The Monetary Theories of Boom Ba

A quick footnote to Peter Suderman's post below on Jared Lee Loughner's contributions to the UFO/conspiracy/Forteana site AboveTopSecret.com: The currency thread mentioned in the Daily Caller article should dispel the theory that Loughner was a gold bug. There are actual gold bugs in that discussion, and they're as mystified by Loughner's ideas about an "infinite source of currency" as anyone else.

On a related note: On Sunday Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center declared it was "pretty clear that Loughner is taking ideas from Patriot conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller." While it is possible that Loughner will turn out to have absorbed some ideas from Miller, that "pretty clear" is looking pretty bad. Any evidence of a Loughner/Miller connection has yet to emerge, and as Dave Weigel notes, Loughner's behavior in court has not been the behavior you'd expect from a Miller disciple.

Update: The alleged American Renaissance connection turns out to be BS as well.

Comments

[Dello]

Word is that Loughner (loner, get it?) smoked dope and wanted to go back to a Gold-based currency.

Obviously, he was a Libertarian.

[MSM Response]

...smoked dope...

Reefer Madness was right!

[R C Dean]

The whole point of gold buggery is that gold is not an infinite source of currency.

If that's what you want, Bernanke is your guy.

[Pip]

Buggery?

[Ska]

Sheepery? Sheep-buggery?

[Sheep Shagger]

My ears are burning...

Oh, wait, that's my urethra.

[Pip]

WTF??? Are all of you people stupid? Look. The guy posted on a lot of different web forums. Got that? Web forums. People who post on web forums are all fucking crazy. We need to make posting on web forums illegal. It's the only way to keep everyone safe. Well, that and letting congressmembers skip the TSA lines.

[Tim]

You saw that too?

[Mango Punch]

Has anyone heard from Warty recently?

[Warty]

If I define warty then warty is a person who employs warts or wartism, especially as a political weapon.

I define warty.

Thus warty is a person who employs warts or wartism, especially as a political weapon.

If you call me warty then the argument to call me warty is Ad hominem.

You call me warty.

Thus the argument to call me warty is Ad hominem.

[sr7]

Can I just call you my long lost pal?

[waffles]

Keep hitting that strawman! Someday it might call you warty.

[Fiscal Meth]

If there is a warty your concern would be thanks.

All syllable's are thank's.

Nevertheless no concern has syllable's.

Therefor no concern has syllable's.

Yet all syllable's has thank's

Therefor there is no warty.

Hope this diagram helps:

&**@-The universe

~~^!{{-country's

XwartyX-syllable's

[Warty]

If the money is in use for certain cult then there's worth in money.

The money is in use for certain cults.

However, there's worth in money.

Why is there not one currency for the world?

If I use the coins from Zimbabwe in an American shopping center then the purchase is void.

I use the coins from Zimbabwe in an American shopping center.

Nonetheless, the purchase is void.

It makes my skin crawl.

[Pip]

I would just point out that I have received a Malaysian coin, in lieu of a dime, as change from a candy machine.

[Tim]

We need government action. Clearly this is a failure of the marketplace.

[Fiscal Meth]

Then tribes are hidden on earth! He was right!

[Ska]

Return those lifesavers, the purchase is void.

[TomD]

As all these assorted pundits and armchair political hounds weigh on on the influence of "political rhetoric" on Loughner, one thing that's become abundantly clear is just how square they all are.

I think they genuinely are incapable of processing Loughner for what he was. They can't actually conceive what it's like to be swimming outside the mainstream. They simply don't have a feel for the world of a teen who grew up going to Warped Tour shows and deciding to disconnect in high school and eventually burrowing deep into his own mental universe. It's just foreign to them -- worse, they're incapable of considering that his world might be foreign. Their instinct is to make it all work in the context they know, and they don't think to even question that as the fundamental setting.

They simply can not process, on an intuitive level, that he operated in a completely different reality from them. They assume that his world had the same day-to-day storyline that theirs did, with all the same big memes and touchstones defining his social context. The "atmosphere" marked by tea parties and Sarah Palins and Barack Obamas and hot stories churning in the news cycle didn't have to be the atmosphere he lived in. It's not the atmosphere for a LOT of people, but because it is the atmosphere of these pundits and hobbyists, it's what they naturally attribute. It's a classic "fish in water" category error.

To employ a bit of journalism lingo: His day-to-day world didn't have the same nut grafs as theirs. And it's been really telling that they're incapable of grasping that.

[BakedPenguin]

I don't know that his retreat from the outside world was a "decision" on his part. Schizophrenia most commonly manifests during young adulthood. He went insane, for unknown reasons, and perpetrated a horrible act.

I do agree with you about this - that fact is something a lot of people are unwilling to accept.

[Tim]

People want something/someone to blame. You can't put insanity in jail or make it against the law- therefore the blame has to be pinned on things (guns) or people ( Palin).

[MNG]

I think SIV unintentionally asked a thought provoking question on an earlier thread when he advocated lynching the guy on the spot (did I mention the thought provoking part was unintentional?) because "what else would you do with such a person in anarchtopia?" I've always been interested in the question of how libertopia would deal with people who seem to have a dangerous mental illness. Could government fund asylums? Would there be involuntary committment? Would there be preventive treatment or only after-thefact prisons?

[John Thacker]

Well, the number of truly crazy people is pretty rare. I think in a true libertopia you would have to only have after-the-fact punishment, not involuntary committment of people that society seems dangerous.

Remember that no matter what policy you choose, there will be abuses.

One eloquent statement in favor of liberty has been by John Green, the father of the nine year old killed. He said, remarkably (I would not fault him for saying something different in his grief):

In a free society, we're going to be subject to people like this; I prefer this to the alternative.... If we live in a free society like the United States where we are more free than anywhere else, we are subject to things like this happening and I think that's the price we have to pay.

For every one guy like this that does go crazy, there are dozens with all the warning signs. Is it worth locking up ten innocent men in order to ensure that the one guilty one is locked up too? Some people think so, but generally it's a dividing line between libertarians and not. (And on the Left, between the more civil libertarian and the communitarian/social democrats.)

[MNG]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

[Pip]

Did you get religion within the last 24 hours or something?

[MNG]

In this instance I just wanted to know what libertarians would say on that subject. My own position is probably not going to mesh (I'm skeptical of involuntary committment, but I'd likely fund some type of voluntary preventive care and post-incident asylums) if that makes you feel better 🙂

[John Thacker]

I don't think we necessarily disagree all that much. The biggest sticking point for me at least is involuntary commitment, and government efforts to detect PreCrime.

Most libertarians don't have too much of an issue with some provision for voluntary preventive care for the indigent, though most of us prefer private charity. Post-incident asylums instead of prison may be more appropriate in some instances, though it's hard to tell-- and many, including me, favor less dehumanizing conditions in general prison.

[SFC B]

I don't think most people's Libertopias would have a problem with incarceration post-incident. The problem comes when you have someone whose behavior makes rational people go "He's fucking nuts and he's going to kill or hurt someone or himself," but hasn't actually done anything wrong.

I, personally, think the answer is making more liberal allowances for close family to have someone held for observation and evaluation, but I think that when you're discussing pre-emptive detention for someone who may or may not ever break any law or cause anyone any harm you're on thin ice.

[John Thacker]

You're welcome. The libertarian distate for involuntary commitment and pre-crime preventative locking people up is inextricably bound to the belief in responsibility for one's actions.

Once you morally say that people are merely products of their environment, and should be expected to, e.g., behave violently based on that, well, then you really do open the door for preventative treatment of people who haven't done anything yet but show all the warning signs and come from that wrong environment.

[Mike M.]

And sadly, our understanding of the workings of the mind and the causes of these severe mental illness seem to still be in their relative infancy.

Maybe one day we will have a better capacity to be able to identify and help the most extreme and dangerous cases, but we still clearly have a long way to go.

[R C Dean]

I've always been interested in the question of how libertopia would deal with people who seem to have a dangerous mental illness.

I'm going to assume that libertopia exists under a minarchy with rule of law, not some Somalian/anarchy/warlordism.

Could government fund asylums?

Maybe, but in libertopia the tax burden is so low that the citizenry has ample funds to direct toward the general welfare as they wish, so asylums would likely be voluntarily/charitably-funded.

Would there be involuntary committment?

Not pre-emptively, no. In libertopia, you aren't imprisoned for what you might do, but for what you have done that violates the rights of others. I would expect that in libertopia someone who is genuinely insane (as in, not responsible for what they've done) could be involuntarily commmitted for treatment in lieu of prison.

Would there be preventive treatment or only after-thefact prisons?

Both. Preventive treatment can be quite lucrative as a voluntary service, you know. Court-ordered preventive treatment? Probably not, because in libertopia a court can't strip you of your rights except as punishment for something you have actually done that violates the rights of others.

[SIV]

Yeah, unintentionally douchebag.

I was just putting surveyor symbols on a map and your grammatically tuned ears picked up the hateful, uncivil idea so you asked about it over on this thread.

Thomas Szasz has written more than a few books you might like to read which answer your question in great detail.

[TomD]

Yes, sorry, I didn't intend to blur the lines between his chosen lifestyle and any mental illness (which is practically a given at this point).

My reference to "high school" was based on what his former friends have said: He was seemingly healthy at that time, but they were socially fringe.

My bigger point is just that the Paul Krugmans and Joe Progressive Tweeters of the world are not properly analyzing this guy, because they can't. My immediate impression was that Loughner was a guy who'd have regarded a Sarah Palin as cheesy and contemptible, if he regarded her at all. He had a different sort of lens on the world then they're used to, and these people can't grasp that. And not even because of their politics.

[SIV]

Insane is for a court to decide.
"Mentally ill" or "crazy" is not insanity.

[The Other Kevin]

Well said. But I also think people (and politicians moreso) have a hard time accepting that some things are just out of their control. When something bad happens, they want to pass a law, or arrest someone, or root out a conspiracy... you know, "do something" so it doesn't happen again. It it very humbling to accept that other people sometimes do terrible things, and no law will ever stop them.

[Lith Ping]

Great point. To put it succinctly, he wasn't a registered Democrat, therefore he must have been a rightie.

[TomD]

Thanks for the nice feedback. But your summation doesn't really nail what I'm trying to get at here. I may not be communicating well.

My point is just that this whole paradigm of "righties" and "registered Democrats" and "narratives that dominated the news cycle at different points during recent years" is probably not very relevant in the first place.

[Lith Ping]

No prob, thanks for the explication.

[grrizzly]

This is a very smart observation. People obsessed with politics immediately assume that criminal's motives in an attempted murder of a politician are basically the same motives they themselves could contemplate. It's hard for them to realize that other people are motivated by completely different reasons, be they rational or not. In general, people assume that others are just like them, but often they are not. And occasionally it becomes obvious.

[Mike in PA]

Wow! How about how prescient that "mordant" was?!

[PIRS]

Did anyone else have trouble posting a reply to the article below (the other UFO article)?

[Brian from Texas]

I couldn't comment on it either. I wanted to ask if Loughner and his lawyer were going to claim that aliens and anal probes made him do it.

[Tim]

Yeah. No Worko.

[Mr Whipple]

Yes. I was posted something from my Droid and it didn't show up. I thought maybe it was something I did wrong.

[Jim]

Major League Baseball was preventing you from commenting while it collected data on you from its spy satellite.

[P Brooks]

Wait- are you trying to tell me Mark Potok and the SPLC are trying to hang a political narrative that suits their purposes on this random event?

Shocked, I am.

[Mike in PA]

It's a collectivist viewpoint. People are not individuals - simply part of some group. And since everyone dislikes what this guy did, he must be part of the "other" group. He certainly can't be part of my group.

Any attempts at trying to classify this guy are just stupid. He was not a liberal, not a conservative, not a goldie, not anything but an individual with serious problems.

We can easily see this because most of us view people singularly. That just doesn't jive with a collectivist way of thinking.

[Joe M]

The word you seek is jibe, not jive.

[Tim]

Stewardess, I speak jive...

[Mike in PA]

HA!! That's hilarious! "V","B" being so close on the keyboard.

I guess my fingers were being a little more ethnic today! (this is great!)

[P Brooks]

gold is not an infinite source of currency.

Wampum is what we need.

[Tim]

All depends on who gets wamped.

[Warty]

Are you going to tell me that its hard to make a compound-complex sentence?

Ha! You can't fool me with grammar mind games.

How oddly profound.

[SugarFree]

grammar mind games fool
complex sentence compounded
snuggle up, warm gun

[P Brooks]

I bow to the whimsical sentence structures of our Grammarian Overlords.

[ClubMedSux]

On Tuesday ClubMedSux of the H&R Commentariat declared it was "pretty clear that the Southern Poverty Law Center is as rooted in reality as Loughner himself."

[Tim]

SPLC exists to collect money and generate scares that reinforce liberal prejudices.

[P Brooks]

David Ickes blocked that comment page.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

[David Ickes]

P Brooks is a lizard!!!

[Warty]

Wow, he looks a little crazy.

Bonus: genius comment division.

When the 2nd Amendment was written, the only firearms available were Flintlock pistols and Flintlock Muskets ? both required (relatively time-consuming) reloading after each shot. Quick mass murder was impossible so our forefathers couldn't consider the problems we have today. As a Tea Party member who wants to follow the intentions of our forefathers, I want mass production of multi-fire weapons and their ammo to cease. This would make the 2nd Amendment follow our forefathers original intentions.

[Fiscal Meth]

Restore the original intent of the commerce clause! Abolish trains!!

[MNG]

I'm not sure that changes in technology or society could mean the original expectations of ratifiers may no longer control (I'm thinking of the 14th re: affirmative action or gay marriage or the 4th and electronic eavesdropping). But unfortunately for this guy if the original expectation was to have people have the right to keep and bear arms so they could function in a militia then the opposite of what this guy proposes is true, the citizen should be able to keep and bear military style arms (i guess subject to the Congressional "discipline" mentioned in Art. I).

[Mr Whipple]

Wow, he looks a little crazy.

Who the fuck smiles for their mug shot? Dude must be nuts.

[SugarFree]

If I ever get arrested, I'm going to give the biggest grin ever. And gunfingers if they let me. Why be dour?

[Tom DeLay]

Indeed.

[Mr Whipple]

Nice!

[Tim]

Ya know, those colonials with their flintlocks defeated the world's premier fighting force. Not bad.

[MNG]

Yeah, well they had God on their side so there's that.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Warty,

When the 2nd Amendment was written, the only firearms available were Flintlock pistols and Flintlock Muskets[...]

Oh, man... How many times have I heard this pseudo-argument... And the 1st Amendment was written when people wrote with quills, so it does not apply for iPods, and so on...

(Thanks for the link, Warty.)

[JD]

Fucking Google, how does it work?

http://www.britannica.com/EBch.....ting-rifle

The first effective breech-loading and repeating flintlock firearms were developed in the early 1600s.

By the 18th century the Cookson repeating rifle was in use in America, using separate tubular magazines in the stock for balls and powder and a lever-activated breech mechanism that selected and loaded a ball and a charge, also priming the flash pan and setting the gun on half-cock.

[ClubMedSux]

There's search terms all up in this bitch.

[cynical]

I've heard this shit like three times today from three different leftards. Do they just beam this shit straight into their heads or something?

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

It's a long-recurring meme among the anti-gun left. I've been hearing it for years. "They couldn't have anticipated" modern firearms. "The were thinking of only muzzle-loading flintlocks."

And of course, the way-too-easy reply is to point out computers, radio, TV, cell phones, high-speed, computer-controlled printing presses, your deskjet printer, the internet... none of which, using their logic, gets First Amendment protection.

Heck, you have no right to a ball-point pen, then, since they didn't exist even as a concept.

They also couldn't possibly have foreseen the mega-churches, especially their Sunday morning mass TV broadcasts, so those are out. And don't forget giant flashing billboards along the highway.

It's just too easy.

[JD]

As I pointed out above, repeating firearms have been around longer than the 2nd Amendment.

I can't believe that the Founding Fathers (especially Franklin and Jefferson) could fail to anticipate major advance in weapon design. The percussion cap, which enabled the development of metallic cartidges (and hence modern repeating firearms) was in wide use by 1830.

[alan]

Yeah, what is the deal with that? I've seen that argument for years, of course, but there has been a clusterfuck of it lately. Sadomasochism from the left, as they enjoy the spankings that that fuckhead shit can only provoke?
It's definitely some twisted shit going on there.

[VoteMuslimNoPork]

This nut job's infatuation with syllogistic argumentation is ironic as hell ...

[Tim]

I don't know what that means but it sounds intelligent as hell. You've got my vote for President!

[Pip]

What? You want another Muslim president???

[pmains]

A typical syllogism has a minor premise, a major premise and a conclusion. So, A + B -> C. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

His logic reminded me more of Lewis Carroll's logic puzzles.

(a) All babies are illogical.
(b) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile.
(c) Illogical persons are dispised.
Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles.

[Amakudari]

Nah, there's no C. His logic:

If A then B.
A.
Thus B.

If there's no flag in the constitution then the flag in the film is unknown. There's no flag in the constitution. Therefore, the flag in the film is unknown.

...

If B.C.E. years are unable to start then A.D.E. years are unable to begin. B.C.E. years are unable to start. Thus, A.D.E. years are unable to begin.

...

If I define terrorist then a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon. I define terrorist. This [sic], a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon.

And so on.

It's just repetition. And it's obnoxious because either A doesn't mean B or the statement doesn't deserve repetition.

Also, who lists We the Living and The Communist Manifesto as his favorite books?

[Fiscal Meth]

All plants grow.

Ivy is a plant.

Therefor KILL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE!!!

[IceTrey]

Apparently Giffords and Loughner were both Jewish. There's a good conspiracy.

[R C Dean]

Speaking of tautologies . . . .

[cynical]

So, after he asked his Congressperson a difficult question, he, um... he didn't put it up on YouTube, right? Because if he did, I think I know who might have influenced his crazy ass.

[Warty]

I took one for the team and went to his site. True to form, the following is top-center.

TAKE ACTION
After the Gabrielle Giffords shooting it's more vital than ever to encourage intellectually engaging politicians by asking them tough questions on video rather than enabling teaparty threats of "Second Amendment remedies".
Take a few minutes right now and promote the plan at that link and ask teaparty enablers why they won't promote that plan.

[Pip]

It must confound his brain trying to process the fact that the intern who saved Gifford's life has the surname Hernandez.

http://peoplesworld.org/studen.....ords-life/

[SIV]

STFU Warty

[sevo]

"...ask teaparty enablers why they won't promote that plan."

Because babies can't manage crocodiles?

[bigbigslacker]

http://www.cpusa.org/communist.....ncitement/

What happened to the good ole days when American Communists supported violence? Did these guys get infiltrated by Democrats or something?

[Citizen Nothing]

We're all Boom Baians now.

[BoscoH]

Infinite source of currency? Sounds kinda Keynesian to me.

[QuietDesperation]

Fractal currency! No matter how small you divide it, it's still like the original unit!

[QuietDesperation]

The progressives have got absolutely batshit crazy over this. A commenter over on ScienceBlogs was demanding the Obama Administration get Justice to file murder charges against... Sarah Palin. The general consensus there seems to be "Well, the Tea Party is assholes so we need to be even BIGGER assholes!" But, hey, they're all sciencey and stuff so we can't possibly imply they are childish little dinks.

[Paul]

There are actual gold bugs in that discussion, and they're as mystified by Loughner's ideas about an "infinite source of currency" as anyone else.

Forgive me, but in all seriousness, isn't the "infinite source of currency" a uniquely liberal/progressive concept?

[Chris Rock]

While it is possible that Loughner will turn out to have absorbed some ideas from Miller, that "pretty clear" is looking pretty bad. Any evidence of a Loughner/Miller connection has yet to emerge, and as Dave Weigel notes, Loughner's behavior in court has not been the behavior you'd expect from a Miller disciple.

Whatever happened to just plain "Crazy"?

[cynical]

Dude, if this guy was babbling at voices only he could hear, the proggosphere would be searching high and low to find them so they could conduct an interview.

He's driven them around the bend.

[cleaning]

Southern Poverty Law Center declared it was "pretty clear that Loughner is taking ideas from