What is a Store of Value?

In economic terms, when people talk about a store of value, they’re talking about an economic good that retains its exchangeable market value in the short-run and the long-run. All value is individually subjective so exchangeable market value is the assumption that consumers and producers in the aggregate feel confident that there will be a coincidence of subjective exchangeable value between them at any time so they can use the good in trade.

This means that two people both value the good in trade independent of its current market price and are willing to trade it independent of the price of the good being traded for. If the trade doesn’t happen, it’s not for lack of subjective exchangeable value on both parts, it’s because they couldn’t agree on a price.

If they both value it but one is not willing to trade it in exchange for something else independent of the price of the good being traded for then it’s not a store of exchangeable market value. It’s a personal store of value based on personal preferences and values and it is not a medium of exchange.

For example, gold has been a store of exchangeable market value for thousands of years but certain types of gold coins have numismatic or sentimental value to collectors and they will not trade them regardless of the price offered. Those coins do not store exchangeable market value.

Whether a good is a store of exchangeable market value in the short-run and the long-run or not depends on its economic fundamentals. The short-run price of a store of value will vary but its fundamentals will ensure that it has a coincidence of exchangeable market value in the short-run and the long-run that can be used in exchange whatever that value might be at the time.

Key point: a store of exchangeable market value doesn’t mean a high price in the long-run, it means that the good will have a coincidence of exchangeable market value in the short-run and long-run regardless what the market price is at any given time.

A store of value has to be durable so that regardless what happens to it physically, the nature of the good is difficult to destroy so it can be used in exchange. An ice cream cone doesn’t make a good store of value since the ice cream will melt and all you’ll be left with is the cone. But since gold and silver are fundamental elements, regardless what form or state they are in, they’re still gold and silver. That’s true for any precious metal so precious metals are durable.

A store of exchangeable value has to have utility and value across diverse markets so that even if it loses value in one market, it still has value that can be exchanged in others. This diversity of value is what insures that the good will have exchangeable value in the short-run and the long-run. Although a bowling ball is durable and difficult for the consumer to destroy its value is limited to the context of bowling and doesn’t have diverse value in other markets. The long-run value of a bowling ball depends on the demand for bowling and bowling alone. If the demand for bowling dries up so does the value of bowling balls so bowling balls don’t make a good store of value.

The nature of gold, silver and other precious metals as natural elements make them durable and they have utility and value in a large number of markets: adorning furniture, adorning clothing, jewelry, electrical circuits, heat shielding etc. Precious metals have the sort of durability and market diversity that makes them a good store of exchangeable market value that can be used in exchange at any time.

Even if I don’t need gold or silver, given their market diversity, I feel confident that others will accept gold and silver in trade at any time so I’ll accept them as well in order to trade them later.

Is Bitcoin a store of exchangeable market value?

Is a Bitcoin durable, is it difficult for the consumer to destroy the nature of it? If you keep your Bitcoin wallet on any hardware device – computer, cellphone, memory stick, external hard-drive — and they are damaged beyond repair then your Bitcoins have been destroyed. There are certain measures that can be taken to attempt to recover the wallet but nothing is guaranteed. If you live in an area where you lose electrical power and/or Internet, cellphone connectivity then your Bitcoins cannot be exchanged and since you can’t do anything with them, they are worthless at that point in time which is the antithesis of a store of value.

Does a Bitcoin have diverse market utility and value? No, the only use for a Bitcoin is on the Bitcoin blockchain. The long-run exchangeable market value of a Bitcoin depends on the demand for people to use the Bitcoin blockchain to transact business. If that demand dries up so does the exchangeable market value of Bitcoins.

Speculative value is not the same as exchangeable value. In other words the fact that the price of Bitcoin fluctuates wildly – it lost 80% of its price in one year and 24% in one weekend — isn’t a characteristic of a store of value. The speculative value depends on the speculator not using, not exchanging his Bitcoins on the blockchain but rather continuing to hold them in hopes of recovering from the wild price dips and the price climbing in order to profit from continued speculative demand. A store of exchangeable market value must have a coincidence of market value that can be used in exchange at any time in the short-run and long-run regardless of the price.

Since people hold their Bitcoin in speculation, it decreases its exchangeable value rather than storing it.

Intellectual Property

There is no such thing as ‘Intellectual Property’, it’s a politically contrived concept meant to provide legal economic privilege for some at the expense of others – as is the case with all political economic intervention.

IP is the concept that physical property represents ideas and those ideas are also property and they deserve protection under the law. It’s the concept that ideas, people’s thoughts, can be ‘stolen’ and stealing is illegal. How is this strangely magical connection made between a physical product and someone’s ideas? Is it assumed that some of us are witches and warlocks and can read people’s minds and steal their thoughts for ourselves?

What is stealing? Stealing is taking something that doesn’t belong to you without the owner’s permission and the owner no longer has that thing because you took it. To steal ideas and thoughts would mean the ability to not only read someone’s mind but also to delete those ideas and thoughts from them so they no longer have them. Obviously, IP must be based in the dark arts.

IP is so perverted, the concept of stealing must be redefined in order for it to be legally implemented. When real property, like a car or wallet, is stolen the act of stealing ensures the owner no longer has the item, otherwise it wasn’t stolen. Only in the fantastical, mystical world of IP can something be stolen and both the owner and thief be in possession of it at the same time.

Regardless how uncomfortable, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. So let’s assume that it’s not some sinister voodoo at play and remove mind control from the analysis and we are left with the truth that people can’t steal ideas and thoughts. It’s embarrassing that this needs to be pointed out but politics is for the infantile and the insane and IP is political so the nonsense makes sense.

So, if people can’t steal the ideas of others, what does IP actually do? IP is the fraudulent idea that if you produce a product and receive IP rights from the government for that product, nobody else can legally produce that product or something similar without paying you for the permission to do so. It creates legal barriers to entry and competition. Any such economic impediments lead to an inefficient allocation of resources, less innovation and invention and a monopoly position for the holder of the IP rights. In other words, one person benefits economically at the expense of everyone else.

The argument in favor of IP is always the same: ‘How can I profit from my idea if anyone is free to copy it?’. First of all, since we’ve established people can’t read minds, if you don’t want your idea copied, don’t put it in the public domain and certainly don’t sell the product of your idea. Once you sell a good though, it belongs to the buyer and he can do anything he wants with it including copy it. Secondly, this argument implies that any product that is profitable must enjoy IP rights and we know that’s not the case. Most products on the market are not patent or copyright protected, so how do those producers profit? By continuous innovation and invention, by building a better mousetrap, by providing a quality product at a price consumers can afford. In short, by continuously working at it. IP laws relieve producers of such proletariat responsibilities and allow them to profit from legal protections like royalty. In fact, that’s what paying an IP holder to produce or use his product is called: a royalty.

Like all political programs, IP laws get abused. There are attorneys who do nothing other than go around buying up patents and copyrights and then look for potential violations so they can sue for infringement. Nothing is produced, there is no innovation, no invention just a legal privilege being passed around for profit. IP laws are just another way politicians have found to legally redistribute wealth to a favored legal class, another economic perversion.

Artificial Intelligence?

The definition of intelligence is a philosophical question for which there is no one, objective answer so if we don’t really know what intelligence is, we can’t know what the concept of Artificial Intelligence is either.

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) being used in popular culture is a marketing slogan to sound impressive, technologically advanced and important, it’s not. What is called Artificial Intelligence is just a system of hardware and software. People who don’t understand technology and computer systems are easily impressed by the language with no real comprehension of what it is or does or how it does it.

Voice recognition technology – which has been around since the 1950s — records voice patterns digitally and then matches a speaker’s voice to those patterns to come up with a ‘best guess’ decision of what the speaker said. In order to personalize the system to a specific speaker’s voice, the system must be ‘trained’. That means the system takes multiple samples of the speaker’s voice in order to calculate an average set of digital patterns to come up with a ‘best guess’ decision of what that specific speaker said. Sometimes these systems work very well but if you’ve ever encountered a voice recognition system when calling customer support and gotten the old “did you say …? “, that’s because the system couldn’t find an acceptable pattern match to your voice so it prompts you to say it again.

Any pattern recognition system, regardless if it’s voice, facial or anything else, is implemented in the same way. Multiple samples are taken, a pattern of weighted averages is calculated and then matched to the input the system is given to come up with a ‘best guess’ output. What is called AI is no different in that regard. The only difference is how it comes up with the weighted averages.

AI uses what are called neural networks which aren’t really neural, neural refers to the brain and nervous system. Computer system don’t have brains or nervous systems but using language that mimics human physiology maintains the illusion of intelligence. AI neural networks are just interconnected networks where each node in the network is connected to all the other nodes. It’s an attempt to mimic how science believes the human brain works – are we seeing a pattern here?

Similar to voice recognition systems, an AI network is ‘trained’ by giving it multiple samples of data from which it calculates a weighted average pattern. Neural network training does this by beginning with a random set of parameters, giving the system input, running it all the way through the network and measuring the difference between the input and the output and adjusting the parameter values accordingly until an optimal set of values is reached. The parameters that define this weighted average pattern are stored on disk and matched against input to come to a ‘best guess’ output.

What does this say about Artificial Intelligence? It says that AI can’t do anything that we didn’t ‘train’ it to do. Put another way: we taught AI everything it knows but we can’t ever train it to know everything we know. This simplistic but accurate characterization means that AI can never become more than what we allow it to become and never ‘know’ more than us since it’s knowledge base depends on us.

Larger AI systems like ChatGPT, Google and IBM are investing millions in AI in order to throw as much processing power at it as possible to stay competitive. In essence they are using brut force to come up with faster response times and make it seem more like you’re talking to a human. But in truth, there are hundreds of computers being used in the background just to draw you a picture of a black Nazi officer.

Ironically, the biggest flaw in AI systems is the lack of humanity, the human factor, the missing characteristic the propaganda is trying to create. AI systems can’t drive defensively, they can’t hear a driver ‘gunning it’ to catch a stale yellow light and know not to proceed when it gets the green because the other driver might still be in the intersection. When you tell an AI system to draw you a picture of a WWII Nazi officer, it doesn’t know that there weren’t any black or Asian female Nazi officers, it’s just regurgitating what it’s been ‘trained’ to do.

AI systems also don’t know the difference between what represents reality and what doesn’t so with so much AI generated content on the Internet now, it’s consuming its own output as input and producing perverted representations. It’s the technological equivalent of inbreeding.

There are AI systems that can identify a new problem and ‘train’ itself on how to solve the problem but how to identify and ‘train’ itself was also programmed by someone. The propaganda gives people the impression that AI systems can think independently like humans and once up and running can autonomously evolve like Skynet in ‘Terminator’. Any deviation from what we expect it to do is not autonomous evolution, it’s a bug that was introduced by the developers. At the end of the day an AI system is just a bunch of hardware and software doing exactly what we programmed them to do. Sometimes it works really nicely, sometimes it’s complete shit and hinders problem solving rather than helping. But that’s exactly what you would expect from a bunch of nuts and bolts so it’s actually working as expected if you have realistic expectations.

AI is a nifty new technology that has its niche` and its uses but that’s all. The concerning part about it is that, like all new technology, the powers that be will find a way to weaponize it and use it against humanity.

Is Government Productive?

Some people will argue that just because the government does something, anything, that it’s being productive. But whether someone, an organization or government is productive or not depends on the value of what is done and the costs to do it. If the costs are greater than the value then it’s consumption. Productivity means taking resources and putting them together in such a way so as to create something new with a greater value than the sum of the resources individually.

My grandmother’s arts and crafts club used to take penny pipe cleaners and twist them together to make Christmas tree ornaments. They sold them for a nickel creating three cents of value for each one since the pipe cleaners alone were only worth two cents.

As an employee, your employer gives you resources to work with and you produce what he decides would add the most value to the company and he shares that productivity with you in the form of a paycheck.

Your lawn is overgrown and needs to be cut so you take your lawn mower and time and energy and mow the lawn. You value the freshly cut lawn more than when it was overgrown so you were productive.  

Is there any evidence, any argument that government can be productive? That they can do something, anything that has more social, economic value than the resources they use would have individually? How do you measure social, economic value in a country of 320 million? Ask every single person and then take an average? Estimate it based on random samples? Even if you could, everyone is an individual with individual preferences and values. The concept of public utility or social value is just an idea, an abstraction used to simplify and obfuscate economic parameters on a large scale. It doesn’t exist in reality and cannot be measured in any meaningful way.

Where does a government get the resources it uses? Taxation, fees, fines, permits, licensing any number of revenue generation schemes that people in society are obligated to pay or face penalties up to and including jail. They also confiscate land and natural resources under the guise of law. All resources the government has were taken from someone else. What are the costs to society, the economy? Resources taken from one sector of the economy and redistributed to the government can no longer be used for productive activities in the sector they were taken from. This is called opportunity cost and it’s immeasurable. Although the government might do something with those resources, there’s no guarantee it will benefit the sector they were taken from more than those resources could have benefited that sector directly.

Resources are used most efficiently by those who own them because there was a cost to acquire them. When government takes resources, they have no incentive to use them efficiently because it didn’t cost them anything to acquire them. They know that regardless what they do with those resources, they can always take more. Government waste is well known and documented. Wasting resources is consumption, the opposite of productive.

The government has a $32 trillion debt from borrowing to cover operating costs. That debt imposes an inflation tax on the entire economy leaving less wealth for private innovation, invention and productivity.

By its nature, the state is a consumer of resources, not a producer of wealth. Although all of these costs cannot actually be measured, there is no evidence that anything the government does could produce more value than it consumes.

The Argument of Nothing

I can create, invent, make up straight from my imagination any phenomenon I want. Since I just made it up, obviously it doesn’t exist in reality, it’s not real. And because it doesn’t really exist, its existence cannot be proven or disproven, so any argument made in terms of its existence can be made with confidence that it cannot be disproven. Any attempt to prove or disprove the imaginary phenomenon will be a logical fallacy of one form or another. This is what I call the ‘Argument of Nothing’ and its power to control people cannot be overstated because it is an impenetrable argument with applications in all facets of society especially religion and politics. It’s extremely powerful in persuading people’s minds to believe things for which there is no evidence, no proof and no reason.  

For example, most people would admit that Santa Claus doesn’t really exist, that it was just a childhood fairy tale created over the ages for children. But it’s impossible to prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist because you can’t prove something doesn’t exist that doesn’t exist. You also can’t prove Santa Claus does exist but the human mind is more susceptible to accepting something that might be true than it is to rejecting it because there is no proof. It’s the ‘better safe than sorry’ philosophy of life. Blaise Pascal is known for ‘Pascal’s Wager’ in which individuals engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of a God. There is no proof a God doesn’t exist so since a God might exist, better safe than sorry so they choose – at least ostensibly – to believe. Churches leverage the ‘Argument of Nothing’ to recruit and retain members by confidently preaching religious dogma that they know cannot be disproven and with enough pomp, circumstance, showmanship and fear, they can convince people it might be true so it’s better to be safe than sorry with eternal damnation.

This can be done by anyone with anything. I recently figured out why some people win the lottery multiple times. It’s because a descendant is traveling back in time and giving their ancestors the winning numbers so they’ll have a fortune to inherit in the future. I can’t prove it’s true, but you can’t prove it’s not. The ‘Argument of Nothing’.

The argument of nothing is a powerful tool in politics and is most effective with phenomena that have an aire of plausibility but cannot be validated by the average person. For them it’s more of an abstraction that exists somewhere in society without form or detail, it just is. For example, even if you’re not a medical professional, most people believe viruses exist. So if propaganda is spread that there is a new, deadly virus it’s impossible for a suburbanite to know if it’s true or not. They’ve never seen a virus under a microscope and wouldn’t know one if they did. It could just as well be a complete fabrication, nothing but a political manifestation to push a political agenda (i.e. money and power) and there’d be no way for the 9-5er to disprove it, the ‘Argument of Nothing’, but better safe than sorry with your health!

Are carbon based fuels creating a climate crisis? Those claiming they are can’t prove it but you can’t prove it’s not.  Better safe than sorry. ‘Argument of Nothing’.

Does ‘Artificial Intelligence’ pose a national security threat? Those claiming it does can’t prove it but you can’t prove it doesn’t.  Better safe than sorry. ‘Argument of Nothing’.

Net Zero (Chance of Survival)

How is politics not a religion? People who believe there is an existential climate crisis due to human being’s use of carbon based fuels are looking crazier and crazier every day, why isn’t anyone talking about the insanity? They have reached cult status worshiping yet another god for which there is no verifiable proof of its existence. Like every religion, an extraordinary belief without even ordinary evidence.

Sure there are ‘climate scientists’ and ‘atmospheric scientists’ who have done ‘academic research’ and claim there is statistical significance to the claim but those ‘scientists’ are funded by the UN and other governmental institutions to produce the results they’re being paid to produce. But there are also scientists who criticize those results but nobody wants to talk about them, they are ignored and ostracized to the point of irrelevancy. They are labeled heretics for their blasphemy and like the middle-ages they must be denounced by the church. But why would published, tenured, respected scientists speak out against the prevailing political winds if they didn’t believe it was true? There are no benefits for them other than knowing they didn’t compromise their professional integrity and their principles for money and political prestige. It’s like when I’m looking for a good hotel, I only read the negative reviews because hotels don’t pay people to write negative ones.

The belief is that CO2 emissions from carbon based fuels are creating a ‘greenhouse effect’ causing global temperatures to rise, which will lead to crop devastation and the polar ice caps melting and the seas rising by 20′ and a whole bunch of other doomsday predictions – none of which have ever come true by the way. There are hundreds of websites, Wikipedia entries, international accords, political policies, ‘Eco’ settings on devices, Bio food, bars and restaurants issuing paper straws, wind farms, solar panel farms, electric cars etc. meant to ‘combat’ this threat.

And yet, there is no reason to believe a crisis even exists, not one. Of course human beings affect the environment just like all life forms do but there is no evidence that our impact is any more or less, any ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than any other. The reality gap between the crisis alarmists and what we have observed on a daily basis since it began almost 70 years ago is so large there’s ZERO probability it can be true.

But damned with reality, full steam ahead with the UN’s insane ‘Net Zero’ policy of removing CO2 produced by humans as it’s produced so there is a net zero existence of CO2 from carbon based fuels. That means people will be forced by government policy, regulations and laws to cut their CO2 ‘footprint’ as it’s called. Automobile manufacturers will be forced to produce more and smaller electric cars eventually making internal combustion engine vehicles illegal to produce and drive. What does that really imply for humanity? The problems with EVs compared to ICEs are well documented and the problem is physics. The energy density, cost, weight, and size of onboard energy storage can’t even come close to matching that of ICE vehicles and never will, it’s a physical impossibility. EV batteries also drain faster in cold weather and even faster if the heating unit is used to stay warm. If the batteries are damaged and need to be replaced, it costs as much as the car to replace them. The weight of the batteries is offset by using lightweight composite materials for roofs and bumpers which are attached only with glue. Instances of roofs and bumpers falling off are also well documented.

How would EVs affect daily human life considering the everyday transportation essentials people rely on to survive? Delivering crops and food to market, delivering medicines to pharmacies and hospitals, transporting medical patients and medical resources. There are any number of solutions to keep an ICE vehicle running if it’s in the cold or running low on gas but there are zero solutions for a dead battery pack in an EV.

But while the president is forcing others to drive supped up golf carts, he’ll keep his gas guzzling buses and motorcades.

‘Net Zero’ will also mean people will be forced to live in smaller dwellings with smaller ‘carbon footprints’ like trailers, refurbished shipping containers, small cottages in the woods or a nice renovated two rock, one pee-hole cave might do while the president lives in a mansion paid for by the people living in shipping containers.

Air travel will have to be curtailed, quotas will be put on how much you can fly and how far while the president will fly anywhere he wants in a Jumbo 747 and private helicopter.

That’s Net Zero but it gets far more sinister. There are others who believe that net zero political policy isn’t insane enough. They want real, absolute ZERO CO2 emissions from carbon based fuels used by humans.

From Wikipedia:

“In his 2021 report, Dangerous Distractions, economist Marc Lee said that net zero had the potential to be a dangerous distraction that reduced political pressure to reduce emissions.  “A net zero target means less incentive to get to ‘real zero’ emissions from fossil fuels, an escape hatch that perpetuates business as usual and delays more meaningful climate action,” he said. “Rather than gambling on carbon removal technologies of the future, Canada should plan for a managed wind down of fossil fuel production and invest public resources in bona fide solutions like renewables and a just transition from fossil fuels,” he said.”

In other words, no more carbon based fuels at all, zero, everything should be wind or solar or hydro or electrical. But that’s impossible since batteries for electrical devices have to be charged with electricity, how will electricity be produced without carbon based fuels? It’s a physical impossibility for wind, solar and hydro to produce enough electricity to charge all the batteries the world would need. And those ‘alternative’ forms of energy are highly unreliable as principle energy sources. The only viable alternative is nuclear which is great, a single pellet of enriched Uranium produces as much energy as two tons of coal, it’s a great alternative but for some odd reason, the powers that be wont even add nuclear to the discussion. Almost as if it doesn’t exist.

Bottom line is if politics forces humanity to live without carbon based fuels, it will be a real existential crisis. It will thrust mankind back into the dark ages, disease will run ramped, life expectancy will fall, famine and poverty will ensue. But those responsible for the policy will still be living like royalty consuming the abundance of carbon based fuels available now that everyone else isn’t using them. Blaming the dark ages on ‘free markets’ or ‘capitalism’ or some invisible virus, AI or aliens and claiming that those who created the problem are the only ones who can fix it so we have to give them more money and more power.

Why isn’t anyone talking about the insanity?

The Fissure Bridge

Confirmation bias is the concept that people’s currently held beliefs bias how they process information and make decisions. Any information that agrees with or confirms their currently held beliefs will be processed and any information that doesn’t will be filtered out. Confirmation bias then reinforces people’s currently held beliefs and hinders critical thinking, innovation and invention.

Brainwashing is the concept of coercively cleansing a person’s mind of its current content and beliefs and implanting new, more desirable ideas, thoughts and beliefs that are more to the cleanser’s liking. The purpose is for the cleanser to leverage the new beliefs by using confirmation bias to control the individual’s behavior.

Indoctrination is the concept of implanting desirable ideas, thoughts and beliefs in a young, impressionable mind over a longer, more gradual period of time that are more to the liking of those doing the indoctrination. Currently held beliefs are not yet developed and don’t need to be cleansed as with brainwashing. Having matured and developed their minds in concert with these ideas for years and years, they are as real to the individual as their own existence and will not be questioned, again critical thought is suppressed. The purpose of indoctrination is also to leverage these beliefs by using confirmation bias to control the individual’s behavior later in life.

For example, if your parents belonged to a religious cult and raised you with the same beliefs on a daily basis from an early age so that you have been convinced that there is a god and he’s watching you all the time and judging you for your journey in the ‘after life’, then the fear of this judgement will influence your behavior. If the cult says you have to do A, B and C in order to spend all of eternity in a heaven rather than burn in hell’s fire and brimstone, then you will do A, B and C and C usually has something to do with money.

Brainwashing, indoctrination, social engineering are all siblings in the same family of concepts meant to psychologically condition people’s minds in order to control them. And like any control system, a car, a computer the controllers must have a method of accessing just the beliefs they’re interested in, a trigger in order to manipulate them to their advantage. With a car it’s a key, a computer has a power button and socially engineered behavioral control systems have key words and concepts. Key words and concepts that have been repeated thousands upon thousands of times in the context in which they’re used so that the words and concepts are indistinguishable from the context whether they make sense or not.

Politics has an advanced social engineering program that has evolved over the millennia in order for a small ruling class of political insiders – a few hundred or so — to control hundreds of millions without ever having to raise a fist. It is so advanced it can get otherwise peaceful, intelligent people to volunteer to go to war and kill others in some foreign land they don’t know and who have never done anything to them and risk being injured, maimed or killed themselves and be proud that they did it! The key words and concepts are invoked and the psychological fissure in the person’s mind is bridged from the rational to the irrational where the desired belief system can be accessed.

This control system is so effective and efficient people will allow themselves to endure physical pain and suffering without even knowing why and without any rational justification. For example, a crosswalk at an intersection with a pedestrian crossing light is a psychological key that triggers the fissure bridge and engages the irrational. People are conditioned to believe that when they see that light in the context of crossing the street, they must stop and wait for the light to turn green even if there’s not a car in sight and even if they crossed thousands of streets in their life without a crosswalk. The irrational conditioning prevents them from thinking independently and disengages their motor skills until the appropriate key – a green light – triggers the fissure bridge back to the rational and they cross the street. There are people who will stand in the freezing cold, rain, snow enduring physical discomfort and pain without being able to consider simply looking both ways and crossing the street like our parents taught us and how any rational adult would do.  Their psychology won’t allow it, their brains are broken but they don’t know it.

Cognitive Dissonance is the psychological state in which your mind holds conflicting beliefs which can cause confusion, agitation, anxiety, anger and even physical violence. Although the beliefs seem perfectly rational individually, they  are a source of internal conflict when they are revealed. Rational behavior is seen as a threat to the indoctrinated’s irrational beliefs, an insult to their identity and must be defended. The defense mechanism can be verbal insults and angry comments or even physical violence. This is why people can discuss almost any subject calmly and maturely but they can’t discuss politics or religion. Both politics and religion have sophisticated indoctrination programs that create the psychological fissure bridge in people’s minds and the cognitive dissonance is seen as a threat and the defense mechanisms kick in.

Is Morality Objective?

Objectivity means the absence of subjectivity, a universal standard applied to everyone equally. Gravity is an objective physical law, jump up in the air and you will come falling back down to earth.

In this context, can we say that morality is objective, is there a universal moral standard that can be identified and applied to everyone’s behavior equally? A universal standard that defines wrong and right and any deviation from it defines immorality, criminality? It wouldn’t seem so considering how many people define their moral compass by religious doctrine or by legal doctrine or by other arbitrary beliefs but let’s look at it logically anyway.

In order to discuss objective morality, we first have to agree what morality means. Let’s say that morality means the difference between wrong and right. So what does wrong and right mean? Let’s say wrong is defined by a purposeful action that imposes a cost or harm on someone else – this excludes honest human mistakes, accidents.  I wanted to rob you, I meant to rob you, I robbed you, no mistake about it.

It’s the idea that your actions make someone worse off, a lower level of utility in some way than if you hadn’t done whatever you did. If you steal money from them, they are poorer, if you assault them they are physically injured etc., there is a victim.

But individual utility, a person’s well-being is subjective, it’s based on personal preferences and personal preferences are obviously not objective. Can we objectively say that everyone who has something stolen is worse off? Do we speak for them? What if someone is the kind of person that believes if someone stole from them then they must have needed it more than they did and they would have gladly given it to them if they had asked? They don’t consider themselves worse off, a victim because of the theft. In that situation, the action was not wrong or immoral because there is no victim. As a society we cannot decide on someone else’s behalf whether they are a victim or not, only they can do that. And there only has to be one person in the world who feels like that to dispel the objective theory of morality.

Therefore, victim-hood and morality doesn’t depend on the actor but on the actor’s target’s subjective valuation of the actions rendering wrong and right and morality subjective since individual valuation of everything is subjective. No two people value anything the same.

But our analysis of subjective morality actually implies something much more than that. Consider an old lady falls down in the street, is it wrong, immoral not to help her up? There is no objective response, it depends on her subjective valuation. It’s fair to assume she would prefer someone help her up and she would consider herself worse off laying in the street rather than being on the sidewalk. If your actions don’t help her then she’s worse off and her valuation of your actions is that they are wrong, immoral. But we know that is just as valid as any other valuation of the actions of others so are we to believe that morality can obligate us to act in circumstances that we have absolutely nothing to do with? Are we morally obligated to run into a burning building to save someone? Because they are definitely worse off if we don’t. If so then there’s no such thing as a hero, it would just be seen as the right thing to do. Are we obligated to give to others who have less than us since they would be worse off if we didn’t? If so then there’d be no such thing as generosity, compassion, charity, humanity it would just be seen as the right thing to do.

What are we to conclude if morality cannot be objective and if subjective morality strips us of our free-will and humanity? We have to conclude that there is no such thing as morality, there can’t be, there are just the consequences of your actions. Tough pill to swallow but true nonetheless.

What implications does this have for humanity? Historically, peaceful societies have been more economically prosperous and violent societies have been poorer. Respecting private property claims and voluntary cooperation have proven to lead to economic prosperity whereas survival of the fittest always leads to famine and suffering. But can one society be considered objectively moral and the other not?  Not necessarily, all we can conclude is that the consequences of peaceful cooperation  are more economically beneficial than the consequences of war. Not really a surprise is it, the answer to the question of objective morality was always staring us right in the face wasn’t it? Economic prosperity and safety is a matter of intelligence, reason, rational and peace not morality.

What’s Wrong with Public Education?

The problem with public education is that it has nothing to do with education, it’s politics. Public school systems are political institutions, administered, run and funded by bureaucrats for political expedience. Is there anyone who doesn’t understand the inherent inefficiencies, half-truths and political horse trading of politics? People you wouldn’t trust to babysit your kids but who you trust to educate them?

Any politician’s priorities are to his party first then to his political capital. Schoolboard decisions, regardless what it is, has nothing to do with what’s best for the school, the kid’s education or the community. Schoolboard bureaucrats have to ‘play ball’ according to their party’s platform and do whatever’s necessary to get reelected. And like all elected officials, there are no qualifications required to be on a schoolboard and no work experience required, anyone from the community can be elected, just get the most votes. That should seem odd, shouldn’t it? Have you ever heard of an organization deciding who will fill a job vacancy simply by popular vote rather than the best person for the job by education, experience, qualifications, interviews and internal discussions?

School budgets and teacher salaries are not determined by their value to the market, they are just line items in a state budget set by political policy. And like all political policy they are susceptible to corruption. When school budgets depend on student performance, teachers and administrators will sacrifice their professional integrity and principles and do whatever it takes to protect their budgets and salaries, even lie and cheat. The list of such scandals in public education is far too long to list here and annual statistics show that the more money public schools get, it has little to no effect on student performance. Internationally, American students don’t even rank in the top 20 in reading, mathematics and science while public school budgets have skyrocketed.

The politics of public education strips children of their individuality, it standardizes education and treats every kid as if they learn the same way, they don’t. It expects them to test what they’ve learned in the same way, they can’t. If public schools really cared about education, that should seem odd too shouldn’t it? Can teachers and ‘educators’ not look at the kids and see how wonderfully different they are or do they choose to ignore their diversity because that would require real effort and concern for student education which would eat into the budget. Political budgets are fixed pies, every institution getting their slice with which to make do. If public school bureaucrats waste money on education, they might not have enough money left for themselves and we can’t have that.

So what is primary education, what does it even mean, the problem has to be defined before it can be solved. What do children need to learn and what’s the best way for them to learn it? It seems reasonable that children need to learn some basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic in order to equip themselves with the tools to learn more advanced topics. Since every child is an individual and learns differently, the learning needs of each student need to be evaluated and a method designed to meet those needs. Who knows these kids better than their parents? Who better to teach their kids the simplest things like reading, writing and arithmetic, how hard is that really?

After they’ve learned those basic skills it seems reasonable they should learn whatever they want, whatever they’re interested in and the parents can foster interest by providing opportunities. Before public schools, parents would pay mentors and artisans to teach their kids similar to what parents do today with after school music, art and sports activities. Why can’t they do the same thing with any academic or trade skill from engineering to automotive mechanics?

Why must children learn history if they’re not interested in history? If they want to know something about history they can Google it. Why must children learn geography if they’re not interested in geography? If they want to know something about geography they can Google it.  Why must children learn anything they’re not interested in? If they want to know something they can Google it or watch online educational videos like Khan Academy or any number of others and then ask their parents for clarification if needed.

The truth is that public education is a failed experiment which consumes scarce resources and provides no benefit to the students or the community. Just another one of many government institutions that redistributes wealth from those who produced it to those who didn’t. But it does provide ostensibly free babysitting for parents too busy living the ‘American Dream’ to be bothered with their kids’ education.

Male-Female Wage Gap?

Depending on which ‘study’ you read, some believe that there is a systematic difference in the amount of money companies pay men and women for the same work and they claim the difference is due to sexism. Let’s distill the issue of emotion and consider it rationally, reasonably, logically and with some common sense.

First of all, what does the phrase “for the same work” mean? Does it mean the same job title, working on the same types of projects, does it mean working in the same domain, what does it mean and how do you quantify it? If you read the ‘studies’ you’ll see there is no standard definition or measure of “for the same work”. It’s a purposefully vague and generalized concept that is typically whatever fits the author’s bias best. It doesn’t control for differences in education, industry, markets, geography, years of experience, market shares of the companies etc. The only metric is that – on average – men earn more per hour than women and it’s claimed that it’s “for the same work”.

In economics we talk about market value, wages, in terms of productivity and value to the firm. The more productive a worker is for the firm, the more valuable they are and the higher their wages. Productivity, then, seems like a reasonable basis for worker comparison.

So let’s restate the argument in the context of productivity: some believe that there is a systematic difference in the amount of money companies pay men and women for the same productivity and they claim the difference is due to sexism.

Now that we’ve clarified the problem, lets analyze it reasonably. Businesses exist to make a profit, in fact the people complaining about a wage gap are the same ones who complain that profits are the only thing businesses care about. If a man and a woman were significantly similar in their productivity in a given industry, and the companies paid the women less than the men due to their sexist attitudes, then those companies employing women would have a competitive advantage against other companies that paid higher wages to men. Labor costs are a huge part of any company’s bottom line and they are always looking for ways to cut them in order to increase profits. Being able to pay women less money for the same productivity would be the perfect solution.

So, if there really were a wage gap for the same productivity, we’d expect to see companies everywhere hiring more and more women, driving their wages up and simultaneously driving men’s wages down. We would also expect to see female owned businesses hiring all women since sexism wouldn’t be a factor but we don’t see that at all, and the reason is because productivity is not the same because men and women are not the same.

Social experiments have been conducted in which half an audience was male and half was female. The experimenter instructed the audience members to raise their hand when they heard a job called out that they’d be willing to do. The outcome is consistently the same: men and women are not willing to do the same jobs or work the same schedules. Men are more willing to work riskier jobs and longer hours at the expense of other things like family and personal time. Women are more likely to work more traditional jobs and fewer hours because they value their family and personal time. Another obvious difference is that women can get pregnant which will affect their productivity and their work schedule.

The sports industry gets a lot of attention because women athletes don’t understand why they don’t get paid as much as men. WNBA players don’t understand why they don’t get paid as much as NBA players. The product in professional sports is elite athleticism, athletes doing things that we can’t do and can’t see just anywhere like on a playground basketball court. The elite of the elite is what people pay for and women in the WNBA can’t compare to the men’s athleticism in the NBA so people choose to watch the NBA instead. We know that wages are a function of productivity so the players in the NBA are paid more because they bring in millions for their teams. WNBA players are paid less because they bring in very little. The WNBA brings in so little in fact that it has to be subsidized by the NBA to stay afloat.

There is no rational or empirical evidence to suggest wage differences has anything to do with sexism. It’s just an appeal to emotion to try to politicize the issue and get politics to force companies to pay women more money just because they’re women which I think is sexist.

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