Warning, warning, danger, danger: severe geek alert. First, let's take a short piece from one of my favorite philosophers that I love to read (often if only to disagree with his conclusions while admiring his writing), Daniel Dennett. This is an excerpt from Consciousness Explained : My explanation of consciousness is far from complete. One might even say that it was just a beginning, but it is a beginning, because it breaks the spell of the enchanted circle of ideas that made explaining consciousness seem impossible. I haven’t replaced a metaphorical theory, the Cartesian Theater, with a nonmetaphorical ("literal, scientific") theory. All I have done, really, is to replace one family of metaphors and images with another , trading in the Theater, the Witness, the Central Meaner, the Figment, for Software, Virtual Machines, Multiple Drafts, a Pandemonium of Homunculi. It’s just a war of metaphors, you say — but metaphors are not “just” metaphors; metaphors are the tools o...

How about Detroit's Big 3, as reported in Coyote Blog : If the world's citizens will not freely lend the Big Three automakers money of their own free will, then Congress is considering using force to make it happen. Auto industry allies hope to secure up to $50 billion in federal t loans this month to modernize plants and help struggling car makers build more fuel-efficient vehicles. Congress returns this coming week from its summer break, and the auto industry plans an aggressive lobbying campaign for the low-interest loans. I'd also like to highlight three of the comments: I'm sure it's just a coincidence this issue comes up 60 days before a presidential election. I mean it's not like Michigan is going to be a crucial swing state, right? There's a bit of talk that the Chevy Volt is less of a useful production model and more of a stalking horse for a government bailout. The more information that comes out about it, the more it's the wrong car, for the ...

My Dad does not have a lot of patience with the nation of wimps we have become. A few weeks ago I was talking to him about the fact that fuel prices (among other things at our house) would be curtailing our normal big, two-week vacation this year, and that we were having to make other sacrifices to get back to living within our means. He was unimpressed. "We didn't get to go on big vacations when you were growing up, did we? And without all the credit cards, nobody really had the option of running up all that debt. So how are you any better or any worse off? You people keep expecting everything to always get better and better, and that isn't always going to happen. Get used to it." He's right about the myth that the American dream is that every generation should have it better than its predecessors, or else we're somehow failing. Throughout most of American history --and for most Americans--moving up in the world, whether in relative terms (status) or re...

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1731463420071217?feedType=RSS& feedName = topNews http://www.nysun.com/new-york/two-plead-guilty-in-decade-old-slavery-case/35266/ Wha - wha -wha-what? Well, if you are lucky you too can be the slave of wealthy foreign born millionaires . Hopefully your new masters will treat you with kindness after your 401K goes belly up.

When we ask the question on the surface it seems simple enough. Americans work. We like to work. We take satisfaction from our work. Right? Yes, by and large we do. But if you Google how many Americans are working in full time jobs you find that the numbers are not what we would expect. It was at this point that I cracked open Dr. Henry Liu, one of the economists I had a chance to study with and unlike the Friedman flat earth folks offered a sobering and starling statistics from the 2007 Department of Labor and BOE statistics: Socialize Risk to Deliver Privatized Profit Like their flawed attitude toward risk, the authorities in charge of regulating financial markets and the economy apparently think that inflation-fighting structural unemployment spread over the whole economic system is not damaging to the economy as long as the resultant profit is privatized and concentrated on a preferred selection of financial institutions, even if the privatized profit is achieved by externalizing t...

I got this in the mail today and through you might enjoy it. I thought it was funny. Political Economic Models Explained with Cows - 2008 Update SOCIALISM- You have 2 cows.You give one to your neighbour. COMMUNISM- You have 2 cows.The State takes both and gives you some milk. FASCISM- You have 2 cows.The State takes both and sells you some milk. NAZISM- You have 2 cows.The State takes both and shoots you. BUREAUCRATISM- You have 2 cows.The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away... TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM- You have two cows.You sell one and buy a bull.Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.You sell them and retire on the income. SURREALISM- You have two giraffes.The government requires you to take harmonica lessons AN AMERICAN CORPORATION- You have two cows.You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead. ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM- You have two cows.You sell t...

I hope that senator Obama can deliver on these promises. In my fantasy land, Obama would adopt the foreign policy strategies of Ron Paul and it would make the dream ticket. These proposed economic polices are not bad, in fact many of them are what needs to be done to move the nation and our economy forward into a global world. This is one of the areas that the good Senator and I agree on, that keynsenian economics are much better that military keynesianism , now if he would do that instead of a guns and butter platform we would be in much better shape as a nation. Love him or hate him, the one thing that Ron Paul pointed out eloquently is that it is virtually impossible to avoid national bankruptcy if you try to have have a huge military budget and social programs. So too often the left says we support social programs and the right says we support the military programs and then they wind up supporting both to the detriment of the republic and its form of government and to benefit a ...

Tice Proves Every Bear Has Its Day, Invokes `D' Word (Update1) By Edward Robinson May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Money manager David Tice pokes his head into a conference room at his Dallas offices and tells Doug Noland , his top market strategist, the morning investment meeting is starting. ``It's a historic day,'' Tice says as he disappears down the hall. ``This is crazy; just wild.'' It's March 13, one of the worst days yet in the spiraling credit crisis. Shares of Bear Stearns Cos . are falling en route to the bank's emergency rescue 72 hours later. Buyout giant Carlyle Group's mortgage bond fund has collapsed after defaulting on $16.6 billion of debt. The U.S. dollar is trading at a record low of $1.56 to the euro. New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini is forecasting a severe recession that may last six quarters. ``Cookie anyone?'' says Tice, 53, offering peanut butter Girl Scout sandwich cremes to four members of his investmen...

You just need to read this to believe how absurd the politics of money creation has become. It is literally not worth a penny. But a penny is worth much more than one cent. I would say sell all the nickels and pennies you have saved to a metals dealer, you'll get a better deal than at the bank.

If you want to get a clear idea of why we are in the economic and financial situation we are in, and how things will only get much worse as long as we continue with our foreign policy strategy, there no better book to read than Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis . The third in his series that chronicles what he calls- and I agree- is the " tragedy of American imperialism ," this book review and article give you much to think about if you are at all interested in redeveloping a sound American Economy . I recommend reading it with Chris Hedges book American Fascists so those of you like Jonah Goldberg who are confused about what fascism is, or who are elitist and meet all of Umberto Eco's 14 criteria for being lulled into fascism without knowing it, can start to understand its dynamic and social drivers and what this kind of movement it is and why it is inherently anti-American . If you take time to read all the articles here critically, you will see why, we Americans have ...

You may have seen my expose on Yon Goicoechea. If not scroll down and read it. It was my machismo moment of outrage at CATO for awarding this extraordinary right wing non-libertarian big state rightist the Milton Friedman award for liberty. Not only has Yon been linked to student violence in Venezuela , but he calims in his interview with Playboy that he has been "promoting human rights" which I guess is a good thing even if he is only paying lip service to them, but still he has not really offering any solutions to the problems in his country like the Libertario. In fact there were so many contradictions in his positions that the students of the European Congress in Belgium rejected him going there . Look, this guy is no Bolivar, and is no libertarian. Which again makes CATO's award all that much more inexplicable. I am still looking for that video of the students in your movement throwing the gas at the national guard Yon and invite you to explain how vio...

On Money, Inflation and Government Dr. Ron Paul These past few weeks have provided an unfortunate opportunity to discuss inflation. The dollar index has reached new all-time lows. The total money supply, M3, as calculated by private sources, is growing at a disturbing 17% rate. The Fed is pumping dollars into the economy at an alarming rate. Just recently the Fed announced new loan auctions totaling $100 billion. That is new money created from thin air. If these money auctions, combined with the bailout of Bear Stearns, continue to be the trend, we are in for some economic stormy weather. The explanation lies in understanding the basics of money, and why it is dangerous to give government and big banks control over it. First, money is not wealth, in and of itself. You cannot create more wealth simply by creating more money. Wall Street bankers cry out for more liquidity, but what is really needed is more value behind the dollar. But the value, unfortunately, isn't there. You see, t...

....the problems with the economy do not stem from consumption related issues, they stem from 1.) the lack of domestic production, and 2.) super liquidity. Overall there are too many dollars floating around in the economic system to try to "provide full employment and low interest rates," to use Bernanke's words, while not creating opportunity through the productive mechanisms of the economic structure. So basically, what he means is that after Wall Street has been slathered with enough green to cover a St. Paddy's day festival in Ireland , and the value of the dollar collapses, we will need an alternate way to fuel the economic structure. This can be done in three ways, 1.) by opening the economy up for the average person to competing currencies and the use of commodities as trade items, or a return to the use of "silver and gold" as legal tender or 2.) through a political and populist redistribution of wealth and 3.) through continued aggressive warfare t...

A refresher course in the economics of taxation anyone should be able to understand. First, crack open a cold one. ( don't drink too much beer ) Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1.The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7.The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. ( don't drink too much beer ) The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the: First four men were unaffecte...