Quote of the Day, 1/2/2013

So while the takers are making out good, the rich are getting insanely richer, and the middle class is getting hammered. This is not an accident. Collectivist societies are always 2 tier ones. The miserable serfs, and their masters. We are just being worked into that system slowly. It’s not coincidental that our political class and thier buddies are ending up as the masters, while the rest of us end up as serfs either. That’s the way this system works.

- Right Thinking

The Utopian Myth of the good State

What a wonderful world it would be if everyone accepted the simple moral premise of rejecting all acts of aggression. The retort to such a suggestion is always: it's too simplistic, too idealistic, impractical, naïve, utopian, dangerous, and unrealistic to strive for such an ideal.

The answer to that is that for thousands of years the acceptance of government force, to rule over the people, at the sacrifice of liberty, was considered moral and the only available option for achieving peace and prosperity.

What could be more utopian than that myth—considering the results especially looking at the state sponsored killing, by nearly every government during the twentieth century, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. It's time to reconsider this grant of authority to the state.

No good has ever come from granting monopoly power to the state to use aggression against the people to arbitrarily mold human behavior. Such power, when left unchecked, becomes the seed of an ugly tyranny. This method of governance has been adequately tested, and the results are in: reality dictates we try liberty.

The idealism of non-aggression and rejecting all offensive use of force should be tried. The idealism of government sanctioned violence has been abused throughout history and is the primary source of poverty and war. The theory of a society being based on individual freedom has been around for a long time. It's time to take a bold step and actually permit it by advancing this cause, rather than taking a step backward as some would like us to do.

-part of Ron Paul's farewell speech

Buying a Wife

Chinese Man Spends 35K For ‘Obedient’ Vietnamese Wife

exerpt:

Inviting the prospective marriage partner to go have coffee, 20,000 Vietnamese Dong; Taking a taxi, 100,000 Vietnamese Dong;  The first time visiting the girl’s family, 200,000 Vietnamese Dong worth of fruits; A seafood feast, 300,000 Vietnamese Dong…you need to first be clear that 1 yuan RMB is 2700 Vietnamese Dong. Which is also to say, in Vietnam, two people having coffee is only 7 yuan, and the gift given while visiting the girl’s family for the first time can be done within 100 yuan!

Like Old Dai, every person who has gone to Vietnam must remind themselves, “I am moneybags, I am moneybags. [I just have higher purchasing power]” Due to the underdevelopment of their economy, many local girls have formed the idea of marrying foreigners. “Remember, [to them] we are foreigners.” The partner Old Dai ultimately chose is called “A-yin”, and all three sisters have married into China. “One older sister married to Hong Kong, one older sister married to Taiwan, and the father-in-law’s family can be said to have a lot of face amongst the locals.”

As for how good Old Dai’s wife is, netizens have already described her as “best quality goods”. “Not greedy, not lazy, not too open, not arrogant, not money-worshiping, is young, pretty, hard-working, kind-hearted, and key is obedient.” This remarried man registered marriage in Vietnam last winter, and today his Vietnamese wife A-yin is already living with him in Nanjing. Aside from doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning, Old Dai’s wife will at most go visit him at the office and learn dance from the dance class teacher while practicing Chinese.

The high quality life of having a “Vietnamese wife”

In addition to considering house and career, one must also consider their family’s circumstances. What looks like not unreasonable circumstances, makes 28-year-old Mr. Hong very depressed. Originating from the rural countryside of Subei, he has no house or car, but every day he gets a call from his father and no matter how the conversation begins, it always concludes on “quickly find a marriage partner”. Young Hong is indeed worried, because within the country, he is a bit “powerless” on the matter of finding a bride. Not long ago, he saw a person’s post on a Xici discussion forum, relating his experience of “finding a wife” in Vietnam.

35,000 yuan, 15 days, the poster Old Dai had selected one out of over 40 Vietnamese girls to bring home to be his wife. The poster had gone to Vietnam alone, and after publishing a personals’ advertisement in the newspaper, had attracted one local girl after another for “interviews”. “There were several that were truly really beautiful, who even on the big streets of Nanjing would “not be drowned out in the crowd” [would stand out]. This was how netizens evaluated the Vietnamese girls in Old Dai’s post. 

Accustomed to going to 1912 [an upscale shopping area in Nanjing] every day, Old Dai himself was unable to explain just what he was busying himself with. But at the end of last year, due to a series of 47 posts of both photographs and text, him and his realistic “Vietnamese marriage partner journal” together became famous. “If we want to talk about Vietnamese girls’ most positive attribute, it would be their consideration.” 

Careful/observant netizens discovered, during the process of finding a marriage partner in Vietnam, every girl who had eaten with Old Day had first filled his bowl with rice, peeled the shell off the shrimp, put the meat in his bowl, and waited for Old Dai to begin eating before being willing to pick up their own chopsticks. Facing this kind of scene, netizens were “shocked”. “In the past, there were only rumors, but we never though that Vietnam is really like this!” “This kind of thing we have encountered before, except in reverse, with us serving our wives…”

China Smack found thanks to the Expat Chronicles. 

It could be a better, although more expensive, than this.

The Fiscal Cliff Deal

With republican support we averted the fiscal cliff.  And added more spending.

I realized this year that the republicans are no good.  Its time that the rest of you that support them realize that the majority of republicans are worthless, and that all politicians will disappoint you.

Best Books of the Year

I thought that I should take note of the best books that I read this year, and last year.  So I shall.

My two favorite books of 2012:

Dragon Hunter by Charles Gallenkamp

Its about Roy Chapman Andrews and his east Asian exploration, which included the discovery of the first dinosaur eggs.

Heart of Asia: True Tales of the Far East by Roy Chapman Andrews

Several accounts of Andrews' early exploration in east Asia.  Includes harpooning a whale, exploring parts of (now) North Korea where even the Koreans were afraid to see, and hunting a variety animals in Asia.

My two favorite Books of 2011:

Bang by Roosh V

About picking up girls.

Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu by A.L. Sadler & Stephan Turnbull

A biography of one of the greatest Japanese of all time.

Update: I forgot about Bourbon for Breakfast and It's A Jetson's World.  It seems that I spent so much time singing their praises that I forgot about them.

Quote of New Year's Day

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.

- Larry Corriea

Why Our Economy Stinks

Our economy is a mess.  Our economy is in as bad of a shape as it has ever been since the founding of this country.

Read (or re-read): Dumb Ways (for an economy) to Die

Our economy is capable of improving, most of us want to work, businesses want to grow, we all want to buy more iPads, etc.  But we are being held back by our government.

...there are many dumb ways to kill an economy. Over the last five years, the federal government seems to have set the record for attempting as many as possible in record time. Then we look at growth rates and wonder why they are so anemic, why our kids can’t get jobs, why sector after sector seems to be crumbling, and why so many people are looking abroad for opportunity.

We all want to be safe, to have minimal accidents, to lose minimal property, etc. and because of that the government has created countless laws to keep us safe.  The problem is that we do not life in a perfectly safe world, and accidents happen.  We take risks in life everyday.  If we were really all about safety, then the speed limits would be 5 mph, we'd never use pointy knives, and we wouldn't need to lock our doors.

Because our government wants to be responsible for keeping us safe it has passed countless laws.  And while we may want to be safe, we need to take some risks, and some of us are willing to take greater chances than others.

Let's look at it with an analogy.  Assume that our economy is a runner trying to go as fast and as far as possible.  And then our government decides that that is good, but this runner needs to be safe too.  So this runner is required to wear a helmet, glasses, shoulder pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, a flak jacket, a raincoat, knee pads, thigh pads...

A runner would indeed be safer, from most things, by wearing all of this safety gear, but the runner will be much slower than it would be were it not so encumbered. 

Many of us may like the idea of being safe, even at the cost of some progress.  But the greatest progress comes from those who take risks and chances.  And forcing all of this safety upon us slows us all down.

Safety laws are just several of many things that our government has done in order to (allegedly) improve our lives.  You make like the safety, but you cannot argue that it has not slowed us down and will continue to retard growth, and will continue to slow any recovery that we may experience.

Let us throw off the yoke of government laws, rules, and regulations.  Let us run free, so that we may experience the greatest accomplishments that we are able.

Or we can continue to do what we are doing: spend, spend, spend, regulate, regulate, regulate...  After all, what's 8% unemployment among friends?