Socrates: What is love of profit? What can it be, and who are the lovers of profit?

Comrade: In my opinion, they are those who think it worth while to make profit out of things of no worth.

Socrates: Is it your opinion that they know those things to be of no worth, or do not know? For if they do not know, you mean that the lovers of profit are fools.

Comrade: No, I do not mean they are fools, but rascals who wickedly yield to profit, because they know that the things out of which they dare to make their profit are worthless, and yet they dare to be lovers of profit from mere shamelessness.

Socrates: Well now, do you mean by the lover of profit such a man, for instance, as a farmer who plants something which he knows is a worthless herb, and thinks fit to make profit out of it when he has reared it up? Is that the sort of man you mean?

Comrade: The lover of profit, as such, Socrates thinks he ought to make profit from everything.

Socrates: Please do not speak so recklessly, as though you had been wronged by someone, but give me your attention and answer just as you would if I were beginning my questions over again. Do you not admit that the lover of profit has knowledge of the worth of the thing from which he thinks it worth while to make profit?

Comrade: I do.

(more…)

It requires the greatest kind of wisdom, she thought, to know when to apply injustice. How can justice fall victim, even, to what is right? How can this happen? She thought, Because there is a curse on this world, and all this proves it; this is the proof right here. Somewhere, at the deepest level possible, the mechanism, the construction of things, fell apart, and up from what remained swam the need to do all the various sort of unclean wrongs the wisest choice has made us act out. It must have started thousands of years ago. By now it’s infiltrated into the nature of everything. And, she thought, into every one of us. We can’t turn around or open our mouth and speak, decide at all, without doing it. I don’t even care how it got started, when or why. She thought, I just hope it’ll end some time. Like with Tony Amsterdam; I just hope one day the shower of brightly colored sparks will return, and this time we’ll all see it. The narrow doorway where there’s peace on the far side. A statue, the sea, and what looks like moonlight. And nothing stirring, nothing to break the calm.

Having caught?

- from A SCANNER DARKLY, by Philip K. Dick

Because the old emotional brain was evolved to deal only with the personal situation, it is ill-equipped to do the moral calculus, weighing costs and benefits and choosing the action that yields the highest aggregate welfare. For such advanced cognition, the more newly evolved brain areas must be recruited.

“It’s science.”

Of course we’re also evolving into Patri Friedman, here shown recruiting newly evolved areas of his brain.

Geoffrey Allan Plauche responds to some comments I made at Chris Sciabarra’s blog:

Outside of academia one can promote libertarian ideas in the media (op-eds, letters to the editor, tv news commentaries, documentaries, blogs and websites, etc.), in the arts and entertainment (fiction writing (from short stories to novels), comic books, cartoons, music, plays, tv shows, movies, etc.), having children and teaching them libertarian ideas, by ignoring the State as much as possible and creating and encouraging the growth of alternative societal institutions (such as homeschooling, fraternal societies, clubs, neighborhood committees, church-related organizations, charities, and new businesses). This is partly the rational evangelism that John disparages, but not entirely. Rational argumentation often has little effect by itself on those who are old and set in their ways, but the young are more open to new, radical, and true ideas. Moreover, what Chris and I advocate is not rational argumentation merely, but rational action. Different people have different talents and resources to bring to bear on this culture war and so will be better at different avenues of attack. You should do what you can. Rational argumentation will often play a role but it must be supplemented by, or rather supplement, a bevy of other strategies many of which I have already mentioned.

One important avenue that I have mentioned, and John emphasizes as well, is libertarian-run businesses. Yet business, while important, is only one institution of collective action that libertarians can use to ignore, avoid, and undermine the State. John also includes a related issue: invention. I certainly agree that certain new technologies can and will be used to help to create a libertarian-anarchic society. However, John’s argument that so-called “rational evangelism” won’t work and that “the state will have it’s [sic] way as long as enough people approve of it…is simply not the case” is wrong, and his focus on the role of technology borders on determinism. Are certain advanced technologies necessary in order to bring about and maintain a libertarian-anarchic society? John has not explicitly told us if this is the case, and if so, why; but his argument seems to imply that it is. Moreover, if certain technologies are necessary for liberty, then it appears that in a society without said technologies there is an inescapable gulf between the moral and the practical. Ultimately, what technologies are invented and how they will be used is determined by ideas. Email encryption won’t do people much good if people think that they are obligated to let the government through it, or if a majority of the people think the State has the right to punish those who don’t. It is the ideas that people hold that we need to change.

Phil Zimmermann didn’t have to change anyone’s ideas to radically restructure privacy in communication. That does me good as an individual regardless what the majority thinks of it.

And I’m not talking about advanced technologies per se, just profitable technologies and services focused on evicting politics from individual decisions.

Plauche links to Walter Block’s battle plan for academia. Why should anyone care whether Austrians conquer academia? Consider how long the minimum wage has been a settled matter among economists and what a negligible effect that has had on policy. If you can’t even persuade most people of the very simple fact that a minimum wage is harmful then what is this kind of battle plan supposed to accomplish?

Less than two years ago Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution wrote (emphasis added):

Crypto anarchists and cyber-libertarians promised a new world of privacy and liberty built on the foundations of the internet and public key cryptography. As David Friedman memorably put it public key cryptograpy allows “anonymity with reputation” thus it becomes possible in theory to evade the taxman while still maintaining a public presence.

All of this now looks somewhat naive. Consider, for example, how internet gambling has been quashed. First, the credit card companies caved into government pressure and refused to process gambling related transactions. Initially, gamblers shrugged this off and routed their transactions through PayPal but a U.S District Attorney accused PayPal of violating the USA Patriot Act and to avoid charges PayPal was forced to pony up 10 million dollars. (Why am I not surprised that a law intended to go after terrorists has been used to most affect against peaceful gamblers?). Entrepreneurs have taken their online gambling sites to places where it is legal like Antigua and Costa Rica but don’t try coming home again. When Jay Cohen, founder of the World Sport Exchange, did that he was tried, convicted and jailed in a Federal prison.

Today it’s pretty clear that intenet gambling has not been quashed.

The statist pigs at The Stranger register shock when this rotten provincial shithole of a city does what it always does:

The Stranger - News - City - Club Crackdown
On Saturday, August 6, representatives of the Seattle police, fire, transportation, and other city departments stormed into Tula’s, a quiet jazz club on Second Avenue in Belltown, and started making demands. They inspected the exits and sidewalks for fire-code violations. They stood in front of the stage and shone their flashlights around. They asked for the club’s liquor license, its occupancy permit, and something called an “open-flame permit” for the votive candles on the tables. And they examined the club’s tax receipts to make sure patrons were paying a mandatory admissions tax.

The purpose of this harassment is, of course, the liberal puritanism (and racism) that recoils at the notion that anyone, anywhere might be having unsupervised fun. (The inclusion of the SPD in this special little task force suggests a ripe field for extortion and bribery, but that’s a secondary matter.) But this is the State that the Stranger routinely ass-kisses on a regular basis; this is the city where Dan Savage’s “new urbanism” pretensions are supposed to blossom, so grounds for complaint are very thin indeed.

At the back of this week’s issue, we find Adrian Ryan’s inevitablyarch, coy, fagalicious and endlessly tiresome Celebrity I Saw U. A. Ryan opines about my girlriend:

“Lastly: Appreciation for Courtney Love has deepened since Madonna broke her ass, and we shall celebrate this by certainly not addressing her newest tango with judges, tear jags, various and very under-identified “controlled substances,” another month of court-ordered recovery, nor, of course, any other thing. Almost all of me would instead like to bid dear Courtney well, and hopes that she finally overpowers the nasty crack monkey that rules her soul and commits at last to a fresh new life of organic intoxicants like the fucking rest of us.”

I hate self-righteous potheads.

But I love you, dearest Courtney.

Soon, soon, very soon, the Other Gods will awaken, the Small Adorable One will be made manifest, and every snippy, smelly hemp infested hippie swine in this shitty little town will be crushed mercilessly before You. Even Sadako will help. Until that day, my beloved!

Chris Sciabarra asks:

Do you have anything specifically in mind, John, with regard to practical efforts in large-scale social, political, or economic change?

I do: The production of means by which individuals may increasingly evict collective politics from their lives.

An example of this would be Phil Zimmermann’s creation Pretty Good Privacy. The question of whether or not individuals ought to be free to communicate privately was previously subject to collective politics, but Zimmerman and a handful of other individuals largely evicted politics from the question. States may still assert authority to read your email, but whether they can is now up to the individual. I think a significant reason the Soviet Union fell when it did was that it lost it’s war on private communication. That wasn’t the result of strong encryption, but it’s another example of how technologies can enable individuals to increasingly evict politics from their lives. People typically assume the state will have it’s way as long as enough people approve of it, but that is simply not the case in many areas, and those areas can be expanded.

I find it striking that Rand’s great protagonists were inventors and businessmen, yet her admirers tend to focus almost exclusively on rational evangelism. The most powerful model for collective action appropriate to individualists is business, yet business gets short shrift from libertarians as a means for curtailing the state - they tend to devote themselves instead to collective political movements.

More comments at Catallarchy.

We get readers from searches like this.

In case the link goes bad, that’s someone Googling the words: no birth control hot wife breeding party.

The search returned my entry: Kinsella Wants To License Breeding.

A few days ago I wrote about the sad case of Gooey The Duck. Instead of boring you with the update, I’ll get straight to the point:

In a country where you can’t safely own a duck, how long to you think your guns are going to last?

Sunni Maravillosa points to a guest editorial in the Seattle PI:

Besides, don’t you find it somehow empowering to see your neighbors voting? Isn’t it a good reminder that we’re all in this together? I’ve always thought that the polling station is one of those few places where you can actually see democracy working in its pure form.

Our lives are so complex. Shouldn’t we at least keep a special day with a simple, distinct ritual that symbolizes the system we’re proud of?

I think we owe it to ourselves to do that.

The shallow bubbly praise of voting contrasts quite nicely with the fact that it was only a few months ago that the Washington State Governor’s race was a front-page fiasco, don’t you think?

“You can’t beat going to the polls”, says the valiant pundit. I think I in fact can:

I recently witnessed a chat between Lynette and Billy Beck. Billy said he’d told his Uncle that he “now & then contemplates burning himself on the capitol steps”. From the transcript:

Wm J Beck III: This evening, I described to my mother’s brother how her baby boy now & then contemplates burning himself on the capitol steps.
Lynette Warr3n: Not trying to be cryptic. I just want to be clear
Wm J Beck III: It’s literally funny: I never even allude to that without suspecting that anyone who’s ever seen it before will suspect that I’m having an acute episode.
Lynette Warr3n: I know better
Wm J Beck III: It’s not, of course. This is chronic: low-level, but always present.
Wm J Beck III: Well, my uncle had never heard it before. He drew a sharp breath, and said, slowly and quietly: “That’s pretty heavy.”
Wm J Beck III: I was right instantly up in his face: “Well, what the motherfuck do you think it’s ever going to *take*?”

Self-immolation

This was by no means the first time we’d heard Beck speak of thinking along these lines. He’s spoken of such matters in chat before, he’s even blogged about it recently. Upon witnessing the chat cited above I blogged an entry contrasting Thoreau’s determination to live in the world “be it good or bad” with Beck’s perspective. Beck soon contacted me and we had another chat. Then he wrote a post saying that Lynette and I seemed to be exhibiting “a good deal of the emotive force of hysterics” and that “Their estimation of my personal devotion to an ideal of freedom rises almost to the level of resentment because I am so serious about it.”

I had already decided to discuss all of this publicly but those comments will help make clear why. I’m doing so because I think that in public it will be more difficult for Beck to sustain the idea that we are resentful of his devotion to freedom or that we are in hysterics. Sometimes an audience can provide a reality check. Since he cares what people think about him I think he’ll find it more difficult to dismiss what we have to say in public than in private.

Beck says he cannot pay taxes. I say the fact that he does proves that he can:

jtk3isme: you pay taxes billy, so it seems to me you can
Wm J Beck III: What did you say?
jtk3isme: i said you pay taxes
Wm J Beck III: I mean: is that really what you intended to say?
jtk3isme: yes
Wm J Beck III: What are you talking about?
jtk3isme: you pay sales tax and other taxes
Wm J Beck III: John… have you *never* paid attention?
jtk3isme: sure I have
Wm J Beck III: I wouldn’t pay *those*, either, if I could find a way to stop it, and this fact has a serious implication.
jtk3isme: you do pay them, which means you *can*
Wm J Beck III: I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I will set up a fucking robot to let you know every Saturday that I haven’t burned myself on the Capitol steps. Will you shut your fucking impertinent mouth then?
jtk3isme: not a bit of it
Wm J Beck III: No, sir: I can’t. They’re different things.
jtk3isme: one theft is in princple different from another?
Wm J Beck III: No, they are different in practice. However, let me put it to you this way: by your way of thinking, I just die tomorrow. Will *that* shut you up?
jtk3isme: No, it will shut you up.
Wm J Beck III: You’re implying a problem of integrity, and I know the solution. Is that what you’re looking for?
Wm J Beck III: That should be at *least* as attractive to everyone involved.
Wm J Beck III: Certainly, the punk Swann might be satisfied.
jtk3isme: I’m not implying any lack of integrity for paying your taxes
Wm J Beck III: Look, John: don’t try to bullshit me.
jtk3isme: I say it’s fine
Wm J Beck III: It’s *not*.
jtk3isme: no really it is okay to live in the world, be it good or evil
jtk3isme: they commit a crime but you do not by paying

We’ve had the same discussion a number of times. Every time we do Beck chooses to construe it as an implicit attack on his integrity, as if I were saying he ought not be paying sales tax and other taxes. On the contrary, I’m saying that it’s fine for him to pay sales tax and it would be fine for him to pay income tax. I’m saying his behavior demonstrates that he judges that paying sales tax is better for him than not paying it - else he wouldn’t pay. His behavior demonstrates that he judges he should pay sales tax (which of course is not to say he should have to pay it, he shouldn’t) to get on with pursuing other values.

And he could pay income tax to get on with pursuing his other values.

Paying taxes is no moral crime and it need not be a vice.

Special report from the Seattle Pravda:

In the state of Washington, you can eat as much roasted duck as you please.

You can shoot the occasional duck, provided you follow certain rules.

But you can’t possess a wild duck — a fact that Diane Erdmann didn’t fully grasp until two state Fish and Wildlife officers showed up at her Auburn workplace Friday demanding her pet duck Gooey.

Remember, if we allow women to adopt baby ducks, then the terrorists will have won.