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Right now, I am just trying to get my brain going. The coffee is done. I ate two fruit and grain bars. I eat a lot of those damn things. One of the secrets of the brain on fire is the necessity of glycogen for the mental process. The brain runs on glucose, so when you drink coffee, you want to toss in some carbohydrate as well. I also recommend two lemon filled glazed donuts from Krispy Kreme.

I've been listening to LRN lately through iTunes. So much of my media consumption is audio. I think I have pointed out before that audio sources are like vegetables in your diet. Vegetables fill you up, give you essential nutrients and vitamins, taste awesome, and won't make you fat. Similarly, audio fills your brain as you do other things. It could be driving, housework, or mindlessly grinding away on a dreadmill at the gym. I'm a big fan of the iPod shuffle for its convenience in this regard as you can take it with you almost anywhere without it being a burden. I load mine with brainy podcasts like EconTalk. This is how I get smart while getting other shit done. I will have to do a blog post on my favorite podcasts.

I'm trying to ignite my brain as hard as I can right now. It is raining hard now which really sucks. Going outside for some forward movement helps to ignite the brain. I don't recommend carrying the iPod on walks and runs. One part is just safety as people have a nasty habit of getting hit by airplanes (seriously) because they are wearing headphones and don't hear danger coming. The most famous story was the airplane that needed to make a crash landing on a beach, and this guy was out there on the beach taking a run while wearing headphones. FUCKER GETS WIPED OUT. He never heard that shit coming. That sort of thing is kinda rare but getting creamed by some blue hair in a Buick is more common.

Stefan Molyneux is on LRN right now. For a guy that I don't always agree with, I listen to him often. I don't share his anarchism. I don't think rearing children in a non-aggressive household will make one bit of difference. A fundamental belief amongst anarcho-capitalists is that people are inherently good, and they are somehow corrupted from the outside by government, bad parenting, etc. If we remove these things, a non-aggressive society will magically appear. This sounds naive to people which is why libertarianism has a certain utopian ring to it.

Liberals have a certain belief in the inherently good nature of people. Conservatives are darker believing that human nature is self-seeking but can be disciplined. This is why they have their respective philosophies of government. For liberals, human nature gets corrupted by the greed of capitalism which is why they are always going on and on about all those evil corporations. Corporate influence is what corrupts the otherwise benign nature of human beings with the profit motive.

Conservatives believe that human nature is inherently selfish and evil. They see the free market and capitalism as being just fine because it channels these selfish impulses into benign channels. The profit motive is what makes the grocer and the computer maker provide me with the things I need to live. Since I have to purchase these things, this motivates me to get off my ass and go work which benefits other people. Government is necessary to spur people to other forms of virtuous behavior such as refraining from rape, theft, assault, and murder. But it also gets into areas such as keeping you from smoking pot, looking at porn, or fornicating.

Libertarians blend the economic conservative principles with the liberal social principles. But this still does not address a fundamental question. Are humans inherently good or evil? That is a difficult question to answer. We have both examples of atrocity and altruism that we can choose from to make our case.

My own belief is that human beings are inherently selfish. This is the constant. The variable is what they perceive to be in their self-interest. For one person, their self-interest will motivate them to work and care for the poor and unfortunate. For another person, their self-interest will motivate them to try and purify the white race from the pollution of the Jews and the darker races. When you mix all of this up, you end up with a vegetarian like Hitler who was kind to animals but exterminated millions of people. Self-interest can cause atrocity, but it also makes people want to be moral and feel good about themselves.

The variability of human behavior is tied to people's worldview. You are never going to eliminate people's selfish aims. This is why the leftard project is utterly doomed. This is also why anarchy doesn't work. The argument from anarchists is that government always leads to tyranny. The problem is that they isolate evil in the abstract. In this case, it is government which is aggression. But government is people. This gets forgotten. The argument is that limited government leads to bigger government. But this does not mean that no government does not lead to government. Anarchists make great pains to paint government as a sort of mafia. What they overlook is the real mafia. It should be apparent from real world example that in a state of anarchy that enterprising individuals will get together and pursue aggression. This is what happens in Somalia with the piracy. This is what happens in Mexico with the drug cartels.

In the intellectual dispute between liberals and conservatives, the evidence is clearly on the side of conservatism. This does not mean that there are not serious flaws in conservative thinking. But the Burkean notion of statecraft as soulcraft holds true. Steven Pinker's work in this area also lends credence to this idea. Government works best when it curbs the aggression of others. It oversteps when it goes beyond that mandate to go after non-aggression. This is why government has shown some results in reducing murder but fails miserably with something like Prohibition.

There is nothing inherent in government that makes it good. I think I can also add that there is nothing inherent in government that makes it evil either. In short, government reflects the same variability we see in human nature. Both the capitalist and the thief are motivated by greed. The difference is that the capitalist opts to trade while the thief opts to steal. Similarly, we despise government when it collects taxes or prosecutes the drug war, but we see it in a more benign light when a judge throws out some frivolous lawsuit or affirms the rights of some accused criminal.

These are all Enlightenment concerns. These are the things that the Founders debated before signing the Declaration of Independence. This is also what happened leading up to the drafting of the Constitution. In the history of the world, what makes our current era so remarkable is simply ideas. That is the only difference between our times and society and what existed during the Roman Empire. What has changed is thought. Ideas have consequences. The government we have is a direct reflection of the ideas that the population has regarding freedom, prosperity, flourishing, etc. If this is in doubt, look at the revolutions that hit Eastern Europe during the fall of communism or the Arab Spring. The real power is not in the gun or the tank but in the realm of ideas.

My personal belief is that what has lead to change and progress is the rise of empirical thought. When people see it for themselves, they respond to it. People become cold to rational arguments. This is because people know from their experience that you can establish rational arguments for almost any point of view. But truth is not the consequence of a perfect chain of logic. Truth is what actually exists. When ideas are demonstrated and shown to be true, they take hold immediately. This requires work, but it always pays off.

This is deep stuff to ponder, and I have plans to put it in a volume that I have planned called Libertopia and Leviathan that I will write at some point. I'd get a book written if I don't blog so damn much. But I think the real answer to my productivity issues is more coffee.

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