Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Ten Books Which Have Influenced Me Most

Tyler Cowen, at Marginal Revolution, replying to a reader, lists ten Books which have influenced me most, with a wee bit of commentary, and encourages others to produce their own list.  Here’s mine.

1.  The Bible.  Various authors.  Most definitely the first book read aloud to me as a child.  Not in its entirety, but passages each night at the dinner table, though I have read it through on a number of occasions over the years.  A source of spiritual guidance to be read, I think, as if you are thrashing wheat.

2.  The Gulag Archipelago Parts I & II.  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.  Read shortly after their release.  I was 15 I think.  Taught me that the beneficence of the State invariably was dangerous.  A lesson I’ve learned well, and I urge others to heed the warnings.

3.  The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis.  Led me far from dogmatic religion and further into faith.

4.  Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand.  Buttressed my courage to live as an individual.  That dang Galt speech, though, is drudgery.

5.  King Rat. James Clavell.  A story which I reread almost every year to delve into the human condition and interaction under duress.

6.  The Deputy. Rolf Hochhuth.  Just read, twice in a row, and commented on here.

7.  The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antonius.  My copy is a pocket sized hardcover from 1899.  It travels well, especially along trout streams.

8.  Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Ludwig von Mises.  I am not an economist, but Mises’ book, though a sweeping tome, is written with clarity.

9.  The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexander Dumas.  Love, revenge, survival, a sweeping tale as far as I am concered.

10.  Representative Men - Seven Lectures. Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson’s writing is aphoristic, which I enjoy, and his constant forays into transcendentalism also feed my metaphysical musings.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/16 at 01:23 PM
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Condemning the Poor Into Abject Poverty

If an individual is poor, or drops into economic circumstances due to job loss wherein pinching pennies is a daily task, the individual must tighten their personal financial belt in order to not succumb to total personal economic collapse.

Individuals who may be living in the above manner, and attempt to continue living within their modest means, without applying to the State for relief, are to be admired.  Unfortunately, the State may not necessarily admire these economically challenged individuals striving to live within their means, and thus the State may force these individuals into abject poverty.  To wit.

Consider the case of Avondale, Arizona resident Christine Stevens, who has been in deep water (financially speaking) since losing her bank job in January 2009. She decided to discontinue her electricity service and make do with solar panels – Arizona has no shortage of sunshine, after all – and using an ice box in lieu of a refrigerator.

But such frugality defies Avondale city codes, which require a refrigerator, heating and cooling system, and electricity enough for all. So Stevens’ house was condemned, and Stevens kicked out. “We explained to her that the panels weren’t enough to sustain a quality of life there,” Avondale’s code enforcement manager said.

And this.

When you’re worried about someone’s quality of life, adding them to the ranks of the homeless might not be the best way to improve it, but it’s close enough for government work. Sometimes more drastic measures are needed, like the ones taken by city officials in Mountain View, California: they kicked an old lady named Loretta Pangrac out of her house, demolished it, and billed her almost $20,000 for their troubles.

The road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

No fridge is better than no house

Linked via James Hanley at Positive Liberty who linked to the story via Jennifer at Ravings of a Feral Genius.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/16 at 07:58 AM
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Census 2010 “Fair Share” Thought

You know what’s fair? Not having to give all that money away to the bureaucrats in the first place. If we didn’t give it to them, they wouldn’t need to worry about whether we got our “fair share” or not. If they didn’t have all this stolen money with which to bribe us, they wouldn’t be able to bribe us. Simply, our “fair share” is whatever we earns we keeps.

I would point out, that individuals are not giving money to the bureaucrats voluntarily, though that point is made in the third sentence of the above quote.

From a post at No Third Solution titled I Responded to the Census Today.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/16 at 07:33 AM
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The True Value of Social Networks

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, each of these social networks are touted as valuable resources for individuals.  But the true value of social network sites may not be accruing to the users.

The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who’s behind that “friend” request? Think again. Your new “friend” just might be the FBI.

The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target’s friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.

And if you believe that your data is protected behind a wall of privacy by any of the social networking sites privacy policies, you had better think again.

The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is “often cooperative with emergency requests,” the government said…

The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn’t want to be the company that stands in the way of an investigation…

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand “the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations.”

Break the law and your new ‘friend’ may be the FBI

Posted by John Venlet on 03/16 at 06:19 AM
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