I will be reading one part a week or about 50-80 pages. Should be slow enough to stick with it. Reading starts Friday. I’ll post my thoughts on the part and address any comments.

Tim asked, why not Human Action?

Human Action is a great book(tome) but it is too dry a read and will disinterest many of the people that visit the site. I picked volume four because it is over an exciting and misunderstood period, the revolutionary war. I also happen to be reading Gates of Fire, so I suppose I’m in a war mood. Although, if this goes well, I’m not opposed to reading sections of Human Action.

I figured some of you might be interested in a bookclub/studygroup sort of thing. I’m going to be reading the fourth volume of the four volume work, Conceived in Liberty by Rothbard.

With nearly ever politician and man on the street proclaiming their undying love for the founding fathers,the spirit of America and revolution, this might be the perfect opportunity to read a complete history of colonial America.

If you want to order the book you can do it from Amazon or Mises Store. I can’t attest to the content of the book, but the construction of the book is pretty nice.

Alternatively, all four volumes are available online. Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4

It will probably be a week before I begin reading. However, I’ll make a schedule in the next day or two.

Comment or email me any suggestions you have.

A coronation is never a pleasant sight for an honest man.

The Republicans just might not repeat the mistakes of 2000, 2004 and 2008 by nominating a non-leftist.

Have you ever wanted to inspire your child to the mediocre heights of a federal airport screener?

This has got to be some sort of tell-tale; don’t expect airports to become anymore pleasant anytime soon. The toy is a manifestation of an American security fetish; it is indicative of an appalling faith in government. Other than foiling plots at clean teeth and hydration, airport security fails utterly to detect hidden weapons. Now, I would never dream of accusing a government employee of efficiency, but when your failure rate is as high as 95% one has to seriously question these sorts of security schemes.

When a flight attendant asked him to close his laptop after boarding, Shafermeyer says he jokingly asked her, “Are you the one who checks for shoe bombs?” Within minutes, federal agents removed him from the plane. He spent much of his time in the St. Louis County jail in solitary confinement. Shafermeyer says he’s charged with making a false bomb report.

One has to wonder what the chances of a Muslim, devout enough to kill himself, boarding a plane drunk then making a shoe bomb joke to the infidel flight attendant while the plane is grounded?

Merry Christmas

Following up yesterdays article I have a few reading recommendations:

The Demolished Man — Alfred Bester
The Stars My Destination — Alfred Bester
A Canticle for Leibowitz — Walter M. Miller, Jr
Dune — Frank Herbert
Neuromancer — William Gibson
Childhood’s end — Arthur C. Clarke
Hyperion — Dan Simmons
Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert A. Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress — Robert A. Heinlein
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K. Dick

Any of these should be enjoyable.

At the moment, I’m reading a complete collection of Arthur C. Clarke short stories.

Making the claim, science fiction is the highest literary form is silly…of course. Science fiction deserves every up-turned nose it gets. After all, this is the genre of the romantic-female-spaceship-captain-vampire-werewolf-undead-opera. However, I’ve been feverishly reading sci fi over the past few years and have come to several conclusions.

1.It is the highest form of literature.
2.Sci-fi has undergone drastic contemporary changes.

Ill tackle the second point first:

Sci-fi is a somewhat confusing genre. Rather I should say, Sci fi as a label is useless. It communicates almost nothing. Sci fi varies so wildly in content and style the label should be dropped. In fact, the only thread tying this supposed genre together is that it involves some sort of science or technology — two terms so devoid of precision which barely communicates an actual idea. Regardless, science and technology are in every book written. What is the Pequod but a technology that enables man to explore himself in a new setting? It is for these reason sci-fi as a word says almost nothing.Unfortunately I have nothing to suggest as a replacement.

This is to say nothing of changes in contemporary science fiction which is more accurately called romance in space.

As for the highest form of literature:

Recall The Count of Monte Cristo. One of the finest stories written. It was retold in a science fiction work called The Stars My Destination. In The Stars My Destination, the protagonist is a mediocre and uninspiring creature that continues to breath, but if for some reason he stopped, not a single thing would change. He is trapped in a small wrecked spacecraft, surviving only by a nagging instinct to do so. Another vessel comes close enough to aide but makes a conscience decision not to. The rest of our protagonist’s life is spent seeking revenge. What’s different, what makes one better than the other? If there are no differences outside the setting why should an author clutter his book with exotic technology, fantasy science and otherworldly settings. I suppose because some people think those things are interesting, but if science fiction is the highest form of literature I will have to justify the use of these foreign settings. I will go further and say that it is these sorts of settings that make science fiction a better genre.

Today discussion is focused around non-factors. Is it relevant to a discussion of CAFE standards if a car gets 25 or 27 MPG? Even the most dull among men can see that such distinctions are not ones of substance but rather of degree; arbitrarily ordained. By way of hyperbole, so-called science fiction, can reduce arguments and behavior to their very essence. What if the discussion of CAFE standards were to take place in a universe where cars got 2500 or 2700 miles per gallon? The elimination of everyday distractions is what allows science fiction to focus upon actual issues.

The clarifying effects of science fiction does not stop at political issues. Perhaps the greatest triumph of science fiction at a genre is its ability to explore the cliched “human condition”. Paradoxically, the exotic settings in science fiction clarify, not obfuscate, human behavior. It is because man has: traveled to the center of the universe, instantaneously teleports with his mind, travels through time, has vast space battles and travels faster than the speed of light that one begins to understand the human action is immutable. A conquistador who forsakes his family to seek adventure in the new world finds himself struggling against the same obstacles as a man who travels the stars. The soldier who travels faster-than light to other planets is in no way different than an American soldier who fights a war in a Vietnamese jungle. Both return home, both struggle with the gulf that now exists between themselves and the ones they used to know. It is this struggle with one’s self that makes literature and it is because science fiction acts to clarify this struggle that “science fiction” should rightly be considered the highest form literature can take.

Hope… Change…

The top U.S. military officer says that up to 30,000 new American troops could be sent to Afghanistan next year.

It will be interesting to see how those enchanted by the litany of change will reconcile with the reality of the coming years.

Undersea sub-cables have just broken…

Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

The centralization of infrastructure via government granted monopoly has created a network fragility that otherwise would not exist.

Citing imminent danger to the national economy, President Bush ordered an emergency bailout of the U.S. auto industry Friday, offering $17.4 billion in rescue loans and demanding tough concessions from the deeply troubled carmakers and their workers.

Two nights ago, I was engaged in a discussion about auto bailouts with a family member. He claimed that because the senate had rejected the auto bailout and because there no popular support for an auto bailout no auto bailout would happen.

I think what he missed is a simple axiom of government; government will always seek to increase it’s power. By intervening in this way, the national government creates a leverage to control automakers; it is a further justification to nationalize the entire industry.

Part 1&2 respectively:

After watching those videos I finally feel entitled to wear a stop snitching t-shirt.

It’s interesting to note how the criminalization of everyday life creates an unequal legal system. You are guilty of a crime no matter what you do.

Hey, you senators: Thanks for nothing

This is a decent article for understanding the emotional underpinnings of these sorts of people.

Do you want to watch us drown? Is that it? Do want to see the last gurgle of economic air spit from our lips? If so, senators, know this: You’ll go down with us. America isn’t America without an auto industry.

I suppose the obvious point here is that America was America long before it had an auto industry…

But more importantly, the fiery rhetoric used is the sort that ends up swaying the pedestrian man. Arguments like above cited already dominate much of what passes for intelligent discussion.

Several false assumptions support the bitchy rabble-rousing:

1. “Jobs” create economic prosperity
2. Government can spend (read: print) money to stop this so-called economic hemorrhaging.

The first is rather simple, jobs have absolutely no causal relationship with prosperity. Jobs do not create prosperity also true vise versa. To understand this imagine a society with 100% employment… got it in your head? If you pictured a poor African village surviving off yams, you would be right. In an economy anyone can work. Work is a very simple thing and there will always be someone willing to pay something for your labor. However, labor is not necessarily productivity, labor can be as silly as digging a ditch and filling it back up; interestingly enough a job only government will pay someone to do. The fact that I’m not working 16 hours a day just so I can farm enough yams to surive the winter months goes to show how simple this is. Prosperity comes when individuals specialize and trade; thereby enriching both parties, not when everyone in a society is doing ’something’.

The second idea is even simpler to dismiss. If prosperity or value is added to a society by the government printing more money than the great conundrums of the dismal science are solved, just make sure the printing press is running 24/7. Of course it isn’t that simple, like the first point, printing edicts of value on pieces of paper adds nothing to society. Your life and my own do not suddenly become better-off because government added another zero to its green IOU’s.

On 10 December, Human Rights Day, the Secretary-General launched a year-long campaign in which all parts of the United Nations family are taking part in the lead up to the 60th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on Human Rights Day 2008.

A best it’s a fluff document with as much connection to “rights” as NAFTA has to “free-trade”.

If taken seriously, it is a document of ambiguity that trammels actual rights. As the very astute James Wilson wrote:

But in a government consisting of enumerated powers, such as is proposed for the United States, a Bill of Rights would not only be unnecessary, but, in my humble judgment, highly imprudent. In all societies, there are many powers and rights which cannot be particularly enumerated. A bill of rights annexed to a constitution, is an enumeration of the powers reserved. If we attempt an enumeration, everything that is not enumerated, is presumed to be given. The consequence is, that an imperfect enumeration would throw all implied power into the scale of the government, and the rights of the people would be rendered incomplete.

At worst though, the UDHR is a smoke-screen for global statism. Consider Article 25:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

I could go on but it’s obvious by now; the word “human rights” had to be manufactured because the sovereignty over one’s property necessarily excludes a large government.

more honorable profession by night. I’m just surprised she made £100 an hour. I suppose that’s what happens when Swedish pirates steal all your country’s good looking women.

They are charged with conspiracy to manage brothels for prostitution and conspiracy to control prostitutes for gain.

I suppose the feminist argument that prostitution degrades women just went out the window.

I was reading a piece on Slashdot discussing vaccination. The majority feels that vaccinations are a necessary thing for children and condemn parents who choose to not vaccinate.

The argument is that it doesn’t matter if a vaccination may hurt the individual; the public health will undoubtedly benefit. This isn’t a new idea, either. In 1905, the supreme court made the same assertion in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that the individual’s liberty must be subordinate to the public’s welfare.

This assertion has several flaws:

1. There is no such thing as public health, public welfare, social welfare, social health, etc. The ‘public’ does not get the flu; the ’society’ does not contract chicken-pox. Individuals get the flu; individuals contract chicken-pox. At no point in time will it ever be possible to say the public is unhealthy. Tom is overweight; Tom has a high risks for heart disease, not Florida. People mistakenly assume that a useful abstraction, words like society or the public, are actual physical things. However, this sort of illogical anthropomorphism was done for another reason.

2. Laying behind the masquerade of “public health” is a more sinister motivation. Consider this comment from the same Slashdot article:

The unvaccinated pose a greater danger to the general
population than the vaccines pose to the individual.

If one understands that a ‘general population’ has no physical health, just like a ‘general population’ doesn’t wind up with a bad case of syphilis, one cannot help but to realize what forced-vaccination advocates really want; for you to act in a manner that benefits them. In other words, you must get vaccinated because it will benefit me. It is not that one party acts in a manner that harms another, it is that one party does not act and because of their non-action another party fails to benefit.

For those concerned with liberty, such a line of reasoning becomes ominous. Everyday in my life I act to benefit myself. When I’m forced to act in a manner I would have otherwise not, I necessarily do so to the determinate of myself. When Tom forces Bob to act in a manner to benefit Tom, this is called slavery.

The mendacity of ‘public health’ arguments cannot be ignored, it poses a serious threat to individual liberty.

Almost every report on inflation mentions that inflation is a rise in
the price level. This is not the case. Inflation is not an increase in
price levels, just as deflation is not a decease in price levels.

Inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon. Inflation is an increase in
the supply of money.

At first glance, this may seems like a petty semantic argument, but
the perniciousness of defining inflation as an increase in the price
level is grave. One cannot fight a problem one is not aware of. If
inflation continues to be defined incorrectly, efforts to combat
inflation will be misdirected.

For example, if one thinks that an increase in the price level is
inflation, one then must ask why is this bad? Prices increase
everyday, for good reason. If the Hannah Montana concert ticket goes
from $30 to $3000, the price increase communicates the fact that
Hannah Montana tickets are being valued more highly by some people. It
does not indicate that the dollar has inflated astronomically
overnight. So why is an increase in the price level bad? It is this
question that becomes impossible to answer if one does not properly
define inflation.

Understanding inflation allows one to answer the question. When the
supply of dollars increases, the price level rises to reflect a less
scarce dollar. However, the increased supply of dollars affects some
before others. Prices may not adjust to reflect the increased supply
of money. Because of this, purchasing power is redistributed to
people purchasing with newer money, from people holding onto older
money.

Because prices do not always reflect inflation and because inflation
is thought to be an increase in price levels, the philosopher kings
also known as economists do not see that the real value of the money
has been reduced drastically. This parallels the 1920’s when the price
level was relatively stable; when the depression did occur, economists
were taken off-guard.

Furthermore, defining inflation as an increase in the price level
obfuscates the true culprit, the fed bank.

I’ve recently been asked what “brace the remnant” means. After I’ve explained it a few times and only receiving puzzled stares in response, I figure this would be a good time to put it in writing. I took the phrase “brace the remnant” from an essay by Albert Jay Nock, entitled Isaiah’s Job. The essay explores the biblical notion of Isaiah’s job and its relation to contemporary society.

From Isaiah’s Job:

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he
had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”

The body of liberty sometimes feels like its slowly being smothered. In fact, most of the items I post are just that, reports of a slow death by collectivism. I sincerely wish I could be optimistic about current happenings, but I cannot. If society is a pendulum, we are on the apex of the swing away from liberty. So why should I even bother fighting a losing war?

It is the understanding of Isaiah’s job that gives me some hope. The tide of collectivism may be unstoppable for the present but the remnant will persist. It is the eventuality of the Remnant that makes Isaiah’s job fruitful. The Remnant that eventually creates the Italian and Greek city states, or the Roman and American republics are often a small group of people who take the lessons of the past to heart. I took the name bracetheremnant.com with such in mind.

How to Combat a Banking Crisis: First, Round Up the Pessimists

Hammered by economic woe, this former Soviet republic recently took a novel step to contain the crisis. Its counterespionage agency busted an economist for being too downbeat.

The word “novel” seems a bit out of place considering the history of the USSR.

“It is a form of deterrence,” says Martins Bicevskis, Finance Ministry state secretary.

Poverty is now outlawed in Latvia… about time.