“The State” on Spitfire EP

Rothbard dubstep from up-and-coming electro/dubstep musician (and, coincidentally, anti-state libertarian) Porter Robinson. This is magnificent. I’m going to buy it 10 times.

(via whakatikatika)

(via philosophicallust)

Listen kids, you can learn something important from the #occupy movement!

And I don’t mean some political platitude about teh evil 1%.

I mean something practically important, something you can personally control right now, and something that will shape the rest of your life.

Please direct your attention to this typical grievance:

She is college educated, probably in debt, and unemployed.

A central complaint for occupyers is that they (1) have student loan debt and (2) don’t have jobs or don’t have good jobs. That makes sense.

Over the last 25 years, the total number of university students in the US has risen by over fifty percent. A lot more kids are going to college. However over that same time, the total number of students majoring in the most in-demand fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) has decreased. What are students majoring in instead?

Why are students majoring in soft-studies degrees that are not in demand and don’t pay? In part because government subsidizes all degrees. Government subsidizes (and sometimes guarantees) all student loans, regardless of what degree they’re in. You get grants regardless of what you major in etc. So lenders and universities have no incentive to really care what you major in. They get the $$. It doesn’t matter.

That distorts the natural information signaling of the higher-education market. Private lenders would otherwise offer much lower-interest loans more readily to biochem majors than queer theory majors. Many of these occupyers likely have degrees in fields with little-to-no career value, all of them government subsidized at least in part.

So what’s the lesson you should learn? It’s clear. College is expensive and the generic “college degree” doesn’t necessarily help much if at all. For most people:

• If you do go to college, do not major in a field that is not in demand unless you’re sure you want higher risk of a much harder life.

What majors are not in demand? Avoid:

• psychology
• psychology
• psychology
• we don’t need more psych majors
• sociology
• philosophy
• arts (visual, performing, studio, theater, whatever)
• communication
• journalism
• literature
• education
• social services
• history
• area “studies”

Obviously this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn about these subjects or even take classes in them—maybe do a minor. Just don’t major in them if you’re considering career prospects. And if the fields that are in demand absolutely do not appeal to you, consider putting off college or dropping out rather than racking up pointless debt and wasting your time.

A Tribute to Communism

All of Marx’s important prophecies have turned out to be false.

First, he predicted growing class polarization and the disappearance of the middle class in societies based on a market economy. Karl Kautsky rightly stressed that if this prediction were wrong, the entire Marxist theory would be in ruins. It is clear that this prediction has proved to be wrong; rather, the opposite is the case. The middle classes are growing, whereas the working class in the sense Marx meant it has been dwindling in capitalist societies in the midst of technological progress.

Second, he predicted not only the relative but also the absolute impoverishment of the working class. This prediction was already wrong in his lifetime. As a matter of fact, it should be noticed that the author of Capital updated in the second edition various statistics and figures but not those relating to workers’ wages; those figures, if updated, would have contradicted his theory. Not even the most doctrinaire Marxists have tried to cling to this obviously false prediction in recent decades.

Third, and most importantly, Marx’s theory predicted the inevitability of the proletarian revolution. Such a revolution has never occurred anywhere. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had nothing to do with Marxian prophesies. Its driving force was not a conflict between the industrial working class and capital, but rather was carried out under slogans that had no socialist, let alone Marxist, content: Peace and land for peasants. There is no need to mention that these slogans were to be subsequently turned into their opposite. What in the twentieth century perhaps comes closest to the working class revolution were the events in Poland of 1980-81: the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope.

In the fourth place, one must mention Marx’s prediction concerning the inevitable fall of the profit rate, a process that was supposed to lead ultimately to the collapse of the capitalist economy. Not unlike the others, this prediction proved to be simply wrong. Even according to Marx’s theory, this could not be an inevitably operating regularity, because the same technical development that lowers the part of the variable capital in production costs is supposed to lower the value of the constant capitaý. Therefore the profit rate might remain stable or increase even if what Marx called “living labor” declines for a given unit of output. And even if this “law” were true, the mechanism whereby its operation would cause the decline and demise of capitalism is inconceivable, since the collapse of the profit rate can very well occur in conditions in which the absolute amount of profit is growing. This was noticed, for what it’s worth, by Rosa Luxemburg, who invented a theory of her own about the inescapable collapse of capitalism, which proved to be no less wrong.

The fifth tenet of Marxism that has turned out to be erroneous is the prediction that the market will hamper technical progress. The exact opposite has quite obviously proved to be the case. Market economies have been shown to be extremely efficient in stimulating technological progress, whereas “real socialism” turned out to be technologically stagnating. Since it is undeniable that the market has created the greatest abundance ever known in human history, some neo-Marxists have felt compelled to change their approach. At one time, capitalism appeared horrifying because it produced misery; later, it turned out to be horrifying because it produces such abundance that it kills culture.

Neo-Marxists deplore what is called “consumerism,” or “consumerist society.” In our civilization there are indeed many alarming and deplorable phenomena associated with the growth of consumption. The point is, however, that what we know as the alternative to this civilization is incomparably worse. In all Communist societies, economic reforms (to the extent that they yielded any results at all) led invariably in the same direction: the partial restoration of the market, that is to say, of “capitalism.”

As for the so-called materialist interpretation of history, it has provided us with a number of interesting insights and suggestions, but it has no explanatory value. In its strong, rigid version, for which one may find considerable support in many classical texts, it implies that social development depends entirely on the class struggle that ultimately, through the intermediary of changing “modes of production,” is determined by the technological level of the society in question. It implies, moreover, that law, religion, philosophy, and other elements of culture have no history of their own, since their history is the history of the relations of production. This is an absurd claim, completely lacking in historical support.

If, on the other hand, the theory is taken in a weak, limited sense, it merely says that the history of culture has to be investigated in such a way that one should take account of social struggles and conflicting interests, that political institutions depend in part, at least negatively, on technological development and on social conflicts. This, however, is an uncontroversial banality that was known long before Marx. And so, the materialist interpretation of history is either nonsense or a banality.

Another component of Marx’s theory that lacks explanatory power is his labor theory. Marx made two important additions to the theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. First, he stated that in relationships between workers and capital, the labor force, rather than labor, is being sold; secondly, he made a distinction between abstract and concrete labor. Neither of these principles has any empirical basis, and neither is needed to explain crises, competition, and conflict of interest. Crises and economic cycles are understandable by analyzing the movement of prices, and the theory of value adds nothing to our understanding of them. It seems that contemporary economics—as distinct from economical ideologies—would not differ much from what it is today if Marx had never been born.

The tenets I have mentioned are not chosen at random: they constitute the skeleton of the Marxian doctrine.

—Leszek Kolakowski, “What Is Left of Socialism?” First Things (2002)

Politically, the United States is dead.

Quotations translated from the français. If Harper were more consistent, he probably wouldn’t have campaigned for Obama, whatevs.

Everything You Know About Nutrition is Wrong

(Well not “everything,” but muchos de the conventional wisdom is probably ass-backwards.)

I get bored with political economy at times… largely because convincing people to adopt correct ideas is hard and probably won’t have much benefit for a while. However, with nutrition, determining correct ideas and refuting incorrect ones can have benefits quickly.

So, a brief and simplified overview of the science on human health:

0. Biologically modern humans have been living on Earth for at least 100,000 years. Our larger family of humans have been living on Earth for millions of years. For the vast majority of that time, we lived as hunter-gatherers. Evidence from anthropology, archaeology, and epidemiology strongly indicates that people in hunter-gatherer societies almost never experience:

• obesity
• diabetes
• heart disease
• high blood pressure
• cancer
• Alzheimer’s
• acne
• tooth decay
• poor vision

and many other health problems associated with metabolic syndrome. Indeed, hunter-gatherers are usually lean, healthy, and have long lifespans without modern medicine.

It was not until the first Agricultural Revolution, when we began to eat a lot of grass seeds (a.k.a. “grains”), that we began to experience these health problems at high rates. And it only got worse from there (until the advent of modern medicine around 100 years ago when it started getting better—on the treatment side).

1. A logical starting point for determining what is healthy, therefore, is to look at what we typically ate as hunter-gatherers vs. what we didn’t typically eat. This logic gives some clear answers which have been further confirmed by biological science and clinical trials.

2. It makes no sense whatsoever to avoid meat for health reasons. (Especially not beef, lamb, game, or fish.) Meat is the most healthy food. Meat, including offal, contains bioavailable amounts of all the nutrients necessary for optimal human life and no significant anti-nutrients. Unlike vegetables, you can live well on meat alone. Our bodies evolved adaptations to eating significant quantities of meat, and significant amounts of saturated fat. Hell, we likely hunted big game almost to extinction on some continents. Being efficient hunters and eating more meat allowed us to grow more powerful brains and thus become the smart modern humans we all are and love.

3. Neither cholesterol nor saturated fat cause heart disease or any other significant health problems. The myth that consuming saturated fat causes heart disease has been thoroughly debunked by the last 50 years of clinical trials, scientific advances in physiology, and epidemiology. It persists only thanks to inertia and politics.

Cholesterol is a bit more complicated, but the evidence is unambiguous that neither dietary cholesterol nor total blood cholesterol cause heart disease or any other significant health problems. Cholesterol is a vital nutrient, necessary in significant quantities for good health. The only potentially “bad cholesterol” is that contained in small, very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL). And what increases VLDL? Not fat or cholesterol in the diet, but rather carbs in the diet. Want to reduce this so-called potentially “bad cholesterol” in your blood? Eat more animal products, more saturated fat, more complete protein, less carbs. All that crap (Cheerios, Quaker Oats, Cocoa Puffs, granola, low-fat yoghurt, etc.) government-approved as “heart-healthy” is exactly the opposite.

4. Refined carbs are unhealthy and fattening. That means bread, pasta, cereal, etc.—anything made with flour or sugar. To simplify things a lot, refined carbs sustain raised blood sugar and, eaten regularly, keep you more hungry and your insulin+ high and thus keep your bodyfat cells full, growing, and reproducing.

5. To understand this, you have to understand that the conventional “it’s all about calories in vs. calories out” approach to bodyfat is backwards. If you get fatter, it’s not because you’re eating too many calories. You eat more calories because you’re getting fatter. And you’re getting fatter due to dysregulation of the bio-chemicals (like insulin) which control your bodyfat tissue, in turn driving bodyfat accumulation, bodyfat retention, and hunger.

6. Fat is not fattening. Eat more fat if you want to be lean and healthy. Okay… so you can get energy from eating either carbs or fat. Your bodyfat is a buffer meant to be continuously consumed for energy when you’re not consuming food. However, if you’re eating carbs rather than fat, and thus have a defect in your fat metabolism, your body will be burning carbs for energy and not fat—including bodyfat. To lose bodyfat, you need to get your body burning fat for energy instead of snacking on refined carbs all day. There are two ways to do this:

1. semi-starve yourself (calorie restriction) or
2. eat fat and protein instead of carbs

The latter is healthier… and it is the only method consistently demonstrated in clinical trials that actually works for statistically significant weight loss. If you want to lose body fat, eat more saturated fat.

7. Wheat is especially unhealthy and fattening. Not only are wheat products made up of mostly fattening refined carbs, but they also contain the dangerous protein gluten and other anti-nutrients that inflame and penetrate your gut. An inflamed gut can’t absorb other nutrients properly, and allows toxic substances to leak into your system. Furthermore, there are molecules in wheat that bind to minerals in other foods and prevent them from being absorbed. Finally, certain wheat proteins can stimulate the immune system in a bad way, so that it begins attacking your own tissues (“autoimmune disorders”), making you sick not just in your gut but everywhere (like people with celiac disease but subclinical). And there is nothing good in wheat that you can’t get more efficiently from animal products, vegetables, or tubers. If there is one thing you should completely avoid eating, it is wheat.

8. Sugar is especially unhealthy and fattening. Fructose, found largely in table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (and fruit juice), is seriously bad shit when consumed anywhere near the levels of the standard American diet. Fructose is very likely a trigger that causes the bodyfat tissue defect mentioned in point #5. If you want to lose weight or improve your health, and you’re drinking a lot of soda pop, that’s the first thing you should cut out. Now, thanks to government subsidies, high-fructose corn syrup is currently found in virtually all processed and sweetened food… including those “heart-healthy” cereals and “low-fat” yoghurts and all that other nasty stuff.

9. Vegetable oils are unhealthy due to high levels of omega-6 fats, which block omega-3; so use heart-healthy butter instead (or coconut oil or ghee). Also, for similar reasons, avoid nuts and legumes. Especially soy.

10. So for optimal health and weight management, based on good science and quality clinical studies, what should people avoid eating? What should people eat?

Eat to satisfaction:

• meat
• fish
• shellfish
• eggs
• butter
• vegetables
• coconut products
• heavy cream
• hard cheeses
• cocoa
• herbs, spices

In moderation (can eat more of these if you’re not trying to lose bodyfat):

• fruit
• tubers
• good nuts (almond, macadamia, cashew)
• whole milk
• soft cheeses
• full-fat greek yoghurt
• rice

Minimize:

• sugar
• legumes, especially soy
• vegetable oils
• “low-fat” dairy
• corn
• oats

Avoid completely:

• wheat and other gluten grains

Skhumbuzo Mhlongo publicly set himself on fire and then committed suicide last week after a government official tore up the ID papers he needed to start his new job at a bird seed factory. He had been trying to get those legally required papers for years.

The 22 year old committed suicide after being refused the identity documents he needed to start a job on Monday.

In his suicide note, Mr Mhlongo explained how an official had torn up his ID application, calling him a foreigner.

The minister said she suspected an official had expected a bribe.

The BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says the Department of Home Affairs has come under heavy criticism over the years for its inefficiency in issuing ID documents, birth certificates and passports, with some people claiming to have waited up to four years.

She points out it would be even more difficult to obtain the documents if you have no parents to vouch for your identity.

Mr Mhlongo, who was buried in Hillcrest near Durban in Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, had been due to start the new job at a factory which manufactures bird food on Monday.

Mr Mamoepa said the Department of Social Development assisted the family with the burial arrangements. Mr Mhlongo had been raised by his mother, who disappeared in 2000, leaving him to care for his younger siblings.

He had apparently been trying to get an ID card for some time without any luck and had been told to bring someone who could vouch for his nationality.But the official did not believe that the man he brought along was his father, tore up Mr Mhlongo’s papers and called him a “kwere-kwere” - a derogatory term used for foreign nationals.

He apparently left the suicide note before hanging himself.

BBC News

Little, nagging, piecemeal government regulations and state bureaucracy quietly erode opportunity and slowly destroy lives. The world’s poor bear a heavy burden. It’s rare that the tragedy of this quiet tyranny is so vividly tangible. And we forget too often.