bit-anarchist

Rereading this comment, I realized I made a jump withe white émigrés bit. The idea is that they would form a significant support base of Nazi Germany, but weren't as central to the philosophy of Hitler's ideology as suggested.

I also recognize that I did claim that Jewish Bolshevism wasn't the justification for the mass murders. I still maintain that, for I meant the main primary ideological reason why the Nazis did it. Without the racial supremacy (specially without the theories about Hebrew degeneracy) and ultra-traditionalism of Nazism, Jewish Bolshevism wouldn't even be conceived.

As the citation says, it was one of the main beliefs that justified the invasion and the Holocaust. Even if Jewish Bolshevism wasn't a thing (which could happen, if Jews didn't get better representation in the USSR in comparison to the Empire), Nazis would still commit the holocaust, invade the USSR, and, most importantly, still exist, thus, it can't be called a key pillar of Nazism. It's more accurately described as a key pillar of Nazi propaganda, supported here:

> Michael Kellogg in his Ph.D. thesis argued that the racist ideology of Nazis was to a significant extent influenced by White émigrés in Germany, [...]

p.s. Kellogg is mentioned below to argue that this was the origin of Hitler's antisemitism, but that is contested, and there's plenty of evidence of Hitler antisemitism from early on. Still, Jewish Bolshevism is well accepted as a key propaganda element.

Moving to the second point, I don't see how your citation address it. "Cultural Marxism" is primarily spoken without referring to religion. Unlike Cultural Bolshevism, there's no modern equivalent to Jewish Bolshevism, and, as I stated previously, the ones who primarily talk about Cultural Marxism don't even mention religion, and if they do, they often treat Judaism and Christianity as if they are in the same boat. If anything, the closest religious scapegoats would be Muslims, but they aren't treated as "masterminds". Don't even get started on race (which is what Nazis actually cared about).

Beg to differ: to the purposes of the idealized free USA, a popular militia was, and still is, the only solution for a free territory of people. A modern organized army as understood today is all about ceding your right as an free individual to become subservient to a large authority.

And who would be the owners? Give names.

I read it. In my second reading, I found nothing that contradict the first point, and that address the second point. If you found otherwise, could you cite the relevant sections?

You might be confusing a couple of things. Nazis couldn't care less about the "west". In fact, in the Nazi world view, Jews already controlled most of western contries. They were, first and foremost, "aryan" supremacists (not white supremacists, as commonly understand today), and saw the world under a dialectic lens of Aryans vs. everyone else. There is no "west" there.

The people who most talk about "Cultural Marxism" (conservatives) tend to be Israel shills, even on when it commit atrocities. In the same line, most discussions of cultural marxism don't invoke race, maybe religion (but not often Judaism).

No they aren't the same. Jews, as a race, were seen as subhuman and antisocial, sufficient justifications in Nazi world view to exterminate.

Cultural Bolshevism was, at best, an attempt to link anything seen as degenerate to jews to further strengthen persecution of such. Even if Jews weren't a thing, Nazis would still mass murder, hence it was an excuse.

Cultural Bolshevism wasn't the justification to the mass murder the Nazis committed. The genocide was motivated due to Nazis' own racial theories. The rest were killed due to strict authoritarianism of the ideology. At best, it was an excuse.

I tried to show that that Coca Cola is an "exception" that proves the rule. With medications, people are really after the formula. If there's something preventing access to the source materials, like in Coca Cola, going after that particular formula isn't good either, as you won't be able to do much with it even after finding it out.

My contention with your position on patents is that, although they make companies publish the recipe, while in effect, they not only keep the formulas secret in practice, but also create a monopoly, preventing reverse engineering altogether. If you cut the duration of patents, the incentives of releasing as patents goes down as well, increasing the push for trade secrets. In the end, I posit that cutting the duration of patents will have similar practical effects to removing patents altogether.

Finally, I think your contention is exaggerated. Unless the drug is very niche, there's going to be a significant demand for them. This demand creates an incentive for better reverse engineering efforts. Patents make them illegal, almost nullifying this.

..and democracy. The problem is never democracy itself, it's the autocrats, or extremists, or social media, and solution is more regulations on private life and more mentions of the paradox of intolerance.

Aspects of reality that are shared by all possible subjects.

> So morals only matter depending on how easy a decision is to make and how it won't affect you personally?

I see you cut the first part, only to follow with a "only" qualitative. That's not an honest nor moral thing to do. Specially given you still have to prove their moral obligations about the matter. Saying that they've chosen the risk minimizing option is a non sequitur.

That presumes that it's their responsibility to hold them accountable or, at least, that the other option is free. Given that you haven't shown either of those, and the statements point to the contrary, it's fair to say they are not complicit.

What facade of reponsability? Their responsibility was not being complicit in the crime and they accomplished just that. It's not their responsibility to prosecute their employer, specially if it comes with significant risks to their life.

Having morals doesn't mean you must self-sacrifice. If you have no obligations, you have no obligations.

We also used to say that solar and wind were fundamentally flawed: solar panels had an exotic manufacturing process, energy storage was limited and expensive, they are fundamentally tied to specific environmental conditions which may not hold, etc. We still managed.

Likewise, we could see cost reductions with cheaper/better alternatives to concrete, models that don't require so much piping, the exotic pressure welding becoming not so exotic, etc. We also could see better reactor models with yields, increasing energy production.

First, whether something is meaningful or not, depends on the subject.

Independence here isn't about whether your mind exists in a parallel world - devoid of external inputs - it's whether your input is required for an action to happen or not. They didn't simply comply with a choice from above, they experimented and came with an option that works for them. It doesn't matter whether that's a common choice or not, but who held the final authority in it.

In centralized systems, your input is, in theory, basically irrelevant/in practice, completely irrelevant unless you happen to the central authority.

Because the alternative to a market (a system where people make choices with the stuff they own) is a system where people are dictated to use stuff they don't own.

The divine right of kings touched on a lot of things, like governance, ownership, origin of law, etc. Decentralization/centralization focuses on ownership before anything else.

Not op, but my answer would be yes.

The very need for psychiatrists is, in a sense, an example for that. This is a case of companies trying to do their best to convince you to engage with them, because, otherwise, you likely wouldn't. Also, you never get stuff you don't "need". Games you don't want to play? Never happens, even in addictive games. Consume art that makes you feel nothing? Feel nothing how? Worst case scenario, you thought it would make you feel something, but it didn't. In all of these cases, the worst that happened is that you were made to wrongly belive that they would sate you, but your prediction was wrong, so you improve it for next time. Remember, even hypnosis can't overrule individual will, only brainwashing (which isn't a thing yet).

Take the opposite approach, central planning. In central planning, you are given little to no choices. You will be assigned the resources and roles you need according to the central planner. Even if the planner is democratic, your influence is reduced to a single vote, which is guaranteed to be erased by the law of large numbers. And that's ignoring external factor to you that are in control of the central planner: the psychlogists you mentioned still exist, but now they work for the planner instead.

We can argue that people are currently led into making poor choices in the market, but to conclude that this means no choice is being made is wrong. In a market, we can improve people's choices. In centralized systems, "people's choices" aren't a thing.

I don't think Coca Cola is a good counterpoint due to a couple of reasons:

1) there was a recent attempt to find the formula [1], but the primary reason that was infeasible is that, allegedly by the ingredient list, they use coca extract and, IIRC, only one company provides that in the US, due to FDA regulations. Even if they were find the formula behind, it wouldn't help much, so they're are trying to replicate the flavor instead.

2) Coca Cola is, before anything, a brand. It's not comparable to generic medications because people in general don't buy it for the formula specifically, but the expectation of flavor and taste associated with the brand. Even if you were to find the current formula, the Coca Cola Company can just change it.

In regards to the last point, there probably is one (likely in heavily subsidized prices case), but, regardless, I don't see how your point shows patents are the reason anymore than a increase in competition, which we are proposing would happen if patents were abolished.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc

Civil engineering and power equipment companies also profit from other plants. In fact, there are specialized power companies for wind and solar.

If private energy companies won't invest, then either don't invest public funding, or invest but with focus on developing long-term technologies. After all, the primary reason for nuclear being uneconomic today is lack of investment. If solar and wind can be made profitable, I don't see how nuclear is any different.

Still, the positive note of this is the ban lift, not whether new reactor will actually be built.

Can't speak for all countries, but lobbying for green energy in the USA, according to PACs, is higher than nuclear. I don't think Switzerland is different.

> We know they do because before the government took over the job, the nascent medicine industry would sell you literal poison.

We also know that some reports of poisoned industries in the past were exaggerated (and politically capitalized to lobby monopolistic regulations). This wasn't exclusive to medicine.

> The place where you can buy literal homeopathy sugar pills, and various completely unstudied compounds and other scams.

Presuming that these aren't actual cases of fraud - if they were, they'd already be illegal in a private market, regardless of the FDA - how many are actually buying these? Not many, I presume. For those that are, I think better informing them is much better solution, not only to combat innefective drugs, but also to strengthen trust on actually effective treatments. That said, homeopathy seems more like a yet-to-be cracked down case of fraud, regardless of regulations.

> If private industry was better than the government at managing drugs, the American supplements industry would mean we should have dramatically better health outcomes and dramatically cheaper healthcare.

Why? USA's healthcare system is an overly bureocratic, poorly regulated (not as in lacking in regulations, but that the regulations that exist are bad) goliath. It's closer to a government-funded system, except stupid. It's not an example of a government-free system, but how private actors do their best to exploit existing and lobbied soon-to-be regulations in their favor.

I'm not convinced about trade secrets being the capitalistic route here, specially since, as pointed out somewhere else, the current system is basically like trade-secrets already, which suggest inverted causality.

In a pure free market, someone could try to keep the formulas secret, but others can just reverse engineer it into being public, which is basically guaranteed to happen if there's sufficient demand. Given that they aren't wasting money trying to obfuscate the recipe nor the formula, these competitors do have an advantage over the original. As such, I posit that free-to-copy will be default behavior in a pure free market, with trade-scerets being resteicted on niche sectors.

The reason we can't do this today is primarily that reverse engineering is heavily restricted by IP laws.

What lobbyists? Concrete powder companies? Other governmental companies?

Keep in mind similar things have been said about solar and wind previously.

That's either the crime of extortion (which is more broad than corruption) or failing to comply with official duties, which will likely result in firing. When I spoke of the crime of corruption, as expanded in a sibling comment, I was referring to a charge labelled "corruption". It seems, under US, there isn't a law against corruption per se, but against variations of fraud, extortion, etc. Unlike Brazil, for instance, where corruption is, specifically, a crime against the public administration. Still, my bad.

I concede that, outside of formal law, one can describe certain deviations of official attributions of private corps.' agents as corruption.

I'm not fond of that definition for a couple of reasons:

1. praxeologically, all individuals act for personal gain, which is subjective in nature;

2. most private corporations don't have a well-defined governance (aside from the occasional constitution), specially ones that rely on gift/favor-based economies, such as seen in certain tribes. Governments tend to be an exception due their unique legal nature.

Bernie Madoff's case can best described as a Ponzi scheme, a form of massive fraud scheme.

In a sibling comment, I realized that "corruption" isn't a defined crime in most jurisdictions, aside from Brazil, for some reason, so it's kind of wrong of me to say that corruption is legally defined.

Still, my particular peeve here is the implication of immoral conduct without context on LinkedIn's own rules.

I'm not fond of Brittanica's definition of corruption [https://www.britannica.com/topic/bribery].

   Improper and usually unlawful conduct intended to secure a benefit for oneself or another.

It might as well describe any crime, similar to definition c from earlier. Even still, Britannica memtions gifts, which points to corruption being primarily connected to bribery:

  In societies with a culture of ritualized gift giving, the line between acceptable and unacceptable gifts is often hard to draw.

I suppose I agree with the lack of formal definition for corruption, but defining "corruption" as simply "evil" makes the word ontologically empty, but adding a corrupting element to it (bribe), makes it more defined.

Brazillian law, for instance, defines the crimes of passive and active corruption:

  The Penal Code, in Article 317, defines the crime of passive corruption as "soliciting or receiving, for oneself or for others, directly or indirectly, even if outside the function or before assuming it, an undue advantage, or accepting a promise of such an advantage." [0]

  Active corruption, committed by an outsider, who offers or promises an undue advantage, is provided for in Article 333 of the Brazilian Penal Code. [1]

But, granted, revieweing US and UK law, it seems they don't define "corruption" as a crime (albeit some of the act names do mention corruption). So let's fallback onto the dictionary: [2]

  a: dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity

  b: inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery)

  c: a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

Both definition a and c are too ample and, as you put it, "a smorgasbord". Definition b, specially when combined with a, describes something pretty specific: inducement of a powerful agent to wrong by improper or unlawful means, such as bribes.

Embezzlement is better typified under theft. Same goes for most of the others: fraud is fraud, blackmail is blackmail. They may acquire a "corrupt" character when they are done in direct exchange of personal material gains. There are discussions about whether insider trading should be illegal.

Generally speaking, corruption is primarily a crime against public administration because it involves the government, which (supposedly) represents the people. Private companies represent themselves, so they get to (more) trivially decide who is on the line or not.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_corruption

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_corruption

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corruption

> Whether they are extremely useful or just some tool that has its uses depends a lot on your lifestyle.

The "useful" then didn't refer to the individual value judgments of all individuals, but the presence of material affordances that a sufficiently big mass of people would find useful. I admit this was not the best wording, but I forgot (and can't find it right now) the formal term that encapsulates the material qualities that others may see usefulness.

> What "best (tools)" means for you, depends a lot on your values. For example, if you value privacy, mobile phones and in particular smartphones are incredibly bad tool choices.

Agreed, but this misses the point. I didn't mean to imply that the value of things are objective (this is a misesian perspective, SToV is implied), but that some people would find smartphones useful, adopting themselves, and that would further expand the opportunities smartphones are useful to others, creating a positive feedback loop.

My bad, then. If I may suggest something, give a small acknowledgement and avoid words such as "cancer", which is pretty loaded.

Still, people (as in most individuals in the economy) can't simply be stopped, even less so to plan, specially in a free system such as enjoyed by most of the west. That requires a high degree of coordination and coersion that I think only Cuba and NK are currently capable of, slightly. Otherwise, people will just do their own thing, leading to a technological revolution again, given the material means.

A more practical approach is to continuously nudge the direction of change towards a better direction, constantly reevaluating approach, but avoiding having to stop everyone else.