Bill Walton on happiness

Never forget - happiness ends when selfishness begins.

~ Bill Walton

Kevin Duffy on the selfishness and irrationality of capitalism

Q: Why is libertarianism not generally called pro-capitalism?  Is it just a way of saying you support a more extreme version of free market capitalism?

A (partial): What I fundamentally dislike about libertarianism is how selfish it is.  I also resent how many of them assume their positions are preeminently “logical,” and that their own superior reasoning “proves” the superiority of their myopic worldview.  Human beings are not rational machines.  They are not fundamentally logical.  We are far more nuanced than that.

Duffy comment: You have a point. Individuals act in their own self interest.  They also can act irrationally at times, especially when in crowds. 

Fair enough, but shouldn’t we apply the same principle to government officials?  What puts them above these human foibles? 

The difference is that individuals trading with others must use persuasion, i.e. they have to make each other better off.  Call it selfish all you want, but free markets are mutually beneficial, win-win.  This doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes or have regrets after the fact, but going into the trade, they only do so if they expect to benefit.  And when things don’t work out, that failure imparts information.  People learn. 

Government officials, on the other hand, use coercion.  THEY decide what is best for society and tell everyone what to do.  Resist and you end up in jail or worse.  The political class (the government and its cronies) lives at the expense of the populace, win-lose.  These people are far from selfless.  In fact, they lie, cheat and steal all the time. 

This is not to say the people have no say in the matter, but it is the majority who count, not the minority dissenters.  Government officials know this, which is why they constantly play to the crowd.  Their stock in trade is propaganda which works by simplifying the complex to a political slogan, playing on peoples’ fears and pitting one group against another. 

The defenders of such a system can only do so with semantics, calling mutually beneficial trade “exploitation” and government coercion “selfless.”  Sorry, but your system is built on brute force.  No amount of spin can give it moral superiority over a system of freedom.

~ Kevin Duffy, Quora, May 13, 2022

Tom Woods on lockdown selfishness

Part of the natural order is that parents make sacrifices for their children, not the other way around. If vulnerable people want to isolate themselves, and I can understand why they would, then they should do that. But as I am going through middle age it would never occur to me to make those demands of young people. Never. Because I would think that that was selfish. Selfish of me. That when I was young, I got to experience all these things, all these irreplaceably beautiful moments of youth. But you can't have them to keep me safe. 

No, I'll stay safe by following precautions and limiting my contacts. But you go out and enjoy the one life you get. That's what a good and decent human being says. That's what an unselfish person says. 

~ Tom Woods, "The Fact-Free COVID Dystopia," 44:20 mark, Mises Institute speech in Jeckyll Island, Georgia, October 8-10

Vasko Kohlmayer on the self-focused Baby Boomer generation

Abundance rarely breeds thrift, modesty or prudence and affluent societies almost always overreach their bounds and means. The plenty creates the illusion that the means are inexhaustible and the ability to do things unlimited. Of even greater concern is the fact which has been often observed that plentitude and easy life tend to breed moral loosening, especially in those who did not have to work for their comforts. People who are born into ease do not need to grapple with the world in order to survive or live well, and as a result they have a surplus of time and energy. Since there is not much to worry about externally, such people tend to direct their attention inward to themselves and become self-focused and self-absorbed. And from there is only a small step toward self-indulgence, self-seeking and selfishness.

Not surprisingly, these qualities became evident across the swathes of the baby boom generation. Perhaps the most cuddled and sheltered young cohort in America’s history, they grew up in the post war boom of prosperity, watched over by their dotting and increasingly affluent parents who sought to insulate their offspring from the hardships of life they had themselves endured during the Great Depression and the War.

Feeling secure from birth, the boomers did not inherit the work ethic, modesty and moral restrain of their parents. Quite the opposite, many of them openly rebelled against it and instead made the satisfaction of their own desires the goal of their lives.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "America in Crisis: Correcting the Narrative," LewRockwell.com, July 2, 2020

Time's 1966 Man of the Year