I partly agree with this and partly disagree with it, being more sympathetic to PC than Jeremy is; and I don’t think putting pressure on bigots is automatically “oppressive” in the negative sense, let alone “totalitarian.” (By analogy, defensive violence is not on the same moral level as aggressive violence.) But this is still one of the more thoughtful discussions of the issue I’ve seen.

My sincere apologies for the title of this post.

The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News:

To the Editor:

In his letter on June 19, Edzard van Santen quotes the saying that one person’s right to swing his fist ends where another person’s nose begins.

Well and good; but what puzzles me is that he cites this saying as though it’s meant to be a critique of libertarianism. On the contrary, that saying encapsulates the essence of libertarianism.

In the 19th century, Herbert Spencer stated the same principle less metaphorically: Each has freedom to do all that he wills provided that he infringes not the equal freedom of any other. And in the 20th century, Murray Rothbard explained it more fully: “No one may threaten or commit violence (‘aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.”

Van Santen also quotes the saying that no one is an island, again as though this conflicted with libertarianism. But libertarianism is the only political philosophy that actually takes seriously the idea that no one is an island.

Other ideologies assume, explicitly or implicitly, that human beings are inherently atomistic, with naturally conflictual interests, and so that society needs to have order imposed on it by top-down authority. Libertarians, by contrast, have traditionally rejected this atomistic vision of society, emphasizing that a human being is, in Emerson’s words, “all made of hooks and eyes, and links himself naturally to his brothers.”

It’s precisely because we recognize that no one is an island – that social order arises spontaneously and organically through voluntary, nonhierarchical relations among equals – that we are libertarians in the first place.

Roderick T. Long

I’m not sure why they a) waited nearly two weeks to publish it, after van Santen had already gone a round with Leland Yeager; b) removed my quotation marks on the Spencer quote, while keeping them on the Rothbard and Emerson quotes; or c) published my letter under the title “We were libertarians in the first place,” thus tearing my closing phrase out of the context that gave it sense. But hey, it’s the OA News.

My cabin interior redesign is now finished!!

Here is the finished and now neatly organized corner of my cabin that is the "office". So much better than the unused and oh so messy loft! Everything is now neatly organized on the selves which are now mostly covered by curtains (Thanks Kerry!!) for a tidy appearance.

Not only is the cabin a much more pleasant place to be but keeping it clean is now so much easier. It may just be a change in attitude on my part but yeah, I'm enjoying being organized. It's also nice having a "work space" which is something I've not had for the past few months because I replaced my previous table/desk with a futon.

The paint was a great decision. As much as I enjoyed the plain wood it needed to be protected. The paint has done wonders to brighten the place up and add to the sense of organization and tidiness. Good call!

  We all know that capitalism is all about deals behind closed doors, maximising profit, increasing market share and reducing costs. So we all know that deals will be done to get rid of the opposition, to get the edge on the competition. That's capitalism, underhand deals, back-handers and anything else that might up your share value, and increase that sacred profit margin. Barclay's latest little scam is just business as usual, normal practice, how it's done, another wee trick for the book. What it is not, is something out of the ordinary for capitalism. It is a system that can't be reformed or modified to benefit all in our society, it is a gambling casino rigged for the rich.The following is a short extract taken from  A World To Win, which puts it very eloquently:

 

Rigging markets par for the course

The Thinking Housewife (?) posted an entry called Procreation in Liberaldom. It is basically a list of four arguments as to why contraception, and by extension the refusal to procreate, is “a form of subjugation.”

This is a bizarre statement since, as I’ve pointed out before, procreation is pretty much a pure form of subjugation, because it consists solely of using other persons (the new lives) as means to an end. So to call the refusal to procreation “a form of subjugation” is a projection meant for breeders to feel better about what they’ve done. We’re the tyrants, you see, not them…

Anyway, this entry provides us with an answer to the following question: what is it that female serfs (housewives with children) are being indoctrinated to believe is the purpose of procreation? Laura Wood, the Thinking Housewife (?), gives us four points.

One, it deprives life to those who could be cared for and survive. The unborn are potential inhabitants of this world. In effect, this potential is a form of existence in a community that extends through time.

I have to admit I don’t really understand the relevance of this point at all. Wood provides no argument as to why existence is a good thing, and we already know thanks to Benatar’s asymmetry that non-existence is inherently a better state than existence. Furthermore, how does this potential undo the very concrete harm of procreation to the woman?

Non-existence is completely involuntary for those who are deemed unfit to exist because they do not fit into the modern selective breeding scheme.

How can that which does not exist be subject to anything? We can make sense of such arguments for existing human lives because we suffer from being coerced. We rightly abhor the fact that people are exterminated for being thought unfit to exist, and this is a source of unthinkable suffering. But that which does not exist cannot suffer or be deprived from anything, including life. So what does it matter if non-existence is “involuntary”? One might as well bemoan that which does not exist cannot eat ice cream.

Two, it deprives succeeding generations of human capital. Even the mentally unfit or unexceptional provide labor.

The language of capital is the language of exploitation, of objectification. “Human capital” is a human being reduced to a number, to a production apparatus, a means to an end, which one must bend to the demands of the (non-human, non-humanist) profit motive. It seems that to Wood, the worth of a human being to future generations is reduced to the fact that ey can produce labor to the capitalist machine. I may be reading too much into this, but whether I am right or not, her argument is still callous and wrong.

Now, to address the argument directly: no one is personally obligated to provide labor for society. Furthermore, no one’s livelihood depends on there being, say, ten billion people instead of seven billion people, so the fact that some people use contraception does not deprive any future generation of anything.

Three, it deprives those who do not fully understand what parenthood is the opportunity to approach the possibility of procreation without the negative prejudices created by contraception and sexual freedom… The sexual revolution has resulted in a widely reported increase in involuntary childlessness. A significant minority of women use contraception for many years and then when they wish to have children discover they are infertile. This is one of the wages of acceptance of artificial contraception and the economic autonomy of women.

Overall argues that the highest purpose of parenthood is to create “supportive, life-enhancing and close relationships.” But if this is true, then don’t couples have an ethical obligation to provide these relationships to those who are infertile? She contends that we do not owe the unborn existence. But she also apparently believes we don’t owe the living kindness and compassion. Viewed even from within Overall’s narrow and sterile ethical framework, it would be wrong for women not to suffer the minor inconvenience of pregnancy to help potential adoptive parents.

I can’t really think of an argument for procreation that is more hateful of women. Does Wood seriously believe that women should be forced to risk their health to carry children that would go to adoptive parents?

There are so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to start. First, there are plenty of children available for adoption in the world, so no need to create more. Second, how does Wood derive this “ethical obligation”? It would only make sense to say that we have an ethical obligation to provide children if people had a right to children, but this is not the case (if only because it is a contradiction in terms to have a right which, in itself, harms other people). So this is all just coming out of left field.

Third, it is rather strange to state that the purpose of parenthood is to bring about “supportive, life-enhancing and close relationships.” You’d think that if that was the case, it would take a rather different form than the current one which is based on claims of ownership. But this is a relatively minor point compared to the extremely bizarre claim that some women have a duty to produce children for other women’s sake.

Finally, and most importantly, the mass acceptance of artificial contraception deprives our successors of the chance to live in a world in which human life is viewed as intrinsically beautiful, mysterious and good – no matter what circumstances or hardships are involved. This is in effect a deprivation of vitality, a depletion of hope and confidence. The effects must be profound and extend over the course of many generations.

Ah yes, because I’m sure that the world before contraception- a world where a third of women or more died in childbirth and children themselves dropped like flies- led to people viewing life as “beautiful, mysterious and good.” Just look at the, er, slight obsession with death in Victorian times.

I can only interpret this “argument” as a bit of overdramatic poetic license. I don’t think Wood has any empirical evidence or logical deduction whatsoever backing up the proposition that the absence of contraception leads to people viewing life as “beautiful, mysterious and good.”

Wood’s arguments seem to be, for the most part, irrelevant. She seems to be coming from an entirely alien, irrational worldview. Her conclusions are horrifying and bizarre. Pretty standard Christian fundamentalism, I guess.

Just finished the third installment of the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness and it was good. Even though I’m not particularly impressed in the faux 16 bit graphics, the mechanics were solid and the game was enjoying to play. With that experience in mind, I tried playing Cthulhu saves the world, which comes from the same developers and I got disappointed. The game is missing all the improvements that made the RSPoD game enjoyable and just turned into an annoying grind. I tried playing in hard to have a challenge (because in RSPoD normal was too easy for me) and quickly found out that hard in this game doesn’t mean more challenging encounters, it merely means one needs to grind more to proceed. I just spent 1 hour sitting in one spot in the map and doing random encounters until I realized that the game is just not interesting enough to worth doing that. The battle is not even as interesting as RSPoD. Half the time I didn’t know why I lost, and that, combined with the fact that you can actually lose the game and thus from minutes up to hours of play as well (if you forgot to save and didn’t have “continues”.)  Combine that with the fact that mana points carry over from one battle to the next and first town was so designed that I needed to travel one minute to refill my MP, and it was just an exercise in frustration.

Perhaps the game would be not so annoying had I not played in hard, but if your only difference between the modes is how much grind you need to do, then that’s bad design right there. I hope they reuse the engine of RSPoD to more games because the ones they had before just don’t grab me in the slightest. Not in gameplay, nor graphics not even story.

Meh.

Insightful? Funny? Informative? Convincing? Helpful?