Gulag Archipelago (abridged audio on audible is better organized & far easier to follow than unabriged)
If you've never read any of Ayn Rand's stuff then Anthem is a good place to start.
Meltdown by Tom Woods
& Applied Economics by Thomas Sowell were both pretty significant books early in my economic journey.
Don't hate me for posting this. Has Brit gone off the deep end ~ looks pregnant too. https://video.nostr.build/6b1dbd08df0cb3ba2c08f7ff9b2576a0735e51738a41f9494f81663810a85fd0.mp4
#nostr #grownostr #plebchain
Definitely looks a bit unhinged. But I'd guess that's normal bloating & SAD inflamation despite otherwise being in decent physical shape.
💯 That question is basically what makes a commitment to libertarian principles the only reasonable answer. The fact that we can always be wrong is why everyone should be free to choose for themselves in every way possible. Truth is emergent based on the results of individual choices.
I suspect you may be correct in many cases, but believing in their "intellectual superiority" is sorta a prerequisite for seeing others as livestock.
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do"
But also protect yourself from them the best you can. Many people would rather eat you than face their own demons.
The process of defeating govt is the same as the process of building systems that better protect people from all forms of criminality.
Forced funding has no mechanism for self correction. People in govt operate via an inverted morality where they can only "advance their careers" by increasing the amount they steal from everyone else.
If we can eliminate forced funding, then the ability for anyone to withhold financial support for any organization allows every individual (& collectively, the market) to place checks on what any organization can do to them at their own expense.
You don't want people to be free to build anything better?
An increasing amount of resources are being confiscated via the legacy system, and they are being allocated in ways that increase the cost of living & make life worse for most people.
How is anything supposed to improve unless we can reduce the amount being confiscated by force & allow people to instead allocate their own resources to things that serve them?
It doesn't really matter tho, because I don't think people like you can stop us 😘
People who want to force you to fund their ideas & causes, only want to do so because they intend to do things with your money that you wouldn't want done.
Taxation is just the real world manifestation of the greed of people who consider themselves intellectuals.
How well do you think the poor are served by the current "justice" system? Or the current monetary system? The govt shut down small businesses, locked people in their homes, & printed 6 trillion dollars which basically wiped out the economic influence of 70% of the working class for the year.
I think a world with a polycentric legal system where billionaires have to actually earn their money & they don't have a monopoly central authority to control will be far better for the poor.
The most obvious problems are the ones we already have. I just want people to have the freedom to build something better without having to fund pedo politicians & their endless wars. Defense of forced funding is just support for more of the insanity we already have.
If I have a bunch of healthy body parts needed by 10 other people, and their "collective will" is to sacrifice me to save themselves, does that make it morally okay?
You seem to just be trying to rhetorically evade & deny the underlying principles without addressing them directly.
What is economic dominance? Can I make you sell me anything? If we have a system to enforce property rights then I can only offer you things in trade.
What control does a billionaire have over me without a govt to influence to force me to buy their products or devalue my savings to bail them out? It's the govt & forced funding that is the primary source of all corruption & evil where "economic dominance" is concerned.
What portion of what someone else earns or trades to acquire should you or anyone elss get a say over?
Greed is the desire for things unearned with no regard for those who bear the cost of having those desires satisfied.
I think anyone who wants to initiate threats & coercion to acquire or reallocate resources (no matter how greatly they out number their victims) are morally in the wrong. Rather than calling me "smug," maybe explain how do you go about justifying your initiation of violence?
If the greater good is all that matters, then any healthy individual like you or me could justifiably be sacrificed to provide the body parts needed to save multiple others.
The individual is the smallest minority, the prime unit, if we don't protect individual rights, then we all become slaves to imaginary abstractions. Groups & collectives aren't real, they don't speak, they don't have desires, they are just our mental shortcuts for lots of individuals.
What is authoritarianism?
I think it's effort to control people & resources that don't belong to you.
Technologies which reduce third party control over individuals & their resources are inherently anti-authoritarian.
I mean, if you support funding things by force, then that makes YOU the authoritarian.
The idea that we are moving to a world where people ultimately have more control over their own resources seems fairly self evident given Bitcoin, Nostr, Keet, 3d printing, & open source AI tools. The system that is eroding property rights is doing so at an accelerated pace, such that it is clearly destroying itself (likely driving people to our solutions). And destruction of property rights leading to economic collapse isn't exactly a new pattern.
How are you going to force me to contribute to some govt program I don't support if I can secure my own money, transact without permission, & privately engage in trade bith in person & on networks like Nostr & Keet?
Property rights enforced by technological advances allow for crowd funding & voluntary contributions to anything that people want.
What is likely to become more difficult is centralized efforts to fund causes & special interests via theft & against people's wishes.
Bitcoin Twitter now has the same sort of r/bitcoin vibes that sparked the migration to Twitter in the first place.
By my estimation, people who think truth is a function of consensus rather than an objective & discoverable thing are historically the most dangerous. But I guess collectivists & post modern "consensus" types also tend to fall into the "uninspired by reality" category too.
