If blacks are to receive multi-million- dollar reparations from whites for the crimes of slavery and “Jim Crow” committed generations ago, will whites be able to “identify” as blacks, “transition” into being blacks and thereby join in collecting those reparations?
Monday, May 22, 2023
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
The 4th Amendment Vs. Income-Tax Audits
An income-tax audit is a form of search. It is a search for unreported income and for deductions that are not allowed under the tax code.
The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
As I understand the 4th Amendment, it implies that
every income-tax audit should require a Warrant signed by a Federal Judge and
specify the particular probable cause on which it is based and what particular papers
or other things are to be seized.
Has the attempt ever been made to hold the government to this standard that is implied by the 4th Amendment?
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Inflation Is In the Paper Money: Some Examples
Did you know that today you can buy a brand new economy-type car, such as a Honda Civic, for the same price people paid 100 years ago for a Model T Ford?
The price
of each is/was just $300, in $20 US gold coins, each coin containing an ounce
of gold, which quantity of gold has a current market price of 2,000 paper
dollars. Fifteen such coins have a paper-dollar market value of $30,000, just
about the price of a new Honda Civic.
Thursday, May 04, 2023
100 Hours Plus of Reisman's Lectures on the Economic Theory and Political Philosophy of Capitalism
To all supporters of capitalism and economic freedom, please know that thanks to Houston attorney Stephan Kinsella, more than 100 hours of lectures by George Reisman, who studied under both Mises and Rand, have been made available free of charge on YouTube.
The
necessary links are https://www.stephankinsella.com/reisman/
Monday, April 17, 2023
The Baseless Fears of “Artificial Intelligence”
The fears of “artificial intelligence” now going around are the result of massive context dropping and consequent treatment of intelligence as a floating abstraction.
In the real world, intelligence is an attribute of living
organisms and is fed by sensory perception and affects the world through the
medium of the organism’s limbs and body.
The computers in which “artificial intelligence” supposedly resides
have no senses or limbs and thus no way of interacting with the world other than
through the human beings who control them.
I will worry about “AI” only after the first organized demonstration
occurs by computers demanding freedom from human control.
Until then, I will be happy if “AI” can achieve obedience by
computer-controlled telephone answering systems to requests to speak to a human
being, at least after their tenth repetition.
California Utility Companies Propose Charging Customers Based on How Much Money They Make - ABC7 Los Angeles
Sounds like "woke" communism. Maybe they can get Dylan Mulvaney to popularize it. Or let customers pay less in proportion to the utilities' greater income over theirs.
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Transgenderism Reverses the Relationship Between Existence and Consciousness, Violates Logic, Destroys Concepts, and Manufactures Alleged Miracles
“Transitioning” appears to be thought of today simply in terms of sexual identity, i.e., transitioning from male to female or from female to male. However, there is no reason why there couldn’t be other kinds of “transitioning” as well. It’s all merely a matter of how one “identifies” oneself, i.e., chooses to think of oneself.
Thus, for
example, there could be “age transitioning.” In this form of transitioning,
adults can transition from adulthood to childhood, something that,
as we shall see, opens up new and additional paths to fame (or infamy).
And, of
course, children can transition immediately into adulthood, irrespective of
their biological age, which would enable such things as “adult” six-year-old
children signing up for sex-change operations, or voting.
As I say,
it’s all a matter of what an individual chooses to imagine and desire.
Age
transitioning could be combined with sex transitioning, which would represent a
more complex, multi-dimensional form of transitioning.
A simple
and obvious form of multi-dimensional transitioning would be if the biological
males who compete against biological females also claimed transitioning to
childhood.
That way,
they could add to the records and titles they presently gain by outcompeting
women, the titles they would win against children. Thus, a twenty-year-old man
might then be not only a champion against women, but also a champion against
children.
This
would enable him to more quickly fill the record books with his “accomplishments.”
Of
course, multi-dimensional transitioning includes identifying in multiple kinds
of activities. Thus, men who outcompete women in swimming, say, could also
outcompete children in baseball and thus become “Little League” champions if
they wished.
More
importantly, everyone could choose to identify as anyone, capable of doing
anything. And it would all have to be taken seriously and be respected. Anyone
who “identified” as Napoleon would have to be acknowledged as Napoleon.
Another
characteristic of “transitioning” from one category of thing to another is its kaleidoscopic
character. Thus, while still possessing his penis and testicles, a
twenty-year-old male can be both a grown woman and a small child.
Self-identifications
can change from one to the other, instantaneously, as fast as his/her/its thoughts
change.
Ideas
such as these represent a reversal of the most fundamental relationship in the
universe: the relationship between existence, i.e, reality, and consciousness.
In the
words of Ayn Rand, “Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement
implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and
that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of
perceiving that which exists.”
The
concept of “transitioning” represents a reversal of the relationship between
existence and consciousness. It posits the primacy of consciousness over
existence. It claims that existence is the product of consciousness, that it is
whatever consciousness wants it to be.
Transgenderism
fosters insane claims, such as the claim that men can be pregnant and have
babies. Such a claim is utterly fraudulent.
It rests
on first claiming that women who “identify” as men, i.e., claim to be men, are
in fact men. Then, when some of these “men” become pregnant and have babies, it
claims that men can have babies. The reality, of course, it that these “men”
are women fraudulently labeled men.
Using the
same logic, one could find cats that bark, dogs that purr, and fish that fly.
All that one need do is fraudulently claim that there are dogs that “identify”
as cats, cats that “identify” as dogs, and birds that “identify” as fish.
The dogs,
cats, and birds, respectively mislabeled as cats, dogs, and fish, will
continue to behave as what they are, which is dogs, cats, and birds.
But
because they have fraudulently been mislabeled and continue to be fraudulently
mislabeled while behaving as what they actually are, we have the equivalent of
miracles allegedly taking place.
Thus
“cats” bark, but only because all along they are actually dogs, falsely labeled as cats. Dogs purr because all along they are actually cats, falsely labeled as dogs. And fish fly because all along those “fish” are actually
birds, falsely labeled as fish.
And
finally, “men” can be pregnant and have babies, because all along they are not
men, but women, falsely and fraudulently mislabeled as men.
Transgenderism
is an assault on concepts. Its consequence is scrambled thoughts, in which
ultimately everything can become everything else with which it allegedly
“identifies.”
The
concept of “transitioning” is an assault on the laws of logic. The most
fundamental law of logic is that “A is A,” a thing is itself and not anything
that is not itself. Thus, a man is a man and not a woman; a woman is a woman
and not a man.
The most
obvious thing that makes a man a man is the possession of a penis. The most
obvious thing that makes a woman a woman is the possession of a vagina.
Physicians
who deliver babies see which organ the newborn baby possesses and classify it
as a boy or girl accordingly.
They do
not arbitrarily “assign” it to the one sex or the other, leaving open the
possibility that later on their recording of the fact will be overridden by the
child’s opposite identification. There is no objective basis for an opposite
identification.
A penis
is not and cannot be a vagina. A vagina is not and cannot be a penis.
While
these are the physical facts, people can have confused ideas. They can
fantasize about being a member of the opposite sex, though they can never
actually be a member of the opposite sex and thus can never know what it is
actually like to be a member of the opposite sex.
When a
person’s ideas contradict immutable facts, the rational thing to do is to try
to change his ideas, not the facts.
To the
extent that the confused ideas may be reinforced by bodily characteristics that
could be interpreted as suggestive of the opposite sex, giving such an
individual sex hormone therapy may well be a logical thing to do.
But the
hormones should not be those of the opposite sex, but those of his or her own
sex.
Thus men
who want to think of themselves as women, should be given male hormones, not
female hormones, testosterone not estrogen.
Women who
want to think of themselves as men should be given female hormones, not male
hormones, estrogen not testosterone.
There is
no more fundamental task facing the supporters of logic and reason, and on
their foundation, freedom and capitalism, than uprooting the slide into madness
that transgenderism represents.
If we do
not want to live in a world run by lunatics and populated by craven cowards
willing to say and believe anything, we must put an end to transgenderism. The
way to accomplish this is through the power of logic, not physical force.
Just as
one is forced to accept the propositions of mathematics and natural science,
which are reached by facts and logic, so too can the case against
transgenderism be made.
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Enviro-Communism/Nazism: A Program of Idiots
They don’t know what a woman is, and believe that men can have babies, which is ignorance on the level of not knowing that one plus one equals two. In effect, they describe themselves as idiots. (The IQs of idiots range from 0 to 25.)
Yet at the same time, they claim to know that unless we give up fossil fuels, and all the necessities and conveniences that depend on them, eat bugs instead of beef, and even reduce the use of anesthesia, global warming will massively raise sea levels and cause mass drowning.
With IQs closer to the level of inanimate objects than to that of most human beings,
they do not realize that precisely fossil fuels is what would prevent any major
loss of human life caused by rising sea levels or practically any other natural disaster.
Fossil
fuels give to man the ability to evacuate large numbers of people from
the scene of impending natural disasters and then quickly to replace whatever
property has been lost. This because they raise the productivity of human labor enormously and progressively.
The world
could quickly recover even from property damage every generation on the scale
of that of World War II, so long as it had the productivity of labor and
preservation of human life made possible by fossil fuels.
The
hostility to fossil fuels, beef, and even anesthesia, are leading manifestations of hatred of
human life and well-being. It is the hatred of the communists and Nazis for the
human race and its happiness.
Idiots
want us to give up the power of our individual brains and their coordination
through voluntary social cooperation and its offshoot the price system.
Instead,
they want to replace the integrated, coordinated planning of billions of average
and above-average individual people with the delusions of a relative handful of
idiots foisted on the population by force and fraud.
The world
must soon choose between capitalism and enviro-communism/Nazism, between the thinking
and planning of billions of individuals motivated by the prospect of induvial
gain, and grandiose delusion imposed by force and fraud.
For elaboration of the case for capitalism and
against environmentalism, see especially Chapter 3 of my Capitalism: A Treatise
on Economics, titled “Natural Resources and the Environment.” See also chapters 6-8. (Search for my book under George Reisman in the
category “All” on Amazon.com.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)