Paradocracy

Whereas socialists condemn slavery of the past, they seek in the present (and into the future) to bind slaves to their ever-changing concept of the “common good.” Ironically enough, as a percentage of his productivity, the average slave up through the nineteenth century actually kept more than three-fourths of his productivity, considerably more than the average taxpayer today.  Moreover, the average slave reserved the option to eventually buy his freedom: indeed, many slaves became freemen in just this fashion. However, it’s virtually impossible today for the average taxpayer to ever reclaim his freedom; he’s met everywhere with superficial justifications for his continued enslavement to the consensus, the “common good” and the tax collectors who enforce their will.  Whether the layman, the intellectual or the politician, slavery has never been a question of morality, but rather about how close the slave ought to be to his master, and what ends his work ought to serve. Whether at the

The price of bitcoin plunged overnight by more than 21 percent: this placed the digital "asset" $26,756 (38.8 percent) below its November 10 high. While some bitcoin speculators are unfazed by the decline, citing past volatility to assuage their concerns, their indifference to the price action of bitcoin exposes yet another of its weaknesses: bitcoin is not a store of value; it is not money; and its use case is exclusively limited to its use as a speculative risk asset.  Since its conception, bitcoin enthusiasts have characterized the cryptocurrency as an alternative monetary asset, namely "Gold 2.0". They have likened certain qualities of bitcoin to those of gold, and they've claimed that bitcoin improves upon gold just as every other digital asset has improved upon its predecessor: whether it's e-mail, audio files or online shopping, the bitcoin enthusiasts claim that the digital space is the preferred domain for all things.  Unfortunately, the bitcoin ent

Once again, rural California is bustling with chatter about another secession movement. Draconian mandates and hypocrisy continue unabated, animating talks of secession across all of northern California. Yet, just as there are plenty of proponents of secession, there are many doubters.    The doubters claim that hopes of secession are a pipe dream, that they are unrealistic due to the administrative costs that the "poor country folk" couldn't possibly afford. Fortunately, they're wrong.  While it may be unlikely, their outlook is purely self-fulfilling: while they claim that secession is unlikely, they're bound to make it so with their complacency. Secession is successful where a people join together to declare their sovereignty and to effect their separation; in many cases, this means positively asserting one's rights, not asking for permission. Secession, not only an essential course for representative government and developing communities, produced several

In all courses of life, debt is a curious yet dangerous instrument: it can serve a person well, but it can just as easily ruin him.  Whereas personal debt serves a vital function to meet needs in times of great exigency, the public debt is a scourge to be avoided everywhere and at all costs. Obscured by empty promises and delusions of grandeur, the public debt, as exercised historically and today, is little more than perpetual slavery: it is a debt-financed government powered exclusively by the exploits of theft, force and coercion.  Where its promises are plenty, the costs to the public liberty are indefinite.  Debt-financed government is insidious not only because it creates the illusion that the public can have something for nothing, but because it distorts the relationship between the public and their government; in this way, the government funded through debt is more disconnected from the public which it purports to represent, and it is thereby less sensitive to the limitations im

With bitcoin trading around the vaunted $50,000 level, speculators galore project the next moonshot to $100,000 and beyond. In the fanfare surrounding bitcoin, people have been animated about all things virtual, smugly mocking the physical world as they do their best Scrooge McDuck impersonations in virtual form. Regrettably for them, whereas Scrooge had a pool of gold that he enjoyed, they can merely stare at their virtual wallets wondering what they might one day be able to afford.  Ironically, while the bitcoin bandwagon is full of fanatics caught up in their virtual fantasies, they sense they're getting rich not by assessing their wealth in the form of bitcoin, a nebulous unit to be sure, but in the form of US dollars or other assets with actual utility. If not for the fact that the tangible world stands to speculate with them, contributing to their illusions with the assets that make us truly wealthy, the music would've stopped long before the bandwagon ever got going.  In

My dear wife has been admitted to the hospital, and I’m here as a visitor praying for her health and the health of our unborn baby. Suddenly, our calmness and our peace of mind are shattered by political developments from the California Department of Public Health .  Following the conveyance of an “order” which they have no constitutional authority to issue, the nurse informed us last night of this new development which will require visitors to show proof of vaccination or negative test result. According to the Public Health Officer of the State of California, hospitals are now required to "verify visitors are fully vaccinated, or for unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated visitors, verify documentation of a negative SARS-CoV-2 test." Personally I find it ironic that hospitals are reportedly full of COVID cases, yet they want to screen visitors to ensure that they don’t have COVID. Put another way, COVID is reportedly already in the hospitals, but they want to make sure that

Over the past year and a half, Americans and people worldwide have been encouraged to "trust the experts" and to "trust the science." Well, as we know all too well by now, while it often aids in getting there, "science" doesn't independently produce facts. It's a process that aims, like an asymptote approaching a limit, to get us as close to the truth as humanly possible.  In this way, the risk in depending on "science" to determine the facts is found in the public's unquestioning obedience to those who hold "the science" beyond reproach in order to advance their own selfish objectives. For this reason, it is imperative that the people wielding "the science" do so in good faith, and in such a way as to avoid discrediting it. As it turns out, people will trust in an institution so long as it preserves their faith; once it has betrayed them, it's difficult to regain their trust.  As much of the public has become

Let us all remember that, at the very outset of the reported COVID-19 outbreak, we purportedly had precious little to sacrifice for the “common good.” To be precise, “two weeks to flatten the curve.”  At this point, a year and a half later, we must confess that this projection was either a blatant lie or premised on the farfetched expectation of total participation. At this juncture, it’s self-evident that, while we responded with something approximating total participation, we were destined to never achieve absolute, 100-percent participation in mask-wearing.  Even if we had perfect participation in strict compliance with the ever-changing and uncertain guidance from the so-called experts and approved channels, there would have been no way of proving the public's innocence. What's more, there would have invariably been something imperfect about its execution: whether improper use, inadequate materials, or something else entirely.  Bearing this in mind, those seeking to encoura

People often mischaracterize money as the root of all evil, whereas the old adage rightly states, per 1 Timothy 6:10 , that it is “the love of money” that is the root of all evil. Nevertheless, we live in a money-driven world due not only to the inescapable need for resources, but for the progressive specialization of labor and the endless pursuit of instant and material gratification. In this way money, formerly conceived as an expedient for the mutual satisfaction of wants, has eventually come to consume the lives of people who've decided for themselves, or who've had others decide for them, that little to nothing else than material or monetary gain should ever come to define their lives.  Of course, people are rightly free to define their lives as they see fit; they’re free to define their lives by material and monetary gain, just as they’re free to define their lives by their memories, adventures and precious moments. While I’d contend that the worthwhile life consists of