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This was a great show, too, by the way

For myself, I think that people vastly overuse those terms, especially when used as slurs. Very very few people are actual communists. Even fewer are actual Marxists. That said, a huge number of people are influenced by those ideas. It’s better to try to be more precise when we speak. But it’s also very hard to follow my own advice.

Good question. The thing is, a tariff is just a tax, and there’s nothing moral about a tax. I suppose the government could just make it illegal for an American to buy anything from a Chinese firm (for example). But what would be the punishment? Tax the American? Throw them in jail? That’s hardly moral either. It’s difficult to combat an evil with another evil. There’s also the problem that if we allow the government to decide who they can impose a tariff on, it’s not likely they will do so in the exact manner you think is moral. The very corrupt and immoral people who usually find their way into government cannot be trusted to wield the power most people want to entrust it with.

@HamanNature I'm not a pure Libertarian so I'm quite so wary of state power. I personally would like to see a complete trade ban with countries that allow slay very (which includes every social list country) and a 20% tariff on countries that don't follow suit. Except for food and energy, those markets should remain free. This would isolate and impoverish evil regimes without warfare and put upward pressure on wages without undercutting from industrial forced labor. Also, if Republicans ran on this it would be a fantastic framing win to own the Left.

@@HamanNature I disagree that taxes are inherently immoral. When the Hungarians dismantled their army so they could cut their taxes and subsequently were conquered by the Turks, that was the wrong thing to do for their people. Similarly I don't think taxing vices like cigarettes, corn syrup, or internet smut is a bad thing. If we taxed single use single use plastics, our food would come in more expensive glass or aluminum containers but we'd have much healthier endocrine systems.

@@LoganLS0 "Their people" is a telling phrase. Many politicians act as though they think the citizenry "belongs" to them. Of course it's possible to get a good outcome from some program funded by taxation. Winning a defensive war, going to the moon, "muh" roads, etc. It would be weird if they took our money and gave us absolutely nothing as a kickback. But there's a meta-problem with supporting coercive taxation and the various regulations you mentioned. It is that you've supported other people deciding what taxes and what regulations will be imposed on you by the supposedly legitimate legal order. Government actors cannot be trusted with this power. They don't know what's healthy and what's not. If you let them decide what is smut and what is art, you destroy free speech. History is littered with the terrible results of giving government this power. I remember arguing with my right-wing friends as they were supporting the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA and the Patriot Act. "These things will be turned around and used to abuse you. The power will never be used as you intend it. There is a huge meta-problem here and you're ignoring it." Fortunately, many right-wingers are abandoning that way of thinking. I hope more follow. Thanks for your responses. I very much appreciate you taking the time.

I feel the same way about Metallica that Scott feels about Star Wars.

So true. The letters confused me! I’ll be better next time.

Sure enough, Adam is sniffing around the intuition I am getting at with the MS-13 and barn raising, etc. Shoulda waited and kept my mouth shut.

I think marginal analysis is useful and insightful, but it's not the only framework from which to analyze actions. As I said in the podcast, it doesn't scale. I misinforms the way we think about collective actions. Bob handled my objections quite well, but he had to do an impressive 4-D chess move to do it! Thanks for your comments!

Ah. Well that makes sense. The dude sure rubbed me the wrong way.

Electorally spikey!

I thought it was great, too!

Awesome, thank you!

My only quibble with your comment is about the word "soon". I definitely agree that eventually, we must expand our reach. And, of course, I worry about humanity being wiped out because we only exist on one planet.

Very helpful RUclips link! Thank you.

My pleasure! Thanks for providing all the knowledge!

These are the glorious days of Haman/Murphy crossover episodes!

Thank you!

At least one. Probably two! And "utopia" is a slur. There's no such thing. There aren't even "solutions", only trade-offs. I'm arguing that private roads are a preferable solution to government roads, not that the result would be "utopian".

@@HamanNature *libertarianism" is a slur, you let me know when you're done reinventing the government to build those roads.

There still need to be laws created, updated and executed. That's the government's job. It needs to be figured out where it's a good idea to build roads. It needs to be coordinated. Land must be bought and often people need to be forced to sell for everyone else's benefit. How would you do that in a libertarian environment? Everybody who sees it as a business opportunity and can bring up the money will build one, but only where they can convince land owners to sell, so good luck with continuous streaks of road. Where land is easier to buy, there will be 3 or more roads side by side and they will compete over tolls. So when there is more than one road in a direction, the toll will be low. If there is only one street to get to a certain point, it will be extremely expensive. Competitors will not want crossings with each other's streets. It would be similar with power, water, sewerage, defence, communication infrastructure, ... In the end one will turn out to be stronger than everyone else. This one will win and create a dictatorship and everyone will complain about preferring a democracy.

I understand your intuition, but it's wrong. Government isn't a requirement for order and coordination. In most cases it's an impediment. We need order. We need coordination. We even need governance. We don't need a monopolistic government for any of this. Read The Privatization of Roads and Highways by Walter Block to answer all your specific objections. You can't yet see how this type of coordination is best accomplished from a bottom-up emergence, but you will if you read that book.

@@HamanNaturerespectfully, Walter Block’s ideas leave a good deal to be desired. When confronted on how different disputes are to be resolved he has this idea of one person going to court A and the other court B and if they don’t agree then you have to get a new court. You’re basically recreating a governmental court system. Then you start getting into who enforces the court orders. The answer is private policy forces, right? Then you have feudal lords who battle for supremacy, no? I get it. Government sucks and is inefficient. I have yet to hear a good argument, from Walter Block or anyone else.

A restaurant that got destroyed by the Covid lockdowns. They had a clear (but quiet) habit of hiring people in recovery or just out of prison or... something. More here: hamannature.substack.com/p/an-invisible-crime-the-demise-of?r=2u0knv and here: ruclips.net/video/F4Y34lsIUd4/видео.html

This shall be so!

Honestly, the laugh track makes the bit. "Ted McHam" really shone on this one.

Well, the trouble is, they already abrogate unto themselves the right to decide what can and cannot happen on public property. That's why there should be no such thing. The only morally justifiable form of property is private. So, on the one hand: Abolish all public property. On the other hand: Since you haven't done that yet, government, I have opinions on how you should manage that property.

Well sure, but the "behaving the way it does" is supposed to be choosing whether to make those planes out of metal or gelatin, right? I guess I could construct a story where there's no contradiction, but it sure seems like there is one. I mean, if our big brains aren't choosing to turn left or turn right or decide to invent antibiotics, what the heck are they doing that's so evolutionary adaptive?

@@HamanNature They are “choosing” it but only in the same sense that a river “chooses” to meander left instead of right. Lots of brains are making bad choices. We don’t hear about them too much in history books for obvious reasons.

@@snex000 It would be hilarious if evolutionary biologists started using this framing when talking about humans and our big brains.

​@@snex000ONLY if you don't focus!! You can Choose to let your brain act like a river moving down hill, or you can focus and move your mind river up hill!

@@ExistenceUniversity Supremely irrelevant and unhelpful comment.

Oh… I’ll dish da dirt!