Tuesday 31 December 2013

Jason Brennan's idiotic economics

A couple of months ago, Brennan, that great big designing baby or booby, posted a draft chapter, on Designer Babies, of a forthcoming book of his on BHL, in which he claimed to understand basic Economics. Yet, basic Economics requires Common Sense. So, can his claim possibly be true?

Judge for yourself. This is an extract from what he wrote.
'Consider what might happen if the planet Earth began trading with the Vulcans from Star Trek. Suppose a few hundred years from now, Earth is vastly more productive and technologically advanced. Suppose we Earthlings discover how to build starships. Shortly after we test our first warp drive, the Vulcans make contact with us. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the all Vulcans are more talented than all Earthlings. The dumbest Vulcan is smarter than the smartest Earthling, the weakest adult Vulcan is stronger than the strongest Earthling, and so on. Suppose the Vulcans are also better at doing everything—growing corn, making computers, designing fashion—than Earth is. Everything we can do, they can do better, and they can do things we can’t do, too.
To those with little background in economics, it might seem like Vulcans would have no reason to bother trade with us. Or, to others with little background in economics, it might seem that trading with Vulcans would just put us all out of work, because everything we can do, they can do better.
But economists understand that’s a mistake. In fact, except in unusual circumstances, both the Vulcans and Earthlings would gain immensely from interplanetary trade. Each planet should specialize in its comparative advantage—that is, the form of production for which it has the lowest opportunity cost.
My response, which the stupid fuckwit has, of course, deleted on the pretense that it was 'trolling'- in furtherance of which claim he also tried to criminally extort money from me- is presented below-

'Your  designer baby post is fatally flawed because Vulcan is better off by wiping out the population of Earth and colonizing it with suitably modified hybrids. Similarly, the rest of your argument fails because the designer baby technology might lead to a speciation event such that the new 'supermen' displace or otherwise exterminate the descendants of stupid slobs like me so as to make more efficient use of the earth's resources
'Comparative advantage is irrelevant when Land is scarce. The guys with Absolute Advantage displace the others unless there are non-convexities or some arcane reason for 'reswitching' type multiple equilibria. Actually, come to think of it, you are bound to get the following type of 'reswitching'- the absolutely disadvantaged can just breed faster and faster and accept lower and lower entitlements so that they retain or even increase their demographic share in the final evolutionarily stable eqbm. In other words, designer babies could give you two speciation events- one for supermen and the other for subhumans. H.G. Wells predicted that the supermen would ultimately turn into Liberal Arts College attending snobs- i.e. limp wristed Eloi- preyed upon by meat headed Morloks with Engineering degrees from M.I.T'

In Econ, as in Philosophy or the art of conspiring to extort money under false pretenses, a little Knowledge is a dangerous thing.
In this case, it isn't the Theory of  Comparative Advantage that is wrong, it is just that Brennan is too stupid to understand that unlike average variable cost, opportunity cost isn't something your Excel spreadsheet can calculate for you. Coase, long ago, pointed out the global, inter temporal, and substantive nature of the concept which, in his opinion, Americans generally failed to grasp.
Brennan is a stupid man and, with the unerring genius of stupidity, he has put his finger on the two situations which best demonstrate the danger of applying Econ 101 in a mechanical manner.
Common sense tells us that if an alien species has absolute advantage in everything, and are selfish, then they will wipe us out and take over our planet. This is because habitable planets are scarce. However, if we are ready to blow up our planet rather than be completely exterminated then we have a bargaining chip. A Pollyanna President of the World Republic, who placed his faith in Brennan's argument, would be directly responsible for the extinction of our species.
Similarly, changing the genome isn't at all like changing education and training- i.e. the well springs of 'acquired advantage'. What if designer babies are created so as to thrive in a world in which we perish? Then, we wouldn't all be in the same boat w.r.t. things like the hole in the ozone layer would we? There incentive for poor and rich to come together to tackle common problems, local or global, would no longer exist.
In this context, Graciella Chichilnisky showed the importance of 'Goldilocks' preference/endowment diversity- not too much, not too little- as well as providing the mathematical tools to begin to capture the dynamics of unequal trade.
One final hilarious point, Brennan doesn't get that 'food' has a satiation point and, in any case, rational beings will overproduce for prudential reasons. Vulcan won't sell us starships for food they can't eat. More generally, primary and low value added goods have low Income elasticity and the terms of trade shift against their producers. This could by itself give rise to a repugnancy market- don't buy shoes made by starving Bangladeshi rape victims.
As for 'Designer babies'- this impacts on Hamilton kin preference, i.e. Price Equation calculi as well as Dawkins' extended phenotype type considerations. Suppose the market for 'designer  babies' has high artificial barriers to entry and large economies of scale and scope. Then we would predict an oligopolistic market with an essentially identical product marketed in a discriminatory way- i.e. the same soap with a bit of perfume is 'Deluxe', while if given an ugly German name, it becomes 'Masculine'...etc etc. If this is the case, then we can predict that parents as well as everyone else will have less Hamilton altruism towards the kids. Indeed, at a certain point, if there is no parental contribution, or if it is junk, then kids would be like cars- stuff you send to the landfill when tastes or commodity prices change.
Oh. Okay. I now get why Brennan is for Designer babies.
It's all part of Georgetown's unique approach to Ex Corde Ecclesiae

Sunday 29 December 2013

The harm in hypercorrection- or jurm jindeh ast!

My Iranian friends like to tell the story of the Indian mourners at Ayatolloh Khomeini's funeral who took up the cry 'Khomeini zindeh ast' (Khomeini is alive!) only to be betrayed by Hindi's lack of a 'z' phoneme into proclaiming 'Khomeini jindeh ast' (Khomeini is a bitch whore).
Recently people from Meerut have taken to hypercorrecting by inserting a 'z' into Arabic or Persian words which actually require a 'j'.
A case in point is, Kejrival supporter, the hilarious poet/ stand up comic, Dr. Kumar Vishvas, who certainly knows better and takes a mischievous delight in remaining within the decorous prison of Ghazal 'Muhabbat', at 'Kavi Sameelans' presided over by Professors with the power to rusticate, or District Magistrates who can have you thrown in jail, such that it is entirely what is suggested but unspoken by his gamin persona, which soars aloft on the wing of Zatalli's satire and Chirkheen's scatology.
Still, his mis-pronouncing jurmana as zurumana is to be greatly deplored. This fashion for hypercorrection imperils the historic foundations of Indo-Iranian friendship and mutual respect.
Mind it kindly.
Aiyayo.

Friday 27 December 2013

Jason Brennan. of Georgetown Uni, admits breaking Federal Law in a bid to extort money from me

Jason Brennan is an Assistant Prof at  worthwhile Jesuit Institutions. He also edits the BHL site where, acting out of pique at my criticism of his stupidity, he banned me for having used foul language or something of that sort.
I hadn't used foul language- I had however humiliated Jason by showing that his vaunted scholarship and ratiocinative power  was utterly worthless.
Jason tried to extort money from me, by impersonating a female attorney of a prestigious firm,  on the excuse of adjudicating my complaint against the BHL website.
I pointed out to him that he would go to jail if he did not apologize and make restitution before the end of December.
He has not done so. Why? He thinks he is really really smart and I'm fucking Christian and really really dumb..

Jason sent me this email

eudaimonia_02912@yahoo.com
23 Dec (4 days ago)
to me
Mr Iyer,

In the spirit of Christmas, please accept my deepest apology for my childish, miscreant behavior. I will use the next few days to reflect upon my flaws, and hopefully take the first steps toward building better character. Thank you for your patience and tolerance in this matter.

All best wishes

Notice, the cunt did not sign his name to the above.

I also sent him an Email on Xmas Day, APOLOGIZING FOR ANY DISTRESS I MAY HAVE CAUSED HIM!/ Her.  ( He sometimes pretends to be a woman by the name of Debbie Dresner)

I stand by that. I put my name to it. It was genuine. I actually took out material from my blog which might reflect badly on this fucking cunt.

But, guess what? The fucker wasn't genuine. How do we know? His confession is too short. Liars keep their statements short. This cunt just doesn't want to go to Jail.

Still, there are people who make mistakes who are anxious to do something in the way of reparation so as to avoid incarceration.
Brennan is far above that.

He hasn't apologized for his prejudicial conduct on BHL- indeed,. I'm still banned there which suggests Jason has a good defense in Law against the charges I and others will be bringing against him.
Does he have an equally good defense against FEDERAL CHARGES OR EXTORTION, WIRE FRAUD AND RACKETEERING?

Time will tell.

Gandhi, Rawls & Academic Credentialism

(From Prof. B.N. Ghosh's - Beyond Gandhian Economics)
What was the jajmani system of ancient India? Essentially, it was a system that redistributed wealth and income towards those whom, in a well ordered Social Order, we would expect to be the least well off- viz. those descended from, or otherwise modeling their behavior on, mad fuckers, violent sociopaths, or lazy cunts.
The mad fuckers were known as Rishis and the Brahmin caste, of which I am so estimable an ornament, are descended from them. These Rishis had a problem with premature ejaculation. When ever they saw a pretty girl in the distance, they'd shoot their load and then that sperm would be collected in a jar or leaf or some other utensil and conveyed to where it would do most good. Clearly, mad perpetually prematurely ejaculating fuckers are going to be the least well off, and least respected members of a Well Ordered Society. Thus, if there's a chance, when choosing from behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, that we might be descended from Rishis, we would stipulate that Bhramins should be treated as the highest caste..
Since being descended from sociopathic nutjobs is less humiliating than being a Bhramin, the Aristocratic Kshatriya class must content itself with second place- unless actually occupying the throne, in which case they get to be God.
As for the money-lending Bania, this was Gandhi's own caste, no very great humiliation attaches to being descended from a lazy cunt- indeed, amongst the English, the definition of a gentleman was one who belonged to the leisured caste- so, though still comfortably above the non-jajman 'Service' castes who do the actual work, they must content themselves with third place.

As Gandhi points out, granted a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics, the ancient Indian system would have been truly perfectly compassionate. Unfortunately, Brahmin priests weren't totally shit, so they didn't deserve to be treated as the highest caste. Furthermore, Kshatriyas weren't sociopathic nitwits, so they didn't really deserve their Aristocratic status. Banias too were energetic and forward thinking.
Still, what isn't true about genetics may be true about training and education. Hence, Academic Credentialism is both Rawlsian and Gandhian.

Wednesday 25 December 2013

Himmelfart- Andre Rieu's Xmas Concert

I was born in Germany. I'm the only member of my family who doesn't speak German. Yet, I alone  possess German wit, German sentimentality, a German feeling for the Gemutlich and, it therefore follows, the peculiar German love of England- that land of 'Angels' whose incessant Annunciation they, with Teutonic pedantry and precision,  denominate as Heaven's fart .

I'm watching, the Dutch, violinist Andre Rieu's Xmas special on Sky HD. He says, in simple German, that English is the loveliest of languages and then produces the cutest kids imaginable from Nagasaki and keeps referring to his petite and pretty English Soprano as gross and Angular.

In the past, I'd be 'sleeping the babies' in a darkened room- coz I get cranky and tend to bite people if the Queen's Christmas speech omits mention of Ayn Rand, or Rice, or how like Christ was actually this really cool Von Misean Vampire- but, lately, all the babies have grown up and are playing complicated games on their various devices so, just to give myself face,  I speak thus to you now.

Three pretty girls are now singing Goethe's 'Rose of the Heath' which reveals the great feminine truth that the heart's deflowering pricks to madness everyone save the rude boy by whom unctuous Virginity is undone.

I'm flummoxed. Why are the Germans clapping for this?
Rieu is now introducing the gorgeous Carla Mafioletti and asks which country she comes from- Denmark, Jah?.
Nein! The Mafia are from Sicily. That's where she's from. Just as them unnaturally cute kiddies were from Nagasaki.
But the English are angels.
Rieu's hilarious German joke is 'Skiing? NO! People go with two legs but do they come back in the same condition? I ski. Yes. I have a sledge. And my wife pulls it. '
It isn't witty, it isn't true, yet it is universal in a manner which French esprit or the Anglo-American wisecrack isn't- because, of course, Rieu omits mention of the whip to hasten the slattern on to her snowy doom.
Thus the truly comic aspect of the situation- viz  the curious cries and lamentations  of one's bare breasted wife being lashed and flayed so one can fuckin' drag race Santa- is nevertheless  precisely what is elided. Which is why, as I've often maintained, only us truly Aryan Iyers can incarnate the whole of German humor.
 I forget how this connects with my critique of German Monetary Policy, but it does, okay? It just does.


A post prandial Christmas prayer

May the Turkey on which I've dined
& Sprouts of Brussels, belly refined
Tho' Euro-piles e'er are swollen
Quarrel not in my colon

Tuesday 24 December 2013

Remembering John of Capistrano on Christmas Eve.

John of Capistrano was obsessed with blood.


Capistrano argued that though Christ's blood was spilled only after his death, yet it was living blood and therefore pure and uncorrupted.

Capistrano's other great service to Christendom was that he gave young Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula, his start in both life and un-death.
Something to think about as we celebrate the birth of Our Lord while watching Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.

Is trolling euvoluntary?

N.B.- This post has been edited in the light of a negative comment

Mike Munger, speaking of my own modest trolling efforts, suggests it might be. This is a link to a paper of his on Euvoluntary Exchange & the Rawlsian Difference Principle regarding which the following points suggest themselves

Munger isn't going for the low hanging fruit here- the most obvious one being
1) the argument from price/service provision discrimination w.r.t. Goods and Services which are either natural Monopolies/ Monopsonies or else Legally constituted as such. For e.g. the State may choose to define itself as having the monopoly of legitimate coercion.
In this case, Economics 101 (which Rawls assumes we have access to 'behind the veil of ignorance')
says that there will always be some goods and services such that price/ service provision discrimination will be both allocatively and Hicks/Kaldor efficient- i.e. yield higher output and potentially help the worst off for e.g. by the Monopolist distributing a small percentage of profits to the least well off One percent or half percent or setting up a hospice for lepers or something like that.
However, segmenting the market on the basis of things like ethnicity, gender, inherited status, having a PhD, etc may be the cheapest and most effective way of preventing 'leakages'. Thus, the Difference Principle might endorse Racism, Sexism, Credentialism etc.
More generally, by giving rich and powerful people preferential treatment, a Justice or Political System gives them an incentive to support the system rather than 'Hirschman Exit' or form a close dealing coalition designed to circumvent the System in question.
Munger does, however, point out that paternalistic Legislation which assumes that poorer, less educated, or lower bargaining power people can't be trusted to make fair bargains, may in fact end up hurting them.
Indeed, we would expect that either there will be 'Agency Capture' or some 'Goodhart's law' type perverse effect, or else a class of intermediaries will arise to circumvent the Govt's interessement mechanism.
(I may mention, that a Binmore type (i.e. with no external coercion) 'repeated game' approach comes unstuck for a similar reason because there is no way of distinguishing phenotypal 'canalisation' (which is in the core) from 'capacitance diversity' (which may not be and has high hysteresis and is associated with things like ressentiment and moral panics) within the Evolutionary Stable Strategy. What I mean is that a speciation type event occurs such that the co-operative representation of the underlying strategic game has a splintered grand coalition)
2) Munger is sticking with the notion that profit needs to be positive to motivate entrepreneurship and Capital formation. Actually, it can be negative because
a) Non-monetary returns - e.g. learning, status, and network effects
b) Precautionary Asset diversification and Strategic behavior.
c) Global contraction and negative Expected real interest rates. Here, people's need for diversified precautionary balances means that there is still an arbitrage opportunity.
One important point, generally overlooked in this context, is that Human beings have always had an incentive to practice charity because producing more than you need is a good hedge against lean years. This holds even if there are no 'reputation effects' or 'moral economy' type vesting of conditional Entitlements.
Portfolio Choice theory explains why an Entrepreneur who will never make a profit may yet gain wealth, status- even a seat in the House of Lords, like my old mess-mate, Karan Billimoria- without attracting the ire of his investors. On the contrary, the fact that they backed a 'neverwozzer' (Silly Billimoria chose a name for his beer that barred him from America) shows their methodology was correct.
My point is that the information processing function fulfilled by the Entrepreneur continues to attract a return even if Profits are negative. (I should explain, Economists define Income as what you can spend without diminishing your Wealth. In this case, Capital (broadly defined) is having to donate a portion of its depreciation to the Entrepreneur simply so as to continue to exist at all)
Human Societies have evolved to cope both with Expansionary and Contractionary phases. In a perpetual steady state, Munger's objection to tinkering with the outcome of a Rawlsian mechanism- viz. that this amounts to violating the veil of ignorance condition, seems merely scholastic. However, this ceases to be the case once we acknowledge the reality of  the coexistence (or indeed co-evolution) of Entrepreneurship with 'Negative Profits'. Capitalism is not a vampire. It is a wounded beast which dies to keep Entrepreneurship alive. The troll outlives the blog.
Certainly, the opposite may happen. The feudal lord may treat the Merchant as a fatted calf. But Entrepreneurship is the troll lurking under the bridge over which all the King's horses and all the King's men pass over to oblivion.   In India and China, comprador Merchants, in league with the Evil East India Company (vide Pirates of the Caribbean)  ultimately killed off the feudal lords only to be betrayed by their descendants, like Jappa Pallikathayil or Nina Burdwan, who studied Political Philosophy, and began jabbering about 'fairness' and 'exploitation' and other such nonsense. Which is why trolling bleeding heart blogs is actually euvoluntary.

Monday 23 December 2013

Extract from 'Minyan Murders'

'Rien n'est plus fecond, tous les mathematiciens le savent...'
'English!'
'Yaah! No more of your endless bloody Racine!'
'That’s not Racine’ Obi intervened, ‘still, the boys are right. So, I’m sorry Celeste,  as Chair, I'm obliged to ask- could we please have that in English? '
'Ra Ra Rasputin,' David chanted drunkenly, 'Lover of the Russian Queen, C'mon baby do your thaaang.'
Celeste fumed and muttered but surrendered her paper to the hieromonk with surprising good grace. Indeed, she was being uncharacteristically well behaved. No doubt, she thought her paper would blow everybody else's out of the water.
  'Let me see. Yes. The quotation is from Andre Weil. He writes- 'Nothing is more fecund, as all mathematicians know, than these obscure analogies, these troublous reflections of two theories in each other, this reciprocal blurriness which is inexplicable save as the smudge marks left by furtive kisses, fugitive caresses, detecting which the Researcher will taste no higher pleasure because- when daylight dawns & the phantoms of his obsession dissolve,  when Conjecture incarnates as Certitude- then, at that very same moment,  those twin theories, revealing their common source- desert him by vanishing together.
 ‘As is taught by the Bhagvad Gita, we reach Knowledge and Indifference at the very same time. Metaphysics has turned into mathematics, making itself the marble of a sculpted treatise whose cold beauty can no longer move us.'
  'Okay,' said Richard, 'I get it. What Celeste is saying is that Descartes only introduced Geometry to Algebra so as to get up a three-way for fruity, future, French Mathematicians, but then- and this is what Andre Weil finds out- if Froggy will a wooing go, it turns out all Love but is Lust for a pair of for long sundered, latently Sapphic, twins who, so piquantly discovered to each other, promptly run off together to pleasure only themselves in perpetuity-  which, truth be told, is a picture actually kind of yucky- so, all we are left with is this sepulchral pornography which is utterly Ancient Greek in that it turns out the pin-up you've been beating your meat to is actually a bikini shot of your own ...'
  'Not Algebra,' Babu said, 'Arithmetic.  What the Weil conjecture is about is far more mind-blowing. He's saying ordinary Arithmetic-nothing more complicated than fractions- inputs into Diophantine equations you don't need High School Maths to understand- yet is deeply connected to algebraic topology.
  ‘But, to generalize from Weil is to miss the really prodigal aspect of Diophantus's genius- his rigorous eschewal of general methods- each one of his equations requires the use of a special techniques that won’t work for even its most closely related problem- which is perhaps what Celeste is getting at when she equates, his pupil, Hypatia's defence of her virginity- by the display of her menstrual rags- with 'the Paraclete's monstrance & Plato's remonstrance'.
‘I don’t dispute the importance of Weil’s conjecture- but its modish or seductive glamour for intellectuals, its impact on Structuralist Anthropology & Semiotics  and so on, seems utterly mischievous- after all, if Celeste is right, Hypatia, was killed by the Alexandrian mob, not because she was a Platonist- Neo-Platonism had already been assimilated to Judaeo-Christianity- but because she lectured on Diophantus and demonstrated a range of different heuristic devices, astrolables and orreries and other such apparently magical objects, each of which was highly efficacious in a highly specific context but useless in every other. Thus, Diophantus should be taken as showing how much can be achieved without the zero, the negative, the irrational, the imaginary, and this- by itself- delivers a salutary  rebuke to the System builders, the Generalizers,  the totalizing Theorists- who had actually invented those concepts in the first place- but, for that very reason, jealously prevented their being used in any useful way.
   ‘But, if I accept this part of Celeste's argument, regarding Hypatia, then I am obliged to take issue with the use Celeste is making of Weil’s Gita and Grothendieck’s Yoga.  Indeed, even according to the Brahmins' own hermeneutics, in so far as the Gita, or the Yoga Sutras, or anything else, confirms things already believed or known, that meaning does not exist in them. The confirmation is actually a de-confirmation. Hermeneutics has a heuristic which says, if we already know the meaning then that isn't the meaning. No apoorvata obtains- nothing novel is here- the chain of causation has not been affected- the action of reading could have been omitted for all the good it did.’
   ‘Now, clearly, Weil's conjecture does have 'apoorvata' with respect to the Diophantine equations, clearly it does open up new vistas for his own subject. But only because  of the very domain specific way in which it is framed. Yet, Structuralism ignores this domain specificity and claims Weil's Bourbaki as legitimating its model.  I say this not as an expert on Structuralism, but because that is what I read on the very first page of Jean Piaget's  slim little volume on the subject. But, and this is the crux of my objection, Weil's conjecture has no apoorvata outside  a highly specific Research Program confined to Mathematics alone. Thus it can't have the meaning that Celeste is claiming for it. Why? How so? The fact is, Godel had already shown that each higher level axiom in Set Theory entails the solution of certain Diophantine problems which had been undecidable from the previous axiom set.  Godel, via Tarski, is the landmark figure for us who are outside Maths or on its fringes. What is the corollary?
 'Think of axioms as being rules- indefeasible rules like moral absolutes, deontic absolutes, rules about your duty- things like 'Thou shall not kill' and so on- then, what happens is that, the attempt to unify domain specific theories on the basis of greater and greater generality yields something which is the opposite of useful, the opposite of a utility belt of heuristic tools- what we get is an infinite rule set, an infinite deontics, a cancerous meta-metaphoricity.
  'That’s the danger with having rules in the first place. They are supposed to make things simpler because they are few and facts are many. But, what happens when you propose a rule?- even something as obvious as 'don't play with your own faeces'- the bad news is you are already on a slippery slope to- 'don't touch the person who carries away your faeces'- then- 'consider as Untouchable all people even vaguely related, or who perform a function vaguely similar, to guys who carry away shit'- till finally you end up with patently absurd stuff like 'Your mother becomes Untouchable to you during the hour when Saturn is in your paternal ancestor's Lunar House but ceases to be so if the wind is blowing from the west and the Stock Market is down.
  'Ultimately, the High Caste man hurriedly bolts down his flavourless food alone and naked- like a furtive animal. Everybody and everything, including his own clothes, have become untouchable and inauspicious to him by the metastasis of meta-metaphoricity. '
  'But, Babu,' Obi warned, 'That is precisely the point Celeste made when she invoked, the scholar vagabond, Solomon Maimon, as opposed to Moses Mendelsohn, as the true tutelary spirit of what she calls ' the lumpen Ashkenazi Aufklarung which equated the Talmudic delight in the creation of more and more rules, its thymotic meta-metaphoricity, with the unbridled 'Golden Liberties' of the Polish aristocracy, so ruinous to their country, yet which, much more than Marx, granted a relative freedom from both heteronomy and humanism to what would become Europe's new revolutionary class par excellence.'
  'Really? Was that what she was doing? Well, forgive me if I want to spare my people the holocaust visited upon the lumpen Polish Jew- revolutionary or otherwise. Celeste's Maimon is a Mathematical Spinoza, au fond. But, that unlucky conjunction is itself a Shoah. Why? You are tacking metaphysical univocity to a skeptical critique of dualism- whether dialethic, like that of Maimonides, or cognitive, like that of Kant. What's the upshot? Reason can still release from bondage- but only under the seal of vagabondage- the malamati dervish, the kapalika yogi and now the drug addled hippie pimping his College educated girlfriend in the name of Universal Love.
   'And this is the new Indology, the new Orientalism. Sex, drugs & rock & roll- as if that last, the confiscatory orchestration of the clinking of the fetters of the oppressed, wasn't already that undying Diophantine Dionysios which renders a class proletarian- child bearing- serving the community only by, even breadlessly, breeding and unpermitted the possibility of becoming, by the Logos or Love's leaven, either Eucharist or better bred.
  'This is the other side of the Structuralist turn in Antropology. When Dr. Ambedkar- the Liberator of us Untouchables- studied Anthropology at Columbia, it was still possible for that ad hoc or incipient Science or Monadology to serve a useful purpose. It provided the right stepping stone to things like Constitutional Law and Monetary Economics, which our Boddhisattva Ambdekar proceeded to master, but master only for our benefit. These are the practical tools by which millennia of oppression can be shattered. Anthropology, from being the servant of the Colonizer, the Imperialist, could have gone on to become the liberator of the slave class, the mender of  broken men. Instead, what happened? You have Levi Strauss- the notion that there is some sort of Universal Mind which structures all things outside Time. The appeal of Structuralism, for Anthropology, is that it unites, on the basis of greater generality, ad hoc theories based on observations of particular places at specific times. But, the effect has been the opposite of Liberative, at least in India.
  Sanskrit has a special place- a safe place, thanks to Nietzche's praise of the pitiless persecution of the Chandala- for Saussure and Structuralism but only because it is so patently synthetic, atemporal, and artificial. Thus,  though this same 'Sanskritization' equates the organic and the natural with dirt, death and pollution- it has been willy nilly valorized as the 'natural' or 'canonical' method for our people, the people it stigmatizes as Untouchable, to advance forward.
   'We must give up eating meat, drinking wine, worshipping God under vernacular, as opposed to Syndicate Hinduism's Sankritized, names and...and what? Will we be any better off? No. We will still have to carry night soil on our heads, except not just night soil, now we have to carry all that fucking Sankritized shit as well!'
  'Andre Weil, like his sister Simone, learned Sanskrit as a kid. He read the Bhagvad Gita in the original. That's why he came to India. But, in India, seeing the reality of Untouchability- worse even than the treatment meted out to the ghetto Jews- what did Weil do? He aligned with Gandhi, the last of the 'Mahatmas' to champion the Caste system.
  'Not that Gandhi was particularly Casteist himself. It was just that he was part of the nativist, lawyerly, reaction to the advent of impersonal British Law. Thus, there was a Temple road in Kerala which anybody could use because it was a public highway. Some High Caste lawyers go to Court and, simply to advertise their cleverness, have it declared a private road. Untouchables- but only Hindu Untouchables, not Muslims or Christian Untouchables- were now forbidden to use it. Gandhi goes to Kerala and holds a debate with the priests. He is defeated. They prove that they are only doing their duty- as is prescribed in some ancient text- they have no personal animus against Untouchables, nor do they deny the Spiritual greatness of the Saints from that Community. Indeed, they point out, since the Untouchable can continue to use the road simply by changing his Religion, there is no element of coercion. The whole thing is merely a voluntary observance of a ritual, and therefore a meaningless,  hoary old practice.  Now the priests were not saying that they were obliged to uphold Untouchability under all circumstances. They were only saying they did so because no inducement  or sanction obtained for them to do otherwise. If the Law was changed declaring the road, or the Temple itself, a public space, then they would not stick their necks out to fight it.  But, Gandhi did not believe in Laws and Courts- precisely because of their eschewal of meta-metaphoricity, their commitment to positivism- so he could not take the path that was being offered to him. Nor could he endorse Untouchables converting to Christianity or Islam- Untouchables, for him, had less sense than cows. Instead, this cancerous, seemingly voluntarist, type of Casteism becomes attractive to him. He affects his final apotheosis- making himself the ultimate object of Gabriel Tarde's law of imitation- by calling himself an Untouchable 'Bhangi' and therefore univocal with the Supreme Deity of the Brahmins- Lord Siva who laves the soul's impurities at the Creation ground.
   'Fine, you may say, if he had stopped it there. He didn't. In 1932, the second year of Weil's stay in India, Gandhi blackmails Ambedkar, by going on a fast. Why? The British- who had given Universal suffrage and Representative Government to Ceylon the previous year- they could do so because Ceylon's native elites were still loyal enough to accept the British provision of highly effective protection for minorities across the board- the British were seeking to move thing forward in the same way in India, though Universal Suffrage remained a far off dream, and part of their project meant protecting the Untouchable minority by granting them separate electorates. Gandhi- who had at first cooperated with Ambedkar, believing him to be a Brahmin- now used his 'non-violent' weapon of the fast-to-death against him. Ambedkar had to yield. His people would have been massacred in every village in India if Gandhi's health suffered during his hunger-strike. Ultimately, with mixed electorates, but reserved seats, only Uncle Toms would be elected- until, that is, the Untouchables evolved a gangster class that might pose a sufficiently compelling countervailing threat.
  'Weil was in India while all this was happening. Yet, he chose to accept Gandhi's interpretation of the Gita, even though he had just seen it used to perpetuate caste hierarchy in the name of non-violence. Why? Well, I suppose, because Gandhi's approach appeared to unite disparate theories, the prescriptions of different religions, on the basis of greater generality.  But, according to this more general theory, what does the Gita say? It says- do your duty- follow the profession of your caste-but do so without relish or hope of reward. Don't do another's duty even if you are better at it or will relish it more because that would be a sort of Violence- and Violence is always wrong.
'Weil took this lesson to heart. He was a mathematician not a soldier so he felt no obligation to hurry back to France and enlist once War was declared. But, this just put his own life in more immediate danger. Ultimately, he was incarcerated as a deserter. Yet, the truth is, for Mathematics to survive, for Weil's conjecture to have yielded fruit, Hitler had to be defeated. In fact, Mathematics played a big role in the defeat of Hitler. Turing with his Enigma machine,  Von Neumann on the mathematics of shaped charges at Los Alamos- indeed, when Oppenheimer quotes the Gita- 'I have become Death, the devourer of Worlds'- it is noteworthy to recall that, in the Mahabharata, the Just King has to learn Probability theory and a sort of autistic savant, Diophantine or discrete, maths before gaining the necessary auctoritas  to press the button triggering the Kurukshetra holocaust.
 'Interestingly, the other lesson Yuddishtra, the incarnation of Justice, has to learn- this happens just before his instruction in Game Theory- is that the so-called Sages and Anchorites are actually spiritually lower, not higher, than the low caste 'Vyadha'- the butcher or meat vendor- who worships his own parents as his Gods and lives extremely well without giving a thought to the strictures of Kings and priests.
'But Weil wasn't interested in the egalitarian Gita of the enlightened butcher. He preferred instead the slavish doctrine of the Bhagvad Gita- which makes the dispassionate Butchery of men a moral absolute and which seeks to unite all the different ontological and epistemological and soteriological traditions of India into one seamless Casteist strait-jacket. A joyless strait-jacket- as Weil points out. Why bother reaching for Knowledge if you reach Indifference at the same time? Weil's erotic subtext gives the game away. Essentially, the project is either masturbatory or meretricious. To climax, in this context, is to feel indifference, if not disgust, for the object that excited your lust. The reverse is the case with ordinary sexual intercourse, based on mutuality and reciprocity,  because it intensifies pair bonding, diffuses an exponential tenderness, and widens the circle of affection and responsibility, familial, social and oecumenic.
'In contrast, to assimilate sex to masturbation is, I suppose, to have united two projects on the basis of greater generality. But, it is also to disable Love as something that might shape Evolution, bring about Change, and thus abide with us for aye as a source-spring of Joy, of Hope, of Liberation.'

  'Babu, I appreciate what you're saying,' Obi said, 'more especially as it arises out of the terrible suffering of your people, but, as an Anthropologist myself, I am obliged to observe that you are completely misunderstanding not just Celeste's paper but also Levi Strauss's Structuralism.  He is certainly not legitimating your Indian caste system by asserting its correspondence to some deep Structure embedded in a Platonic 'Universal Mind'- indeed, just as he rejected a unification of Totemism with his theory of bride exchange precisely because women really do have babies while men don't actually produce more totemic animals for the hunt by their couvade- that is false pregnancy-  rituals, so too would he utterly reject Untouchability as abjectly delusional and working only by a purely verbal,  metonymic or meta-metaphoric, illocutionary force. '

'Non,' said Celeste, ' ma chère Obi, you are unjust. Babu has understood. You have not. It is, the Criminologist, Gabriel Tarde's monadology, not the Mandarin, Durkheim's, functionalism, which is important for understanding Zadig. Tarde believed Cartesian dualism- the hiatus between matter and mind-was resolvable in a gregarious Monadology, escaping the prison, the frustrated geometry, the concurrency deadlock, of an intractable and Bourgeois relationism, by a vulgar joy at mimicking the substantivism of Newton's hooligan God. These words- Structuralism, Functionalism, Structural-Functionalism- these are totems, nothing more. And Academic Anthropology, publishing its papers, is the couvade ritual which brings to birth more and more totemic animals for other clans to hunt.'
'You're saying...'
'NO! I am NOT saying. This is not my paper. That is why I am giving it.'
'Good to know', said Richard,' If it isn't yours, it might mean something. Read on McDuff!'
'Yeah,' said David, 'but just the sexy bits.'
'David!' Obi frowned.
'No, is okay,' said Celeste, 'Give me the paper. Here- this is for you- if you didn't like the bit about the virgin Hypatia then perhaps you'll like this-
 'A young Egyptian, having become hopelessly infatuated with the courtesan, Thonis, made a contract for her services for an extortionate sum of money.  That very night, however, she appeared so vividly to him, in a dream, that his lust for her was utterly sated.
 'When he failed to keep their tryst, Thonis took him to court demanding the cash due her under their contract.  The judge, Bocchoris, ordered the Egyptian to bring in the money, and to hold it aside while Thonis was allowed only to grasp at its shadow -- the thing imagined being a shadow of the reality.'
  'Lamia, the flute player, the greatest hetaira of her day, protested this injustice to a colleague. Though the dream-Thonis had indeed sated the young Egyptian passion for her, the shadow of his silver had rather kindled than set free the courtesan from her desire for commerce with it.'
    Consider this as a metaphor for Zadig's mimetic monadology. Behind the hiatus between the real and the rational numbers- between what is and what Minds conceive- there is this eager grasping after shadows upon which Mathematics, like Judge Bocchoris, must pronounce Judgment, but pronounce Judgment only so Justice becomes the shadow for all whoring to pursue.
   Aliki has described Zadig's 'tâtonner of the axioms' as being like a set of cannibal mountaineers,  consuming those of their comrades who are a drag in the task at hand, and climbing the cliff faces of the different Diophantine escarpments, only to piously commemorate those they had ingested by being randomly possessed by their angry shades.
  Aliki's metaphor captures a lot about how Zadig's goal is to be achieved. I want to think about what it means for it to exist at all.  Let me read on
  'Suppose contracts for sexual services are legal and conscionable so Thonis can sue for damages. Surely the court has to grant substitute specific performance- i.e. the payment of the agreed on sum,  less, perhaps, Thonis's 'transfer earnings'- i.e. her regular tariff for walk-in trade- so as to make both parties as well off as if the contract went ahead?
   Is there a counter-argument? What if the defendant's lawyer maintains that Thonis performed some action such that her phantom appeared to his client and satisfied his desire so that she herself was not put to trouble? In that case, it is the phantom who should be rewarded and, it may be, the shadow of the silver suffices to do so. This argument holds because Thonis has 'unclean hands'. She has done something in bad faith so as to make the contract unequal in that the other party would no longer have a desire for specific performance on her part, should she have decided to renege.
  Thonis, of course, would maintain that she has no control over to whom or to what purpose she appears in dreams. She has not studied dream magic- quod nescis quo modo fiat, non facis- she didn't know how the thing could be done so she did not do it. Her hands are clean, she acted in good faith. Judge Bocchoris has rewarded her shadow with shadow wealth- and perhaps this is shadow Justice- but what of her own claim?
 The defendant's lawyer might argue that his client had not in fact entered a contract, but, being indifferent as between the phantasm of Thonis, and the actual Thonis, merely advertised the offer of an unilateral contract to both while stipulating what consideration would pass to the latter if she was the first to slake his lust. Thus, the courtesan should be disallowed substitute specific performance- which is damages- because otherwise something which is not, in essence, a bilateral contract is treated as being so.
 Thonis has a counter-argument in that, even if the contract is not a contract, nevertheless, by participating in it she performed a service in return for a promise of payment and thus has an action in Assumpsit or under an implied contract. What is the price of the service? Clearly, it is the price stipulated in the contract, even if that contract isn't a contract simply because the defendant did not stipulate for any other sum as consideration for Thonis's entering into this contract-that-is-not-a-contract.
  Judge Bocchoris, now, has a chance to put forward an argument touching upon the nature of Justice.  He can say that the moment Thonis brought a suit for damages under a implicit contract for a service- viz. the service of entering into a contract-that-is-not-a contract- her failure to specify that this was the case meant that he, himself, as Judge, was released from the duty of judging of that issue and only had a duty to provide a show of enforcing Justice with respect to a mere show or appearance of a contract. But, since no contract becomes Justiciable, being of itself permanently either unripe or moot (i.e. no party suffers injury save by some supervenient, multiply realizable, mental act of their own), it therefore follows that such Justice as is invoked by any Contractarian theory is but a meretricious phantom or wet-dream.'

    'I actually quite like that!' said David suddenly sober, 'Your Judge Bocchoris was a Straussian! Did you really write that? I mean that's Hilary Putnam's supervenience and multiple realizability and then the substitute specific performance thing and so on- it's Anglo-American is what it is- so you're telling the truth this isn't your paper.. so... what are you saying... you are Thonis, the courtesan or ...Jeez, I'm drunk again.'

    'I did write it. I wrote it just for you. There's something in my paper for each one of you. That's why it's not my paper. I'm not speaking. Don't you get it? This is Zadig's Seminar. His Silence is only meaningful while we speak. We have to become silent to let him speak us.'
'So if we say nothing, he will speak?'
'No. His silence will speak ours.'
'Okay, now I'm definitely drunk again' said David.
'Wharrabou'  me, Pet?' said Barney- who'd given up on being a bisexual, David Bowie, Space Pirate in favour of a lugubrious, shoulder padded, Roxy Music, New Romantic, persona- 'got any Smarties left over for yer lover-boy me ole china plate?'
------------------x------------------
'Barney was a spy! Typical American perfidy!'
   'It's your own fault ' David said, 'it was your paper planted the idea in his head. Byzantine General's & Theodora's orifices! Way to go, Celeste! '
   'But, I told you- it was not my paper, I was not speaking!'
   'Yes, that's why he listened.' Richard said, 'Though, for the life of me, I can't figure what it was about the Byzantine Generals theorem which gave him the billion dollar idea he mentions in his note. Frankly, if I could see any way to make money off it, I'd have left too. As it is, I have to stick with this bloody Seminar or give back my grant to the British Academy. Fucking Barney! Really, really, selfish of him to slope off to make money for himself. I mean, whatever this great idea is- it emerged out of our discussions- I mean, we should have a share in it. We really ought to sue that twat. I've an Uncle who is a barrister in Swansea. Maybe, we should give him a call.'
   'Wouldn't do much good.' David said. 'His Dad is a top patent attorney. Which actually isn't saying much because the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, isn't patent friendly- at least when it comes to algorithms or Software though that might be a different story if this mooted CAFC gets off the ground. Still, for the nonce, the fact that his Dad's surname is  Needledick- Bastard means that he gets a lot of co-licensing work. The nerds in Silicon valley recognize that they need a Bastard for a lawyer but are more comfortable with a Needledick-Bastard for when the time comes for them to be shafted themselves.'
   'That's his actual name?'
'No, it was done by deed poll as a condition of his divorce from Barney's Mum- she's the second best divorce lawyer in Southern California.'
  'The second best Divorce lawyer, you say? I suppose that explains her surname- Slacktwatted-Whore.'
  'No.  Why do you ask? She simply reverted to her maiden name- a fine Old Money, New Mexican one at that- but did lose custody of Barney and had to pay alimony on a scale which let her husband take his practice global. The truth is, Barney has had a pretty rotten time because of the divorce. I guess that's why he wanted to turn into a Rock Star so badly. Actually, Richard, if only you'd got him that role in the rock-opera you had Babu work on- what was it, Oscar Wilde and Lily Langtry?- he'd still be here. And we need him. I've been reading the fine print on my offer from the Corven Institute. There is a rule that this Seminar terminates if less than ten people attend two consecutive sessions. What that means is, I risk getting no academic credit for this through no fault of my own.'
   'Shit! In that case, me and Moyra might have to return our Grant money to the British Academy!'
'Yeah.  Look, we're all totally screwed unless we make some systematic arrangement to rope in alternative delegates to keep up the quorum. As far as I can make out, the only condition is that they have to be less than 21 years of age. There doesn't seem to be much of a lower limit. That's why, when Obi brought along her twins, Zadig let the Session go ahead. But now they have had to go into hiding, we're really up against it. I mean the fact that Zadig still isn't saying anything means that  a lot of us just aren't that motivated to show up. Not that I blame Li Xi- her Embassy work takes priority-and obviously, we've got to respect the fact that Shahrukh is on a roll at the Chess Olympiad up at Oxford.  Still, it's a bit of bad luck that Mohammed is stuck down at Ascot seeing about his Uncle's Derby winner. What I don't get is why Moyra had to rush down there to make sure the horse is getting organic oats and not chowing down on Fried Chicken or something equally unvegan.  But it isn't just Moyra, now there's the problem with Aliki- her love life is out of control- we can't depend on her... Honestly, this whole thing is turning into a farce. Say what you like, at least Barney was a regular.'
'There might be a way round this.' Rasputin spoke up.
'How?'.
'Well, I think this Seminar is set up like a Minyan- the Jewish congregation. Wherever ten are gathered then an extra two- the Shekinah, the Divine Presence, and the Torah, the Law- also appear so that the number is 12 for the 12 tribes of Israel. The Rabbis establish that ten is sufficient for the quorum because the ten spies- who give discouraging reports  about the Land of Canaan thus incurring the wrath of the Lord- are described as a Minyan. Now, clearly, we here don't make up a Minyan. Only David is fully Jewish and, in any case, women, normally, wouldn't count. Furthermore, where is the Torah? And if there is no Torah, why should the Shekinah descend upon us? It may be, if Celeste is right, that there is an apophatic Torah in Zadig's Silence and that attracts the Shekinah. But, this permits an additional possibility. You see, according to the Kabbalah, after puberty a second, higher, type of soul is infused and there is a possibility of a third soul being added as one approaches the age of 21. The soul of a male zadik, a Jewish Sage, can enter a woman's body. In fact a female zadik could also do this if a woman has the nefesh, the soul, of a homosexual man and this needs to be cancelled.  So long as the ibbur is of male Jewish Sages, or for the purpose of cancelling homosexual nefesh in a woman, the defect of a person being female or non Jewish is remedied. In that sense this Seminar could indeed be a Minyan.  But, bear in mind, this is Zadig's Minyan. If Aliki is right, his mimetic monadology works backwards from the optimal outcome in a manner that crams competing ditopologies into Concurrency dynamics.
   'What all this boils down to is that  five people under the age of 21 can, if ibbur is ongoing, count as ten souls. In fact, even two people under twenty one, along with two children under puberty, could exceed the quorum because the children have two empty slots- one for the ruah and one for the higher type of soul known as neshama.
   'I think that's what happened when Obi brought the twins- -being under the age of puberty, they had only the nafesh, the basic soul, but not the higher type of soul called ruah or spirit. You see, I've been keeping track of our numbers and carefully observing Zadig to test my theory. I think he halts a session when he thinks the quorum is broken. But, it isn't just a matter of 'bums on seats' to employ Richard's  phrase- it's something spiritual. If a third soul is descending on us- if the talk takes a spiritual turn- the number goes up. But, when a profane turn is taken- the number can go below the Minyan and so he gets to his feet and dismisses the Session. What I'm trying to say is that we have to do two things- get in surrogates to make up the physical Minyan but also pay attention to the spiritual side of things, the serious side of things. We must permit this ibbur- this entry of a third soul, the soul of a sage- into ourselves. We must be hospitable to the Shekinah and seek to respond to the Wordless Torah.'
  'That may be,' Obi said, 'But, if we ourselves are to benefit from this Seminar- I don't mean benefit in any purely personal or selfish way- then our own interaction is important. As Celeste has shown, Zadig knew Gabriel Tarde's inter-personal Monadology. Recall the Byzantine Generals theorem. So long as the number of spies is less than one third of the whole, we have fault tolerance. This means there must be at least three of us, plus one innocent, involved in any productive deliberation of our own  because the truth is none of us came here with unmixed motives, none of us have clean hands, so none of us knows whether, in this context, we are spies or not.'

   'One more thing,' Rasputin said, 'The ten spies formed a Minyan because they hadn't acted in concert. If even two of us act in concert, the Shekinah withdraws. The result could be disastrous.'

Friday 20 December 2013

Speak Seraphina with dwindling Grace

In Youth, fellatio ends when you get Engaged
Coz Bee Jays are for the Middle Aged
Speak, Seraphina, with dwindling Grace!
 My prick now prettier than your face

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Ghalib 55

لو ہم مریضِ عشق کے بیمار دار ہیں
اچّھا اگر نہ ہو تو مسیحا کا کیا علاج

Lo! Love's invalids, our lot to curse
  Christ we cure, ourselves to nurse

Friday 13 December 2013

Why gender bending Jason Brennan is Hoppe-ing Mad

Update- Mr Iyer,

In the spirit of Christmas, please accept my deepest apology for my childish, miscreant behavior. I will use the next few days to reflect upon my flaws, and hopefully take the first steps toward building better character. Thank you for your patience and tolerance in this matter. 

All best wishes


Notice the fuckwit didn't put his name to this shit? The cunt thinks he's smarter than me and is still banning me from BHL.




 I emailed the body of this post to Jason Brennan and guess what that great big Bleeding Heart Libertarian, supposedly much exercised about Public Justification Argumentation theory, went and did? That's right, he banned me from the site, without any shred of excuse or appearance of fair play, and deleted all my comments.  Fascist? Not at all. Just par for the course for the Credentialized Ponzi scheme that is Academic Philosophy of no matter what ideological stripe.
Still, as in a Greek Tragedy, or in the annals of Tacitus, what followed from Brennan's usurpation and exercise of absolute power was his own abrupt plunge into psychotic gender-bending criminality. He tried to extort money from me in the guise of some sort of Washington hooker or street solicitor and when that failed, he claimed to have received a large sum of money from the ghost of my former G.P.

I'm not kidding. This isn't an elaborate metaphor. It's what actually happened.

In nuce- Brennan starts by claiming to have a disproof or Hoppe's argument that the very act of making an argument presupposes his own theory of self-ownership. I point out that Brennan's argument fails. He then, as a matter of observable behavior, not theoretical observation, turns into a female extortionist who claims victory over me in a battle of wits by receiving ghostly money from a dead person. In other words, Brennan's disproof of Hoppe involved him in much more than Hoppeing mad self-ownership, he arrogated to himself the right to stipulate an impossible Universe, of his own choosing (one where he was a female criminal)  as the only proper inter-subjective Reality for his interlocutor. It's a bit like Eric Cartman's Meinongian victory over Kyle in South Park's Imaginationland III.
This proves, or if does not prove then at least it illustrates, my thesis that BHL is essentially ontologically dysphoric. In the same way that a man trapped in a woman's body experiences gender dysphoria, so too does Brennan, when challenged, unman himself by retreating into a female criminal's body in an impossible Universe where he gets to extort money from ghosts.

How the story unfolds
I make some comments on Brennan's post against Hoppe on BHL and email him this blog post.
Brennan bans me
I complain to the BHL editors at this puerile display of pique and arbitrary and unconscionable violation of its own stated principles and get this Email in reply-

Dear Mr. Vivek,

We at the law firm of Edward Betten Williams have completed our investigation of your recent complaint on behalf of BHL. As the User Agreement at www.bleedingheartslibertarians.com notes, users producing spam, abuse, foul language, or the solicitation of illegal activities are subject to a site-wide ban. By posting at BHL, you are bound by all terms of the user agreement, including an arbitration clause, as well as a clause holding you responsible for all legal fees incurred during the review of complaints. Accordingly, one of our customer service representatives will be in touch shortly with instructions on how may remit payment. Please note that failure to remit payment within 30 days will result in us initiating a suit in small claims on our client's and our own behalf.

Sincerely,
Debbie Dresner, Esq.

 Needless to say- there is no such User Agreement.  Would BHL, confirm they had authorized this criminal act?

Vivek Iyer
10:28 (4 hours ago)
to eudaimonia_029.
Dear Debbie Dresner,
Further to your recent extortion attempt, could you please supply us an address where you can be contacted? As things stand, it is the contributors to BHL, as identified on the page you linked to, whom we will have to pursue in this matter.
Sincerely
V. Iyer.
eudaimonia_02912@yahoo.com
13:19 (1 hour ago)
to me
Dear Mr. Iyer,

We can be reached at 2200 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, USA.

We have determined that the legal costs of pursuing payment overseas outweigh the potential benefits. Accordingly, you may consider yourself to be let off with a warning. However, you are hereby reprimanded and advised to pursue no further contact with our law firm, with our clients, or with me. Any further contact can and will result in legal action, including action for criminal harassment. Remember that any email you end us, as well as anything you post online, can and will be used against you in a court of law.


Sincerely,
Debbie Dresner, Esq.

Vivek Iyer 




Dear Ms Dresner,
You have not denied that you attempted to extort money from me. I signed no 'User Agreement' of the sort you referred to, nor is any such User Agreement mentioned on the page you linked to. You have said that your firm examined my comments and found them to be in breach of this supposed User Agreement. The costs you supposedly incurred became the basis of your attempt to extort money from me.  This means that there are people employed by your firm who should be available for deposition if criminal charges are brought against you in this matter.
I must inform you that your client's action in this regard have been highly prejudicial and I am actively examining my options in this regard. The criminal attempt at extortion, or conspiracy towards that end, which you have engaged in, aggravates the offense.
I must advise you that your conduct is highly unbecoming an officer of the court- assuming your styling yourself Esquire is to be taken as a claim to be an attorney. I treat with disdain your stupid and criminal attempt at intimidation.
Far from considering myself 'let off with a warning'- I consider myself to have been traumatized and subjected to criminal misconduct by your unfounded, highly prejudicial and illegal actions.
I will not warn you of the consequences of the malice and stupidity you have displayed in your interactions with me- suffice it to say that it will cost your client a pretty penny.  
I say this because I am not able to find your firm at the address you have disclosed. Is it an accommodation address? 
Sincerely
V.Iyer.
Mr. Vivek,

You were expressly advised that any further contact with my firm, our clients, or me would result in us pursuing charges of criminal harassment. Unless we receive a signed, notarized affidavit at our address in the next five days indicating that you promise to avoid any further contact with us, we will issue sub poenas in both District of Columbia and Nottingham civil courts against you. Be advised that failure to comply with our request likely will result in a summary judgment against you.

As you may be aware as well, in Her Majesty's Court and by the laws of the United Kingdom, complainants who initiate failed lawsuits incur both their own and the defendants legal expenses. In addition, the laws of the United Kingdom consider most unwarranted complaints against public figures to be libel. Thus, it is in your own interest to discontinue all further communication with or about our clients, both through email exchanges or on the Internet.
Vivek Iyer 
15:25 (4 minutes ago)
to eudaimonia_029.
Ms Debbie,
You were expressly advised that you have engaged in conspiracy to criminally extort money. You have not denied this. 
Does your firm really exist? Are you a lawyer? 
If it does and BHL is your client then it is your duty to advise them of what you have done and the manner in which it aggravates my Civil claim against them.
If I do not receive a full apology from your client and an offer of damages by the end of December, I will certainly exercise my right to legal redress both as a Civil and Criminal matter.

eudaimonia_02912@yahoo.com
15:31 (5 minutes ago)
to me
Mr. Iyer,

Expect a subpoena from us with the next five business days. 

Good day.
Vivek Iyer 
15:38 (0 minutes ago)
to eudaimonia_029.
I expect nothing but stupidity and incompetence from you.

Vivek Iyer 
22:10 (12 hours ago)
to eudaimonia_029.
Debbi  Dresdner
I'm sorry if I was a little peremptory in my last.
Your stupidity and incompetence, after all, is the source of my revenue.
Do please remit the money you owne me for the many valuable lessons I've given you- a course of action to which, you are contractually bound by the User Agreement applicable to engaging me in Email intercourse.
Good day
P.S- a lawyer is supposed to intimidate the other guy. You did the opposite. You admitted you had no money and were a crap firm and then, quite gratuitously, showed me why any claim you might have against me must fail. 
Prima facie, you have admitted that any Criminal action you initiate is mala fide and in furtherance of a conspiracy to criminally extort.
Meanwhile, I've been busy. I've evidence that other members of BHL consider me to be a very valuable commentator on their work.
You say you work for BHL. What if they deny that you do? Then you and you alone will face FEDERAL CHARGES of Criminal Extortion, Wire Fraud and Racketeering in this regard. 
You have said that I should expect a subpoena from you. That was funny. But, of course, as you very well know, you violent criminal, though the word 'subpoena' is meaningless in the context of English Law (Since you have advised me, a Britisher, about British Law, you must be very knowledgble about it) BUT it has a very different, obscene, and utterly criminal meaning as used by people of your ethnicity and criminal antecedents.
Thankfully, I've read between the lines and taken EVERY STEP POSSIBLE TO PROTECT MYSELF AGAINST YOUR MURDEROUS AND SOCIOPATHIC KINDRED.
This does impose a cost on me- which I propose to recover- not from you- worthless person that you are- but your principals.
eudaimonia_02912@yahoo.com
03:38 (6 hours ago)
to me
Dear Mr. Iyer,

Thank you for your prompt responses to our inquiries.

We received today the sum of £4255, paid for on your behalf by a Mr. Grant Blair. This settles our civil proceedings against you, and so long as you keep to your agreement to discontinue harassing our clients, it also settles the criminal proceedings against you.
Vivek Iyer 
10:00 (12 minutes ago)
to eudaimonia_029.
I know of no Grant Blair- unless you mean my Doctor who died a couple of years ago- what a preposterous lie.
Still, this is quite funny.
Clearly you and your clients enjoy my attentions.
It is nice to be appreciated.

(I dedicated a book to Dr.Grant Blair a few years ago. The book is available on line- that's how Debbie got his name. Tragically, he died a couple of years back. Still, since BHL's 'philosophy' consists of nothing but raping the ghosts of Dead White Males, why shouldn't one such ghost pay off their stupid attempts at extortion, albeit only in their own greasy little imaginations? )

Update- it turns out Brennen is Debbie- they have the same email address- so the sequence of events is as follows, I email the post that follows to Brennen, he bans me from BHL, I complain to the Editor- also Brennen- who goes mad and turns into a (Jewish?) woman who likes pretending to be a lawyer and who tries to extort money from me- and, according to her own lights, SUCCEEDS because the ghost of my dead Doctor pays her £4225 in ghost currency.
Why did all this happen? I think Brennen teaches at a Jesuit Institution. Was he molested as a choir boy by this dybbuk Debbie Dresner dressed up in priestly vestments? Dunno.  Gotta say, Brennen was right to ban me from BHL. I'm just not crazy enough for that august forum. I bet that's a thing you never thought I'd have to say...

Now for the post which sent Brennen totally round the bend-
Why Jason Brennan is Hoppe-ing Mad
What happens when, for the purposes of argument, you grant the other guy's assumptions not for the purpose of agreeing with him and making him more agreeable but for the fell purpose of taking his pants down and saying real mean things about his genitals?
The answer, I'm afraid, is you fuck up big time.
Take the case of Constable Brennan who enters Hans Herman Hoppe's illegal shebeen and says 'Just for the sake of argument, I'll assume your premises are licensed and will now drink a gallon of your moonshine. Ha! Ha! Just took down your pants. You gotta tiny weiner. What's more you are pissing my urine out of your urethra!  Oh fuck,  I just pissed on the Archbishop. How come all my Friday nights end like this?"
Don't believe me?
Then check out  Jason Brennan on Hans Herman Hoppe over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians-
'I find it bizarre that anyone would find Hoppe’s argumentation ethics argument for libertarianism even slightly persuasive. It’s a string of non-starters followed by a string of non-sequitors. But I recently learned that at least one super-smart person found it convincing when he was younger. Thus, I think it’s worth showing how you can refute this argument in under a minute. First, I’ll give you terms commonly used in political philosophy. Then I’ll quote Hoppe’s argument. After that, the minute starts.
Begin with some terms from political philosophy:
'A liberty right is something that grants me permission to do something.
claim right is something that entails others have obligations, responsibilities, or duties toward me.
So, for instance, suppose you believe: “Everyone has the right to do whatever he pleases; no one has any duties to anyone else.” This sentence asserts that people have liberty rights to do anything, but have no claim rights at all.
In contrast, take: “I have the right not to be taxed–the government shouldn’t take my money.” Here I assert a claim right to my money–I assert that government agents have duties not to take my money from me.
So, to review, by definition:
“X has a liberty right to do Y” means “It is morally permissible for X to Y.”
“X has a claim right to do Y” means “Others have a duty not to interfere with X when he Ys.”
You can have a liberty right without a claim right. So, for instance, Hobbes thinks in the state of nature we all have liberty rights to kill one another, but he doesn’t think we have claim rights not to be killed.
With that distinction, consider Hans Hermann-Hoppe’s argumentation ethics argument for libertarian self-ownership.
Hoppe claims that the act of trying to justify a theory that rejected libertarian self-ownership is a performative contradiction—the act presupposes the truth of libertarian self-ownership. As he explains in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property:
It must be considered the ultimate defeat for an ethical proposal if one can demonstrate that its content is logically incompatible with the proponent’s claim that its validity be ascertain- able by argumentative means. To demonstrate any such incompatibility would amount to an impossibility proof; and such proof would constitute the most deadly smash possible in the realm of intellectual inquiry … Such property right in one’s own body must be said to be justified a priori. For anyone who would try to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose an exclusive right to control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say ‘I propose such and such’. And anyone disputing such right, then, would become caught up in a practical contradiction, since arguing so would already implicitly have to accept the very norm which he was disputing.
Okay, 60 seconds. Go!
For the sake of argument, on Hoppe’s behalf, grant that by saying “I propose such and such,” I take myself to have certain rights over myself. I take myself to have some sort of right to say, “I propose such and such.” I also take you to have some sort of right to control over your own mind and body, to control what you believe. (Nota bene: I don’t think Hoppe can even get this far, but I’m granting him this for the sake of argument.)
But all I need to avoid a performative contradiction here is for me to have a liberty right to say, “I propose such and such.” I need not presuppose I have a claim right to say “I propose such and such.” Instead, at most, I presuppose that it’s permissible for me to say, “I propose such and such”. I also at most presuppose that you have a liberty right to believe what I say. I do not need to presuppose that you have a claim right to believe what I say.
However, libertarian self-ownership theory consists of claim rights.
So, by saying, “I propose such and such,” at most I presuppose the permissibility of my saying “I propose such and such” and of your believing “such such,” but I don’t presuppose that anyone or anything has any claim rights or duties at all.
Hoppe’s argument illicitly conflates a liberty right with a claim right, and so fails.
Q.E.D.
Since Hoppe’s argument is complete nonsense, it has other fatal flaws aside from the one I described above. For further refutation, see here:
http://www.reasonpapers.com/pdf/351/rp_351_8.pdf

Why is the above fuck-witted? Briefly, rights can be inchoate- indeed, must be so, if discourse regarding them is to be non trivial. Grant the other guy's (illegal) premises and you are estopped from urging Illicit conflation unless there is, indeed, an Omniscient Oracle able to do the relevant backward induction after having solved the underlying Laplacian problem.
Moreover, for any given X whose Natural Language assumptions, A, you accept- even if only 'for the sake of argument' - it must be the case that there is always another interpretation, I, which defeats the Interpretation which yielded you a disproof or impossibility result.
Why?
Well, the one incentive compatible minimal assumption a person makes when voicing a Natural Language proposition is that the proper arbiter, or Humpty Dumpty, of its Interpretation is the one which makes him look smarter than everybody else.
This could easily be strategic or instrumental or refer to currently Open Problems in Maths.
Speaking pragmatically, since only Computational Logic's Argumentation theory, currently, is recognized as potentially non-shite, Brennan's result can be known in advance to be a case of his pissing on the Archbishop.

Of course, that Credentialized Academic Madoff-wannabe never responds to my comments coz me is just a fat black guy wot don't got from edumification- and that's a good thing coz, as long- time followers of this blog will know, I really iz shite.
Still, I now extract my comments on this post and paste them up here.









  • Your argument fails because Hoppe is assuming that people have a duty to be consistent- so your liberty right to state a certain sort of proposition creates a claim right, to believe or act consistently with that shite, against yourself..
    The fact is rights are rights whether or not the right-holder has an argument to justify that right or not. Indeed, I'd be suspicious of a guy who gives me an argument as to why he has the right to do something.(.e.g break a window to get into his own house) because people who genuinely have that right generally refuse to provide any argument at all but tell you to fuck off or they will call the police and get you arrested for trespassing.
    Furthermore, there may be a duty for a certain sort of philosopher to always justify his action and to be consistent while doing so but this is not the case for non-philosophers or, indeed, for philosophers if you ring them up real late at night.
    I don't know why you'd want to accept that- it is 'the ultimate defeat for an ethical proposal if one can demonstrate that its content is logically incompatible with the proponent’s claim that its validity be ascertainable by argumentative means'
    By doing so you are binding yourself to play a particular sort of game- which we all know to be utterly pointless.
    It certainly isn't a Libertarian game. Liberty aint about ethical proposals or what stupid Professors think is 'ascertainable by argumentative means' (spolier alert- it's the empty set)
  • windwheel  Danny Frederick 









A liberty right lets you do an immoral thing and the corresponding claim right makes it immoral for others to stop you doing that thing.
Both type of rights exist even in a Robinson Crusoe world. Crusoe has a liberty right to make a Trust in which he is the only beneficiary and also the trustee, prior to the arrival of Man Friday. He can then say, I homesteaded this Island and put it in trust for myself such that I'm forbidden. under its terms, to permit you to dispose of my property even if, absent that Trust, I'd have felt morally obliged to go halfsies with you.
One way of paraphrasing Hoppe is to say 'assume that, when playing a certain type of Language game, any well formed proposition within it is a case of exercising a liberty right such that it creates a claim right against oneself of a particular sort.' In that case, his argument goes through. Don't grant him his assumption and it fails. This is because the assumption is specified in natural language and it always possible to find an interpretation of it, for example one which uses pseudo-random generators- which defeats any given dis-proof.
The scandal this creates for BHL thinkers is that an obviously silly argument obtains which is not refutable because, for some reason, BHL academics buy into Public Justification because like maybe it's in my job description and anyway all the cool kids are doing it?
The proper Libertarian response, surely, is to say 'a plaque on both your houses' and go back to fantasizing about teaming up with Sarah Palin to become like a real badass bounty hunter or something equally lubricious.
    • Danny Frederick  windwheel 
















      I think you are confusing moral rights and legal rights. Something may be legally permissible (no one has a legal claim-right that you not do it) but morally impermissible (someone has a moral claim-right that you not do it). Telling a lie or insulting someone may be examples.
      I think you are also confusing power-rights with liberty-rights. You exercise a power-right when you alter someone's claim-rights or liberty-rights.
        • Avatar

















          I think we are speaking of 'essentially contested' concepts here, so the confusion is baked in, though no doubt I bring some of mine own to the table as a sort of relish.
          In general, I have no legal right to lie or insult someone except by reason of my own claim rights which ultimately derive from Public Policy pragmatics and thus are inherently defeasible.
          Interestingly, the same Policy pragmatics may bar me from telling the truth or awarding condign praise.
          Morally, I may have rights that conflict with claim rights- including claim rights against myself- and these can undoubtedly affect the prevailing distribution of power-rights.
          I think it is true that- if we thinks Moore's paradox is a genuine scandal, or that Wittgenstein's private language argument doesn't have an algorithmic workaround- then we've boxed ourselves in and have no means to disprove in advance every possible interpretation of Hoppe.
          One reason to think so is that 'following a rule' need not be deterministic. If so, by a Razburov Rudich type argument, our intuition about what is 'natural' misleads us.
          The Research Program for Argumentation theory in Computational Logic is not obviously unsound, whereas it is self-evidently foolish in the context of BHL, and so perhaps the latter should use the former as forge in which to cast the silver bullet which will finally kill off Hoppe's undead beastie.
          see more
      • Windwheel  David Friedman 
      • 'consider the proposition "One should never argue about what people should do." Belief in it is inconsistent with defending it argumentatively, but that tells us nothing at all about whether it is true or false. One could even imagine someone who did not believe in the proposition constructing a valid argument proving that it was true, although he would presumably stop speaking as soon as he had completely convinced himself.'
      • This argument, though meaningless in any strict sense, might appear not to be so because, at first glance, we feel that the introduction of impredicativity indicates that we have entered a higher order language and thus a different complexity class for the underlying Game.
        However, by Razburov Rudich, we know we can't draw any conclusion from this.
        Hoppe says ' For anyone who would try to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose an exclusive right to control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say ‘I propose such and such’.
        Apparently, self-ownership forbids leasing out one's faculties to wrath and lust and gluttony and drunkeness such that we can say with Agammemnon 'Not I, but my phrenes spoke' or 'Honey, it was the drink talking. I don't think you're a fat ugly slag at all. Honest.'.
        Who wants self-ownership on such restricted terms?

















          • Avatar



















            "Who wants self-ownership on such restricted terms?"
            Ha...funny response, but that proves the point too. For me, the point is even larger...you DO own yourself, in any semi-sane approach to ownership. I call it "axiomatic" because the only way out of it is to define ownership in some manner that precludes self-ownership.
            And sure, there are lots of ways to do that, but not without stripping the essence of what ownership--actual, independent of judgment, objective ownership--is.
            Also, it might be worthy to note that ownership itself, whatever it is, has existence only in a social context. Implicit in any concept C is the existence (or the imagined existence) of not-C. In the absence of a social context, there would be nothing that qualified as "not owned," and so "own" would carry no meaning. Well, except any that the actor wanted to fantasize into existence, of course.


              Windwheel  pelletfarmer 















              • I like this because it equates ownership with responsibility and thus serves a moral purpose even in idionomic discourse. For e.g. if Robinson Crusoe is an alcoholic, he still gets to 'own' the enormities he perpetrated, whilst drunk, in the sober light of day.
                I don't suppose it matters very much if we substitute 'self-creation' for 'self ownership' or, indeed, attribute both efficient causes and 'ownership' to God or 'the Force' or 'The Tao' or whatever. The crucial things is to learn to 'own' one's errors and idiocies so that it becomes your responsibility to fix things.
                Under Mrs. Thatcher, tenants were allowed to buy their houses from the Govt and, instead of turning into slums, owner-occupied houses showed superior maintenance and compliance with relevant by-laws against nuisances.
                Even if this measure had not increased labor and social mobility, it would still have been a success even though nothing had changed except that the occupants now made mortgage payments whereas previously they had paid rent.
                The argument was made that this 'privatization' would make people selfish and anti-social. They would retreat into a fantasy world fed by cheap Videos and frozen dinners. If someone broke a window pane or if the boiler burst or there was a spot of rising damp, people would just fix it themselves instead of making endless trips to the Council office. BUT, moaning about the Council's apathy Socializes you- i.e. coarsens you- the alternative being surrendering to Fantasy.
                Anyway, this was Terry Gilliam's take on British Socialism, circa the Seventies, in his masterpiece 'Brazil'.
                Nothing wrong with fantasy, so long as you fix the porch light when it goes out and insulate the loft in plenty of time for Winter.
                Argumentation theory, on the other hand, except in a Comutational Logic type context, has always been a threat to Liberty- which is the leisure to dream rather than the lucid, too lucid, nightmare of Public Justification's Nakedness in the Exam Hall.
          good_in_theory  daniilgorbatenko 
















          Having a way to translate a particular concept into the language of a particular analytical system doesn't strike me as "redundant".
          *If* "moral" and "liberty right" are equivalent in some interpretation, I wouldn't call that a redundancy. I would call that an interesting result of conceptual analysis which enhances our understanding (in this case of morality, and of rights, and of their relationship). Saying water is H2O isn't a redundancy, it's a revelation.
          In any case, if it turns out "moral" and "liberty right" are equivalent, that would only be in a particular application of the analytical framework. Take Hohfeldian analysis and apply it as a means of describing an existing legal system and you will no doubt find "liberty rights" that are immoral.
          But if I infer correctly from Jason's example with the KKK's speech rights, I think Jason would say as far as ethics goes, we have a duty not to do immoral things (morality requires this of us). Since a "liberty right to x" is defined as the lack of "a duty not to do x", we do not have the liberty right to do anything immoral.
          Perhaps for Jason morality requires we do what is moral (exerts a claim right on us). Then we end up with the result that we have a duty to do all things moral. Morality and immorality are then each a species of duty.
          We've assumed that nothing immoral is a liberty (I guessed this to be Jason's view.) So let's get to the question of whether or not every liberty is moral. If some liberties are neither immoral nor moral, then this fails. If some moral duties we have we are not at liberty to fulfill, this fails. It seems to me both of those are likely, so I'd wager "liberty" and "moral" are not equivalent/redundant.
          For example:
          Not everything we are at liberty to do is moral: I am at liberty to prefer vanilla to chocolate. This is neither moral nor immoral.
          We are not at liberty to do everything moral: I have made a promise which constrains my liberties, including my liberty to do moral thing X.

















            • '*If* "moral" and "liberty right" are equivalent in some interpretation, I wouldn't call that a redundancy.'
              What if the reason they are equivalent in that interpretation is because some notion of 'equitable estoppel' or 'substantive due process' makes the legal judgement dependent on the moral one? Surely that is redundancy?
              Is there any way to get equivalence between two different types of rights, under an interpretation of a deontic logic, in which the one is permitted no recourse to the others meta-language?
              As a matter of fact, not theory, it is in the nature of any transaction that it remains inchoate from some perspective, if it is indeed legally justiciable. This is because, as a matter of common experience, there is no offense without a defense- otherwise summary offenses wouldn't carry a right to appeal.
              P.S. I don't actually live under a bridge. I just tend to wake up there after a night out with disturbing frequency.
            • good_in_theory  windwheel 
















              You should probably answer these questions for yourself because they don't have a lick to do with what I was saying. Or my underlying point that not all equivalencies are redundancies.


                windwheel  good_in_theory 
















                • No offence. I was merely asking what motivated your assertion- i.e. if there was something you could point me towards in the literature.
                  I really am trying to puzzle these things out for myself but even one who paddles his own canoe might ask for information about streams within the current.
                  That being said, and do please correct me if I'm wrong, essentially you are saying Equivalences can be
                  1) effectively aleatory,- this can't be disproved because we cant distinguish the psuedo random from the genuine article
                  2) the substantive solution of a Co-ordination problem- this can't be disproved though it does tend to cash out as 'pre-established harmony' type Occassionalist optimism
                  There are other alternatives, however they do involve redundancy- one arising from impredicativity- at least, so far as I can see.
                  I'm evolving a blog post on this- videhttp://socioproctology.blogspo... and welcome your input.

                    At this point, Jason Brennan or whoever, decided to censor my comments coz them guys really are Libertarian and totally committed to Public Justification. I'm kidding. They are rent seeking Credentialist Fascists.
                  • Good in theory turned out to be a guy in his mid twenties. I invited him to get out of the Academic ghetto and make some money for himself.
                    • No wonder BHL banned me. I exposed their Ponzi scheme and was enabling their victims to just fucking say No and quit that shite and start doing something useful.