FSK's Guide to Reality: Thanksgiving Blogging Holiday

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving Blogging Holiday

I decided to skip posting today. I made a post so that people don't think I was hospitalized.

8 comments:

Scott said...: Happy Thanksgiving.

I haven't been commenting because I normally hit a folder I have with certain bookmarks and for the last month your blog wasn't coming up. I was thinking "Whatever happened to FSK?" and looked in my links and they had been deleted. I then searched my hard drive for the various FSK articles I've saved and they had all gone missing as well. Strange since no one else has access to my computer. Reasonably, it's absurd to think someone hacked my computer just to try and erase all references to you, and therefore I must have accidentally somehow deleted them all myself, but I sure didn't do it intentionally and don't see how it could happen accidentally. I guess it's a mystery, unless it turns out it happened to other people as well in which case it will be something of a concern.; November 25, 2010 at 1:05 PM
FSK said...: I have no idea if Scott is kidding or serious.

If Scott is kidding, then it's a good joke.

If Scott is serious, then I noticed weird anomalies on my computer as well.; November 25, 2010 at 2:07 PM
Anonymous said...: I have some questions about Scott's post.

Computer software is complex.

You may access a web page seemingly hosted on one web site, but in fact you may merely get an empty frame that refers to content on another website, that may in fact be generated by a server side script on the fly.

What exactly had Scott saved to his computer?

Was it just a link?

Was it just a wrapper empty web page containing a reference to a live web page?

Maybe the web browser updated itself and the old bookmarks were in an old format and not recognized.

Recently some shortcuts on my desktop disappeared. They referred to a hard drive that is sometimes not connected though. Still they should not disappear.; November 25, 2010 at 4:11 PM
Scott said...: No, not kidding about it. You know how every browser has bookmarks or favorites, and they are usually arranged in little folders in a window? They are not folders in the operating system, but representations in the browser. I have one folder that has the sites I check every day. FSK disappeared from there some weeks ago. Having discovered this, I thought maybe it was accidentally deleted, like perhaps was scrolling down the list and pressed delete. But then I went to search my hard drive for my FSK articles that I save and those were gone too. Now maybe that is a fluke as well and it's only a coincidence I noticed both at the same time. I am not drawing conclusions about this yet. If this actually is a bizarre and over the top FSK censoring conspiracy, then perhaps it would have happened to others as well.

As far as it being unlikely, it is in the realm of intelligence operations, and FSK could be on various lists since he consistently points out how the emperor is naked. I am on one of the watch lists myself, I always get very carefully screened when traveling.; November 25, 2010 at 8:42 PM
FSK said...: I've been considering "evil aliens" more than humans being clever enough to do that.; November 25, 2010 at 9:03 PM
Scott said...: LOL. Well I'm pretty sure you're joking about aliens. If there were aliens, it doesn't seem like they'd be the ones objecting to your articles, unless there is some sort of an evil alien overlord scenario behind the scenes to create a one world government with authority to remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and thus kill all plants because the aliens are allergic to chlorophyl.; November 26, 2010 at 1:57 PM
Anonymous said...: Your blog is very useful insofar as its content is mainly text which is easier to digest that website with lots of videos.

Your way of describing government actions as Problem! Reaction! Solution! is valuable. I can now view government actions as causing permanent problems. If the free market was allowed to work on its own, a problem would soon disappear on its own. When the government appears, a small temporary problem turns into a big permanent problem.; November 26, 2010 at 3:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Consider housing in London, UK.

1) Many London workers (not in banking or government) find that they have to spend half their salary on rent. If they have to work long hours for their money they resent this.

2) So they move outside London and commute in. This wastes 2 - 4 hours of their time everyday in traveling.

3) If the free market was working, rooms would stay empty in London, landlords would be unable to find tenants and eventually rents would fall.

4) However immigrants and the unemployed take up the empty London rooms. High rents do not put them off, as the government pays it all. Why rent to a British worker when you can make more money by renting to a clown or unemployed person?

5) Essentially housing benefit gets paid to upper class and middle class landlords via their poor tenants and is effectively a government subsidy to property owners.

6) If a politician crows about how he is a self-made millionaire it is often off-the-back of property.

Government housing benefit has the effect of pushing workers (outside banking and government) outside London. The unemployed can only afford to live in London.

This is also why teaching is so bad in London. Good teachers don't want to live in London and pay all their wages in rent.

The government has to reclaim the money they pay in housing benefit. They do this by stealing houses by slapping 40% inheritance tax on them. The banksters and estate agents are all too happy to push up property prices.

What determines the price of property in London? It is certainly not based on the cost to build a house.

The price is determined by what a 17 year old youth with spots sitting on the receptionist chair in an estate agency says. He/she just goes on what the last house sold to a corrupt, looting bankster went for.; November 26, 2010 at 3:39 PM

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

This Blog Has Moved!

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving Blogging Holiday

8 comments:

This Blog Has Moved!

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