Grames

Whoa. I had never even noticed you could vote for posts.

Welcome. Your graphic is not clear. I wonder what it says. (edit: ah, work in progress)

Ok then, we are substantially in agreement. My minor point then is that "internal consistency" is the sine qua non of rationalism, and does not usually imply or include any observation. Rationalism - In more technical terms it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive." Your usage to the contrary is idiosyncratic and misleading (to me at least) but I catch your meaning and agree now you are certainly not advocating rationalism.

The mechanism at work is the realization that such issues are up for a majority vote. That should mobilize everyone, on all sides of the issue. Sometimes the marketplace of ideas really is just about who has the most money to fund advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts. That principle will work just as well in favor of individual rights advocates when they get more money.

What is the distinction between venting and exploding? Isn't exploding a way to vent?

This sounds like a pile of rationalism. Internal consistency is not the standard of proof of anything, it is a means of proof. Only external consistency, reality perceived by the senses, can be the standard of proof. I would agree that using the word "proof" in demonstrations of existence is wrong. Ultimately all demonstrations of existence must reduce to an appeal to the evidence of the senses. A demonstration of non-existence cannot be made because there is no evidence for the senses to perceive. The only way to make an argument for non-existence is to prove a contradiction with what is already known with certainty. A person who believes certainty is impossible will not believe that contradictions disprove anything. This is how Kant made room for faith.

My thought was that the expansion of the money supply caused by FRB loans is not inflationary as long as the value in goods and services created by the loans also expands. If the loans were bad loans then there is some inflation. As the loan is paid back with interest in the form gold or the bank's own notes the bank now owns outright some portion of gold which it did not before. Either the gold supply increased with new gold, or the bank retires its' own note, decreasing the amount of notes in circulation. If all loan payments were in the form of notes then when the loan is completely paid off there would be less notes in circulation than before the loan was made, the difference being the interest paid. So good loans are actually a little bit deflationary, and the value of gold has appreciated. The bank's gold gets partly distributed to those who have deposits in interest bearing accounts, and any excess is the bank's profit. The bank owner can then spend it all on a marble lobby or lend it all out or give it away, his choice.

Ok, so FRB can work, but what we have now (fiat currency, central bank) is immoral?

A fractional reserve bank's fraction on loan should be a function of its deposits which are not presentable on demand. That would solve the panic problem. If one of the bank's loans defaults then only those customers who assumed the risk in exchange for interest would face the possibility of loss. As far as the expansion of the money supply argument goes, there is no inflation as long as the value in goods and services created by the loans also expands.

There is an equivocation in the article between "universe" and "visible universe." Given the inflationary Big-Bang theory, the universe has an age. The speed of light multiplied by that age gives the size of the visible universe, and it is presumed that the universe is larger that the visible portion. An astronomer has detected irregularities in the cosmic microwave background that he proposes to explain by gravitational influences on the visible universe from mass beyond the visible universe. This is analogous to deducing the presence of an undiscovered planet from the motions of a known planet. In no sense is this evidence of anything "outside the universe" even in the original astronomer's own words.

I agree with Steve D'Ippolito, except that I think the churches may and probably will lose in court. There are limits to what churches can do in the name of freedom of religion. For example, no church is explicitly racist in its membership. No church can make polygamous marriages. Why should there not be additional civil regulations applied to churches against anti-gay discrimination given those precedents? American courts have routinely elevated equal protection concerns above freedom of association, why would that change now?

How can a bank being able to beat any panic not be 100% safe for the depositors?

But if your actions result in a theft, they already are outlawed. That there is no difference between writing bad checks and fractional reserve banking is the point.

Nytimes credibility on this kind of story is zero.

A gay marriage rights crusader who doesn't understand rights, assisted by a sympathetic court with an equally impaired understanding of rights. This could be a tort or a criminal action. It would happen. The single-minded stupidity of some people knows no bounds.

McKeever has convinced me. Fractional reserve banking is also unethical because there is always, eventually, a run on the bank. Right now the global credit crunch is an instance of banks running on each other. One would think that banks as institutions would know not do that to each other, but it appears that one would be wrong. Because they always end badly, pyramid schemes and fractional reserve banking should both be outlawed.

Official gay marriage will be used as a weapon against churches that refuse to perform gay marriage ceremonies. The government sanction that would be applied is stripping such institutions of their tax-exempt status. The reason churches have tax-exempt status in the first place is the first amendment's free exercise clause; thus gay rights infringes religious freedom. Another possibility is the use of police powers to close churches that refuse to marry gays. America is still a very religious country. I predict civil and uncivil disobedience.

I would expect him to ask for both an Obama Youth and an overseas corps. Congress won't say no.

This is an idea that has been kicking around for a while, most eloquently raised by Thomas P. M. Barnett in the presentation he calls "The Pentagon's New Map". Basically he accepts the idea that America is an empire, or at least part of one. Specifically it is the military muslce of the world order. He advocates doing it right. Here is a TED talk 23 minute presentation of his idea "The Pentagon's New Map: A Force to Wage War, Another to Wage Peace" Waging peace is a fallacy. This poisonous mushroom of an idea swelled up during the worst part of the Iraqi occupation, before the military embraced the realization that it was fighting an insurgency sponsored by foreign powers, and which could be fought by conventional counter-insurgent tactics that have been proven to work over and over in the past ("the Surge"). The separate force idea has already been proven unnecessary by events on on the ground in Iraq, but Obama has never shown much interest in facts concerning Iraq.

Same here. Learn to love it. It does save time when it prevents even one multi-hour recovery session.

Joining this thread late because I joined late. This comment strikes close to the heart of the matter: Some of the the value-judgements implemented by the game designer qua game are: the scarcity/abundance of resources, importance of speed vs. efficiency, importance of long term vs. short term planning. Designing a game such that certain strategies are effective and others are less so or ineffective is a value-judgement, but the question is really "Are these metaphysical value-judgements?" Are they comments about reality as such that the player is meant to carry away from the game? Some are, some are not. I think any game that uses a strongly representational art style with an emphasis on realism is making a claim about the relevance of its strategies to reality. I think the relative inaccessibility of these judgements makes them hard to perceive. It takes many tens of hours to explore a game's options and the artist/game-designer is radically dependent on the player being active for that amount of time. If the artfulness in a game cannot be perceived by those who do not play it then naturally a game won't be thought of as art by those people.

In Objectivism, "ought" is nested inside one branch of a conditional. "IF you wish to live as a human being THEN you ought to ..." I've seen the phrase "hypothetical imperative", but I think a better term would be "hypothetical normative."

There are no imperatives. Exactly. In an Objectivist society people and institutions would be better able to afford generosity, and better motivated to be generous when they knew they had no part in alleviating the situation indirectly through their taxes. The particular free riders that are problematic would be recognized on sight and refused service.

The right of self defense by the governed.

Principle is a concept from epistemology. Epistemology is prior to morality in the hierarchy of knowledge, so it is not correct to say all principles are moral principles. However principles, like all knowedge, have some value assigned to them to the extent they enable effective action and this is how they gain their moral dimension. Only principles that are about morality are properly considered moral principles. The theory of gravity is a principle that explains why mass has weight. It would be unprincipled and immoral to build a bridge that neglected gravity in its design.