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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Reader Mail #92

I liked this article on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and other bridges in NYC.

A lot of the key infrastructure in NYC is 100+ years old. The NYC subway had more miles of track 100 years ago than today. More lines were demolished than new lines added.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. The German police raided the home of the owner of the wikileaks.de domain. The excuse cited was "child pornography".

"Child pornography" is a catchall excuse that the bad guys use to crack down on Internet users.

I wonder if there's some policeman somewhere who thinks "Most Internet users do nothing but look at child pornography all day."

That's one big risk of operating my own agorist-themed domain. The bad guys could physically raid me or steal my domain.

I'm disturbed by that other article that says "If you question the legitimacy of the income tax or Federal Reserve, then you are a terrorist."

I'm much more concerned about State police seizing me, than I am about losing my domain.



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. People have tried making closed-source forks of open source projects. Those projects tend to fail. The open source community will still support the open source version (if it's any good), and they will do a better job of support than the closed-source business that has limited resources.

Therefore, restrictive licenses like the GPL are unnecessary.

Intellectual property is not property. The GPL is silly. If I open-source code for my website, I'll just make it completely public domain.



This article by Kevin Carson on "Center for Stateless Society" was interesting. It's about how State regulations shut small-scale manufacturers out of the market.

He mentioned that strict regulations were recently passed on clothing and toys, in the wake of the "tainted goods imported from China" scare. These regulations hurt small-scale producers. Suppose it costs $100k+ to get a State license. That makes small-scale manufacturing impractical.

State regulation makes it hard for small business owners to bootstrap a business. The best way to start a small business is to spend 5-10 hours per week while still keeping a wage slave job. State regulation makes this a lot harder. (In the area of software, most wage slave contracts specify that all software you write belongs to the employer, even if written while not at work. If I put code on my personal website, I should only do a release while unemployed!)

As usual, Kevin Carson falls short of the correct solution. Small-scale manufacturers should practice agorism. By avoiding all State regulations, small-scale manufacturing would be a profitable business.

There was an interesting bit in the comments:

Property taxes make subsistence farming illegal/impractical.

If you have a farm where you produce exactly enough to match your consumption, that's not viable. You have to sell some goods to earn some slave points so you can pay income taxes and property taxes.

Taxes force all productive workers to produce more than they consume. The difference is loot for the parasite class.

There are limits to property tax rates. Suppose property tax rates were 100%, and it takes the State 2 years to foreclose for nonpayment of property taxes. Then, people would just refuse to pay the tax and move every 2 years.

In some jurisdictions (most notably California and Proposition 13), there are limits on how much property tax rates can be raised.

In times of hyperinflation, property tax burdens will be wiped out. The State won't be able to raise property tax rates fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. At this time, free market police will become a viable business, and the bad guys won't be able to collect property taxes at all.



I had a phone interview with someone who started a software company, but neither of the cofounders is a software engineer. They hired some outsourcing firm to develop version 1.0 of their product. Now, they want to hire a software engineer directly. Their website has not been released to the public yet.

Here's the bit that made me say "ROFLMAO!" They said that they're raising a round of VC, and they expect to have a valuation of $10M. If you have a software startup, and neither cofounder is a qualified software engineer, your business is worth $0.

My impression is that the VCs also don't understand "A software startup needs to have a qualified software engineer as cofounder." They're merely evaluating the investment based on the parasite/BS skills of the founders.

They said that the outsourcing firm is developing a social networking site for them, using open source software to cut down on costs. The basis of the social networking site was WordPress. WTF? WordPress is a blogging engine, and not a social networking engine. It sounded like a mess to me. The outsourcing firm probably took WordPress, wrote a style sheet and maybe a plugin or two, and sold it as the finished product.

If neither cofounder is a qualified software engineer, then you're *GUARANTEED* to get ripped off by a parasitic con artist, rather than by someone who knows what they're doing.

VCs and members of the parasite class treat software engineers like interchangeable cogs. That is exactly the wrong approach for a software startup. In a software startup, you need to have top-of-the-line software engineers who are 10x-100x more productive than average. You may retort "If you're so smart, FSK, then why don't you start your own software company?" The problem is State restriction of the market. I don't have the ability to ask a VC for $1M in funding. Even if I did, the terms of funding would make me the effective employee of the VC. I've decided that any businesses I start will be 100% owned by me. Otherwise, the Principal-Agent problem causes a conflict between my personal interests and those of my investors. If I accept VC, I must eventually sell to a larger corporation or "go public", so that the VCs may cash out their investment. If I keep 100% ownerwhip, I'm under no pressure to sell, and I'm not answerable to outside investors.

The only actual expenses of any business I start would be hosting ($20/month via Linode), plus my rent and living expenses, plus my time. I should treat my blogging business as a self-bootstrapped one, rather than soliciting outside investors. I probably won't be able to seriously interest competent VCs until I have 10k+ regular readers/users, and by then I won't need to raise money. One advantage of being stuck living with my parents is that my living expenses are practically zero, although I prefer my interpersonal freedom.

I felt like telling the interviewer "Your business is worthless. You're wasting your time. Go do something else.", but they wouldn't have understood anyway.

I also tried explaining to them "You have no idea if your software is any good until you have actual users." They didn't get it. I also explained to them "On my blog, I consider 5%-10% monthly reader growth to be good. Starting from 200 readers, 10% growth only brings me to 220 readers. Still, 10% monthly growth is *NICE*, especially if I can keep it up for several years." I normally don't mention my blog on job interviews, but once I realize "This job is hopeless!", then I don't mind. As another interesting bit, I mentioned I had a blog, but the interviewer didn't bother to ask for the URL. That also was an indication of the lameness of the interviewer.

They said they were paying cash+equity, but the cash was based on "milestones achieved", rather than an hourly, weekly, or monthly rate. That sounds shady. It's possible that I could do a good job, but wind up in an argument with them over "Were milestones achieved?"

"Don't work for idiots!" is sound advice. However, what alternatives are there, besides starting my own business?



This thread on mises.org was silly. Someone was asking "Why don't a bunch of anarchists buy some land and form an anarchist State? Why can't a group of anarchists buy land from a State, like the US government bought land. The Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, and the Gadsen purchase are examples of States selling land."

The problem is that State's won't voluntarily cede their taxation power.

The deal to buy land applies only when one State sells to another State. No State will sell land to a group of individuals who want to form a competing State.

I can buy land, but I still have to pay "rent" in the form of property taxes. Even if I own/rent land, I must pay tax on labor performed on that land via the income tax.

The Federal government is the issuer for dollars. Suppose I had $1B and offered to buy some land and start an anarchist State. Why would the Federal government accept $1B from me, when it can merely print as much money as it desires?

No government will voluntarily cede its property. This includes both land-property and human-property. Laws restricting immigration make sense when you realize "Humans are property of the State". By restricting immigration from Mexico, the leaders of the US government say to the leaders of the Mexican government, "We won't steal your property!"



I read a blog about "introduction to standup comedy". He had some interesting bits.

The most valuable asset for an aspiring standup comic is "stage time". This is time spent in front of a live audience. You won't know how good you are until you have an audience. Similarly, you don't know how good a blog is until you have readers and feedback. You don't know how good a website is until you have users.

If you want to get booked at one of the top comedy clubs, you need to have appeared on TV. You can only get a spot on TV if you've been booked at one of the top comedy clubs. That sounds a lot like "We want to hire someone with 3 years of iPhone development experience. There's a shortage of iPhone programmers!"

I read another source that said, "In NYC, there's a lot more nightclubs than there are standup comics who don't suck." If I attempted standup comedy as a paid gig, I'd be looking to earn enough to substitute for a wage slave software engineer job, and not earn a ridiculously huge income. My goal from standup comedy would be "Earn $1k per week!" and not "Make millions of dollars!" I should be able to find a place in middle-tier nightclubs, if the top ones won't admit me for censorship purposes.

The author said "The comics who are successful is very loosely correlated with who's actually any good. However, if you're super-awesome, you'll do well anyway." Obviously, I consider myself super-awesome, but my opinion is biased.

He also said "If you want stage time, host your own event." That seems like a good idea. If I pick an off-peak time like Tuesday or Wednesday evening, I might be able to rent some space at a low-profile nightclub cheap/free. I could do a 1 hour show, tape it, and upload it to the Internet/YouTube. I shouldn't hold out for "OMFG!! I need a mainstream media outlet to promote me!" Given the nature of my content, that is very unlikely and I shouldn't hold my breath waiting.

I wonder if "reaction from live audiences" is different than "reaction when blogging"? When blogging, only the people who think "FSK is awesome!" or "FSK sucks!" bother to comment. A nightclub audience, especially at an "open mike" night, should be more openminded.

Besides, how could hecking from a standup audience be any worse than pro-State trolls on my blog! I wouldn't see any stupid ideas that I haven't heard about before. A clever retort to stupidity would sound better if delivered immediately and in person.

A key component of my act will probably be arguments with pro-State trolls in the audience. I won't need to plant stupid people in the audience; they'll be there naturally.

The main feature of "promote agorism via standup comedy" is "Audience members with the productive personality type will think I'm awesome. Audience members with the parasitic personality type will think I suck." I can see that as a potential problem, if half the audience thinks I'm aweome and half the audience is ready to call the cops and have me arrested.

I've concluded that "promote agorism via standup comedy" is an experiment worth pursuing. I'll probably wait 3-18 months before starting. It's worth it if I promote my website during my act. If one audience member becomes a new regular reader of my blog, it's profitable.

The primary problem is "My parents would freakout if I told them I was attempting standup comedy." My parents have repeatedly told me "FSK should not express his free market ideas in public. A State enforcer who hears me talk will kidnap/assault/drug me."

Attempting standup comedy is more of a marathon than a sprint. I shouldn't expect immediate success. It might take 3-5 years before I find someone willing to pay me to perform. It'd just be a hobby and "promote my blog/website" thing initially. I should also experiment with a vlog.

I noticed that some of the people who organize "open mike" nights also have jobs as writers for The Daily Show or David Letterman. It's possible that I could get booked as a guest on such a show. It probably wouldn't happen until after a few years trying. I doubt "someone steals my material" is a big risk. If other people start talking about free market economics, that's a good idea! Any established mainstream media personality won't be able to afford risking their reputation.

When I gave Math talks in college and grad school, people always said I was a good public speaker.

Via standup comedy, I should at least acquire some new regular readers for my blog. Based on AdBrite statistics, I evaluate that each regular reader of my blog is worth $0.0001-$0.0005 per day. It's actually more than that, because a dedicated regular reader will promote my blog elsewhere. This leads to exponential growth, albeit at a rate of only 5%-10% per month. At this point "Other people promote my blog!" is more valuable than "I promote my own blog!" I'm focusing more on "Write good posts!" and "Answer reader comments." than promoting my blog or looking elsewhere for post ideas. (It's a cyclical thing.)

Several people wrote, "You're an idiot if you try out for 'Last Comic Standing' (the NBC show)" A ton of people show up to audition, and you get 30 seconds or less each. The producers of the show frequently have chosen the finalists ahead of time. The producers of the show favor comedians who are signed with their agents. The auditions are a fnord that provides the illusion of openness.



I liked this post on APMEX's blog. They claim there is a huge spike in people ordering gold and silver coins/rounds/bars for physical delivery.

In fact, at APMEX, the numbers of orders increased 262% for Gold from 2007 to 2008. Silver orders increased 358% from 2007 to 2008. So far, 2009 appears to be making those increases look paltry by comparison.

I made my first silver investment, although it's a State-licensed paper investment. I bought SLV with my 2008 Roth IRA contribution.

APMEX linked to this Glen Beck video on the growing national debt. The approximate shape of the graph was correct, but he was otherwise really off.

The obvious errors are:
  1. M2 and the national debt is closer to $10T than $1T shown in his video.
  2. The Y-axis should be a log-scale. This makes recent moves seem more dramatic



This post on nostate.com is a transcript of Mike Gogulski explaining market anarchism and free market police/justice to someone. It was interesting, but only covered bits I already understand. It's a good beginner-level explanation.



I liked this article on why it sucks to be a professional computer programmer. I remember reading it before, but it was worth reading a second time.

Most programming languages have a very short half-life. After you've been working for a few years, your old skills start losing value as fast as you pick up new skills. Every time a new language is released, you have to decide whether or not to spend effort learning it. If you make the wrong decision, you may be SOL, because all your experience in obsolete languages.

About 7 years ago, I thought "If only I became an expert C++ programmer. Then, I'll never have to worry about finding a job." Now, I am an expert C++ programmer. However, the industry has moved on to other languages.

I disagree with "My old experience in C/C++ is useless when applying for .NET, Java, or PHP jobs." That is what most wage slave employers say. A lot of skills are transferable, such as going into someone else's lousy code and figuring out how to patch it. The hardest part of most jobs is understanding the business logic and dealing with badly-written legacy code, rather than language-specific coding details.

There was another interesting bit.

This trend, in which people without computer programming experience manage computer programming projects, is a result of the low prestige of computer programming. People with high prestige jobs, like surgeons, would never allow themselves to be managed by non-surgeons. In a complicated medical procedure there will be a head surgeon overseeing the surgery, and not a project manager without any medical training. Lawyers have Model Rule 5.4 which makes it unethical for non-lawyers to manage lawyers.

If a lawyer is managed by a non-lawyer or a doctor is managed by a non-doctor, that's considered wrong. It's very common for software engineers to be managed by people with no technical ability at all.

"If you don't like it, start your own software business!" is hard, due to State restriction of the market. State restriction of the market means that parasitic types are usually controlling businesses.

Employers like to treat programmers like interchangeable cogs. In practice, you get what you pay for. With a State-licensed monopoly, it's irrelevant whether a business hires great software engineers or lousy ones.

There was a related post with an interesting comment. The primary things that doctors do in medical school is fact memorization. Fact memorization is a substitute for genuine learning. Fact memorization provides the illusion that you're doing something difficult and interesting.



I'm reading blogs written by standup comedians. I'm noticing lots of obvious flaws.
  1. Crappy site design
  2. Lousy ad placement (if ads are present)
  3. Lack of basic blogging skills (if a blog is present). For example, no archive pages. As another example, a badly-placed navbar.
  4. Lousy choice of domain name. For example, "angryjewishguy.com" is a suitable domain name for a comedian. (It's available!) "Firstnamelastname.com" (with your actual name) is a lousy domain name, because your audience may not remember how to spell your name. My real name is unsuitable for a domain name, because people who've heard it once will probably misspell it.
I wonder if, since I'm a software engineer, other standup comedians might hire me to design their website for them? If I'm already paying $20/month for a Linode, I could easily accommodate extra domains. I wouldn't be charging for hosting; I'd be hosting for website design services and such.



Azraelsjudgement was citing my blog on YouTube again. I noticed via Google Analytics (just 1-2 visits).

GET A BETTER CAMERA!



This article, via Hacker News, was interesting. It's about assymetric "friend" relationships in social networking websites.

On FaceBook, you only get to be a friend if both people accept the invitation.

On Twitter, I can follow your Twitter feed even if you don't follow my feed. This is assymetric. For example, you can follow a celebrity's feed, even if the celebrity doesn't know who you are.

Assymetric friend relationships make more sense.

As another example, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or visit my blog, even if I have no idea who you are. You may think "FSK's blog is awesome!", while I have no idea who you are.

For example, suppose I establish a successful agorist gold/silver/FRN barter network. As a new customer, you'd be taking almost no risk buying gold from me, based on the trusted trading network I've established. As a seller, I'm taking a huge risk with a new customer, because he might be an undercover cop. If I want to grow my agorist business, I have to take the risk of adding new customers. At the same time, I want to minimize that risk.



David Z from nothirdsolution has become an active Twitter user. I never understood the attraction of Twitter, but other people are of course free to use it.

Due to the way Twitter works, I don't know if someone is circulating my blog on Twitter. In Google Analytics, Twitter referrals show up as "direct traffic" instead of showing Twitter as the referring site.

If I were making up phrases for Twitter, it'd be stuff like:
  • Taxation is theft!
  • Government is terrorism!
  • The USA has an unfair monetary system!



I liked this post, via Hacker News, on people manipulating their "Twitter" follower counts. Once you make a "top 100" list, you'll keep getting new followers just from being on the list, even if your Twitter feed sucks.



I liked this post. Someone did a study. They concluded that, in criminal trials, pro se defendants perform better than those who used an attorney. That isn't completely scientific, because the pro se defendants may have been more intelligent or the prosecutor had a weaker case. It was a straight analysis of "% of time acquitted completely" and "% of time convicted on a less serious offense".

For example, suppose a State enforcer assaults me for agorism. I decide to represent myself sui juris. I might be able to persuade the jury "I'm not a bad guy! I don't deserve to go to jail!" I might get an acquittal, or a conviction on a lesser offense.

However, that contradicts the way judges behave. Judges assume that a pro se defendant has a mental illness. You'd have to be insane to forego the advice of a laywer! I read that most "defendant competency psychiatric examinations" are ordered when a defendant expresses a desire for a pro se defense.



Supernova Girl has left a new comment on your post ""Going Galt" Fnord":

If I'm not mistaken, Ayn Rand's 'Anthem' is required reading by the NYC Dept. Of Education.

I'd never heard of that. I never read it in school. Usually, the top "free market thinkers" are never mentioned at all in school. This includes Ayn Rand, Bastiat, Louis Even, Karl Marx, and Lysander Spooner. I went to a NYC public high school, and I didn't hear about Ayn Rand until my last year of college. She was mentioned by another student, and not by the schoolwork.

I never read "The Fountainhead". I only read "Atlas Shrugged". At this point, I have very little patience for lousy writing. Ayn Rand is a writer that has good ideas, but her writing isn't that good.

Karl Marx is mentioned and ridiculed in a State school. However, the details of his work are never actually mentioned, lest people discover that the USA is actually a Communist country.

(I worked in a bookstore & used to stock the Summer Reading shelves. There usually was a choice between Ayn Rand's Anthem & Joseph Heller's Catch 22. I would then proceed to point to where the Cliff-Notes are shelved)

& I'm with you on taxes being highway robbery. Literally.

Taxes are theft. That is hardly worth mentioning anymore, except that it's an important truth censored by the mainstream media.

I live on SI, and with these MTA fare hikes, they want to raise the price of the Verazanno Bridge to 13 bucks. I swear, the City must think Staten Island is the lost city of El Dorado.

PS:I sent you fanmail! (IDK, do you get that kind-of stuff?)

Yes. I've been getting more E-Mail and comments than I can answer recently. That's a good sign, but I'm having a hard time keeping up.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post ""Going Galt" Fnord":

The only difference Rand had was that she appointed a crazy person, peikoff, before she died to be her pope.

I didn't know about that. Productive workers are usually paired with a parasite. It makes sense that some of her closest advisers were parasites.

I'm placing my writing in the public domain. However, I'll probably sell my site/domain if they're worth anything when I die. Or, I'll give it to my children, if I have some.

She also rejected the nostate argument by saying violent gangs would take over, and her chapter on state without violating rights was bogus.

That's missing the point that the State *IS* a violent gang that's taken over.

Anyway, given massive pro-State brainwashing, it's natural that her thinking has some errors. She's dead, so someone can't explain agorism to her and see what she thinks.

She also said that if you disagreed with her in any way you couldn't call yourself objectivist, which is just a whole other level of extremism.

I don't call myself "Objectivist", although I have some aspects of that philosophy. I prefer to remember ideas and not labels.

Here's a good rule of thumb. If someone in an online discussion forum has named themselves after a character from an Ayn Rand novel, that's a good indication they're a fruitcake.

I say that people who disagree with me are usually stupid. Of course, if you disagree, you're free to not comment or stop reading.

Josh has left a new comment on your post ""Going Galt" Fnord":

Have you seen "The Passion of Ayn Rand"?

It shows her doing Nate even though they're 25 years apart.

I haven't seen it.

Nate? Who's Nate? I want to see her doing Alan Greenspan!

barry b. has left a new comment on your post ""Going Galt" Fnord":

Let's see how long this lasts. I've got a feeling not long, and I seriously doubt anyone is going to actually quit their jobs. Things simply haven't gotten that bad yet, as in these individuals aren't necessarily paying more taxes at this time - and these same fruits certainly didn't 'Go Galt' when Bush doubled the National Debt... or triple it? Can't remember...

It isn't viable for people to quit their wage slave jobs until there's a viable free market alternative.

In the present, I'm still seeking a wage slave job, which seems like a waste of time.

An agorist revolution isn't going to happen overnight. It's going to take another 15-20 years.



eagledove9 has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #90":

LOL...

****quote****
I could call my site "ijbwjucsubeiysczainvdepog.com
" ... (Note to self: How many times can I create a link to a random gibberish domain name, before some idiot goes out and registers it?)
********

This sounds like a good way to speed up the collapse of the fiat money system. The squatters probably have to borrow money to buy those websites, so the more money they borrow for gibberish websites, the more money gets destroyed.
No. That won't lead to the collapse of a fiat monetary system. It might be neat to con a domain squatter into registering an otherwise meaningless domain.

If you want to conduct a mass experiment, everyone can link to the same gibberish domain on their own blog!

BTW, my ISP (Verizon) does something unethical. If you get a "domain not found" error, they redirect you to a search page, instead of serving a "domain not found" message. It doesn't bother me much, because I'm not fooled. Verizon has a monopoly, so there's nothing I can do about it.



Kiba has left a new comment on your post "Mark to Market":

Fiat money is not worth anything intrincrastically. It is just a whole lot easier to inflate with fiat money. Bankers and insider like that because it mean that they can print money at will.

It might be fine that people don't run the turning press, but people are easily tempted to print money because it is so easy to cheat.

With gold, it is kinda hard to inflate unless you mine an asteroid or something.

The problem with fiat money is not "someone with a laser printer, suitable ink, and paper counterfeits". The problem is the legal counterfeiting performed by the Federal Reserve, financial industry, and Federal government.

Even if a big new gold mine were discovered, there would still be the labor cost of mining and refining the gold. Existing gold might lose 30%-50% of its value. Over time, paper money always loses all its value.

"Fiat debt-based money is evil!" and "State regulation of the monetary system is evil!" are in the "Proven!" category.

I was emphasizing a different problem with fiat money. The money is inherently worthless, which makes it silly to quote prices. The reason a house is worth $300k one year, $500k the next, and then $100k is due to State manipulation of the monetary system. With a gold standard and a free market monetary system, prices would be mostly stable.



Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "StackOverflow Sucks!":

There are plenty of websites out there to ask your blatantly non-programming questions.

Please do not try to justify that your question about your external HDD has anything to do with programming.

I don't understand why people keep trolling on that post.

I believed my questions were appropriate for StackOverflow.

StackOverflow's censors determined that my questions were inappropriate.

You aren't going to convince me that my questions were inappropriate. I'm not going to convince StackOverflow's censors that my questions were appropriate.

I decided that StackOverflow is a stupid website and I'm not wasting time there anymore.

I have followed the advice of "If you don't like StackOverflow, then leave!" I'm not wasting time on StackOverflow anymore, which was the point of the post.

Once *ANY* website or forum adopts a censorship policy, then there are always arguments over "Is this appropriate?" Over time, the people with the most liberal attitude towards "What is appropriate site content?" get disgusted and leave.

Here, the only comments I filter out are obvious spam. I do ridicule stupid comments, but I don't censor them.

The remaining StackOverflow users are those who take the narrowest possible definition of "appropriate site content". Anyone more openminded would have gotten disgusted and left like me. I'm the only one who bothered writing a post about it on his blog.

StackOverflow's users have the right to behave like jerks. I have the right to say "I'm not wasting time on your stupid website anymore."

For LAMP questions (my current interest), Google provides better answers than StackOverflow. I've also gotten useful answers on the Linode forum for other questions.

It isn't immoral for me to complain "StackOverflow sucks!" on my own personal website. By definition, everything I write about here is on-topic.

There's really nothing further to say about this issue, but some jerk will probably post another comment justifying StackOverflow's stupid censorship policy.

On the Internet, if the site owners are unreasonable, it's very easy to say "**** you! I'm leaving! I'm starting a competing website!" One of the main reasons I started my own blog was that I got frustrated arguing with idiots over and over again on a discussion forum. If I post something intelligent, and then 10 people post "FSK is wrong!" or other incoherent gibberish, then I get drowned out.

The truth is not determined by a majority vote. That's the flaw in all sites with a voting-based ranking system.

On StackOverflow, suppose that 10% of the users were interested in my question, and 90% thought "This question is inappropriate!" What right do those 90% have to censor the remaining 10%? Once you adopt a censorship policy, then the most reasonable people get disgusted and leave. You're left with only jerks as regular users.

On my blog, I'm actively seeking the opposite effect. I want the stupidest people to get disgusted and leave (or at least stop leaving stupid comments).

When dealing with the State, it's very difficult to say "**** you! I'm starting a competing business!" The Internet is organized along anarchist principles, although the bad guys are trying to regulate that away.



Ah Fai has left a new comment on your post "The Compound Interest Paradox":

Good day, am I not wrong to say that.. the 'invention' of compound interests ultimately guarantees the survival of the Fed.. since by servicing a loan, people would have to pay more than they loaned in the first place, and by that more bank notes would have to be printed.. an ever increasing amount of money in circulation, devaluing its intrinsic value (if.. it has value in the first place), ever increasing price of goods (MV=PQ) and inflation (well which can be skewed from media btw)

Go back and re-read the articles again. You're sort of agreeing with me and sort of disagreeing at the same time.

The Compound Interest Paradox means that the productive workers are the slaves of the banksters. The most parasitic people dominate the financial system and the State for their own personal benefit.

The income tax means that people can't boycott the Federal Reserve and use other forms of money.

The Compound Interest Paradox means that people must keep going back to the banksters for bigger and bigger loans, lest the entire scam collapse.

The scam is collapsing. It isn't going to occur overnight. It'll be a gradual collapse over the next 15-20 years.



Sovereign has left a new comment on your post "Mark to Market":

I agree with pretty much the entirety of this post, except the idea that there will be another boom.

I mean "There will be another boom, according to the pro-State definition of an inflationary boom." Remember that the CPI is less than true inflation. Money supply inflation is misreported as economic growth.

Suppose:
  • True inflation is 30%.
  • The CPI is 5%.
  • The FRN-denominated value of GDP increases by 10%.
Pro-State troll economists will say "Hooray! The economy grew by 5%!" The economy actually shrunk by 20%, adjusting for inflation correctly.

There probably won't be another year of substantial genuine economic growth in the on-the-books slave economy.

There will almost definitely be another inflationary boom, with an illusion of economic growth.

It is possible that there was geniune growth in the late 1990s. The introduction of computers and the Internet led to real efficiency gains.

Even if the pyramid scheme that is our economy wasn't unwinding, there won't be the energy necessary to generate another boom.

I disagree with "There is an energy crisis!" If you quote the price of energy in real money (gold or silver), energy prices have not risen substantially. Oil/gold is at a local minimum.

Energy prices have actually increased at a rate very close to true inflation.

The bad guys will successfully reinflate, and cause another illusionary inflationary boom.

We're stuck in another paradox now between economic growth and energy availability. If the economy grows, demand for energy goes up, and thus does the price. The high price puts too much stress on the economy, which then suffers, halting growth.

If somehow a recovery actually gains steam, there will be an energy price spike which will kill it.

I disagree with "Energy is a limiting factor!". Energy prices will rise at approximately the same rate as true inflation.

The collapse is underway, but for different reasons than the ones you mention.



poster print has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #78":

Keep the good posts coming!

I wasn't sure if this comment was genuine or spam, but I published it. That user's Blogger profile links to a spammy site.



Jason has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #91":

Thank you for at trying to use common sense and some degree of objectivity when looking at government, freedom, economics and such, and also for taking the time to do so. I do have hope when I find others who do not rush to discover who to 'hang' for the worlds problems, but rather continue to shine a light on the simple, core reasons for the majority of them.

Peace and Joy as you desire it,

Revenge-based justice is immoral and self-destructive.

I read a story about, in an Islamic country, a man threw acid in a woman's face and blinded her. The sentence was that she is entitled to put acid in the man's face and blind him.

That is incorrect. The man should be forced to work and pay compensation to the woman, or the police agency that insured her. Blinding the man would adversely impact his ability to pay off his debt.

Consider my example, where I was kidnapped and tortured by the psychiatry/death industry. If I took the "Unabomber" solution towards the psychiatry industry, I would ultimately accomplish nothing. Even if a bunch of psychiatrists were murdered as revenge, others would merely take their place. According to natural law, I only have a valid fraud claim against the psychiatrists that assaulted me. I don't have a valid fraud claim against everyone who works as a psychiatrist, even though they're almost certainly also scumbags.

The correct solution is for me to go around saying that the "chemical imbalance" theory of mental illness is nonsense.

Regrettably, a corrupt State court does not recognize my claim against the psychiatrists who kidnapped and tortured me. I am left with no recourse.

Paradoxically, being kidnapped and tortured by the psychiatry industry was very educational for me! However, that does not excuse abusive behavior. I'd be much better off if I'd actually received humane treatment. I don't appear to have been permanently damaged, but I'll never be sure.

Even though I don't get compensation for my loss, other people are still being harassed by the psychiatry/death industry. Those people are entitled (if they request it) to a restraining order preventing them from further injury. Most victims of the psychiatry industry are not even aware that their doctor is a fraud, and won't even consider the possibility.

It's much better to focus on building on alternatives to the State, rather than on destructive behavior. An agorist drug-free mental health business would be an acceptable response to the psychiatry industry.

As a moral question, it is acceptable to use violence to defend yourself, without violating the Non-Aggression Principle. For example, if State enforcers tried to kidnap/arrest me based on practicing agorism or my blog, it'd be morally acceptable to use violence in self-defense.

As a practical matter, using violence to resist the bad guys is pointless. Their resources are too superior. It'd be better to surrender peacefully and hope for an acquittal in a trial.

Besides, a policeman/interrogator with the parasitic personality type would not be able to interview me without starting to see what's going on. Via the "good cop, bad cop" interview style, one of the interrogators will always have the parasitic personality and one will always have the abused productive personality. The productive interrogator will get *VERY* uncomfortable while interrogating me.

A nonviolent resistance strategy seems the best option. By the time it's practical to defend yourself against a violent raid by the bad guys, the State will have already lost anyway.

Also, with nonviolent resistance, you may claim the moral high ground. An agorist harassed by the State says "I'm just trying to make a living and do something useful. Why are you bothering with me when there are other serious crimes that go unsolved?"



fritz has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #91":

I happened upon your blog through a random search long ago. your work has helped me realize that there is another way to think. And the state is not necessary for human survival.

You seemed to be thinking that resisting the bad guys is futile, after your frivolous arrest.

I should keep track of "How my regular returning readers found my blog initially." In Google, I rank well for some rare search phrases. I sometimes quote my blog on other forums. Other people sometimes cite my blog. At this point, "other people promote my blog" seems to more effective than "promoting my blog myself".

Since than I have read many other blogs that you suggest. You have assisted me in my growing understanding of economics, and possible stateless societies (esp agorism)

I read you everyday,,Thanks for your good work

you know, I was chatting on mises live chat, And someone ask if I were FSK. I said no, But I was proud to even be considered one of the greats.

It's good to see that other people understand my ideas well enough to do a convincing impersonation. That's the whole point.

That's how exponential propagation works. If each of my regular readers convinces one other person per year about real free markets, then there will be a rapid spread of correct thinking.

I don't spend much time on mises anymore. I got bored and frustrated.

It's in my best interests to spread my ideas to as many other people as possible. That's more chances for agorist trading groups to start, which undermines the power of the bad guys. Plus, the bad guys gain less from eliminating me, the more people there are who understand my way of thinking.

Thanks for bring economic enlightenment into my life!! Fritz

OK. I still need a *LOT* more regular readers, before blogging is viable as a job. I'm also looking into other things.



Gaell has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #91":

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Ann

http://externallaptop.net

This comment is spam. I was charitable and published it. Via Google, I noticed the exact same comment was posted on a bunch of blogs.

I was busy, and didn't have time to do proper due diligence filtering out spam.

The spammer got a slight boost to their PageRank, by me publishing a link to their site.



Sovereign has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #91":

FSK, you responded to one of my posts as such:


Without a network of trustworthy trading partners, precautions are useless.

Suppose you've stockpiled food and water and weapons, *BUT* you're the only family in the area who is prepared. The State collapses.

A stranger knocks on your door asking for help. Do you:
shoot him
answer the door


You went on to explain how having a group of agorist partners would make one stronger. I agree. Of course a group is more secure against an external unit than an individual.

But, first and foremost, this group of agorists needs to be alive, and for that they need food, and right now there is a great risk of hyper-inflation due to the massive amounts of currency being injected into the economy by the feds.

There's a couple of points you're missing.

Even though there's hyperinflation, crops are still being planted and reaped. Even if the government collapsed in June, the crops planted in the spring would still be harvested in the fall. There still is a partial free market food production system. Agorists should develop a true free market system.

Every agorist doesn't need to stockpile food and weapons. That's inefficient. It's sufficient for me to have trustworthy trading partners who will sell to me in an emergency. For example, in NYC, it'll illegal/risky to own a gun if you aren't a policeman. I don't need to own a gun if I know someone who will sell me one in a SHTF scenario. If necessary, I could pay someone, so they hold a gun "on reserve" for me in their stockpile.

The myth I was criticizing is "A small group working alone to survive against complete economic collapse." That won't work.

There is also a threat of an energy price spike, which would not bode well for food prices (as we eat 10 calories of hydrocarbons for every one calorie of food we consume).

Based on what I've seen, energy prices are only rising slightly faster than true inflation.

I fully support agorist ideals (and try to live them) but they will get no where if those who hold them in their heads have no food in their bellies. If anything, buying food is at least a good investment, as you will always need it, and the price of it won't be going down in light of inflation.

One problem with stockpiling food is that it spoils. Hoarding canned food and eating it over time is also suboptimal, because canned food isn't as good as fresh food.

In a SHTF scenario, a 1 year food stockpile is useless, if you're the only one in your area who has a stockpile. What are you going to do? Shoot people who come begging for food? If you have a 1 year food stockpile, and then 400 people find out about it, you've now used up your stockpile or you have to fight off a mob of 400 people.

If a group of 10,000+ agorists make SHTF preparations, then they should be able to hold off an angry mob.



Chrono has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #89":

I owe you a thousand comments. Let's get started.

You mentioned, when discussing your domain, that you want something easier to remember. I contend that .coms are far easier to remember than .orgs or .nets. Ultimately you will come to your decision on your own...

Yes, it's ultimately my decision. I've decided that key factors are:
  • It should be easy to remember. A ".com" or ".net" or ".org" are equally easy to remember, if you aren't an idiot. "Fskrealityguide" is too hard to remember, for someone who isn't a regular reader.
  • I should be the #1 result in Google when people search for my site's name. It's easy to check this, by verifying that the current top results have a lousy PageRank and aren't very relevant for the name.
  • My current regular readers will find me no matter what site name I choose.
  • In Google, most of my traffic comes from long tail search phrases. I only get 1-2 visits per week from each, but it adds up over time. For people who find my blog via Google search, the site name is mostly irrelevant. It should be something easy to remember.
  • I'm not going to worry too much about idiots. My new domain will be easy to remember for someone who's never read my site before.
Anyway, it's my decision. You're probably going to continue reading no matter what name I pick. You probably know how to use your browser's bookmark feature or an RSS reader.

AdBrite seems to be going well for you, per your posts from yesterday (3/30). I did not fully understand what google had done until I read those posts (in Reader Mail #91).

Google had banned me from AdSense for "invalid clicks".

Google has a strong market position, but not an absolute monopoly. AdBrite is almost as good as AdSense.

However, my AdBrite income has gone down slightly in the past week or two. My traffic continues to increase, which is the important thing.

I made $11.36 from AdBrite in March 2009. I wasn't using AdBrite for the full month, and my income nearly doubled when I added the extra two ad widgets (left sidebar skyscraper and bottom of page rectangle). Extrapolating my eCPM rates, I'll make very close to $20 in April.

My first AdBrite check will arrive in June 2009. That's when I'll find out if they're deadbeats or not. I'll probably wind up waiting until July or August to actually purchase my own site and hosting.

I noticed a comment below mine about the MBTI...
I've recently taken a Myers-Briggs, and it was a professional level test with a very good interpretation; in other words, it was not a free MBTI you can get on the internet. The test questions focus on preferences. This signals to me that it is not necessarily drawing conclusions about a person on an inner level, though again, there were several very accurate points, particularly where it addresses conflict resolution, and methods of processing reality. I conclude that the introvert /extrovert main categories are worthless, this is where I found many "which do you prefer" questions, however there is a caveat coming. The caveat is that you can change from introvert to extrovert and back, depending on your confidence and familiarity in the situations the questions address. From that perspective, the test could be very accurate. My initial reaction says it's worthless, but I'm willing to leave things up in the air, for now.
My gut reaction is that I no longer fit into that scale.

The "FSK personality type scale" has two main categories, "abused productive personality" and "parasitic personality". As sub-categories, there's "productive personality, but aspires to parasitic role"; this type of person studies NLP tactics. There also are people who aren't that smart, and aren't that productive or parasitic. There's also "normal", which is where I place myself now.

I was "INTJ" the time I was tested. I disagree that a multiple-choice personality test is relevant or useful. If I were making hiring decisions in my own business, I'd go solely by "parasite" or "productive", filtering out the ***holes. I'd rather have an entry-level productive worker than someone with 10+ years of experience as a parasite. The experienced parasite is a dangerous employee; he'll **** things up while deflecting blame to others. A skilled parasite will wreck your business while you're congratulating him for being such a brilliant leader.

The ability to filter out parasites should be *VERY* useful if I'm ever running my own business. There's one side of parasitism I haven't been on before. Parasites are great at presenting different faces to superiors and subordinates. I've only dealt with parasites as a subordinate, and never as a superior. I should be able to catch the scam, if I observe the parasite interacting with others. I should be able to catch the scam anyway, although I've never been in a position where I had formal authority over a parasite.

If I successfully build an ***hole-free business, I should be resistant to parasite infiltration.

"Abused productive" is "introverted", because they're used to being abused by parasites and have no self-confidence. The parasites have self-confidence and are extroverted, because they're skilled at manipulating others.

The reason I mention the MBTI is because I believe the more intelligent a person becomes, the more they shift to the most mature type designation which depends on the bias of the test. I suppose, if the test is very good, and has no bias, then it would not be able to give a type...in which case all the scaled scores would be 50/50% E/I,N/S,T/F,J/P...this is where you come in, FSK. I would say that you would continue to test as a type, until you are using your brain 100% ... my theory is that, assuming the groups in the MBTI are valid, a mature person should be 50/50 everything and not fit into a type.

My guess is that I have the positive characteristics of both types now. I'm probably not yet fully at 100%, which is probably unattainable, but I'm doing very well.

You probably started out introverted, you would naturally become more extroverted, maybe you were an N and you will become more S, a T who will become more F, and a J who will become more P. Anyway... my 2¢

I was INTJ when I was tested 10 years ago. That scale seems irrelevant now. It's only meaningful as a way of measuring pro-State brainwashing.



barry b. has left a new comment on your post "The Nymphomaniac Pattern":

FSK,

what was the name of that video you mentioned a while back with nancy pelosi and minimum wage

I have no idea what you're writing about.



fritz has left a new comment on your post "The Nymphomaniac Pattern":

I think you are coming to a good understanding of women and things. Just keep plugging away, consider it a game that you keep getting better at.

For meeting women, I'm doing better. It's rough, because there are parasites everywhere. I'm noticing the following pattern:
  1. I flirt with a woman.
  2. Woman seems attracted to me.
  3. Later, a parasite comes along. The woman is already in an "interested" state.
  4. The parasite redirects the woman's attraction from me to himself.
This is probably a problem only because I haven't fully cracked my pro-State brainwashing yet.

For example, last weekend, I went out dancing. There was a woman who was by herself. I did a dance with her, and she seemed friendly. Later, there were parasitic men swarming all over her.

In the context of a dating, I only need to convince one woman, "FSK is a good guy!" I'm also noticing that things like "FSK is an unemployed loser who lives with his parents!" are less of an obstacle. Mostly, that issue was causing me to have less self-confidence, rather than anything else.

For a wage slave job, I need to convince a group of people, unanimously, "FSK is worth hiring!" The problem is that one of the interviewers always has the parasitic personality type.

I noticed that when a parasitic person conducts a job interview, he is not evaluating "Is FSK qualified?" He is evaluating "Do my evil jedi mind control tricks work on FSK?" They don't, and therefore a parasite will *ALWAYS* veto a decision to hire me.

Going on a bunch of job interviews has been enlightening, because I get to meet a bunch of people for 15-30 minutes each. I used to think "It's random if the interviewer likes me or not." I now realize "People with the productive personality type like me. People with the parasitic personality type can't stand me. The more in tune with the truth I get, the more parasitic people feel hostility towards me." Previously, when interviewing, I got a vague sense of uneasiness from parasites. I played my "abused productive worker" role well. Now, the manipulations of the parasites are totally obvious and transparent. It's a problem, because they usually have the people around them totally conned.

If a parasite tells others "Don't hire FSK!", they'll never consider the possibility that the parasite has malicious intentions.

If I made a parasite-free business, even as an on-the-books business, I should be tremendously productive.



Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "AIG Bonuses and Bailouts":

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/03/exclusive-aig-was-responsible-for-banks.html

Interesting read.
Yes, that was interesting. There were even some good bits in the comments. It seems that blog gets a lot of traffic!

I already said "AIG's bailout was really a stealth bailout for the banksters. The banksters were AIG's creditors. They were the actual recipients of bailout money."

That link gives more details, and some details I hadn't read about before.

When a banker buys credit default swap insurance, one of the variables is supposed to be "Risk that the company I purchase insurance from will go bankrupt." Because AIG was "too big to fail", there are no negative consquences for the banksters misestimating AIG's bankruptcy risk.

AIG's credit default swap insurance was only one part of a huge corporation. All of AIG was placed as collateral for the credit default swap insurance trading desk at AIG. That reminds me of an amusing anecode.

A large corporation with an AA credit rating had a hedging desk. The hedging desk was tremendously profitable. They decided to spin off the hedging desk as a separate business. Now, the hedging desk had a B credit rating. They could no longer borrow at such favorable interest rates. The hedging desk was no longer profitable.

In other words, the hedging desk was only profitable because the assets of the huge corporation were pledged as collateral for the losses of the hedging desk. During unexpected market circumstances, the hedging desk could have bankrupted an otherwise profitable large corporation. Similarly, AIG's credit default swap division was pledging all of AIG as collateral. AIG's credit default swap business wouldn't have made sense as a standalone business.

This is the essence of the Agent-Principal problem. The people at AIG's credit default swap division were employees. When they make bad decisions, they can switch jobs or qualify for a bailout. Limited liability incorporation lets them escape the negative consequences of their bad decisions. In any corporation, the people who control the business aren't the actual owners. That, combined with limited liability incorporation, provides an incentive for management to line their pockets at the expense of everyone else. If you make $1B in profit 95% of the time and lose $10T the remaining 5% of the time, that's a gamble worth taking. When you profit, you get a huge bonus. When you're wrong, you just declare bankruptcy and switch jobs or qualify for a bailout.

When the housing market boomed, AIG's executives sold a bunch of credit default swap insurance. They made huge bonuses and sales commissions. There were very few claims, so the credit default swap insurance business seemed very lucrative. Then, the housing market crashed. Due to the Compound Interest Paradox, there were a bunch of mortgage defaults at the exact same time. These same executives now have a free put option. They can quit their jobs or declare bankruptcy, leaving other people stuck.

If you owe the bank $100k and can't pay, you have a problem. If you owe $10T, then it's the bank/State's problem and not yours.

That post had some interesting bits.

Suppose a trader at Goldman Sachs purchased from AIG credit default swap insurance on a mortgage CDO made up of 30 year bonds. You won't know until 30 years later exactly how much AIG actually owed on the credit default swap trade. In the credit default swap trade, Goldman Sachs pays AIG the return on the mortgage CDO, and AIG pays Goldman Sachs the Fed Funds Rate minus a fee. You don't know how much the credit default swap contract is actually worth until 30 years from now, when the mortgage CDO is fully paid out.

The housing market crashed. Suppose that AIG now owes Goldman Sachs $1B on this credit default swap contract.

If AIG declares bankruptcy, then Goldman Sachs may only collect 10% of the amount owed. Goldman Sachs is due a $1B payment, but they only get $100M in AIG's bankruptcy liquidation. This loss of $900M times many such contracts could cause Goldman Sachs' bankruptcy in addition to AIG.

If AIG declares bankruptcy, then it's painfully obvious that the banksters who bought credit default swap insurance from AIG were idiots. The AIG bailout is a stealth bailout of the banksters. This helps prevent the entire economic system from unraveling. Given a corrupt fiat debt-based monetary system, the banksters must be bailed out lest the entire monetary system collapse in hyperdeflation. That is the point of the Compound Interest Paradox.

That article also had another piece of information I hadn't read about before. Suppose the credit default swap insurance contract was worth $1B. Instead of waiting for the contract to unwind over time, AIG cut a deal with Goldman Sachs to immediately terminate the contract. If the fair value was $1B, then AIG actually paid $1.5B-$2B to pay for early termination of the credit default swap insurance contract. This accomplishes several evil goals simultaneously:
  1. The credit default swap insurance contract is no longer on AIG's books.
  2. The credit default swap insurance contract is no longer on Goldman Sachs' books.
  3. Goldman Sachs receives capital that can be used elsewhere.
  4. The different between "fair value" and what Goldman Sachs actually got paid is extra profit for Goldman Sachs.
Many banks reported profits on January and February. That's only due to the huge bailouts they received indirectly via AIG!

Even in good economic times, financial industry profits are pure State subsidy and economic rent. Banks profit by borrowing at the Fed Funds Rate and lending or purchasing assets. Banks collect the spread times their leverage ratio. When banks lend money, they literally print new money out of thin air. The banksters make seignorage profit off this perk. Productive workers pay the cost of bank profits via inflation. Even if you personally have no debts, a corrupt monetary system makes you the slave of the banksters. State violence forces you to lose your savings to inflation, because inflation-protected investments like gold and silver are heavily regulated/illegal.

He also said the "unwind price" for these contracts was far above the normal market price for credit defaults swap insurance. AIG was allowed to "trade through" other quotes when repurchasing its own insurance contracts. Allegedly, a specific exemption from the normal market regulations was given.

I really liked this bit:

if Zero Hedge knows about it, it is safe to say Tim Geithner also got the memo

If the "Zero Hedge" blog knows about corruption in the financial industry, you can be sure that insiders at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve know.

Do insiders know that the financial industry is one huge scam? I suspect the answer is "Yes, and they're covering up the truth", but I can't prove it. It might also be massive gross incompetence, in a business dominated by parasites.

The key points regarding AIG are:
  1. The bailout of AIG is a stealth bailout of the banksters.
  2. An explicit bailout of the banksters would be too obviously corrupt. Therefore, devious tricks are devised that hide the looting. The AIG/GM bailout is a stealth bailout of the banksters. The "stimulus spending law" bails out the banksters via increasing the inflation rate. Complicated excuses for bailouts are invented, via phony pro-State troll Keynesian economics.
  3. Executives have no obligation to disclose how bailout money is actually spent. There's zero accountability.
  4. The bonuses at AIG and other banks are only a tiny fraction of the total money stolen.
  5. The financial industry is purely parasitic. In a true free market, bankers play a valid role matching savers and people who need capital. Via fiat debt-based money, the financial industry is *GUARANTEED* a certain percentage of all productive work in the economy. It's built into the rules of the monetary system! The rules of the monetary system were written by (guess who?) financial indusry insiders!
  6. The salaries and bonuses earned by the banksters are pure looting and pillaging. Their salaries are pure economic rent. "Economic rent" is a situation where someone earns a profit without doing any work. For example, State licensing of lawyers and the nature of the legal system means that lawyer salaries are economic rent.
  7. The "too big to fail" mentality means that businesses that aren't "too big to fail" aren't worth operating. You'd be an idiot to own or operate a $50M bank. You'll just go bankrupt during the next recession/depression.
  8. When a bankster buys credit default swap insurance, one of the components is supposed to be "risk that the insurer goes bankrupt". Via the "too big to fail" principle, the banksters are not punished by the market for misestimating AIG's bankruptcy risk.
  9. It is silly to say "Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are competitors", if Citigroup's bankruptcy would threaten the solvency of Goldman Sachs. In a true free market, you don't lose if your competitor goes bankrupt. The reality is that the large banks are colluding to loot and pillage the American people.
  10. State regulation of the economy, along with the "too big to fail" propaganda, encourages consolidation of industries.
  11. In a true free market, the bankruptcy of one business doesn't threaten everyone. In a true free market, you don't have large megacorporations. Instead, you have a bunch of small businesses. State restriction of the market is required to make large corporations more profitable than small businesses.
  12. When a mainstream media communist/comedian discusses economics, it is pure propaganda. It is convincing and sophisticated propaganda, but it still is propagadna.
  13. Bailouts aren't free. Non-insiders pay the cost via the inflation tax, the income tax, or other taxes.
  14. The financial industry is, essentially, a legal money laundering operation.
  15. If you don't want to continue supporting a corrupt system, then agorism is your best option.
(This last bit derserves its own separate post.)

There were also some good comments posted.

So let me guess. AIG-FP traders that did not get their HUGE Bonus left the company and started singing like a canary.

That's an interesting perspective. The bonus payments were also hush money.

At one job, I was given a bonus, *BUT* there was a condition attached. "You must sign a 1 year non-compete contract or we won't give you your bonus." (I should have just signed it, waited for the bonus payout, and then quit.) The executives at AIG, as terms of their bonus, probably agreed to not discuss the bailout.

This comment was interesting:

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves."

Andrew Jackson, 1836 - forced the closing of the Second Bank of the U.S. by revoking its charter
Seeing Andrew Jackson's picture on a Federal Reserve Note is like watching Ben Bernanke dig up his grave and take a dump on his corpse.

When you "save" the job of someone in the parasite class, several productive workers are worse off.



By E-Mail, the libertarian college student said he was still having problems with his idiot professor:

Hi there, it's me again, the frustrated libertarian on campus . . ..

I have another question:

During the 'Roaring Twenties' did the government truly engage in a laissez faire policy towards business? This and 'de-regulation of the stock market' is being presented as the reason for the crash of '29. Not so. Correct? Your thoughts?
Thanks so much for taking the time!


It is silly to talk about a "free market banking system" when you have a central bank credit monopoly.

A central bank credit monopoly and free markets are opposite ideas. It's dishonest to say "Failure of the free market!!" when you have a central bank credit monopoly and heavily regulated banking industry. A free market system does a much better job of guarding against abuse.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

During the 1920s, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially low, causing an inflationary boom. It's the exact same mechanism as the housing bubble from 2001-2006.

The Federal Reserve jacked up interest rates in 1929, causing a crash. Insiders knew the crash was coming, and converted to cash before the crash. They made huge profits at the expense of everyone else.

Your professor is still an idiot.

Oh man, this is a bazooka. Thanks so much.

Your blog is great -- I just read 'What was the purpose of the original U.S. Constitution?'. That is one heck of a conspiracy theory -- but I have come to appreciate a good conspiracy theory, especially those that have a regrettably painful resonance of TRUTH to them. My question, Why would European bankers plot to infiltrate the U.S. system looking hundreds of years in advance? If this is true, everything I thought I knew about our country is wrong, terribly wrong! Aghhh! But, how could a country operate or even survive, especially in today's environment, without strong defense in place and taxation to provide for that defense?


You're missing the point. A real free market system, where nobody has a monopoly, provides better security at a cheaper price.

Suppose there's a problem and a lot of people who ate at Taco Bell got food poisoning. Taco Bell loses customers.

Suppose that the State fails to prevent a terrorist attack. Do people fire the government and buy protection from someone else? No. What actually happens is that the State demands more power and more resources.

Similarly, "The public school system is failing! Let's spend more money on public schools!" The bureaucrats who did a lousy job just got a raise.

Government has a monopoly. Whenever government fails, the "solution" is always to give government more power.

The best system for defending individual freedom and choice is a free market system.

In a true free market, if the police fail to protect you, then you have a valid claim against your police/insurance agency.

In the present, suppose someone robs you or murders you. The State police have a monopoly. If they don't investigate, don't try to hard, or do a lousy job, you are stuck. The State police do not have an obligation to reimburse you if you are robbed, although they might successfully recover your stolen property. However, there still are laws that ban gun ownership and deny people the right to protect themselves.

Suppose you are murdered. The monopolistic State police catch the criminal. The State police do not have an obligation to reimburse your heirs for their loss. If I'm married, and someone murders me, then the police don't have to reimburse my wife for the loss of my income and support. The State police still demand that I be unarmed and not carry a gun.

In a criminal trial, it's always "State vs. criminal". It's not "victim vs. criminal".

Revenge-based justice is stupid. Suppose there were a true free market and someone is convicted of murder. Then, the criminal has an obligation to spend the rest of his life working to pay off the relatives of the victims. The police pay the death claim upfront, and then must imprison the criminal (if violent) and make sure he works. If the criminal is nonviolent, then the police may let him work out of jail if he's more productive there, under strict supervision. However, the police would be 100% responsible if there's another crime!

Regarding "European bankers infiltrated the colonists!", they probably knew 10-20 years ahead of time that the revolt would probably succeed.

You're missing the key point. In every war, the banksters back both sides! If the colonists lost the Revolutionary war, then the European central banks are still in control. If the colonists win freedom from Britain, that's OK, because the European banksters have planted spies among the colonists. In the meantime, the European banksters lend money to England to finance the war.

The banksters win either way! That's the brilliant part of the scam!

"Support both sides in a war!" is a time-tested tactic that the banksters had already mastered in 1776. They used this tactic to consolidate and expand their power in Europe. Lending money to kings is always better than lending to individuals, because kings can impose taxes to force people to pay the debt. Even better, lend money to kings in two different countries and encourage them go to war with each other!



I'm still slightly behind on answering comments and E-Mails. More reader comments is good, because it means people are interested. I'm doing a good job of discouraging stupid comments.

It seems that an increasing percentage of my blogging time is spent answering reader comments. That isn't necessarily bad. It could be a problem if comment volume increases by 5x or 10x.

Sometimes, responses to reader comments are more interesting than the original post. That's the reason I decided to make "Reader Mail" posts. Most people don't go back to a post after reading it one, just to see new comments. If you read via RSS, you don't see comments at all. If I didn't have "Reader Mail" posts, then people would miss otherwise interesting comments and my response.

1 comment:

barry b. said...

FSK,

You must be busy. I was referring to a video you referenced recently in one of your articles. This guy, who reminds me of 'Borat' interviews nancy pelosi about her double standards on minimum wage since they sometimes don't pay Congression Pages minumum wage. Does that conjure up the memory? I went back and tried to find it but couldn't.

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