My Facebook feed today had a link to an article from last year by The Objective Standard on homicide statistics. The article looked at claims that if the murder rate of blacks was the same as that for whites, then the United States would have a very low murder rate which would rank 147th in the world. After dissecting the numbers the article’s author pointed out the cultural causes for the disparity in murder rates.
The first comment to the article made a claim that in the 1960s many people
A question from Politix popped up for me today asking:
Do you wish there were more conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans around?
Here is my response:
I wish there were more radicals, yes radical, not moderate, for individual rights and liberty. When you talk of conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans you are essentially asking for people who believe it is ok to violate your rights, but just a little. This ignores the fact that any violation of rights leads inevitably to further
In re-reading Atlas Shrugged I am definitely seeing more than I did the first time. Or rather, I am better able to see parallels between Atlas and today’s world. Today I read the following in the chapter with the discussion of Directive 10-289 which would give the government complete control
In the last year or so there have been many comparisons between events in reality and those depicted in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Many articles and internet memes pointed out the similarity between the decline of Detroit and the ruin of Starnesville in Atlas Shrugged. Both were thriving industrial areas that, due to collectivist, liberal policies essentially destroyed themselves.
I am currently re-reading Atlas Shrugged, listening to a series of podcasts by Dr. Diana Hsieh to help me get
I am currently re-reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time since I first read it two years ago and I am getting a lot more out of it the second time around. In part this is due to the podcast series from Dr. Diana Hsieh in which she discusses the novel in roughly 60 page chunks. It has been fun and informative to take the books in those pieces, reading it first then listening to Diana’s
Politix had another interesting questions today: Is it ok to call undocumented people illegal aliens?
Here is my answer:
Hmmm…
illegal – forbidden by law or statute; contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, etc.
alien – a resident born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization; a foreigner
So, an illegal alien is a foreign born person residing in a country under conditions contrary to, or forbidden by, law. This sounds
I had been meaning to write a post for awhile now about the ongoing dispute between Amazon and the publisher Hachette. The dispute centers largely on how much Amazon can discount physical books published by Hachette and how to set the price for e-books. Initially I was going to write about the rather absurd claims about Amazon’s actions in the dispute – they are like Russia massing troops on the Ukraine border, like a repressive regime, like a totalitarian state or the mafia or that
In a recent email from the Politix website there was asked the question of whether income inequality concerned me. The first paragraph of this post was my answer, which I expand on.
In and of itself, income inequality is not a problem and is simply a fact of reality. Everyone has different levels of skills, different interests, different levels of ambition to actually make a larger income and different things are more or less in demand than others – to name just a few factors that can go
The website Politix is sometimes a good source for ideas for posts. Today a question popped up in my email asking about whether the fact the immigration to Mexico is harder than to the United States concerned me, with the possible answers of Yes, No and I’m not sure. When you vote you also have space to either endorse someone else’s comment or to put in a comment of your own explaining your vote.
I voted no, and posted the following:
The United States should be basing its policies, on
Last week was pretty busy at work and I did not have time to listen to all the podcasts I try to follow, so here is a two week list of them.
Philosophy in Action Rapid Fire Extravaganza – Dr. Diana Hsieh and Greg Perkins answer some 20 questions on topics ranging from Buddhism, Kant, negative income tax and superpowers.
Peikoff.com: Episode 327 – Leonard Peikoff in a special half hour edition of his podcast