aethernotes_polyblog

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-19T20:41:00.000-08:00

As a creator of intellectual property theft and piracy does concern me; but as a creator of sometimes controversial content these bills frighten me to death. I’m often amazed at the clueless person in the media who decries the exercise of power by the government when men like Nixon (very NAZIesque in my opinion) Reagan, G H W Bush, and Bush the younger; yet they celebrate the increase of government power and interference in our lives by men like L B Johnson, J E Carter III, W J Clinton and their latest hero du jour Barak Hussein Obama. Government power is a corrupting influence no matter which party or person is wielding it! I refuse to believe that the choice we as humans have is between Stalin and Hitler; there must be an alternative to the bad ideas that both of these men put forth.

SOPA or PIPA is a bad idea, just as The Patriot Act was a bad idea. Bad ideas know no party affiliation. They can (and are) put forward by businesses (which despite the media [which is a BIG business] bias toward Obama's weilding of power) or government functionaries. It does not matter where (or what side of the political aisle) a bad idea comes from; all men who wish to be free resist such ideas.

Here is an article that says more and better than I could on this subject: http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/jeffcarter/2012/01/19/stop_sopa_now_why_its_important_to_the_average_joe/page/full/ I suggest strongly that you read this article and consider the implications of this bad bill.

Lesson 56 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2012-01-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

Men only dare greatly if they expect great rewards. The government that seeks to limit the size of reward that a man may hope for or expect is foolish at best and tyrannical at worst.

Some say that greed, or need is the mother of invention and I would have to say that the first is closest to the truth. That is because no matter how great the need of a people group is the only reason something new is attempted (which is the essence of invention) is if the person who is making the attempt believes he will reap some reward that he feels is adequate to his effort.

The only difficulty I have is in calling the self-interest that inspires invention greed. This is because I do not believe that wanting a better life in and of itself is a manifestation of greed. It seems to me that greed is when you try to prevent other people from having a better life. Or when you desire something and steal it rather than work for it.

The characterization of profit as evil is one of the many ways in which the lazy and greedy rulers of a society work to make it easier for them to steal from those who work and produce the good things they desire but do not wish to soil their hands with the production of.

Tough Times Ahead

2012-01-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

I extracted the following quotes from this article. http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2012/01/08/obama_fails_math_portion_of_presidency_test/page/full/ I believe that it is well worth your time to read but if you don’t feel like it then consider these words of wisdom.

"The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people." Andrew Mellon Secretary of Treasury for Warren Harding.

It seems to me that we would be very foolish not to look at history and see what has occurred at other times from the current era to the fall of the Roman Empire which can be traced back to policies that are very similar to those of the current president of the USA.

For wisdom let us look at someone from the party he says he represents though from another time: John Kennedy.

"Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now." John F. Kennedy

We are spending money we don’t have to make things better in the USA today. This is like a family maxing out all of its credit cards. The question remains this: What will happen when no other nation will lend us money? That I believe is a fearful day and fast approaching. Worse yet is the day when no one will accept our money, when it is viewed with the same disdain as the peso… indeed times are going to get tough.

Good Intentions

2012-01-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Good Intentions

Good intentions put no food on the table

Nor do they put money in the bank

Good intentions do no work

And good intentions save no lives

More often than not

Though many won’t admit

Good intentions lead to bad ends!

2012 Writing Challenge

2012-01-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

Well for 2011 I missed my goal of posting at least one item per week here. Part of the reason for that is that for most of the year I was still posting at Author Nation with the hope that that site would help build this site as it was a social networking site as well as a writer’s forum of sorts.

I’m now fairly certain that Author Nation is defunct so that should provide me with a greater incentive to post here more frequently. There has been one other thing that has held me up as well. That is the fact that The Hard Knocks School of Life is proving harder to do than I thought it would be. Not to write the items, as I have some 600 of them, but rather to expand upon them. This is due to the fact that a great many of the pieces of The Hard Knocks School of life are only a few words long. And while I feel that a lot of them are perfectly fine at that length I’ve felt that posting a 5 or 10 word bit once a week was a bit on the weak side when it came to writing.

Lesson 55 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-12-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

Evil breeds hate. Then hatred breeds violence.

Hatred sets men one against another. The father of evil (if you believe the Bible) is Satan; the one thing Satan wants more than anything else is for men to hate one another. The fact that men hating one another breeds violence and causes men to destroy one another means that we do Satan’s work for him.

Perhaps you do not believe in Satan or in objective evil. If you insist on disbelieving in Satan that is fine; but not believing that we can define evil as one man stirring hatred for another for any reason seems to be lacking in understanding. For if we hate one another we can never have peace.

Lesson 54 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-12-07T07:27:00.001-08:00

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built. Abraham Lincoln

Let us paraphrase this for the modern era: Let not the poor man steal (whether with his own hand or by government action) from the rich but rather let him learn to become rich and build his own wealth thereby assuring that his wealth will be safe from the greed of other men.

Greed is without a doubt at the heart of wishing to have what you desire without work. But greed always leads to everyone having less goods and less security.

Lesson 53 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-11-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

Human nature is universal, people are individual.

Self interest is a matter of human nature. In every society no matter how it is organized people will generally seek their own interests over everyone else. This is one of the generalities of human nature.

People are individual (this is also a generality of human nature) in that everyone will express some form of individuality even in the most conformist culture. Also even though everyone can be expected to seek his own interest it is never wise to expect that any one person will seek his own interest even when it may seem that he has an obvious interest.

Lesson 52 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-11-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

Today’s lesson is a quote from Ayn Rand the author of Atlas Shrugged. “One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” —Ayn Rand, 1975

My first question on seeing this quote is: What is a Statist? A Statist is a person who invests the state (government) with the ability to answer all of life’s questions and needs. A person who believes this way is worshiping a false god of course but since the state has become their god you cannot do much to persuade them away from investing all of their effort into it.

In the modern era it is wise for us to remember that the statist will do his (her) best to destroy anyone who even begins to shake their faith.

Lesson 51 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-10-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

Self interest is not evil. Taking away people's incentive to win is evil!

Self interest is often conflated to be greed which is then seen as evil. I find no difficulty in identifying greed as evil. What I do find difficult is to separate honest and reasonable self interest that is survival oriented for both the individual and society from greed which is not survival oriented.

Perhaps the best way to define greed is as a hunger that cannot be sated and that grows greater the more it is fed. In extreme cases this sort of hunger destroys not only the individual but the society of which he is a part.

Taking away a person’s incentive to win is evil because this is an abrogation of his self interest which as I noted above is good not only for himself but for everyone around him.

Lesson 50 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-10-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

Jealousy and greed are interrelated; if I am jealous of my neighbor's car I am actually practicing covetousness which is a form of greed. If I am jealous of my wife or husband it is because I think of them as possessions rather than as people.

Some people think that self-interest is the same as greed I do not think that self-interest is the same as greed nor is it (self-interest) evil. Yet because it puts your welfare above other people’s welfare it is easy to mistake self-interest as greed.

Greed (and I’ll define it more in a later lesson) is insisting that you should be the only person to have possessions. It (greed) is not wanting more possessions than you currently have unless by having more things you seek to deny possessions to your neighbor.

Lesson 49 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-10-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

If you can't enforce the law then it is nothing more than empty words.

I suppose that the easy thing to say about this statement is that it should need no further explanation. It seems (at least to me) to be complete without adding to it. That does not mean that there are not other principles that cannot be obtained from it nor that there are not questions that must be asked if this principle is true. The first of those questions is this: When has the law become so complex that it is impossible to know or enforce?

Lesson 48 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-10-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

The purpose of religion is the moral education of a society.

Some people may ask if moral education is necessary. Others may insist that we are unable to truly define what is moral. Whether or not a person believes that moral education is necessary children are consistently being morally educated. They may be receiving the message that if they want something that if they can take it that is a reasonable behavior or they may be receiving the message that they must respect other people in both their persons and their property.

I think though that one of the worst things I’m seeing today is the advancement of the idea that it is moral for a crowd to do things that it would be immoral for a person to do. This is a very dangerous idea. In fact a quick look at the French revolution will give a person chills when the behavior of the ‘masses’ is examined.

Lesson 47 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-09-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

You have heard the teaching that if your neighbor slaps your cheek you should offer him the other one. Some people have interpreted to mean that you should accept violence without recourse. This is untrue. If your neighbor balls up his fist and punches your nose you are well advised to return the favor immediately.

You say to me that returning violence for violence just escalates violence. I say that the appearance of weakness encourages violence. Most times it is possible to accept an insult (though to some people even accepting an insult can will be viewed as weakness) without injury; however when insult escalates to assault it is generally no longer wise to accept it.

Lesson 46 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-09-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

There is no time when you are not making a choice. You may choose to stay where you are or you may chose to move from where you are. The most important thing to remember is that in either case you're making a choice.

Being able to understand this principle can help you to recognize when you have made a choice. This is because many times we fail to recognize that attempting to not make a choice is impossible because the only time you are not making a choice is when you are dead.

Lesson 45 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-09-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

The only way that everyone can (or will) have the same amount of goods and services is if no one has any goods or services.

Of course even in the most aggressively socialistic or communistic countries it is evident that not everyone has the same things or the same services rendered to them. For example consider North Korea. Most of the population of North Korea lives in abject poverty while the ruler of the country (an absolute dictator) lives in luxury that would embarrass anyone with a sense of morality. The same can be seen in Cuba where the Castro brothers have lived in luxury while their people starved. Thus when anyone puts forth the idea that fairness consists of everyone having the same amount of goods and services it is well to ask whether he is willing to divest himself of his goods so that he can live up to his rhetoric.

Lesson 44 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-09-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Lies are like acid corroding or corrupting any society that permits them to permeate its fabric.

What more needs to be said about this? Yet there seem to be some people who would rather hear a pleasant sounding lie for the moment than to hear an unpleasant truth. A pleasant lie for example is that when everyone has the same amount of stuff that society is fair. This is a most childish belief that leads at the very least to mass misery. We may have equal value to God but we do not have equal talents and it is certain that we have not all applied our talents with equal vigor to gaining stuff. Therefore it is actually unfair to assume that everyone having the same stuff is fairness!

Lesson 43 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-09-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

The truth must be defended; that includes debunking lies whenever you hear them!

It may seem oxymoronic that allowing a lie to stand can cause much evil but since lies are one of the basic units of evil every person who aspires to goodness must oppose. Thus anyone who says that the truth can stand without being defended is expressing at the very least moral incompetence. And very likely is asking that whatever lies he has told not be exposed.

Lesson 42 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-08-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

If you are doing something and you are not getting the results you expected don’t continue doing what you are doing. Stop and examine what is happening and rethink your strategy, you may need to change what you are doing.

Another way of stating this is that to do the same thing the same way and expect a different result is insanity. There is little doubt that failure should lead to reexamination of what a person is doing. Therefore anything that prevents people from reexamining their behavior in the face of failure is doing them a grave disservice.

Lesson 41 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-08-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

If you seek peace through weakness you will have peace; you will also most likely be a slave! It may seem to be a contradiction that you will live a more peaceful life if you are willing to work and fight for what you have than if when threatened with violence you give whatever is demanded by the person or group issuing the threat but it is true.

Another way to express this is that bullies only pick on those they perceive as weak.

Lesson 40 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything. This may seem to be an over simplistic statement but as with a great many bits of wisdom the fact of its shortness and simplicity is what gives it great impact.

For example how many people believe a great many ideas without ever learning to think about those ideas. Atheists don’t believe in any god but are unwilling to look at the universe and see the necessity that such a being exists. They claim the fact that there are many different beliefs as to what a god would represent this means that there must be no real god or even anything that is objectively true though every society minimally condemns murder.

Lesson 39 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-04-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

Emotion rules reason. This is why tyrants appeal to people’s emotion. Lust lures people to death, fear drives them into the cages, and anger can turn them into an unthinking mass willing to commit any atrocity.
This is one of the statements that leads me to believe that less is more. I honestly don’t know what I could add to this statement to intensify it or convince anyone who is unwilling to accept its bold simplicity.

Altogether too often there is living proof that emotion has ruled reason when a riot breaks out or when a group of people decide to attack someone they see as threatening. Yet we do not teach our children to use reason rather than emotion. I wonder why?

© 2011 Vic Jones

6000000 tax payers?

2011-04-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

P. Obama has defined rich as making more than 250,000 dollars. So with that in mind I did a little research and found that about 2% of people filing income tax paperwork made over this amount. Therefore if (and trust me this is not true) every person filed an income tax return the number of persons making more than 250,000 dollars in the USA would be around 6,000,000 (this assumes 300,000,000 population). But a great number of people file jointly (I didn’t look up this statistic) and a certain number of people are exempt from filing as well as a certain number who will not file for other reasons.
Therefore we must ask a serious question: what sort of person would in essence destroy (because the end result of taxation is destruction) a resource like people who are ambitious enough to make an income that is higher than others?

Some have suggested that P. Obama is incompetent. I think this is untrue, he has said he will fundamentally transform the USA. All of his activities seem to be trending in that direction with no fumbles at all. So no I do not think he is incompetent. Anything he does that is destructive to the USA is deliberate.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 38 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

2011-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

No tool is good or evil. Things are morally neutral, the uses they are put to may be good or evil but the uses do not define the tools.
It may be difficult for some people to understand that things are morally neutral although I cannot understand why anyone would find this concept difficult. After all things (except animals [and I’ll discuss that in another place]) are only moved by people. People are aware of what is (or should be aware) evil. That is the deliberate destruction of other people.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Go Fly a Kite

2011-04-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

Take some time,
To enjoy your life,
Do somethin’,
Just ’cause it’s fun,
Sure you can’t live for fun,
But to try to eliminate it is just as bad,
Balance is the key,
To a life that is well lived,
Have some fun,
Work hard,
Love your family,
And work to love your neighbor,
For this can bring peace to the world,
Don’t expect your neighbor to love you,
For all you may do,
He may remain your enemy,
Still love is what Jesus calls us to.

© 2011 Vic Jones