Chyden Finance: profit from hypocrisy

Geert Wilders is Dutch Member of Parliament, who is currently on trial for insulting Muslims and non-Western foreigners. Apparently, the Netherlands does not have an equivalent for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the USA, and being a loudmouth jerk over there is illegal.

Before you champion the silencing of loudmouth jerks with whom you disagree, bear in mind that silencing them implies silencing the loudmouth jerks with whom you agree.

For every Rush Limbaugh you silence, you silence a Louis Farrakhan, an Al Franken, a Llewellyn Rockwell, and an Al Sharpton.

The Wilders trial bears watching. Pity most individuals in the USA are largely unaware of the situation in Europe.

time stamp 3:44 : Not to make light of the situation, but citing Thomas Jefferson in this context is intriguing. I get how the sentiment is appropriate, but within the context of Dutch jurisprudence, it strikes as a bit of a non-sequitir.

time stamp 4:48 : “[I]f something is true, how can it be illegal?” If only the British with their farcical libel statutes saw the wisdom in that rhetorical question!

Metarchy is the principle that each individually should abide by the precepts that he or she espouses. For example, racists should be forbidden to live near or work with individuals of other ethnicities, communists’ property should be seized, the rude should be snubbed, etc.

Those who would silence others should be silenced.

In time, only those social systems that do not spin out of control under their own weight would prevail.

No need for prescriptive and detailed political theories here.

Metarchy is not teleological, but rather self-referential. A metarchist does not seek The Good, per se (although, no doubt, he or she has some operating hypotheses). The principle is more like a reversal of the Golden Rule delivered forcefully: Be done unto, as you would do unto others.

There is a world of difference between license and liberty. As long as individuals bear the costs of their actions and do not create negative externalities, let a thousand tasteless, perverted, venal flowers bloom.

However, one must bear in mind that value is subjective; one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Whether one is a libertarian, socialist, religionist, or whatever, if one tries to force The Good onto others, many of those others will interpret that as a negative externality and resist.

In the case of Geert Wilders, he is being accused of being anti-Islamist, racist, etc. However, a closer reading of the situation suggests that he is pushing back and is being judged by a different standard than that by which those whom he opposes wish to be judged.

More later, as this case develops.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

NASA press release authors Grey Hautaluoma, Ashley Edwards, and Josh Byerly announced Monday, 1 February 2020 that NASA “has awarded $50 million through funded agreements to further the commercial sector’s capability to support transport of crew to and from low Earth orbit.”

Fret not, junior space cadets! Pres. Obama’s cutting of NASA’s budget is a good thing. Your paychecks will be signed by someone in Big Business, rather than by someone in Big Government.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

The X Prize Foundation plans to establish a USD 10+ million Brain Computer Interface X Prize.

Probably, we will not see fully immersive virtual reality for another decade or so, but we might see fully immersive virtual reality in another decade or so.

As I have been saying, the world two decades from now could be as different from the world two decades ago, as 1930 was from 1890.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

BBC News reports, “There is a strong link between heavy internet [sic] use and depression.”

To their credit, the authors of the study that this article is based on do not draw causal arrows. They stress that it is just an apparent correlation.

More to the point, they got their study cited in BBC News and the International Business Times.

Sadly, they are not immune from stating hypotheses as conclusions, “This type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.”

Recently, I speculated that busybody do-gooders might regroup under the banner of public health, now that envirofascism is denied them.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

The Toronto Sun reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) is taking a lot of heat for its Swine Flu (H1N1) fear mongering.

In a thoroughly disgusting bit of doublethink, an unnamed WHO ‘expert’ said in testimony before the Council of Europe that accusations of incompetence “trivialize the deaths of over 14,000 people.”

The federal and provincial governments in Canada spent approximately CAD 500 million on this non-event, which could have been spent on real threats.

In trying to save face, the WHO’s leaders trivialize the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individuals who could have benefited from the funds that were wasted this past year, due to the WHO’s bumbling ineptitude.

Most vile and inexcusable of all is that, when a real threat looms, people inured to the prattling of the Chicken Littles at the Bureaucracy That Cried Wolf will be disinclined to take it seriously, which could lead to real tragedy.

I’ve been calling shenanigans on this since June of 2009.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

BBC News reports, “A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show.”

Wired reports, “[T]horium could solve the nuclear power industry’s most intractable problems.”

According to the Wired article, among the advantages of thorium over uranium are:

• It yields very little waste, which must be stored for a few hundred years, rather than a few hundred thousand.
• It is abundant, thus inexpensive and virtually inexhaustible.
• It creates enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely.
• It would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used to make nuclear weapons.

So, if this stuff is so great, then why don’t we see thorium-fueled nuclear power plants dotting the countryside?

Reread that last point above.

Thorium is useless as a weapon.

Nuclear energy was developed at the height of the Cold War, and members of the political/military elite wanted to be able to blow stuff up by the city-load. They pushed for uranium-fueled nuclear power, so that the military could lay its hands on the waste for weapons.

Fortunately, the tide seems to be turning, and we could start hearing more about thorium in the coming years.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute reports, “A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers has found that in old mice, a several-week exposure to the blood of young mice causes their bone marrow stem cells to act ‘young’ again.”

The Times Online reports, “Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time.”

“If confirmed, the discovery that one tissue type can be genetically reprogrammed to become another, could revolutionise treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, opening up the possibility of turning a patient’s own skin cells into the neurons that they need.”

Ponder the economic implications of a population whose mean age were significantly higher than today’s.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

The Orlando Sentinel reports, “When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020.”

The New York Times reports, “President Obama will… turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week.

The Wall Street Journal reports “[A] report released last week by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, an outside safety watchdog for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, cautioned that the private space companies rely on ‘unsubstantiated claims’ and need to overcome major technical hurdles before they can safely carry astronauts into orbit.”

Meanwhile, the International Business Times reports that the Indian Space Research Organisation [No... That is not a typo.] plans to launch a manned low-earth-orbit space mission in 2016, thereby joining space agencies in China, Russia, and the USA.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

Tom Bevan writes in The Real Clear Politics blog, “President Obama is admitting the the health care bills passed by either the House or Senate (or both) contained provisions which were ’snuck in’ — presumably by Democratic members and perhaps on behalf of certain lobbyists — that would have in fact prevented people from keeping their current insurance and/or choosing the doctor they want.”

Pres. Obama promises, “[T]here’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating.”

Fair enough, as far as it goes, but we do not have the power to hold him to it.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

A People’s History of American Empire
by Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Narrated by Viggo Mortensen

Invest accordingly.

CWE