PRay TeLL, Dr. Hash

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Many years ago unions were created to counteract uncontested employer exploitation. Private business is Capitalism with its focus on profits, so workers united as the only defense against the employer's might, and it worked. In fact, the Trade Unions were so successful at equalizing the playing field, both in a legal sense & in the public consciou...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Let's review another batch of original ideas that you've probably never heard before:</p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We have a Spend-n-Tax economy: taxes must repaid by the people who ended up with the loan money.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">High margin...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Government's function is leadership & oversight, and nothing makes people more unhappy then when Government seems to give preference to one person or group over another, therefore, by definition, Government is socialist because it must look out for the best interests of everyone. In contrast, during everyday American life, because we are a Liberty...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Before Teddy Roosevelt was president, he was key in the enactment of Civil Service exams and meritorious hiring of public employees. Before him State-run services were inefficient & corrupt because every time a new Party took office, they fired everyone from the old Party and hired based on patronage. Now, however, the problem is entrenched Public...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Negotiation requires three things: clearly articulated opposing positions where each side gains only at the expense of the other; feedback to monitor the outcome to check for adherence & adjust as necessary; and an adversarial relationship to ensure that there is no collusion against a poorly represented Third Party.<br /><br />Every n...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In America you have the right to accumulate as much money as you possible can during your lifetime. You can spend it as frivolously, as consumptively, or as benevolently as you want. But you do not have the right to create a fiefdom for your heirs. If your sons & daughters have the merit to rebuild on your remaining empire after you're gone then a...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Every kid played Monopoly until they learned that somebody always got everything and they ended up out of the game. Real life is very similar, if the wealth is not redistributed it will accumulate in ever increasing amounts in the hands of the very few who have it. It’s a mathematical certainty that if you have a 1% advantage at a casino, eventually y...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One of the great American myths, perhaps the biggest of them all is, if you work hard, you can get rich. There's no sugar-coating that, it's as greed-based as it gets, and there's nothing wrong with letting natural human motives be the basis of a vibrant society, in fact, it's easier & more predictable that way, probably more efficient too. What's...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Taxation is not a matter of liberty, or fairness, or principle, or class, or any philosophical babble: it is accounting. Every dime Government spends is a loan from the American people, and it needs to be paid back by the individuals who ended up with it. When Willie Sutton, a famous bandit, was asked why he robbed banks, he said, "because that's...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There's an almost total misunderstanding of federal-level economics among the general population. Conservatives keep comparing it to home budgets, and Progressives get it mixed up with Marxism.<br /><br />Money is imaginary, only made possible through Government. Would you really accept pieces of paper, or worse, computer numbers, if there...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Let's review the 10 original ideas you have heard so far:</p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Any question of politics can be boiled down to a simple yes or no answer.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Wisdom is understanding human motivations.</p> </li&g...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Knowledge can come from facts or it can be fictional. It can derive from science which is based on facts, or mysticism which is based on nothing. Science is belief in things that can be proven while mysticism is the belief in things that can't. Viewed in the harsh light of healthy skepticism, the hold mysticism has on people seems irrational, but huma...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Karl Marx is considered one of the most influential men of the last millennium, and obviously ideologies are separated by strong feelings, so the ideas of Marx are much maligned in the U.S., for good reason since they entirely conflict with liberty, but the interesting & often unknown fact is that Marx thought all nations must go through a stage o...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Capitalism often evokes images of OWGs rubbing their hands together, making millions without ever working a day in their life just because they had money to start with. While indeed that is the endpoint if wealth is not redistributed, a modern capitalist is actually more likely to be someone with skill, perseverance & luck that works very hard &am...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Most nations use markets: I make shoes & trade them to you for corn because that's what I want, and you want shoes. Markets work well with liberty because it's you deciding what to exchange for, from who & rather it's worth making the exchange at all. Markets depend on an adversarial relationship, each side trying to maximize their leverage fo...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Kings used to rule, or the church. Laws could be arbitrary & often were with no input from the people they affected. Often the rules were said to come from God, or through God's oracle, and there is no arguing with God. America explicitly rejected the rules of kings in the Declaration of Independence, and our concept of “separation of church &...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There are myriad ways a nation could make decisions: proclamation by an authority called autocracy, a lottery, an algorithm, scripture-based theocracy and, of course, democracy. Democracy isn't necessarily the best or most efficient way of making decisions but if everyone is an island of liberty then everyone wants to have an opinion, whether they kno...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Liberty is self-determination, and reaping the rewards & consequences of one's own actions. The United States is the only Liberty nation: its laws default to liberty, its youth is indoctrinated to liberty, liberty is a major part of the American narrative. If you were born here, our way of life seems natural and you are prepared how to think and w...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To counter the litany of negative base human emotions, there is an overpowering positive one: naive optimism. Naive optimism is the most precious of human foibles because it irrationally overlooks the impossibilities of life & sees only the possibilities. It's the counterbalance to hopelessness, discouragement & depression, and the reason peop...

<p>Control is the most insidious human motivation. The fundamental goal of all people, either consciously or unconsciously, is to be in control. The simple fact is that you are the center of your universe, as are we all, and we all wish to control our universes. Any personal action fundamentally boils down to whether we gain more control, or escape the control of others. This is why, deep do...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Wisdom is about people & people are the result of their motives, hence wisdom is about human motives. <br /><br />Everything you think you know about human feelings & motives is wrong. If you're like me, you initially learned most of what you know about the motives of people from fairy-tales & television written for entertainme...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Every complex decision begins by answering the most fundamental question, one on which all subsequent answers depend. The fundamental question has a special word assigned to it, liberty: do individuals make their own decisions or are they told what to do? Your ideology derives from how you answer this question because almost all other parts of governa...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The U.S. congress has an approval rating in the single digits because our representatives are often in gridlock, which leads to frustration, inaction, and inevitable public disenchantment. How is it that people who are seemingly, in a world view, so much alike but have so much difficulty coming to a conclusion? The primary blame lies on those people’s...

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When I was growing up, I felt like I was only one who didn't know what was going on, everything was confusing, life seemed too complex to understand. I wanted to know. Now, after an expansive education, after multiple careers, after a lifetime of searching for wisdom, I've finally figured it out, and I've codified it, and I'm going to give the Secret-...

Advice is easy to come by but wisdom is a difficult concept: 1. There can be no rational debate if one side loses and the other side wins. 2. Blocking trolls will make your online experience much more pleasurable. 3. Live in your Calm Sphere and let everyone else live in theirs. 4. Accept your loses but remain optimistic to the end. 5. You’ll never be happy if you don’t have personal goals to sati...