I fear that most are concerned with whom the wealth is given to rather than the fact that it is stolen in the first place. In effect they accept that state institutions are above and beyond common morality.

Good article.

To me, the problem lies in the utilization of these principles.

From an information theory or statistical perspective, free-energy minimization lies at the heart of variational Bayesian procedures (Hinton and van Camp, 1993) and has been proposed as a modus operandi for the brain (Dayan et al., 1995) – a modus operandi that appeals to Helmholtz’s unconscious inference (Helmholtz, 1866/1962). This leads naturally to the notion of perception as hypothesis testing (Gregory, 1968) and the Bayesian brain (Yuille and Kersten, 2006). Indeed, some specific neurobiological proposals for the computational anatomy of the brain are based on this formulation of perception (Mumford, 1992). Perhaps the most popular incarnation of these schemes is predictive coding (Rao and Ballard, 1999). The free-energy principle simply gathers these ideas together and summarizes their imperative in terms of minimizing free energy (or surprise).

The computational theory of mind and the conflation of brains and creatures invariably leads to such problems.

Observation, trial and error, scientific method, logic, principle—foundational critical thinking skills can suffice to help navigate information.

You’re a big boy. Figure it out.

Lies, misinformation, errors, superseded theories, pseudoscience. If you need someone to differentiate between truth and falsity then you are a part of the problem.

Your case against independent media reads like it was written by CNN. But to derive your info from the legacy, fake news media, is too puerile an approach to informing oneself. It’s narrow, curated, doesn’t involve much thinking, and is subject to the whims of someone else.

Much better that all information is provided, true or false, and to learn to navigate it. Not everything is meant to be curated and disseminated for us. We ought to wean ourselves from curated information or we will never learn.

In that sense the internet has brought us closer to informed democracy.

There is nothing disproved about the fact that men can afford other men rights. History is blood-soaked with states denying rights, so I’m not sure you know what you’re talking about.

Exactly, they stole the land and gave it to their friends. It’s an organized monopoly. Now you say I should become their friend, to enjoy “all they’ve given you”, which turns out to be no more than the fruits of their robbery.



I’m not an anarchist when it comes to the organization of defence. Though I believe people should protect their communities, they are at risk being wiped out and subject to the worst that man can offer. So I agree with Paine that government may be a necessary evil in that regard, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world.

No, it didn’t earn it. First it begged for it, as with war bonds, then it took it, as with income tax. Only after the money is seized could it provide for you the things you claim it does. It doesn’t just start providing services in wait for some true-believer like James to tell everyone it is deserving of some payment for its services. Hilarious.

The government created the problem by imposing lockdowns, shuttering businesses, forcing people in their homes, thereby altering consumption and shopping patterns.

The government didn’t earn that money, that’s for sure. It won’t give to anyone but itself.

Brilliant. If taxes go up on shipping then shipping raises the prices, and, as usual, the cost is left up to the citizen. It makes no sense, if true. But also as usual, government sees itself to the solution to a problem it created, like any protection racket.

That’s a strange conception of freedom.

Voltaire was right: In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Note that they skipped the letter xi and went straight to omicron.

Slavery exists too, ssu.



Any man can afford another man a right, and anyone can defend someone else’s rights. It’s as simple as that. If you need a state to tell you what rights are important and when you should defend them, they can get you to do anything.

I’m well aware of that. Might makes right. The state can do no wrong. We’ve seen countless examples of it.k throughout history.

I don’t like that view because it limits application of rights, and makes them subject to abridgement or suppression by the authority that confers them. But all men can grant rights.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Everyone has the right to education.

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

I don’t think democratic policy change should entail the violation of basic human rights.

No you miss and evade my point, Tim.

Yeah, I know nothing about emissions control tech, but any tech that lasts for mere months ain’t worth it.

Do you need an authority to tell you when and where to shit, or are you an adult?

If your emissions control technology for automobiles worked for 3 to 6 months only you might think of a better solution.

It’s easier to ask instead of making things up. Just looking out for you.

I whined about forced covid vaccines and their shit efficacy.

Let’s get those facts straight, pal.

It was a very clear cut case. Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to shoot black people, did so, but was acquitted by a jury instructed to ignore anything Rittenhouse did to cause concern to others.

How many black people did he shoot? And why would you assume their skin-color?

Here’s a recent case that ticks all the racial boxes for you. This case in particular shows how malicious the State is. They tried to convict him for murder even though it was the police who gunned her down.

https://weartv.com/news/local/florida-man-acquitted-of-shooting-at-deputies-in-raid-that-led-to-death-of-girlfriend

You couldn’t point to a single soul that you’ve protected save for yourself.



A poll or appeal to majority is no repudiation of rights being violated, I’m afraid. Neither is it an example of democratic policy. But you’re right. There is no reason to think they’ll change so long as they are bolstered by public opinion and motivated to retain political power.

We agree. Maybe somewhere people are voting for these policies, but none that I have seen. I also don’t think democratic policy change should entail the violation of basic human rights.

Of course there is a problem, but the puerile and weak solution is to let the state dictate how to solve it. All they’ve done, apparently, is to completely dismiss human rights in favor of regimenting society and treating the populace as prisoners in their own countries. This will be the greatest peace-time policy failure in human history.

When the state forces you indoors, orders you to close your business, prohibits you from travel, do you tell yourself it’s like mum making you go to your room?

A jury of your peers, the evidence, and the trial all disagree with you. One was armed and then subsequently, quite literally, disarmed. Rittenhouse provoked none of it. The pedophile and other rioters who attacked him should have known better.

Violent mobs were roving around town burning down people’s property and livelihoods. Your “professionals” could do and did do little to stop it.

Rittenhouse was clearly responsible for defending himself against violent attack, exercising his most basic rights.

When 17-year-old kids have to stand up to defend the community from violent mobs I think immaturity is the least of your worries.

It was good to hear the verdict because the American justice system is usually a woke joke. It’s not surprising that state’s case resembled the media’s narrative, which was so obviously threadbare and unhinged from the start.

You used to obsess about fascism and racism until the exact moment it took power.

Oh, ok. Well, he differentiates between spontaneous and designed order. I can’t see how a centrally-planned economy can come from the former without first coming from the latter.

I guess I don’t understand the question.

I was responding to the question: “Hayek's views would say that central planning is fine as long as it emerged naturally, like in a mir?” That contradicts his view that central planning cannot work.

Military is not an incidence of central-planning because military planning has nothing to do with markets and economy, and is limited in activity and scope.

There is supply-side and demand-side economics. So-called “trickle” kinds of economics are pejoratives, and not actual theories.

Hayek would point to his Local Knowledge Problem, which suggests that the vast majority of the knowledge required for rational planning exists outside the grasp of any central authority. The knowledge is dispersed among all people, decentralized.

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html

I miss the times when business deals between a president’s son and foreign state entities would result in wall-to-wall news coverage, SNL skits, condemnation from celebrities, late night talk show jabs.

When the mine was sold, Mr. Biden’s father was near the end of his term as vice president. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Hunter Biden’s business ties in China were widely publicized.

But BHR’s role in the Chinese mine purchase was not a major focus. It has taken on new relevance because the Biden administration warned this year that China might use its growing dominance of cobalt to disrupt America’s retooling of its auto industry to make electric vehicles. The metal is among several key ingredients in electric car batteries.

NYT: How Hunter Biden’s Firm Helped Secure Cobalt for the Chinese

We should always remember: though a woman is more free to abandon her traditional role and seek protections from the state over other human relations, she has the corresponding and growing freedom to do the opposite. The point of it is that the realm of conduct is expanded. It’s better this way because only by free choice can a woman—or anyone—educate herself to this or that desirable end with dignity, by force of her own reason and conscience.

None of this is to say that women should or should not abandon “social responsibility”. I just wouldn’t say a fear of the conditions are really warranted.