The best intentions, based on faulty logic, can lead to disaster.
In a world of mass information and disinformation, we should examine the assumptions that form our decision-making process. In doing so we can avoid promoting policies and actions which lead to outcomes which are the exact opposite of what we really want.
Name Your Own Tax Rate
Imagine you’re given the special opportunity to name your own tax rate… The tax rate would only apply to you, and would be good forever. You’re free to keep as much of your income as you’d like, and spend it on whatever you choose. No one else would know what you chose to pay, unless […]
New Way of Thinking
For most of us, most of the time, concepts that exist outside our thought patterns are virtually unreachable. The majority of thoughts we have are limited by personal experience and knowledge, and bounce around in an echo chamber of the mind. It is rare that our entire outlook changes and we’re able to emerge from […]
Artificial Intelligence Scary? It doesn’t have to be.
A concern we often hear regarding the rise of Artificial Intelligence is that it may one day take over humanity. In fact, many people seem to skip several steps of critical thinking and just assume this hostile takeover is an unavoidable eventuality. After all, there’s no time to reflect with the pending cyborg army attack. […]
We Should Make Life Fair, Right?
There has been a buzz growing in modern society to provide more equality. Unfortunately, equality of opportunity is being dominated with a push for equality of outcome. These two objectives sound similar but have very different consequences. This article shows how insidious this mentality can become when discussing fairness of outcome in the modern world: Huffington […]
Voting does not make you virtuous
Voting, like everything else, should be a matter of personal preference. Unfortunately though, sometimes sporting an “I Voted” sticker doesn’t quite satisfy people’s need for virtue-signalling, and they need to take it to the next level: vote-shaming. Here are some common (and demonstrably refutable) claims about voting: “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” Putting aside […]
A morally superior alternative to democracy
In every democratic vote, the will of the larger group is forced upon the minority group. At one point or other every individual subjected to the process finds themselves on the losing side. In most aspects of life, such a process which consistently and unnecessarily produces losers would be considered completely unacceptable…but with politics, it’s a […]
Government involvement in garbage collection is disastrous for the environment
Whenever a service is rendered with a universal flat fee for unlimited use, over-consumption runs rampant. (Consider the lack of self-control at an all-you-can-eat buffet, or the overuse of air-conditioning in a hotel room.) In the case of municipal garbage pickup, households are generally charged a flat rate as part of property tax, and the […]
Law: the most primitive, barbaric solution
Looking for government laws to solve problems is literally the last thing we should do. These days, it seems like we’re happy to discard both a sizable chunk of our IQ points and our imagination the moment a societal challenge arises. From school shootings to climate control to concerns about the growth of Artificial Intelligence, […]
What happened to the Golden Rule?
The Golden Rule we were all taught as children instructs us to treat others the way we ourselves would like to be treated. It’s a beautifully simple maxim that, if adhered to by adults, would greatly reduce conflict in the world. We expect children to understand and respect the principle, yet for some reason we […]
Don’t confuse legality with morality
It’s dangerous to assume that just because something is legal or illegal, it is therefore right or wrong. There is a distinction between what is legal and what is right. After all, the institution of slavery, lack of women’s voting rights, and Nazi treatment of minorities were all perfectly legal, but were also abject moral travesties. […]
Social Security Benefits
I doubt it, but 50 years from now, this Social Security pyramid scheme may still be going on. But let’s be honest, IT IS A PYRAMID SCHEME. There is so much packed up in this topic that it deserves more attention than this quick post. In 2068, ‘Beneficiaries’ may be getting their promised $1000/m taken […]
Meritocracy – Is it fair?
Logically, giving a task to the most capable and productive person for that job is the best choice. One could argue that an individual can prove their merit through their work, production, and execution. Illustration: If you required life saving brain surgery and had the opportunity to select your surgeon. Assuming all else is […]
Utopian ideals can not be forced
Just about everyone has an of idea of what an “ideal society” would look like. Common themes might include no poverty, no conflict, and everyone’s needs being met. The nearly universal desire for such results demonstrates a hallmark of good in humanity. Conflict among individuals and groups arises, however, when these individual ideals of an […]
Like it or not, child labor is sometimes the best option
For most of human history–and sadly in many parts of the world today–the alternative to child labor is starvation. Prior to taking a job in a factory, a young person in an under-developed nation was not exactly spending their time playing with friends or staring into the clouds. Far more likely, their new factory job […]
We need more price gouging, not less
In the aftermath of natural disasters, essential supplies (ie water, food, fuel, generators) are often in low supply and can be hard to find. Left alone, market forces of supply and demand quickly act to resolve such an issue: suppliers make special arrangements to get the supplies into the hands of buyers customers. Since natural […]
The institution of slavery could not have existed without help from the government
In 1850, the US Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring all citizens and officials of every state to return escaped slaves to their “owners”. Yes, that is all states, including “free states”. The 1850 law did not come out of the blue, however. The precedent had been set long before, dating back to the US […]
Minimum wage laws are harmful and immoral
Making sure that every worker is paid a “living wage” is a good thing, right? Well, it certainly sounds good, but let’s unpackage the premise to confirm that we’re not actually advocating a policy which does more harm than good. Minimum wage laws prohibit any person from being employed if the value they offer is less […]
Is Democracy Moral?
As Americans, we are indoctrinated from an early age to believe that democracy, or “majority rules”, is a virtuous system. At the same time, we’re taught that mob rule and the idea of “might makes right” is immoral and dangerous. The reality: democracy is exactly mob rule. The desires of the majority are forced upon […]
Tragedy of the Commons
The tragedy of the commons is a term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. The concept and phrase originated in […]
Hate Speech
There appears to be a growing trend being exposed my many of the vanguard Youtube commentators that I follow. This trend is to attempt to silence people who are not going along with the ‘dominant message’. An extreme example shown: in the UK it appears that people can be arrested for “disturbing the peace” for […]
The US Railroad System – The federal government has made rail travel less affordable, destroyed competition, and vastly reduced rail use.
1950’s, Interstate Commerce Commission forced private railroad companies to keep open lines which were losing money, and set rates instead of letting market decide. Unions helped cripple railroad companies. Even though the job of stoking the old steam engines had been eliminated, railroad unions fought for 35 years to keep firemen in diesel locomotives. After […]
Housing Crisis – The federal government created and persisted this disaster.
1977-1995 From CRA to ACORN, banks were forced into giving loans to people with bad credit and insufficient incomes. 1992 HUD forced Freddie and Fannie to purchase the loans 1995 Treasury Department established the Community Development Financial Institutions Funds which funded banks with tax dollars to encourage even more risky loans. Federal Reserve slashed interest […]