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I'm living proof that being right doesn't make you popular. Or rich. I guess that's an indictment of the culture. A free market would fix this if we had one.

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"Libertarianism" is an umbrella that covers many conflicting ideas... some of which are wrong... but I will say that liberty as conceived by the American Founding Fathers does NOT "pave the way to dictatorship" because "freedom" in the political context means "freedom from the coercion of other people." (Self-defense is permitted -- against those who first engage in coercion.)

That coercion is the thing that American institutions are supposed to fight against, and if they fought against it consistently, there would be no door for the Left to walk through, because the Left depends on coercion (such as censorship and subsidies) to prop up its false beliefs and impose them on others.

Unfortunately, Christianity needs coercion for the same reasons. That's why Christianity pushes the notion that freedom only leads to coercion, that some form of coercion is inevitable, and that the only choice is between a Christian dictatorship and a non-Christian dictatorship.

The American government historically has not been able to be completely free because it has had to tolerate coercion because of the popularity of Christianity. Once that concession to coercion is in place, no matter how small, the Left finds it easy to repurpose the coercion for their own ends. THAT is the door that the Left is walking in through -- not freedom.

(Historically speaking, Marxism is just secularized Christianity, Marx's critique of "capitalism" echoes the critiques of "usury" throughout Christendom, and this is why the Pope so often sounds like a Marxist. It's also why people who give up Christianity for various reasons find that Marxism fills that Christianity-shaped hole without forcing them to think too much. Freedom, however, requires them to think...)

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@wisdomXplorer The idea that consciousness is supernatural.

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@QuoteNietzsche Newtonian physics does it.

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@o0mypasta What about school teachers and professors? The good ones can be very wise -- and sometimes their attempts to educate others have a positive effect.

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Accurate concepts, generalizations, and principles allow us to make accurate predictions. For example, if you have an unknown piece of metal, and then you discover that it's "steel," we already know a whole lot about steel (melting point, strength, electrical conductivity, how it rusts, etc.) and all that knowledge would then apply to that particular piece of metal, too, even though we haven't measured that particular piece of metal in those ways.

However, inaccurate concepts lead to incorrect predictions. They cause people to "know" a lot of stuff that isn't true. Unfortunately it is possible for inaccurate concepts to be propped up in a large number of ways, including wishful thinking and social pressures. Alchemy and astrology have persisted for a long time, even though they aren't true.

When inaccurate concepts are used to judge others, that's injustice. It can lead to people being "punished" for things that aren't even true about them. This is the problem with racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice. It is also the problem with "labeling" people.

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@Owennfa Some of this is just inflation. It costs much more to fix or replace a house than it used to.

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@Lieboisout This is why fiction exists. You can take a collection of principles and give it a person’s name, such as Howard Roark. (But it takes more than a tweet to get to know him…)

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@RockChartrand When the Berlin Wall fell, (Communist) East Germany was observed to be *more* polluted than (capitalist) West Germany. How did that happen?

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@Owennfa This sort of behavior is probably caused by accounting rules being detached from reality... causing companies to look better off "on paper" while actually being much worse off.

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A book changed my mind once. I had a question, and the book was the first to answer my question head-on instead of being wishy-washy about it.

Not everybody asks the question I was asking. Not everybody is dissatisfied with the answers they have been given. But some people really are looking for answers. I was.

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@navium_exuro It's possible to be a genius and retarded at the same time -- in different respects.

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The "reason vs. emotion" dichotomy is actually a form of the "mind vs. body" dichotomy.

Objectivism holds that a man should be an integrated being, which means his mind and his body should be integrated, and his reason and his emotions should be integrated. In particular he'll have a positive emotional appraisal of reason and its results. He'll feel good about using reason; he'll enjoy using his mind. So he wouldn't normally end up in "reason vs. emotion" conflicts: his emotions would encourage him to use reason, because it gets the best results! Emotions can be trained, experience is what trains them, and the result of the training, if it is done correctly, is this sort of integration. When you learn reasoning works, this makes you feel good about it.

(The flip side is that people who do not feel good about reason might feel that way because they don't get correct results from it, because they are not doing it correctly...)

Reason and emotion are both faculties of consciousness, and existence has primacy over consciousness, which means that both reason and emotions have to be checked against reality and corrected if necessary. So the error of emotionalism doesn't consist merely holding emotions above reason, it consists of holding emotions above reality. And rationalism is holding "reason" above reality!

If you do have a conflict between reason and emotion, you have to check them both against reality -- and either one might turn out to be correct. Or maybe neither is! (If you have an emotion, you will have to work out the reason for it.) The result of the checking should be that you have the correct answer. You should feel good about its correctness even if you are not happy with the answer itself: at least you know.

In an emergency, you might not have time to reason things out. This is why you plan ahead. If you don't have time to explore new lines of reasoning you have to rely on the ones you worked out previously. Emotions and intuition are precisely your "lightning calculators" for finding them. They are not a bug, they are a feature. And it is not emotionalism to say so.

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There's this idea ("The Secret") that says your thoughts create "vibrations" that cause the universe to give you what you want. A lot of world leaders believe this, and it has a dark side.

This idea is why world leaders believe they must control people's thoughts and opinions. Because what if the universe doesn't go your way? It must be because someone else's thoughts overrode yours, and so they caused the universe to obey them instead of you! So they must be punished! ...

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@Sassafrass_84 Brainwashing requires more than just speech; it requires some sort of arm-twisting, too. Or bullying. This arm-twisting is provided in compulsory public schools, where kids are not free to leave.

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@ArmstrongEcon They may act in what they *think* is their self-interest, but their definition of “self-interest” is wrong, to the point that they’re going to destroy themselves in their own self-interest. Criminals also think that way, with similar results.

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The USA is already a mostly socialist country.

Defenders of capitalism don't always understand this and defend the status quo as "capitalism" when it isn't.

Opponents of capitalism use the problems their ideas created to sell a "solution" which will actually make things worse.

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@skumWgmi I would blame this problem on government intervention and cronyism. A free market (and a sound currency) would fix this.

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"Opportunity cost" can be objectively grounded but it only applies in certain special scenarios. Like for example, if you could take a job with higher pay, but you decide to stay in the job you're in, you're incurring an "opportunity cost." And that's an objective fact, although the issue can become more complex when you consider non-monetary costs (e.g., commute time or whatever). Life can have many trade-offs.

I think it would be wrong to build a whole economic theory around "opportunity cost" because it is not the general case; it only applies in certain special scenarios. Most of the time it's pretty clear what the best available option is, when you consider your own hierarchy of values. (Also, if someone acts irrationally, and does not consider their own hierarchy of values, and makes suboptimal choices, they pay the cost themselves.)

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@LauraLoomer "In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins." -- Ayn Rand, "The Anatomy of Compromise," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

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@ChipActual @ChristianHeiens I strongly suspect that the kinds of builders who hire illegal Mexicans aren't hiring them for their great building skills. (Legal Mexicans don't have to go along with corner-cutting.)

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@lemire I get the feeling this sort of behavior is subsidized by the Cantillon effect.