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- 2012
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Rights and Process: Intellectual Property as Socially Optimal?
Harold Demsetz, in Toward a Theory of Property Rights, makes the case that economic and historical factors determine the particular bundle of rights that constitute “property rights”. He points to the case of Native American tribes and land rights: once the costs of externalities (the tragedy of the commons, in this case) outweighs the cost [...] -
“Conservative” and “Liberal” are Heuristics, Not Ideologies
I’ve said before that Conservatism and Liberalism are not ideologies so much as aesthetics. The specific ideological content of the labels varies so much by place, time, and context (e.g. theologically conservative or liberal). Even in a particular place at a particular time, no one can quite agree what “most conservative” means. There are attempts [...] -
Video: Why Christians Shouldn’t Vote for the Marriage Amendment
Transcript follows. In September 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly passed SB 514, called “An act to amend the constitution to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.” In May of 2012, voters of North Carolina will get [...] -
The Politics of Monergism
Or, What the Doctrine of Election Says about Your Vote in the Next Election. One of the lesser splits between Catholic and Protestant doctrine concerns the relation of politics to the fall of man. Would we have presidents and legislatures and kings on earth had there been no fall? Certainly if politics is no more [...] -
Politicians in the Pulpit
American Christians very often tend to vote “one of their own” in political elections. No doubt this is more a result of in-group/out-group mentality than Biblical doctrine. Nevertheless it is a powerful force, once for socialism, and more recently with the revival of Evangelicalism for social conservatism. And what would evince Christian bona-fides better than [...] -
The Invisible Hook of the Market
When the last bastions of the old media go under, it will not be with a bang but a whimper. It will be a long slide, not a cataclysmic collapse. And for this we have piracy to thank. This is the saving grace of piracy, that it adjusts our economy to changes made necessary by [...] - 2011
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The Will Of God and the Theory of Complex Phenomena
In Christian theology there is a recurring tension between “Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you” (Hosea 4:6) and “Avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless” (Titus 3:15). On the one hand, we are exhorted not only to know God, but to know about God [...] -
2011 In Music
20. Vintersorg – Jordpuls Avant-Garde/Folk Black Metal I wouldn’t ordinarily include it, but it’s the first listenable Vintersorg album in over a decade. 19. Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will Post-rock Slightly more boring than their last few albums. 18. Subway To Sally – Schwarz In Schwarz Medieval/Folk Metal Nothing we haven’t [...] -
Hayek on Coercion
Disclaimer: So far as I know Hayek has never actually coerced a kitten. The idea of coercion is central to many strands of Libertarian thought, held up as the summum malum and opposed to voluntarism. But to actually define coercion precisely enough to build a political theory on it is a bit trickier. In general, [...] -
Peace and the Politics of Conscience
Last month, I asserted that the Bible speaks nothing about how society should be governed, but has political implications only so far as it binds the conscience of the voter. Here, however, let us move beyond particular issues to whole ideologies. Scripture says nothing about Capitalism or Socialism. But can a Christian in good conscience [...] -
Atheism and Reward Morality
“If you’re doing what you’re doing for reward and punishment, it’s not really morality.” I’ve seen this trope more than once in Atheist circles, that traditional religious morality is somehow less moral for being reward-oriented. Atheists, it is contended, are more moral for doing the right thing – not for reward’s sake, but just because it’s right . . . -
Faith And Activism, or, The Bible is Not a Blueprint For Society
The Independence of Faith and Politics Nothing is easier, it seems, than to draw political implications from scripture. The Right has integrated opposition to abortion and gay marriage into its gospel, and on the Left it has become trendy to invoke Jesus’ compassion for the poor in support of the welfare state. As different as [...] -
The Disingenuous Rhetoric of Balance
S&P has finally downgraded its rating of US government debt, once considered the safest investment you could make. The government’s cost of borrowing will inevitably increase, as will interest rates tied to government securities. And not least, it’s a major blow to American ego. So who’s to blame? For Democrats, blame lies with Republicans who [...] -
John Stuart Mill on Calvinism
One of the great marring flaws of Mill’s treatise is the persistent confusion of society with government. Though he does distinguish them explicitly at certain points, far more often “society” exercises the force of law over an individual. This error, his aside on Calvinism suggests, stems from a muddy idea of authority… -
The History of Gold and the Future of Bitcoin
Yesterday I looked briefly at Bitcoin in the context of various conceptions of money. Today, with the benefit of having an actual Bitcoin economy to look at, I’d like to expand on that with a more thorough analysis, and some prediction thrown in for good measure. First of all, a strict distinction between token money and specie money is, well, specious. Hayek explains. . . -
Bitcoin and the Denationalisation of Money
Last month I wrote about Hayek’s and Rothbard’s conflicting monetary ideals. Much of the difference between their visions can be chalked up to differing predictions, but Rothbard’s prescription involves one important proviso that Hayek’s does not – namely, the institutionalization of the 100%-reserve warehouse receipt model of money. It was the failure of Rothbard to [...] -
Hell and Atonement; Punishment and Consequence
Albert Mohler, in his essay Why They Hate It So, argues that the view of Hell as a consequence of sin rather than the punishment for sin undermines the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. I have of course argued that Hell is a consequence, but I am certainly no enemy of substitutionary atonement. The fundamental truth which consequentialist and punishmental partisans miss is that, when speaking of sovereign divine action, punishment and consequence are indistinguishable categories. . . . -
Hayek vs. Rothbard on Free-Market Money
Within Austrian economic theory, there is a fundamental philosophical split between the “evolutionists” following Hayek, and the “moralists” following Rothbard. The former see the world in terms of dynamic, spontaneously ordering evolution of norms, where the latter see the world in terms of fixed and universally applicable ethical norms. This is perhaps a simplification, but [...] -
Culture and Laws
Economists are taught to take economic values as an ultimate given. But political values are different. Where my neighbor’s economic values affect me only in diffuse and necessary ways, his political values have the potential to affect me in very unnecessary ways. But the justice of any particular law cannot be decided based on a standard of coercion, for coercion itself is a slippery standard. “[A] continuum . . . inheres between private, voluntary agreement and coercive local government.” . . . -
Resumption of Indulgences Triggers Fears of Grace Inflation
ROME – With church membership still down after two centuries of recession, officials at the Vatican Reserve in 2009 announced the resumption of indulgences, a policy dubbed “Plenary Easing”, to spur church recovery. Two years in, however, some are beginning to question its effectiveness. Since 2009, the value of the Plenary Indulgence has fallen 17% [...] -
Laws Destroying Lives: The Economics of Trafficking
Human trafficking is the biggest form of slavery in history. But sometimes it seems half the battle in the anti-trafficking movement is fighting despair within its own ranks. Fighting trafficking head on is like plucking leaves off a vine of ivy. But durable institutional solutions do exist. when we look at the types of labor demand supplied by trafficking, we can see a pattern emerge… -
Wordle Redux
Just over two years and over twice as many posts after the last one. Also includes Wordles of the blog comments and of Twitter @thrica. -
Red Son: Freedom for the Collective
Red Son is a retelling of the Superman story where Superman’s ship lands 12 hours later into a collective farm in Ukraine. There are strong moral parallels between Communist Superman and the Superman we know, but it’s not morally homogenous like the original. The book has Superman seriously grapple with the moral and ideological consequences of a Superman to the Communist ideal… -
Rob Bell is Almost a Calvinist
Rob Bell should be a Calvinist. And I don’t mean that in the way that anyone should. I mean he’s just one step from already being there. In the midst of all the hubbub surrounding Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins, the guy writing for The Tenth Leper actually got a pre-release and read it, [...] -
The Toaster Marriage Canard
For as long as there have been social conservatives, there has been the threat of chimp marriage, or dolphin marriage, or christmas tree marriage. Judging from the news, one could even allege these fears have borne out. Let’s start out with a definition of marriage. “Between a man and a woman” is not it. Lots of things happen between a man and a woman that are not marriage, from business relationships to one-night-stands… -
Luther on the Two Wills of God
It has become a standard argument from those who believe in the absolute sovereignty of God to speak of two wills of God – the revealed, normative word, and the inscrutable, positive, decree. Luther draws the distinction between God preached, and God not preached – that is, between the Word and the Substance of God. . . . -
Right and Duty
Most modern political philosophy is built upon the first principle of human rights. Of course, even from this starting point, political philosophies diverge wildly on what they consider among those rights. Clearly one cannot have an enforceable right to everything. In principle, there must be a way to distinguish useful and beneficial rights from unnecessary or even harmful ones… -
Law
What we mean by “law” is a question germane both to religious and political philosophy. In some sense, it just seems to mean “necessity”. This seems to be the usage in Romans 7:23, where Paul talks about “another law” in his members waging war against the law of the Lord in his inner being: his [...] - 2010
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A TULIP for Marriage
Having written about marriage as a strictly spiritual ordinance – one on which civil arrangements have exactly zero bearing – I’m going to develop that point a bit further by applying to it several key doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. First, the five points of Calvinism, known by the acrostic TULIP. For context, it will [...] -
2010 In Music
Looks like 17 is the magic number again. You can click on any cover image to see a larger version. So without further ado: 17. Eluveitie – Everything Remains as it Never Was Celtic Folk/Death Metal Not nearly as good as Slania (2008′s #1 album). But it’s still ok. 16. Mar De Grises – Streams [...] -
Civil Rights’ Next Step: Immigration
The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a resounding triumph for justice. Though it ended up swinging in the opposite direction and actually outlawing a lot of private discrimination, it was a systematic breakdown of the walls which kept blacks from justice in the courts and from equal treatment by the state. Perhaps, given [...] -
How the Federal Reserve Destroys the Environment
Isn’t it funny that environmentalists generally line up on the left on political discussions – the left, the side dominated by the Keynesian cult of consumption? Let me back up and explain what I mean. During the Great Depression, the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes came to prominence, mostly because of good timing. It [...] -
Why Don’t We Have an Ideal System?
For all the political and economic theories out there which claim to be the best, very few grapple with the question, if it is indeed good, why don’t we have it? Any consistent system must deal with this problem, because no system on earth even closely approximates an ideal type of any sort: we have [...] -
Public Religion, Public Confusion
It’s not uncommon to hear people sanctimoniously condemning evangelism as forcing one’s religion on another. In their mind, religion is a purely private matter; a preference, like what flavor ice cream one likes. Rhetoric like this comes alike from the “Spiritual but not religious” crowd, the New Atheists, and pretty much anyone with a measure [...] -
In Defense of the Tennessee Firefighters
Firefighters last month stood by as an unpaid house burned, protecting paying neighbors. However one defines public goods, this event obviously removes fire protection from that class. So should the firefighters be condemned or commended? -
Metaphysics and Economics
Within believers in any economic-political system, there are those who justify it consequentially, and those who justify it morally: those whose justification is ex post, and those whose justification is ex ante. To be sure a good system will qualify via both metrics. But the question still remains of which route to take to convince [...] -
Castro Presents Democrats a Golden Opportunity
The Democratic party finds itself in a pickle. Poised to lose control of Congress this November, their congressional campaigns all reek of the desperation that characterized Republican campaigns in 2006. A few miles south, Cuba finds itself in even more dire economic straits than the US. The drastic step of cutting 10% of the government workforce was just announced, in the hope that a private economy can spring up where none has existed for decades… -
Heresy
The fact that good Christians disagree on various doctrinal issues is a reality that every Christian must eventually come to grips with. There are, of course, easy ways out. For example, no one is going to heaven except those with my particular beliefs. This idea usually crops up in only the most insular churches and [...] -
The Art of the Contextual Sidebar
Wordpress by default has a persistent sidebar which appears on most every page. One thing I’ve noticed while trawling the sites of designers is that usability is greatly improved by making the sidebar contextual – that is, not a generic site-frame that sits on every page. There are several ways one can improve usability on a site with the sidebar; things I will arrange from easy to hard. -
Conservatism and the Regulatory House of Cards
I’ve alluded to the regulatory house of cards before, specifically with regard to net neutrality. The basic idea is one of unintended consequences: starting from a state of freedom, the government sees a problem real or imagined and tries to fix it by fiat. Of course, this perverts incentives and makes for new problems, which [...] -
Marriage As Sacrament: Did Protestants Call It Wrong?
The strength of the Protestant reformation was the axe it applied to contemporary Catholic doctrine. One of the many categories to get the axe was the sacraments. Catholics had a nice round list of seven, several of which are nowhere spoken of in the Bible. But one in particular got thrown out perhaps too hastily, one whose consequences are now coming to bear in the modern American political scene: marriage… -
God, Authority, and Authoritarianism
Ni Dieu Ni Maître – “Neither God Nor Master” – has become a trendy slogan among anarchists. The idea is that the self is the final authority, that it has an obligation to submit itself to no authority, religious or political. There indeed seems to be a sentiment that religious devotion is incompatible with liberty. Submission to the state, the logic goes, is only a small step to a mind accustomed to submission to God. Is it such a small step, though, as if the authority of God were essentially the same as the authority of men but on a grander scale?… -
On The Orders of Beauty
The idea of beauty as the reduction of all particulars to a single head still allows for a dichotomy in the treatment of beauty; what I will refer to as the appreciation of first and second order beauty. First order beauty is the most common conception, simply because it is the most obvious. It is beauty in an object as such, and stops there: everything exists for a purpose, and executes its function in the best way possible… -
Art Culture and Spontaneous Order
The art world is a fascinating example of spontaneous order. Though the particular motives are different, like with the market, motive is indeed the key to art culture as spontaneous order. There are two axes on which we can describe the motive of artistry: first the artists’s with regard to himself, and second the artist’s with regard to his audience… -
Make A Modal Comment Window in WordPress
For those maintaining WordPress blogs with regular posts, one of the most frustrating things can be getting users to comment regularly. Obviously we want to make this as easy as possible for them. Sure there’s the #comments anchor that we can link to after they’ve read the article that jumps to the bottom of the [...] -
The Origin of Group Instinct
Man is undoubtedly a social being. Nearly everything he does is in regard to another human being. Some have taken this observation so far as to say that it is a fundamental characteristic of human beings to fragment into competing groups. Certainly this tendency is found in all peoples across all times. Yet to say this is a fundamental characteristic of humanity fails to apprehend the core of the tendency… -
Democratic Despotism
Montesquieu described three distinct types of government: Republic, Monarchy, and Despotism. He makes salient the difference between Monarchy and Despotism: in a monarchy, the power of the sovereign is constrained, where in a despotism, the sovereign has total power to execute his every whim. Rather than making one threefold distinction, as Montesquieu does, it seems [...] -
The Thrica Network joins the Illuminati
The Illuminati has been making overtures to me of late. Never one to pass up an opportunity to lord secret power over unsuspecting masses, I quickly accepted. But it seems they’ve been planning to induct me for a while. An observant reader has recently brought to my attention a startling fact which it may behoove [...] -
Occam’s Razor and God
Occam’s razor is often cited as an evidence against the existence of God. The argument goes that if we can explain the universe without resorting to notions of God, then it is preferable to do so. Whether or not Occam’s razor actually applies in this situation, this argument obviously has its appeal: why argue for the existence of something that we don’t need to explain what we see? Yet the appeal of this argument in itself belies its very unsuitability for this question, and in fact demonstrates just the opposite point… -
The Will of God for My Life: The Importance of the Doctrine of Sovereignty
With graduation fast approaching, the question gets asked very often: What is God’s will for my life? Life is full of uncertainty about the future, and that’s generally the context of the question. What college do I go to? What job do I take? Whom do I marry? Where do I move? The circumstances are endless, but the question remains the same. -
Is China’s Growth Sustainable?
China is on everyone’s minds now, not only because they send us cheap imports, but because Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with this arrangement. The crux of the issue is China’s currency policy, which most of the world believes is set “too low” – effectively making China’s exports cheaper than they would otherwise be in terms of other currencies. The US is not the only one upset either, for the sake of its trade balance… -
An Update on AguaT
Hello all, It’s been a while since I’ve updated AguaT. Usually that’s because I simply don’t have the time to do so with all the other things I do; it’s rather low on my priorities. However, since upgrading to Snow Leopard, time is no longer my limiting factor. It seems ThemePark, the tool I use [...] -
Is Freebanking Inevitable?
Wired Magazine has a great article on the future of money. Its basic premise is that, like with the media industries, the internet and the global communication infrastructure will allow the market to cut out the middlemen that lubricated the market in its absence… -
Constitutions as Meta-Policy
In the late 1780s, a debate raged between the Federalists and the Antifederalists on whether a bill of rights in a constitution would be sufficient, or even harmful, to individual rights. Ultimately the Federalists won and we got a bill of rights, on the condition that there be a general liberty amendment… -
Systems of Supremacy: Democracy vs. Capitalism
Socialists, Syndicalists, and other collectivist groups will often posture their system as one of worker supremacy. They will also characterize Capitalism as a system of employer supremacy. This is not the truth, as if a system had to favor either employers or employees. Capitalism is rather a system of consumer supremacy – for both employee [...] -
Christ As Culture: Conservatism in the American Church
When Christianity began to spread throughout the Roman Empire, the repeated complaint of the Romans was that the new faith subverted the worship of the gods that held the Roman state together. Though many less educated came to believe that the empire fell due to the displeasure of these gods at the Christian faith which [...] -
The Implicit Contract
One of the main functions which the modern state has arrogated to itself in recent times, one which is almost universally viewed as legitimate now that it has become fully ingrained, is the setting of product standards. The FCC, FDA, USDA, CPSC, EPA, and other agencies constantly prevent countless products from ever even entering the [...] -
A Manifesto on the Abolition of Copyright Protections
I am pleased to announce the completion and immediate availability of a manifesto for the copyright abolitionist, as well as a more academic companion paper going into detail on some of the claims made in the manifesto, A Social Utility Model of Intellectual Property Enforcement. These may both be found on the new Writings page, [...] -
Against a Legislature
Though the intellectual picture for free markets may look rosy with the discredit of orthodox Keynesianism with the oil shocks of the 70s, the Washington Consensus in the 80s, and the fall of Communism in the 90s, a far more formidable foe now looms ahead: institutional momentum. A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury… -
Why the Lapsarian Debate is Irrelevant
First, this is not a disputation as to whether decrees can precede one another. Even lacking a temporal order, a logical order may be necessary. The relevant question is in terms of means versus ends: were humans created for the sake of salvation and reprobation, or were salvation and reprobation created for the sake of humans?… - 2009
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The Best Music of 2009
17. Letzte Instanz – Schuldig Alt-rock/folk metal Rather poppy, but catchy. Sounds like they’ve found a groove. 16. Amorphis – Skyforger Heavy metal Very catchy riffs, as far as standard metal goes. 15. Eluveitie – Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion Celtic folk/rock The acoustic sound works… sort of. It’s hit or miss, but many good [...] -
Copyright and a Culture of Monoliths
Though it was originally instituted for the protection of the distributors of media, copyright has come to be regarded in popular mindset as protection for the incentive of artists and innovators to create. The distribution industries know that the function of protecting the distributors as such has been made unnecessary by the advent of the internet, so they no longer try to justify copyright laws that way. They would have us believe instead that without copyright laws, actors, musicians, and writers could not make a decent living… -
The Stimulus: Beyond “Worked” and “Failed”
$787 billion worth of fiscal stimulus to get the economy back on track, and the best volley Conservatives can lobby is that it didn’t work. With the Obama administration’s widely off-the-mark estimates as to the unemployment rate with or without the stimulus (the actual job losses exceeded the estimates without the stimulus), the debate now [...] -
Inflation & Exchange: In Defense of Backed Currency
It’s easy to look at the character of a currency pegged to a particular value (whether dollars or gold) as regulation, and a floating currency as letting the market have its say about the relative values of currencies. But this abdicates from money its role as the unit of exchange – the anchor by which all prices are reckoned. One might well ask, why does money need to be an anchor?… -
“Natural Marriage”
Let us for the sake of argument grant that homosexuality is unnatural in some meaningful way. Guess what else is unnatural? Monogamy. Certainly the proportion of animals in the animal kingdom practicing monogamy is lower than that which practices homosexuality: Neither is unheard of, but both are comparatively rare. And if one can make an appeal to naturalness without reference to animals, then what constitutes naturality?… -
Proximity and Likeness: In What Sense is God the Good for All Men?
C.S. Lewis in the above passage from The Four Loves draws a contrast between proximity to God and likeness to God. And when we say that nearness to God is the Good for all men, it is important to keep in mind in which sense we mean that. -
Nature, Axioms, and Sanctification
Let us first define ‘nature’ as our active axiom – that is, the ultimate good towards which we strive in acting. There are then two types of nature: -Absolute Referent: The unconditional striving towards the good of something external. -Relative Referent: The striving towards the good of the self. The relative referent is the defining [...] -
Worth, Identity, and Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is in vogue in Western policy. From progressive tax rates to caps on executive pay, people like to see some sort of injustice in the fact that there are rich people and poor people. I will look here at the moral and philosophical presuppositions that are necessary to an egalitarian worldview. The egalitarian tends to justify leveling and redistributive policies on the basis of equal humanity. All men are created equal, they say, so why ought so much inequality prevail in our world?… -
Children Of Men and the Moral Ponzi Scheme
This post is intended to expand on the philosophical ramifications of a sociocentric theology. Whether Christian or not, the only feature required for the applicability of this post is the belief in the happiness of others or of society as a whole as a final moral end… -
Trinity and Tritheism: On Coequality
“Coexistent, coequal, coeternal.” These are the three adjectives typically used to describe the persons of the trinity. The Athanasian creed has given Christianity a fear complex when describing the trinity: it is the creed that deals most explicitly with the idea of the trinity, but also the only ecumenical creed with explicit anathemas. Thus, the trinity, like few other concepts in Christianity, is considered “untouchable” – a sacred cow of the Church… -
For Sensible Deregulation: Why We Need Net Neutrality (for now)
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet Union was in trouble. It had been on a protracted economic slide for many years, and showed no sign of lifting. Mikhael Gorbachev, leader at the time, fancied himself a reformer, and went on a spree of deregulation and privatization. But coming from such a regulated environment, the sweeps of deregulation were not – and could not be – total. People were free to do things they were not before, but the perverse incentives still existed. The house of regulatory cards collapsed… -
Attitude To Business: A Call to Consumer Activism
We Libertarians and free market types very often allow ourselves to be defined by our opponents. Oppose regulation, they insinuate, and you are therefore in favor of all the dirty and devious practices a business might engage in. I’ve met more than a few who actually are. But opposition to regulation does not have to [...] -
Politics and Virtue: Positive and Negative Libertarianism
Why do we believe in liberty? Not as a question of natural rights versus consequentialism – that’s a different debate entirely. There are two ways to answer this question that cross the lines of the aforementioned argument: “I believe in liberty because I have faith in my fellow man that unconstrained, the market will drive [...] -
The Political Philosophy of Star Trek
Star Trek often catches a lot of flack from the American Right for portraying a Socialist space utopia. Certainly there is a vast, far reaching central government, and the human race is indeed portrayed as enlightened beyond self-interest. But should Star Trek be totally thrown out for its political philosophy? I believe there’s more to [...] -
The Balance
The balance concept of works is one of the most bedeviling concepts in pop religion. The idea goes, if I do more good things than bad things, God will accept me. Unfortunately, even Christians all too often buy into the balance model. Not so crude a balance model as exists in pop religion – we take James 2:10 to mean that even one act of sin outweighs all the good works in the world. This is passably true on the surface, but it is still fundamentally a balance model…
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Consistent Egalitarianism
If we want to go after inequality in opportunity as such, the way to do it is not by handing out healthcare and welfare and social security. These efforts miss the fundamental engenderer of inequality by decades. The only consistent application of the egalitarian ideal is to nationalize child-rearing, and removing that right from parents. . . . -
Godliness and Godlikeness
We often think of the Christian life as becoming progressively more like God – in character, if not in substance. Though this is true in some respects, it is not an appropriate description of the whole of sanctification. Indeed, through the process we are to become less like God in certain respects, for naturally we [...] -
Objection Answered
For a time the question of culpability in predestination was one which I had a sense of the right answer, but had a hard time articulating in coherent categories. The Romans 9 argument, “God is God. He can do whatever He wants”, is true, as far as it goes – but also profoundly unsatisfying. Why [...] -
The Law as Values
People from the time the law was given have looked at it as a series of categorical imperatives – things that one must abide by no matter what and regardless of the reason. It becomes more about the action itself than the spirit behind it. It was exactly this thinking that led Jesus to rebuke the Pharisees for adhering to the letter of the law while completely missing its spirit (Mark 2:23-28)… -
Traffic Jams and the Free Market
Rush hour traffic in Raleigh gives the mind a lot of time to idly wander, and so was born a thought along the lines of Daniel Klein’s Rinkonomics: the trafficonomy.
Traffic jams are in fact a lot like the free market. This is not a pejorative comparison, as if we could alleviate the jam…
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A Microfederalist Manifesto
Q: What is the fundamental problem with government? A: It is unconstrained. There is no process to achieve the optimal amount of regulation or private sector intervention, and even if it is perchance achieved at one point, there is nothing to keep it there. The line between desirable and abuse of power is not in [...] -
The Ends of Institutions (Or, The Problem with Moral Theories of Government)
Institutions Versus Individuals Among political theorists, there is a debate among those who view the ends of government as protecting natural rights, and those who view its ends as promoting the maximum felicity of its citizens. The dichotomy may seem to be one of moral versus practical concerns, but so far as we define a [...] -
The Role of Physical Piracy in the Market Economy
In discussions about piracy, even among people who are otherwise ok with free piracy – downloading – those who copy CDs or DVDs and physically resell them on the black market are often condemned, to the point that there is a wide consensus on both sides that the outright prohibition of this sort of activity [...] -
Safari 4′s Messy Trail
Those of you who’ve been trying out the new Safari 4 beta – at least on the Mac, though I imagine you could find similar data trails on the Windows version too – have no doubt been impressed at its shiny new features. But if you’re a stickler for disk space like I am, or [...] -
A Teleology of Rest
Though the expenditure of energy prevents it, physical teleology tends towards a state of rest (diffusion, the second law of thermodynamics). Though the addition of new information prevents it, economic teleology is always tending towards a final state of rest (equilibrium) with regard to prices (Mises, Human Action, Chapter 14.5). Though borrowing, language contact, and [...] -
The Ends of Faith
Throughout the history of the Church, there have been countless movements that either rise and quickly wither, or completely reform the Church. Names like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards stand out as giants of the faith, while there are countless others whose ideas perhaps conform better to the modern zeitgeist, but whose names are obscured by the passage of time. What makes the reformers stand out against time, while other movements repeatedly die even after being repeatedly introduced? . . . -
Evolution of a Logo
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The Effectiveness of Overthrow
Machiavelli, almost 500 years ago, had this keen insight on the apparent paradox that the stronger a government is, the easier it is to overthrow. He is of course speaking entirely from the perspective of conquering it as an outsider however – I intend to generalize the notion to include (and focus more on) the overthrow of the government from within… -
Objective or Subjective Value?
The foundation of liberal (in the classical sense) thought is freedom, for the purpose of the maximization of the happiness of man. Unfortunately happiness isn’t exactly a cut and dry concept. Libertarians of the Subjectivist school (Mises and his followers) believe happiness is maximized when man is free to do as he pleases: value, something’s [...] -
Do We Need a Government Healthcare System?
The American healthcare system is in trouble: costs are far too high. Not to the consumer – the average consumer pays only 16¢ on the dollar for medical expenses, after government and employers step in. The government pays for 50% of that, and even more for those on medicaid and medicare. The expenses are ballooning, far more quickly than many other areas of government expenditure (not including social security, of course). The government can’t pay a theoretical infinite sum in the indefinite future: something’s got to give. What are the causes of the ballooning costs?… -
Idea vs. Reality of Obama
Obama is highly regarded – not only in America, but almost everywhere abroad, where the opinions of our presidents often seem more polar than at home. They hated Bush even more than we did, and they seem so far to love Obama even more than we do. The idea of Obama is good for our [...] -
In What Sense does God Act?
What is human action? According to Mises, it is the use of means to attain ends. One acts towards these ends in order to gain utility, or to somehow improve one’s lot, however that looks for the particular person. This unfortunately runs into problems with the idea of the almighty, as Mises also points out [...] -
Wordle
This is the Wordle of the blog so far. I would have expected to see more economics relative to theology, but maybe economics just has a more varigated vocabulary. Or maybe I write about God a lot more than I realize. -
Ambassador-Camp.org
The new Ambassador Camp website has just gone live. From the Portfolio page: Ambassador Camp is an Christ-centered summer camp in Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina. This site was taken on after the old domain was lost to a hosting company that went under, and moves them from a very basic Frontpage website to something both [...] -
A Theory of Social Capital
Why do people act the way they do socially? What makes one person gregarious and another reserved? Does economics hold the answer? The answer to the last one is, of course, “duh”. Applying economic principles to human behavior of all sorts yields all kinds of interesting results, especially if it’s not strictly economic behavior. So in the spirit of Freakonomics, we’ll look at the act of socialization through a microeconomic lens…
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Is God the Author of Sin?
Let it first be understood that this is a completely different, but not unrelated question from “Does God sin?”. To answer either question, we first need to define our terms. Sin is the valuation or desire for something less than good. To sin against another person is to have something less than their best interest in mind. Thus, if God is that highest good, sin in its most general form is to value anything more highly than God. This is what Jesus meant when He described Himself as the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17): the law is an approximation, love is the form. The law is 3.14, love is ?. The law is a riemann sum, love is an integral. The law is a series of commands that approximate how the regenerate person acts, where love is what actually produces it in fullest form…
- 2008
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Best Albums of 2008
15. In Extremo – Sængerkrieg Medieval metal Mediocre as far as In Extremo goes, but it’s got its moments. The acoustic companion album is actually pretty good, though. 14. Vestigial – Translucent Communion Dark ambient/tribal I don’t generally go for true ambient music, but this is just dense and dynamic enough to be interesting. 13. [...] -
The Necessity of Depravity
Idly scouring the internet as I sometimes do, I came across an article entitled 50 NES Quotes You Should Know. Though the article succeeded in broadening my library of references to old school video games beyond “Do a barrel roll” and “Abort/Retry/Fail?”, the main revelation came from an offhand comment beneath the fourth page of the article:
Christianity says that people are inherently good and that deep down we all want to do the right thing. Video games prove the opposite is true.
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Pat Robertson’s Year End Prophetic Review
Pat Robertson, January 2008: “he said oil would reach $150 a barrel – the price hit $100 on Wednesday – with the dollar continuing to lose value in 2008.”
Reality, October 2008: “Crude has now fallen about 40% since surging to an all-time record $147.27 a barrel on July 11.”…
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The Auto Crisis and Car Commercials
Surely by now every American is aware of the collapsed credit market and the imploding American auto industry. So what are the automakers telling us to quell our fears?
(WARNING: The sample of commercials is non-representative and based on two nights of watching an hour of TV.)Honda was subtly and soothingly reassuring, with a hypnotically calm voice:
“Rest assured that now, as always, you can still get low APR financing.*”
*for well qualified buyers… -
Thankfulness
With Thanksgiving around the corner, I think it would be a good idea to take a look at thankfulness. What should we be thankful for? Are there things we should not be thankful for? I’ve insinuated before that material prosperity is not necessarily a blessing. Should we nevertheless be thankful for it?
Note that the first and last beatitudes are for those without any claim to prosperity. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:2), and “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). These are blessings which preclude the rich (one would assume that the persecuted generally forfeit their wealth). Obviously there is a special blessing for the poor, but is that a complement to a blessing of wealth, or is wealth not a blessing at all?…
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Campus Crossroads
Campus Crossroads is a campus church at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We want to redefine church to our generation. For too long we have been taught that church is a place you go. It is a building; it is an organization. Biblically, the church is none of these things. It is [...] -
The Nature of Christ
The description of the Trinity in the Athanasian Creed was frustrating for me for a long time. What does it mean to say that there is one God with three Persons? It’s all well and good to say “eternally begotten”, but it’s almost a senseless phrase. In fact, the whole creed is full of concepts that make very little sense on their own: without explanation, it’s a very unhelpful way to think about the Trinity.
Fortunately, there is explanation…
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Divine Delegation and Free Will
Creation is such that God is the ultimate good for it. Good is thus absolute with respect to creation as we know it. But is it absolute with respect to God? That is, could God create something such that God Himself is not its ultimate good?…
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The Pre-Existent Will of God
I’ve referenced John Piper’s proof of a selfish God a lot in the past few articles, and once again it is the starting point of this one. This is posited as the motive of God working through history in the redemption of mankind, that His mercy and justice may simultaneously be exemplified.
But does this mean that God is bound by higher notions of ‘glory’ and ‘good’? It would certainly seem so if we are to apply the self-interest model of free will to God. We are bound in our behavior by our knowledge, our values, and our interests. Obviously God has infinite knowledge and thus entirely correct values, but does God have interests? Being omnipotent, can He ever improve His lot?…
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Blessing
As Christians, we have faith that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). As straightforward as this seems, the concept of good itself is more problematic than it ought to be: what is good in the first place, and what does Paul mean by good here?
I cannot count how many times I’ve heard prayers thanking God for placing us in a country where we are free to worship Him. It’s a favorite theme of Patriotic Evangelicalism…
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Don’t Vote
No, seriously. As wonderful as civic duty is, there’s also civic responsibility. If you plan on voting in November, answer the following questions out loud before reading on: Who are the two major party candidates? Who are you voting for this November? Why?
If you could not answer the third question, don’t vote. If your answer for the third question was “I can relate to him” or “the other guy’s eletist”, do not vote…
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Beauty
The phrase “The beauty of the Lord” is thrown around a lot in Christian circles, especially in song. It’s a wonderful thing to sing about, but what is the beauty of the Lord? How can it be appreciated when there is nothing of Him for us to see but His creation?
For a long time I had no idea what it meant to marvel at the beauty of the Lord. I had not even but the vaguest idea of what beauty really meant. In retrospect, my first glimpse was the testimony of a missionary who had been working with Campus Crusade at various universities. He recounted the story of a grad student he met one day, who told him though she was not a Christian, she knew “there must be a God, because…
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Standing in Solomon’s Shoes
The Dream of Solomon, by Luca Giordano The concepts behind the recent article What Is Free Will? may seem pretty out there – they are very abstract at points, and it’s easy to question the value of plumbing to such depths. But the framework also has intensely practical benefits for the believer who is open [...] -
The Shortcomings of Efficient Market Theory (And What They Mean for Investors)
the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that [prices in] financial markets already reflect all known information. It further states that it is impossible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck. -Wikipedia, Efficient Market Hypothesis Efficient Market Theory holds that because all investors are rational, this requires that [...] -
Neither Party Stands for Change
Change is the official buzzword of the 2008 Presidential Election. Everyone likes to throw it around: Obama started the craze with a series of high-minded-sounding but empty slogans, and now the word has even been co-opted by John McCain, seeking to recover his maverick image. But what exactly are we changing from? Partisan politics and [...] -
The Origin of Sin
The goal of this article is to apply the ideas behind What Is Free Will? to the theme of A Humble or a Haughty Spirit. Having read both of these will be helpful in reading this article, as I justify in those articles some of the assumptions that I will take for granted in this [...] -
What Is Free Will? (Or, Does the Nominal Believer Really Believe?)
The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions. -Wikipedia, Free Will Rational agents, by definition, act based on what they know and believe in order to maximize their expected total enjoyment(/pleasure/utility/etc.). Though intuitively it would seem that not everyone is rational, the definitions [...] -
George Bush and the Death of American Constantinianism
Or, How God Works Through History to Suppress Bad Theology. The history of the Church over the past few centuries may be surprising to many who consider the world to be in a perpetual state of moral decline. The 18th and 19th Centuries were particularly dark times for Protestantism and Evangelicalism worldwide. Having fully accepted [...] -
Epta Astera
Epta Astera is a gregorian folk metal band based in Chapel Hill, whose entire branding, including cover art and web design, were done by me. This is a redesign for their second album, SALIGIA, which features cathedral architecture on the front, and the logo prominently displayed. Like the last design for Ero Cras, the header [...] -
From Whence Religious Truth?
With Postmodernism in full swing, it almost seems as if new religions are springing up faster than new followers can be made. Especially hot on the market is custom religion – tailored from an eclectic mix to fit your own needs and desires; something deep enough to make you look sophisticated (“spiritual but not religious”), [...] -
A Humble or a Haughty Spirit?
I was out driving the other day with the radio turned to a Christian radio station, when a song lyric jumped out at me: Because you would rather die / Than to ever live without me. Lines like this have never sat well with me, but I always attributed my discomfort to a question of [...] -
Comparative Government: A Thought Experiment
The news has been filled recently with stories like minimum wage jumping 70¢, or California banning trans-fats in restaurants, all ostensibly for the sake of the common employee/consumer. Things which sound nice and warm and fuzzy on the surface – who doesn’t want to help out the bottom rung of society, or to make Californian [...]