The questions raised in my blog post are still very important, but this list can add depth to the discussion presented.
Related to my post concerning conspiracy theories, I have a short list of conspiracies that were merely theorized about at one time, but later became a matter of historical fact. This list of 10 Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be True is not an attempt to make you join the 9/11 truth movement or to buy some expensive magnets to protect you from lizard jews, but it is an opportunity to falsify a common claim that conspiracy theories are never true or will never be verified. Several of these conspiracies would never have come to light, had conspiracy theorists not investigated them.
The questions raised in my blog post are still very important, but this list can add depth to the discussion presented.
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As promised, here's more Rothbard. After a week of topical posts, I thought it would be appropriate to suggest a more timeless resource. Few things are as timeless as Rothbard. I was listening to an episode of Radical Agenda, and a caller reminded me of a short essay by Rothbard that lent itself heavily to my conversion from techno-marxism to anarchism.
It's a surprisingly difficult article to find and, somehow, the only places I've been able to find it is on leftist websites. This is ironic, as it is essentially taking the legitimate tools of the lest and turhing them to the ends of liberty and justice. The main thrust of the article is about a practical and principled solution to "public" property (ie. state property) in the hypothetical case of an orderly dissolution of government. Everyone, even those who know Rothbard, ought to read this article, as it presents a solution very similar to my own when people ask about what would happen to existing state infrastructure and corporations that are in bed with the state in an anarchist world. Confiscation and the Homestead Principle is a work that ought to be published right alongside For a New Liberty, maybe even as an appendix. There is a certain dry irony to the essay, as it essentially takes the kernel of truth hidden in marxism and sets it in the greater framework of anarcho-capitalism, exactly where it belongs. There is a veiled but undeniable call for what amounts to the proletariat to occupy and overthrow the state's management of their places of work, much as there is in Marx's works. Unlike Marx, though, Rothbard points out that such a repossession is not one centered on vengeance, labor theory, or class warfare, but instead on the basic principles of property rights and calling out the state on its rhetoric concerning "public property". Now that everyone's "Independence" Day hangover ought to have passed and I've gotten some decent feedback on my brief soundcloud rant concerning it, I felt I should follow up with something a little more intellectual than a rant laced with historical references. It's also a chance to offer an olive branch to those that were upset that I would be so critical of Pope Francis' non-encylclical. Toady's resource suggestion is another Catholic-oriented one: Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae. An encyclical indicting the heresy of Americanism. As is typically the case with encyclicals, it draws a surprising but undeniable connection between two apparently disparate phenomena. In this case, it's the vocations crisis and the dropout rate of young Catholics being a result of the American radical liberal understanding of freedom. While there are allusions to the flawed Thomistic definition of freedom, the argument presented is compatible with more reasonable definitions.
Unlike Laudato Si, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae is addressed to the Catholic world and upholds doctrinal integrity against the mistaken views of the pagan world. Well worth a read.
As I've said before, Cantwell, with rare exception, tends to say exactly what I'm thinking in more or less the way I'm thinking it. He has an incredibly rational, well-read, and solidly grounded approach and interpretation of facts. I'm not saying this because I agree with him, I'm saying it because he's managed to make me critically assess my beliefs and has led to me changing my position on a handful of things. He's got a grasp of economics and the human condition that rivals and even surpasses that of Andreas M Antonopoulos.
He doesn't always couch his arguments in the most dispassionate or compassionate manner, but that's not his rhetorical style. What he does is effective, and that's why those unable to measure up to his standards of integrity and knowledgeability are apt to attempting to silence and exile him. It is ironic that the anarchist, atheist, asshole, with a criminal record from New York City is, quite literally, the conscience of "the liberty movement".
He recently posted what has rapidly become his most popular piece of work by a tremendous margin. It was a response to the SCotUS' ruling mandating religious support of gay marriage licenses. Unlike many people who simply look at such issues as either, "Yay! Gays!" or "Boo! Gays!" Cantwell and I have an identical and less-conventional position on such issues: tell the state to mind it's own goddamned business.
As is the case with any other economic or human social issue, government involvement makes everything worse rather than better. The state has absolutely no reason, moral or otherwise to concern itself with the voluntary interactions of human beings, nor they types of agreements (or contracts, for those who believe in contracts) that humans make between themselves. The Church has no reason to try to make sinners the enemy of the state and use violence to try to force them to behave morally, as it will only increase opposition to the Church, and justly so. When did Christ ever take a sword to the adulterer? In the same way, the state cannot use violence to force the Church to acknowledge the state's claim to redefine an institution as old as the human race in order to garner political support. Inserting itself into the voluntary interactions of humans: forcing cake shops to serve customers, punishing churches that will not abandon their sacramental duties, and creating any number of perverse economic incentives will not make discrimination go away, it will justify and magnify it. Just as people are incentivized to kill endangered species that come to roost on private property, they are incentivized to make protected classes of humans go away when they come to roost. Bitcoin, as both a technology and as a currency, is an invaluable tool for the rise of freedom and decentralization. There are those in governments (especially the US government) who understand this and are doing their best to smother it in its crib. The remainder are ignorant and happen to be blundering their way into attempting the very same sort of abortion. Fortunately, the government cannot regulate Bitcoin, they can only regulate the points of contact between Bitcoin and the legacy systems that the government controls. This, of course, has made access through exchanges and more traditional methods of exchanging one form of money for another quite difficult and somewhat risky. Fortunately, where there is a market demand, the market provides: Purse.io is a simple solution to a ridiculous problem. Much like Brawker, a previous endorsement of mine that has since gone out of business, Purse.io allows one to essentially use their credit/debit card to buy Bitcoins.
Basically, someone makes a wishlist entry on a site like Amazon and places an appropriate amount of bitcoin into an escrow wallet to purchase that item. You then order that item form their wishlist. When they receive the item, the bitcoin is released from escrow and sent to your account. Congratulations! You've just got yourself some invaluable magic internet money. The process works in reverse, as well. If you want to spend your newly-acquired Bitcoin to buy something from Amazon (say the price jumps in value 600% again and your $50 in BTC becomes $300 in BTC overnight), You need only to make an Amazon wishlist entry and to place enough bitcoin to make the purchase worthwhile to another Purse.io user (people frequently get amazon products at a 5-25% discount buying in BTC) and just wait for someone to fulfill that wish. I've only used the service once, but the UI was seamless and easy to use, the instructions were clear and simple, and I managed to get my Bitcoin right away, courtesy of same-day shipping on Amazon. This is a great starting place for people who are bit-curious but intimidated by all the paperwork and regulatory bullshit associated with using fiat to buy crypto-assets on exchanges. Today's resource suggestion is a blog post on ZomiaOfflineGames.com. You may recognize the site from the resource suggestion on HYPERCRONIUS; the man who made that game is a huge content producer, daily content on one of his handful of blogs, weekly or twice-weekly podcasts, video games, etc. All of his material is worth the time and effort; even when he is wrong, he is such in an intelligent and informative way. Today's resource suggestion is about the "quantified self" and the rise of wearables marketed as self-quantifiers and the inherent dangers and cultural tyrannies that can result from their use.
Wearables can kill. It's short and to the point, and gives one a good taste of what to expect from the podcast or other blog posts. A good follow-up to 8-bit Philosophy is the School of Life's series of philosophy videos. They have two playlists of about 15 videos each. One here and another here.
They seem to go a little deeper than (-bit philosophy, at the expense of a modicum of entertainment value. These are well-composed, entertaining, and generally informative. If any of the videos sparks your fancy, you can easily look up any of the specifics mentioned in the video and pursue it further. The School of Life has many other video playlists, but I haven't watched them yet, and I'm leery of endorsing them without first watching them, given how most youtube videos concerning things such as "political theory" tend to be quite mistaken. A question I still get asked a lot, if less frequently than before, is "How can one be a Catholic and an anarchist?" Among the many opportunities one finds (mostly borne out of misconceptions about the Church) to raise doubts as to the compatibility betwixt the two is "Isn't the Church some sort of empire centered on the Vatican and using the mafia model to spread throughout the globe?" I hope to write a full post about the intricacies of the relationship between freedom and faith in my philosophy, but this resource is a decent response to the specific question of "What about the Vatican"? Today's daily resource post is an exploration of the relationship between religious and secular society, political theory as applies to "anarchist states". It's a short, easy read (17 pages), and basically just explains away the misconceptions that lead to such a question. You can read it on this page, or you can download it from Mises, here. Oh, and one more thing, from whence do you think the mafia got it's organization structure? |
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