Low Content Rant/Vent thread

Miscellaneous General
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… That’s not a definition.

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See thesaurus’

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Since this is the low-content rant/vent thread…

You know what pisses me off? People who aren’t willing to define their terms. Oh and also people who try to pass off non-definitions (e.g. “a corporation is a corporation”) as though they’re actual definitions.

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I see what you did there.

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So are you a hippy if accept the Carsonian narrative of political economy?

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Also, technically they wouldn’t as corporations are a state-chartered legal shield. That doesn’t mean, however, that large businesses would be impossible. The term corporation actually has nothing to do with the size of a company.

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Just found out that somebody on YouTube’s username is “SchittReport.” Whoever this person is, he/she likes to post videos with Cenk Ugyur supposedly “owning” Ron Paul, and comments on how libertarians are people who just say “tough luck” when it comes to helping out the poor.

Is it possible to be a libertarian and at the same time not feel extreme hate through how people constantly lampoon the ideology through arrogant stupidity?

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Is it possible to be a libertarian and at the same time not feel extreme hate through how people constantly lampoon the ideology through arrogant stupidity?

To me it feels like banging ones head against the wall sometimes. The obstacles to being understood are so great.

  1. As Jacob once sagely wrote, most people are in arrested development and cannot use logic.

  2. Bertrand Russell’s observation that people would rather die than think, and he sees that every day.

  3. The schools proactively deter students from thinking rationally, forming lifetime habits.

  4. There is a flood from all sources of constant brainwashing preaching economic [and other] falsehoods.

  5. There is great emotional resistance to admitting one is wrong.

  6. To most people, seeing is believing, meaning they don’t grasp what they cannot physically see before their physical eyes. Economic principles cannot be so exhibited.

  7. The effects of economic actions are often not immediate, so that cause and effect are seperated in time, obscuring the connection.

Any more?

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My rants:

  1. I was very surprised to discover that I am the de facto bitcoin opponent. Where is everybody? I also was surprised that so few people chose to deal with the gist of my argument: Refute Mises’ Regression Theorem, or show why bitcoin doesn’t contradict it. In reply, I got a flood of verbiage about how bitcoin makes buying and selling more secure online, and other irrelevencies.

  2. I feel I have pretty much contributed what I have to offer to the forum, and have learned what there is to be learned here. It’s like the end of a good summer camp, bitter sweet and emotional. I think also that there has been a movement in two directions lately in the forum that have left me behind.

First, there is much more interest in libertarian toipics than economic ones, it seems to me. My interest is in understanding economics. I take the libertarian stuff for granted.

Second, there is a trend here to try to squeeze AE into the Procustrean bed of the economics people are learning in school. The Keynesianism you are fed in the classroom stays with you, in ways you don’t suspect. I prefer to start AE with a clean slate, and from a sound foundation of AE, look at what the mainstream is saying [and how absurd it is].

  1. I find I am slipping lately. I’ve made dumb mistakes on my blog that I have had to correct. Not sure what that means.

  2. In real life I am a pleasant character, easy to get along with, cheerful, respectful of others, [or at least able to hide my contempt of the contemptuous]. I don’t like that my sarcastic side lets loose here, but can’t seem to help it. Where did that evil Mr Hyde come from?

I also don’t like that I like being patronizing to those who need it. Dave, I thought you are cultured.

  1. I think the up and coming stars here are Wheylous and Gotlucky. They seem to appreciate my writing, the surest proof of someone who knows what’s what.
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I’m the opposite. I take the economic stuff for granted. I work slowly through the AE stuff because for me, it’s enough to know that the specialists understand what’s what, so I don’t need to understand all of the more subtle and complex aspects of AE. I plan to go more in depth as time goes on, but I don’t feel the need to binge on AE.

I think some of the people who study it in the classroom are actually economics majors, so they have to do it anyway. Anyway, there are still a fair amount of topics related to economics and praxeology, but I think a lot of newbies are trying to imagine what a private law society might look like, so I think that’s why there are a lot of questions about libertarianism.

Thumbs up

Don’t forget Neodoxy. It was a sad time when he went on break.

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My turn to rant:

I hate when people make an argument and then refuse to engage in a debate about it. I’m not talking about bickering and insulting. I mean refusing to defend their argument from criticism and pretending that they have some moral high ground. Doesn’t happen too often, but I hate it when it does. If you don’t want to defend what you wrote, have the cojones to say it.

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UNBELIEVABLE

What are some strategies to take down bureaucracies? I’m thinking of things like in this article: http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1108.html

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Define “define”, Auto, you may be using a different meaning than I am.

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I seriously doubt it.

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What do you mean by “doubt”? For that matter, what is this “I” you are referring to?

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@ gotlucky

So…what prompted this?

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DerpStatis response to me (or lack thereof) in the thread about one of Kinsella’s arguments against IP.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_notion

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Well played.