Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: combatting ignorance

Phoenician, in his imitable style, can’t even understand Wikipedia when he quotes it:

“The 2000 Equality amendment to the Military Service law states that “The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men.” As of now, 88% to 92% of all roles in the IDF are open to female candidates, while women can be found in 69% of all positions. […]

A combat option for women is the Caracal Battalion, which is a highly operational force that is made up of 70 percent female soldiers. The unit undergoes training like any combat infantry. The IDF commando K9 unit, Oketz, also drafts females as elite combat soldiers.”

You’re a moron, Dipshit.

I do so enjoy when Pharyngulans comment here.  All they ever manage to do is publicly demonstrate that their IQs are at least two standard deviations below mine.  In this case, he clearly fails to understand the significance of the fact that 8 to 12 percent of the roles in the IDF are closed to women; those are the actual combat roles.  Women in the IDF are simply not permitted to serve in any combat role.  They haven’t served in them since 1948. They are allowed to train for combat, but they are not permitted to actually perform any combat role for the very reasons I originally cited and more.

“Women serve in support and combat support roles in the IDF, recently they have been allowed additional options but they still do not serve in active combat.  Around the world there has been some discussion about whether or not women should serve in active front-line combat. In Israel it is clear that despite the vast contribution of women in the military, active combat is not an option. This decision is based on the physical and biological differences between men and women but also for moral reasons. As Michal, a combat fitness instructor in the IDF, says, “No one wants to even think of the possibility of an Israeli girl falling into the hands of the enemy.” Our history is already filled with too many such stories of atrocities.

The Israeli military has always combined the practically of combat with the morality of our Jewish way of life. For political reasons women’s groups have tried to break down barriers but the simple fact is that physically women are not capable of doing the job men do. There was an attempt to integrate women in the Search and Rescue units but it was discovered that a great deal of physical damage was caused to them as a result of the increased effort. Even the girls who were integrated into the anti-aircraft unit suffered great physical damage during the long hikes. They suffered more than 30% more stress factors than the boys.”

Wake Up is dubious:

Congratulations on your exploits in Tekken.

Yeah, it wasn’t a video game, it was a similarly dubious active-duty Marine officer with significant combat experience.  He doesn’t mock the martial arts any more.  Nor would you if you tried to last even one minute against me or any other Dragon from my old dojo.  I’ve seen no shortage of doubters and mockers.  No one ever remained that way after stepping onto the mats and experiencing what a combination of speed, strength, experience, and training can do to the average tough guy.  We never did any choreographed fight demonstrations either.  We simply gave people a pair of gloves and told them to take their best shot.  Most of them did exactly the same thing.  Step-step-cock-grimace-BIG rear hand.  The rest tried the midsection tackle.

RealMatt, on the other hand, is simply misinformed:

The odds of a person trained in every single martial art ever known to man, with little to no real life fight experience, performing well in an actual fight, are very low.

Totally false.  It depends upon the school and the training.  The first time I got into an actual fight after I’d had a few years of training, it took me about ten seconds to incapacitate the guy with an arm bar after breaking his nose.  There is a very real difference between the fighting schools and the non-fighting schools.  I’ve been knocked out and had bones from my nose to my toes broken in training, whereas in the four real fights I was in, no one ever even managed to touch me.  In my experience, heavy contact sparring with someone who is trained is a lot harder than real fighting, as untrained brawlers not only tend to present a myriad of open targets, they advertise what they are going to do.

For example, they have a tendency to lead with their face, which is when the guy cocks his rear arm back as he leans or actually steps forward.  This is a very, very bad mistake against a trained fighter and usually results in eating a jab.  The instinctive grapplers, on the other hand, like to tackle at the waist.  That is how the aforementioned Marine managed to put himself in position to get his neck snapped so quickly.  Go with the flow, drop the arms, slide the left up and over, grab, twist, and lock.  Then ride to the ground, but carefully.

However, most men tend to start with punches, so my preference is usually to sidestep and catch the arm as it comes at me, pull it past and pivot to either a) slam the guy face-first into a wall if it is there, or b) keep turning and put him down on the ground in an armbar if it is not.  If the wall is there, I jam his arm up high behind his back while he’s stunned, then turn him and sweep his legs to put him down.  Then I put one knee on the back of his neck while keeping his arm pinned high. I also try to speak reassuringly, telling him to calm down, it’s all right, and so forth. They can’t do anything in that position, but you don’t want them to panic and cause you to break something.  The combination of the shock, the pain, and the helplessness usually causes them to relax in short order.

The only time this didn’t work without a problem was the second time, because I stopped with the guy pinned against the wall.  He seemed calm enough, so I stepped back and let him go, at which point he lunged at my bouncer friend.  That was how I learned not to stop until the guy is not only temporarily incapacitated, but down as well.

Mailvox: the failed metaphor

Congratulations to A. Man, who is the 150th commenter in the last five years to announce that I have, yet again, jumped the shark.  It’s amusing how often that metaphor has been heard from overly optimistic critics during the time when the readership has grown from 240k to 930k per month, especially when these critics are often the very same individuals who demand to know where they can find any indication of the economic and societal collapse I have predicted:

“Feminists are objectively worse than Nazis”

It’s nice to see that you were able to fully clear the shark.

“This
is what the feminist’s vaunted concept of equality means. This is what
it has always meant: the legal protection of a woman from all and any
consequences of her actions. This includes a woman’s ability to break
any contract at will, to steal from anyone as she pleases, and murder
even the most innocent without having to even hear a whisper of protest
to make her uncomfortable.”

The odd thing is that you know this
isn’t true, you know this statement cant be defended…and yet you make
it still. How does that work? What kind of reconciliation do you do in
your mind?

First, feminists are objectively worse than National Socialists.  I have demonstrated this in both logical and empirical terms.  The unborn and the recently born are much more helpless than international Jewry. The cost in human lives of feminism is quite clearly greater than the cost of National Socialism or Fascism ever was.  It could be debated whether feminism or communism has been more costly in those terms, but the mere fact that the matter is debatable suffices to prove what a terrible and evil ideology feminism is.

Second, the statement not only is true, but it can be easily defended. There is no reconciliation necessary to defend it because it is based on straightforward observation.  I direct the following questions to A. Man.

  1. Did American women not demand, and do they not presently possess, the right to break marital contracts at will?
  2. Have feminists not defended the right of women to kill men who abuse them?
  3. Does the feminist definition of abuse include non-physical abuse?
  4. Have feminists called for ban on actions that make a woman feel uncomfortable?

Mailvox: Republican hatred of Ron Paul

Stickwick wonders why conservatives react in such a stereotypically liberal manner to Ron Paul:

I have a question about the conservative perception of Ron Paul. Rachel Lucas seems like a reasonable right-of-center person whose political views are moving towards libertarianism. In fact, she now refers to herself as a libertarian. However, she still hangs on to the idea of American interventionism. In a recent post she criticizes McCain for his criticism of Rand Paul and for his overly-interventionist policy, but agrees with Ace that *some* interventionism is necessary:

I don’t agree with it, but at least their position is stated reasonably. What I find odd is how her commenters are using this as an opportunity to dump all over Ron Paul. Here’s a typical example:

“For the record, I cannot STAND Ron Paul. Fiscally he makes sense, but in every other conceivable way he’s a senile, batshit crazy old fuck.”

Why do some right-of-center people get so vitriolic about Ron Paul? They go right past “I strongly disagree with his ideas on foreign policy,” and straight to “crazy old fuck.” This is exactly the sort of thing they denounce when the left gets personal in its attacks or calls right-of-center ideology a “mental disorder.”

Why do conservatives call Ron Paul crazy instead of just disagreeing with him? Would you shed some light on this?

It’s not at all hard to understand why so many conservatives hate Ron Paul with all the fury of a thousand suns.  The reason is that he shames them for their hypocrisy.  He reveals the inconsistency in their non-conservatism.  He forces them to confront the fact that they are not the proponents of small government and liberty they believe themselves to be.

Big government, international interventionist, and monetarist “conservatives” hate Ron Paul for exactly the same reason the Pharisees and Sadducees hated Jesus Christ.  Because he exposes their intrinsically false nature to themselves.  And the reason they dismiss him as crazy instead of responding rationally to the arguments he presents is because they know they cannot do so without losing.

Mailvox: rabbits gonna rabbit

And Asher’s gonna asher:

“He’s not dumb but when I point out that without science and
philosophy everything that makes his art media possible wouldn’t exist.
It doesn’t even register with him.”

It clearly runs in the family.

“The most obvious possibility is that the “it” refers to science being a necessary condition for various art media used by my brother. However, the reference doesn’t make any sense given the context which is that I am aware of the scientific advances that make my brother’s visual art possible.

The other possibility for Vox’s “it” is that “things” don’t register for me. Fine, but that is, in itself, an empty reference. What things? Everything? Some things? If not everything then what set of things? Vox doesn’t make this clear, and, in doing so he ends up sounding like Amanda Marcotte.

Yes, science being a necessary condition for various art media is clearly the most obvious possibility.  And yes, I sound EXACTLY like Amanda Marcotte.

“Your “it” has no clear object of reference.”

It is sufficiently clear to the sufficiently intelligent.  I often find Asher’s take on things to be more than a little fascinating.  It’s rather like watching a retarded Spock in action.  His attempts at ad hominem are the best; they resemble someone attempting to trash talk in a language they’ve studied for three semesters in college.

“And I suppose you your mother find sex response to attract, yes?”

Mailvox: the line between F and SF

An SFWA author writes concerning the upcoming SFWA election:

 I voted for you and my ballot’s going out tomorrow in the mail. I thought your opening statements were hilarious! Outlandish, too….  But anyway I liked most of your ideas for SFWA.

The idea of establishing two Nebula awards — one for SF and one for F is really over the top. They overlap. Just as a good story also overlaps with dark elements. (Which we politely do  not refer to as “horror” but it is.) This is the main reason I’m writing you –I’d like to know just how you would possibly chop SF & F in half –when novels and stories contain elements of both. “Hard” sf isn’t the only definition of Science Fiction. “Hard SF” implies that there is some explicit element of science explained within the story or novel (which Landis and Haldeman do well) but it’s not the only element and anything we imagine becomes fantasy.

This was my response:  In answer to your question, those nominating a novel for a Nebula Award would be expected to indicate that they considered the nominated work to be either F or SF as part of the nomination process.  A novel that received both SF and F nominations would have both types of nominations counted but would be put up for the award in the category that received the most nominations, assuming that it received enough combined nominations to qualify.  If the author happened to disagree with the categorization and the difference between the two categories was between one and three nominations, then the category would be switched at the author’s request.

Obviously, if everyone nominates something that is clearly Fantasy and the author prefers it to compete in the Science Fiction category because he believes he is the second coming of Isaac Asimov or because he thinks it will be easier to beat out Star Trek 562: Spock Takes a Nap than the most recent rewrite of a Brontë novel published by Tor Books, there would be no reason to accommodate that.

But if a book could be reasonably considered to be either science fiction or fantasy, to such an extent that it is unclear to the readers, there is no reason not to permit the author to determine which category the book most properly belongs.

Mailvox: impeccable girl logic



How can one possibly hope to refute these fiendish adversaries?  Or to confound their impeccable and diabolically clever arguments?  And seeing as how Miss Paradis is not only breaking out logic, but Latin, I can only conclude she must be a witch!  In fear and desperation, I attempted to dismantle her argument, but there were simply no flaws to be found!

  1. I did, indeed, write that widespread rape makes a society uncivilized whereas widespread female employment makes a society demographically unsustainable.
  2. And in doing so, I did, without question, show a certain lack of empathy.
  3. And furthermore, this dreadful dearth of empathy did inspire the Paradis sisters to collect THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS from similarly disgusted individuals and give it to an incest charity… in my name!

Thereby proving, beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt, that my thesis concerning the demographic unsustainability of widespread female employment and the relative damage it causes to society vis-a-vis widespread rape can only be completely and totally incorrect.

I stand corrected.  Quod sherat demonstrandum.

UPDATE:  Miss Paradis expounds upon her dialectical approach: “I’m not attempting to refute an illogical argument. The argument is
based on false premise and was meant only to be inflammatory, either
that or your ‘super intellect’ has no understanding of capitalism.”

Mailvox: to forgive or not forgive

BR asks about the consequences of cheap and easy grace:

As always, thanks for the work you do.  Your blogs are exceedingly useful to me in organizing my own thoughts on everything from politics to relationships.  Unless I’m completely confused, I believe you consider yourself a Christian.  As you seem to also be a Man of Reason, I assume a large part of your Faith is also rooted in Reason.  I love Reason-based Faith.  One of the main reasons I don’t subscribe to any religion is because I find too many people in religions that subscribe to the fallacy that Religion and Reason are not compatible.  I tend to dislike Atheists for the same reason.  Yes, The Irrational Atheist is queued on my Kindle.

Today’s question is on the Christian Principle of Forgiveness.  Does Christ want us to forgive people who harm us in the absence of any sort of reparation?  And I mean harm, not mean words that hurt our feelings.  Words and actions that cause our standard of living to be reduced.

It seems that most “mainstream Christians” believe Christ taught that we should forgive people who harm us regardless of whether that person makes any attempt to undo the damage they caused.  However, this seems to be to be in direct opposition to Christ’s own actions.  God forgave us our sins not in a vacuum, but only because of Christ’s sacrifice.  This to me is more Redemption, than Forgiveness.  Sinning comes with a price tag, however that price was paid for us.  Had it not been, we would not have been forgiven.  If you and I went to dinner, and I paid the bill, you would not say that the restaurant forgave your debt to them.  The debt was still paid, just not by you.

This position seems to be taken most often in regards to unintentional harm.  Harm done not out of malice, but through negligence and carelessness.  However, this still seems to be at odds with other aspects of Christian theology.  I am not Christian, and therefore will not receive the benefit of Christ’s sacrifice.  Yes he died for my sins, but until I take the additional step of acknowledging his sacrifice and committing to his principles, I don’t get the benefit.  In other words, I have to do something to gain forgiveness.

I agree that a person who makes reparations for harm they unintentionally do should be forgiven.  If a person accidentally rear ends my car, but pays for all of the repairs, it is absurd for me to hold a grudge against them.  On the other hand, if the person accidentally read ends my car, but refuses to pay for the repairs, it would be equally absurd for me to forgive them.  However, it seems to me this is exactly what many mainstream Christians seem to think should be done.

 I’m bringing the question to you because I think it dovetails with the “saving Western Civilization” aspect of your blogs.  It seems one of the biggest problems we have in modern society is everyone going around doing whatever they want without regard to the consequences.  Obviously, when their actions only harm themselves, I don’t care.  When their actions cause harm to another person, they simply say “I’m sorry”, and expect that to somehow be enough.  Unfortunately, “I’m sorry” doesn’t make my car functional again.  This problem is further compounded by the above “forgiveness fallacy”, because society now refuses to hold these people accountable.  I don’t mean in a criminal prosecution sense, but in a social consequences sense.  Because everyone is so eager to forgive everyone else, there are no social consequences for bad behavior.  Because there are no social consequences, the bad behavior continues, and the harm done to others by the bad behavior continues to mount.  This harm ultimately results in misplaced resources, which leads to a lower standard of living.

An example:  I rent my spare room to a tenant.  The lease requires that rent is paid by a certain date, and defines penalties for failure.  The first time my tenant missed his rent, I slapped him with the fine.  He was never late again.  I could have chosen to “forgive” him because he simply forgot to pay, and not levied the fine, but then what reason would he have to pay his rent on time?  The harm done by not paying his rent goes beyond simple financial transactions.  I have my own bills to pay, and depend on his rent to make them.  If he is routinely late on his rent, I have to hold more cash reserves to ensure I can pay my bills on time.  This additional money just sitting around “just in case” is an inefficient use of resources.  It’s either unavailable to purchase goods and services, thereby reducing the number of people employed in the production of those goods and services; or it’s unavailable for investment, which costs me money due to lost opportunities (as well as costing another person an opportunity due the reduction of loanable funds in the system).

Taking the example further, if he were routinely late, but always paid the late fee, I would actually be doing him a disservice to completely forgive him this constant “sin”.  By not holding him socially accountable for this lazy attitude, I provide him no incentive to correct his behavior.  Even though it’s his choice to effectively pay a higher rent than the market demands, it reduces his standard of living.  While I could certainly take the position that it’s none of my business, such lack of concern would seem to be at odds with Christ’s message.  In other words, letting your child eat chocolate cake for breakfast is not love. 

Cheap and easy grace, as well as ready forgiveness for sins not repented, is the hallmark of modern Churchianity.  It is also indicative of a false and overtly anti-Christian religion that cloaks itself in Christian language.  The parents who make a showy scene of publicly providing unrequested forgiveness to the murderer of their only daughter when the man responsible refuses to even admit the crime aren’t demonstrating their Christianity, they are simply posturing emotionally, because repentance is required as a part of the process of forgiveness.

God doesn’t forgive the unrepentant and therefore neither should the Christian.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” – Luke 23:39-43

Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell both criminals they will be with him in paradise, only the repentant man.  When he does ask his Father to forgive the unrepentant, he does so because “they know not what they do”.  So, my conclusion that the Christian can forgive, without repentance, those who do their harm in ignorance, but not those who willfully intend a harmful course of action.

I would, of course, be remiss if I did not point out that BR is making the same mistake I once made, which is to judge the -ism by the -ist.  This is logically fallacious, particularly considering that Christianity not only accounts for, but depends upon, the imperfection of Man.

Mailvox: which is worse, work or rape?

A drive-by commenter throws out a few questions:

women don’t have to stay home and breed simply because it intimidates
you that we’re in the workforce. What about the fact that women may
wish to work and be very capable of doing so. Are you saying women are
less intelligent than men? Is there any reason that a man couldn’t stay
home and provide childcare if that is best suited to a family? 

1) True.  Women don’t have to stay home and breed because it intimidates anyone that they are in the workforce, about two-thirds of them have to stay home and breed in order to prevent society from either collapsing into demographic and economic ruin or being transformed by the imported replacement workers into a third world society.  The birthrate has already fallen well below replacement level without the rate of female employment even drawing completely even with the male employment rate; one wonders how low it would go if all women were required to enter the workforce.

One can look to Londonistan if one requires an example of this process at work: “[F]or the first time, white Britons are now in a minority in the country’s largest city…. White Britons now make up 45 per cent of the population, compared with 58 per cent in 2001.  London’s population has been boosted by immigrants. Three million foreign-born people now live in the capital.  

2) The fact that women may wish to work and are very capable of working no more implies that they should always be encouraged to do so anymore than the fact that men may wish to rape and are very capable of raping means that they should always be encouraged to do so.  The ironic, but logically inescapable fact is that encouraging men to rape would be considerably less damaging to a society than encouraging women to enter the workforce en masse.  Widespread rape makes a society uncivilized.  Widespread female employment makes a society demographically unsustainable.  History demonstrates that incivility can be survived and surmounted.  Unsustainability, on the other hand, cannot.

3) Are women less intelligent than men?  On average, no.  In terms of the highest standard deviations, yes.  However, I think it is readily apparent that both men and women are to blame for constructing an equalitarian society that, in terms of intelligence, doesn’t even rise to the ability of a dog to avoid defecating in its own bed and staying off the railroad tracks.

4) Yes, there are a number of reasons that a man cannot stay home and provide childcare.  The three most important are that a) most men don’t want to provide childcare, b) most women don’t want to work to support a man, and c) doing so significantly increases the probability that his wife will stop being attracted to him and his marriage will fail.  A woman simply OUTEARNING her husband increases the risk of divorce by 50 percent; this implies that it is untenable to expect women to be willing to completely support their families.  But certainly, if there are women who dream of marrying men who will stay home and play video games with the children while they work 60 hours per week to support the family, there is no reason they should be barred from doing so. 

I tend to doubt there are enough of these hard-working snowflakes to be of any statistical, let alone demographic, significance to society.

Mailvox: value is not objective

Asher claims to know something of economics despite making a massive and fundamental error that requires complete ignorance of subjective value theory:

My undergrad was economics and my grad work was in philosophy focusing on theory of mind and the social sciences, prompted by investigating whether or not economics is a positive body of knowledge. Yeah, I know just a little bit about the topic.

A little bit is not enough to intelligently discuss these matters.  Other than the Mises Institute, there is not a single undergraduate economics program of which I am aware that is not based on the neoclassical assumption of objective value.  Unfortunately, the state of economic education is now such that one can possess considerable economic academic credentials while still knowing nothing of some of the most fundamental basics.  Subjective value is a proto-Austrian concept that is not taught in either Econ 101 or 301; most economics PhDs, to say nothing of undergrads, are completely unfamiliar with the scholastics and the pre-Smithian economists and genuinely believe that economics is a 200-year old discipline that began with Adam Smith.

This is where Asher demonstrated that he simply does not know what “subjective value” is:

 This is where the subjective theory of value leads. If everything of value has to be reflected in a market price then to not pay anyone for something of value is ‘unjust’.

Subjective value does not lead there; it cannot lead there because it neither requires anything, (much less everything), of value to be reflected in a price nor assigns any significance beyond the immediate exchange to the exchange value.  As it happens, I’ve been reading Volume II of Rothbard’s excellent Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, which I recommend to everyone, but especially Asher, and happened to read the following at the gym today:

In contrast to the Smith-Ricardo mainstream of Smithians who set forth the labour theory (or at very best, the cost-of-production theory) of value, J.B. Say firmly re-established the scholastic-continental-French utility analysis. It is utility and utility alone that gives rise to exchange value, and Say settled the value paradox to his own satisfaction by disposing of ‘use-value’ altogether as not being relevant to the world of exchange. Not only that: Say adopted a subjective value theory, since he believed that value rests on acts of valuation by the consumers. In addition to being subjective, these degrees of valuation are relative, since the value of one good or service is always being compared against another. These values, or utilities, depend on all manner of wants, desires and knowledge on the part of individuals: ‘upon the moral and physical nature of man, the climate he lives in, and on the manner and legislation of his country. He has wants of the body, wants of the mind, and of the soul; wants for himself, others for his family, others still as a member of society’.  Political economy, Say sagely pointed out, must take these values and preferences of people as givens, ‘as one of the data of its reasonings; leaving to the moralist and the practical man, the several duties of enlightening and of guiding their fellow-creatures, as well in this, as in other particulars of human conduct’.

At some points, Say went up to the edge of discovering the marginal utility concept, without ever quite doing so. Thus he saw that relative valuations of goods depends on ‘degrees of estimation in the mind of the valuer’. But since he did not discover the marginal concept, he could not fully solve the value paradox. In fact, he did far less well at solving it than his continental predecessors. And so Say simply dismissed use-value and the value paradox altogether, and decided to concentrate on exchange-value….

But whereas Say simply discarded use-value, Ricardo made the value paradox and the unfortunate split between use- and exchange-value the key to his value theory. For Ricardo, iron was worth less than gold because the labour cost of digging and producing gold was greater than the labour cost of producing iron. Ricardo admitted that utility ‘is certainly the foundation of value’, but this was apparently of only remote interest, since the ‘degree of utility’ can never be the measure by which to estimate its value. All too true, but Ricardo failed to see the absurdity of looking for such a measure in the first place. His second absurdity, as we shall see further below, was in thinking that labour cost provided such a ‘true’ and invariable measure of value. As Say wrote in his annotations on the French translation of Ricardo’s Principles, ‘an invariable measure of value is a pure chimera’.

Smith, and still more Ricardo, were pushed into their labour cost theory by concentrating on the long-run ‘natural’ price of products. Say’s analysis was aided greatly by his realistic concentration on the explanation of real market price.

– Murry Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, 1.5 Utility, productivity and distribution

Not only does Asher not understand what subjective value is, he then compounds his error by leaping to an erroneous conclusion on the basis of his false understanding.  Subjective value severs any possible connection between price and justice; it specifically denies even the possibility that there is necessarily any connection between the exchange value of a particular object to two parties at one point in time and the value of that same object to those two parties at a different point in time, much less any significance to any one else of either of those two different exchange values.

Nor is subjective value theory new.  Rothbard traces it back to Democritus, a contemporary of Socrates, of whom he writes: “Democritus contributed two important strands of thought to the development of economics. First, he was the founder of subjective value theory. Moral values, ethics, were absolute, Democritus taught, but economic values were necessarily subjective. ‘The same thing’, Democritus writes, may be ‘good and true for all men, but the pleasant differs from one and another’.”

Rothbard also noted that Saint Augustine grasped the essence of subjective value: “Augustine’s economic views were scattered throughout The City of God and his other highly influential writings. But he definitely, and presumably independently of Aristotle, arrived at the view that people’s payments for goods, the valuation they placed on them, was determined by their own needs rather than by any more objective criterion or by their rank in the order of nature. This was at least the basis of the later Austrian theory of subjective value.”

There is, there can be, no such thing as a “just price” under subjective value theory because the value placed upon an object by an individual, which is used to establish the price, is both unique and dynamic.  This is in direct contradiction to the objective value concept that has dominated economics ever since Adam Smith revived the ancient value paradox by confusing exchange value with use value.

Mailvox: surviving in the coming chaos

DA seeks advice on the matter:

Dear Rabbit Hunter Extraordinaire,

I write to you seeking your help in how millennial young male should go about preparing for the future. To provide some context, I am a 20 year college sophomore. Additional not-insignificant details about me include black, upper middle class, Traditional Catholic, and if it helps, my college major is in computer engineering. ( I included this to get your opinion on the usefulness of my degree. I also add that I will leave college debt free.). Forgive me if I come across as attempting a snow-flaking/woe is me act, but my circumstances do leave me fairly isolated. To make matters worse, my political sentiments lean very heavily towards the far right( think Walter Williams) and I’d rather avoid getting caught in the crossfire between the “vibrant” cohorts.

I’ve been reading/lurking/commenting occasionally on your blog for the past three years and your writing has contributed greatly to my current understanding of economics and history. Though my knowledge of said topics is not nearly as comprehensive, it doesn’t require a genius to know that current times are bad and are going to get a whole lot worse.

Having said all that, what are your recommendations as to what I should do to hopefully survive the coming state of entropy? I understand that providing a definitive response to this may be difficult but anything at all would be very much appreciated.

Cue a few thousand little rabbit minds exploding.  Anyhow, being black, intelligent, aware, and intrinsically attractive to SWPL’s seeking token black acquaintaces to prove their SWPLness, DA potentially finds himself in an excellent position to not only survive, but thrive, in the increasingly difficult times ahead.  What looks like a serious disadvantage given the increasing polarity of the American racial divides could actually prove to be an opportunity for a young man of his abilities.

The greatest advantage will be to do as the rabbit people do, but in reverse; a sort of wolf in rabbit’s clothing.  By taking advantage of the SWPLs’ desperate desire to be seen as anti-racist, DA will be able to write his own ticket so long as he keeps his very incorrect ideology to himself.  At the same time, DA will have to realize that the days of whites pretending to be color-blind are over.  Only those SWPL who live in 98.9% white communities can still affect the pretense any longer, but the end of nominal color-blindness will make SWPLs even more desperate to seek absolution from him than they already are.  The more racial polarization, the more the left-liberal white class will be seeking to cling to their living, breathing, get-out-of-racism free cards.

I doubt it has escaped DA’s attention how certain whites fall all over themselves for the likes of Obama and RGIII.  It’s an advantage freely offered to any sufficiently well-spoken black man, so why not avail oneself of it?  The key to success here is to always exceed their secretly lowered expectations.  Being a former white sprinter who is now an American soccer player in Europe, this is something with which I am very familiar myself.  The less they expect, the better you tend to look.

The degree is potentially a good one, particularly as it came debt-free, but programming can be a career dead end and credentials mean little in the programming world.  DA should be careful to keep up on the latest fads and shoot for design and management opportunities as they present themselves.  But, at the same time, he should insist on keeping up with his programming, as the most valuable managers are those that genuinely understand the issues involved.  He should stay away from the false security and bureaucratic mediocrity of the large corporations and look for opportunities in small-to-medium size firms where he can take advantage of his ability to exceed expectations.

In terms of avoiding the crossfire from the vibrant cohorts, the best place to be is in the SWPL strongholds.  Being upper middle class, he’ll be more than welcome among them so long as he doesn’t burst their bubbles by betraying what he thinks of their ludicrous equalitarianism.