Year: 2015

In defense of Bill Cosby

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

News is coming out now that Bill Cosby gave drugs to women he wanted to have sex with who were not his wife. Nothing says he raped any of them or tricked any of them or gave them something they did not agree to take.

People love it when otherwise good people slip up. The better they are, the better people feel when it is revealed they made a mistake. It makes them feel better about themselves.

A few years ago my father and I discussed a case of a family friend’s husband soliciting a 15-year-old for sex. It turned out to be a cop and he got arrested. I argued, and still argue, that this is not a crime, and that sex with a post-pubescent teenager is not pedophilia or especially perverted. A bad idea, yes, but sick, I wouldn’t go that far.

Pedophilia is a crime and a perverted sickness because young children cannot consent, and there is no biological reason to even want to have sex with a child. The desire belies something deeply wrong that infects your fantasy world. To want to have sex with a prepubescent child shows that something is inherently wrong with your sex drive. As for homosexuality (if we want to go there), it does exist in the animal kingdom, so there is room to say it is not a sickness but simply an aberration that is known to exist across species.

Pedophilia, in terms of sex before breeding age, does not exist among animals. It is a uniquely human sickness.

In any case, the cops should stay out of all consensual sex, which does not include children, and Cosby must only answer to his wife and family.

Drugging women consensually in order to have sex with them is a problem of low self esteem. Some people hurt themselves because of low confidence, some suffer depression, some take drugs, and some have consensual sex with people who are not their spouses. It is all the same disease, stemming from a lack of satisfaction from current circumstances leading to an inability to control one’s fantasy world (which we all have) and prevent it from intruding on reality.

But it goes full circle with the people dumping on Cosby because he did this. They want to feel better about themselves because they are, to a degree, suffering from a lack of confidence in themselves. Pointing a finger at Bill Cosby for doing this is just a different way of dealing with a lack of confidence, just like having sex with multiple women who are not your wife.

We would not dump all over Bill Cosby if he were simply depressed. We would reach out and try to help him. This is the same thing. If he actually raped women (I don’t know if he did, but the news that came out today had nothing to do with rape) then Cosby haters would have more of a case.

Oh, and if you don’t like Bill Cosby, you’re a racist. Etc.

Bring them all down

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

I smell blood.

Greece. Italy. Spain. All of them either destroyed the Beit Hamikdash, or expelled us. In the next three months, they are all going down.

And Francis, give me my menorah and books back that you stole from me over millenia and have stuffed in your vault of theft. I’m asking nicely now.

As big as the government is in Israel, we are still Jews. We know how to handle money. Even the thieves among us. Goodbye, European States.

The match has been lit. Now watch the fire spread. You cannot keep piling debt on debt and expect to survive. It cannot be done, and it will topple. It is now toppling.

I generally make a feeble attempt to mask my hatred for States and the fractional reserve system of inflation that supports them. I always follow State monetary law no matter how unjust. I pay my taxes and obey all monetary and economic regulations. But I always express my disdain for it because thank God, there is still freedom to do at least that, as long as I wish no violence on anyone. And I don’t . I only wish bankruptcy, and the natural consequences of that.

Now I’m ditching even the feeble attempt of disguising my hatred for disdain. We’re in the home stretch now.

A Daffenblurb about the Government

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

We’re sitting under the food pyramid at the doctor. I tell them to look at the food pyramid, and see that the bottom row is all wrong. We shouldn’t eat any bread, grains, or cereal, but the government says we should eat lots of it so we all get sick so we have to go to the government doctors.

Tziv: I don’t like the government.

Daf: That’s why when I see the government…I RUN AWAY!

We’ll Miss You, Yanis Varoufakis

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the guy. On the one hand he’s a commie. On the other hand, he promised not take any bailout money and he never did.

He has resigned, saying:

Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.

I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.

And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.

I believe it was entirely Varoufakis who prevented any more bankster bailouts, and for that he should be commended. I fear that Greece may yet break if he’s not there.

I can proudly say that though at times I can’t stand the guy, I found him and thought he was cool before it was cool to think he was cool.

Greeks Stick it to the Banksters, Vote No, OXI, No Deal

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Oh boy. All eyes on Italy and Spain now. Watch the yields.

The three weeks are off to a crazy start this year.

The OXI camp really beat the crap out of the Yes camp. So far 60-40. Total landslide! Grexit at this point doesn’t really matter. If the Greeks print money, it’s Grexit. If they don’t print money, then no Grexit. What matters is the bond yields. Interest rates. Do they stay under control or do they bankrupt the whole continent?

OXI.

Italian Government Exposure to Greece: €61.85 billion; Spain at €44.42B

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis ,

I came across this table at ZeroHedge. This article is very worth reading.

Exposure to Grexit table

Italy’s taxpayers are exposed to the tune 3.8% of the country’s GDP. Spain is at an even higher 4.1%. The jist is that a hard default by Greece on a No vote will mean all those assets turn to zero, which jacks up the debt ratios of these already extremely indebted governments, and pushes interest rates extremely higher overnight.

My feeling is that the central banks have a week or two at most to contain the bond markets by printing money faster than they ever have before, after the Greeks vote No, if they do indeed vote No. We’ll find that out in a few hours.

Money supply growth in the US is already fading fast.

עת לעשות ל-ה

 

What a day to be reading “Democracy, The God That Failed”

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

I started a new book last Shabbat. Hans Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God That Failed.” He’s not as good a writer as Rothbard, sentence structure more confusing and convoluted, but his mother tongue is German like Mises, so considering, it’s pretty good.

The thrust of it is that democracy is actually a step backward for humanity, and monarchy is preferable. For many reasons, one being that monarchy is privately owned government, where the right of confiscation is capitalized into one dynasty, allowing for lower time preference rates (farsightedness) insofar as preserving the right of confiscation and maximizing its value long term.

Democracy is publicly owned government, which is worse, because the government officials cannot capitalize their right of plunder, and therefore their time preference rates become much higher (shortsighted) and they try to extract as much as they can as fast as they can without worrying about preserving the wealth of the government they are the caretakers of.

Axiomatically, the progress humanity has enjoyed since democracy became the leading form of government has been in spite of democracy, not because of it.

I have only finished the first chapter, but I love the way he splits it between “privately owned” government and “publicly owned” government. One other way to see it is that tax rates in monarchies rarely exceeded 10%. 20% is absolute highest recorded in the Torah by Pharaoh. 20% tax rates in Israel or America would seem puny. We pay much, much more than that. Not just income taxes, but everything taxes. Our standards of living are still higher because we have so much more capital equipment, more for the government to steal without starving us.

So it is very interesting that the pinnacle of democracy, a plebiscite, a referendum, may lead to the starvation of an entire country (Greece).

I would much rather live, ceteris paribus, given current levels of capital and technology, in a monarchy where I know that he won’t steal so much from me as to bankrupt himself. A democracy is much more dangerous. If you’re going to tell me that a king can just kidnap me whenever he wants me as fodder to fight his wars, yes, that’s true.

And I point you to Vietnam and the forced draft in Israel.

Looks like the Greeks will vote No on the Greferendum

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Bloomberg reports:

The first poll before a snap referendum Sunday indicated most people back Tsipras. The survey, in Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper, showed 54 percent would vote “no” — rejecting austerity in exchange for aid — and 33 percent would vote “yes” — accepting austerity as the price of staying in the euro. The poll was conducted by ProRata, which surveyed 1,200 people June 28-29 with a margin of error of 2.8 percent.

The truth is the question itself is nonsense. They cannot reject austerity. They have already overspent. Austerity will either come through spending cuts which will impose it on those who receive government paychecks, or it will come through hyperinflation if they go to the Drachma.

It looks like the Greeks are voting to leave. It’s going to be a pretty interesting 17 Tammuz. I wonder what happens on 9 Av.