Blog powered by Typepad

« The problem, not the solution | Main | Mea culpa, mea maximima culpa and all that sort of thing! »

Wednesday, 05 August 2020



Libertarianism is an act of love only to those who can afford to always be on top and those who like it rough.

Try Funded Libertarianism then, Bob.

What was it we worked out? Can't remember exactly, £12k or £14k per annum for the Big 8 "things without which harm will come to you": Food, clothing, shelter, health, education, energy, information and transport, wasn't it?

35 hour week probably all that's needed. No state. All bought in the market. Job done. It's only the rotten pol gene in the pool that stops it happening. If that mutation had never happened we'd be doing it already.

I wonder when the pol gene mutation landed in humanity's gene pool? Dogs pack, ants anthillate (You what? ... Ed), bees hive (Whatever ... Ed). I guess it was in all us critters since before we crawled out of the water and into the Hobbesian "state of nature".

Except domesticated cats. They don't give a fk, do they?! You wouldn't catch them packing, anthillating, or beehiving. These pol-gene dodgers sit in cosy living room windows staring out at you like you're a fking idiot as you stagger off to the salt-mines for a day under the thumb of some power-crazed nutjob. "Oh where shall I sit today in between meals being served me and regular strokes and massages: Is it the sofa, the comfy chair or the still warm bed my douchebag so called 'master' just vacated for a day long session with the power-crazed nutjob?". It could have been like that for us too.

"As difficult as herding cats". Why couldn't we have been like that?



Most of us over here are like that. There's nothing that motivates people more, either left or right, than hatred of government. Different people just hate different aspects; taxes, drug laws, gun control, police tactics, etc., etc. I doubt Britain is much different. There are those who hate everything about government and believe it shouldn't exist, but they're a fringe who have learned absolutely nothing from history.

What do you think of a "free market" creature like Mark Zuckerberg? He's made $85 billion selling information he's stolen from unwitting Facebook users and by allowing various interests to spread political propaganda and conspiracy theories and act as a medium for hate groups. Does he fit your idea of a "maker" and irreplaceable asset to society?

If you mean a BMI somewhere in the range of £13k ($17k) per person annually and adjusted for inflation, we might still agree, though that's over optimistically simple. In practice I don't see how it could be administered by anything other than a democratic institution though, since any unregulated private enterprise would cheat even worse than a government that, at least in theory, has to face informed voters.

Two things ref Zuckerberg ...

1. So long as he doesn't incite violence, or aid and abet incitement to violence, he's ok on this front.

Most people are able to filter propaganda and conspiracy theories, and as the internet matures they mature and advance also in their techniques for so doing. Fact checkers abound, counter opinions abound, and people respond in the conversation threads to debunk fake news and poor ideas. Once again, new markets solve their own problems if left alone.

Discourse and debate true-out in the end because most people seek truth. The internet is a leveller that rakes the muck thin across the population so everyone can seek truth more productively. That's why authoritarians don't like the internet of course: because they want to rake the muck into their corner only and have you only wallow in it there.

A simple "All men are fallible, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is fallible" argument destroys the authoritarian's argument for censorship: If humanity can't read the internet right then why would authoritarians who are also human read it any better?

2. Whether Zuckerberg is a monopoly or not is debatable. But it doesn't matter, so long as anti-trust action is harmless.

As he himself said when asked if he was a monopoly: "It sure doesn't feel like it from where I'm sitting". No doubt, he believes, his busy days are spent battling competitors.

But then we might answer: "It sure does feel like it from where we're sitting". There are choices, but are there enough?

Or is it full-on fake competition, a fraud of the anti-trust laws?

Like the banks, who purport to compete by offering "new customers only" deals while knowing full well that all the other banks are doing the same. So for every 1,000 customers who leave them, 1,000 will join them from the other banks. And meanwhile nothing changes: no new products or services are innovated. A fake market, an anti-trust fraud.

And so the discourse and debate goes on.

The thing that's on our side is that properly implemented anti-trust remedial action is harmless to all except the powerful.

If you take Z's company and split it into 100 copies and float them off you haven't expropriated from the investors: "If you take a ten dollar bill from my wallet and replace it with ten one dollar coins in my purse, you haven't robbed me: you've merely given me change."

The only person short changed is the executive who loses his anti-free market power, but who cares about that?

And if you get it wrong and accidentally split a company that had no monopoly or cartel power, what then?

Well, no worries also. Once again the shareholders have merely been given change. And the executive: if they had no monopoly or cartel power anyway, what have they lost? Nothing.



Too late. Facebook has been used to incite violence all over the world. Just search "facebook violence".

Most people are able to filter propaganda and conspiracy theories

All people can be manipulated by propaganda, though some are more gullible than others. If that weren't true companies wouldn't spend billions on advertising and politicians wouldn't bother to lie or make up "story lines".

That's why authoritarians don't like the internet

Joe Goebbels and Roger Ailes and Twitter, just to name a few, would disagree. Facebook took down a comment Trump made about children being immune to covid, but it's way too little and late.


If not government, what entity is going to enforce anti-trust? I"m beginning to suspect you're not really a Libertarian.

Btw, FoD claims he's not writing only because he's bored. Is that true? In any case I wish him the best.

Busy with some stuff Loz for a couple days, dog to the vet today and garden tomorrow but come Saturday I'll email the White House and have 'em lean on whichever agency its been holding up your green card.

Incidentally Bob, careful using that 'FoD' nomenclature there is, by my count, at least two former mil aviation types hangs around here and for us 'fod' is foreign object debris.

Can't have that stuff potentially clogging our fans afore we're properly tanked up with our coffee.

Off-topic (Well Loz you should expect some of this too)

Now, to those of you which clicked that first link that's likely sufficient "advisory" to whether you wish to click on the last video on Peter's site - twelve minutes duration. It's for sure damned impressive.


Facebook responds against any content that is an incitement to violence. Sometimes Facebook goes too far in this regard and infringes freedom of speech ...

The legal systems of the free world have fine-grained precedence filtered through many minds greater than yours to establish where the balance lies. One can be sure that the alternative, "Bob's broadcasting statute", would yield nothing more than a licence for Left Axis authoritarian propaganda.

Your "take back control" Pavlovian response is indicative of an authoritarian. As said, if you are indeed human then why would your censorship of the content yield any better result than the humans who read and discount the lies and incitements to violence? Or are you a bit special, Bob, some people more equal than others and all that?

Ref anti-trust: Even the employees of Facebook are starting to be corrupted by the monopoly power of their organisation, demanding censorship in favour of their Left Axis partisanship. Time to split FB into a 1,000 pieces and let them compete again.

This could be done very easily. The source code for FB could be forked 1,000 times and deposited with 1,000 group companies, and then the group companies sold off. This is how Lloyds TSB was split after the financial crisis in Blighty.

(As an aside, this process, btw, was a huge understated leap forward in the progress towards a freer, more open, more competitive economy. Dave Cam and Georgie Osborne followed their Libertarian anti-trust instincts and came up with a winning formula. That's something about Blighty to be proud of for a change. Shame it's all been blown away by the blue socialists who've taken over, and who can't wait to centralise, nationalise and instigate licence and monopoly wherever they can.)

Each independent company could share its post and comment thread data (i.e. the content) with the others via web service API's, or not, as the case may be. The ones who share and consume posts and comments with the others would become more popular because of the broader participation and content. The narrow minded ones who refused to share and consume content from the others would become niche. That doesn't mean they wouldn't survive, who knows what model might succeed or not? Unless you're God you can't know which way a market would go.

Each one could choose its censorship principles and then filter the content for its customers accordingly. The people would then be free to review the filtering principles and choose which Facebook out of the FB-0001 ... FB-1000 range of choices they wish to engage with in accessing the pool of content.

Think of it like allowing multiple franchises to compete over the railway lines, or multiple coach and bus companies competing over the road network. Each can choose which lines and roads it wishes to offer, and the consumers can choose which coach / bus or rail operator they wish to use.

It's a three layer neural network, to give it its exact description.

Not all markets are three layers: Follow the manufactured components of a automobile back to their sources to see a deep layer neural network in action.

Anti-trust is one of the few examples of the state's justifiable existence in Libertarianism, as well you know, y'old strawman-argument merchant!

It's also benign when it comes to harm. As said, the state is not expropriating the investor: One $1000 share in FB taken equals 1,000 x $1 shares in FB-0001 - FB-1000 given. It's giving change, not theft. And the state is not expropriating from the executives and employees because they've still all got jobs. All they'll lose is monopoly power - but that was the aim of the exercise! And if they didn't have any monopoly power then they've lost nothing.



Pointing to the Italians as a font of wisdom is a somewhat dicey proposition. A better example of free speech absolutism is our ACLU:

"Over the years, the ACLU has represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That’s because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they’re going to be preserved for everyone."

And you're confusing two different issues. I agree that everyone's free speech should be defended within the established limits. Expressing a belief system is one thing, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is another. You might also look into our laws regarding "fighting words":

So, as with all other rights, there are limits. In general I agree the wisdom of crowds can eventually reach correct conclusions. That's the basis for democracy. All the extreme ideas you're trying to attribute to me are a pile of bullshit.

Purposefully manipulative propaganda originating from a hostile foreign power or speech meant to incite violence don't meet the definition of free speech under our laws. Zuckerberg knows it, he just doesn't want to monitor all the information on Facebook or be forced to do so by government regulation. It would make a serious dent in his bottom line. His free speech claims are pretentious.

The greater point is that we've run the experiment many times in the past and know that the artificial shaping of public opinion by those hostile to freedom is destructive. Allowing them to run amuck is not an extension of freedom, as you seem to believe.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment


Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment



Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.


Post a comment

Your Information
