In this thread we post short things that don't require a seperate thread. Previous low content threads:
April 2011
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/23834.aspx?PageIndex=1
March 2011
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/23166.aspx?PageIndex=1
Januari 2011 http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/21877.aspx December 2010 http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/21375/385246.aspx November 2010 http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/20722/377418.aspx October 2010 http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/20457/374319.aspx
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
Robert Neuwirth On Our Shadow Cities
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
This post is uninformative and made only to make sure my post count wasn't 666 during finals week. :( can't get much more low content than that. BACK TO THE BOOKS!
--Edit--
Well, I don't want this to be a total thrown away post. So here is a poem I was thinking about earlier by William Stafford.
A Story That Could Be True:
If you were exchanged in the cradle and your real mother died without ever telling the story then no one knows your name, and somewhere in the world your father is lost and needs you but you are far away. He can never find how true you are, how ready. when the great wind comes and the robberies of the rain you stand in some corner shivering. The people who go by- you wonder at their calm. They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, "Who are you really wanderer?"- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: "Maybe I'm a king."
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine - Elvis Presley
Student:This post is uninformative and made only to make sure my post count wasn't 666 during finals week.
Awesome!
A cool post I made on another forum, which ladyphoenix made me join: http://www.onlinedebate.net/forums/showthread.php/23145-The-Rise-of-German-Fascism?p=465708&viewfull=1#post465708
Edit: I was just looking up Free Lunch on wikipedia, and it says that saloons used to include a free lunch with the purchase of a drink to build customers. Well, the temperance movement had a problem with that. They thought it made people drink, and tried to get it banned. Just reminded me that the Progressive desire to control what we eat has a long history.
Filled this out for my recent history class survey: "The book literally lies. The book claims Hoover was "pro free market" and "unwilling to run deficits". What a joke. Hoover ran UNPRECEDENTED deficits, establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, enacting the Home Loan Bank discount system, extending government aid to land-banks, bailing out state governments, etc. FDR himself conceded that the New Deal was just an extension of Hoover policies which is ironic because FDR campaigned against the runaway spending of Hoover, pledging austerity .
So the book is objectively wrong. This is just mindless regurgitation of popular statist mythology so that all the little kiddies can rationalize the next corporate bailout or foreign war.
Good job being a shill!"
Sieben: Filled this out for my recent history class survey:"The book literally lies. The book claims Hoover was "pro free market" and "unwilling to run deficits". What a joke. Hoover ran UNPRECEDENTED deficits, establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, enacting the Home Loan Bank discount system, extending government aid to land-banks, bailing out state governments, etc. FDR himself conceded that the New Deal was just an extension of Hoover policies which is ironic because FDR campaigned against the runaway spending of Hoover, pledging austerity . So the book is objectively wrong. This is just mindless regurgitation of popular statist mythology so that all the little kiddies can rationalize the next corporate bailout or foreign war. Good job being a shill!"
Filled this out for my recent history class survey:"The book literally lies. The book claims Hoover was "pro free market" and "unwilling to run deficits". What a joke. Hoover ran UNPRECEDENTED deficits, establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, enacting the Home Loan Bank discount system, extending government aid to land-banks, bailing out state governments, etc. FDR himself conceded that the New Deal was just an extension of Hoover policies which is ironic because FDR campaigned against the runaway spending of Hoover, pledging austerity .
Thank you, Sieben.
Normally, I would say, "You could have been more polite and less hyperbolic", but the facts you detailed are sufficient enough to make up for the rhetoric.
Yeah... This is an attitude "problem" I've been having. I totally have patience for people who are legitimately interested or intellectually honest. But the second I get one whiff of bull, I call them on it. Bluntly and unequivocally. On forums I never ever let anyone get away with their mistakes. Even if they drop them I just carry it on to the next post. It is totally sadistic and I want them to be as uncomfortable as possible for the crime of spitting their crap at me in the first place.
There are two results. It can spiral into heated disrespectful discussion where my opponent will not budge an inch, and therefore gets owned over and over again on the same issues they were originally wrong about. As far as I can see, experiencing repeat failure is humiliating and they eventually stop. They also sometimes just walk away. The more "mature" users do this - but they usually wait till they're in a real bind to exit. When told that I'm being "uncivil" or "immature" I fire back that intellectual dishonesty is far more uncivil, and that maturity is a social shield they hide behind because they have no real substance.
So inb4 "you won't convert many people this way". I'm not trying to. Calling liars liars and hacks hacks is catharthic. If I'm going to bang my head against the wall trying to explain that the state is not a voluntary club, I may as well let the people know along the way that there's something wrong with them after a few pages. Politely restating arguments is just avoiding the real issue - people are utter and complete failures. On the plus side, the people I fight with are usually the especially obnoxious members of the forum. Observers frequently chip in that they're on my side, not on theirs.
I just wanted to say how glad i am that mises.org is like the only site not blocked at my job!
Sieben:This is an attitude "problem" I've been having. I totally have patience for people who are legitimately interested or intellectually honest. But the second I get one whiff of bull, I call them on it. Bluntly and unequivocally.
Good. The world need fiery screaming anarchists now, even if they're a little over the line.
Sieben:Calling liars liars and hacks hacks is catharthic.
The problem is that a lot of these terms have been misused to the point where they are simply interpreted as undefined slurs. So even if you refer to them in their actual, academic meaning, people will just hear "angry rant".
I noticed this, for example, with the term "myth". A myth is defined as "an unproved collective belief that is accepted uncritically", but people more or less throw it around to denigrate anything they don't believe in, even if it is neither unproved nor accepted by very many people nor are they uncritical about it. The word has lost it's meaning, so when I call something a myth, actually meaning "an unproved collective belief that is accepted uncritically", the listeners will simply think I'm throwing around undefined slurs to denigrate something I happen to not believe in. This kind of newspeak is very much the friend of authoritarianism, because liberal content relies on clearly defined words.
Marc Stevens' latest.
Emperor Nero:Good. The world need fiery screaming anarchists now, even if they're a little over the line.
Emperor Nero:The problem is that a lot of these terms have been misused to the point where they are simply interpreted as undefined slurs. So even if you refer to them in their actual, academic meaning, people will just hear "angry rant".
I don't think I convert these people. But they get a lot less aggressive around me and it gives them something to think about. And again, spectators usually agree with me
Hey, the Republicans have Bill O Reilly, look how popular he is. Then again, Bill is an imbecile, and judging by your debates, you know what your talking about.
1984ing the public schools, school surveillence. Creepy.
http://motherjones.com/media/2011/05/annette-fuentes-lockdown-high
Ron Paul the voluntaryist?
I got goosebumps at 00:13. Brb gonna make a thread for that video.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/05/house_passes_bill_to_force_off.html
The Obama Administration is being "forced" by Congress to sell off leases in the Gulf. Of course, we know that government leases on land being used for mining or limber or oil are a bad idea because of a lack of well-defined property rights and lack of liability, but this caused oil to fall below $100 a barrel.
http://www.pricestats.com/
This could blow the CPI out of the water along with MIT's Billion Prices Project, which according to Zerohedge just came back online.
Medley of Jung and current situation:
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
From Hazlitt, written in 1978. Sounded to me like it was written today:
In nearly every country in the world today the outlook is for continued inflation. The arguments of the sound money champions and limited-government advocates have proved futile against the sophistries of the inflationists and the vested interests of the poli- ticians. The politicians have concluded that they can continue to hold office only as long as they spend more than they tax, as long as they redistribute income, as long as they "soak the rich," as long as they hand out subsidies to a score of pressure groups under the plea of "relieving poverty" and showing "compassion."
For years thoughtful and responsible men have hoped that, when the situation in a given country got bad enough, the inflating "welfare" government would be turned out, or would itself reverse its policies. But the expected time of realizing this hope keeps re- ceding into a more distant future. Where, in this country or that, the inflating socialist government has at last been thrown out, the "conservatives" elected in their place have feared to make any but trivial changes. Millions of people have got used to their food subsidies, or their controlled rents, or their high and prolonged unemployment insurance, or their government-provided jobs, or their escalating "social security" benefits. They have come to ac- cept all these subsidies as rights. The existing government fears
that any attempt to remove or reduce them will set off riots. The attitude of the politicians in power becomes increasingly one of "Apres nous, le deluge."
Why the New Guy Can't Code
"'We've all lived the nightmare,' writes Jon Evans. 'A new developer shows up at work, and you try to be welcoming, but he can't seem to get up to speed; the questions he asks reveal basic ignorance; and his work, when it finally emerges, is so kludgey that it ultimately must be rewritten from scratch by more competent people.' Evans takes a stab at explaining why the new guy can't code when his interviewers and HR swear that they only hire above-average/A-level/top-1% people. Evans fingers the technical interview as the culprit, saying the skills required to pass today's industry-standard software interview are not those required to be a good software developer. Instead, Evans suggests: 'Don't interview anyone who hasn't accomplished anything. Ever. Certificates and degrees are not accomplishments; I mean real-world projects with real-world users. There is no excuse for software developers who don't have a site, app, or service they can point to and say, 'I did this, all by myself!' in a world where Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services have free service tiers, and it costs all of $25 to register as an Android developer and publish an app on the Android Market."
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/05/08/012243/Why-the-New-Guy-Cant-Code
Trolololol silver is coming back up trolololol
Atlas Shrugged - Penn Point
Penn Point has been great lately.
http://rsc.jordan.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Federal_Land_Ownership--May_2009_.pdf
Percentage of state land owned by the federal government. 84.5% of Nevada is federally owned for example.
We should be taking notes off of Penn Jillette, as for what we can do as libertarians. Let's see: media icon for many reasons, tv show promoting views, personal little videos.
23,000 File Sharers Targeted In Latest Lawsuit
"Subpoenas are expected to go out to ISPs this week in what could be the biggest BitTorrent downloading case in US history. At least 23,000 file sharers are being targeted by the US Copyright Group for downloading The Expendables. The Copyright Group appears to have adopted Righthaven's strategy in blanket-suing large numbers of defendants and offering an option to quickly settle online for a moderate payment. The IP addresses of defendants have allegedly been collected by paid snoops capturing lists of all peers who were downloading or seeding Sylvester Stallone's flick last year. I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/10/0048246/23000-File-Sharers-Targeted-In-Latest-Lawsuit
I think the obama video is fake.
"No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person." ~ Karl Hess
"look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?" ~Zaphod Beeblebrox
The "White Panther" Statement of the "White Panthers" of the 60's, is very facepalm heavy with beliefs in post scarcity and other contradictory typical marxist premises, taken from Wikipedia. My favorite is number 3:
In November 1968, Fifth Estate published the "White Panther State/meant". This manifesto, emulating the Black Panthers, ended with a ten-point program: Full endorsement and support of the Black Panther Party's 10-point program and platform. Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets. Free exchange of energy and materials—we demand the end of money! Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care—everything free for every body! Free access to information media—free the technology from the greed creeps! Free time & space for all humans—dissolve all unnatural boundaries! Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule—turn the buildings over to the people at once! Free all prisoners everywhere—they are our comrades! Free all soldiers at once—no more conscripted armies! Free the people from their phony "leaders"—everyone must be a leader—freedom means free every one! All Power to the People![3
In November 1968, Fifth Estate published the "White Panther State/meant". This manifesto, emulating the Black Panthers, ended with a ten-point program:
A few of those in the end don't sound so bad.
...
Assault on the culture... fucking in the streets? Why that?
Apparently US health care is so expensive because "the US government is less involved in price regulation". There aren't enough price controls!
*facepalm*
facepalm indeed. If only the government would cap the prices, all problems would be solved. Just cap it at 0 dollars, just like the communists did!
Hahahaha "Providers charge more because they can"! Thats hilarious! Seriously that's just such a childish and economically ignorant way of putting it!
Anyway they're right that about the first three myths but the fourth is wrong, just because actual costs on malpractice itself is not high this does not imply that the actual spending on malpractice insurance isn't high.
As for the truths doctors are overpaid they can charge monopoly rates, there is too much overhead a large part of this problem is because of the fact that health insurance itself is so common which, also combined with malpractice, helps to increase price, and the government, through tax incentives helps to increase how common health insurance itself is.
The FDA helps to keep drug prices high, as does intellectual property if your into that kind of thing
SNAP!...wait...what?
"Here’s what the Library of Parliament says about the bill on its website: “Clause 5 of the bill provides that the offences of public incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred may be committed by any means of communication and include making hate material available, by creating a hyperlink that directs web surfers to a website where hate material is posted, for example.”
For simply posting a link to a website that has material someone else deems hateful, you could go to jail for two years and be branded a criminal."
Robert Murphy on Freedom Watch
re: "Sell off the state"
See my post about the holdings in land of the federal government.
Juan Williams, Ron Paul Driving the Republican Campaign-
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/159863-ron-paul-driving-the-republican-campaign