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  1. Today
  2. Saddam Hussein has bested Vladimir Putin in Dictator Elections VP came out of the election in Russia just ended with only 87%. SH in 2002 got 100% with all 11,445,638 registered voters turning out. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We have been learning a great deal from the Netflix documentary Turning Point – The Bomb and the Cold War, even in the parts we had lived through.
  3. Yaron Brook took this up on his show, expanding on Necrovore's point that real estate agents are a cartel, held in place by licensing laws. Market failure had nothing to do with it. He predicts that commissions will go way down in the short run, because there are too many agents, then go up to 4% or 5%.
  4. Yesterday
  5. David's remark got me thinking that the way we found the house we wanted to buy was probably pretty good from the competition factor. We were buying in 2009 which was good for buyers, as housing transactions had fallen (also, since we were first-time buyers, we were able to get a federal tax advantage at that time). We had been renters in Chicago throughout adult life. By retirement time, we had saved enough money to by a house, provided we moved to a less expensive part of the country. Using sites like Zillow, we had spotted about 30 places in the mid-South we wanted to explore. We had no agent. We rented a car and drove down to look at those houses only from the outside. All but 7 could be eliminated by the surroundings of the house. I wrote down the agents with whom the 7 homes were listed at the property, and after we returned to Chicago, I called each of them and made an appointment to see the interior. They knew I was looking at a number of definite houses, and perhaps that was to our advantage. When I came to the house that was calling "home," it turned out that (in Virginia) that agent could be also our agent, so that is what we did, and it was very convenient for us. I'm pleased to hear his commission may well have been 6% from us—I never knew—and really that seems like a bargain for us.
  6. It is analogous to the fees imposed on vendors who accept credit cards. Credit card companies charge vendors some amount for their service, which the market has set at about 3% but some companies charge more (hence “we don’t accept Discover or American Express”). In this case, the business can either eat the cost, or refuse to accept credit cards, or charge mor for using a credit card (if legal, otherwise they offer a discount for cash). NAR has the power to enforce terms on members using their services, and 3% per party is fairly standard (was so when we bought our first house in 1987). An agent has the greatest incentive to sell a house that they are the seller’s agent, so as a buyer you can assume that you will probably get shown many houses being sold by your agent: but not exclusively. MLS is the useful tool by which agents gain access to many more houses and buyers. Originally, there was little alternative to paying the “standard rate”, when all agents agree to abide by a certain fee standard. The rates have never been fully-enforceable so the NYT is just lying, no surprise. An agent can elect to forego some of their commission, if they want, but Agent A cannot force Agent B to accept a lower commission. I’ve heard of agents accepting a lower commission but it seems to be rare. Of course there was always “for sale by owner”, where there is a chance that you will sell your house for a good price. The interwebs provided some competition, and there are services which aim to match buyers and sellers for a lower commission. The FTC approach is to force multiple listing services to become public utilities, preventing them from not including discount sales in their listing. Outside of real estate, 3% is a ludicrously low sales commission given the agent's labor, so whiners who object to paying for the service provided by a real estate agent are free to arrange cheaper alternatives. Doing without an agent is an obvious albeit hard-to-implement choice. Shopping for a discount listing service is another choice, depending of course on the nature of the market you are in (i.e. do you need a shark, to make sure that you make the winning bid?). But real estate commissions are not "so high". Government excise taxes on the other hand...
  7. I do seem to recall (from some older articles) that many jurisdictions had laws requiring that all real estate agents had to be Realtors, so much so that people began to forget that Realtor was trademarked and not a generic term like "lawyer." I do not know if such laws are even still on the books, but even if they were or are repealed, it is still likely that the National Association of Realtors would have a lasting advantage from their existence. If the market is open to competitors then prices should stabilize even if no competitors appear (the mere threat of competition is often enough to stabilize prices). This kind of arrangement is similar to laws requiring that cars be bought through a dealership, which Tesla has gotten in trouble with, or laws that grant city or county monopolies for cable television. Such things are of course products of the "mixed economy" and are violations of the separation of state and economics (a principle not recognized by law at present).
  8. Doug, I had imagined our agent would be getting about 10% (we came to own real estate only once, late in life), so I was surprised that people consider 6% or so high. I've seen some dramatic data given for the thesis that if one is a seller, one will get about 1.5 times for your home using an agent than doing a "for sale by owner." Whether one is a seller or buyer, I think most of us would not want to do it ourself if the other party had an agent.
  9. It looks like a 6% rate was last seen in 1992 and hasn't gone below or even to 5% since. Maybe 'high' is a clickbaiting term ? https://www.statista.com/statistics/777612/average-commission-rate-realtors-usa/
  10. The current online New York Times has an article claiming that real estate commissions in the USA were at the high rate of 6% because the National Association of Realtors had the power to enforce it and that this constituted a failure of the free market that required antitrust action to correct it. Can anyone provide a good source explaining the real reason commissions were so high?
  11. Ed Driscoll, one of the bloggers at Instapundit, is fond enough of pointing out times when the left is at cross-purposes that he frequently starts off such posts with "Annals of Leftist Autophagy." There are now dozens of these, and it is conventional wisdom on the right that the left is a mess. The American right, having fallen under Donald Trump's sway, has -- from praising Trump as an Alinskyite and blaming "society" for bad behavior, all the way to embracing central planning -- increasingly been aping the left. And, like progressives were doing for a time to centrist Democrats, MAGA Republicans have been primarying traditional Republicans. This last has reached the point that even some MAGA Republicans can see a problem: The Speaker of the House is asking members of his party to stop primarying each other:The more they purge or alienate normal people, the more trouble the GOP is going to have winning elections. (Image by odder, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)"I've asked them all to cool it," Johnson told CNN at the House GOP retreat in West Virginia last week. "I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it's not productive. And it causes division for obvious reasons, and we should not be engaging in that." "So I'm telling everyone who's doing that to knock it off," Johnson added. "And both sides, they'll say, 'Well, we didn't start it, they started it.'" This is rich, coming as it does from someone selected for his blind loyalty to Trump, because the behavior is motivated by blind loyalty to Trump:"I would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats," [Matt] Gaetz, who led the charge to oust McCarthy, told CNN. "But if Republicans are going to dress up like Democrats in drag, I'm going to go after them too. Because at the end of the day, we're not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress. We're judged on whether or not we save the country." Gaetz is one of the most slavishly loyal Trumpists there is, and remember that, in the minds of his faction of the Republican Trump Organization Party, if you aren't one of them, you're a RINO or worse -- a Democrat in drag. Thanks, Matt. An election is supposed to be how the people select the best among a variety of choices, and if Republicans weren't numbskulls, they would (a) define a positive agenda to run on besides whatever Donald Trump wants at the moment, and (b) welcome competitive races, even if it means someone who doesn't completely toe the party line gets elected. But appreciating that point would mean understanding that American political parties are actually coalitions, and that alienating people who might agree with part of what you want to accomplish might impair your ability to do anything you want to accomplish. One wonders if pointing this out, however indirectly, as Johnson has, will bode ill or well for his future in whatever the Republican Party has become. If the Democrats were not so awful, it would be easier to cheer on the inevitable result of this kind of attitude -- non-MAGA Republicans and independents who want a decent alternative to Democrats getting fed up and staying home, or voting for the Democrats in disgust. Perhaps Americans should send the following message to the GOP: If you're going to call me a Democrat for the sin of not worshipping Donald Trump, I guess I'll play the part. But then again, perhaps that won't be necessary, per the last several election cycles. -- CAVLink to Original
  12. They are many, we are few -- so? They control us through the welfare state. So? We can refute and resist them. We know truly and can speak clearly of this: Self-Defense in a Welfare State You the welfare statist government say you are here to “help” and “serve” us with “welfare” by taxing, licensing, and regulating us. We the individualists are here to repudiate you the welfare statist government and your electors. . . . . . To reject and remove from you the power to violate our rights and so restrict you to your proper role of just protecting individual rights. We do not need or want your false help. We choose to truly help and live for and by own selves. We are self-sufficient, self-respecting, autonomous individuals. We own and support our lives by thinking and working for our own purpose and profit. We defend our rights to our property, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness. We reject your welfare statist tyranny and refute the self-sacrifice and self-immolation of the altruism that spawned you. We recognize and uphold the supremacy of reason and reality, not the faith or force of the rights-violating State. We trade and associate with each other freely, without coercion, for mutual benefit with mutual consent. We don’t violate anyone’s rights and won’t accept any violation of ours. If we help each other in times of misfortune, we do so voluntarily, based on value not force. We value each other as individual free agents, as fellow humane, reasoning beings, living productive and proud lives. We seek each other’s benevolent company and appreciate each other’s unique, singular sovereignty. And we stand together against any tyranny with the full moral, rational certainty of our individual rights. So, we neither want nor need your welfare statism, your taxing and regulating our conversation and commerce. While we may comply when we are forced by law, we will not be martyrs or willing victims. We will resist, protest, and seek restitution where provided by law. You tax, license, and regulate, but you must also grant subsidies, relief, insurance, pensions, exemptions, deductions, and all such “welfare services and entitlements” so as to maintain the pretext for your statist tyranny. Where we could and care to, we will make claims on such “welfare” as a form of restitution, in self-defense, but without either agreeing or supporting your welfare statism. We will not vote for any member of any of your welfare parties of any color. We will vote only for legislators who stand for individual rights, and for the ethics of reason and reality that’s its foundation. These individualist politicians will oppose and seek to repeal all welfare statist laws and reform the constitution to affirm explicitly, definitively, the supremacy of individual rights, and to remove the government’s power to violate them, in anyone’s name, not the State, Society, or God. Meanwhile, we will continue to live and let live, to make the best of what’s possible to us, even in this welfare statist tyranny. There are and have been other worst states of tyranny than here now in the US-Canadian America, where it's still, overall, the freest in the world. But being the freest is not yet being all free. There's still a long way to go, but it will be soon enough. The legacy of Aristotelian Enlightenment is still a strong source of philosophy against any tyranny, especially when fortified by the rational individualist philosophy in our own times formulated by Ayn Rand. That the Ayn Rand Institute teaching her ideas of Objectivism continues to grow, 35 years after her death, and that her books continue to be bestsellers, is a positive cultural barometer of the progress of a rational, romantic civilization. More and more, there are politicians who acknowledge Ayn Rand’s positive influence on them. As we live on in the frontiers of freedom, we will avoid, as best we can, your welfare statist interference and distraction from our pursuit of our noble purpose, which, ultimately, is our own happiness. We will keep strengthening our understanding of the philosophy of reality, reason, rights, and romance – seeking continuous self-realization and self-betterment. There’s always a better way, as we’ll teach our children, a better and benevolent way through self-knowledge, self-sufficiency, and self-defense. Our children of liberty are the mothers and fathers of freedom’s future. With truth, courage, and love, we cheer them on. You, Welfare State, your days are numbered!
  13. Last week
  14. War Powers War Authorization Clinton – Bosnia Nuclear Launch
  15. Thank you for your comparisons between Rand-Peikoff's and the others' rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, the latter of which I knew little about before. I'm just beginning to browse through your prolific work on philosophy llisted on your profile. And I'm looking forward to further postings from you on this topic of necessary truths, and to your explanation of necessity as "a compound of necessity-for of life and of living mind in grasping fact, the realm of necessity-that".
  16. Motivation is a key to human action, to its initiation, sustenance, and completion. Based on one’s values, motivation comes in many forms, such as financial, legal, ethical, promissory, logical, intellectual, and esthetic. At its core, motivation is emotive, i.e., e-motion: that which “-moves out”, that which is the motive power of action. An example of esthetic motivation is the following. Motive Power The motive power of life is the engine of directed motion, the generator and creator of life’s ambition, driving actions forward in life’s continuous sustenance and realization. In music, as in life, there’s a motive power that pulls music outward, a keynote that carries the flow of melody in harmony on a constant beat toward resolution and arrival. In literature, as in music and in life, there is a motive power that draws out the words and names the concepts that inform and inspire thought onward to envision real ideals. The source of motive power, in literature, music, and life, is: integration – it’s choosing to clarify and unify words, tones, and actions with integrity and purpose, all aiming for the climax, crescendo, and ecstasy that await. As three models of motive power, behold: In real life is the person and character of genius and benefactor Ayn Rand (see 100 voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand and The Letters of Ayn Rand, In music and literature, are the following two complementary works: one a motion-picture in sounds, the other, a motion-picture in words; the music “Collision” may be heard as a short prelude to the scene from Atlas Shrugged. All models are worth repeated visits for reflection and re-motivation. ===== “Collision”, by John Mills-Cockell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiIe3PjiYp4 And his other similar earlier works from 1970s, such as “Melina’s Torch”. “Tillicum”, “Aurora Spinray”, “December Angel”, "Appaloosa and Pegasus" – all can be heard on Youtube. Also, especially noteworthy is his 2004 Concerto of Deliverance, commissioned as a tribute to Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. http://www.starshipaurora.com/concertoofdeliverance.html ===== Dagny riding the John Galt Line (especially p. 245-246, Atlas Shrugged😞 She felt the sweep of an emotion which she could not contain, as of something bursting upward. She turned to the door of the motor units, she threw it open to a screaming jet of sound and escaped into the pounding of the engine's heart. For a moment, it was as if she were reduced to a single sense, the sense of hearing, and what remained of her hearing was only a long, rising, falling, rising scream. She stood in a swaying, sealed chamber of metal, looking at the giant generators. She had wanted to see them, because the sense of triumph within her was bound to them, to her love for them, to the reason of the life-work she had chosen. In the abnormal clarity of a violent emotion, she felt as if she were about to grasp something she had never known and had to know. She laughed aloud, but heard no sound of it; nothing could be heard through the continuous explosion. "The John Galt Line!" she shouted, for the amusement of feeling her voice swept away from her lips. She moved slowly along the length of the motor units, down a narrow passage between the engines and the wall. She felt the immodesty of an intruder, as if she had slipped inside a living creature, under its silver skin, and were watching its life beating in gray metal cylinders, in twisted coils, in sealed tubes, in 'the convulsive whirl of blades in wire cages. The enormous complexity of the shape above her was drained by invisible channels, and the violence raging within it was led to fragile needles on glass dials, to green and red beads winking on panels, to tall, thin cabinets stenciled "High Voltage." Why had she always felt that joyous sense of confidence when looking at machines? -- she thought. In these giant shapes, two aspects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless and the purposeless. Every part of the motors was an embodied answer to "Why?" and "What for?" -- like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral code cast in steel. They are alive, she thought, because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power -- of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form. For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It was a net of connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for the first time. They are alive, she thought, but their soul operates them by remote control. Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal this achievement. Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going -- not the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become primeval ooze again -- not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages -- the power of a living mind -- the power of thought and choice and purpose. She was making her way back toward the cab, feeling that she wanted to laugh, to kneel or to lift her arms, wishing she were able to release the thing she felt . . . . =======
  17. One would think so. I'm not one of those calling for such a declaration, especially one justified to 'help Israel' (which will fight its own regional battles, hopefully without interference) but for "calibrated" retaliation against any "clear and present danger", such as the intolerable attacks on international shipping by the Houthis which the US led consortium has firmly responded to and has to permanently stop. I believe Iran is "testing the waters", so to speak, seeing how far they can push the West through its proxy terror groups while avoiding confrontation. They must be met resolutely on an ad hoc basis while not (yet) maximally. https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/2024-03-16/live-updates-792187
  18. A return to clarity, by a proper expert on urban warfare. Increasing dismissal of the "numbers" put out by the Gazan Ministry of Death. Nothing new, Hamas' strategy was all-dependent on large civilian casualties, real or fictional, to "win" the political war.
  19. I'm inclined to side with Gus in opposing such a law as is coming about in Utah, and my concern, as in the example Gus mentioned, is the ability of children to find things out about the world, going around the controls of their parents. It is good to be able to learn more truth. The internet offers that, even if it has also the ability to convey the social-gang emotional damaging that goes on among teenagers. Parents do indeed need to be on the lookout for what their children are encountering, whether their children are in pains over social relations with their peers, whether their children are using drugs, shoplifting, becoming depressed, or getting suicidal. But parents can be on the lookout for those things without the lazy turnkey of controlling, not just monitoring, but upfront blindering of children to wider truth of the world and wider truths being discovered of nature beyond what parents wish them to learn. Preparation of a child for independent life is enhanced, as far as I've observed, by wider and argued views of what the world and we consist of, not by deprivation of that information.
  20. https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-gang-stalking-apps?top_ans=288414866 Here's a long bunch of posts of people experiencing the same thing and/or explaining how it is done and some of the things experienced after a Google search of "gangstalking app". DavidOdden, who I appreciate and thank for his advice asked for me to be more specific but one has to understand that a person is "attacked" essentially 24/7 in countless ways when enduring this so writing details would take days or weeks at the least. I found these things recently and the existence of gangstalking only this summer after experiencing this for years because it's so much that it at first seems impossible. Again, everything involves the concept of plausible deniability, and such a massive 24/7 series of events over years from minor harassment to theft and countless numbers of different things constantly occurring so writing a full account is not simple.
  21. And silence after publicly stated that I'm being tortured and slowly destroyed in every manner and slowly murdered, including past active murder attempts via allergies, attempted car crashes, and others that I won't mention. Again, this is why this is allowed to occur because nobody takes action. If I were a woman, child, person in some foreign country, a victim of some kind of storm event or fire people would rush to help, but because they are attacking constantly in manners with plausible deniability the world let's it occur as everything, everyone, and any possible way to improve and fix the situation is taken away, sabotaged, or made impossible and I'm forced against my will to sleep in my own vehicle until they finish either passively or actively murdering me.
  22. A Friday Hodgepodge 1. Some time back, the New York Times bought Wordle from its inventor. Having heard the new owners were going after clones of the popular word game jogged my memory of the existence of the game Don't Wordle. This non-clone has a different object: Make it through six rounds without guessing the word correctly. It's harder than you might think. 2. On her Substack blog, Claire Evans discusses art inspired over time by scintillating scotomas in her post "Brighter Than a Cloud:"Perceptual distortions are difficult to measure, but they can be approximated in paint and pencil, which makes migraine art a powerful diagnostic and scientific tool. The earliest depictions of migraine phenomena were illustrations made by physicians who happened to be migraineurs themselves, like the German ophthalmologist Christian Georg Theodor Ruete, who illustrated the three successive stages of his own "flimmerskotom" in 1845, and the 19th century British physician Hubert Airy, whose ink renderings wouldn't be out of place in the Wellcome's migraine art collection.Occasionally experiencing these myself, I have to say I wish English had borrowed the German term for these unchanged. Also worth noting are a link to an extensive British collection of migraine-inspired art and mention of the only Oliver Sacks book I have not yet read, Migraine. 3. If you live in certain small parts of North America, this year is going to bring you a double blast of cicadas: Adjacent broods of 13- and 17-year cicadas will be emerging at the same time. 4. I found the title odd: "The Best Multi-Tool for Every Job." I thought: What? Isn't that like looking for an expert jack of all trades? But what the article does is list the best such tools for certain niches, like keychain-sized:Tools: Needlenose pliers, wire cutter, knife, package opener, scissors, flathead driver, crosshead driver, bottle opener, tweezers, file It would be wrong to compare the Gerber Dime to most full-size multi-tools. After all, it only weighs a shade over 2 ounces and occupies as much space as a Bic lighter. But when we compare the Dime to similar keychain-size multi-tools, it continues to surprise and charm. The spring-loaded pliers are strong enough to pull staples from a 2-by-4, and the crosshead driver tightens loose, irritating screws. Because the Dime attaches to a keychain via a split ring, we frequently call on the bottle opener between camping trips and cookouts. A hidden set of tweezers and a pair of scissors are welcome additions too. The build quality remains up for debate, and we question whether the Dime's portability sacrifices durability, but Gerber's limited lifetime warranty puts our mind at ease. Even though most of us carry a full-size multi-tool, the Dime is a welcome addition that exceeds expectations.My favorite memory of being glad I carried a multi-tool -- a Swiss Army Knife in this case -- was to facilitate the small, informal picnic after the ceremony for the wedding of a friend, for whom I was best man. Whoever planned that picnic hadn't thought to bring a knife! -- CAVLink to Original
  23. Key themes of content and methods of mathematics in the 20th Century– An overview, in 2002. —by Michael Atiyah.
  24. People being (or pretending to be) skeptical, not believing (or falsely denying) what is happening, and not coming to the aid of a victim such as myself reaching out to literally everyone for some sort of help and protection from this that is allowing it to occur. I'm being tortured and slowly murdered. This is happening and I am being tortured and murdered by whatever this evil group is whether or not it is what I'm finding and sharing via research to help save my life or something else.
  25. From my experience with all that has happened nonstop over the last two years we are far less free than we assume already. I would have asked the same questions before all of this occurred. The thing is all of this is and has happening(happened) to myself. The break-ins to where I was staying, the minor property theft and destruction including slight draining of fluids, etc. The isolation, car engine revving, coughing, mobbing at places I go, little things like causing things I buy to be out of stock, people acting strange towards me (including here from some that I suspect), sabatoging any job I have tried to hold (to the point of being physically attacked at Amazon then them finding a way to dismiss me because I cursed at my 4 attackers). The list goes on and on, and I could write everything that has happened nearly 24/7, but it would take days to do so.
  26. I'm not a criminal though. I just possess knowledge about several things that they don't want shared with the world. Also, I didn't write that, just found it yesterday and shared it here because it contains so much information even if I don't like some of the more conspiratorial stuff it contains.
  27. I'm the only Objectivist that has solved physics that they are trying to deny to the world? I don't know why else.
  28. I see that the document you linked mentions the East German Stasi. Maybe the secret police of a dictatorship could bring something like this off. But how workable would it be in a relatively free society?
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