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I started using Jolly Roger almost two years ago:

https://tomwoods.com/ep-937-ho...

They work well with SIP.

Oh man, there is a huge body of philosophical, moral, religious, and political writings about natural rights, their origin and application. Unfortunately its not part of any official school curriculum so when you come across someone well-versed in the subject talking about it... well its like trying to understand concepts of multiplication without understanding addition. Tom Woods recently did an excellent speech introducing the origins of it: http://tomwoods.com/ep-969-whe... unfortunately he doesn't have any links on that page to written work on the subject. I have read some EXCELLENT primers on the topic, but of course can't remember/find any of them right now. So now I am in the unenviable position of trying to explain the topic (as an armchair philosopher) in a few sentences to someone on the internet, hoping to word it in such a way that it doesn't seem ridiculous.

It starts of with a basic proposition, that all humans own their own bodies. That is to say, a rational adult has exclusive control over their own bodies. Even in tribal pre-historical society, if I tried to come up to you and cut your organs out for an experiment, the other tribemembers would have some serious problems with this. You at LEAST need the person's permission before carving them up. This basic moral reasoning, that you can't just go around chopping up other people, seems to be a moral universal standard. (Yes I know, barbarians, solders and war and all that, but its usually two tribes in conflict, we are focusing on behavior amongst tribe members in a somewhat civilized society) From this moral universal standard that people own their own bodies, and therefore have exclusive control over it (deciding to get it pierced or tattooed or not, deciding to donate an organ, etc.) from that one basic principle, you can also (in a perfectly logical, rational way) derive property rights, from which all other 'natural rights' come from. Its not that lighting will strike you if you murder another person or anything, its that it is a biological reality that only I can control the movements of my arms, the speech coming from my mouth, and the people I choose to associate with. Attempting to prevent a person from moving their body, generating certain sounds from their mouth, or associating with certain people can be considered universally morally wrong, because it violates the basic universal moral standard (and biological reality) that people own/control their own bodies, and shouldn't be stopped from doing so unless it is harming another person in some way.

please listen to the podcast i linked to, as it goes into more depth in the subject and is more eloquent than my writing. Its also worth noting that John Locke is considered the 'breakthrough writer' who took what people had been discussing regarding 'natural rights' for several centuries, and put it together into a comprehensive philosophy. This philosophy greatly influenced the American Revolution and the thinking of our first 4 presidents, who enshrined these concepts in American Law. Read any of John Locks books today, still a great read, and may not seem revolutionary today, but remember he published his books anonymously because his head would have been chopped off by monarchs if he didn't. His writing was LITERALLY revolutionary, as it inspired revolution amongst the colonies, and influenced western law in several countries for two centuries and counting.

Listen to this excellent podcast. We have nothing to fear re: automation. It will only help us to prosper overall.

http://tomwoods.com/no-robots-...

Tom Woods got one of these calls and decided to make an episode out of it. It's either hilarious or pathetic, depending on your frame of mind. These particular scammers wanted to be paid in Target cards. It's instructive, from multiple perspectives, to listen to their (successful) technique.

I heard an interview once with an Indian call center worker who was trained to treat Americans as if they were seven-year-old Indian children. I'm sure there are some /.'ers who can appreciate the way it feels to have to talk to an idiot who makes ten times your salary. Some of these call center workers probably feel the rubes deserve to be bilked out of their savings. That's no ethical position, but one we might recognize.

Once they figured out Tom was on to them, they called him an asshole, but the tone was definitely more like that one would use with a peer. It's obviously only economically efficient to talk to idiots when such scams are in play (which is why the Nigerian scams are purposely written to be so obvious - auto-prefiltering their marks).

The only way NIRP can "work" is for all accounts to charge interest and there to be no physical cash option. This is not conjecture or conspiracy theory.

Negative Nominal Interest Rates: Three ways to overcome the zero lower bound , published: Buiter, Willem H., 2009. The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 213-238, December.

The paper considers three methods for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and thus for restoring symmetry to domain over which the central bank can vary its policy rate. They are: (1) abolishing currency (which would also be a useful crime-fighting measure); (2) paying negative interest on currency by taxing currency; and (3) decoupling the numéraire from the currency/medium of exchange/means of payment and introducing an exchange rate between the numéraire and the currency which can be set to achieve a forward discount (expected depreciation) of the currency vis-a-vis the numéraire when the nominal interest rate in terms of the numéraire is set at a negative level for monetary policy purposes.

Costs and benefits to phasing out paper currency (PDF) By Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University.

This paper explores the costs and benefits to phasing out paper currency, beginning with large-denomination notes, later extending to all but small coins and bills, and eventually those as well. It is hardly a simple issue; paper currency is deeply ingrained in the public’s image of government and country, and any attempt to change long-standing monetary conventions raises a host of complex issues. The symbolic value of the euro, for example, as a flag for nascent European Institutions, is hard to overstate. Nevertheless, it is important to ask whether currency in paper form has outlived its usefulness. Credit and debit cards today are increasingly being used for even small transactions. And although today’s crypto-currencies fall far short of being true currencies – for one thing their prices are simply too volatile – the underlying technologies may ultimately strengthen the menu of electronic payments options.

For more information, the Tom Woods Show covered this in an episode last summer. Also note that so far, NIRP isn't even achieving the desired result of increased loans to spur aggregate demand. The only thing it has achieved is wealth transfer.

around here we don't consider the value of a person's life to be based on how rich they are.

I spent most of a decade working at a big medical center near the northern US border. So many [wealthy] Canadians.

But, yeah, the US prices have gone nuts since the HMO Act of 1973. Here's an Emergency Room doc talking about how bad it is and offering some solutions .

Seems right - the US cares about everybody getting corporate-provided insurance, not healthcare, so it only makes sense that the systems suport that.

The models where so-called insurance has been abandoned are where the costs are lower and the care level is higher.

I'll just leave this right here...

http://tomwoods.com/d/bernie.p...

Read these words:

Java.
Malware.
Security.
Flaw.

Now watch this interview (and maybe the blooper reel as well)

and then read these words once again:

Java.
Malware.
Security.
Flaw.

I bet you are reading these in that zombie voice now.

Here's an interesting info-graphic I saw for the first time today. Pretty much falls in line with the rest of the sentiment here.

If State Legislatures don't WAKE THE F***K UP and push back they will be irrelevant.

Even the ACLU is starting to understand this.

Every discussion by the ratifiers of the Constitution points to the President as being Commander in Chief of a a war only after war has been declared by Congress. Tom Woods covers it well on his site.