*Note: I misspoke and meant to state that Austrian school investors are bullish* on Asian markets.
In this installment, I deal with an overview of other systems, including Marxism/socialism and its variants, mixed economies, Catholic distributism, and Austrian Economics, as well as analyzing the arguments of collectivist positions in general, laying the groundwork for the biblical basis for capitalism, private property, human action and prosperity. I also look at theology in the history of the West and its relationship to religious systems, focusing primarily on the philosophic basis for market capitalism. I chiefly answer the criticisms of a distributist friend.
Recommended reading:
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal By: Ayn Rand
How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes By: Peter Schiff
Meltdown By: Tom Woods http://www.mises.org http://www.jaysanalysis.com
What about applying philosophy to geo-politics and espionage? Is there a philosophy of propaganda and psychological warfare? What are 3D, 4D and 5Dimensional analyses? What is the “Great Game”? How does Ian Fleming and James Bond fit into this? Is there any relation between fictional entities like Bond and real psy ops and propaganda? How does semiotics relate to this? Is there a relation to the Venusian arts and pickup artists? What about Catholicism and Malachi Martin? –All this and more in the latest podcast installment.
“A system of categories is a complete list of highest kinds or genera. Traditionally, following Aristotle, these have been thought of as highest genera of entities (in the widest sense of the term), so that a system of categories undertaken in this realist spirit would ideally provide an inventory of everything there is, thus answering the most basic of metaphysical questions: “What is there?” Skepticism about the possibilities for discerning the different categories of ‘reality itself’ has led others to approach category systems not with the aim of cataloging the highest kinds in the world itself, but rather with the aim of elucidating the categories of our conceptual system. Thus Kant makes the shift to a conceptualist approach by drawing out the categories that are a priori necessary for any possible cognition of objects. Since such categories are guaranteed to apply to any possible object of cognition, they retain a certain sort of ontological import, although this application is limited to phenomena, not the thing in itself. After Kant, it has been common to approach the project of categories in a neutral spirit that Brian Carr (1987, 7) calls “categorial descriptivism”, as describing the categorial structure that the world would have according to our thought, experience, or language, while refraining from making commitments about whether or not these categories are occupied. Edmund Husserl approaches categories in something like this way, since he begins by laying out categories of meanings, which may then be used to draw out ontological categories (categories of possible objects meant) as the correlates of the meaning categories, without concern for any empirical matter about whether or not there really are objects of the various ontological categories discerned. Read more of this post
Truth? Objectivity? Logic? Knowledge? Metaphysics? Who cares? I do! You can’t have a proper education without philosophy! In this discussion, I give an impromptu introduction to philosophy – a 101 class, if you will. I cover the three major branches of philosophy: ethics, knowledge, and metaphysics, and how these three are inter-related and make up a worldview. I give examples, cite relevant philosophical works, and decostruct relativism as a prime example “doing philosophy” and why it matters.
In this exclusive interview with Reuters’ award-winning D.C. economics correspondent, Pedro da Costa, we explore the Federal Reserve system, economic and philosophic history, “free markets,” the “third position,” the bail out and derivatives, Max Weber, and much more, as well as his award-winning report, “Club Fed: The Ties that Bind at the Federal Reserve.”
Mr. da Costa’s bio is as follows:
“Pedro da Costa has been covering economics and financial markets since 2001. He recently relocated from New York to Washington to cover the Federal Reserve and macroeconomic policy. Da Costa earned a Master’s in international relations at the University of California San Diego and studied sociology and political science as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics. He grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.”
Note: apologies for the Skype quality which skips and jumps here and there, and which I could not help. We’ll just pretend it’s cryptographic and we’re “agents” (not spies!) and de-code certain sections where Skype “jumps.”
Ms. Annie Machon was gracious enough to grant me an interview to discuss her own story, the infamous David Shayler affair, corruption and whistleblowing in British Intelligence, the modern terror state, and much more. Her 2005 book, Spies, Lies and Whistelbowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair is a fascinating read, and can be tracked down, if you’re sleuth enough.
Her bio at her site reads:
Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned in 1996 to blow the whistle on the spies’ incompetence and crimes with her ex-partner, David Shayler.
Drawing on her varied experiences, she is now a media pundit, author, journalist, international tour and event organiser, political campaigner, and PR consultant.
She has a rare perspective both on the inner workings of governments, intelligence agencies and the media, as well as the wider implications for the need for increased openness and accountability in both public and private sectors.
She is also a recognised international public speaker on a variety of issues: security and intelligence, ethics and citizenship, the war on terror, press and media freedoms, secrecy legislation, civil liberties, totalitarianism and police states, accountability in government and business as well as discussing her personal story of being ‘on the run’.
Annie can also provide relatively pain-free and fun training in public speaking and media skills,
Annie read Classics at Cambridge University and then began a career in publishing. In 1991 she was recruited by MI5 where she was posted to their political and counter-terrorism departments.
Machon, A. (2005).
Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5 and the David Shayler Affair. Book Guild Ltd. ISBN-10: 185776952X
