There are also ascensores which you can pay $.50 to get a ride to the top of the hill, and there are about 10 of those hidden around town. Valparaiso is quite frankly one of the coolest cities I have been to. It’s not something I can really describe accurately and I highly recommend y’all visit in your life time.

I’ll be posting some more photos of the stairways, cityscapes, and this cool functioning (but rundown) cementary. Stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy this incredible art.

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Hopefully, I’ve made your mouth whet with these photos. Come back daily for more photos and to read about our experiences.

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This song just released a couple of weeks ago by Dirty Projectors has a very cool vibe to it. When I hear it I just think it could be from a James Bond flick. Unfortunately, I can’t read hieroglyphics but I can assume it’s lyrics.

The Dirty Projects are from Brooklyn, NY and they consist of David Longstreth, Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, Brian McOmber, Nat Baldwin, and Haley Dekle. Currently they are signed to Domino Records

Dirty Projectors – Gun Has No Trigger Lyrics

If you had looked, you might have just seen them
Stretched in the background
You’d see the oceans swell
And the mountains shook

You’d see a million colors
If you really looked
Now quick the night draws near
Her curtain spreads quicker
The safety’s off

But the gun has no trigger.
If you had looked, you’d be no one’s coward
Distance, justice, power
You’d glimpse the password

You wouldn’t need the book
You’d own both slave and master
If you just had looked
But now the banks all closed

And nothing gets bigger
The crowd will yell
But the gun has no trigger.
If you had looked, you might reconsider

Or just maybe you already have
They watch you sleeping
You watch their garbage cook
You’d weep a bowl of tears
If you had looked

But now the gate comes down
The pangs are growing dimmer
You hold a gun to your head
But the gun has no trigger.

Jonathan Adler Giraffe

Cardboard Safari – Bucky

Chris Kelsey Pottery

There are other school of thoughts for governance, and I’m in the camp that people should make decisions based on voluntary actions. This school of thought is called Voluntaryism and it is the most moral school of thought for governance.

If you need a refresher on how governments currently rule by force, I recommend you watch George Ought to Help.

Government is not good for society

When I speak out against the government (in it’s current model of rule by force) the most common response is that government makes decisions for the common good of it’s people. In my article on why markets are better than policy I explain why they are not good decision makers.

The million dollar question is who’s view of society are they implementing? In America, because we are a democracy, the standard response would be the will of the people. But let’s dig down into that a little bit. In presidential election years, voter turnout has been around 55% and in non-presidential years the turnout has been around 38% [source]. So we are implementing laws for the society based on less than half of the voting population.

When we dig down a bit further we realize that we are a representative democracy, so we are actually implementing the views of people who are elected. That is 1 president, 100 senators, 435 congressmen, and 9 supreme court judges. So for a country of 300+ million people, we don’t even have 550 people representing the views of the populous. Wow! This is immoral. I have nearly that many friends on Facebook.

It is impossible for a government (or any government) to have the collective knowledge of what society actually wants and the ability to implement it. Government can’t be operate for the good of society in this situation.

Slavery and government

The similarities between slavery and government are uncanny. I challenge y’all to imagine society in the 1700′s when slavery was pervasive, considered acceptable, and the norm. Many individuals were born into slavery and could not imagine life as a free man. Slave owners could argue that slaves agreed to a social contract and by accepting food, shelter, and other necessities like how the government today argues we agree to a social contract.

Some slaveowners would grant freedom to their slaves – but those slaves had to purchase their freedom. People of that time would argue that slaves were better off as property because of the benefits they received. They would also argue that society was better off by having slaves. But what they couldn’t argue was that owning individuals was moral – that it was the right thing to do.

Governance by force is not moral. It forces individuals to do things that they would not do on their free will. It requires people to purchase and support things against their core beliefs. If people do not agree to fund certain services – they will be imprisoned.

Proponents of government will argue that society is better off because of the decisions that governments make. Hell, they may be right – but that doesn’t mean their actions are moral. It also doesn’t mean we should accept it and promote it. Freedom and liberty are built on a foundation of morality – to follow the golden rule which is essentially the non-agression principle.

Voluntaryism is moral

When you sacrifice your beliefs for the “good of society” you allow immoral actions to happen. Slavery could only exist because the majority allowed it and didn’t recognize the immorality of owning people. Ruling by force is the same situation.

To have the best representation of what the people want, leave it to individual actions and society will ultimately become what collectively the people want. A society built on voluntary agreements is the framework we should strive to implement.

I encourage you to support building a society based on morals – and that foundation starts with voluntary actions. Do not force your beliefs upon others, and do not accept others forcing their beliefs upon you. A voluntary society is mutually beneficial to all parties involved.

When you have a limited budget, you aren’t able to compete with the big guys through traditional means. To overcome these challenges my focus for marketing strategies have been unique offerings.

I wanted to share a couple of successful strategies that I have done recently to give your small business some inspiration.

Be a purple cow

In the business world, clean cut and professional is the unspoken status quo. But blending in with the crowd doesn’t get you noticed. Since a majority of my business is developed through networking, it’s important for me to represent what my company means. To express how I see the world differently, think creatively, and am not afraid to buck the norms I grew out a beard.

Now, as many of y’all know this isn’t your typical tidy and well groomed beard. As of this article it’s a 10 month beast with a handlebar mustache that completely covers my mouth. Yes, eating has been a challenge at times – but everyday I can feel confident I am being noticed. Random strangers will comment on the beard and it’s a great opportunity to start a conversation and generate leads.

Because big beards are so unique to the marketing world, I’ve integrated the beard into my marketing strategy. I developed a 11″x17″ poster that highlights my capabilities and integrates the bearded lifestyle. The only downside is the beard has grown quite a bit since I made the poster. The poster is big enough for someone to not want to throw away, yet not too big that people don’t know what to do with it. I got a 40″ press piece poster one time and it’s too big to do anything with other than leave rolled up.

Be current

Don’t be afraid to take advantage of a fleeting trend. You should know one when you log into Facebook and all your friends are posting the same thing. An example is the “This is what my ______ thinks I do” theme that was all the rage for 3 days. By being an early adopter, you can garner some attention for your brand or company.

How I did this was with the recent half a billion lottery that everyone was talking about. My friend Jon Reisinger showed me how a radio station purchased lotto tickets a month ago and if people shared the photo and liked the company they would share the winnings. Well, in the Spokane market this had yet to be done and with $20 worth of lotto tickets I was able to take my company’s page from 30 likes to 90 likes.

Don’t be afraid to give something up and ask for something in return. For $20 I was able to get 60 likes from real individuals – I paid $100 for about 10 likes when I was using Facebook’s advertising platform. Maybe for my next idea I will purchase the new iPad and do a drawing for anyone that likes the company and shares the contest information. For $500, I could probably get a few hudred likes.

The key with this strategy is to offer something that people really want and desire. While my business and I are quite awesome, I can’t imagine a rush of shares to win a free hour consultation from me. People realize when you are trying to push something that is normal free, but now all the sudden has a monetary value.

You also have to keep the end in mind with these goals. While these likes are great – they aren’t going to directly lead to any business. But if the goal is to build trust with future prospects by showing an established Facebook Page – it may make sense.

Hire a pro

If these things don’t come naturally to you or people in your business – hire a pro. I am happy to help you, but there are also tons of others out there that do a wonderful job. They all have their specialties and unique business structures – so interview a few of them.

If you need help with your marketing, feel free to reach out to me and I’d be happy to give some free consulting.

They will invest time learning about politicians, voting, trying to change other people’s voting decisions, and watching political news shows. None of these activities will increase your freedoms – in fact it is actually enslaving you. As beautifully described in the published pamphlet The Voluntaryist.

We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice, as incompatible with libertarian principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which State power ultimately depends.

By participating in the political process you are saying, “You are in control, and I submit to you for decisioning of what should or shouldn’t be allowed.” All the meanwhile, your vote does not matter. With gerrymandering, voter fraud, election fraud, and many other corrupt processes your individual vote doesn’t count. Your vote is statistically insignificant.

So you realize that you are currently shackled to political process, but you want to become free – how do you do it? Well, the first step is to recognize your self ownership and individual sovereignty. (That is where I got the name for my business Sovrnty) The basic concept of self ownership is that you have supreme authority over your own choices, without interference from the government, as long as you are not violating the rights of others.

Now that you are a sovereign individual, does that mean you don’t have to follow the laws of the government? Absolutely not! Violating the laws of the country you live in is foolish as it can lead to imprisonment and an ultimate loss of your freedoms. You should strive to learn about the methods that create the most personal freedom within the confides of the various laws around the nation.

Fortunately, there is not one world government and we have the freedom to move between countries. We also have the freedoms to diversify our wealth among the various countries in the event one country becomes excessively corrupt and tyrant. That is the beginning of your freedom – to become location independent with your assets diversified globally to prevent total theft via force.

You should strive to take advantage of the loopholes that the various governments give you. You can enjoy a lot more freedom by doing that, rather than investing time in the political process – to which you have no real influence.

Update @ 5:30pm: Looks like the video has been taken down – let’s see if I can find a new one. Found one on YouTube.

Miike Snow just released their second album Happy to You yesterday and we are happy to share The Wave from that album. They are a Sweedish indie pop band consisting of Christian Karlsson, Pontus Winnberg, and Andrew Wyatt. Their official video is sporting an apocalyptical scene with an oh so cool wide screen.

Enjoy!

Miike Snow – The Wave lyrics

The first strike of the hammer
Made my heart beat faster
The rat-tat to remind me
That there was something behind me

You can hear them
You can hear them banging on the tin
But my love won’t be saved
We’ll all be staring at the wave

They told me I wasn’t anything
Before the bombs started falling
I was a fee for the master
I was a walking disaster

I know you hear it coming
I know you hear the sound
I know you feel it coming
Don’t let it get you down

You can hear them
You can hear them banging on the tin
But my love won’t be saved
We’ll all be staring at the wave

But my love won’t be saved
We’ll all be staring at the wave

Yesterday, however, my friend linked me a wonderful article (warning PDF file) that hits the nail on the head of the religion of environmentalism. Steven Landsburg wrote The Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life in 1995 and it’s still applicable today. In this chapter Steve touches base on the indoctrination of children in schools and shows how environmentalists take the moral ground to inflict their wishes at the expense of their opponents.

The naive environmentalism of my daughter’s preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism. The antidote to bad religion is good science. The antidote to astrology is the scientific method, the antidote to naive creationism is evolutionary biology, and the antidote to naive environmentalism is economics.

Economics is the science of competing preferences. Environmentalism goes beyond science when it elevates matters of preference to matters of morality. A proposal to pave a wilderness and put up a parking lot is an occasion for conflict between those who prefer wilderness and those who prefer convenient parking.

He quickly points out the root of the problem – that rather than solving this issue via voluntary actions, individuals will use politics as a way to force the other side to accept their point of view. As we’ve discussed before, politics operates through force – not voluntary actions. Steven then goes on to point out the flaws in the morality of future generations.

A variation on the environmentalist theme is that we owe the wilderness option not to ourselves but to future generations. But do we have any reason to think that future generations will prefer inheriting the wilderness to inheriting the profits from the parking lot? That is one of the first questions that would be raised in any honest scientific inquiry.

He goes into more details and examples to the fallacies of environmentalism and I encourage you to read the entire article. It’s a short 5 page read and worthy of your time. His article to the teacher is absolutely epic a brilliant use of thoughts.

Dear Rebecca:

When we lived in Colorado, Cayley was the only Jewish child in her class. There were also a few Moslems. Occasionally, and especially around Christmas time, the teachers forgot about this diversity and made remarks that were appropriate only for the Christian children. These remarks came rarely, and were easily counteracted at home with explanations that different people believe different things, so we chose not to say anything at first. We changed our minds when we overheard a teacher telling a group of children that if Santa didn’t come to your house, it meant you were a very bad child; this was within earshot of an Islamic child who certainly was not going to get a visit from Santa. At that point, we decided to share our concerns with the teachers. They were genuinely apologetic and there were no more incidents. I have no doubt that the teachers were good and honest people who had no intent to indoctrinate, only a certain naïveté derived from a provincial upbringing.

Perhaps that same sort of honest naïveté is what underlies the problems we’ve had at the JCC this year. Just as Cayley’s teachers in Colorado were honestly oblivious to the fact that there is diversity in religion, it may be that her teachers at the JCC have been honestly oblivious that there is diversity in politics.

Let me then make that diversity clear. We are not environmentalists. We ardently oppose environmentalists. We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic fundamentalism or the War on Drugs. We do not recycle. We teach our daughter not to recycle. We teach her that people who try to convince her to recycle, or who try to force her to recycle, are intruding on her rights.

The preceding paragraph is intended to serve the same purpose as announcing to Cayley’s Colorado teachers that we are not Christians. Some of them had never been aware of knowing anybody who was not a Christian, but they adjusted pretty quickly.

Once the Colorado teachers understood that we and a few other families did not subscribe to the beliefs that they were propagating, they instantly apologized and stopped. Nobody asked me what exactly it was about Christianity that I disagreed with; they simply recognized that they were unlikely to change our views on the subject, and certainly had no business inculcating our child with opposite views.

I contrast this with your reaction when I confronted you at the preschool graduation. You wanted to know my specific disagreements with what you had taught my child to say. I reject your right to ask that question. The entire program of environmentalism is as foreign to us as the doctrine of Christianity. I was not about to engage in detailed theological debate with Cayley’s Colorado teachers and they would not have had the audacity to ask me to. I simply asked them to lay off the subject completely, they recognized the legitimacy of the request, and the subject was closed.

I view the current situation as far more serious than what we encountered in Colorado for several reasons. First, in Colorado we were dealing with a few isolated remarks here and there, whereas at the JCC we have been dealing with a systematic attempt to inculcate a doctrine and to quite literally put words in children’s mouths. Second, I do not sense on your part any acknowledgment that there may be people in the world who do not share your views. Third, I am frankly a lot more worried about my daughter’s becoming an environmentalist than about her becoming a Christian. Fourth, we face no current threat of having Christianity imposed on us by petty tyrants; the same can not be said of environmentalism. My county government never tried to send me a New Testament, but it did send me a recycling bin.

Although I have vowed not to get into a discussion on the issues, let me respond to the one question you seemed to think was very important in our discussion: Do I agree that with privilege comes responsibility? The answer is no. I believe that responsibilities arise when one undertakes them voluntarily. I also believe that in the absence of explicit contracts, people who lecture other people on their “responsibilities” are almost always up to no good. I tell my daughter to be wary of such people — even when they are preschool teachers who have otherwise earned a lot of love.

Sincerely,

Steven Landsburg

Original Source
Steven Landsburg’s Blog
Article hosted on our servers (in case original gets moved).