Tag: mailvox

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.

Mailvox: a rabbit attempts econ

It’s fascinating to see a creature that can’t count to six attempt to tackle supply and demand.  Phoenician returns and a modicum of economic hilarity ensues:

“And the more women that work, the more women have to work and the less time women who don’t work will have with their husbands who support them, because an INCREASE in the SUPPLY of labor necessitates a DECREASE in the PRICE of labor, demand remaining constant.”

Alas, dipshit, demand doesn’t stay constant – the women working and earning wages also spend those wages.  Fucked up again with basic economics, dipshit.

Wait, working women are going to spend their wages?  Why didn’t someone point that out to me earlier?  This changes everything!

Actually, it doesn’t.  It is obvious that consumption patterns change when a woman works instead of staying home.  More office clothes and restaurant meals, to say nothing of day care and transportation costs.  So how much does total female demand have to increase in order for this altered female consumption to break even with the increase in the labor supply, everything else remaining equal?

35 percent net.  Since not all women work, every single woman who does and is part of the aforementioned post-1950 delta would have to increase her new work-inspired consumption 81.7 percent just to balance her wage depressing effect.  Since Does that sound even remotely plausible given that real household income has remained essentially flat between 1965 and 2012?

And anyhow, we can forget that required 81.7 percent increase because it is extremely unlikely that female consumption-based demand has increased AT ALL due to more women in the labor force for the obvious reason that working women bear fewer children.  The US fertility rate has fallen from 3.7 to 1.9 children per woman since 1955, which means that the increased number of women in the labor force has reduced overall consumption and demand due to there being 1.8 less children in the average family.  At the USDA middle-range estimate of $234,900 to raise a child to 18, that reduced fertility rate translates to $422,820 in reduced demand per woman, or $983,302 per working woman in the delta.

Which effect, I note, is something I had already pointed out in the post to which Phoenician was so ineptly responding: “The reduced birth rate has a negative effect on consumption, and
therefore the demand for labor, 20 years before the consequent negative
effects on the supply of labor can help balance it out, putting further
negative pressure on wage rates.”

It was brave of the little guy, though, wasn’t it?  Perhaps if he’d only thrown in a few more vulgarities, he would have won the debate, because rhetoric is always so effective in an intrinsically dialectical discourse.  Well, there is always next time.  Hop along now, furry little fellow.

Mailvox: “McRapey and me”

EGA writes to describe how l’affaire McRapey has caused him to rethink his opinion of the theory of Game, particularly as it concerns the socio-sexual hierarchy:

I have read your blog for some time. Your posts at Black Gate during the fluffle started by Leo Grin’s descriptive essay on the “bankrupt nihilism” of the current wave of epic fantasy were my start. You made me laugh and cringe while arguing with R. Scott Bakker, and I enjoyed your posts on economics, about which I admittedly know very little and found many of your posts challenging, yet enlightening.

I read your blog mostly for the economics posts, and enjoy much of what you write on other subjects. I never exactly agreed with your writing on a few subjects. I am very skeptical about much of what is written about “game,” about human biodiversity and a few other subjects. In fact, I didn’t think that your breakdown of the sexual market place hierarchies synced, at all, with my own experiences or observations. And while I do enjoy some of what is written in the manosphere, Heartiste and others set me on edge.

So when the posts on John Scalzi started, I cringed worse than I ever did when you had a similar argument with Mr. Bakker. And I wanted for Scalzi to win, at least in some fashion. I was the one who commented on his blog, trying to point out how much he was only proving you correct. Every chance he gets, he manages to do almost as you (and I) might predict, almost as if he were following a script. You know because of your experience and observation. I know how to predict him because, honestly, I am him.

I didn’t want him to lose that fight because I didn’t want to believe that what you wrote about the “gamma male” was true, which is perhaps indicative of how weak my intellectual opposition to the idea was in the first place. You wrote that it is a good thing to lose well. I don’t know how to do that. I am that guy and I hate myself for it. You wrote that it is a good thing to use knowledge you share to improve your lot, but I don’t even know how to start with that. Few things I have ever read have ever scared me or caused me to question what I’m doing with myself, but I am lost here. Hence, I’m writing to you, asking for any advice on what to do with myself now that I’m ready to admit that I’ve been looking at the whole subject of male-female relations, intellectual argument and epistemic pursuit hopelessly backwards.

P.S. I recall that in my exchanges with Scalzi, I claimed that you were
enjoying an echo chamber of sycophants. This was unfair and untrue. I
apologize for that.

His apology is accepted, of course.  Unlike the rabbit warrens, VP has never been an echo chamber and even the Dread Ilk cannot be reasonably described as “followers”, much less “sycophants”.  And EGA’s ability to admit that he was wrong is the first step forward in the journey upon which he is about to engage, in consciously developing his self-respect and improving his status as a social creature in a social hierarchy.

How does one learn to lose well?  One puts oneself in competitive situations where one is going to lose, regularly and frequently, until the sting of defeat disappears and the fear of failure is gone.  That is the point at which progress towards becoming a true competitor begins.  It is also why non-athletes are disproportionately represented among the gamma population; few athletes reach 10 years of age without experiencing a considerable amount of defeat.  I may have been a NCAA D1 sprinter who played for a #1 ranked soccer team in high school, but I was also a member of a church basketball team that lost its first game by 47 points.  (Note: if you’re a white kid without a jump shot who is going to play in a church basketball league, a Lutheran league is your best bet.  Baptist leagues, not so much.)

I’ve written before about my favorite kids team.  I was their coach for all three years they were in the scuola calcio, from 6-8.  The first year, we had one 7 year old and we were winless, losing most of our games by double digits.  It was brutal, but by the end of the season, there were no more tears and losing didn’t faze them.  The second year, they started to become competitive, winning games here and there, although they were still beaten badly by the two big teams attached to the professional clubs.  But the third year, they went undefeated, and I have never seen a more fearless and ruthlessly competitive team play any sport at any level.  It was like watching a squad of sharks dispassionately ripping apart everything that crossed their path.  It was one long glorious bloodbath.

Before the first game, some of the parents complained that I was only bringing the 8 year olds and the best seven year olds to the tournament.  So, I brought everyone and started all the little kids.  We were down 3-0 within three minutes, two of the little ones had been hurt and had to come out of the game, (they weren’t hurt badly, they’d just been hit by the ball), and my playmaker cried out, in genuine anguish, “what are you doing?”

“I’m making a point,” I said, loudly enough for the problematic parents to hear.  Their ringleader promptly stepped forward and explained that the point had been taken, so I signaled the ref and mass substituted the entire team.  The boys cheered as they ran onto the field, visibly alarming the other team, and went after them with all the gleeful fury of weasels in a hen house.  We won that game by four goals. 

In the championship game of the big tournament, it was tied 1-1 at halftime.  I knew we would win, and even told a Brazilian acquaintance whose son played for the other team as much, because my kids knew how to lose and didn’t fear it, while some of their opponents had quite literally never lost a game in their lives.  I knew that if the other team scored next, my kids would try all the harder, whereas if we scored, they would quit.  Sure enough, we scored the next goal, every head on the other side went down, fingers started pointing, and their voices started sounding accusatory and panic-stricken.  We ended up winning 5-1, beating the very same team that had beaten us 14-0 two years before.  More importantly, we had beaten a club that had beaten ours for literally generations.

One defender’s father was openly in tears at the end of the game.  I asked him what was wrong and he shook his head and smiled.  He said: “They always beat my grandfather.  They always beat me.  But my son, he has defeated them!”

The best thing was that the competitive culture the kids created was, for a short time, passed down to the younger kids.  We went undefeated the next year too; four of my boys ended up being recruited by the top pro program, which was three more than in the previous 20 years.  And their pride in having been a part of that team was such that when the big club played against our club in subsequent years, they refused to take the field.  In one star striker’s case, he even put on his old training jacket over his uniform and sat on our bench for the entire game.

They weren’t any better than the kids from the best programs, in fact, they were mostly smaller, slower, and less skilled.  Two of our three biggest players were rejects who didn’t make either of the elite teams.  But they were fearless, so perfectly fearless, that it was a joy to watch them and a privilege to coach them.  I quit coaching a few years later when I found I couldn’t replicate their success to the same extent.  I definitely played a role in their success, but I now believe it was mostly the result of the tempering they had received during that season of unending defeat.  Looking back, I realize that my three most valuable players were, ironically enough, the least talented; the miniscule defensive rock who couldn’t kick the ball ten yards, but reliably brought down attackers twice his height, the single-minded lupolino who couldn’t do anything with the ball but put it in the back of the net, and the emotional leader of the team, who had two left feet and berated his own failures more ferociously than anyone else’s.

They were magnificent.  I’ve had my share of victories in athletics, as an individual and as part of a team, in a variety of sports, but I couldn’t forget those kids if I tried.  If you ask me what is a champion, I think first of them.

Just as the seeds of future failure are often sown in success that comes too easily due to good fortune, the seeds of future success are planted in our failures.  Don’t be afraid of them.  Admit failure and attempt to understand it, so that you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.  Even when you can’t reasonably expect to succeed, you can try to fail for a different reason.

Mailvox: a leftist responds

DH couldn’t quite keep his response to Live by the Science within the Blogger comment character limits, so he emailed it to me.  It’s almost alarmingly reasonable and helps explain some of the appeal of the Left, particularly to the young, that is so inexplicable to we libertarian extremists.

Thank you for bringing this topic up.  It’s not a very often discussed topic within leftist circles for many reasons.  Within my close circle of elite, liberal friends we do get together to drink artisianally crafted authentic middle-ages mead we often discuss this topic, but only in hushed tones.  Between puffs on our organically grown, locally sourced, hand stretched tobacco, we speak quietly of the science itself, and the implications.

First, my initial point, if it was not clear, is that there exists legal equality before the law.  Sadly, at this point American law and history, this has been reduced to “Congress has the ability to regulate all people equally, but may or may not do so”.  I believe this is the basis for your comments regarding the “legal fiction” of equality.   My view on this is that this state has come about as a result of two forces:  1) a few holdouts of the anti-feminist line of thinking, who have managed to pass or hold onto, pre-feminist laws and customs; and 2) feminist and other activists who have decided to “work the refs” to obtain a favorable outcome, in contradiction to their claims about wanting only to be equal.  The point remains is that the leftist ideal is “equality before the law”, not “equality of outcomes”.  

This is a difficult topic to discuss in liberal circles because of racial hucksters.  With no exceptions the racial hucksters are all leftists and liberals.   It is often uncomfortable to own the sludge of your ideological party, but nonetheless, these buffoons are mine to own.  It is beyond question that you cannot discuss any of these matters with this cohort, under any preconditions.   I generally find solace in the fact that we share the revulsion towards the types who hiss “raciss” at every turn.

My objection was founded on the basis that leftists and liberals like myself recognize that most stereotypes are correct.

For example, I am a bleeding heart liberal.  If an unfortunate looking soul solicits me, I will do almost anything they ask.  My wife often remarks that I must have a glow that only grifters can see.  At the gas station, when I have parked my electric-only golf-cart sized car to run in and get some chai or tofu, I am often approached by someone with a hard luck story asking if they can have a dollar or two for gas so they can get home to their babies, or back to work, or whatever.  More often than not I fill their tank.  When the local church – not mine, I am not religious – had storm damage and needed donations for a new roof I split my emergency fund and donated timbers I had obtained for a DIY project. 

The same is true not only of this stereotype, but of most of them.  I won’t restate them, but you can imagine what they are.  Because they are rooted in observation and obtained over the ages they are more often accurate.  When I learned that the genetics of racial attributes are fairly well established I was not surprised.  As with many things, conventional wisdom tends to be accurate.  However, despite this, we on the left seek to carve race and race relations out of the realm of the biological sciences, and instead, keep them in the realm of social pseudo-science.  Frankly, we do not trust the masses with the information, nor even our own elite.  It is rope enough to hang oneself, or in this case, one’s neighbors.  But why deny our natural selves, and our natural desires?  We seek a compassionate compromise – that is based outside of science and history.  We seek a balance between our biological instincts that tell us to divide by race and attributes, and the rational knowledge that there is an at least equal value to be had people with attributes that are unlike our own.  We do not yield the ground that there is a clearly and universally superior sub-species group [although, logic dictates that one could develop, over long timescales].  This compromise is the “content of one’s character” test.  And really, except for a small number of hardcore bigots, that’s how I see most people, liberal, conservative or otherwise, operate their relations. 

This test and the collective result of individuals’ decisions to live by it are the reason why today a small slice of minorities have the opportunity to access the more affluent, more socially rewarding, and more culturally powerful anglo-American tradition.  As Derbyshire pointed out, there is a high-demand for minorities who are exemplars of their respective race.   At the top end of the societal power scale, people of all races mix well.  Within my circle of latte-sipping effette liberal friends, RGIII would fit in just fine, and he would be warmly welcomed.  That is because there is a very small difference between a successful black, and his white counterpart.  They both live in the same areas, kids both go to the same schools, etc.  The main difference is the statistical improbabilities involved.  For the white businessman, it is somewhat more likely that he ended up where he did.  For the black businessman, it was quite a bit more unlikely that he ended up where did.   Two racially divergent alpha’s share a lot more in common than one white alpha and what black delta.  At the bottom end of society – the low-class whites, the low-class blacks, the low-class hispanics – well, we never really expected them to mix well to begin with.  Our long-term preference would be for them to reduce numbers through birth control and abortions.   And again, this is where the “content of one’s character” test comes back into play.  I wouldn’t want my children significantly interacting with people in this cohort, because more often than not, their character matches their lot.  When that stereotype fails, I am happy to make exceptions. 

Many leftists and liberals will often say things like “racism is evil”, without realizing they are being irrational.  In many cases the MPAI-variety leftist will really mean they think racism is evil, but for those of who think about it more deeply, what we really mean are “the manifestations of racism are unpleasant” – those things are violent segregation, and racial hucksterisms, and the damage to human dignity that is done by systematic racism (i.e. ‘No blacks allowed’).  This was what I meant by the “what to do about it” department.   I recognize racism as an inherent element of the human condition, and as such, the desire itself is not “evil” to the extent that evil exists in the world.   This is also my point regarding malice and ill-will.  I would never fault a person for moving out of a declining neighborhood, being overrun with low-class minorities.   This is because it’s not built on ill-will or malice, it’s based on a desire to preserve what one’s already got.   It gets much more sticky when you ask, well why not prevent the minorities from moving into the place where you relocate?  That way, you won’t have to repeat the activity years down the road.  This is difficult because it prevents the “content of one’s character” test – which is the basis for equality of opportunity and thus the basis for the rational leftist preference for race relations.

The civil rights era is precipitated on violations of what many view as the God-given right of free association.  You have lost the legal basis, in many cases, to decide with whom you shall associate, do business with, and conduct your lives with.   Even though racial tensions were largely localized, the liberals of the 1960’s and 1970’s were successful in working the refs to get the Federal government to trade a good chunk of freedom of association on the altar of equality of opportunity.  This may have short-term benefits, but many leftists recognize that the intellectual  and legal footing for this is very weak.

Many of the most upsetting facets of liberalism in America are centered around the victimization of the majority, in the name of equality of opportunity.  This often comes at the expense of equality before the law, which is troubling.  These are things like quotas, affirmative action, and preferences built upon normalizing access to outcomes deemed favorable by favored minorities.  I have often argued that enforcing these mandates puts the entire concept of “equality before the law” in jeopardy, and it seems that with the growing documentation and understanding of the biological aspects of race, this is becoming more likely.   The  rational leftist has no choice but to acknowledge that these preferences must be dispatched.  As the understanding of sub-species race expand, so too will the demands of the minorities, until the point where equality of opportunity is worthless (a point which we may well have already passed).  The leftist solution is to refocus policies and society around equality of opportunity and to do so while preserving  and enhancing equality before the law.   In this way, we can balance the natural desire to separate unto ourselves with the compassionate compromise of the “content of one’s character” test.  Civilized people will be welcome to organize themselves according to their preference and to maximize productivity and commerce, and the low-classes will remain largely as they are today – defactor segregated.  Over the longer timescales, intermixing will average out the various attributes and produce generations of citizens with more average abilities, with fewer deviations from that average.

It is unfortunate that all cannot engage openly and honestly in this debate, and for that reason, I recognize the inherent weakness of the leftist liberal position.  VD is exactly right when he claims that honest and forthright discussion on this topic is not currently permissible, and that the blame for that lies largely on the side of the left.  MPAI is true, but especially so for many on “my side”.

What an eloquent elegy for his own side.  The fact is that discourse is rendered impossible when, as soon as one speaks one’s mind, the interlocutor points, shrieks, and rules not only the thought, but the speaker as well, out of bounds.  This is the intrinsic problem with the Latin proverb qui tacet consentire videtur and the idea that silence indicates consent; it creates an incentive for forcing silence and thereby creating the public impression of consent.  After all, if no one is speaking out against the iron-fisted rule of Stalin, everyone must be consenting to it, correct?

And the problem of the “content of one’s character” test is even more obvious.  One’s character by what moral standard?  The Left’s position sounds noble enough, at least as described by DH, but when practiced by those who reject the traditional Western moral standard, it becomes inescapably incoherent.

Mailvox: the charity war

Phoenician presents a fascinatingly ironic defense of McRapey:

Your attempt to smear him is a joke, and you’re a joke, you twerp – and what you don’t get is now you’re an even bigger joke known to many, many people who had no clue you existed.  Scalzi has pwned you. You might as well drop your pants, paint your ass red, and bend over.

So he can do what, gently massage my gluteal muscles?  Surely Phoenician doesn’t mean to suggest McRapey would, you know, sexually assault someone!  It appears that Mr. Scalzi’s fans share his public fascination with “cranial-rectal insertions”, “assbags”, and rape.  Now, perhaps I am a joke, an even bigger joke than before, and yet I can’t help but notice that the Dread Ilk appear to be the only ones laughing.  Phoenician, for one, appears to be a good deal more angry than amused.

Here is the question:  If l’affaire McRapey is going so fabulously well for the Gamma Rabbit, why is it only his fans who are urging me to stop?  My readers don’t appear to mind a daily update on the latest gamma antics and one would certainly hate to see the poor little gay black children shortchanged.  Does Phoenician simply hate little gay black girls?  I am absolutely committed to ensuring that they get every last penny of the $50,000$60,000 now pledged to them; I do wish there was an official counter or something to which I could link just to keep track.  In additional to the charitable imperative, I note that not only has Mr. Scalzi never once asked me to stop referring to him as McRapey, but has repeatedly professed his delight at all the attention he is receiving.

I, for one, would be devastated to see the anticipated recipients of such charitable largesse deprived of 95% of what they are expecting.  I expect that even if Mr. Scalzi no longer enjoys the attention, he would be loathe to make any request that would cause them to lose out on $57,000 in donations.  If he genuinely wished me to stop, then surely it would behoove him to simply ask me to do so rather than engage in all of these theatrics.

But what if Phoenician is correct and it is the Gamma Rabbit’s approach that is proving to be the more effective?  In that case, then logic clearly dictates we must follow the man’s charitable example.  Here’s what I’m going to do: From now until the end of 2013 (and
backdating to January 1st), each time John “I am a rapist” Scalzi forces himself on a woman “without their consent or desire and then batter(s) them sexually”, I’m going to put $5 into a pot. At the
end of the year, I’m going to tally it up.  All the money, up to $1,000,
will be donated to Victoria’s Secret, a stripper named Sunshine, a restaurant called The Black Cat, and the Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio.

Nothing is going to stop Gamma Rabbit from doing what rabbits do.  But at least the thought of all that money going to causes the Chief Rabbit of the Whatever warren hates will enrage him to much the same extent that the idea of FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS pledged to Emily, rain, Rainbow Pride, and the Colored People infuriates me.

Don’t look at me

I received this in my email today:

Urgent Notice: DDoS Attack 

Dear Members,
SFWA.org
has been experiencing a DDoS attack since approximately 10am EST this
morning. Our webstaff has been working to restore the site. Please be
patient while they continue their efforts. Members may have difficulty
accessing the main sfwa.org site and the content within. The forums at
sfwa.org/forum are also experiencing intermittent outages as well.

This event prompted an amount of speculation that the DDoS attack might possibly be related to certain differences of opinion between the current and future presidents of the SFWA.  As it happens, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it, (I was not even aware of it until after it had already been resolved), and neither did the Dread Ilk.  The reason, of course, is that it is the easiest thing in the world to determine if the Dread Ilk were involved in something within 24 hours of an event taking place.

  1. Were firearms involved? 
  2. Was the caliber larger than 9mm?
  3. Is the body count in excess of 20? 
  4. Are the fires still burning?

If the answer to all of these questions is no, you can be absolutely certain that the party responsible was not a regular reader of this blog.

Mailvox: an erroneous summary

Ed responds to my previous post on sexual inequality.  Unfortunately, he tries to leap past the specific issues raised and summarizes them incorrectly:

Your
arguments, gentlemen, all boil down to one essential realization: When
you open up the gates of universal suffrage, the results become more
unpredictable and difficult to manage.

This is
totally incorrect.  When the gates of universal suffrage are opened, the
results become entirely predictable and deleterious.  This is both
logically obvious and empirically demonstrable, since the consequences we are
currently experiencing were correctly anticipated by a wide variety of
men and women who opposed suffrage.

[H]ere
is a point I believe you overlook: We live in the twenty-first century.
Women are taxpayers, voters, and fully integrated into our educational,
corporate, and political institutions. A significant number of men
(myself included) believe that they have the right to equal
opportunities in our society. Even if it is possible to prove that women
are marginally less (or more, a la Tom Peters) capable than men, an
inexorable fact remains: Female participation in our society is firmly
established; and barring some cataclysmic counterrevolution, it is here
to stay.

Considering that I’m on record as expecting
the collapse of the USA in the 2033 timeframe, I don’t think I
can be reasonably said to have overlooked the point.  I understand that female
participation in our society is firmly established; that is precisely
why I expect our society to collapse and shatter.  This will not be the first
time this has happened, and human nature being what it is, I tend to
doubt that it will be the last.

Roissy’s observations on this score are reliably astute: “We are the front lines of a grand sociological experiment the fruits of which are just now beginning to ripen. There is no way to know the exact contours it will trace, because nothing of this precise nature on this gargantuan scale has befallen an entire civilization of our size, until now. But if past performance of similar civilizational devolutions is indicative of future returns, there is little cause for optimism. The omens are everywhere.”

 One,
even if it is possible to demonstrate that a particular group (men,
women, whites, blacks, Asians, etc.) is marginally more
intelligent/aggressive/etc. as compared to its counterpart(s), such
differences are statistically marginal, at best. Within my personal
circle of acquaintances, there are plenty of Asians who are poor at
math, and at least a dozen African-American engineers. The marginal
characteristics of a particular group (if they are provable and
demonstrable at all) do not enable you to make accurate predictions
about an individual member of that group.

Secondly, we
live in a pluralistic society. Fairness demands that we accept the equal
rights of all individuals (as opposed to the group rights advocated by
the extreme right and the politically correct left); and practicality
demands that we (I am speaking for conservatives here) construct a
message of small government and individual liberty that is free of
religious, ethnic, and gender biases.

In practice, arguments about race and/or and sex-based innate abilities do little more than offend people.

First, the inability to make accurate predictions about an individual member of that group are irrelevant since we’re not discussing the hypothetical disenfranchisement of individual voters, but rather the disenfranchisement of an entire class of voters.  And the marginal characteristics of a particular group most certainly allow one to make accurate predictions about their future collective behavior.

Second, fairness is irrelevant.  This is the expected retreat to metaphysics I anticipated and it is not applicable to the practical argument in which we are presently engaged.  Nor does practicality demand a message free of biases, indeed, the entire written history of Man demonstrates precisely the opposite.  Nor could it, given that my argument is a practical and empirical one.

Third, it is no concern of mine if people are offended or not.  The truth often offends people.  It is no surprise to me that women dislike the historical fact that their collective involvement in governance has historically led to the rapid loss of national sovereignty, to economic contraction, and other consequences generally deemed undesirable.  But history is as it is.  The facts are as they are.  Simply wishing things were otherwise is neither realistic nor a rational approach to the issue.

No one who is capable of grasping the concept that permitting children to choose their meals is not always and necessarily in their long-term best interest should have trouble understanding that permitting an increased influence in governance to any particular group is not always and necessarily in the best interest of that group or anyone else.  Nor is it necessary for a society to collapse entirely before the positive or negative effects of a specific group’s increased involvement in government to be ascertained.

Mailvox: errors of the equalitarians

Boris rejects my proposed liberty metric:

“So my question to Mr. Trimnell is if he accepts the number of laws and regulations in effect as a reasonable metric for measuring human liberty in this regard?”

This is a terrible metric. The content of the law is far more important wrt liberty than the actual number of laws. It can hardly be argued that American society is less free today than in 1919.  In any case, a more complex society will always have more laws, so your metric is not well thought out at all.

Boris’s objection is nonsensical on its face.  How can he reasonably compare the content of a single law to the total number of laws?  Alternatively, if by “the content of the law” he means “the cumulative content of all the laws”, how can he possibly ignore the fact that since all laws contain restrictions on human behavior, the larger the number of laws, the larger the number of restrictions on human behavior that they collectively contain?

It is true that the cumulative content of restrictions imposed by all the laws is a better metric than the mere number of them, but the latter is much easier to calculate, harder to dispute, and is demonstrably a reasonable and effective metric even if not the ideal one.

Furthermore, it can very easily be argued, indeed, it can very easily be proved, that American society is considerably less free today than in 1919.  I invite Boris to either attempt to prove that American society is considerably more as free today than in 1919 or retract his assertion.

Finally, what is “a complex society”?  Wikipedia defines it as: “the extent of a division of labour in which members of society are more or less permanently specialized in particular activities and depend on others for goods and services, within a system regulated by custom and laws.”  Since a complex society features a regulated system by definition, it should be clear that the complex society’s inevitable tendency to have more laws not only fails to disprove the metric, but instead underlines its effectiveness.

I also asked The Great Martini about his preference for democracy or limited democracy:

“Question for you: what better expresses the will of the people, direct
democracy or representative-limited democracy? And which do you favor?”

Direct
democracy would be preferable if a practical system could be devised to
implement it. There’s the question of whether it would even be
feasible to run a government by constantly consulting all the people
every time a decision had to be made. If everyone were versed in
everything and if everyone would actually agree to a process of constant
polling it would no doubt be a very effective expression of the will of
the people. The internet has made that more feasible, but still I
think impractical.

What does feasibility have to do with the more perfect expression of the will of the people?  Is direct democracy via the Internet truly LESS feasible or a less perfect expression than the system of limited representative democracy when it took weeks for information to travel from Washington DC to the various Congressional districts across the nation?  Is it even less perfect than the present system that involves gerrymandered representatives voting on giant bills consisting of thousands of pages that they have not even read?

The point I am making here is that even the most die-hard equalitarian favors strict limits on democracy.  They might appeal to feasibility, practicality, voter ignorance, or any number of other factors, but at the end of the day, every single one I have ever encountered favors concrete limits for the electorate.  Therefore, this is a purely practical debate and the metaphysical arguments upon which the pro-suffrage equalitarian rhetoric is based are irrelevant and inapplicable.

Mailvox: the metaphysical straddle

This discussion with Asher concerning the utility and legitimacy of utilizing both practical and metaphysical arguments was too long for Blogger’s comment system, so I’m giving it its own post.

I’m not sure what you mean by “that”. Are you saying you never do the metaphysical/practical straddle or that the way you do it isn’t a problem? IF you are offering both metaphysical and practical arguments THEN you are doing the straddle, and the straddle is the problem, in itself.

Earlier you noted that you effortlessly switched back and forth between metaphysical and practical considerations, which looks, to me, like an admission of a straddle. If so, then that is a problem and, if not, could you clarify that statement.

High IQ does not mean one is able to avoid the straddle problem by being smart, as the straddle IS the problem. Either one makes metaphysical arguments or one does not, and if one does than the entire argument is metaphysical.

No.  Your core assumption is wrong.  A metaphysical argument does not magically subsume a practical one.  They are two different arguments that happen to concern the same subject.  You are conflating “straddle” and “switch”; you’ve used the term “straddle” in two different ways.  What I do not do is what you correctly claimed many libertarians (and many others) do, switching back and forth between the practical and the metaphysical in order to avoid having their weakest arguments exposed and defeated.  I do not “switch” between the two for that reason.  I utilize both, following my opponent where he goes.

Where you are correct is that once one RETREATS to the metaphysical, one cannot legitimately return to the defeated practical argument.  But following another’s retreat to the metaphysical in no way invalidates what has already been shown to be a successful practical argument.

The average ability of the ilk is considerably better than that of the average Joe, but most of the ilk do not capable of following you, at least in the way you lead the conversation. It’s not that your reasoning is bad but that it’s too demanding for most of your blog readers, both those that agree and those that disagree.  The ilk are considerably more advanced than the average guy but less advanced than they fancy themselves.

On average?  Of course.  That’s precisely why I repeat myself over and over again.  That’s why I provide illustrative examples.  Those who can, learn, and eventually demonstrate that they can utilize the tactics themselves, often in long debates here in which I don’t involve myself.  Those who can’t follow are at least usually able to appreciate the tactical aspects in both the aesthetic and entertainment senses.  And given that I have repeatedly stepped in and informed people when they were using various tactics improperly, why would you think you are informing me of anything I don’t already know in this regard?

It’s not difficult to see when someone is attempting to utilize a dialectical device in a rhetorical manner or asserting a nonexistent logical fallacy.  Sometimes people have to experiment and try things out before they get the hang of it.  Sometimes, it is eminently clear they will never be able to do more than bluster and posture.  So be it.  I don’t always get things right myself, as readers like you are always, to your credit, pleased to point out.  However, the other day, I said this blog is not The Following, but it could be reasonably considered to be like that show in that I have helped develop a widespread collection of lethal serial killers in the intellectual sense.  When a member of the Dread Ilk eviscerates the arguments of a friend, or family member, or co-worker using the tactics he has learned here, I am with him in spirit.

I can use this metaphor. A trap is like a claymore mine. You are a parent and the ilk are your young children. You leave the mine lying around your house in the event of a home invasion and, instead, one of the ilk sets it off and it ruins his day. From where I’m sitting that is what we’d call an “own goal”.

It’s not an applicable metaphor.  The traps are, in almost all situations, triggered by the interlocutor.  It’s more like planting a minefield on a battlefield and I am the only soldier on the one side, outnumbered though not outgunned.  The civilians are safe.  The other side, well, one of them will probably step on a mine.  And even if a civilian decides to come onto the field and inadvertently sets one off, well, hopefully it will be a learning experience for him and everyone who witnessed it.  The traps are only set to catch those who are determined to be blindly critical at all costs.

The only way that setting traps is always a good thing is when there is no audience or where you know the audience is on your level of intellect. Most of the ilk are likely to misuse most of your traps most of the time.

Totally disagree and would go so far to assert that your perspective is solely tactical and fails to even begin to take the strategic aspects into account.  The traps are set, in part, for the benefit of the audience, who tend to find them more than a little entertaining in operation.  For example, I suspect Allyn was at least mildly amused when she commented: Vox claims “For my next trick I will make the rabbits appear and then dance and hop on one foot”.  On
command the rabbits appear, raging at Vox for being a Nazi, homophobic,
poopy head that is not smarter than them. What they seem to miss is
they are doing this while dancing and hopping on one foot.”

Now I agree that most people, including the many of the Dread Ilk, don’t have the ability to effectively lay traps for critics.  The capacity for constructing them requires a psychological inclination as well as the ability to utilize a dialectical device with rhetorical ramifications.  That’s all right, it is only one of many techniques and is primarily useful for someone like me, who has hundreds, if not thousands, of critics eager to attack him at every sign of weakness or error.  By displaying false signs, I can take out most of them and demonstrate that their criticism is both superficial and baseless with very little effort.  Your average person who is not a critical target has considerably less need of any such device.  As Allyn observes, I can come right out and announce that I am doing this, just as I am doing here, and it won’t even slow down the speed with which the average rabbit will plunge his head into the shining wire.

Some may consider this to be sadistic, but my view is that if you are aware someone harbors a negative attitude towards you and is inclined to attack you at the earliest opportunity, they entirely merit whatever consequences result from their predictable behavior.

If they are harmonious then you only need to use one and the other is redundant. If anyone uses two the odds of them being harmonious is, to put it charitably, very thin. The entire reason that people do the straddle is that they use one set of arguments to cover for weaknesses in the other set and vice versa.

You’re incorrect; you’re again conflating straddle and switch.  I utilize both levels in order to expose that both levels of the critic’s arguments are wrong and thereby render the switch useless.  You’re completely failing to understand how the game is actually played in favor of some imaginary, metaphysical version of it.

Another metaphor I can use. If day after day an army takes the field, gets defeated and then retreats to higher ground then there is something wrong with the field officers. The obvious strategy would be to stick to where one can win and not continue sallying forth onto ground where one keeps being defeated.

Another bad metaphor.  First I defeat them on the lower ground.  They retreat.  Then I defeat them on the higher ground.  At which point they usually abandon the battlefield altogether.  You know perfectly well that is the usual pattern observed here.  With, of course, the exception of the anklebiters of the world, who sally forth to defeat again, and again, and again, much to the amusement of many.  I don’t mind them most of the time.  It take absolutely no effort to keep swatting down their arguments.

That just doesn’t make any sense. If one has already won on the field of battle then one doesn’t *need* to retreat.

You’re missing the point.  I’m not retreating.  I’m following up the successful defense with a counterattack.  Here is how it almost always works.  I post something.  My statements are attacked on factual grounds.  I defeat the factual argument.  The interlocutor retreats and attempts to justify his now-defeated practical argument with a metaphysical one.  I then launch an attack on his metaphysical argument.  That defeated, he runs away.  We’ve seen this process again, and again, and again, have we not?

I’m not switching anything.  I haven’t given up one iota of my practical argument or the ground I am defending.  I’m simply moving onto the other side’s ground and taking that away from him too.

If you find yourself doing the straddle that indicates that you are faced with an intractable foe, and many in the audience are also likely to be intractable foes.

Of course.  This is hardly news.  I’ve been getting death threats, having book contracts paid off, and seeing my job, my music, and my books attacked for 12 years now.  And yet, my audience keeps growing, the Dread Ilk continue to become more capable, and my abilities continue to develop.

There are two ways to take this observation. Either you already convinced a bunch of Bush Republicans to join Team Vox or you just admitted to an own goal. Chasing people away is likely to decrease the chances of their joining your team.

If you’ve been around here for as long as you said, you already know the answer to this question.  The people who are chased away tend to be the apparently intractable ones, and even some of them don’t stay chased away.  Will they ever join the team of truth, reason, and freedom?  I have known a few who have.  But it is not for me to say if my actions have changed anyone’s minds.  And it’s not Team Vox, it is Team Truth.  I don’t dictate anything, I simply follow the truth, and The Truth, as best I understand it and as well as my limitations will permit.