ryanfmason

I, Pencil, Conspiracies, and Incentives

The point of Leonard Read's essay I, Pencil is simple and important. No one person is capable of making something as simple as a pencil. You need the wood, lead...

The Real Elections

We hear the word "election" and we typically think of a Tuesday in November (very encouraging choice of day/month to get people to come out and actually vote) e...

Why does the left think Trump is a Nazi?

I'm not sure where this idea comes from originally. The two people I'm fairly certain have said it at some point are Michael Malice and Thaddeus Russell. The id...

8 Quotes Everybody Would Love If They Weren't From Ayn Rand

It's fairly uncontroversial to say Ayn Rand is designated among most people to be "out of bounds." She was just some crazy Russian lady who escaped from the Sov...

How Google-ability changes language

The implications of the internet and search engines specifically are generally understood. You can just Google anything generally considered to be a fact and yo...

US imperialism, Venezuela, and democracy

From everything we're seeing on social media, it is about to go DOWN in Venezuela. The US, Canada, and every South American country except Bolivia has recognize...

Belichick & Mourinho

For the intersection of fans who know the soccer world inside and out and area at least casual NFL fans, the comparison is easy - Bill Belichick is the Jose Mou...

Democratizaton and Decentralization are not the same thing

The advent of Bitcoin and Blockchain has opened up a whole world of possibilities about how people make decisions. Blockchain can let people vote easier and wit...

Forms of Non-Religious Asceticism

Asceticism in a colloquial, un-nuanced definition means that you are giving up the "good stuff" in life. If you've heard the word, you probably picture a Buddhi...

Who are the Philosophers of the 21st Century?

There's a certain paradox of philosophy in the 21st century. When we think of philosophers, we think of people all throughout history, from ancient Greece to th...

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Language

In the previous post I used the common analogy of physical space to talk about the internet. I then used the same analogy to talk about language, explaining tha...

Language as Physical Space

Using the internet is easy enough and can be taught to pretty much anybody. Explaining how the internet works is a whole other task. Where is it? Where does it ...

Was anybody else even close to France?

Coming into the 2018 World Cup, I (and I think many others) had 4 teams in mind who were genuinely in contention to win it all.  Those 4 teams were (in ord...

World Cup Preview: France vs Argentina

If somebody told you this match was happening at the World Cup you'd expect it to at least be a quarterfinal. 3 World Cup titles between the 2 teams makes this ...

World Cup Group Stage First Round - The 5 Worst

Coming into the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the field of competition seemed very stratified. After the first round of games, the fog of stratification has burned ...

Marx was Wrong, but Class Still Matters

If you've been to college, and particularly an elite, WASP heavy college, there is a phenomenon you're already familiar with, but maybe don't know exactly what ...

Is Vox's "Crypto Explained" Episode worth watching?

Vox has recently started a new Netflix series about seemingly random subjects they think are topical or "edgy." Since this series started I (and I'm sure many o...

I wasn't born an Anarchist

Especially in the modern era of hyper partisan ship, that is support or attack of a particular policy, philosophy, or person simply because of what else they ar...

Murder by Police is a Feature not a Bug

It's not a secret that Progressives and Libertarians don't see eye to eye. They disagree very fundamentally about the role of government in every facet of life....

Don't Privatize it, Eliminate it

Every day when I use the DC Metro rail system, I think about this problem.  For those who don't know, the DC Metro is worse than you thought it ever could ...