Augustine2004's opinions on Lew Rockwell, Plato, and assorted other subjects

[Augustine2004]

What is the best approach for the world to give itself a chance of achieving optimal division or at any rate 'good' division?

Part I


In the first section I asked four questions (the fifth one simply asked questions from you, dear Reader):

1. How is the world to decide what the labor is to be? After all the world should not divide anything if it has not yet decided what that is. Note: I like 'activities' instead of 'labor.' In any case, let's agree 'division' means 'division of activities' (or 'division of labor' if you still prefer).

2. After that question is answered, how are the activities to be divided? This is partly a question about knowing which of us can do what and cannot do what.

3. Are incentives and disincentives necessary and if so how are they to be implemented? Or, is guidance necessary? If so how is it to be implemented?

4. Are there any exceptions? That question I will leave to others to answer. Please, if you do answer it, justify your answer.

Are we agreed that the State should not answer those questions willy-nilly? It is to make decisions guided by detailed knowledge of the world with a minimum of guesswork, all right?

Let's take a slightly different approach. Let's pretend that all the world's governments, including local ones, have agreed that you are to be the division czar. Your first task is to survey the entire world to determine how it is dividing the activities. Then you are to suggest the most cost-effective way to improve the division, together with an estimate of its cost. You agree. Now what?

[Augustine2004]

After August 2, we won't get to see whether we can be a nation of self-reliant responsible adults, I'm afraid.

[Augustine2004]

Jeff Clark in a recent article:

Investment legend Marc Faber reports that once a country’s payments on debt exceed 30% of tax revenue, the currency is “done for.” On our current path, analyst Michael Murphy projects we’ll hit that figure by October.

[Augustine2004]

Obama in a speech said:

We all want a government that lives within its means, but there are still things we need to pay for as a country — things like new roads and bridges; weather satellites and food inspection; services to veterans and medical research.

Surely we can live without these things for a while. Not as well as we'd want to, but we are going to get poorer anyway.

[Augustine2004]

This claims the TSA still is not allowing independent safety study of the scanners. http://lewrockwell.com/muratore/muratore18.1.html

[Augustine2004]

The USFG has co-opted science to such a degree that we have much less real science now than otherwise.

It's not just Climategate. Big Pharma needs to be hit with a scandal called Bigpharmagate as well. Dana Ullman was quoted, '[The current clinical studies show] short-term results [usually only short-term], serious side effects, and stratospheric costs.' http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...-research.aspx

We must suspect that anyone using a phrase like 'scientifically proven' is on the make for profits or power; see the page linked above.


Other examples: seeding trials. They are sham 'clinical studies' of drugs designed to familiarize doctors with them, in the hopes the doctors would become more likely to prescribe the drugs to their patients. Parke-Davis was accused of having done a seeding trial for its drug Neurontin. You may find it hard to believe pharma companies can be this low-life, but . . .

[Augustine2004]

"A Key Vioxx Study Was Really A 'Seeding Study'" Ed Silverman, Pharmalot, 8/18/08, pharmalot.com
You know Vioxx, a drug that had to be withdrawn from the market after reports of deaths and other bad things. Merck, the maker, had to pay billions to settle personal injury suits.





American liberals wanted blacks to own more homes than otherwise, so they got the government to fix the housing market to bring that about. Maybe it worked for a while. But today? Thomas Sowell says, 'A finer breakdown of the data on the net worth of blacks shows that the most drastic loss of net worth was in the value of the homes owned by blacks.' That is why the gap between white net worth and black has grown. http://lewrockwell.com/sowell/sowell53.1.html

[Augustine2004]

Paul Craig Roberts doubts the New Yorker's account of the bin Laden kill story
http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts319.html

[Augustine2004]

The riots in England and in Chicago should not surprise anyone who has studied this paper by Professor Hans-Herman Hoppe: 'Time Preference, Government, And The Process of De-civilization--From Monarchy to Democracy.'

http://www.hanshoppe.com/wp-content/...preference.pdf



Here's a key quotation (if you don't understand some terms, I can explain):

[T]he mere fact of legislation—of democratic law-making—increases the degree of uncertainty. Rather than being immutable and hence predictable, law becomes increasingly flexible and unpredictable. What is right and wrong today may not be so tomorrow. The future is thus rendered more haphazard. Consequently, all around time preferences degrees will rise, consumption and short-term orientation will be stimulated, and at the same time the respect for all laws will be systematically undermined and crime promoted (for if there is no immutable standard of ‘right’, then there is also no firm definition of ‘crime’).


... one must first work for a while before one gets paid. In contrast, specific criminal activities such as murder, assault, rape, robbery, theft, and burglary require no such discipline: the reward for the aggressor is tangible and immediate whereas the sacrifice — possible punishment — lies in the future and is uncertain.

[Augustine2004]

Ron Paul's star seems to be ascendant, yet Theology Web seems to be taking no notice!? Except here.

[Augustine2004]

An avalanche is building up in the credit markets around the world. There was actually a start of one in 2008, but the Fed managed to pour enough 'snow on the slopes' to stall it. I don't know if the Fed can pull the same trick when another avalanche starts (a creditor balks at supplying say Greece more credit). (Thanks Porter Stansberry)

Massive credit contraction! Try to think of the consequences.

[Augustine2004]

pacifist http://lewrockwell.com/kohls/kohls12.1.html I am not a total pacifist, but agree the atomic bombing of Japan was murder. (I would have stuck this in a thread started by a pacifist whose avatar name escapes me. The thread's name also escaped me. In any case the article posted here would not have been allowed there anyway.)

[Augustine2004]

<Sarcasm>

Happy now?

This is a fair warning to those sarcastically impaired the preceding text was written in jest.

[Augustine2004]

I wonder what your thoughts would be if you were to read the following by someone in some wide publication (NY Times, no less): “If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better.”

[Augustine2004]

Why the heck would the USFG try to pass a bill that prohibits any of its members 'from providing any information about the mission to kill Osama bin Laden to any person outside the Federal Government'? HR 2819



And note 'kill' above. Nothing about capturing him. Maybe nothing worth fussing about, but . . .