Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Anarcho-capitalists sometimes claim that under anarcho-capitalism, the problem of authority is eliminated, in that there are no authorities. Joseph Fetz just sounded a variation on that theme in the comments, when he claimed that under ancap, all relations will be contractual. Let us consider. I "own" ten acres in the Poconos. It is steep land, falling past the house to a creek in the middle, and then rising to a ridge line. I probably have not been on my "back 5" in two or three years. Tomorrow morning, I wake up to find that all government in the United States has been dissolved, and ancapistan has been declared. Tomorrow afternoon, a group of Lenape Indians arrives, and begins to erect cabins on the other side of the creek. This prompts me to head over there. "Whoa, guys, what are you up to?" I ask them. "Well, kemosabe, now that the evil United States government is out of the way, we are reclaiming our ancestral land. Oh, and we don't mind i...

Bob Murphy recently suggested that I must be using some idiosyncratic definition of 'politics' when I noted that anarcho-capitalism is quite obviously a political movement and advocating it is engaging in 'politics.' Here is Michael Oakeshott defining 'politics' to open his essay "Talking Politics": "Politics is not concerned with anything or everything which it may come into a man's head to want and to contend for but with the consideration of the arrangements and rules which give shape to an association of human beings." We should note here: 1) Oakeshott was a professor of politics; 2) He quite probably had never heard of anarcho-capitalism when he penned those words; and 3) He puts this forward as a commonplace idea, not worth arguing for but merely worth mentioning to orient his readers to what he will discuss. If we ever see an anarcho-capitalist society, there will be plenty of politics going on in it, e.g. "considerations...

Watching some lectures on differential equations, I hear the lecturer say, "If we can explicitly solve the equation, we can precisely predict all future states of the system." The use of "precisely predict" here is very odd. If we are speaking of a pure mathematical system, then we are not "predicting" anything: all states of the system are called into being at once with the creation of the system of differential equations, which, even though we may label a variable 't', do not have a future or a past. On the other hand, if he is speaking of an actual physical system (say, a mass-spring system), then "precisely" is grossly inaccurate: what he ought to have said is "We can predict future states of the physical system to whatever extent it does resemble and continues to resemble the abstract system of equations." Our predictions of the actual mass-spring's behavior based on the mass-spring equation will go seriously awry...

Adam Ozimek does a very nice job debunking the silly idea that every American should attend college. The guy who proposes this actually tries to justify the notion by noting that "The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else reached a record high last year..." Let us say every single worker in America had a college degree: What would the pay gap then be between  college graduates and everyone else? College graduates would be "everyone else," and would simply get the average wage, on average. Since we would still need carpenters and auto mechanics and hair dressers and janitors, if Leonhardt thinks this average wage will be higher than it is now, he must believe that sending people to college for jobs that don't require college degrees will somehow force their wages up! I don't know about you, but when I hire someone to take down a few trees in my yard, I don't first check if he has a B.A., and then say, "Oh, here's an extra $100...

I have a lot of Facebook friends who are anarchists. For people who claim to "hate" politics, I have never met a group who are so obsessed with it. For many of them (and I recognize that this is not true of every anarchist friend I have: if it doesn't apply to you, then you are not one of the "many"), it seems that about 90% of their posts are political. They are fixated on promoting their political view to the exclusion of all else. About 95% of the time, I manage to make the sensible choice and ignore these posts. But every once in a while one of them gets to me: it is usually a combination of a sense of smug superiority in the poster's own views and a sneering contempt for lowly "statists" that leads me to wander in where angels fear to tread. It happened the other day: someone posted a bit of nonsense from Mike Huemer, claiming that if we don't accept the head of a charity organization simply going around seizing the funds he needs to ...

As is typically asserted in the popular media: Then it is not surprising that some virgins will build up a lot of resentment about their "condition." Note: In pointing this out, I am absolutely not absolving Elliot Rodger of his crimes. What he did was evil, and he is personally responsible for choosing to do that evil. But recognizing that fact does not preclude examining the circumstances that led that particular evil person to act in that particular evil way.

The man across from me on the subway is eating an orange by gnawing into a half-peeled but still whole fruit. He apparently doesn't realize that it easily comes apart in nice, bite-sized pieces. This wouldn't be of much concern to anyone else but him except that, as a result of his bizarre consumption method, he has left a large puddle of juice and seeds beneath his seat. And here comes the unfortunate about to take his seat and... Yep, feet right in the puddle.