Category Archives: Private Property

Microsoft Previews Windows 8 OS

Free Markets, Internet, Outsourcing, Private Property, Science, Technology

News comes that “Microsoft has launched the most complete preview yet of its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.” Is that good or bad? I live with a Microsofty who tries to defend the Machine as best he can. Yet, I dread each and every improvement in this indispensable technology.

I’m just a simple user; not a designer. And each and every “improvement” seems to come with added complexity.

To me, a technological “improvement” means ease of operation. I long to go back several revisions of Microsoft Word and Outlook. I swear; each and every function I once achieved with one or two clicks of the mouse, now takes nine. I’ve even documented a bug or two, which, when challenged on, my better half smiles and walks away.

This weekend we were forced to replace the home’s telephones. (The free market is fabulous. Most Americans can afford a few “telephones.”) The lines kept crackling. It turns out the noise was not the fault of the old, trusted telephones, answering and fax machines.

The upshot of the improved technology: Whereas I was once able to press a single button, and by so doing activate the answering message; I now must click through a whole process to get the same result.

I am told that this added complexity and inconvenience is due to cheap innards. Extant hardware must be made to carry as much programming as possible. Designing for customer comfort is secondary to the price of the components.

Ultimately, each time I accidentally click to update my browser or any other of the things I use to function online, I dread the complexity that will ensue.

Some things are best kept simple. Technology is one such thing.

UPDATED: Arrested for Being a Tomboy (& Talking too Much)

Crime, Fascism, GUNS, Individual Rights, Law, Private Property

They’re getting closer! Those of us who, like young Celia Alchemy Savage, “distrust government,” and, like the 23-year-old Georgia tomboy, believe that “everybody ought to be able to set on their property and do whatever the heck they want to”: Watch out.

Celia Savage, who likes to blow things up on her property or in the forest clearing, was arrested for telling an agent of Police State USA that she liked to “Blow things up. …” especially “toilets in the woods.”

She did nothing wrong, other than blow her mouth off to an officer of the police state. She was not caught in any criminal act, as far as I can tell. There was no plausible cause to search her home. But they did. Based on what they found during that raid, Savage is being “held on federal weapons, explosives and drug charges, and has been denied bond.”

Savage’s Facebook profile, which is also still on the web, lists “explosives” as an interest, her political orientation as “anarchist” and her status as “Push to test. Release to detonate.”
“I despise all law enforcement and any governing authority,” she says in her “about Celia” section.

Had the Georgia resident offered her skills to Uncle Sam’s fighting force, she’d be in the clear, especially if she blew off some “toweled” heads, or peed on them.

What next? Question her likely many Facebook Friends? Perhaps Savage is my friend and I don’t know it?

UPDATE (June 2): “Beware Of People Like … Mercer”:

A secret Missouri State police report, “entitled ‘The Modern Militia Movement,’ and dated February 20, 2009,” is warning about subversives like … me [and YOU].

One of the incriminating telltale signs the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) is on the look out for are Ron Paul stickers.
I have one on my car. It reads: “Don’t blame me, I supported Ron Paul.”
The MIAC has cultivated an ensnaring network of snitches and spies”—consisting of local, state and federal agencies, as well as the public sector and private entities”—all instructed to keep their eyes peeled for “paraphernalia” associated with the patriot movement. Flags, for example. Guilty again. A magisterial “Don’t Tread On Me” flag snakes across the front page of this website, where my seditious work is stored. The Gadsden flag appears on every other page too. I can’t get enough of “that funky snake,” as my website developer calls the critter.
Indeed, this early American symbol represents some of the values I cherish and champion. The Stars and Stripes stands in stark contrast to the “modest motto” the rattler embodies. Beloved of Republicans, especially, the American flag has ceased to symbolize the ideals of individual and national sovereignty, but stands, rather, for arrogance and imperialism, at home and abroad. …


READ MORE about what could incriminate us in Police State USA.

One Giant Step For SpaceX

Barack Obama, Private Property, Science, Technology, The State

Oh the contradictions of being a Republican! Republicans, the ostensible party for market forces, were furious when Barack Obama and his posse privatized aspects in the operation of NASA, the National Aeronautic Space Administration, perhaps the only good move BHO has ever made as president (although he should have privatized the whole thing).

Hungry to sustain the National Greatness Agenda in whatever statist way possible, conservatives slammed BHO on the NASA front.

Now, a private company based in California, called SpaceX, has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Stationbuilt. This via BBCNews:

The head of Nasa has hailed a “new era” in exploration after the launch of the first cargo delivery to the space station by a private company.
The Falcon rocket, topped by an unmanned Dragon freight capsule, lifted clear of its Florida pad at 03:44 EDT (07:44 GMT; 08:44 BST).
The launch system has been built by California-based firm SpaceX.
The initial climb to an altitude some 340km above the Earth lasted a little under 10 minutes.
Within moments of being ejected, Dragon opened its solar panels.
It also unpacked its navigation equipment.
Nasa’s administrator Charles Bolden said: “Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration… The significance of this day cannot be overstated …

‘The Cannibal’ Has Another Convert

Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, libertarianism, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property, South-Africa

In attendance at the New York Junto gathering, where I was the month of May’s featured speaker, was Jay Taylor, a New-York based investor and broadcaster who invests and broadcasts in the Austrian tradition.

I was delighted to hear that the topic of the talk—“Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”—resonated with Jay.

Here’s what the New York money and media man has written:

“It is most important your insights are aired as widely as possible so I was going to have my producer at Voice America track you down if I didn’t hear back from you. [I reply to every single inquiry I get. It may take time—a week or two, or more—but I answer all civilized, normal, sane interlocutors. Few are the people who get struck off my list of interlocutors. I can count 2 individuals in total in the last 5 years. And that took years of displays of incorrigible, maladaptive and manipulative irrationality, the kind that verges on malevolence.]
I really loved your talk and the following discussion. It was very enlightening. What I would most like to achieve in our discussion is to help people see how the loss of property rights is dangerous to liberty and even our safety. And I would like people to realize that applies to America as well as anywhere else.
Then I would like to have that point hammered home to my many “liberal” friends who may have their hearts in the right place but just don’t understand human nature.
You opened up a huge number of philosophical questions that I am personally struggling with, having come from a very religious Mennonite background in Ohio. Where do Natural Rights come from? “We hold these truths to be self evident. That we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (I think it was originally property?)”
I think you are actually quite good at addressing topics and questions when they are raised. I thought you did a great job at NY Junto. … I think you did a great job of explaining the connection between private property and liberty. I will do everything I can to promote your book and the ideas contained therein…

I will be on The Jay Taylor Radio Program sometime in June.