From the time of Xenophon to the Crimean war, every long distance campaign by westerners had a free market following the camp and the march. Every single man in the army fought, and the camp followers fed them, clothed them, and armed them. Alexander, fighting a long distance campaign, had ten camp followers for every …
Author: Jim
A prediction.
Because of rationalization, prediction is a good test of theories. One can always with sufficient cleverness find a hundred and one explanations of past events that fit your model. Wrong predictions indicate indicate false models, and right predictions indicate true models, but retrodiction is always suspiciously accurate. Correct retrodiction is sometimes valid evidence for the …
Current news
We in Flight 93. The plane is headed directly to the ground. Trump is in the cockpit fighting the hijackers, but even if he wins, that is no guarantee he can pull the plane out of the dive. I normally don’t pay much attention to the latest political events, nor cover them in this blog, …
Creeping coup
Doing illegal acts and getting away with it due to state power is a creeping coup. If one side in a struggle for state power can do illegal things, and the other side cannot, the illegal things eventually escalate till the political leadership of side that cannot commit crimes flees the country or goes into …
A merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to all men of goodwill
Impeachment
Trump: This Witch Hunt must end NOW with a trial in the Senate, or let her default & lose. Trump wants a trial in the Senate at which Democrats get to call witnesses, Trump gets to cross examine their witnesses and Trump gets to call witnesses, and they get to cross examine his witnesses. During …
Libertarianism
Libertarianism is classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is, or was, the Puritan sect known as the Levelers, who opposed aristocracy, Kings, and Bishops, but supported private property in the means of production, supported natural inequality, opposed socialism and communism, opposed them for a mixture of religious reasons(God ordained private property and capitalism in the fall) and …
Don’t use enemy words, you will not be understood.
Enemy words are always understood as enemy meanings. And they will always be understood in this sense even if we hold the megaphone, because their official definition always conflates two very different and incompatible natural kinds. Don’t use the words “racist”, “psychopath”, “sweatshop”, “sociopath”, and “pedophile”, among many others equally evil. When someone says “Democrats …
The namefag problem
In today’s environment, it is impossible to speak the truth under one’s official name, and dangerous to speak the truth even under any durable and widely used identity. Therefore, people who post under names tend to be unreliable. Hence the term “namefagâ€. If someone posts under his true name, he is a “namefag†– probably …
Good and Evil
Good people cooperate to suppress evil deeds and exclude evil men, drive out evil men, kill evil men. If no words for good and evil, no extended large scale cooperation. If no extended large scale cooperation, we are not truly human, and we perish. Unless we can speak of good and evil, unless we can …