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Showing 12 of 12 results by bjorn
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Re: i use a mousepad
by
bjorn
on 15/07/2011, 00:52:04 UTC
What's a mousepad?
Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: So, let's say this is a matter of faith...
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 19:44:32 UTC

Another problem with this is, if a doctor or an airplane maker screws up, I can abandon them and go for a replacement immediately. With politicians I'm pretty much stuck until the ignorant masses change their minds.

That's why I'm a believer in highly federated, localized "competitive government".  

I agree that democracy fails when it becomes too large and too centralized.

That's a cool idea. Competitive government can also be considered "scientific government" in a way, since different systems will be experimented with and the outcomes observed. I wish states would consider using something like charter cities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city); cede some land to an organization and let them organize it on their own terms.
Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: What charities are worth donating to?
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 17:27:04 UTC
I'm involved with Books to Prisoners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_to_Prisoners). Some people are in prison for very stupid reasons. There might be a branch near you (if you're in North America).
Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Worst book ever: "Economics in One Lesson"?
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 17:06:59 UTC
I just finished reading "Economics in One Lesson".  Oh boy.  The fact that anyone can gobble that swill down without as much as a burp of mental indigestion is frankly stunning.  I read it due to someone's rave revues on this forum to which they basically revered this book as a bible of sorts.

There are only a few chapters with any worthwhile arguments to salvage, some of those chapters (and there weren't many) I truly liked the principle message of, but even those he had to pack as much polemical mouth-frothing vitriol in as he could, much of which felt manic, like he couldn't even finish a thought without bursting out in Strangelovian fashion. The chapters were also stacked with the most obvious straw man arguments you could possibly dream up.  It's as if his sole source for counter-arguments was someone who read a bad translation of Keynes into a non-native language, had a lobotomy, and were given opiates and hallucinogens prior to their interview with Mr. Hazlitt.

The naked class warfare of this book was so blatant it's amazing that people can read this thinking that it's some disinterested objective view by a scholarly hermit completely removed from the system he seeks to influence, which due to the reverence in which it was previously addressed lead me to believe that some believe this not far off from the truth.  No sooner than you might give him the new chance of being objective and fair in the next chapter he bursts into another polemic.  The lack of objectivity and disingenuous nature actually put this book the borderline of being a manifesto rather than any actual work of academia.  The words "liberty", "freedom" and other slogans are smattered about the pages to keep the average libertarian plodding along thinking that the system he promotes would somehow be in any of their best interests to which they are woefully mislead.

But to be fair, it is nowhere as bad as "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman.



This could probably be edited in such a way to be self-descriptive.
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Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: I think we need some common objectives...
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 16:49:15 UTC
Perhaps a sort of thing which allows axioms to be submitted and organized hierarchically, and then some mechanism to vote on the axioms (yea or nea) so that level of agreement can be assessed. Discussion could fork off of each axiom submitted so that qualifications and whatnot can be discussed. Based on the level of agreement, the axioms could then be organized on another page according to the level of agreement.

Bad idea in my opinion. I've seen plenty of mantras tossed about in this forum where the poster feels it qualifies as an axiom, and the general groupthink in this forum would probably allow it to be qualified as an axiom, thus lending credence to an argument only by virtue of the biased thinking present herein.

It would be akin to a board full of Global Warming deniers setting up and voting on a set of axioms which seemingly demonstrate that Global Warming is not an issue.

I agree, but the purpose isn't to agree on the truth of the matter, but to find fruitful topics for discussion (I think that's what OP is getting at, anyways). The best topics to discuss might be ones which have equal amounts of agreement and disagreement; avoiding topics which are skewed either way might help avoid the groupthink problem.
Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Book request to the dwellers Politics & Society
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 15:56:09 UTC
Against Intellectual Monopoly: http://www.micheleboldrin.com/research/aim.html (appropriately, the authors offer it online for free)
Interesting challenge to what is commonly termed intellectual property (trademarks, patents, etc.); why we don't necessarily need it and why it probably is very bad and counterproductive.

You and the State: http://www.amazon.com/You-State-Introduction-Political-Philosophy/dp/0742548449
Good introduction to political philosophy from an anarcho-capitalist perspective.
Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: I think we need some common objectives...
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 15:20:17 UTC
Perhaps a sort of thing which allows axioms to be submitted and organized hierarchically, and then some mechanism to vote on the axioms (yea or nea) so that level of agreement can be assessed. Discussion could fork off of each axiom submitted so that qualifications and whatnot can be discussed. Based on the level of agreement, the axioms could then be organized on another page according to the level of agreement.
Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Moral relativism and libertarianism compatible?
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 15:04:58 UTC
I think they can be compatible, but it depends on how you go about establishing each position.

If you take moral relativism to be the thesis that moral judgments all have the same truth-value (i.e. all are true, all are false, or they don't even have truth-values) or all have the same ethical value (no value is "better" than another), and you combine it with the empirical thesis that people will, in general, subscribe to and act according to many different moral values, then you pretty much end up with the current moral landscape.

Subscribing to libertarianism, even given this morally relativistic landscape, might still make sense though. You could go at it on consequentalist grounds. Since people will tend to act according to their own values (which are determined by socialization, upbringing, and whatnot), and since no values are ethically "better" than any other, it isn't reasonable to then argue that certain libertarian values are ethically better. But perhaps, given that people will act according to their own arbitrary values, libertarian values might be the values most conducive to social harmony in general since they would provide people with a set of default values which they can use when they interact with people they don't know. Libertarian values might be the most appropriate "default" set of values since they are probably the bare minimum necessary to ensure life on earth. Life on earth requires a) life, and b) access to scarce resources; following libertarian values would definitely assure these things. People can still subscribe to other values within their own value communities (such as females not being able to show their faces to men-strangers), but perhaps not with people outside their value communities. The problem with our current society is that certain values are legislated directly, or incentivized through social institutions, which have been imposed by coercive authorities; this creates an atmosphere where it is appropriate to impose one's own values on others, since it is efficient to do so. Political authority provides the means to do this; without established political institutions, I doubt this would be as easy. Without political institutions designed to impose certain values, I suspect that people's value sets would eventually shrink, and eventually approximate a libertarian value-set since it would be more socially efficient and less trouble.

I've just realized that over the course of writing this my views might have changed or become self-contradictory; please tell me what you think.
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: the silk road?
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 02:43:28 UTC
I have been on the Silk Road, haven't made a transaction there.  Configuring TOR is a bitch, and the site refuses access without TOR up & running properly on your machine.  After several hours, Firefox was the only browser I could get to actually load the page (Chrome and IE just would not get it up).  There is more info on the Silk Road here:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/



This helped me with configuring TOR for Chrome: http://lifehacker.com/5614732/create-a-tor-button-in-chrome-for-on+demand-anonymous-browsing
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Whitelist Requests (Want out of here?)
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 02:02:23 UTC
Hello,

(requesting whitelisting)

Can't say I know a lot about Bitcoin but I hope to learn more from lurking the forums. I probably won't post much, but would like to be able to get involved eventually.

-Bjorn
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Selling Organic Fair Trad Coffee to Canada
by
bjorn
on 14/07/2011, 00:44:03 UTC
When do you think you'll be ready for business?
Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: the silk road?
by
bjorn
on 13/07/2011, 23:40:41 UTC
Silk Road is currently down; the website has this to say though:

Quote
So the server went down unexpectedly today. This was very unnerving because we thought it had somehow been seized or something terrible like that. Fortunately it was just some kind of glitch and we were able to reboot. Everything has been backed up and is totally current, but we are not going to turn the site back on for a couple of days while we work out a way to prevent such problems. We are terribly sorry for this inconvenience, but we want to provide the best service possible, and random outages just aren't going to cut it. We know it must be terribly frustrating, but we are taking the better-safe-than-sorry approach and we hope you understand.