::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Thoreau on government: the next step forward

Political ·Thursday April 22, 2010 @ 22:44 EDT (link)

I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well—is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.


We all know of a few wars in recent memory that were "the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool". We know the system is broken. It is subject to demagoguery, to class warfare, pitting people against each other by robbing from some to share the ill-gotten loot with others in return for their votes, to manipulation, to corruptions, to bribery. It is designed to grow in scope and power. It was a little better that what preceded it. But Thoreau, along with the writer to the Hebrews, was persuaded of better things.

Just as a constitutional republic was the evolutionary step that "men [were] prepared for" to follow a remote constitutional monarchy in 1776, the next progressive or evolutionary step is no government at all—a voluntary society without coercion or robbery, without a state to infringe on the right to life, liberty, or property. Government has become inexpedient. True progressives in the United States will agitate for this "city on a hill" to throw off our chains and again lead the peoples of earth in this next great step forward.

Books finished: Alongside Night, Utopia, I, Robot, The Vision of the Anointed.

Tax Day Tea Parties 2010

News, Political ·Thursday April 15, 2010 @ 19:28 EDT (link)

Bellevue City Hall, 1100-1330; arrived about 1130, parked at Bellevue Square—bit of a walk—left about 1330.


Red Square at UW; the Young Americans for Liberty group were sign-waving; I stopped by and talked/stood with them from about 1330-1415. Frank at the parking gatehouse saw my Campaign for Liberty shirt and said he was a fellow Campaign for Liberty activist and gave me a copy of a resolution they were trying to pass to get Washington's congressional delegation to join (Ron Paul's) the Audit the Fed proceedings.


Back to work for a bit, then Honey met me and we went to Overlake Transit Center and took the bus (545 express) to Westlake plaza (4th and Pine) for the Seattle festivities. Huge crowd. Lot of great speakers.


Co-authoring morale event

News, Work ·Wednesday April 14, 2010 @ 17:47 EDT (link)

The Word and Workspaces co-authoring groups (developers, testers, and PMs—program managers) went over to The Parlor at Lincoln Square in Bellevue this afternoon for food and pool (I didn't play, and nor did Manasi; not enough experience to play on par with the rest). I took a few pictures:

Toasts and speeches were offered looking back over the long road to getting co-authoring to a state that we felt proud to ship. The following people were present: We ordered food and drinks—I got a burger and fries—and most of the time people played pool, although I did talk to Bryce and Eric some about fantasy works and authors.

Compassion versus theft

Political ·Monday April 12, 2010 @ 00:44 EDT (link)

An excerpt that illuminates a tactic I thought might have been only a local phenomenon: claim that people that oppose (failed) government programs, handouts, and redistribution are not "compassionate". A similar trick, not covered so explicitly, is to claim that it is compassionate to take money from people by force and use it to fund such programs.

The contemporary anointed and those who follow them make much of their "compassion" for the less fortunate, their "concern" for the environment, and their being "anti-war," for example—as if these were characteristics which distinguish them from people with opposite views on public policy. The very idea that such an opponent of the prevailing vision as Milton Friedman, for example, has just as much compassion for the poor and the disadvantaged, that he is just as much appalled by pollution, or as horrified by the sufferings and slaughter imposed by war on millions of innocent men, women, and children—such an idea would be a very discordant note in the vision of the anointed. If such an idea were fully accepted, this would mean that opposing arguments on social policy were arguments about methods, probabilities, and empirical evidence—with compassion, caring, and the like being common features on both sides, thus canceling out and disappearing from the debate. That clearly is not the vision of the anointed. One reason for the preservation and insulation of a vision is that it has become inextricably intertwined with the egos of those who believe it. Despite Hamlet's warning against self-flattery, the vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world and its functioning in a causal sense, but is also a vision of themselves and of their moral role in the world. It is a vision of differential rectitude. It is not a vision of the tragedy of the human condition: Problems exist because others are not as wise or as virtuous as the anointed.

The great ideological crusades of twentieth-century intellectuals have ranged across he most disparate fields—from the eugenics movement of the early decades of the century to the environmentalism of the later decades, not to mention the welfare state, socialism, communism, Keynesian economics, and medical, nuclear, and automotive safety. What all these highly disparate crusades have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government. Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia during the twentieth century, several key elements have been common to most of them:
  1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
  2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
  3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
  4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.
… What is remarkable is how few arguments are really engaged in, and how many substitutes for arguments there are. These substitutes for arguments are, almost by definition, more available to adherents of the prevailing vision, whose assumptions are so widely accepted as to permit conclusions based on those assumptions to pass muster without further scrutiny.

—Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, 1996.

Pay your economic education tax

Political, Humor, Economics ·Sunday April 11, 2010 @ 20:46 EDT (link)

Posted to the "Lively Political Discussion" alias at work.

I and others have spent a lot of time teaching the liberals in here about basic economics—things like supply and demand, incentives, free markets, etc.—and logic, by pointing out fallacies and being positive examples.

Therefore, I will be levying a tax on those liberals for services rendered. If you consider yourself "liberal" or "progressive", or think wealth redistribution is a good idea, I will be taxing you at 5% of your yearly income, and, to be sufficiently progressive, 50% of anything you make over $100,000. If you cannot calculate this for yourself, I am sure the free market will provide qualified accountants.

You are welcome for both the education and the opportunity to repay your debt to society. You have, of course, contractually agreed to this by joining this alias and remaining here.

I will be distributing the funds to the alias owner and to others on the alias that have aided my efforts to educate liberals in economics and logic (and naturally, taking an administrative fee). Failure to pay will be met by nasty letters and then I'll have to send in my enforcement team. We will also be conducting random audits.

You may pay via cash or money order in I/O mail. You may deduct the price of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, or any books by Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, or F. A. Hayek.

We at the LRS thank you for doing your civic duty to support the common good and welfare.



David B. Robins
Lively Revenue Service

Books finished: Magician's Gambit, The Return of the Great Brain, Castle of Wizardry, Enchanters' End Game, The Great Brain Is Back, More Adventures of the Great Brain, Is Reality Optional?.

Tim's 25th birthday

News ·Saturday April 3, 2010 @ 21:32 EDT (link)

On Saturday the 3rd we went over to All-Purpose Pizza in Seattle to meet with Tim, Katt, and Katt's brother to celebrate Tim's 25th birthday with fine pizza and good ale. We found out their planed house purchase in Duvall fell through, but they're soon to be closing on a place in Samammish. The intention was to go over to another place for dessert, but we couldn't find a place to park so went home after the pizza.

Books finished: Queen of Sorcery, The Great Brain At the Academy, Are the Rich Necessary?, The Great Brain Reforms.

"Coffee Party" are bigots - film at 11

News, Political ·Friday April 2, 2010 @ 00:00 EDT (link)

So much for "civility". Civility is not blocking people you don't agree with. If there was an agenda, they shouldn't be coy about it.

Books finished: The Political Mind, Programming F#, The Great Brain, The Great Brain Does It Again, Me and My Little Brain.

Review: The Political Mind by George Lakoff, 2008

Political, Media ·Wednesday March 31, 2010 @ 00:28 EDT (link)

The Political Mind by George Lakoff (2008) is a poisonous screed. I felt sick to my stomach reading it. I had hoped to learn something from what the author had to say about how the brain works, but there was so much propaganda, lies, leaps of illogic, and smug assumption of unsupported and unsupportable statist political theories that I couldn't get through it. It presents the state as the only moral agent and individual rights as worthless except to be subverted. American history is rewritten from whole cloth on every page.

Some of the few good things are the concepts of framing, some examination of metaphor (e.g., of morality being beauty, fairness, light. etc.), and of psychological decision-making, near the end, however, Dan Ariely's treatment in Predictably Irrational is much better. The fact that people don't act rationally, however, is a powerful indictment against democracy or any sort of system where the choices of the masses legitimize violence controlled by the few.

A massive false dichotomy permeates the book, itself composed of two straw men: "progressive" morality is about empathy and responsibility, conservative morality is about authority. Of course, both are about authority, historically "progressives" have authored the most rigidly and disastrously authoritarian regimes, and it is neither empathic nor responsible to bribe the irresponsible with other people's money. Furthermore, no room at all is left for individual freedom - libertarians, voluntaryists, anarchists, and small –government conservatives. His model excludes it entirely, which is a strong indicator that his model is incorrect (as my software architecture professor says, all models are wrong; some are useful; his is not useful).

From my own observations, and from reading this book, what I'm actually seeing is that the "progressive" brain focuses on the collective, while the libertarian focuses on the individual. The collective brain wants control; it wants its "empathy" (misguided as it may be) to have an outlet, by rearranging the collective (including stopping people from harmless pursuits, or redistributing their wealth and posessions); this is where harm begins. It grows angry at any incomplete submission to the self-declared authority of the collective (if it must submit, so must everyone; for social programs, if it must pay for them - even if it agrees - then everyone else must be forced to as well). The individual is subservient. Individualism is tolerated to a point, but the collective (however defined - possibly democratically, possibly not) is king and god. It sees problems and thinks a knee-jerk reaction is an answer, and carries it out with enthusiasm as great as its ignorance; it has a design for "society", and nobody may stray outside it (or refuse to pay for it).

In opposition is the libertarian (classically liberal) brain, which is about individual choice (rights, including property ownership) and responsibility. It doesn't care what anyone else does as long as it is not harmed. There is no grand master plan for what everyone else should do; order is spontaneous and comes from voluntary interaction (e.g., the market). There may be a great deal of empathy (despite the typical liberal slander), but that just means the individual will give his time and means to help out; he feels no compulsion to make others do the same. Conservatives tend to fall between the two (as presented in the book, his authoritarian conservatives are basically just progressives with different ideas for the collective).

The author should have written two books: one a useful, scientific examination of how mental patterns and models affect political thought, then, as another book included free in case people need fire starting material, his poisonous statist screed. But I suspect the first book would be a pamphlet and the second a tome.

Books finished: The King of Torts, Pawn of Prophecy.

DVDs finished: Spider-Man.

Belated birthday dinner

News ·Friday March 26, 2010 @ 22:37 EDT (link)

We went to Outback for steak; I had a New York strip, Honey had the fillet. My birthday was back in January, but we'd been busy with school and such.

I also got my Microsoft five year award (a pointy crystal) on Monday.

Matthew Burke dinner

News, Political ·Friday March 26, 2010 @ 22:36 EDT (link)

We went to the Crab Cracker in Kirkland to hear Matthew Burke (introduced by his wife Jennifer). Matthew is running in Washington's first district against Jay Inslee. He wants to shrink government, stop bailouts, etc.; worked 22 years a financial advisor (wife was a teacher); seems interesting. His opponent, James Watkins, is a good guy too, and they have a good relationship; I would be happy to see either one beat Inslee. We decided to eat later, so just ordered drinks and ate from some of the food ordered for the tables. We donated $50 to the campaign later. It was a nice group of people, and a good time.

Books finished: Controversial Essays.

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