“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Amazing - other uses?

What's next, clothes with pockets??

You know where all the public money has gone for libraries? War.

The cost of medical benefits for all the soldiers who are maimed but now can survive for 50 years is staggering and will choke our culture to death. All those weapons, fuel, R&D, "homeland security theater", etc. all part of the massive war machine.

But war will always be funded because it's the ultimate high of money and power, to be able to send people to kill and be killed, heck it gives the politicians special "war powers", why would they not want it?

Doesn't matter if it's the left or right in charge, they do love their war and will never, ever stop.

What exactly is a "thing like this"? Let's take a hypothetical example of countries A and B.

An ex-marine of country A is caught and sentenced as a spy in country B. Country A not only frequently makes open threats about invading country B, but has also invaded 2 more countries in the region in the last 10 years, one of those with a false pretext, and another to revenge the actions of a few men, not the actions of said country.

Country A, 60 years ago, had the democratic government of country B replaced with a dictator of their choosing.

Country A has imprisoned non-soldiers of other countries, taking them from their countries and keeping them in a remote prison in the tropics without even a trial. A lot of them where found totally unrelated to anything, i.e innocent, and released several years later without any compensation of course.

Soldiers of country A are known to torture, rape and beat prisoners from other countries, and even take pictures of said torture with their phones and laugh at it. Several widespread cases where made known.
Country A has weapons of mass destruction, and is the only country known to have used two of those in a war, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, just as the war was ending and the enemy was surrendering.

Country A has made medical experiments on people without their knowledge. In one case, they publicly said they are "sorry", 40 years after the fact.
Country A is known to have very good relations with dictators and despotic governments in many countries where it serves it's interests.

Everywhere country A invaded in the last 10 years, they brought mass instability, civil tension or war and chaos, in the name of "bringing democracy". Coincidentally it's mostly in strategic places with lots of natural resources.
As late as 40 years ago, country A still practiced segregation in many of its cities. They have also assassinated their two most prominent anti-segregation activists. Even today, despite having made progress on the matter, a hugely disproportionate percentage of the black population of country A is in prison.

Finally, country A practices the death penalty as much as country B, and has a lot of religious fanatics among its population, too, and certain places even prefer non-scientific evolution theories instead of the de-facto scientific theory on the matter for their schools. It's a known fact that an openly atheist would never, as it is, get elected to the top office in country A.

Can you guess country A and country B? Would you get mad at country B?

I think we have self-ownership. I think that we can acquire property in the sense that when we "work" on something we invest time and energy into it. Time and energy to me are the only really objective measures of "life" that we can use in this context without getting all crazy religous (which I'm not) or into biological debate (which I don't think actually helps solve the problem).

For that reason I would argue that when you work to earn property it is yours in the sense that an attempt to remove it from you is damage on your life (time and energy invested in item of ownership). Therefore you can own property only so long as we agree that a person has self-ownership and that the initiation of force is wrong. There is a foundation to those beliefs that I don't have time to write out now but I think a few people would agree with them (some people to degrees).


I start from there. If capitalism is the result of that then I don't see it as wrong or involuntary. Although I label myself as ancap sometime I prefer voluntarist as I actually don't care what the outcome is. I suspect the outcome of a voluntary society would look a lot like "capitalism" per se (perhaps with a few bits added and some chopped off). But, I'm not certain, my ideas are only based on self-ownership and nap primarily.


The only way I could see it being wrong is if you could show me logically that trade is in some way a violation of the NAP. I've seen the argument that capitalism is like the highwayman but to me the highwayman is the laws of nature. You have to work to survive. If we remove all the people but you then your screwed if you don't work. The fact you have to when there are more people around is not an initiation of force to my mind.

Jesselyn Radack is a former US government lawyer, blew the whistle on the US Justice Department when her advice that John Walker Lindh request to have access to a lawyer during questioning should be allowed was sealed, and then Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Lindh had not requested a lawyer. She was given a blistering performance review, fired, and placed under criminal investigation and intense surveillance. She was also added to the nation's No Fly list.

When the Obama administration assumed office, they continued and amplified the Bush-era harassment of Radack.

boycott Burger King

impeachment time

response to "My Dinner With Android"