The concepts of rights is confusing to a lot of people. You can’t see them, you can’t feel them, and they are very often violated. As far as most people are concerned they simply don’t exist. Or, if they do, they are only something that the government “grants” and as such they can be “taken away” whenever that same government sees fit. But the writers of the Declaration of Independence thought that rights were “endowed by [Man's] Creator” and “inalienable”. What did they mean? Who is this Creator? And what does “inalienable” mean?

Now, when it comes to the laws of physics, there is no debate that they are “God-given” or “Nature-given”. It is clear to everyone that something much more powerful than Man determined what those laws would be. Those laws are the work of whatever it is that created the universe, whether you want to call that thing God, or Nature, or Truth, or whatever other name you might apply. And they are beyond the power of Man to change. Man can certainly disregard them. But what he can’t do is avoid the consequences of disregarding them. Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Rights are Creator-given in just the same way. Yes, a man can disregard them, just as he can disregard the laws of physics. But, just as with the laws of physics, he cannot avoid the consequences of doing so. But what are the consequences of doing so? We’ll get to that in a minute.

Now, what does it mean that rights are “inalienable”? Inalienable (or unalienable as it is also written, both words have precisely the same meaning) means simply something which you cannot give away. It does not mean that the senators have legislated that they will not allow you to transfer them to someone else, like a non-transferable coupon. It means that it is a priori impossible to do so, i.e., to talk of transferring them would be to contradict yourself.

In order to understand why this is true let’s consider the nature of consciousness. Consciousness certainly is “inalienable” isn’t it? It is beyond your power to give it away to someone else. And this has nothing to do with any man made law. It’s simply a given. You could say it is “God-given” or “nature-given” or you could say that you’re “endowed by your Creator”, however you state it, the fact remains, try as you might, you simply cannot give it away.

This certainly does not mean that you can’t kill yourself. What it means is that as long as the particular consciousness that is you exists, it is you and not someone else. It is inalienable.

Looking at this from a slightly different perspective brings us to the concept of responsibility. The word responsibility is used here to mean that you are the one who suffers whatever consequences come with your actions. It has nothing to do with blame which is an entirely different concept. For example, if the plane you are traveling in crashes, you are responsible in that the consequences of having gotten on the plane are suffered by you, but you are not necessarily to blame for the crash. When responsibility is defined in this manner, it’s easy to see that it’s inalienable, right? It is inalienable because consciousness is. Wherever you go, that’s where you are, so to speak.

Now, when we talk of rights being inalienable, we are discussing a political ideal. That means that we have a particular goal in mind. If we are to achieve that goal, then we have no choice but to follow the laws laid down by nature (or God), hence you may have heard that the concept of rights comes from an ideal called Natural Law. Natural Law is no less natural and no less law then are the laws of physics. Again, you can disregard the laws of physics if you like, but in no way can you avoid the consequences of doing so. The responsibility for doing so is yours, i.e., the consequences are suffered by you.

The purpose of the political ideal which the Founders espoused was to create a civilized society, i.e., one in which each man had the maximum potential to further his own life. They recognized that each man was ultimately responsible for his own life that this responsibility was inalienable. Hence, rights, which are simply those responsibilities restated from the perspective of a third party, a government, must be inalienable, too. For example, you are responsible for your life in that it is you who experiences it, so any society that you are a part of, if it is to be a civilized society, must recognize this fact. This recognition is the right to life.

So, to come back to our question previously asked, what are the consequences of disregarding rights? As we have seen, rights are the foundation of a civilized society, that is, one in which each man’s potential is maximized. The consequence, then, of violating rights – Natural (or Creator-given) Law – is the loss of a civilized society. This loss is suffered by everyone. It is suffered by you. Hence, the responsibility for ensuring that rights, your neighbor’s as well as your own, are not violated, rests firmly with you. And that responsibility is, of course, inalienable.

And, it is with this article that I attempt, with what little power I have, to convince my fellow man not to give up his rights, the consequences of which I find devastating. May God, Nature, and the Universe, help me to do that!

There are quite a few so-called “libertarian” groups touting so-called “anarcho-capitalism”. To my mind this term is nothing but an oxymoron that serves to confuse people who have otherwise correct instincts. This might be because one of the apparent proponents of the idea was none other than Murray Rothbard. It’s possible, then, that this is just a case of guru-worship. At any rate, these are my views on the subject.

Before getting into a debate about complex philosophical topics like this, it is always a good idea to carefully define terms, so here are my definitions. Keep in mind that, as I will be discussing an ideal, I am using terms in the normative sense, that is, for example, law as it should be not law as it currently legislated. In other words, we are discussing theory and not practice.

• Politics – the study of the proper structure of a collective such that each individual within that collective has the maximum freedom to act ethically[1]
• Law – the body of ideas which delimit the manner in which individuals may act within society such that the political goal is achieved
• Government – the organized enforcement of law. A proper government is, in essence, a collective form of self-defense (and self-defense is the only lawful use of force.[2])
• Anarchy – the absence of organized law enforcement
• Capitalism – the economic ideal under which anyone may aspire to ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is the natural development of a proper political system.

Now, it should be clear from the above definitions that anarchy and capitalism are incompatible. Capitalism is the result of a proper system of government – i.e., it develops from a political (collective) system under which the individual’s rights to property are respected and the recognition of those rights is enforced. Without such enforcement, there is no means of dealing with criminals other than for each individual to engage in war each time he encounters one.

Now the so-called “agency-theorist” will argue that through freedom of association individuals are “free” to band together to protect themselves. This is true, however, the moment they do, organized law enforcement is born, at least within the collective, and there is no longer a state of anarchy. Everything external to that collective, however, is still potentially in a state of war – only now it is war between tribes.

Now, the same anarchist may argue that these “small” governments are preferable to the large centralized one. Again, this depends upon the state of the “small” government. If it is a criminal government, the same problem exists – the potential for tribal warfare. If they are not criminal then of course there is a consistency of law and so which “tribe” you belong to is largely irrelevant. It is for precisely this reason that there will always be a natural tendency towards centralization. Any proper government which encounters a criminal one is justified in removing the criminal government if it is within its power to do so. In fact, if it were possible to ensure that criminals could never gain control of the machinery of government, a world government would be ideal. Yet of course, this is impossible – the very thing that makes a proper government necessary is the very thing that threatens it – the existence of criminals.

It is because of this fact that government can only ever approach the ideal, it can never reach it. This is not a defect specific to Man – it is a defect of life itself. All living things are subject to ignorance and uncertainty and it is ignorance and uncertainty which breed crime, on the parts of both the perpetrator and the victim. Only a state of perfect knowledge would allow for a perfect government – but of course in a state of perfect knowledge no government would be needed.

That life is subject to ignorance is a priori true and from this it follows that there is no such thing as Utopia. The “agency theorists” make the same error that the socialists and globalists make. They assume that a “fool proof” government is possible. But fools make excellent criminals and even better victims. For this reason, neither world government nor anarchy will ever prevent tyranny, injustice or war. As many wise men have pointed out, liberty requires constant vigilance. This is not idle talk. There is no short cut.

The belief that a short cut exists and talk of the means to achieve it serve only to facilitate the eventual decline of a proper government. The populace becomes complacent, believing they cannot be victimized, and greater and greater ignorance of political matters becomes the norm. It is this ignorance that eventually leads to the criminal takeover of the machinery of government and so governments, like the population, have a life cycle with a difference only in the relative length of time they persist.

Does this mean that Man should not strive for ideals? After all, they are only approachable, and never fully realizable. This is a little like saying that one should not attempt to prolong his life because he must inevitably die. As with the question of life and death, recognizing these truths can only help us to better approach the ideals.

Some means of preserving a proper government do exist and are generally attempted. Democracy, for example, minimizes the ignorance of any one man, federation, i.e., the maintenance of local governments, checks the power of the central government, separation of powers limits the effects of any one arm of government, representation sets up a system of local responsibility, etc. Even so, these ideas can only maintain a proper government when the people are vigilant. None of them is “fool-proof” and none of them ever can be.

It should now be clear that our personal values are inextricably linked with and dependent upon the knowledge and vigilance of our fellow man. It is of this fact that criminals are least aware. They imagine that slaves can approach the productivity of free men. They confuse relative wealth with absolute wealth and imagine that there will always be a supply of able men to plunder, even as they murder all the able men. All man can hope for is to stamp out such ignorance whenever he encounters it. No one wants to hear this. But burying one’s head in the sand is exactly what needs to be avoided. Anarchy, which is essentially the return to a primitive existence, is certainly not the answer.

Notes:

[1] a discussion of this is a bit outside the scope of my article, but I will try to make this a little clearer for those who are new to the subject. Because knowledge remains unalterably dispersed among individuals, no man or group of men will ever be in a position to determine what action is for another man the ethical action. This determination must always be made by the acting individual alone and therefore he must always be as free as possible to make that determination – even if he may ultimately err. It is to ensure this freedom that laws are instituted which prohibit to men those acts which interfere with his neighbor’s identical freedoms. This is the basis for the ideal known as Natural Law.

[2] Please note that government is NOT defined as a “monopoly on the use of force”. This idea contains within it the notion that government rightfully exercises some power that is forbidden to the people. Under a proper government the citizens retain the individual right to self-defense and the only purpose of government is the defense of the collective. A proper government might under certain conditions err and imprison an individual who has exercised this right because it is often difficult determine that an act was performed in defense. It is for this reason that citizen are generally expected to leave law enforcement to the government. Nevertheless, I think it’s important not to confuse this with a “monopoly” on force.

One of the virtues of being a generalist is the ease with which one can often detect a con. While the specialist examines the bark of a single tree, the generalist sees the forest for the trees. The generalist’s overall knowledge of surrounding area often gives him vital clues, even before any specialized investigation begins. For that very reason the con man often attempts to envelop his intended victim in a specialized and intimidating language where the victim will no longer be able to identify contradictions on his own. Once the victim’s reasoning is crippled, there will be no choice but to rely on the opinions of the “experts”.

Enter Mr. Karl Denninger, a financial writer who has written several articles that attempt to undermine the case for “hard” money. In Sound Banking A Capitalist Imperative Mr. Denninger invokes the specialized field of accounting hoping to convince the reader that fractional reserve banking is not fraudulent and creates no new money. To the generalist, who can already place “fractional reserve banking” in its proper historical geopolitical context sans accounting, Denninger’s assertion is preposterous on its face.

Nevertheless, there remains good reason to proceed with a full investigation of Denninger’s “accounting” claim. If the generalist is able to decode the specialist language, he will not only deepen his own understanding but he will also be able to more easily communicate his argument to others. Let us put aside Mr. Denninger’s complex and incorrect accounting example for the moment and start from the beginning, with a much simpler example, a pawn shop with one item pawned in exchange for a 20 dollar loan:

Liabilities and Assets balance because the ring is in possession of the pawn shop. The balance sheet indicates that there has been no fraud or theft because liabilities and assets balance to zero. Indeed this is the philosophy and very reason for the existence of the accounting field. “Accounting” for things is merely the objective operation of ensuring that nothing has been lost or stolen, assets and liabilities must balance out. Despite the taxman’s best efforts to corrupt the accounting field with a myriad of endless depreciation schedules, accounting will never be able to determine wealth or value. Measuring wealth will always depend upon an individual’s particular context and situation. Accounting can certainly be a useful tool for clarifying and presenting data but it will never be able to objectively decide a hierarchy of values — that always requires the individual. The science of accounting will never replace the art of business.

Now that we understand the purpose of accounting and why the numbers are supposed to balance out, let’s attempt the same accounting example with a bank:

Again the numbers seem to balance out. Could Denninger be right?! But what happens once we try to physically verify where the entries are? Everything is verified except of course the depositor’s cash which is nowhere to be found! It appears only as an electronic blip worth as much as the numbers in front of you now.

Classical accounting fraud – the reason for audits

In the pawn shop example, if you discovered that the ring was missing from the shop’s inventory you would realize the pawn shop accounting numbers that seemed to balance out as electronic blips were actually a fraud. The same accounting logic that applies to pawn shops must apply to banks as well. Classical accounting fraud involves having false entries that do not correspond to physical reality, the numbers still seem to balance out, however one of the entries is a lie.

The auditing process – verifying each accounting entry is similar to verifying each syllogism of a mathematical proof. Only if each link in the chain of reasoning is correct can one proceed to validate the bottom line. In our example, our auditor discovers that not only is the Depositor’s Cash line a fraud but the $20,000 of reserve labeled as a bank asset mysteriously has the same identification numbers as some of the missing cash originally deposited by the bank’s customer!

How it is even worse than that because of the reserve multiplier

If the depositor hired an investigator to trace where the rest of the cash went he would find it residing in other banks as their cash reserves. If this bank was the only one in town the balance sheet might eventually look like this:

Obviously this process could continue until all $200,000 of the original depositor’s cash is listed as Bank Reserves. The overall deposits for customers would total 2 million dollars. Each of the deposit entries has no physical cash and is manifested only as an electronic bank credit. Nevertheless, Denninger concludes that his definitions are correct:

Ok, having settled on definitions, we will now turn to the fundamental reality of fractional reserve banking. Many people claim that banks “create money” or “print money.” This is not true; a bank recycles money, that is, it increases the velocity of a given amount of money in circulation, but an ordinary bank (not a Central Bank) never creates new money.

The sheer absurdity of Denninger’s claim is now exposed – regular banks must create new money out of electronic blips or they must commit fraud. Only because the electronic blips presented by banks are considered to have unique and magical properties is criminal prosecution avoided – namely that the electronic blips of banks are the creation of entirely new money.

Cash (paper) and Bank Credit (electronic blips in banks only) is the modern analogy to the gold and paper receipts of the past. Banks create credit and by doing so expand the money supply, nothing less than a euphemism for legalized counterfeiting. The accounting example above also explains why every electronic blip of bank credit (money creation) leaves a legacy of debt on the other side of the ledger. Is it any wonder why so much debt exists in the World today?

In another article Mish “Hard Money” Goes Off The Rails Mr. Denninger takes a completely different tack in trying to undermine the excellent case for hard money made by Mike Shedlock. This time Mr. Denninger attempts to provide a metaphysical justification for expanding the money supply as both natural and inevitable:

I walk into the forest (grow) and cut down trees (mine) which I then process into lumber (manufacture.) I dig up some iron ore (mine) and turn it into steel nails (manufacture.) With these two items I now construct a house (manufacture.) That house (and all the products that I used to make it) are in fact money. They were the product of mining, growing, and/or manufacturing. Each of these acts is in fact the creation of money.

Yet who decides to create the money from the house?! If Mr. Denninger constructs his own $500,000 house can I print myself $500,000 dollars (or even easier just enter the amount electronically into my bank account)? Can I then proceed to buy the house with my newly minted money? Can Mr. Denninger who built it? Apparently neither of us, somebody else has that privilege. A naive person might say “society”, those who suspect something is wrong would probably say “government”, while those who are in the know will tell you “the private banking cartel” of course!

In any case, Denninger’s concrete example is ultimately founded upon his own flawed definition of money, a definition that has conveniently confused the terms “money” and “wealth”:

Money: The product of either growing something, mining something or manufacturing something. “Money” is actual wealth, and comes into being only through creation. Ultimately, all money is traced to the only “free lunch” that exists in this solar system, that is, the power of The Sun, although in many cases (e.g. mining) the activity is in fact discovery of previously-created wealth (by the actions of The Sun) levered through human endeavor.

“Wealth” depends not only upon the individual person’s own definition but upon their particular location in time! “Money”, on the other hand, has an objective definition that can be easily quantified and agreed upon. Everyone agrees on how much “money” is needed to make 100 dollars, not everyone agrees on how much “wealth” they would personally ascribe to it. Should your organs be considered a new addition to society’s money supply?

Indeed, there is no way for banks to objectively grow money based upon “wealth” creation. Nor is there any reason to do so. Despite this fact banks create new money everyday with the most common excuse given to the public being the need to “stabilize” prices. Promoting themselves as defender of “stability”, they will never warn you that the “stability” they offer is the stability of a feudal system. For only a feudal lord seeks to “stabilize” prices – workers seek either an increase of their own wages or a decrease of their cost of living. Under a stable, fixed money regime the quality and quantity of goods is allowed to increase relative to the fixed quantity of money. The counterfeiter who instead “stabilizes” prices by destabilizing the quantity of money hinders the market process from producing an ever increasing prosperity. The ideal that people intuitively seek has never been stable prices but stable money.

All prices transmit important information to market participants and only when the quantity of money remains absolutely fixed in quantity is the price information of supply and demand transmitted “noise free”. The phenomena of boom and bust would disappear. Only with all counterfeiters removed, can the market operate as efficiently as possible.

Historical quest for the perfect money and cons perpetrated to profit from it

The desire to establish a fixed quantity of money has historically led to commodities such as gold and silver serving as money because such metals are the only commodities that can approach the abstract ideal of a stable money — readily fixed in quantity (new mines add little to the overall pre-existing quantity), easily portable, and difficult to counterfeit. Not surpisingly, Mr. Denninger also rails against such a fixed money supply based upon metal:

Mish and others like him are wrong because they have their premise incorrect. This incorrect base premise leads to shrill calls for that which will not work (hard currency) and in fact has a thousand-year plus history of not working to stop depressions and other serious economic imbalances.

Yet despite over a thousand years of history none of these people ever examine their premise to discover why these so-called “fixes” never, ever work. They instead wave their arms and try to come up with all sorts of other “explanations” for things like the Panic of 1873 and the Depression beginning in 1929 instead of examining the foundation of their premise and recognizing it’s infirmity.

Mr. Denninger’s superficial and deceptive historical commentary is an immense disservice to his fellow man and only exposes his own ignorance of the banking conditions that preceded the panics of 1873 and 1929. He assumes the rather naive notion that rulers have ever allowed a “hard currency” to exist without manipulation. Even old roman gold coins were diluted by the emperors. The gold gave the coins their appeal to the general public, the diluting copper gave the emperor his pound of flesh. As the coins became more diluted, prices rose. Every economic bust was the result of financial manipulation because every economic bust was preceded by the introduction of a legalized counterfeit. The consequent result is as inevitable as the series of events that follow a man jumping off the ground.

Perhaps the most concise definition of money is the best one: Money is the unique commodity that all sellers in a particular market agree to accept. Thus, the terms “money” and “market” become inextricably linked; the “market” being a group of sellers all of whom accept a common currency called “money”. Honey might be the currency of the beehive, while money is the currency of the rush hour commute. Using this simple paradigm, it becomes clear that there exists markets of all kinds each using their own currency. The obvious fact that certain proprietors are not interested or willing to sell their assets for a particular “money” should immediately dispel the illusion that “money can represent all wealth”.

Money serves a particular function no different than a nut or a bolt and like any tool has an optimal use. Unfortunately that use has been perverted to serve someone other than the ignorant public. If a central bank creates 100 billion dollars in a year, private banks can create one trillion dollars a year – conservatively speaking because the fractional reserve ratio only applies to checking accounts. A trillion dollars a year can change cultures, corrupt academic institutions and scientists, brainwash the public, create new religions and buy politicians. Perhaps it explains why the little mafias the world over have never been able to successfully engage in counterfeiting, perhaps it also explains why some people persist in the magical belief that banks can and should be doing something that nobody else can – turn electronic blips into money. To support his own belief in money creation, Mr. Denninger confuses “money” with “wealth” and in the process elevates money to life itself. He claims that hard money advocates engage in idolatry, while he himself requires money to be everything under the Sun.

In a previous post I suggested that when you eat an apple you might want to also eat the seeds which contain amygdalin, a substance that inhibits the growth of cancer cells. Recently, I came across an article published this year in the Internet Journal of Alternative Medicine entitled Inaccurate Reporting of the Effects of Laetrile: Mistreatment of Ellison, Byar and Newell. While I’m happy to see someone bringing this topic to the forefront again (it is especially timely in light of the recent court decision to force 13-year-old Daniel Hauser to undergo chemotherapy), I’m concerned about the effect it will have on the writer’s reputation. It seems that no matter how reputable you were before you argue in defense of Laetrile or amygdalin, you become a raving lunatic suitable for committal immediately after you do. (This, of course, is just one of the things that ought to make you suspicious.) Already here and there on the internet are the usual loud and bizarre complaints that “apricot kernels are poison!”, “there’s no evidence they cure cancer!”, and “these people are just trying to earn a profit off sick people!” as IF traditional chemotherapy is harmless, evidently cures cancer, and doesn’t make somebody somewhere a nice fat profit. All this while those who attempt to argue that Laetrile might actually work lose their credibility, their licenses to practice medicine, and sometimes their freedom. As John Stossel would say “Give me a break!”

For those of you who are new to this debate and may be struggling to figure out for yourself who is correct and who is deluded I have a few links for you to check out.

Eating Apricot Kernel in Egypt – This is a fascinating blog by a native Egyptian discussing the plants he likes to grow in his garden and the traditional foods made from them. He is apparently still alive and kicking despite eating these highly poisonous apricot kernels on a regular basis. And he points out that this practice has been going on in Egypt for thousands of years.

Contrast that with this article from 1979 (the height of the Laetrile controversy) published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Clinical Nutrition entitled Laetrile: the cult of cyanide. Promoting poison for profit. Just a few quotes from this obvious hit piece:

“The laetrile empire is a highly organized and lucrative industry using sophisticated computerized technology, levels of funding undreamed of by the “snake oil salesmen” of old, with enormous impact on federal, state, and local levels of government.  It has the ability by push-button to generate avalanches of mail, massive funding for candidates supporting laetrile. It has an interlocking network of direct mail, an interlocking network with other organizations promoting health quackery, exerts unrelenting pressures on elected officials, and is not above smearing and threatening responsible scientists who dare to challenge it.”

Now for those of you unfamiliar with the psychological principle of projection, this is really a bizarrely classic case of it. In truth Laetrile proponents are utterly powerless against the real culprit being described here. Do I really need to say more?

“The process of cyanide release from an apricot kernel is analogous to dropping a sodium or potassium cyanide pellet (these salts of cyanide are highly water soluble solids) in water or acid, the means of “gas chamber” executions in California and genocidal mass killings by the Hitler regime during World War II.  Ironically, various leaders of the Third Reich, including Himmler and Goering, ultimately committed suicide by bitting into, and thereby crushing, cyanide pellets.”

Yes, you heard that right. Now, take THAT you Egyptian farmers!

Despite all of this bad press,and contrary to what you might expect, there are still amygdalin studies being done today, but they are done mainly by Asian scientists. Here are two fairly recent articles from the Biological & Pharmaceutical Bulletin which is published by the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan:

Amygdalin Induces Apoptosis through Regulation of Bax and Bcl-2 Expressions in Human DU145 and LNCaP Prostate Cancer Cells (2006)

Antinociceptive Effect of Amygdalin Isolated from Prunus armeniaca on Formalin-Induced Pain in Rats (2008)

This one is from the Department of Pharmacology at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea and was published in The World Journal of Gastroenterology -Amygdalin inhibits genes related to cell cycle in SNU-C4 human colon cancer cells (2005)

In an interesting discussion on another blog, one skeptic points out that the two cancer studies above were done using in vitro cancer cells – meaning they are in a petri dish, not in a living organism (experiments that use living organisms are called in vivo). This is true and is a good point, however, they are put forward here not so much because they are proof of amygdalin’s efficacy, but because they show that these Asian scientists are in fact still interested in conducting experiments while all such experimentation is dismissed out-of-hand in the west. (The other experiment listed here has to do with controlling pain and it was done with live animals. This effect that was also noted by the original proponents of Laetrile.)

In response to the skeptic (or overly credulous depending on how you look at it) above I would like to mention that evidence of the efficacy of amygdalin was shown in positive animal studies that were done in the 70’s. They were performed by Kanematsu Sugiura at Sloan Kettering but they were never officially published. They were, however, leaked by individuals working at Sloan Kettering at the time. Although I have managed to obtain a copy of them, I unfortunately do not have an electronic version at this time and have not been able to locate one on the web. (Update: See Kanematsu Sugiura’s Sloan Kettering studies here.) There is, however, an article written in 1976 by investigative reporter David M. Rorvik entitled Laetrile: The Goddamned-Contraband-Apricot Connection that is available online and that provides a good overview of the entire controversy.

For me, the apparently desperate attempts from the powers that be to prevent people from learning about the nutritional effects of amygdalin, (reference the insane quotes listed above), the fact that people have been eating foods containing it for thousands of years, Sloan Kettering’s suppressed positive animal studies showing an inhibitory effect on tumors in mice (bred specifically to spontaneously develop cancer), the fact that other scientists from around the world are still interested in studying it, proponents’ intelligent statements regarding the medical establishment’s focus on the size of tumors rather than the number of malignant cells in them, and the fact that it is present in a host of otherwise particularly nutritious foods, (apricot seeds, apple seeds, millet, lingonberries, mulberries, and blackberries to name a few) provide evidence that amygdalin does in fact have anti-cancer properties. You will still need to decide for yourself.

This post is again inspired by an article from The Freeman, the magazine for the Foundation for Economic Education. In thinking about it now, I imagine that today I would disagree on some level with a great many of the articles published in the Freeman over the years. Some ideas are more distressing than others, though. For example, in a recent letter to the editor, Stephen C. Apolito corrects Howard Baetjer on the definition of inflation. Baetjer responds saying he agrees “with Murray Rothbard’s aversion to government-issued fiat money, largely because I believe that governments and their central bankers cannot possibly know how large the money supply should be” and he thinks that “when people wish to hold more money, banks should create more money. When they wish to hold less, banks should extinguish some.”

Banks should be creating and extinguishing money? In the words of the Freeman itself “It Just Ain’t So!” Whether “free banking” or no, banks shouldn’t be messing with the supply at all. Here’s why.

Why the Ideal Money Supply is of a FIXED and Arbitrary Quantity

First, let’s think about what money actually is. Money is NOT the “most sought after good”, although it usually develops from that. Yes, money is a “medium of exchange”, but defining money so generally doesn’t tell you anything about what serves as the ideal. In addition to its function facilitating exchange (or as part of it) money serves also as a “data storage” device and it facilitates calculation by keeping track of who owes what in terms of goods. In that sense, it is essentially an IOU.

I think some confusion over this concept stems from the fact that money usually develops spontaneously from a commodity, usually the most “sought after good”. But, money does not have to be a commodity. It can be sticks with carved notches (the tally sticks of Medieval England for example), numbers in a ledger, or blips in a computer.*

Now in real life, it’s nearly impossible to separate any legitimate money from a commodity. (You’ll see why I use the term legitimate in a minute). The reason is that any attempt to do so leaves open the ability to rig the tally. For this reason, the commodity chosen to be money is usually something rare and difficult to obtain more of. A good money generally has to have other properties, too, like being easily divisible, and every divided piece must be identical to the others. (This property is known as fungibility.) This is the reason that elements like gold and silver make such terrific money. The quantity of gold or silver in circulation at any given time is pretty much fixed because it is so difficult to mine and because it is a commodity which is used up to some degree (although gold and silver, as elements can always be reclaimed from waste, it is often expensive to do so.) Now of course, gold and silver are actual commodities and so the amount in circulation at any given time can and should shrink and grow. But it is for this reason that the concept money gets confused with the concept commodity in people’s minds. Money as a concept (Aristotle might have said money qua money) ought to be fixed in quantity. The quantity itself is irrelevant because money as a concept can be infinitely divided. It doesn’t matter how many goods there are, the money can be divided to accommodate any price. (Aren’t numbers beautiful?)

Just to make this really clear, let’s take a look at how it would work. Let’s say there are only 5 “blips” to go around and there are, at the start of our make believe society, exactly 5 baskets of goods. (In real life you could never divide all the goods and services in the world this way. No matter. Your brain just needs to simplify it in order to understand it. We can apply it to the real world later.)

Now we can see that each basket is worth 1 blip. What happens if the amount of goods increases to 10 baskets?

Now each basket is worth 1/2 a blip.

But what happens if our society is really productive. Suppose we end up with 10,000 baskets of goods! (Now that IS productive.)

How much is each basket worth now? We just divide 5 by 10,000 (can you DO that? Yes!) and we get each basket is worth 0.0005 blips!

Obviously with real commodity money this could get difficult. But conceptually, it’s doable and money is a concept. Even with a physical commodity money, chances are we would never need to adjust the amount of money in circulation because the arbitrary figure would be large enough to start with.

Now, why don’t I take into account the number of people in the society? The number of people in a society is not relevant to the money supply because money represents goods, not people. As long as any particular person is productive and produces goods, he ought to end up with some money, but it’s his goods (or services) which are traded for it.

Why is the ideal money supply fixed in quantity? Because modern money, unlike commodity money, is essentially a tally system. Money represents the portion of the supply of goods and services in an economy that you have a claim to. There is never any guarantee that you will get any particular amount of goods and services; the money represents a percentage of the goods and services available. If there is a hurricane that wipes out a portion of the supply of goods and services, you will suffer just like everyone else. When the supply of money changes, however, your proportion of the supply of goods and services changes.

Again, the truth is more complicated, but let’s looks at it simplified.

Suppose you have 2 electronic blips. The supply of money is 10 electronic blips. The amount of goods and services in our little world is 10 baskets. You therefore have a claim to 2 of them. That gives you 20% of the supply.

But, what happens if the money supply increases? You still have 2 electronic blips, but now the supply of money is 20 electronic blips. The amount of goods and services in our little world is 10 baskets. You now have a claim to 1 of them or only 10% of the supply.

Where did your other 10% go? It went into the pockets of the holders of the new money. And what did they do to earn it? Nothing.

It gets worse, however. In the above example, the pie remained the same. In a healthy economy, though, the pie does not remain the same. It grows. This allows those who keep the tally to skim quite nicely. If you only look at the “price” you are getting, you will never realize what is happening to you. Let’s look at it.

As you can see, although the “price” you pay and the number of baskets you get has remained the same, you still lost out. This is the effect of a growing money supply. And it gets worse still, because a growing (or shrinking) money supply means that calculating a profit or loss from a business becomes impossible. As this continues or worsens, business activity falls and the pie shrinks!

Why “Fractional Reserve Banking” is Always and Forever Fraud.

Now before we go on, it is necessary to understand how banks work. This is a complicated subject and I am going to take some liberties again in order to simplify it for you. First, why do we need banks?

Banks, as a concept (again Aristotle, and some other writers you may encounter might say banks qua banks), facilitate the use of money for productive enterprise. They do this by borrowing one individual’s money and lending it to another individual. For the service, banks (qua banks) take a portion of the interest the borrower pays (and sometimes some other fees). Interest, despite what you might have heard elsewhere is the necessary cost of borrowing. When you lend someone else your money you don’t have it anymore. You cannot spend it until the other person pays you back. That time is worth something and you should be compensated for it. That’s what interest does. Also included in interest payments are other factors, like what the risk is that the other person won’t be able to pay you back and in situations where the money supply is not fixed, how much inflation you can expect before the person pays you back.

This service performed by banks might not seem like much, but it is really the cornerstone of a modern economy. Think of it this way. If you decided to simply save your money in a mattress, the entrepreneur down the block who is planning to introduce an entirely new technology that will enhance your life experience 10 fold may never get the chance to introduce that technology. By lending to others we ourselves are ultimately rewarded. For this reason, banks (qua banks) are essential.

Because money and lending are so essential to a proper economy, bankers, if they are not ethical, are in a position to attain extreme power over others. They do this by obfuscating and confusing people into believing that the supply of money needs to “expand” and “contract” according to demand. This would be the case if the money were commodity based, like gold and silver. In that case the supply would expand and contract naturally based on the cost of mining and bankers would have no hand in it. Today, there is no commodity money. Today we are using a tally system with the quantity of the blips, or pieces of paper, expanding and contracting according to the whim of the banker. (It is important to note that your neighborhood banker is likely completely unaware of this. He is simply doing a job. In the US the “banker” would be the Federal Reserve, but there is likely a world system with bankers who control the Federal Reserve, too. For this reason, I don’t recommend confronting your neighborhood banker with what you learn here unless of course your goal is to help him understand.)

So, how does an ideal banking system work?

In an ideal banking system, if you lend someone your money, you cannot spend it until they pay it back. If you did, that would be kind of like having your cake and eating it, too, wouldn’t it? The modern CD or Certificate of Deposit account is closest to the ideal banking system. When you open a CD you are agreeing to lend your money to the bank for a specified length of time. For the use of your money the bank pays you a fee – the interest rate. During that specified length of time you do not have the use of your money. The bank might let you take it anyway if you need it sooner, but only after a delay and a penalty. The reason they do this is because they have promised that money to someone else as a loan and now they will have to ask that person to pay back the loan sooner. If you were the borrower in this case, you wouldn’t like that very much. (The reality is of course more complex than this – the bank might not need to ask for the money back, but they might have to turn down another loan to someone else because of it.)

Today, savings accounts, checking accounts, and other types of deposits can be “loaned out” even though technically you haven’t loaned the bank any money and you can supposedly claim it at will.

Now, how does “fractional reserve” banking work?

In the old days of the gold standard, paper money represented gold stored in a vault. It was simply easier to carry around a paper claim check than it was to carry around gold, which is heavy and hard to secure. For this reason people usually traded the claim checks and only rarely presented them to the banker to get their gold back. Nevertheless, the amount of claim checks in circulation was directly related to the amount of gold in a banker’s vault, therefore the supply of claim tickets would shrink and grow as people deposited more or redeemed claims. This wasn’t a problem because the gold was still the money and the paper just a substitute. As time went on, however, the claim checks became more and more standard and the people’s trust in them grew. At some point a banker realized that he could make a profit by “loaning out” the gold in his vault. He didn’t really have to remove any of the gold from the vault though; he could just print more claim tickets. In this case, each ticket is supposed to represent the same weight in gold, but in fact, it does not.

This is fraud.**

This is also the beginning of “fractional reserve banking.” The phrase “fractional reserve” is a banker’s euphemism. There is no reserve. The “fraction” is simply the amount of gold that the banker doesn’t print double tickets for. For example suppose the banker wants to keep a 10% “fractional reserve.” This just means that 10% of his claim tickets can be redeemed for gold before he goes bust. It also means that 90% of his claim tickets are fakes.

Now in modern times there is no gold at all. The “reserve” today is simply a percentage of the wealth that is deposited with the banks. I say “wealth” because that is the only way I can describe money which represents a real portion of the supply of goods and services as compared to money which represents nothing. In fact it is not so easy to divide like this. Unlike the gold claim tickets where the lucky few who managed to redeem their claim tickets before the banker went bust actually got the amount printed on the ticket, today there is no “amount” of anything on the ticket and it is the luck of the draw whether or not a person manages to get the full claim – in fact this may not even be calculable.

Now of course the above represents a very simplified explanation of how our modern banking systems work and how they should work. But I think it serves as a good starting point for understanding why no one – not even the government – ought to be messing with the amount of money out there. This concept is going to become more and more important for people to understand as we come to rely less and less on an actual object in our daily exchanges. Cash even in the form of paper is probably on its way out. Even today, the bulk of exchange is handled by computerized blips that have no physical representation outside of cyberspace. While convenient, this modern tally system is (and has been) an extremely dangerous state of affairs – something I think a lot of average people are starting to notice these days. I hope this article (and my previous articles The Basics: Money, Inflation and Deflation and The Basics: Banking, Inflation and Deflation) will help demystify the process somewhat.

Notes:

*I’ve gotten some questions regarding my use of the term “commodity” in this article. If you are using the term “commodity” to include any item that a person might want, money would certainly be a commodity. But, I think it’s important when defining terms not only to be clear but to have the terms be useful. I do not think it is particularly useful to define “commodity” in a way that does not differentiate money from the things it is used to buy – therefore money to me is not a commodity.

**Also known as counterfeiting. I don’t like this term, however, because some people will mistake counterfeiting as printing money against the wishes of the government. The government has no business printing money, either.

This is a just pet-peeve of mine. I sometimes hear arguments regarding the ‘consent’ clause of the Declaration of Independence that seem to imply that one must consent to a just government and from that follows the idea that anything goes as long as one consents.

I have to weigh in on this.

In a truly just system there is no such thing as ‘consent’. Consent is implied by the fact that the system is just. I need no signatures, I need no approval. Justice is justice – period.

Now I understand that this might be confusing to some people. Especially those who believe in the concept of relativism, i.e., the idea that there is no independent or objective truth upon which ethics or politics is based. Proof of an objective reality is a bit outside my scope at the moment (although my recent post on Descartes’ Proof of the Existence of God might interest you if you are looking for this). I imagine, though, that the vast majority of my readers take the existence of an objective reality for granted except when normative sciences are involved. In other words, most people’s epistemologies are hopelessly split. Nevertheless, I’m going to make an attempt to show that true justice does not require consent by creating an example from a law that practically no one would find unjust – the law that requires men to abstain from murdering one another. Let’s suppose that for the sake of argument a group of individuals develop a society and all consent in writing to abide by this rule.

Shortly thereafter a stranger comes into town. He murders a citizen in town and is brought to trial for the murder. His defense? Well, he never consented to such a law!

Absurd? Of course it is. This notion follows for ALL just laws. Just is of course an important distinction. If you have a wily relativist view of things, justice will have utterly no meaning and you will not be able to create anything remotely like a just society. You will be busy trying to uphold all kinds of crazy and unjust laws. (If you’re interested in discovering just what justice is and how we know it, I recommend reading some of Ayn Rand’s work. As I mentioned in a previous post Rand is one of the very few philosophers who have a full and consistent understanding in this area.)

Some time ago a friend of mine attempted to counter the above argument with precisely the opposite approach; that anything goes as long as one consents. (This is really a very good thing to do when you are trying to understand a new concept. Take whatever it is you are trying to understand to its logical extreme.) He was imagining that there could exist a society of people who together agreed that to be a part of their society one must consent to never defend himself. Could such a society even exist without breaking it’s own rules? Of course not. The first time someone DID defend himself the society would either need to take action (i.e. defend itself thereby breaking it’s own rule) or else ignore the law, at which point, it ceases to have any meaning.

The point here is, don’t get hung up on the idea of ‘consent.’

The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution are by no means perfect – even as originally written. Nevertheless, when you are reading something that was written at some point long in the past, I think it’s important to remember that languages change and evolve. Words that had one meaning then have a different meaning now, and if you read those works understanding only the current meaning, you are going to be confused. (This problem is compounded when a work has been translated from a foreign language written centuries ago! Remember that when you are studying ancient religious texts that weren’t even written down until centuries after they were conceived!)

Here is the original passage from the Declaration of Independence that includes the ‘consent’ portion:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

I recommend that when you read such terms as self-evident, creator, created, unalienable, just powers, and consent, you immediately try to define them and put them into a coherent whole. No small feat, admittedly, but if you are arguing about the use of the word ‘consent’ you are clearly at this level. The trick is not to get stuck there!

From The Ayn Rand Lexicon:

Prior Certainty of Consciousness:

Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): “the prior certainty of consciousness,” the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one’s consciousness —which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one’s consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform. What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with the Witch Doctor’s blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perceptions—then of sensations.

When the medieval Witch Doctor had merely ordered men to doubt the validity of their mind, the philosophers’ rebellion against him consisted of proclaiming that they doubted whether man was conscious at all and whether anything existed for him to be conscious of.

In a recent post I mentioned that I am reading René Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. As I was reading, I vaguely remembered a passage from Rand’s For the New Intellectual (which also appears in The Ayn Rand Lexicon) where Rand was critical of Descartes. Now that I am reading Descartes for myself, I decided to go back and look up that criticism to see if I agreed with it.

Well, it seems pretty clear to me that Rand is wrong here. (Gasp!) It seems to me that without consciousness the external world can exist all it wants; I’m certainly not going to know it. Rand does not explain with what faculty she discovers that existence exists, she simply accepts it as a given or “self-evident” but I suspect that Rand herself would tell you that nothing is self-evident (except maybe that if I’m thinking I must exist!) And if in fact Descartes starts from the same point as “every witch doctor” he certainly doesn’t end up there. On the contrary, at least as far as I can see in my readings thus far, he ends up right where Rand begins – Existence Exists. In this regard I think Descartes is clearly more complete.

As far as Rand’s defining consciousness as being solely the perception of an external world, I think Descartes makes it perfectly clear that perception is useless without the faculty of understanding.

…the sense of sight assures us no less of the truth of its objects than do the senses of smell or hearing, whereas neither our imagination nor our senses could ever assure of us anything if our understanding did not intervene.

If perception were all that was involved we would have no means of deducing anything at all and would essentially be unconscious machines.

Now I do expect a disagreement with Rand will bring out either a lot of complaints or a lot of hallelujahs, nevertheless, if you are not familiar with Ayn Rand’s works, I do suggest you read them. (And read them yourself. One thing I’ve discovered when it comes to philosophy is that you cannot rely on anyone else to get it right for you!) Where Rand really makes her mark is in the understanding of ethics, and as far as I know at this point she is really one of the only philosophers that properly defines ethics as being in relation solely to the individual himself. She is so obviously correct on this matter that I am still amazed to see how much more prevalent the opposing view is. So although I find her incomplete in her understanding of epistemology and metaphysics, at least as far as how the axioms that she chooses came to be deduced, she begins her ethics with the right axiom nonetheless and is really unparalleled in this area.

I’ll have more to say on Descartes as I continue my readings. I’ll be sure to link back here, so check the comments for pingbacks.

Recently I wrote a post called Pondering the Universe in which I laid out some ideas regarding consciousness and metaphysics that I have been examining. In that post, I mention Descartes’ views about the nature of consciousness or the ’soul’. To get a better idea of exactly what his views are on this topic, I decided to read for myself René Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. I am very much enjoying my reading, but it is by no means easy. If you are interested in picking up a copy, make sure you get a good translation. I recommend Donald A. Cress’ translation, which you can buy following the above link.

I have only finished reading Discourse on Method and still have Meditations to go. Nevertheless, I’m going to throw my ideas out there in the hope that I can start up some conversation. By all means comment with your thoughts.

Here, so far, are my understanding of one of Descartes’ most famous proofs – the proof that God exists.

1. I think, therefore I exist
2. I doubt, therefore I am not perfect
3. That I am not perfect implies the existence of something that is perfect upon which I depend – i.e., God

That’s the proof in a nutshell. It is really quite elegant, but I think rather misunderstood. The problem isn’t the proof, but rather the use of the term “God”.

The term “God” is an equivocation. It has so many connotations packaged into it that it is all but useless for communication today. Two people discussing “God” may have such entirely different ideas about what they are talking about in the first place that agreement on anything related is utterly impossible. Today, any philosophical use of the word is shunned because it implies a religious viewpoint (i.e., a viewpoint based on faith rather than on reason). At the time when Descartes was writing his philosophy, the religious environment was even more strongly charged. The Roman Catholic Church was particularly powerful and defying it could cost you your life. To make the proof easier for modern readers to understand it is probably worth it to replace the word God with “truth” or “external reality” or simply “another being”. The point is really that something other than me exists and my own existence is dependent on that thing. So we can rewrite the proof thus:

1. I think, therefore I exist
2. I doubt, therefore I am not perfect.
3. That I am not perfect implies the existence of something external to me upon which my existence depends

Breaking this proof down a little bit in order to understand it better:

1. I think, therefore I exist

This is pretty straightforward and even Descartes remarks that he has never had any problems with anyone arguing otherwise. 

1. I doubt, therefore I am not perfect.

Now, here there can be some issues. What exactly does Descartes mean by “perfect”? We can avoid that, I think, by saying something like this:

1. I doubt, therefore there is something I do not know.

To make this a little clearer realize that the act of doubting itself is an admission that one does not know something, if only that he does not know that he knows!

1. That there is something I do not know implies there exists something external to me upon which my existence depends

Descartes argues that in order for me to have a concept of something that I do not know, there must indeed exist something to be known, i.e., there must be something besides me in existence. If I were in fact the only being, I would have no means of obtaining such a concept from myself because as the only thing in existence I would, by necessity, be all-knowing.

Now because there is something to know and I do not know it, there must exist something else, but what’s more, this other thing must necessarily be superior to me, i.e., it must be something upon which my existence depends. Why is this necessarily so? Because if I were in fact superior to this other being, I would not lack what it represents.

Descartes seems to be saying also that all things of which I have can have any clear idea (a clear idea is anything non-contradictory) but that I am unable to produce for myself are ideas that I must have received from an entity other than myself and they must therefore exist in that entity. (Keep in mind that Descartes’ idea of God is not all-powerful in the sense that he cannot contradict himself – i.e., he cannot “create a rock too heavy for him to lift”.)

Think about that a bit if you’re not seeing it right away. Remember that Descartes starting point is I think therefore I exist and realize that this is the only axiom at this point.

Now, I am still in the process of reading and parsing this stuff, so I may revise this as time goes on. I will post my thoughts as they come to me so check the comments section for pingbacks. In the meantime, I do hope to see some discussion.

The Freeman is a magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education, a non-profit organization founded by Leonard Read in 1946. I’ve attended lectures at the Foundation’s mansion in Irvington-on-Hudson, NY since 2002. Lately, however, I have been a little bit disappointed with some of the things I’ve been reading in the Freeman. I’m not sure if it’s just signs that I’m outgrowing FEE or if it’s something else. One of the recent articles that I happened to come across is an article by Gene Callahan in which he introduces us to Michael Oakeshott (Michael Oakeshott on Rationalism in Politics, Jan/Feb 2009), a philosopher who, I must confess, I had never heard of.

Apparently, Oakeshott’s best-recognized work is his essay “Rationalism in Politics” which Callahan feels is not “appreciated widely enough.” Callahan explains that according to Oakeshott’s views, the philosophy of “rationalism” ought not be used in politics. To him, the “primary feature of the rationalist approach is the belief that the essentials of any human practice can be conveyed adequately by means of a ‘guidebook’ comprising explicitly stated rules, formalized technical procedures, and general abstract principles.” Oakeshott instead believes, according to Callahan, that the “rationalist, in awarding theory primacy over practice, has gotten things exactly backwards: The theoretical understanding of some activity is always the child of practical know-how and never it’s parent.”

Now, by the time I reached that statement in the article, I was already pretty confused. But, I really could not imagine how anyone could believe that practice precedes theory. Honestly, that makes no sense at all to me. What exactly qualifies as a “theory” to Oakeshott? What qualifies as “practice”? To my mind, practice is defined by theory. After all, what exactly are you “practicing”? I can’t think of a single human endeavor that doesn’t require abstract thought on at least some level in advance. What could Oakeshott possibly mean?

I don’t like to think that people are purposefully obfuscating. I know it happens. But people also make honest mistakes. Therefore, I’ve made some effort to try to see how someone could think that practice precedes theory. Perhaps what Oakeshott means is that humans must have some sort of experience before they can develop a theory or be in a position to reason, i.e., no idea is truly a priori, that is without some reference to sensory experience. Still, to simply experience something is not the same as practicing something.  If I burn my hand on a hot stove, I haven’t practiced anything yet. Almost immediately, however,  I will develop a theory of hot stoves and I will begin practicing that, namely, I will use that theory to avoid burning myself again.

It occurred to me that some people might be confused by the fact that as children we are often taught things without knowing where they came from – hence we learn from practice – and only at some later date do we work backwards to reveal the theory behind our actions. It’s important to realize, however, that our practice ultimately develops from someone else’s theory. Sometimes, we ourselves have done the theorizing, we just don’t remember that we’ve done it. Thanks to our big brains, this sometimes happens faster than we can realize – for example, we often pick up concepts sub-consciously. Think of many of the words you use on a daily basis. You know what they mean, but could you define them? One of my favorites is the word “game”. Everyone knows what qualifies and what doesn’t, but a definition usually requires running through examples in order to pinpoint the essentials.  In this case, it might seem like you are working backwards to discover the “theory” behind the word, but you already did the work, you just don’t remember doing it.

Another issue that might confuse people with regard to this idea is that evolution has endowed human beings with emotions which often seem to follow no theory. But in fact even emotions develop from a theory. They just eventually become so automated that we don’t remember how or why we have them. Emotions are in fact very raw versions of normative sciences. For example, vengeance is the emotional raw form of the normative science of law and compassion is a raw form of the normative science of ethics. Our understanding of these subjects occurs at such lightning speed that we don’t realize that the theory was ever there. But we ignore the fact that there is a theory at our own peril. Our so called “intuitive” theories – i.e., emotions, can sometimes be in contradiction with one another – if we don’t fix that we end up acting on our emotions to our own detriment.

It’s important to realize that theories exist on all levels of abstraction and like every other human endeavor, they are subject to human failings. What Oakeshott doesn’t realize is that his own position on practice preceding theory is in fact a theory. There is only one way a person gets away with not using a theory – and that brings me to Oakeshott’s view of practice.

Oakeshott asserts that “rationalists” believe that the “essentials of any human practice can be conveyed adequately by means of a ‘guidebook’ comprising explicitly stated rules, formalized technical procedures, and general abstract principles.” These don’t sound like very rational rationalists. They seem more like pragmatists to me. To my mind, a “guidebook” or list of explicit rules, or “formalized technical procedures” do not a theory make. These are, in fact, attempts to put a theory into practice. Theories, especially the normative kind (which is the kind that a political theory would be) are not really reducible to a list of rules because the context under which they are to be applied is constantly changing. We do it anyway, but only because there are many people who either can not or will not theorize and in order to help them practice the theory, we need rules. Hence, the normative science of law is put into practice as a list of legislated or concrete rules. The normative science of ethics is boiled down to ten commandments, and so on. But, do not mistake these “rules” for theory. They are practice pure and simple. And, as far as “abstract principles” go, these are but the starting point of a theory. In fact, there’s much more to it and that brings me to Oakeshott’s next issue.

According to Callahan, Oakeshott once criticized F.A. Hayek because he felt his ideas represented a “rationalist system” in their own right and, in Oakeshott’s words, “this is, perhaps, the main significance of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom – not the cogency of his doctrine, but the fact that it is a doctrine. A plan to resist all planning may be better than it’s opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics.”  In fact, as I understand it, Hayek points out that central planners lack information regarding “time and place.” Theories, being abstractions that are supposed to apply to all contexts, come necessarily with variables. A theory can be thought of as a kind of equation if you will, with variables (Hayek’s “time and place”) that need to be supplied in order for the equation to be useful at all. Hayek is essentially saying that central planners lack context and with that he hits the nail right on the head. This is exactly what they lack.

If central planners were indeed attempting to implement a “theory” they would quickly realize that they were lacking context. That this never occurs to them is a clue that they are NOT operating theoretically. Central planners are in fact hopelessly lost in practice, the very place Oakeshott thinks they ought to be!

That of course brings me to the REAL abstract principles that a free society is based upon. The theory upon which a free society is supposed to be based is known as “Natural Law.” You know, all those deducible principles like the one about men having property in themselves (a right to life) and all that logically follows from that? Central planners forget all that stuff, yet this is the theory upon which a proper government is based. It is also the theory that libertarian readers of the Freeman should recognize. Why then are they being asked to throw all that away and contemplate the pragmatism of Oakeshott? I think that’s a really good question.

Picturing the universe as a really just a bunch of infinite loops

The death of a loved one can send you into a metaphysical tailspin, so to speak. You want so much to believe that you will one day see them again. At the same time, if you’re like me, you want to puzzle it out with reason. But this is a question that is pretty close to the limits.

In my studies at this point, I’ve come across a lot of ideas that are impossible to integrate. One, which I’ve tried to depict in the painting above, is the concept of infinity. Infinity is really something you just have to accept because you can never really get your mind around it. Time, for example, and space, just ARE. There is no before, no after, no inside, no outside, and no cause. Everything else, though, has all those things. Reconcile that one. I’m still trying.

Recently, I saw a number of television shows on time, space, and on Einstein’s theory of relativity. One small bone I have to pick with them. They say Einstein didn’t want to believe that the “universe had a beginning” and so he didn’t accept his own discoveries. Well, to my mind Einstein, and the physicists that came after him, have only proved that the universe is BIGGER than we originally thought, not that it “had a beginning.”

With that aside, on the subject of consciousness, there are a lot of opinions. The study of the subject is unfortunately, like a lot of things, hence the painting above, an infinite loop. There are some things you must accept in order to say anything about consciousness, but you are sometimes later tempted by science to disgard what you had to accept in order to do the science. For example, I’ve heard people say meaningless things like “consciousness is an illusion” which of course makes you ask, who, exactly, is being illuded? To my mind, in order to do any science at all, one has to accept the reality of consciousness, the efficacy of one’s senses, and one’s power to reason. If consciousness were an “illusion” of course, all of science would crumble – and yet it is apparently from science that this idea comes. Oops!

I personally think that Descartes was right when he said that the only thing he could be sure of was his consciousness. His body, he said, might not be real, but the fact that he was thinking meant that he was. I think this is an essential starting point. Wherever and whatever the “you” that you experience is, it’s safe to say that it is. Descartes, in my opinion, took this a little too far and assumed that if his body might not be real, then his mind had to be something distinct. The problem with this is that his body might also be real with his mind being a creation of it.

I have a thought experiment that I haven’t yet seen discussed in the few sources I’ve perused (although I have seen it mentioned in terms of consequences AND on an episode of The Outer Limits!). It is the basic Star Trek transporter thought experiment. I have seen the question asked “Would you be transported by this device?” The answer basically tells you whether you believe there is some ingredient unique to you that will not be reproduced when the transporter “recreates you.”  In other words, you are not just a particular arrangement of atoms, but particular atoms at least in some area of your brain. My thought experiment is similar to the Outer Limits episode. Suppose a person is transported and his or her atoms are reassembled identically on the other side, but the original copy is not destroyed. The question is – will these two copies “see” out of each others’ eyes? If you think they won’t, then don’t get into the transporter! The irony is of course, that no one will ever know that “you” have ceased to exist.

But what is this unique element that is required as part of the  recipe that creates “you”? I can’t say whether it’s atoms, a particular arrangement of particular molecules of atoms, a quark, an electron, or what. I can’t say whether they are spread out over the brain or are in one place, or if in fact, they are simply a continuity of particular atoms that once a connection is made to other particular atoms are free to be replaced. All I can say is that some element must be unique. Anthony Martino, the other author on this blog, has dubbed this unique element the “consciousness particle”. (Well, he decided to change that to “perceptitron” by I personally still like “consciousness particle”.)

Another interesting thought experiment, but one that fails miserably in my opinion, is one postulated by David Chalmers, a philosopher with a particular interest in consciousness. He claims that being able to conceive of a zombie version of himself – a being that behaves exactly as he does, but does not possess consciousness means that consciousness must be something extra. This doesn’t quite work, because it might be impossible to create a being that behaves exactly the same way without consciousness. In fact, I think it’s better just to accept that it is.

Chalmers had another thought experiment though that I found very interesting. In this one, he postulates what a scientist stuck in a computer simulation, similar to what happened to Neo in the movie The Matrix. To Chalmers, that scientist could do all the science wants, but he will never discover where his “mind” is. That’s because his mind lies outside the system. This gets really interesting when you realize that if our (smaller version of the) universe had a beginning and is expanding, then there must be something outside of it. Spooky.

I’m sure as my studies continue, I’ll have more to say on this topic. I find that this type of discussion can get very emotional, not only because of the psychological aspects – and there are many – but because our language is lacking in concepts to discuss these things. Equivocations are everywhere. The word “consciousness” for example, is itself a huge one. It could mean simple awareness, or it could mean the products of a lifetime of study (what I would call, things you are conscious of.) Then of course, there’s the simple use of the term “I” or “you”. What represents you. Is it the entire content of you mind plus your awareness? Is it that continuity you feel as you learn and grow? Is the “you” of two seconds ago dead? (Not to say anything of the you of 5 years ago?)

I have a lot more questions. What are the basic necessities for a consciousness? I would say at least a rudimentary memory and some sensory input. We have computers that can do this now. Are they conscious? We would say they are not, but we can’t actually know because being conscious does not necessarily mean being able to report that fact.

All of these things may seem kind of futile. But at least some of what you accept here dictates what kind of life you are going to lead. In that respect, it might be worthwhile to pursue. At any rate, right now I have no choice. My mind is in an infinite loop. Hopefully, at some point, I will discover that I have the free-will to hit Ctrl-C.

Doublespeak is a type of logical fallacy known as equivocation. Equivocation is the use in a logical argument of a word that has two or more distinct meanings. The purpose of using Doublespeak is to evade real debate by confusing or obfuscating.

In any spoken language, words naturally change over time, either in form or in meaning, as the concepts of the people speaking it change. For example, the word “gay” once meant “happy” but today it is used to mean a person who is homosexual. Those who employ Doublespeak, however, are looking to force this change. Because words are automatically associated and do not need to be redefined with each use, the aspiring political activist can use them against an unsuspecting individual. He or she will use a word that people associate positively and which evokes a positive emotion to describe his or her own motives or plans, whether or not these words REALLY describe them.

People usually have no problem keeping two meanings for a single word straight. The reason they can do it is because they have the word in a context. For example, if I use the word “light” to describe a feather, you will probably assume I mean “not heavy.” If I use the word “light” to describe the color of the wall, you will probably assume I mean “pale.” Political activists can change the meaning of a word easily by simply removing contextual information, so that all that is left is the positive emotion. (Ayn Rand calls this context-dropping by the way.) Here are a few examples:

Freedom (from what?)

Liberal (about what?)

Conservative (about what?)

Left (of what?)

Right (of what?)

Missing contextual cues can lead to a lot of equivocations, but many words also have two meanings because one of the meanings is normative, i.e., deals with what OUGHT to be versus what IS. This is especially prevalent in the area of politics because there are two distinct meanings of the word “law” and therefore all the words that pertain to law, like crime for instance.

Law (as it is legislated)

Law (as it OUGHT to be – this is normative.)

Then of course some Doublespeak words are simply changed outright over time so that the past meaning – which some older people will still be using – and the current meaning – the one taught to children – will be different. Anyone who has looked into the history of political party affiliations has no doubt been confused as to what the meaning of Democrat or Republican was at any given time. Words like these are worse yet because they often have no definition at all, they are simply a list of beliefs which may or may not be consistent. (Ludwig von Mises calls this an ideal type, by the way.)

The important thing when dealing with Doublespeak is to simply ask yourself what the definitions of key words are and try to define them. This will usually expose a manipulator or evader for what he is.

In this new series – Beginner’s Doublespeak – I will periodically be exposing a Doublespeak word. If you come across them in your readings, by all means please comment, either here or in any Beginner’s Doublespeak post and expose them.

In the first part of this two-part series on inflation and deflation we discussed how money came to be used to facilitate trade. Metals were the best commodities for use as money because they were durable, relatively rare, and were easy to mold into identical pieces. As the wealth of people grew, however, they’re store of metals came to be heavy and difficult to secure. For this reason people came to rely on specialists to whom they would entrust their gold for a fee. In return they were given a paper receipt showing that they were entitled to retrieve a certain amount of gold from the vault. For the sake of clarity we’ll call this type of specialist a “deposit banker.” If you wanted to pay someone in gold, you would simply give them your receipts for the gold in your deposit banker’s vault. In this way, paper eventually traded as if it were the gold itself. Continued…

What exactly does it mean to be a “soft science”? Over the holidays I got into a discussion with a relative about just this topic. Economics, he told me, is a “soft” science, unlike physics which is a “hard” science. What exactly is the difference?

The word “science” itself is a somewhat fuzzy term. It can be defined as any form of rational inquiry, but it can also be used to describe a particular type of rational inquiry, that of inductive reasoning – i.e., the scientific method. For the purposes of my article, I would like to define science as any form of rational inquiry. Why will become clear a little later on.

So now, having defined that, we can ask the question, what is a “soft” science?

The idea of a “soft” science is, of course, even fuzzier. When people use the term they rarely know what they are trying to say. In the end, the term usually evokes a list of what the person believes are soft sciences and a definition has to be obtained by working backwards and figuring out what they all have in common. A “soft” science is almost always a science that is impacted in some way by human motives, aspirations, and emotions. The list usually looks something like this (depending on what the person includes in the term “science”):

Economics
Politics
Psychology
Ethics
Aesthetics

And of course, all the sciences that deal with human motives and emotions rarely predict anything and are subject to endless debate. It is assumed that the topics are either too complex – as is the case with economics – or that they are relative to whatever opinion you might hold – as is the case with all branches of philosophy. This is not a coincidence. People have powerful motives to obfuscate and confuse both themselves and others with regard to these topics and the reason for that is obvious. Continued…

It sounds strange to a lot of people that both deflation and inflation are being talked about right now as if they could possibly happen at the same time. If inflation is rising prices, and deflation is falling prices, how could they happen at the same time? In fact, there are two distict meanings for the terms “inflation” and “deflation” which are often confused and interchanged, one that is common to the average person, a general rise or fall in the level of prices, and one that is more often used by economists, a rise or fall in the amount of money in circulation. Generally the latter leads to the former, but this is not always the case. For this reason we are going to be strict with the usage of these terms in this article. We will always mean a rise or fall in the level of money in circulation.

The method of inflation in the modern world is a complicated process, but we can simplify it dramatically for the purposes of understanding it. To understand what inflation is, you must first understand what MONEY is. That might seem simple, money is the green stuff you buy your bread with, right? Yes, of course. But how it got that way is not so apparent and because of that many people take it for granted without ever understanding it conceptually. Continued…

You do not have a RIGHT to medical treatment. That’s right, you heard me. You do not have a RIGHT to medical treatment, PERIOD.  Let that sink in a bit.  We’ll come back to it.

Now, there is a whole lot wrong with socialized medicine. Economically, of course it is a disaster. However, the economics of it can be somewhat difficult for the average person to understand, so I’m going to start with the more fundamental reason why socialized medicine is in the words of my old biology teacher “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”.

Unfortunately, public education teaches us next to nothing about those subjects that are the most important for our survival in a civilized society. Philosophy (ethics, politics) are taboo in school (and also at work), economics is not taught at all (not even how to balance a checkbook), history is not taught or is made so boring as to torture the students.  The problems with socialized medicine (really socialized anything-at-all) are related to two of these taboo areas – philosophy (politics) and economics. History would also teach us that socialized anything-at-all is a complete failure, but that would be a statistical analysis and we can do better than that. Philosophy and economics will provide the answer a priori, i.e., solely through logic.

Politics is the study of the best way to live with other people. If you want to live only by yourself, you do not need to study politics (but you would need to study ethics.) Some great thinkers have done a lot of the work for us with regard to how best to live with other people. They have discovered a concept called “rights.” Rights are a negative concept. That means that you have a right to be left alone, not a right to be taken care of. (One way to remember this is to realize that everyone has the same rights. If we all had a right to be taken care of, who would provide the care? If it turned out to be you, what about your right to be taken care of?) Rights are not granted by Washington. They are not granted by anyone, period. Rights are an idea, a concept, that one must follow if one wishes to live in a civilized society.  They are not someone’s opinion. They are not granted by majority rule and they cannot be taken away by majority rule or any other rule. They are absolute. I know, this sounds crazy. Bear with me. Continued…