Stocks down 1%. Bonds down 3%. Dollar down 2%. Gold up 1%.
A gold flag occurs when all assets are down except gold and other commodities. Once the fabric of the financial system starts to tear, we will start seeing this day after day after day.
Author: rafifarber
Terrorism is only when Muslims kill people, otherwise it’s just crime
After the shooting rampage yesterday in California, I saw a tweet from CNN quoting the FBI as saying that it is “unclear if the shooting was terrorism.”
I always ask the “war or terror” people what terrorism is. They usually say violence for political gain. Well, if that’s true, then everything the US Army does is “terrorism”.
The assertion that it is “unclear if the shooting was terrorism” proves one thing though. That the real meaning of “terrorism” is when Muslims murder people for religious reasons. Otherwise, it’s just “crime”.
Why Adele is Just as Awesome as Amy Lee
A few months ago I wrote a post about Amy Lee, praising her for her music but most of all for being a normal person.
Adele fits that category too. I’ve known about her for years but her latest single Hello got me interested in researching her a bit. Apparently, she’s pretty freakin’ normal too. She’s engaged with a kid at 25 (she had a kid at 25, she’s older now), she’s plus size and not a perfect music star body type, but she has lost significant weight since whenever it was she came out with Rolling in the Deep. So it’s not like she’s let herself go or anything like that. Her soon to be husband looks like a fun character goofball type.
You can tell her hair is usually crazy and requires a lot of taming for the stage. Everyone in my family has crazy hair, except me because I cut it off and my son doesn’t have any hair.
When she gets on stage she just sings. She doesn’t womp around on stage, and she wears very nice dresses. She’s a talented enough singer that she doesn’t have to distract you with dance moves. It’s rare that a singer just sings these days. Her performance is almost entirely in her face. The entertainment is to just listen to her and watch how her own music affects her and let it affect you. She feels like a throwback to the 20’s or 30’s with a modern twist. Just beautiful music.
Most importantly, she’s considered a recluse among the famous people community. She doesn’t want anything to do with that and would much rather just live a normal life.
This quote, for example, is gold:
“I think it has a lot to do with becoming a parent,” she added. “When I was turned 25 I was quite shocked. I didn’t think I was old or anything like that, I just couldn’t remember where the last five years had gone. I think it’s the same that happened with every area of my life: My real life, my career, obviously becoming a mom, and stuff like that. It was not remembering very much of it because so much happened and it frightened me.”
The 27-year-old singer also shot down claims that she was a “recluse,” instead revealing that she just won’t give into the Hollywood spotlight.
“I’m not blinded by the persuasion of fame,” she said. “Fame is not real, so how am I suppose to write a real record for anyone to enjoy if I’m living a very fake life?”
Wow is that relatable or what? Also a wysiwyg woman, which is obvious from her stage name, just Adele. She was discovered after she put a demo on Myspace in 2006. (What the heck is Myspace? Hehe…)
I’m more into the louder rock/metal music but I recognize her songs are great. So I searched around for metal covers and I found this TOTALLY AWESOME GUY from Norway. His facial expressions are so nuts it’s great! Cracks me up…
Mark Zuckerberg to give $45 billion to “promote equality”
Mark Zuckerberg is giving away $45 billion worth of Facebook stock to some amorphous causes, most of which don’t sound very encouraging at all. Zuckerberg is a focal point of government attention because through him, the State can pretty much monitor everything about your life at all times.
Donations in and of themselves are not noble. It depends what you’re donating to. If he’s donating to government entities as he has done in the past, it would be better if he kept the money and invested it in private ventures. Remember that market investment is a higher level of morality than charity, and Mark is definitely violating halacha by donating 99% of his wealth. Not that he cares about that at all I’m sure.
Keep in mind also that if he doesn’t donate the $45 billion, some other part of the profit-driven economy will get it and produce something with it. Privately invested, the $45 billion would increase production and raise living standards for a lot of people. Given to charity, it will be consumed and benefit much less people.
I still believe giving to charity is a moral imperative, but it is also very dangerous. It’s not like him giving it away is only beneficial. It is harmful to those who would have otherwise gotten the money through business transactions. Zuckerberg is not creating wealth by donating it.
In any case, his donation aims to: “advance human potential and promote equality…focusing on personalized learning, curing disease, Internet connectivity and community building.”
This all sounds very liquid and vaguely nice, but considering Zuckerberg’s history donating to government institutions like public schools, I fear most of it will be wasted.
There’s nothing wrong with the stuff he wants to promote. It’s just that when you don’t give specifics and you have a history of cooperating with government, you’re probably not going to do much good.
The best thing Zuckerberg could do to promote these causes, a real concrete way he could do it is fund what I call “anti-lobbying”. Lobbying is the most effective way to further your agenda if you’re a big corporation who wants to shut out competition and squeeze consumers. So anti-lobbying could go a long way in making the world a much better place.
Here are some examples:
You want to promote personalized learning? Anti-lobby for the repeal of mandatory government education laws and the end of all public schools. That will open up the education market to all kinds of alternatives that will develop on their own. If that’s too ambitious, anti-lobby legislatures for strong freedom to home-school laws at least. Laws that increase liberty are not really laws. They are anti-laws.
You want to promote equality? Anti-lobby for freedom of currency laws so savers no longer suffer inflation and central banks lose their monopoly power over money. Anti-lobby for the abolition of all laws that favor one group of people over another. Anti-lobby for the end to minimum wage laws that make it illegal to hire low skilled workers. Or at least to lower minimum wage to a level where it wouldn’t affect anyone. There are so many things.
Want to cure diseases?Anti-lobby for the abolition of the FDA and the total and complete legalization of all drugs. If that’s too ambitious, anti-lobby for the restriction of FDA powers to only monitor safety but not efficacy. Phase 3 efficacy trials account for 90% of the costs of drug development. If FDA powers stopped at phase 1 and efficacy were tested in the field, drug development would speed up by a factor of 100x or more.
Want to promote humanity Mark? Don’t promote equality. Promote liberty. And give at least $1 billion to the Mises Institute.
Tzahal Recommends Arming Arab Government and Freeing Prisoners Because Why The Hell Not?
It’s a headline that could come out of The Onion.
צהל ממליץ להעביר נשק ותחמושת למנגנוני הרשות
IDF recommends transferring weapons and ammunition to the Palestinian Authority
Really, what did anyone expect? The cartel in charge of defending us, which prohibits anyone else from defending us, is recommending that more weapons be given to the people killing us and freeing of prisoners that already have killed us. This is all defended by the State’s intellectual bodyguards in universities all over the country who pedantically pontificate about how transferring lethal weapons to other governments is enlightened.
This is the government response to stabbings. Give arab governments more weapons.
Onion type news like this can elicit two responses. Either we can whine about how stupid the government is and try to change who is in charge of it, or we can come to the conclusion that there shouldn’t be a government and try to eliminate it nonviolently.
There is no benefit to having politicians lead a monopoly defense institution, because the politicians inevitably turn that institution into a pack of bumbling idiots who give weapons to the people trying to kill us. Again and again and again. Armies should be private insurance companies who know better than to give weapons to the people trying to kill its clients. That makes you lose money.
When the money you make comes from taxes though, as in the case of the IDF that doesn’t matter. They can test their insane policies out by experimenting with our lives like lab rats however much they want and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even though they’ve done this before and it resulted in the second Intifada. In effect, the morons in charge of the IDF are arming the Arabs with even deadlier weapons now because knives are not enough to elicit public sympathy from the “international community”.
It won’t stop until we privatize the IDF and split it up into competing insurance companies.
Creepster Yinon Magal of Bayit Yehudi is Sexually Attracted to Women, Oh My
There’s some zhlub I’ve never heard of in the Jewish Home party named Yinon Magal. His name can be translated as He Will Rule a Sickle. Apparently he is a raging heterosexual who has a penchant for telling attractive women that he would like to have sex with them. Also, according to tradition, Yinon is one of the possible names of the Mashiach (Messiah). Maybe it’s this guy. We should start a movement.
There’s a whole PC wave going on about how this guy is a criminal because, aside from the fact that he’s married (maybe not for much longer) with four kids, he isn’t very suave at clothing his sexual advances into something more socially acceptable. From what I read, he needs to improve his game, especially once he’s single again. His real crime is being a welfare bum Knesset member, but his problem is that he doesn’t seem to understand the crucial point that men must elicit sexual interest from women first by acting attractively before men make their own advances. Making an advance first without being signaled that it’s OK and wanted is the quintessence of being extremely creepy. “Lefties” love to arrest people on the “right” for being sexually creepy. And vice versa. But it isn’t a crime. It’ll just keep you out of the human gene pool.
The only crime he committed was kissing women and smacking their tushes without permission. Yes, this is an actual crime, and he should be fined for it. But compared to being a Knesset member and drawing up laws about how people can and can’t live their own lives is a much greater crime.
No, I do not buy that unwanted sexual advances cause severe damage to women and therefore it is a serious crime. Some women like uninvited sexual advances, depending on who’s doing it. How many women would complain of a sexual advance from Brad Pitt? Some maybe, but not most. (Not that I’m recommending playing sexual harassment roulette here on the assumption you are Brad Pitt. That will probably get you ostracized and possibly committed.) Some women hate it.
A crime is not a crime because of what it makes you feel, be it good or bad feelings. It is a crime because it aggresses against other people’s property, in this case their own bodies. Rape is a serious crime. Unwanted kisses are a crime but not a serious crime. And making verbal sexual advances is not a crime at all, unless it is accompanied by an actual explicit threat of aggression.
Keep in mind that without primarily male sexual advances, there would be no human race.
Magal also committed a breach of contract with his wife, so it’s up to her if she wants to sue him for that or divorce him. The man is on welfare and has no real job anyway. I say dump him.
If he gets arrested for this, good. One less creep in the Knesset. Though he’ll be replaced immediately by some other creep.
Haredim Won’t be Drafted After All, Yair “Draft’m All” Lapid has a Fit
So, surprise surprise, the Haredi politicians got back into the mafia and decided to shut down the whole “שוויון בנטל” garbage, where the logic is we should all be equally enslaved to our masters and no group should have more freedom than any other group.
There are few terms more twisted and causes more backward and opportunistic phrases uttered than “equality of burden”. It’s the perfect way to take the resentment of government slaves and turn them against citizens who do not enslave them rather than against the government itself. It’s the ruler’s way to divide and conquer, and Pretty Boy Lapid constantly uses this to get himself more votes on the back of enslaving entire groups of people for 3 years.
What I love about the Haredi parties is that they are a vacuum on government spending, forcing the state to spend more on welfare and less on other regulations. If the government is going to spend, it may as well be on welfare rather than more regulatory bodies or war.
No, I am not a fan of welfare, but I’d rather see massive amounts of welfare rather than massive amounts of military spending or “education” spending and general growth in the bureaucracy. Since Israel is at least sort of not horrid in balancing its budget (it’s bad, but not horrible) and the state needs the welfare to keep the Haredi votes, the more welfare the less government spending on worse things.
They believe in taking anything they can from the state but refuse to pay in by being drafted or being taxed, and that is a very good thing. This is the very “burden” that Lapid wants “equalized.” I would rather just see it lightened.
It’s like a bully saying “I have to steal $20 every day, and instead of it coming from you alone, it would be better ןf everyone contributed.”
I say, instead, just steal less please.
The haredim will never be drafted. Even if the law passes fully and finally, they won’t go. There will be riots. In the end all the negativity will result in the end of the draft entirely. That is the real and only solution.
More stabbings, more death, less feeling
Another death today, a 21 year old woman standing by a bus stop stabbed. The saddest thing is I’m become numb to all this.
It’s hard for me to feel outrage or expectation or anything but sadness. Most people who believe in the government as protector can channel their rage to the cartel that is supposed to be their protection racket. They can rouse their emotions by protest and articles and all the yelling and venting that in the end does nothing anyway.
But I have no expectations from them to protect me, or anyone else, so there’s nobody I can yell at.
I cannot be mad at the government or demand that they do anything, because I know that if I do demand they do “something” it will only be a power grab and in the end will only make things worse.
All I can advise anyone to do is arm yourselves and learn self defense, because nobody is protecting you but God.
That, and repent, pray, and give charity. Perhaps it will avert the severity of the decree.
What you can actually do that will help is join Zehut now.
The State is not going to disappear, but there is one minarchist out there who wants to shrink it as much as possible, and actually has a decent plan to end this murder. Pay the Arabs to leave.
On Jonathan Pollard’s Release
Those who know me or follow this blog know that I have always looked forward to Pollard’s release, and I thank God it finally happened. However, I don’t participate in the Pollard mythology, namely that he saved all our lives by giving critical information and he is therefore a hero.
He is a bit of a hero, for sticking the middle finger to the US government, but I’m not convinced he ever did anything all that important. Judging from the snippets I read of his personality, it seems more likely that the Israeli government simply took advantage of a sucker and they knew they could chew him up and spit him out when they needed, and that’s what they did.
If someone can provide evidence that he actually saved lives in Israel, then go ahead. I’m open to hearing it. The standard narrative is that he gave Israel “critical information” about the Iraqi nuclear reactor, which seems silly. It was no secret that Saddam Hussein was building it. No need for Pollard on that.
The true story is probably closer to some guy that the Israeli State thought it could take advantage of for some low level information, whatever it was.
States have no right to keep secrets. Any secret stolen from them is legitimate, Israel or America. Not that I am advocating that, and I would not do it myself because I do not take those kinds of risks or advocate that others should either. You can lose your life doing something like that, or at least 30 years of it. Don’t do it.
In any case, the lesson here is that we should hate Israeli politicians for setting the poor guy up and losing 30 years of his life probably for nothing. No surprise that the politicians are trying to spin themselves as heroes for this, when nothing can be further from the truth.
Jonathan Pollard is free. Thank God for that. But anyone who is asked to spy for the Israeli government should know that if you get caught, you will be left to rot by the Jewish State, or any other for that matter. And if you ever get out, it is that very State who will spin it like they are the heroes of the whole situation, when they are nothing but cowards. Pollard was just naive enough to be part of the show, and he paid for it.
Deep Libertarian Thoughts on Free Market Exchange
Instead of seeing exchange as one event of give and take, see it as two distinct events: A gives B something. B gives A something. Two people are separately giving to each other. The reason for it is all in your head. Forget the reason. Just look at what’s happening. Two people are freely giving to each other, connecting, and benefiting.
We look at the event too much as a give and take, and that is what trips us up into thinking one is taking advantage of the other, or there is a more powerful and less powerful party to the transaction. But if we just observe what’s happening, we can get rid of all that. One person gives. The other person gives. The result is peace.
The only difference between charitable giving and a market exchange is that in an exchange, there are two givers, and they each have a reason for giving. In a charitable donation, there is only one giver, and only he has a reason for giving. The other party is passive.
The reason for a market exchange is a shared interest between the two. It’s what connects them. This puts market exchanges above simple charitable giving on a moral sphere, because the market connects humanity, while giving does not necessarily do so. It can, but giving does not have to connect giver and receiver. An exchange necessarily does. The market necessarily does. It requires reciprocation. Charitable giving does not.
Then why is charitable giving a mitzva? The only reason I can think of is a גזירת הכתוב. Which means there is no rational reason, which makes sense considering there is a Rabbinic limit to charitable giving at 20%. Any more and giving is considered a sin.
Rav Sa’adaya Gaon, at the beginning of אמונות ודעות, the Book of Beliefs and Opinions, pretty much the first complete work dedicated to Jewish philosophy ever written circa 800 CE – Sa’adya observes that if everyone stole from everyone else, there would be no productivity and all of humanity would starve.
That extends to charitable giving. The more people that give without reciprocity, the less production you have. The market requires production from both sides of the exchange in every exchange. Otherwise the exchange is not made. The more charity you have in the world, the less wealth, because charity does not require both parties to produce. It is unilateral. At a certain saturation point then, charitable giving harms humanity. Rabbinically, that point is 20%.
Visually too, indirect exchange through a monetary medium necessarily connects humanity, not just via the two making the exchange itself, but due to the nature of the monetary medium it forces the receiver of money to exchange with yet another person in the future.
If you see the specific good in the exchange as the point of a cone, and then the money as the funnel, the funnel of the cone sits over the seller of the good, who is the receiver of money. The point of the cone sits over the buyer. The buyer gives money to the seller. The cone opens up to a third person, because the money received must then be exchanged with another person. Otherwise the money is worthless. The buyer is in effect pointing the seller in the direction of someone else – anyone else really, urging him to further exchange and add wealth to humanity using the money he has just given the seller.
A quote from Chef, starring Jon Favreau, demonstrates this. The chef is talking to his son, who tried to lazily give a burnt sandwich to a customer:
“I may not be the best husband in the world and I’m sorry if I wasn’t the best father. But I’m good at this, and I want to share this with you. I want to teach you what I learned. I get to touch people’s lives with what I do. And it keeps me going and I love it. And I think if you give it a shot you might love it too. Now, should we have served that sandwich?”
The Jewish Libertarian 