The Mission Advancement Framework - A new site initiative!

[The Rebel Poet]

Exactly. Establishing a linguistics basis will be critical. We'll also have to make sure we state when words have been used to have different meaning outside of our scope.

To the highest degree possible, we need to avoid jargon and use the common definitions of words so as to be easily accessible to newcomers and seekers. All groups tend to develop in-crowd jargon, but this creates a lot of equivocation (both intentional and unintentional).

As a specific example, the NAP is touted as fundamental to many libertarians, but is not always defined. What is aggression? Assuming we got down to a precise definition of the word for our usage, it might conflict with or be more limited than the usual meaning in normal English. Then we can think of aggression as having a limited meaning, while others might think it means something else. Now given this issue, is it easier to make up definitions for libertarianeese and constantly having to explain our definitions to newcomers/outsiders, or is it easier to just use a different word? The answer to that question depends on the individual circumstances. Off hand, I can't think of a better word for "aggression" in the NAP, but avoiding the use of "state," which many people think means a political district within a country, is really easy enough by using "government."

 

[ChristianAnarchist]

I'm not sure what this sentence means. What is preferential about saying "Voting is violence," "Either voting is violence or it's meaningless," and "Voting is always violence"?

Oh I absolutely agree that voting is violence. I only participate in this method of violence when I use it to promote someone who wants to fight for liberty among the "wolves". I figure it's justified as a move in "self-defense"...

"Violence can be used for good..." V in V For Vendetta...

 

[HVACTech]

Oh I absolutely agree that voting is violence. I only participate in this method of violence when I use it to promote someone who wants to fight for liberty among the "wolves". I figure it's justified as a move in "self-defense"...

"Violence can be used for good..." V in V For Vendetta...

good god man, have you never designed something?
voting was integrated as a negative feedback loop.

in this context, it is a signal.
the founders did not have access to how a servo works. but YOU do.

A servomechanism, sometimes shortened to servo, is an automatic device that uses error-sensing negative feedback to correct the performance of a mechanism and is defined by its function.

the intent of including the Democratic PROCESS (voting) into our Republic, was for the expression of the will of the people. (negative feedback)

to suggest that a signalling... feature.
built into a complex system... designed to protect Liberty..
can somehow be conflated with violence is... "special"!

riddle me this.. can Liberty protect itself?

if we are to promote Liberty... this is an essential question.

peace.

 

[Ender]

One thing that I see necessary in a strong Freedom movement is the actual understanding of Capitalism.

What we have today and what most call capitalism is not even close. The monetary system rules the world and without a real knowledge of the facts, and that liberty and freedom have been shackled in the existing money-game, is a complete destroyer of attaining liberty.

Some education in the gold standard, fractionalized banking, and the FED, is very necessary in the quest for freedom.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

One thing that I see necessary in a strong Freedom movement is the actual understanding of Capitalism.

What we have today and what most call capitalism is not even close. The monetary system rules the world and without a real knowledge of the facts, and that liberty and freedom have been shackled in the existing money-game, is a complete destroyer of attaining liberty.

Some education in the gold standard, fractionalized banking, and the FED, is very necessary in the quest for freedom.

Agreed, I think economics is really the core of libertarianism.

It's not a coincidence that the founder of modern libertarianism was an economist.

 

[T.hill]

If this forum were to make a Wiki, then I think it would be a good idea to make different portals that discuss major themes -- the same way that Wikipedia connects individual articles. If you were to look up 'Liberalism in the United States', Wikipedia will reference to the overarching theme of the idea of liberalism in general by creating a liberalism sidebar at the top of the page that links to a whole page or portal dedicated to that theme.

 

[T.hill]

For example, if you were to read an article on the NAP, then you might have a sidebar at top referencing to Deontological ethics or deontology. This way it will give people, especially beginners, a way to easily navigate through different libertarian-oriented ideas and allow them to understand how they relate to each other.

Edit: I suppose that Bryan meant something similar when he said that the material should "Be massively hyperlinked to allow for easy navigation from subject to subject and to navigate up and down subject matter details."

 

[Cabal]

I'm not sure what this sentence means. What is preferential about saying "Voting is violence," "Either voting is violence or it's meaningless," and "Voting is always violence"?

It's not a principle of anarchism. It was presented as a principle of anarchism, and then used to make an argument against anarchism in its entirety. Ergo, straw man. I don't know how else to explain this to you. That anarchists may prefer to interpret voting as an act of violence does not make it a principle of anarchism.

 

[DamianTV]

One thing that I see necessary in a strong Freedom movement is the actual understanding of Capitalism.

What we have today and what most call capitalism is not even close. The monetary system rules the world and without a real knowledge of the facts, and that liberty and freedom have been shackled in the existing money-game, is a complete destroyer of attaining liberty.

Some education in the gold standard, fractionalized banking, and the FED, is very necessary in the quest for freedom.

Absolutely completely agree a full solid 100%. +Rep

I think that a big part of the Education, or, Re-eduation really needs to start with the most basic of foundational principles of economics. The easy stuff that is not taught in public school. Such as using gold as money. What is it about gold that makes it so precious? Its just a metal that comes out of the ground, and beyond that, it has some limited applications as far as physical usefulness. What is it that gives gold its value other than simply being unable to "print" more gold? I think that value comes because it is representative of the work people do. Work to both produce and sell products. But it seems that using gold as a form of money, much like paper with numbers drawn on it or a digital bank acct with numbers in them, it is and has always been Work that gives all forms of money its value.

For every Positive, there is an equal and opposite Negative. Not just in physics but in nearly every aspect of life. So there is a Positive and Negative form of the Idea of sound money also. Latter discussions need to illustrate both how sound money works, and how other forms of money fail. Identify the difference between real money and currency. True / Sound / Honest Money does not lose its value. Currency inheritly loses its value over time, which means that the Work any person does is worth less and less. In order to prevent the thieves from stealing the value of money, we must teach ourselves how to steal without actually stealing. Then and only then can we prevent the evaporation of our efforts that are collected by the hands of the masters of money and currency manipulation.

*points finger at Ben Bernanke saying that Gold is not a form of money*

---

 

[Xerographica]

Thanks. Hayek is spot on, of course, but this focus in just on a commercial / business perspective. This scope does not consider elements such as charity in which exchanges of goods and information are done without a tangible market price consideration. Wikipedia operates on a different model, editors allocate their time/effort to improve Wikipedia pages because they see value in what the platform offers. No one is “supposed to” do this work for Wikipedia, people voluntarily choose to do so because of the value of doing so. The same would apply to this effort, people may choose to provide value to it or not based on the value it offers. It’s really not much different than the message you just posted, you chose to voluntarily do it since it provided value but there was no price involved just the like millions of other messages posted here. What this project does is just offer a vehicle to better structure information to make it more usable.

To be certain, there is no obligation for anyone to participate in this effort.

Thank you for the post!

The message that I previously posted was a guess. This post is a guess. I'm a producer making a guess! That's all producers can do is make guesses. This is true whether we're talking about market economies or command economies. The difference is... in a market economy... consumers can use their money to communicate just how good a producer's guess was. Consumers don't have this freedom in command economies. Which is why command economies tend to fail.

The reason that producers can only make guesses is because they aren't omniscient. They aren't mind-readers. You wrote to me, "Thank you for the post!" Your words sure seem to indicate that you appreciate the time, energy, knowledge and thought that I put into my post. Then again... it seems like you said, "Thank you for the post!" to pretty much everybody who posted in this thread. And, to be honest, it seems highly unlikely that you valued all our posts equally.

I sure don't equally value everybody's posts in this thread! So it seems unlikely that everybody equally values my posts in this thread. I have some evidence of this because ChristianAnarchist is the only person who gave me positive rep for one of my posts. Thanks ChristianAnarchist! I guess? Not to look a gift horse in the mouth... but... I'm not exactly sure what a positive rep is worth. Is a positive rep worth a penny? If it's worth less than a penny then it's not a very big gift horse.

You're right that this forum has millions of messages posted here. But you don't seem to really appreciate that...

1. some of these messages are more valuable than other messages
2. it would be extremely valuable to know the value of each and every message
3. spending would allow us to clarify the value of each and every message
4. it would be infinitely valuable to be able to sort messages by their value

What this project does is just offer a vehicle to better structure information to make it more usable.

Free-market. Those are the Google search results for the term "free-market". What Google does is organize the world's information. What Google does not do is efficiently organize the world's information. This is because the results are sorted by voting (number/weight of income links) rather than by spending. In other words... the results are sorted by popularity rather than by value.

To be honest... I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a vehicle to better structure information to make it more usable." But what I do know is that everybody's time is limited. Therefore... the optimal structure will serve consumers the most valuable information in the least amount of time possible. But the only way that this can happen is if you make it stupid easy for consumers to use their cash to communicate their valuation of all the information that you're sharing.

This is an important topic so I'll try and hedge my bets. Have you read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations? I sure have. It's an awesome book. I really love it. But I sure don't equally love all the different parts of the book. Some parts are exceedingly tedious and/or no longer relevant. Of course there are numerous parts that are painfully relevant. It's almost like most people haven't even read them!!!

Now imagine that you went on Reddit and created a subreddit called "WealthOfNations". Everybody could use that subreddit to share/upvote their favorite passages from the Wealth of Nations. Voting/democracy would allow the most popular passages from Smith's book to rise to the top of subreddit. This would allow people who haven't read the Wealth of Nations to easily/quickly find and read the most popular passages.

As I have already mentioned though... spending is infinitely superior to voting. So it would be infinitely better if people could spent their money on their favorite passages from Smith's book. Then the most valuable passages from the Wealth of Nations would be at the top of the subreddit.

What I'm describing is simply a market. Your project, as you've described it, is not a market. This means that your project is going to organize information... it might even organize a lot of information... but it's not going to efficiently organize information.

This post of mine contains information. And everybody will have access to this information. Which is all kinds of awesome! But what everybody will not have access to is everybody else's valuation of this information. You're going to know how much you value this information.... but you're not going to know how much everybody else values this information. Nobody will have access to the most important information about this information. Which is all kinds of awful.

I'll hedge my bets even more. Do you have Netflix? I do. It's pretty great because it provides quite a bit of content. And, just like on this forum, I really don't equally value all the content on Netflix. A while back there was an awesome movie on Netflix called The Man From Earth. I really valued it! And I knew how much I valued it... but I didn't know how much everybody else valued it. This is because Netflix users can't allocate their fees to their favorite content. In other words.... Netflix, just like this forum, is not a market.

Does it matter that producers don't know everybody's valuation of The Man From Earth? Does it matter that producers don't have the most important information about The Man From Earth? Of course it matters. Because they can't make the most informed guesses without the most important information.

The management of a socialist community would be in a position like that of a ship captain who had to cross the ocean with the stars shrouded by a fog and without the aid of a compass or other equipment of nautical orientation. - Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government

You think that this rule has exceptions.... such as this forum, Wikipedia and your project. But it really doesn't. Markets should be everywhere and in everything.

 

[idiom]

It's not a principle of anarchism. It was presented as a principle of anarchism, and then used to make an argument against anarchism in its entirety. Ergo, straw man. I don't know how else to explain this to you. That anarchists may prefer to interpret voting as an act of violence does not make it a principle of anarchism.

The joy of the NAP it that it is 100% about interpretation. It is an incredibly jargon heavy term with each word defined beyond common usage and loaded with meaning. In fact most of my issues with anarcho-capitalism stem from how greatly advocates can differ over the meanings of terms and act like its nothing. If proponents can be at such odds over the terms then clearly it invalidates the premise that they are self-evident.

That voting is violence is perhaps not a core principle of anarcho-capitalism. The principles of Anarcho-capitalism do however rapidly construct arguments that are compellingly hostile to participation. However very few an-caps wish to admit consenting to the continued existence of the current system. I don't think voting is consent, I think continuing to hold citizenship or to live within the borders of a system is consent.

The simplest way to reconcile this, I think, is to float the premise that working within the current system is the most effective and least self-defeating option. I think the smaller the system gets, the closer we get to not violating peoples rights. It is possible to want the system to actually evolve in hostility and to burn itself to the ground. It is often expressed that this may happen soon. I don't think people understand just how many generations the status quo could hold up for.

I don't want to alienate anyone. I want as many people on board, reducing the scale and scope of public governance, and thinking critically about how they live their lives.

 

[idiom]

You think that this rule has exceptions.... such as this forum, Wikipedia and your project. But it really doesn't. Markets should be everywhere and in everything.

That market has a cost. The cost of running a reddit-esque database far exceeds vBulletin as the data is far more dynamic.

The Wealth of nations exists with structure. If one wishes to read the whole of Adam Smiths arguments in a coherent order, reading popular excerpts doesn't help. If the wealth of Nations existed *only* as a sub-reddit it would be a much more difficult text to make sense of.

Most peoples understanding of Nietzsche is almost entirely backwards dues to the reading of popular excerpts.

The effectiveness of reddits structure is the speed and volume of trivial information that it processes and evaluates every day. Markets are amazing for that.

Entities like encylopaedias have more value the stronger the expertise of their editorial is.

Netflix really does have very very good information. They know exactly how many people watched more than the first five minutes of The Man From Earth. They know exactly where people got bored of it.

Time is more valuable than fees. People through money at steam like crazy because of simply marketing tricks and human nature. However 30% of Steam games are never even installed. Some games that cost the same amount regularly get 2000 hours invested in them. Completely free and fluid markets sometimes give results that are pretty random.

Most good sub-reddits have side bars and *stickied* topics, because there is some information the market doesn't deem valuable enough to keep at the top on an ongoing basis. The regular users get bored of constantly upvoting things or spending reddit gold on old familiar topics.

Markets establish the market value of a thing in whatever currency that market operates in. They do not establish moral values or abstract values.

Would Netflix users benefit more from watching The Man From Earth than 95% of the rest of NetFlix' content? Yes. Does it make business sense for them to keep it even if people could pay them specifically to keep it? Probably not. I am pretty sure there would be far more places that fees get sent and the fee signal would reflect the time signal nearly 1:1. Netflix outperforms cable networks with users even though cable users *can* direct their fees. NetFlix has much better market information because it tracks time information leaps and bounds better than cable companies can even though cable companies have much more granular fee information.

Fortunately since it all comes off a database, one could switch views between a Reddit system, a Usenet system, a standard forum system, or any system on might like. I often view sub-reddits through imgur because it is a lot swifter and simpler. Yay technology.

 

[Bryan]

One thing that I see necessary in a strong Freedom movement is the actual understanding of Capitalism.

What we have today and what most call capitalism is not even close. The monetary system rules the world and without a real knowledge of the facts, and that liberty and freedom have been shackled in the existing money-game, is a complete destroyer of attaining liberty.

Some education in the gold standard, fractionalized banking, and the FED, is very necessary in the quest for freedom.

Excellent points, let’s be sure to address this in Step 5. Thanks!

 

[Bryan]

For example, if you were to read an article on the NAP, then you might have a sidebar at top referencing to Deontological ethics or deontology. This way it will give people, especially beginners, a way to easily navigate through different libertarian-oriented ideas and allow them to understand how they relate to each other.

Edit: I suppose that Bryan meant something similar when he said that the material should "Be massively hyperlinked to allow for easy navigation from subject to subject and to navigate up and down subject matter details."

Agreed on your posts, and yes, that was I what I meant. We can get into the nuts and bolts of this in Step 3.

 

[Bryan]

The message.....

(Cut)

Does it matter that producers don't know everybody's valuation of The Man From Earth? Does it matter that producers don't have the most important information about The Man From Earth? Of course it matters. Because they can't make the most informed guesses without the most important information.



You think that this rule has exceptions.... such as this forum, Wikipedia and your project. But it really doesn't. Markets should be everywhere and in everything.

Fantastic, I see your point and it is a good one. Certainly there are some well-established techniques for how information can be retrieved, such as by navigation, searching and voting, but I had not considered a donation viewpoint. That is an excellent proposition and something that should be incorporated into the plans. We’ll cover this more in Step 3, I’ll add in your point to the initial proposal and provide you credit. Let’s cover it more then. Thank you!

 

[Xerographica]

That market has a cost. The cost of running a reddit-esque database far exceeds vBulletin as the data is far more dynamic.

Storing information (votes/value) about information means the addition of another table in the database. The issue is whether the cost of storing this additional data is worth the benefit of having it. I'm pretty sure it's worth the cost.

The Wealth of nations exists with structure. If one wishes to read the whole of Adam Smiths arguments in a coherent order, reading popular excerpts doesn't help. If the wealth of Nations existed *only* as a sub-reddit it would be a much more difficult text to make sense of.

I'm hardly arguing that we should entirely abolish the Wealth of Nations (WON) in its current format. What I'm proposing is a completely decentralized Easter Egg hunt. Everybody can search in WON for "Easter Eggs" (relevant/important passages). They could then share the Easter Eggs in the dedicated subreddit... and then participants could upvote the best Easter Eggs. Like I mentioned though... it would be infinitely better if people could use their money, rather than their votes, to communicate their valuation of the different Easter Eggs.

"We" could do the same thing with the Ron Paul Forums (I can't because I'm shadowbanned). So you, for example, could create a subreddit called "RonPaulForums". Members of that subreddit could search this forum for Easter Eggs (the best threads/posts). Then they could share the links in the subreddit. All the members of that subreddit would then be able to upvote their favorite threads. At a glance... anybody would be able to see which threads in the Ron Paul Forums are the most popular.

It's simply a decentralized treasure hunt. People dig for buried treasure. When they find it... they share it with others... who can then use their votes to communicate whether the discovery is trash or treasure. Again... to be clear... voting is infinitely inferior to spending as a means of accurately communicating your valuation of things. But voting is certainly better than nothing.

Most peoples understanding of Nietzsche is almost entirely backwards dues to the reading of popular excerpts.

So voting isn't better than nothing?

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Creative Destruction. Guess who added the quote from Nietzsche.

The effectiveness of reddits structure is the speed and volume of trivial information that it processes and evaluates every day. Markets are amazing for that.

Reddit is not a market. It's a democracy. People vote... they do not spend. Or... democracy is a really crappy market. Which would mean that Reddit is a really crappy market.

Entities like encylopaedias have more value the stronger the expertise of their editorial is.

Encyclopedias would have more value if consumers could use their money to communicate their valuation of the entries. Just how important to society is the concept of creative destruction? We don't know because society can't allocate its money to the Wikipedia entry on creative destruction.

Netflix really does have very very good information. They know exactly how many people watched more than the first five minutes of The Man From Earth. They know exactly where people got bored of it.

Knowing how many people "exit".... and when, exactly, they exited... really is not the same thing as knowing how much value the "stayers" derived from watching the entire movie.

Clearly I watched the entire movie. So... can you guess how much of my Netflix fees I would have allocated to The Man From Earth if I had been free to do so? Seriously... please try and guess.

I read your entire post. I didn't exit/quit halfway through your post. Therefore... what? Therefore you know how much value I derived from your post? Everybody now knows how much value I derived from your post?

There's content that I'll consume for "free"... and then there's content that I'll actually be wiling to pay for after I consumed it.

To be fair... this is a tricky concept. Even my favorite living economist.... Alex Tabarrok... struggles with it.

• Prices vs Chips
• Heaven's Going To Burn Your Eyes
• Crazy Cable Confusion: Costless Content Creation

In that last entry I shared this bottom line up front...

Creating content that consumers are not willing to pay for shrinks the pool of resources available for the creation of content that consumers are willing to pay for.

 

[idiom]

Storing information (votes/value) about information means the addition of another table in the database. The issue is whether the cost of storing this additional data is worth the benefit of having it. I'm pretty sure it's worth the cost.

Every time a thread on reddit is viewed it has to be constructed anew as all the posts can change order willy nilly. It is a higher processing cost.

Reddit is not a market. It's a democracy. People vote... they do not spend. Or... democracy is a really crappy market. Which would mean that Reddit is a really crappy market.

https://www.reddit.com/gold/about/

Clearly I watched the entire movie. So... can you guess how much of my Netflix fees I would have allocated to The Man From Earth if I had been free to do so? Seriously... please try and guess.

How much would you have allocated to people finding you similar content, or new content production, or expansion into other countries, or bandwidth upgrades?

Why don't you run a company sometime where every internal business decision is made by customers?

As Ford said, you would have allocated all of his resources to breeding faster horses.

The cost to Netflix is the same no matter how much value you derive from it. They might prefer you actually leave their service and move to a service where you can allocate your fee to particular movies. Customers spending their time leads to them continuing to spend their money. Your personal preferences may have no bearing whatsoever on their core demographics.

Reddit is not a market. It's a democracy. People vote... they do not spend. Or... democracy is a really crappy market. Which would mean that Reddit is a really crappy market.

Back to this, dollars are not the only currency in existence. Democracy is a market. It can be quite a free market. If everyone had $1 to give to a politician to do the job, would it be more meaningful to them than 1 vote?

 

[Cabal]

The joy of the NAP it that it is 100% about interpretation.

What is there to interpret about NAP? The only issues that may present a problem to NAP is property right disputes, in which case, this is a matter of determining the more valid property rights claim where competing claims are in contention. This isn't a problem with interpretation of NAP. NAP is simple, and clear. Abortion is a good example of this--the issue isn't with 'interpretation' of NAP, it's with the dispute between the property rights claim of the mother vs. the property rights claim of the fetus.

If your argument is about what is more open to interpretation though, I'd say that presents a fairly significant problem to the position you're promoting, given that the Constitution is a complete and demonstrable failure with regard to interpretive problems.

 

[HVACTech]

What is there to interpret about NAP? The only issues that may present a problem to NAP is property right disputes, in which case, this is a matter of determining the more valid property rights claim where competing claims are in contention. This isn't a problem with interpretation of NAP. NAP is simple, and clear. Abortion is a good example of this--the issue isn't with 'interpretation' of NAP, it's with the dispute between the property rights claim of the mother vs. the property rights claim of the fetus.

If your argument is about what is more open to interpretation though, I'd say that presents a fairly significant problem to the position you're promoting, given that the Constitution is a complete and demonstrable failure with regard to interpretive problems.

can I give you another word for "interpretive problems"

 

[idiom]

What is there to interpret about NAP? The only issues that may present a problem to NAP is property right disputes, in which case, this is a matter of determining the more valid property rights claim where competing claims are in contention.

What is property? Who can own it? Both of these are essentially arbitrary in their definition and lead to most of the schisms between advocates.