FSK's Guide to Reality: "Best of FSK"

According to Google Analytics, my most popular posts in September were:

Who's the Richest Man in the World? (314)
The Hunt Brothers' Silver Corner (303)
Did the USA Declare Bankruptcy? (283)
BMI/ASCAP/SESAC Legal Extortion Scam (257)
The Compound Interest Paradox (162)
Ruby on Rails Sucks! (160)
Real GDP Is Crashing, 2000-2009 (133)
The Federal Reserve Caused the Great Depression (115)
Satanic Death Hospitals (113)
Premium Text Messaging Fraud - 91097 and 654654 (105)
Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2008 (100)
The Gold Lease Rate is Negative! (92)
Righthaven vs. Charles Johnson (RadGeek) (87)
Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2007 (80)
The Pat Tillman Conspiracy Theory (79)
Verizon LG enV Touch, Bitpim, and Open Source (73)
The Black-Scholes Formula is Wrong! - Part 1/12 - Overview and Background (68)
The Fluoride Conspiracy Theory (68)
Calculating Vega and other Greeks in Black-Scholes (66)
The Gold and Silver Taxation Scam (60)
E-Gold Founders Plead Guilty to Money Laundering (59)
The Five Levels of the Economy (48)
Gold and Silver Buyer's Guide (48)
How Well Does GLD Track Gold? (46)
Oracle Sues Google Over Java/Android (46)
Death Note and Code Geass Fnords (43)
Congress Killed Superman (43)
Agorist Philosophy Overview (42)
Concerned Citizens And Parents Against Voluntaryism (42)
Economic Police State (42)
Your Strawman Corporation (41)
StackOverflow Sucks! (40)

If you only consider posts published in September 2010, the most popular posts were:

Righthaven vs. Charles Johnson (RadGeek) (87)
Oracle Sues Google Over Java/Android (46)
Congress Killed Superman (43)
Concerned Citizens And Parents Against Voluntaryism (42)
Economic Police State (42)
Parking Ticket Death Penalty (36)
Auto IRA (34)
Philadelphia Blogger Tax (33)
Treasury Debt Default? (33)
Are State Parasites Getting Scared? (31)
The Florida Bar Association Works For the IRS? (31)

My Favorite Links

Here is a collection of my favorite links.

Personal Finance

For personal finance, my most frequently visited site is Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance has the best system for watching your stock quotes during the day. I also like the Motley Fool. Both of these websites encourage you to do independent thinking about finance.

Independent thinking about finance led me to discover the Discounted Cashflow Paradox and the Compound Interest Paradox. I realized the fundamental structural flaws in the monetary system and taxation system.

My favorite discount online broker is Vanguard. They are not the cheapest commission-wise, but their customer service has been excellent. Plus, they give a high credit interest rate on the cash portion of your account.

Mises, Rothbard, and Austrian Economics

The school of "Austrian Economics" advocates credit-based money instead of debt-based money. There are two separate websites, www.mises.org and www.mises.net. These philosophies are a precursor to agorism. However, they still hold out false hope that the people who control the government can be convinced to switch to a fair monetary system. They fall short of the correct conclusion that government itself is the problem.

The Mises and Austrian school is still a pro-State theory of economics. They say "government should adopt a sound monetary policy instead of an unsound monetary policy". They fall short of the truth, which is "Who needs a government?"

Agorism and Anarcho-Capitalism

The primary source most commonly cited is agorism.info. Agorism.info has good introductory material, but I'm already looking for more advanced topics. I also found TOLFA interesting. The Molinari Institute has a lot of interesting links.

The source with the most advanced material on agorism is Kevin Carson's The Mutualist Blog.

The Philosophy of Liberty flash animation is interesting.

The agorism websites is seem to be mostly philosophizing and speculating. I'm at the point where I'm ready to start trading and I'm looking for trading partners.

Here is an interesting article on a stable anarchistic society in Iceland 1000 years ago. Paradoxically, it failed due to being not anarchistic enough. The libertarian.org site has a bunch of other examples of stable anarchistic societies.

The Federal Reserve

The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins is worth reading. I think it shares a lot with "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by Edward Griffin, which I have not read.

"America: Freedom to Fascism" is worth watching. You can get it on YouTube or from BitTorrent. A lot of people say "The Money Masters" is worth watching, but I have not watched it yet.

Here is a webpage that features M3 reconstructed. Here is the official Federal Reserve value for M2.

This series of videos on YouTube is a pretty good explanation of the Compound Interest Paradox and the flaws of the current monetary system.

The History of Money

I Want the Earth Plus 5% is a nice story about banking and the Compound Interest Paradox.

The Money Myth Exploded by Louis Even is interesting.

This link on the History of Money has a lot of interesting bits on how bankers have controlled the world's money supply for hundreds of years or longer. Unlike most other sources, it is very short and to the point. However, their recommended solution falls short of true agorism.

Other Interesting Links

Barefoot's World has a lot of interesting content.

Technorati has a nice service where it shows other people who are linking to your blog.

The Jargon File is worth browsing occasionally.

Things I'm Reading Now

These are websites that I'm currently reading. I haven't finished them completely, but find them interesting.

I've been reading Dr. Antal E. Fekete's stories on the history of money and economics. His articles are on a website that promotes purchasing gold coins.

I've been reading the Libertarian Nation Archive. They also have a good collection of articles.

I'm reading "The Modern History Project".

Blog and Forum Hitlist

I saw this on someone else's blog, and I think it's a great idea to help me and others keep track of interesting blogs.

Blogs I Read Regularly

These are blogs I read regularly. I also include other favorite websites that offer an RSS feed.

The Agitator
BradSpangler.com - This has a lot of frequent updates. He has a lot on agorism and counter-economics, but he sometimes gets distracted with irrelevant stuff like voting and protesting.
Dilbert has an RSS feed.
Francois Tremblay's Check Your Premises - Another good blog, with frequent high-quality updates. He also runs the Market Anarchist Blog Carnival, which I have decided to start participating in regularly. All you have to do is submit a link to one of your blog posts.
Freedomain is another good read. He doesn't update his blog often, but he has a lot of good stuff posted in the past.
Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog - This is a great source. He is tough to read at times, but his content is great. He's the best source on agorism I've seen. I like to take his topics and present them in simpler language. He updates his blog sporadically, but he has a lot of great content. It's also worth reading his other books and articles, which are available from his mutualist.org website. I also like the way Kevin Carson frequently links back to his favorite older posts. Kevin Carson's Shared Items is also worth reading; it's a list of posts from other blogs that he finds interesting.
Kung-Fu Monkey. This blog is written by someone who works as a writer in the entertainment industry, which explains the high quality of writing. He sounds like a closet agorist, although he hasn't specifically mentioned that philosophy. This post on the Extrapolated Everyday Bull**** Comparison has promoted Kung-Fu Monkey from my hitlist to my "read regularly" list.
The Liberty Papers has a lot of interesting content.
Megatokyo has an RSS feed. Annoyingly, this is only a partial feed.
No Third Solution, by David Z
Overcoming Bias has a lot if interesting discussion of "How to think".
The Picket Line has a lot of interesting stories about tax resistance.
rec.humor.funny and rec.humor.funny.reruns, via the Google Groups RSS feed
Redpillguy's Blog - His blog is relatively new, so it's hard to judge. He doesn't really update his blog that often. On the other hand, he frequently cites my content, and that's certainly the sort of thing I appreciate.
Techdirt has a lot of interesting technology-related items.
Tranarchism is another new blog. It's too soon to judge the content. On the other hand, anyone who heavily cites my stuff can't be all bad. It's too infrequently updated.
Wally Conger's Blog is another good read. However, he really has two separate blogs mixed together. He has a lot of good stuff on agorism and libertarianism. However, he also likes to talk about his favorite movies and TV shows a lot.
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Feed Aggregators

I like reading feed aggregator sites, because they highlight other blogs worth reading.

Feedburner's list of Left Libertarian links - Someone has been posting links to my stuff here.
Kevin Carson's Shared Items

Blog Hitlist

There are blogs I'm currently evaluating to see if they're worth a regular read. I currently manage my hitlist through Google Reader.

Honorable Mention

These blogs have some interesting content, but they don't make it into my regular reading rotation. If they improved their content or improved their posting frequency, then they would be in my regular reading list. I check back occasionally, and on a slow day I might read them.

Bill Rempel - He talks about finance and trading. He really dislikes the Federal Reserve. I'm not sure if he's come all the way to agorism yet, but perhaps he can be coaxed. He's guilty of my #1 blog pet peeve: A PARTIAL RSS FEED!
Bored Zhwazi - Has some nice content, but it really isn't updated that often. It's worth checking back once every month or two.
Life, Love, and Liberty
Pro Blogger - The idea of profiting from a blog sounds interesting.

Rejects

In Google Reader, I keep a subscription to my rejects, just so I don't accidentally add them again as new subscriptions! I just click on "mark all as read" to clean them out.

Discussion Forum Hitlist

I also decided to add Internet Discussion Forums to my hitlist.

Forums I Read Regularly

I don't currently regularly read any discussion forums. I find Google Reader to be a better information source. A good blog has a *MUCH* higher signal-to-noise ratio than a discussion forum.

Lately, I've been actively posting on mises.org. They have a decent number of intelligent posters in addition to the usual pro-State trolls.

Honorable Mention

These forums are worth an occasional visit, but not worth a daily visit.

Ron Paul Freedom Forum - This is the second Ron Paul Forum mentioned in The Ron Paul Discussion Forum Schism. It's a good site overall, but it needs more traffic.
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Forums on my Hitlist

I'm trying to evaluate if these forums are worth a regular visit.

Elite Trader
stormfront.org - This is a white nationalist website, but my blog would probably be of interest to many posters.
The Anarchism.net Forum - Looks promising so far.
Gold and Silver Forum
Fight Year Zero
Ran Prieur has a forum. He also has a blog, but he has NO RSS FEED!
Joel Skousen's forum. He also has a website (but no blog).
The Mental Militia
Hardcore Politics
anti-state.com
Free State Project Forum

Rejects

Ron Paul Forum - This forum has been overrun by trolls and I've abandoned it.

FSK's Guide to Reality

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Sunday, October 3, 2010

"Best of FSK" - September 2010

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