- Georgism Crash Course: A Benefits Overview of NRT
Explaining Georgism and the Georgist Theory of Property, the benefits of land value and natural resource taxes, Georgism vs other economic ideologies, etc.
- Land Economics Part I: Ricardo's Law of Ground Rent
Laying out the foundational economic theory behind Georgism, and illustrating how unequal land distribution depresses wages. (Downloadable Infographic)
- Land Economics Part II: Speculation and Idle Land
Government Policies Enable Rent-Seeking, Untold Economic Inefficiency, and Lower Living Standards (Downloadable Infographic)
- Land Economics Part III: Mortgage Debt and Lending
How Land Speculation, Mortgages, and Banks Cause Real Estate Bubbles and Recessions (Downloadable Infographic)
- Graphs of LVT Outcomes (Downloadable Infographics)
A visualization of all the positive feedback loops that would result from implementing a Georgist Economic Policy.
- Why Georgism Lost Its Popularity During the 20th Century
The Georgism movement used to be fairly popular during the Progressive Era from the 1880s to 1920s. However, the rising dominance of the automobile, mortgage loans, Keynesianism, and the Cold War era Capitalism-Communism dichotomy all contributed to the decline of Georgist activism. And now we have to endure a century's worth of successive mistakes.
- Why Georgism and Population Control Both Imply Each Other
This essay debunks chapters 6-9 of Henry George's Progress and Poverty. It proceeds to explain an interesting and coherent connection between Georgism and Population Control. Both concepts aim to conserve natural resources that exist in fixed supply.
- Natural Resource Taxation
Market prices are circular because all prices depend on other prices. The best way to boostrap market prices is to appraise the physical inputs to the economy (natural resources) based on their utility, scarcity and downstream effects (such as pollution).
- Killer Arguments Against LVT... Not.
This Georgism FAQs is probably the most comprehensive on the entire Internet, even moreso than my own. However, I dislike the CSS, some of the wordings, and many of the arguments that it makes or prioritizes when arguing for Georgism. It is remarkably thorough, but it could still be greatly improved.
- Henry George AI Chatbot for Answering Questions about Georgism
- Book Review of Progress and Poverty
This is a good review of P&P, aside from its fallacious arguments against Neo-Malthusianism and Overpopulation concerns, which I debunk here.
- Why Land is a Big Deal in the Economy
- Why McDonalds is a Real Estate Company - Financial Interest
- The Land/Property Economics of South Korea - PolyMatter
- Alaska Permanent Fund - A Georgist Success Story
The Alaska Permanent Fund is an example of how Natural Resource Taxation can be used to fund governments.
- Why Did Humans Invent Cities? - City Beautiful
- Why Cars And Car-Centric Urban Planning Suck FAQs
- What Happened when they Banned Cars - City Beautiful
- How We can Make Cities Car-Free - City Beautiful
- How Crime Worsens Urban Sprawl - Ben Southwood
- How Crime Prevents Upzoning and Densification - Ben Southwood
- RateTheLandLord.org
A community platform that elevates tenant voices to promote landlord accountability. You can rate everything from laundromats to legal firms. It's about time we rated landlords.
- WTF Happened In 1971?
This site has a lot of graphs and metrics that changed radically after 1971, the same year that the US ended the gold standard.
- The Crash Course (Playlist) - Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity
Our current economic system is unsustainable. This playlist explains why the West is destined for eventual debt defaults and hyperinflation, and the challenges of peak cheap oil and resource scarcity.
- United States Debt Clock: $35 Trillion And Counting
- The National Debt Is Making Us Poorer
The average American will lose between $5,000 and $14,000 annually by 2054 due to the burden of the growing national debt.
- WTF is Wrong with the Economy? - WhatIfAltHist
Western economies are currently much worse off than the media would have us believe (as of 2024). The cost of living, rent, mental health, and general health are the worse they've ever been in American history. Western society has done everything it could to lower wages: bringing women into the workforce, mass immigration, mass automation, globalization, population growth, etc.
- Silvio Gesell: The "Strange, Unduly Neglected Prophet" - NPR
Silvio Gesell was a German-Argentinian entrepreneur and economist. He believed that the medium of exchange and wealth storage functions of money are imcompatible with each other, so he proposed money that expires, which would cause money to only function as a medium of exchange. His proposal was tried in some towns during the Great Depression, and each attempt was a local success.
- NaturalMoney.org | SilvioGesell.com
These sites have more information on the Gesellian philosophy of economics.
- The Problem of Planned Obsolescence - Veritasium
Planned Obsolscence is one of Capitalism's greatest flaws, and a strong reason to support FOSS software, the right to repair, and other government-enforced game-theoretical solutions.
- Philosophy Of Planned Obsolescence
- The Case Against Patents - PolyMatter
Why patents stifle innovation and market competition, instead of encouraging either of those things.
- How to Fix the Broken Patent System - PolyMatter
TL;DW: The best way to fix the patent system would be to create a system where the government rewards innovators with one-time monetary prizes instead. This is yet another major game-theoretic problem that would be best solved by practical government policies.
- The Misleading Capitalism & Socialism Dichotomy
We should view Capitalism and Socialism as complementary social technologies, rather than conflicting ideologies. Each solves different kinds of problems, and we should be discussing the best ways to use both Capitalism and Socialism to make the economy work.
- Social Mobility Hasn't Really Changed In 400 Years - Gregory Clark
- The Energy Transition Delusion: Inescapable Mineral Realities - Mark Mills
Current projections show that there won't be enough of the required resources for humanity's future at the current rate of use and growth of population. The mining efficiency of many important metals has been dropping every decade.
- Summary of how the Financial System Works
Some simple thought experiments for explaining how money is created, how the economy works, how recessions happen, and his analysis of a commonly overlooked contributing factor to the 2008 Great Recession.
- Thoughts on Economics
This page has miscellaneous thoughts and musings that I have on economics that don't fit in with other pages. The main theme is proposing economic solutions for improving labor efficiency and preventing market failures, planned obsolescence, and monopolies. I also critique LVT-funded UBI and its effects.
- Explaining The Economic Calculation Problem: What If There Were No Prices?
- The Austrian School Versus The Chicago School - Academic Agent
- Financial Markets (2011) with Robert Shiller
- Financial Theory with John Geanakoplos
- Interactive Game: The Evolution of Trust
This Javascript game is great for better understanding game theory. It's fun to play around with.
- The Stock Market is a Bank
The stock market always has winners and losers, whether stock prices go up or down. The flow of money is bootstrapped by debt.
- Pyramid Schemes | Video Version
The hierarchy of pyramid schemes operating within the world's economies, including but not limited to: stock market/housing/soveign debt bubbles, to unsustainable government debt and deficits, to declining economic and population growth.
- FTX, Cryptomania and Fake Wealth
Fake wealth is an illusion created by hype and the fallacy of composition. This played into the rise and fall of FTX.
- Purchasing Power Decline (in Big Macs) | Video Version
GDP is not a very good measure of economic output, and the real purchasing power has probably been declining since the late 1990s or early 2000s, but masked by housing stock market bubbles.
- Why It's Bad to Have High GDP - Luke Smith
GDP is only a measurement of planned obsolescence and how reliant a place or country is on the global economy. Self-sufficiency has a GDP of $0, whereas wasteful consumerism has an extremely large GDP. This article makes a few fallacies, but it helps show why GDP is misleading and doesn't convey very much information.
- Why Singapore's Healthcare and Welfare Systems Are World-Class
- George Hotz's Thoughts on Money Creation
- A Critique of "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber
David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs is Western-centric, it doesn't address rent-seeking or broken incentives in Academia, and it doesn't have any solutions to the problems with UBI. Most importantly, it doesn't propose any solutions to problems of cooperation.
- Political Philosophy: Defining An Ideal Government
Some musings for defining an ideal government's political philosophy and legal code, and the best solutions to the game-theoretic problems that every society must face.
- The Establishment | PDF Version | Video Version
Government, Big Business, Politicians, the Media, and the Academy all collude to maintain the social order and the Deep State.
- Technology and Progress | PDF Version | Video Version
Technology and Progress have been largely stagnant over the past 50 years. We cannot transcend the human condition, and the biggest problems of the 21st century will be political and philosophical problems, not scientific nor technological ones.
- The Rise and Stagnation of Modernity | PDF Version
1969 was the turning point for when major improvements to the human condition in the developed world greatly slowed down.
- Technology and Civilization
This page lists the main problems that are caused by increasing or adopting new technologies, as well as my thoughts on AI, peak technology, and speculations about the collapse of modern civilization.
- Energy is the Mother of Invention
- Collapse is Forever
If modern civilization collapses, the fossil fuels that powered it will already be all used up, hence the necessary energy won't exist anymore to restart it. The scientific knowledge, technological complexity, social complexity, and economic complexity will all fall apart if that happens. Modern Civilization will never recover if it falls.
- Pragmatopia
This video presents a list of things that must be done to save the West. We must expand rationality, reviatalize the West, create a global government, enforce EPC, and create a sustainable financial system funded by NRT.
- Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal - Joel Salatin | Luke Smith's Overview
A local farmer details his frustrations dealing with bureaucracy, arbitrary regulation enforcement, and a number of issues. The number of regulations imposed on small-scale farmers makes their jobs almost impossible and unnecessarily expensive.
- Why Georgism and Population Control Both Imply Each Other
This essay debunks chapters 6-9 of Henry George's Progress and Poverty. It proceeds to explain an interesting and coherent connection between Georgism and Population Control. Both concepts aim to conserve natural resources that exist in fixed supply.
- Climate Change And Global Warming
This analysis compares climate change with overpopulation, pollution, and other environmental problems. Climate activism is moralized, ineffective, and counter-productive. To solve environmental issues, we'll need to reduce fossil fuel consumption, switch to nuclear energy, tax natural resources, and reduce population growth.
- The Deep State and the Myth of Democracy | PDF Version
There are many ways how democracies can be rigged with corruption. It is a myth that democracy is the rule of the people, as the real rulers are the Deep State.
- Thoughts on Democracy
Democracy exists to enable societal compromises. My proposal is to overhaul it with a system that emphasizes meritocracy and sortition. This page also analyzes other reforms to democracy, First-Past-The-Post (FPTP), parliaments vs presidencies, different democratic procedures, redrawing state boundaries, and big tent strategy.
- Philosophy of Activism: Figuring Out What Works *** (Work In Progress)
TBA.
- The Rise of the West - Patterns in Humanity
- Thoughts on Geopolitics
Some musings about geopolitics that follow some basic principles and observed history. All competition ultimately stems from competition for scarce natural resources. Defense, law, and order are the first duties of a state. Geography shapes the battlefield. Peace can only be secured by preparing for war.
- The Case Against Libertarianism and Anarchism
Libertarianism is unsustainable, incompatible with human nature, and it fails to understand what freedom is and why/when it's desirable.
- The Case Against Anarchism | Video Version
Anarchism fails to solve problems of cooperation for large-scale societies, ignores the implications of evolutionary theory for human nature. Arbitrary anti-authoritarian morals are not a foundation for a functioning, technologically-advanced, large-scale society.
- Circles of Control and Freedom
Freedom only exists within a system of constraints: physical, biological, psychological, cultural and social.
- What Is Nuclear Energy?
This website is maintained by a group of nuclear engineers that aim to educate the advantages and drawbacks of nuclear energy. It explains everything that you could want to know about nuclear energy. It's probably mostly accurate.
- The Case for Insect Agriculture
Insects have many advantages over livestock: they are cheaper, take up less space, are more nutritious, and there are thousands to choose from.
- The Blue Revolution
Aqua-agriculture may be the future of humanity's food production.
- How to Kill a Civilization - WhatIfAltHist
- Book Review: Seeing Like A State by G.K. Chesterton
- Our World In Data
This site shows lots of data regarding many different topics pertaining to human civilization. You can browse by topic for lots of things that may peak your interest.
- What is Value? | Closely Related Video
There are four types of value. Biological value is what is good or bad for an organism. Psychological value is a mental judgment of what is good or bad for an individual, from their subjective perspective. Social value judgments are intersubjective. And philosophical value is defined by an explicit philosophical theory of value.
- Lucifer's Question | Video Version
You can't rebel against your own nature, even if you reject it philosophically. You might arrive at the philosophical position that life is meaningless, but you won't act as if life is meaningless.
- Circles of Order and Chaos | Video Version
Family is based on love, society is based on cooperation between selfish individuals, nature is governed by evolution, and the cosmos are governed by entropy and causality. When people encounter a bigger circle, they often struggle with it and may reject it as immoral.
- Motivation, Pain, and Pleasure | PDF Version
Emotions generate motivation, which generates action. Increasing pain corresponds to increasing motivation, and decreasing motivation correlates with increasing pleasure. We could call it Zero-Sum Motivation Theory. It has similarities with the Drive-Reduction Theory of Motivation.
- Axiology: The Nature of Value
Axiology studies the nature, properties, rationality, judgment, and ranking of values. Axiology has implications for ethics, game theory, and political philosophy.
- g-Factors and s-Factors
In many cases, it's useful to have a single rating that works as a general measurement for multiple specific measurements overall. These sections explore the fairness, validity, and implications of this concept.
- What is Morality? | Video Version
Morality is made up of collective values, individual internalization of said values, folk theory, and individual and collective moral myths and assumptions. "Objective Morality" is debunked as an oxymoron.
- The Case Against Moral Realism
Moral realism doesn't provide a coherent definition of good and evil. In most cases, moral disagreements cannot be resolved by rational persuasion, since moral judgments vary so much between individuals, cultures, and societies. Morality is ad hoc, and evil is pervasive.
- Six Reasons why Objective Morality is Nonsense - Coelsblog
This webpage gives some good arguments in favor of moral relativism, and why it's a good thing that objective morality doesn't exist.
- Morality and Selfishness FAQs
These are mostly intended to be a set of follow-up questions that people may ask after reading: What is Morality?
- Ideology and Violence | Video Version
An ideology is a system of ideas that defines a social and moral dichotomy between us and them, good and evil. Everyone knows that the other group's ideology is crazy and that the other group is hypocritical, but they can't see those things about their own ideology and themselves.
- Utopian Ideologies | Video Version
Every morally self-righteous person has what's called a Utopian Ideology, an unrealistic and tribalistic belief system that gives its adherents a claim to moral superiority and the illusion of knowledge.
- The Lion King Moral Narrative
Most moral narratives revolve around Us vs Them and Good vs Evil, used by people for justification of their ideologies since the narratives fit their social instincts and worldview conditioned by the media. They are similar to Walt Disney movies, like the Lion King.
- Altruistic Morality and Victimhood | Video Version
The moral framework of altruism does not lead to actual altruism. It leads to individuals seeking power through victimhood and eventual social collapse.
- Morality and Bad Faith
Morality generates a complex web of pretense, deception, and delusion, for both individuals and collectives. This resulting bad faith prevents us from understanding and speaking the truth about nature, society, human nature, and our own motivations.
- Israel, Palestine and Moral Confusion
Moral judgements about events are made by subconsciously fitting the event to some moral pattern. Multiple moral patterns can be seen in the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and this creates moral confusion for nearly every political faction.
- A Rational Analysis and Critique of Nazism | PDF Version
Nazism is usually presented as a negative moral exemplar without any rational analysis. This essay analyzes and critiques the Nazi worldview from a "Darwinian" perspective, as well as the popular moral narrative about the Nazis and WWII.
- Blithering Genius's Critique of Efilism | Video Version
In summary, Efilism relies on four assumptions: hedonism, altruism, assymetry of pain and pleasure, and life is violent.
- The Ghost of Adam Lanza | Video Version
Adam Lanza was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter. His secret Youtube channel revealed his intentions when it was discovered in September 2021. His personal philosophy (Eulavism, value spelled backwards) had similarities to Efilism, Antinatalism, and Anarcho-Primitivism, but it was also uniquely different, and emphasized a hatred for culture.
- The Case Against Efilism: Why Efilism Will Never Win
Efilism is self-defeating and unlikely to succeed. The Efilist mindset is based on ignorance, rhetoric, and unquestioned assumptions like hedonism and altruism.
- Internet Search Tips - Gwern
- The Encyclosphere
- Encyclone - A Search Engine for the Encyclosphere Project
- My Philosophical And Political Journey
The evolution of my personal philosophy over the years.
- Response To RatWiki's Pragmatosphere Article
My response to RatWiki's Pragmatosphere Article, as written by LiamM32 / Electric-Gecko.
- The Advice Troll
One of the reasons why this blog doesn't have a comments section.
- Mensa IQ Test
- Fires, Polar Bears, and Global Warming
The rational approach to living in fire-prone ecosystems is to accept that fire is part of the natural cycle and create low-fuel areas around human habitation, by clearing/thinning forest and doing controlled burns. The polar bear population has been increasing, and is not threatened by global warming.
- Why College Rankings are BS - Polymatter
This video starts off with explaining the Chinese Student Crisis, and it explains the issues with college rankings at the end.
- Why There is No Best City to Live In - City Beautiful
Rankings for things like "Best Places to Live" are bogus. They use arbitrary criteria, they don't consider different demographics or preferences, and they change every single year.
- Wikipedia has Cancer
- Interactive Map of Reddit
- Collateral Global
A global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures.
- Why Lockdowns Don't Work
Lockdowns fail by every metric, regardless of implementation: common sense, basic economics, statistics, and costs-benefits analyses.
- The Case Against The Carnivore Diet
Someone tried to persuade me to switch to the carnivore diet, so I wrote this essay as a rebuttal.
- What is Orthotropics? - Orthotropics.com | Mewing Studies
Orthotropics is a superior alternative to orthodontics because it directly addresses the causes of malocclusions, rather than the symptoms. Orthotropics also doesn't require surgeries nor does it cause facial damage.
- You're Ruining Your Feet - Jake Leary | References PDF
Most modern shoes cram the toes of our feet into pointy toe boxes. This ruins the natural shape of our feet, it atrophies the muscles for moving our toes sideways, and it negatively affects the muscles that we use to walk. Everybody realizes that foot-binding is bad, but we don't realize that we've been micro-dosing it.
- Save the Oceans: Stop Recycling Plastic (PDF)
- Why It's More Environmental To Throw Plastic In The Trash Than To Recycle It - John Stossel
- If Ideologies Were Honest
- 1MB Club
1MB Club is a growing collection of performance-focused web pages weighing less than 1 megabyte. This projects aims to promote the improvement of performance, accessibility, and user experience across the Internet.
- wiby.me | wiby.org
Wiby is a search engine for hobbyist websites with simpler designs that often can't be found using more common search engines. The benefits of Wiby are described on its about page.
- You Broke the Internet: Architecture for a GNU Internet
- OPSEC / InfoSec 101
How to not get doxed and how to encrypt your hardware.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity
- PrivacyTools.io - Fight Mass Surveillance with Encryption
A list of tools that you can use to increase your online privacy
- TOS;DR.org
A website that summarizes other websites' Terms of Services.
- Introducing the Danseiji Map Projections - Justin Kunimune
- A Comprehensive Colormap Style Guide - Justin Kunimune
- Standards, Units, and Measurements In An Ideal World
If humanity had to start over and decide the best standards, units, and measurements for everything in an ideal world, these are what I'd propose.
Hello and welcome to my philosophy website.
My name is Zero Contradictions, and this place is a hybrid between a blog for my own writings (highlighted in red) and a compendium of external links to works by different authors that have influenced my own philosophy and/or are worth reading (highlighted in blue) as well as links to videos, channels, or audio recordings (highlighted in green).
If you click one of the links in the navigation bar, then the page will scroll down to that section (which will be in one of the three columns for displays that are at least 800 pixels wide).
Whether this site displays in light or dark mode depends on your web browser preferences.