The following story illustrates why.

Suppose there are ten people on an island, and food is scarce. Each day the people on the island go out and scavenge for food. The first day, nine of the ten people find an apple each. The tenth, unfortunately, does not find one. He watches hungrily as the others eat. Noticing this, the nine finders get together and say “we are generous in spite of our need. Let us all give one bite of apple to the tenth, so that he does not starve”, and all agree that this is a good thing, so they do and the tenth gets nine bites of apple.

Now a few days pass, and for whatever reason, the tenth continues to return to camp empty-handed. Each night the same thing happens, where the nine each give him a bite so that he does not starve.

After pondering the situation for a bit, one of the nine who generally gets an apple thinks “scavenging for an apple is very hard work. Number 10 eats but does not find anything. If I stop scavenging so hard, then when I don’t find an apple I might get to eat a bite of each of the others’ apples.”

And so the next day, he does not find an apple. The eight who do get together and say “We are generous in spite of our need. Though it is even harder for us than before, we will give away two bites each so that the two without food do not starve.”

On the next day, two more have the same realization and only six of the ten have found food.

Now, there is clearly a problem. How is this problem resolved?

Those that are finding food may realize that their continued generosity will mean the demise of all of them. If they themselves don’t eat, they won’t have enough energy to find food the next day, and all will starve.

Since in this story, there is no law enforcing the generous behavior of those finding the food, they may decide to leave the non-finding ones and start a new camp with just the six of them. Or, they may decide to simply refuse to help anymore.

However, if there were a law enforcing the generous behavior, they would be forced to give up increasing shares of their food. Then what would happen? Either all would suffer and die as the pattern continued, or perhaps the nonfinders would perceive how dire the situation is, and some would resume finding food. An equilibrium may be reached, where there are just enough finders to find food for everyone, but they all do their work grudgingly and resent the nonfinders. Nobody feels free or generous anymore. Do you think quality of life, beyond simple survival, matters too?

In which situation do you think it more likely that one of the finders decides to work extra hard and find twice as much food, to begin storing food up, so that he can eventually use his extra energy to plant an orchard to create more food for all?

It is like this when we try to help the poor by shifting their burden onto the shoulders of everyone in society, using the forceful means of government. This is why it’s better to limit our helping of the poor to voluntary contributions and charity organizations, and not institute taxation and government programs that can endanger the welfare of the society at large.

This means that sometimes we may have to sit on the sidelines and watch the heart-wrenching scene as people are suffering and we cannot help them. We may have to trust that others, with more means than us to help, will see the suffering and want to help as much as they can. It also means that the best way each of us can help is to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves as best we can, so that we may be in a position to help others when they need it.

In the yoga, we learn to flow energy throughout our bodies, so that all parts of us become fuller, stronger, and freer. The yogi who can flow energy freely all throughout his body will be able to perform more advanced postures, for longer, with less effort; and this physical ability will free him up for greater enjoyment in all aspects of his life.

The flow of money, goods, and services is simply the organized flow of energy throughout the social body. A freer flow will lead to more strength, focus, and flexibility within the system, bringing us more time to spend on the creative process of expanding the horizons of human potential.

Warren Buffet understands the ever-upward spiral of human potential, but I’m not sure he understands the yoga of it just yet!

Witness: nation-building in the middle east while we can’t control our own eating habits back home.

Who wants to learn to exercise from the gym trainer who is overweight?

It is love in that it implies that every citizen has the right to take on the associated responsibility if they choose to. It is love in that it is better aligned with the truth, which is that the power to kill, to inflict mortal wounds, lies in all of us regardless of guns, and it is our goodness and self-control that keeps us from using it indiscriminantly. Aligning with the truth brings greater flow and expansion of energies, which is love.

It is love in that it asserts the sovereignty of the individual; it respects the commonsense notion that we are all masters of ourselves if we so choose. It rejects the confused notion that one class of us is in a position to rule over another by force.

When we restrict gun ownership, we’re effectively saying that the ordinary citizenry is not responsible enough to own guns, but that the government is. That the state is more responsible than the individual. Yet, the state is made up of individuals. So how can this be? Quite simply, it can’t.

One negative of capitalism is it requires cyclical consumption, corps have to reproduce the same junk over and over with minor changes just to keep it going.
Another is ‘technological unemployment’, meaning machines take jobs and there are NO replacements. So everyone without work is just supposed to die.
The[se] are INHERENT problems that can not be fixed by changing the curency or controlling the government.

On cyclical consumption: while it does often seem as though this is what’s happening, it doesn’t have to be this way. If we the consumers want a washing machine that just does the job without all the bells and whistles, and lasts a long time, then there’s a market for it and a smart company will produce it — and in so doing outsell the company that’s producing the overfancy hunk of junk. True, there are certain kinds of products — trendy clothing, for example — that do seem to go around and around in circles. But it’s optional to participate in these markets. You can opt out and wear whatever you find at the local rummage sale for 2 bucks, or for Spitalfields Market in London for 2 pounds, like me! The option to not participate in ridiculousness is one part of the wonders of a free society.

On technological unemployment: this reminds me very much of Manna by Marshall Brain. The robots are taking all of our jobs! It does seem plausible on the surface — if all the jobs are done by robots than what’s left for us to do to earn money?

There’s actually nothing to be afraid of; technological unemployment is actually a wonderful thing! It’s one of myavorite things to think about because I get all warm and fuzzy inside. One way to approach this is to look at history. How about the washing machine? At some point in history, it was somebody’s job to wash the clothes. Nowadays it only takes a few minutes to throw them in the washer; so that job is now gone, replaced by laundromat tycoons and good old GE. And yet disaster was averted and those people put out of work have managed to find other jobs. And now everyone’s standard of living has gone up because we are free to, if we wish, use the laundry machine instead of washing by hand. (It’s important that it’s optional to use the laundry machine — to satisfy those that long for a simpler life, of which there are many, we must allow for the fact that sometimes simple manual labor tasks provide for deeply satisfying work. This is part of the argument for low taxes, but I digress.)

How does this work? The reason you’re getting confused is because you’re looking at the economy in a static fashion. As if the demand for goods and services today is roughly the same as what it’ll be in 50 years. However, these things change over time; how many people in the 1890s were employed by Hollywood? What was at that time a futuristic technological luxury is now a commonplace commodity with an entire industry to support it which employs thousands if not millions of people.

Another way to think about it: forget about jobs and money. Just think about a bunch of humans milling about the earth trying to have a good time. In one scenario, some of the humans spend day in and day out as bank tellers: handing people cash and punching some buttons on a computer. Then someone invents the ATM and those humans no longer have to hand people the cash, they are free to do other things (like invent new ATM-like devices! Or take up cricket.) Net, the world is surely better off with the ATM than without, all other things equal.

So fear not! There will be new opportunities for all; and they’ll be more and more creative as technological improvements take care of the less-fun jobs.

Whenever I hear him talk about the fiat monetary system heading for the tubes, I get this incredibly strong urge to go buy more gold. I think I could use some balance in my perspective! What’s the best fundamental, rational argument for why we’re not headed for rampant hyperinflation?

As it turns out, the “war” is taking place on computer systems a la war games. When the computer simulation deems that an area has been “hit”, all inhabitants of that area report to disintegration chambers to meet their fate.

The local inhabitants claim that this is much more civilized than the wars that used to take place, and they accept it as a part of life in their modern society. However, the war has been going on for a very long time and it continues to take millions of lives.

Captain Kirk, being an outsider, has a different perspective. He notes that the bombs of war, the destructive power of all-out real war, the fear induced by the pain and the threat of pain; these things are what make it real, and make it worth avoiding. When it’s whitewashed, it’s too easy to just continue on with the war.

Rewind a couple of centuries, and bop out of fiction. 21st century America has been at war for years now. It sure doesn’t feel like it to me. Sure, I pay some taxes, and once in a while when I check the news I hear some vague things about US drones flying over Afghanistan or Iraq.

Drones. This is war at it’s cleanest so far, at least for us Americans. We don’t even have to send a real person anywhere near the place we want to bomb now. War is so cheap, so easy that we hardly even notice it happening.

How many armchair fox-news watching neocons do you think would still be pro-war if the abstraction was removed? If our guys were going over there and dying in the same numbers as we’re killing with our drones?

Or God forbid if we were being bombed by Afghani drones? How long would that situation last?

Perhaps we need some visitors from outer space to come break their prime directive and set us straight .

Neat!

What’s more, intrade is projecting a 60% chance of it passing.

If this happens, it’ll be the first time I’ve seen a significant move in the direction of less government control in my adult lifetime.

Of course, this will put California head-to-head with the feds, which seems to be an increasing pattern these days as states are getting fed up with an overblown Washington.

He mentions in there this idea of taking the bailout money and using it to end the income tax instead. This peaked my interest, so I went and took a cursory look at the numbers. Here’s what I found out.

In 2009, the income tax raised $915 billion. The bailout funds committed so far are in the vicinity of $3 trillion, with another $8 trillion committed.

We could have bought 3-11 years of no income tax. Just imagine!

Nobody wants to be responsible for that part! And perhaps nobody is, fully.

The soldier is only responsible for following the order to kill an innocent, or kill someone who may or may not be innocent, or perform an act which has a decent chance of killing some innocent bystanders. But he does not give the order.

The drone designer is only responsible for enabling the killing process to take place more efficiently. But he does not take part in any actual killing.

The drone pilot is responsible for killing from afar, but he neither gives the order nor sees the reality on the ground — he’s simply playing a video game.

The general is responsible for giving the broad order, but he doesn’t do any actual killing.

The president is responsible for allowing the war to continue, or in some cases even starting the war. But he’s very far removed from the killing.

The congress is responsible for allowing the president to usurp war powers and for funding the wars. But they’re not giving the order to go to war, that’s the president.

The voter is responsible for voting for someone who takes a position against his own conscience, because it is the “lesser of evils.” But how can he be blamed, he’s been given such crappy choices.

The taxpayer is responsible for footing the bill, for buying the bombs, for paying the soldiers and generals and drone factories. The dollar-holder is similarly responsible, for funding the war through the inflation of savings. But neither feels fully responsible, because taxes and inflation are not optional.

When we divide up responsibility like this, is it that nobody is responsible enough to consider the killing an act of their own volition? The soldier is just doing what the general tells him; the congress is just doing what the constituency seems to want; the taxpayer is just doing his civic duty. And we are all conveniently moving our thoughts away from our own role.