Professing to be wise, they shewed themselves fools

Holy Scriptures are full of parables and other metaphors because they have to reach people in very different places and times and levels of education.

It is intriguing how western modern man, self-considered the wisest among those of all lands and epochs, is particularly shortsighted to these metaphors.

Take for instance the Creation Story. In which everybody else has always seen a metaphor about the unique dignity of human life, the modern man looks for endergonic nuclear reactions during the first supernovas.

Of course, the modern man finds the Holy Scriptures far more overcome and therefore futile than anybody else; but, to be sure, this is not because of a privileged education but due to a complex of superiority rooted in a mere engineering specialization.

Permission to freely interpret the Holy Scriptures is but a step away from taking them into account whatsoever. Today, more than ever, we must avoid to read the Holy Scriptures without the aid of tradition and authority as that embodied in the Church. Modern man, raised to see Holy Scriptures with the eyes of a haughty, wise, amender instead of a humble, ignorant, pupil, needs more than anybody else of a loving but severe guide from Clergy.

Rules structure

A rules structure is a set of divisions of rights which formally has internal coherence.

Coercion

Coercion is not a human action against someone else's will but against some specific rules structure.

Confront this against the assertion: "Coercion occurs when one man's actions are made to serve another man's will, not for his own but for the other's purpuse" (1). If we follow this definition, I could say that anytime you undertake a service for another you are suffering coercion. If a service is being sold, it would surely be argued, then you are not suffering coercion since you are serving no another man's will but yours. But I would counter-argue: so, since due to the human action axiom you undertake any action but to serve your own will, there cannot exist coercion whatsoever.

That's why I like much more the definition of coercion "as the invasive use of physical violence or the threat thereof against someone else's person or (just) property" (2).

(1) Hayek, Friedrich. The Constitution of Liberty. 1960 -paperback edition, 1978-. Page 133.

(2) Rothbard, Murray. The Ethics of Liberty. 1982 -New York University Press, 1998-. Page 219.

Nostalgia for taboo

There are no many tabooes nowadays. This, more than a triumph for knowlegde, seems to me a loss for aesthetics, for economy of information, and ultimately for civilization.

Morals

Morals is information used to choose final ends.

What the heck is constructivism?

One of the terms which most has troubled me to really catch in is constructivism.

I have been trying to collect all the necessary conditions which define a particular phenomenon as an instance of constructivism.

By now, this is my collection:

1. Coercion. Constructivism in order to be relevant as a social phenomenon has to imply the violation of formerly defined rights of property. Merely defining in my mind an utopia is not constructivism. It is not even if I establish a campaing to persuade other people to voluntarily adopt my utopia. It is not constructivism when I plan a Victorian styled village inside my land and convince other people to buy a house there. I am simply entrepreneurly guessing a demand for Victorian styled villages.

And that's all. If the presence of intention or planning would be the characteristic feature of constructivism, every single human action would have to be deemed constructivist. So, it should be clear that intentionality per se doesn't necessarily implies constructivism.

Neither give I a damn for the praxeologic pertinence of identifying either animism (purposes of the things themselves) or artificialism (purposes of the makers of the things) as influences of specific human actions. These categories are maybe interesting for the thymologist but certainly not for the praxeologist.

So, I don't see any relevance whatsoever in the use of the term constructivism as something essetially distinct from coercion. To me, constructivism is a quite useless concept.

Aesthetics of sex under the sacrament of matrimony

By taking the sacrament of matrimony, the male also becomes a priest. It is the altar which is changed. The woman is the living altar of the husband. The female flesh although, at difference of stone, is physically corruptible, has a soul more adamant than diamond.

In the sexual intercourse under the holy sacrament of matrimony, mass celebration follows the carnal liturgy of love. By it, full communion between priest and altar is achieved. This solemn act, by being open to life, actualizes immortality. Sex becomes therefore into a means to love instead of a selfish end, a social instead of autistic human action.

Priest and altar are the exclusive congregation of this mass. In it, the priest offers all his life to his altar as his supreme worship to God. If Eucharist is performed by the priest, he drinks from the the most sacred chalice, which is in the altar.

What is conservatism to me

This post is about definition. Therefore, in the core it can't be judged as right or wrong from a scientific view point although it can be assessed from a logic perspective, especially in order to analyze its utility. Agreeing with its assertions only could ultimately achieve a convention but not, per se, to find the truth.

In his essay Why I am not a Conservative, Friedrich Hayek supplies reasons for not to regard himself as a conservative. This way, he was attempting to refute the perception which many had about him. Nevertheless, even after the publication of the essay in 1960, conservatives as conspicuous as Robert Nisbet continued considering him a conservative. There are reasons for this: Hayek was a declared foe of coercion; this is: of changing the distribution of rights. (As a matter of anecdote, I became a conservative thanks to Hayek.)

Conservatism of rights can collide with the fundamental classical liberal dogma of freedom only in a society allowing for legal slavery. In that unique scenario, the liberal would fight for changing the distribution of rights while a coherent conservative would defend the current distribution of rights.

What does a conservative conserve
There are several kinds of conservatism because there are several issues which may be desired to conserve. Two main kinds of conservatism are norms conservatism and moral conservatism.

A norms conservative pursues to conserve rights (or being redundant: property rights). Obviously, the existence of such rights has to have a refference to a concrete rules structure.

A moral conservative wants to conserve moral values: specific uses of freedom (i.e. property on oneself) and after all advices on how not to use freedom which transgression does not imply coercion (this is: violation of another's property). It is important to take into account, nevertheless, that to a norms conservative this conservation only can be done through moral means and not through coercion.

Conservatism as political ideology
Conservatism is an political ideology (an ideology which can be used by, say, a political party in order to guide its program) consisting in defending rights legitimately established in a concrete rules structure.

In the parliament, the conservative congressman radically defends the current rules structure and fiercely attacks bills looking for changing the rights frontiers but only fixing new frontiers where there were not. The conservative congressman typically proposes few laws and makes a lot of political control. In particular, this person never will propose a bill to re-distribute rights and will always analyze carefully bills which he presents to discard such re-distributions. Bills developed by him will pursue sanctioning and clarifying frontiers already draft.

In the executive branch, the conservative administration follows a tame obedience to the parliament. If it offers a bill will be exclusively to fine tune the State management.

The judiciary is called to be the most conservative of all political powers.

What's the role of data in praxeology

Praxeology is a purely logic discipline. As such is aprioristic: its content is completly alien to facts of reality. Nevertheless, it is not totally disentangled from them. Some roles which data can perform in praxeology are:

1. Helping leading the specific fields in which praxeology must be developed.

2. Accompanying praxeology in the solution of problems, which usually requieres not of mere praxeology, but of other sciences.

Science of money versus science of value

The essence of difference in such dichotomic terms as producer-consumer, income-expenditure, and the like has its very core in the use of (objetive) money. Such dichotomies cannot be valid in a science of (subjetive) value.

Maybe the most common and general false dichotomy in this sense is between "economic" and "non-economic". Assertions such as "Man has not just economic interests but he has social, politic, moral, sensual, and affectional ones." bluntly neglects the meaning of "economic" which the economist gives (or rather: should ideally give) to the term.

Given the particular realm of economics and its method, the qualificative "economic" can be validly given to any volitive action. The fact that you aren't choosing between an amount of money and a peach, but between saving your father from a fire or securing your life to watch over your baby son is beside the point from an economic point of view. The economist qua economist must acknowledge the same pattern of behavior in both phenomena and their susceptibility to be analized with economic theory.

Although there is a valid and huge domain of non-economic phenomena (including everything in which no volitive action is being analyzed), usually the qualificative "non-economic" is used for non-monetary, ultimately economic, phenomena.

Why doesn't economics limits itself to monetary phenomena? First of all: if you have a method (praxeology) which effectively allows you analyzing some sort of phenomena why should you reject ad portas such field of analysis? Second, and most important it's an argument due to the fact that much of the critique to free markets is based in the suposition that market only means fighting for exclusively and madly hoarding money in spite of love, peace of mind, etc. To reveal the inaccuracy of this critique, it's basic for economics to clearly explain that free markets are about better ways to pursue your goals, notwithstanding wheter they are more time with your family, enjoying the beauty of a dusk in the hills, or happiness for helping others.

It's a shame that even so prestigious (and deservedly so) as James Buchanan fall in the error of thinking that "economic motivation is not pervasive over all human behavior" (1). They don't seem to have understood Kirzner's essay (2) on what economics is about.

(1) Buchanan, James. What should Economists Do? 1979 -Liberty Press-. Page 66.
(2) Kirzner, Israel. The Economic Point of View. 1960 -Institute for Humane Studies, 1976-.

Six questions to an anarcho-capitalist

1. Are you a constructivist?

2. Why, at the beginning of society, did emerge proto-state governed arrangements instead of something akin to anarcho-capitalism?

3. Why are governments omni-present in every single society but haven't there ever existed a sustained case of anarcho-capitalism?

4. Does have anarcho-capitalism to be triggered through legal reforms, an anarcho-capitalist revolution, or should we just wait for it to spontaneously happen?

5. What, in case of anarcho-capitalism being attained, would prevent from state to emerge once again?

6. Is not the one logical fate of an anarcho-capitalist society that one particular firm of services or police begins to gain power, being by that very feature more demanded so increasing its power, until it becomes alone, turning itself in a usual government?