Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

A lot of my thinking lately has been related to what’s been going on with the Libertarian Party.

I will say that I thought some of the ideas that the folks running the Libertarian Party’s Mises Caucus were generally good ones.

As I’ve spent more time listening to them, I’ve come to a pretty uncomfortable realization — they’re lazy.

The realization came rather slowly. I remember hearing Cyprian discuss some of what he saw going on. I thought he was, maybe, going overboard with the sorts of people who were really backing one of the candidates, and his LPMC associates.

There was some really weird stuff going on with this stuff that happened in New Hampshire summer before last. Ultimately, what happened with the party there was underhanded. What happened with the LP National was similarly underhanded. But the issues were resolved, and most people moved on.

LPNH is putting out some radical things on Twitter (STFW if you’re curious; I’m not going to look at their toxic spew), but whatever. I don’t live in New Hampshire for myriad reasons. (Yes, it looks gorgeous sometimes. I’ve been to Minnesota, and could say the same of it, but I wouldn’t want to be there after the weather gets cold.)

Still, Cyprian’s criticisms, along with the wayward embrace of Ron Paul, and his antipathy towards central banking. I do give him credit, but the whole thing with the insane pandemic spending has really thrown his dogged reliance on “hard assets” into question. Here and there, I’ve been buying precious metals only to see them basically flat, despite the incredible increase of circulating money.

Milton Friedman said that price was a function of supply, demand, and available money. My own education, while I appreciated people from the “Austrian School,” was really flavored more towards the “Chicago School.” My professors really weren’t big on either the Keynesians, or the Austrians. Same goes for my father, who taught graduate students in Finance.

Even with that, I was fascinated by the same sorts of things that Rep. Paul advocated. I kind of just brushed aside things like Ben Stein’s improv’d scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The failure of the hard assets really made me look more closely at some of the Chicago School teachings. In spite of some of the warnings against it, I’ve been using a lot of the things Harry Browne recommended in his financial writings.

The other big thing that was going on, too, was the crypto currency craze. Again, with the fixed currency supply, the price of BTC should be through the roof with all of the money printing. Yeah, about that.

So, I’ve been sticking to the Browne-inspired mix of revenue-producing assets, but making sure I have good diversification. (And I’m not going to go into my other passive income source; it’s personal.) But the folks who really are the Bitcoin Maximalists really have something in common — they hate some math that’s really not that difficult. An equation with more than one variable? No, you can’t have that!

The money supply needs to increase at roughly the same rate as economic output increases.

Even the folks at the hated Federal Reserve understand that. They’ve over-created money.

But so have the other central banks.

I really didn’t know that the Sterling was a “fiat currency.” Same for the Swiss Franc. So I assumed that those should be in good shape, but, no, they’re not backed with solid assets. The European Central Bank has created more money than the Federal Reserve has.

It’s all about the Petordollar! Nope, that doesn’t work, either. Conversions of currency are basically without fees now, and instantaneous.

If you wanted to pay me a large amount of Dogecoin, I’d accept it. The chances of it being in Dogecoin tomorrow are almost nil.

So they hate math. Okay. Got it. Whatever.

But they also hate laws. Can the Federal Reserve actually raise interest rates to where they should be? Strike that, since “Audit The Fed” has turned into “Abolish the Fed,” can the private markets set interest rates where they’re supposed to be without running afoul of various laws and regulations?

Not gonna consider that.

Over the summer, these people took over the LP.

The attitude since then has been, we took over the party, we can do whatever we want.

That’s not working, and it’s not because of the sort of chicanery that happened in New Hampshire previously. People are using various methods to keep from yielding to the new overlords.

Here in Virginia, the party’s charter is governed by laws. The people on the “outgoing” board choose to just go full President Madagascar.

Oops.

I’m reminded of a former boss whose car was stolen. The guy who stole it didn’t know how to drive a manual transmission, and blew up the engine.

Oops.

When I tweeted the story covering the things going on with the state parties rejecting the takeover, I said I shouldn’t be viewing it with bemusement.

You stole it. You broke it because you didn’t understand how to operate it. Now you’ve got nothing. Oh well.

I haven’t written since my last summer binge.

Lots and lots going on. None of it is really worth writing about publicly.

I wish I’d saved the article I saw about the economic state happening right now. Essentially, the author admitted something that it seems to be tough for many to admit. I Don’t Know.

This started with the debate over whether that US economy is in a recession after the frequently-cited two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

Change the definitions, and hope that people don’t hold it against you that you don’t know.

I don’t know.

Neither do the armchair Austrian economists.

Why are asset prices not following inflation?

I don’t know.

Oil is still very high. Why is the same not true of precious metals? For the crypto-doesn’t-have-any-use-other-than-gambling crowd, looks like Real Estate is about to crash.

Nobody fucking knows.

Even the people who proclaim themselves to be right on just about everything, and that messaging is the most important thing ever. They knew that this would totally get people on their side.

What’s tougher — admitting you don’t know, or that you were wrong?

Good question.

The site for the Notes of a Goon podcast. Back At Again – Notes Of A Goon

But after issues with the domain registrar who shall remain nameless, I’m back on the Intertubes.

But it’s another Saturday to write.

Speaking of writing, I think I’m going to do my summer sprint again this year. Why the hell not?

So I need to dig through my outstanding prompts, and more things to add to the Summer Writing category.

But things are progressing.

Looking forward to my travels at the end of the week/next weekend.

Next Saturday’s writing may be from the train. We’ll see.

Yeah, it’s a reference to an odd U2 song. I dunno.

This is where the NeoHippies are, and always will be. (I understand that it doesn’t really fit perfectly, but I’m so finished with the antiwar.com-types. Again. And more.)

That really is a callback to my days in radio, where I’d rip probably three faxes per day peddling various apologetics.

I felt much the same way about the obsessive Chomsky quoters on Orkut.

But the latest part is the “takeover.” Instead of creaking fax machines, the new delivery source is Twitter.

While I gave them some credence as I’ve been bumping through various Libertarian podcasts, and seeing them treated favorably on Kennedy, the miss on the Russian invasion of Ukraine really soured me.

Now what they’re worried about, first and foremost, is keeping the US out of a nuclear war. See the clip in the first line. Things that have happened really are irrelevant. Pay attention to this one article Harry Browne wrote in 2001. Pay attention to some of the icky things the US was involved with in South America in the 1970s and 1980s. Pay attention to the Iranian coup in 1953. (Which, yes, the early CIA helped with, but was primarily a British operation….Hitchens wrote about this after the Michael Moore trope was released in 2004.)

Hear what you want to hear, and disregard the rest…..

See? I did have Boomer professors….

(And that particular Boomer professor had actually been a counterpart of my dad’s in the Army…I’ve wondered what happened to him, but my web search skills fail….he’s got a very common first name, and a surname that’s shared with another university nearby….)

The similar thoughts that came into my head watching the debate in NYC, that the clapping section, who now define what Libertarianism is, thought one person won. See here.

What do I do if they succeed? Well, I take my own advice.

Speaking of podcasts, the most notable one I heard this week was this.

I miss the Free Beacon podcast. It was one of the things that seemed to die with the COVID lockdowns.

I could probably plunk away for hours, but I understand that basically nobody will read this. Whatever.

I love how modern browser thingie complains that I repeat words.

Maybe I typed it on purpose, okay?

I worked some yesterday. It’s kind of make-up for basically not working Friday. I almost got distracted, there, too, but I resisted. One of the things I’m a bit concerned about crossed my mind.

Things are changing whether or not people push back on that change.

I’m not particularly wedded to any way of working. No, this doesn’t make me a bad employee, person, whatever.

I understand, of course, the push towards longevity, naturally. The place where this is hosted I’m working on a replacement for.

The blog, and its associated artifacts are pretty straightforward. But I’m thinking that the method of storing email in individual mailstores is probably not terribly efficient these days.

So continue along the path of figuring things out. Maybe it wouldn’t have made sense in 2005; it’s not 2005 anymore.

Looking at things that way really aren’t looked upon kindly, professionally. See: Boomer President IV on aircraft carrier equipment. (The current guy thinks it should be a return to seaplanes….)

But I try to stay up on things as best I can.

I’ve also really learned to accept that I don’t have all the answers to everything. I don’t have any delusion that my work is perfect, either.

S.H.I.Thursdays, everybuddy. *quack*quack*

I’m really happy I didn’t end up a zookeeper.

Especially, now, where instead of going to a crappy little station somewhere to be a minor local celeb, but I really prefer where I am.

Obviously I don’t like having MS. It was more than a little dismaying learning that an old journaling friend was diagnosed the past fall.

Things change, but you can always leave.

I unsubscribed from a few podcasts after what happened with Russia and Ukraine. I emailed Kennedy to tell her I wouldn’t be watching episodes where she’s got those people as guests.

One of them lost the debate I went to see in NYC, and I’ve written about here before.

But you also can sorta go back again. So I’ll go to the TWUUG meeting tonight before I do extra work. Party.

I really didn’t feel like working yesterday, but I did. I also ended up working last night to address an operational issue that arose over the work day.

Since then, minus about four hours of sleep, I’ve been watching what’s going on in Ukraine.

Many of the information sources I’ve been consuming the past couple of years were completely wrong.

There’s just no other way to put it. I was convinced that the Russians would try to invade.

And they did.

And there’s been near silence about it.

Checking his Twitter feed, pretty much nothing over the past two days, save a link to fucking Antiwar.com.

Calling back to the late, great P.J. O’Rourke, Give War A Chance.

I’m too frazzled to write terribly coherently right now.

But there’s lots of things where I’d signed-up for something that’s proving to be untrue.

There’s a Sportsball game or something today. Hat-tip to Bald Bryan.

I guess what annoys me is the admonition that goes along with it. So you don’t care about Football. Great. Many people do. If you don’t want to participate in the hoopla surrounding, go do what you’d like to do. Or make some money serving the people who do care.

I admit I’ve mocked people in the past for engaging in activities I don’t understand. I know I said a few things about the people camped out outside of the theaters when Star Wars came out in 1999

I had a job back then. If I didn’t, I could have done something.t

At the same time, I was still such a stickler for following THE RULES back then, I probably would have never even considered doing anything ummm, outside them. There’s a “No soliciting” sign in the theatre parking lot. Okay, and? Who would I have been hurting, really, by providing for those people with interests that differ from my own?

Kind of feeds in to what’s going on with the truckers blocking all sorts of shit right now. They don’t like THE RULES, and, by just doing what they can, they’re really fucking things up for the PM up there.

Yah, sorry. We’re not leavin’.

The autocorrect in Safari is kind of annoying.

But, being such a stickler for following rules, no matter how stupid they are, worked for me well for a long time. Following them feeds into my obsessive side.

The compulsive side, on the other hand, is writing. Obviously, I’ve managed to stay pretty sparse over here since I finished NoJoMo. I am writing episode recaps over at Back At Again, but that’s about it.

I hope this week is rather low-stress, as opposed to last week.

I watched the debate between Spike Cohen and Dave Smith on Locals last night.

The title is a reference to this.

After thinking more about it, the less intrigued I am about either of the potential candidates.

Much like the Krystol-Horton “debate” at the Soho Forum, the more I heard, the less impressed I was.

To the participants — Spike, don’t wish for an Anachro-Capitalist society. I understand that, likely, there’s a lot less of my life ahead of me. (I worked through Y2K; I’m wondering if I’ll be around to see Y2K38) I think you could articulate a way to minimize the weight of the state on most people’s lives.

Dave, please find a book by someone with whom you disagree, read it, and write a brief summary of the arguments the author presented. Yes, there’s bad things the US did in South and Central America places in the past. Noted. It’s not why there’s tens of thousands of Haitians trying to cross into Texas. But that you floated out something from a very-biased take on history doesn’t add anything to your argument.

I find myself unimpressed with the options presented. None of the above.

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Both of these guys are frequent guests on Kennedy, something which I often view.

Part of what one of the things that’s argued about the LP Mieses Caucus is an attempt to push ideas at lower levels to get libertarians to take advantage of the things that are coming up in the “alternative” media outlets.

I understand and enjoy the format. I really don’t think it lends itself to presentation of any coherent idea about policy.

Landing that fifteen-second clip that gets repeatedly shared on Twitter/Facebook/whatever, doesn’t explain what changes you would make to the existing morass that is the modern state. What will you do to move people from under the boot of the state? Next year. Not thirty years down the road. What are you going to do to bring people towards a system based on freedom?