Writing and reading weblogs should not be a lonely affair.

Over the past year, I have seen a number of Fever readers in my subscriber data, and sometimes a “site.com/fever” entry would appear in my Mint referrers list. For many of these referrers, I did not know they even read my weblog.

A Solitary Affair

Weblog writing tends to be very solitary, and in some ways that is positive. I cannot imagine writing without quiet — a quiet which helps clear my mind and lets my thoughts rise to the surface.

But after publishing, I want to know who has read the article. Occasionally I will receive an email or a comment on Twitter, but I mostly rely on Mint and Feedburner to tell me how many people at least clicked on it. But knowing how many people looked at it is terribly impersonal and not very useful. More than knowing how many people read it, I want to know who read it.

Fever shows me who is reading my articles. Because Fever is a web application which must be installed on the user’s own domain, each Fever reader is unique and identifiable, unlike the Google Reader masses. Rather than just an anonymous digit in my Feedburner data, each reader now has a name, an about page, and likely their own content that they publish on their domain.

Through Fever, I can see precisely who reads my content, what they do, what they are interested in, and what they write. I can see very clearly who my readers are, and so rather than deduce that my readers enjoy my writing and subject matters through the growth of my subscribers, I can very precisely see who they are and what they are interested in.

Even more important is it builds a community. I can find more people to read — individuals that, unless they send me an email or someone I currently subscribe to links to them, I may never have found. Publishing becomes much more a two-way than one-way affair.

This would all be academic unless a large portion of my subscribers use Fever. Luckily, they do. Here is the breakdown of what feed readers my readers used over the past seven days:

Nearly half of my readers use Fever. This not only shows how integral Fever is to me to see who is reading TightWind, but it also shows that readers must love using it since it has become my readers’ favorite feed reader in less than a month.

Reading an Inbox

I use NetNewsWire daily, because I want to read everything that a few writers publish or link to. Their content and links are consistently good, and I do not want to miss a single thing they publish.

NetNewsWire is perfect for this, because each feed is treated like email — there is an inbox, and each item is either read or unread. This means that, unless I happen to be particularly lazy that day, I will at least read the headline of every item, and likely more than just the headline.

Unfortunately, most feeds are not this consistent. For every one article or link they publish that I really love, there may be five that do not interest me at all. I still want to read their good content, though, so this presents me with a tough choice: do not subscribe to these kinds of feeds and enjoy using NetNewsWire but miss their occasional good content, or subscribe to them and suffer through an inbox filled with uninteresting items. I tend to pick the latter option, because I do not want to miss their good posts.

Because NetNewsWire does not distinguish between these two kinds of feeds, my inbox becomes overrun with items I am not interested in. So I skim more than I read, and feed reading becomes more of a chore than the joy it should be.

Fever, though, does distinguish between these feeds: the consistently-good feeds are called “Kindling,” and the hit-or-miss ones “Sparks.” By separating them, I can read just the consistent feeds all at once, and go through the “Sparks” when I have the time and motivation.

Of course, you can approximate this in NetNewsWire using folders. But Shaun Inman recognized that weblogs are not like email (or newspapers), published in a vacuum. Whereas NetNewsWire treats each feed as separate and unrelated to others, Fever recognizes that weblogs link to other content, and that if a number of people are linking to something, then it is likely to be worth reading.

Using this idea, Fever sees what people are linking to, and thus what is important and popular over whatever time period you specify. And because it is powered by the feeds you subscribe to, “what is important” is defined by you. The genius of separating “Kindling” and “Sparks” is it means that you can subscribe to as many feeds as you want without it becoming cumbersome and messy. Indeed, it just becomes more powerful as you subscribe to more feeds, because Fever receives more and more data to look through.

Substantive Communities

More interestingly, though, it reveals communities which may not be immediately obvious. By seeing what people are linking to, you are also seeing what they are reading. But by using Fever, you are also seeing each link in the context of links made to the same content by others, rather than seeing it on its own. It is that context which is important. Since communities are nothing more than people interested in the same things, and Fever shows precisely this, it means what you are seeing is the underlying structure of a community. The structure was always there to see, but because past feed readers conceptualize feeds as individual and distinct, existing in their own world, rather than as connected — the full community structure was difficult to see.

This is something monumentally powerful that is just in its infancy. I can imagine an application which finds the community structure from what publishers link to, who readers subscribe to, and what they read, and utilizing this data, creates a visual look at how people are connected on the web. Using this, you could not only identify communities, but identify community leaders and individuals rising to become leaders.

Or, using this data plus information like how long people viewed an article (and thus an idea of how interesting they found it), an application could recommend new feeds and articles for people to read. It would be quite accurate, too, because it knows 1. what the user is interested in from what they subscribe to and their reading habits, and 2. what other members of the same community are reading and enjoying at that moment.

In effect, this can allow substantive communities to exist without the need for a central meeting place. Yahoo! Groups, forums, and even Twitter would not be necessary on their own. Provided each publishing platform people use (WordPress, Tumblr, Typepad, Movable Type, even Twitter) utilizes the same RSS feed standard, each individual platform choice would be largely irrelevant. This extends the concept of web communities much farther than we have seen, because it requires so little infrastructure to power it. To join a community today, it requires finding where some number of like-minded people are congregating. That takes time, and if that forum or web application goes offline, the community goes, too. The publishing platform becomes much less important than the publisher and their content.

Moreover, the communities would be much more organic and evolve more quickly, because the “community” is just a reflection of who is reading and linking to whom. In today’s conception, a “community” is more tied to its physical structure than its substantive structure. We think of communities as being in certain regions, or on certain web sites. A community, though, is the connections between people, not the means through which they connect. An application which shows these connections across the entirety of the Internet, rather than on a certain web site or in a certain geographical area, would both more accurately represent a community, and allow a more vibrant one to exist.

Fever does not fully realize this possibility, but it is certainly a long stride toward it. Because Fever is tied to a user’s unique domain, and thus to their own identity, writers can see precisely who is reading their writing, and readers can look at the community their writing happens in. I believe this is the future of the web — revealing connections between data and people where we did not know they existed. These are connections which can be used to discover new things about our world, and to become more effective in how we read, work, and socialize.

The power of the Internet is not how fast we can download data, but how effectively it connects people. The concept Fever embodies helps us realize the incredible potential of individual weblogs and feeds.

The Acumen Fund provides capital to for-profit companies whose goal is to help solve poverty:

We believe that pioneering entrepreneurs will ultimately find the solutions to poverty. The entrepreneurs Acumen Fund supports are focused on offering critical services – water, health, housing, and energy – at affordable prices to people earning less than four dollars a day.

The key is patient capital. We use philanthropic capital to make disciplined investments – loans or equity, not grants – that yield both financial and social returns. Any financial returns we receive are recycled into new investments.

I find this absolutely fascinating. I wrote about exactly this kind of company when I first began writing TightWind.

It is a difficult proposition, both for Acumen and for the companies they provide funds to, because their target market does not have much funds. But unlike the developed world, their market has something incredible — a vast amount of untapped potential.

I am glad that they are not afraid to be a for-profit company, and to support for-profit companies. Non-profits certainly have their place, but for-profit firms are self-sustaining and, more important, build reserves of capital that can be invested in other areas to further develop their market.

Iranian protestor on Twitter:

60% of Iran’s population is under 30, we control this country now, not you old pricks that live in the 12th century. You can arrest us… kill us, but you can’t stop us. We will not live in a country that doesn’t follow the Koran. You old bastards need how to read.

This was two tweets broken up. The first is here, and the second is here.

This movement will not end without serious change. Let’s all hope it is true to the movement’s ideals.

Video of Iranian opposition protesting in Iran.

I am sure you have all seen video of the protests. Watch this video until the end, though. BBC cameramen captured protestors helping injured police to safety.

These protestors have been intimidated, chased, beaten, and murdered by the regime’s thugs. That they will still help the police says something about who these people are.

Tuesday’s episode of the Daily Show included a debate between Jon Stewart and Cliff May on torture, but the full debate was too long to fit in the show.

Here’s the unedited version of the debate, which is one of the better discussions I’ve heard.

Jon argued that we should consider captured al Qaeda militants as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention (even though they do not meet the requirements), which effectively means we cannot interrogate — at all — al Qaeda militants, no matter their position and knowledge of planned terrorist attacks.

The Geneva Convention says in regard to prisoners of war:

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

I am not sure if Jon knew what the implications are of designating al Qaeda militants as prisoners of war. It would mean that we cannot subject al Qaeda leaders, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who organized the September 11th attacks) to any interrogation tactics whatever — if he did not wish to talk, then he would have been free to go back to his cell.

That is ludicrous. These are not normal soldiers on a battlefield — people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have dedicated their lives to murdering as many innocent people as possible. That is their life goal, and he (and others) have done as much as possible to realize that goal. They should not be afforded the same protections as an honorable foot soldier of a standing army whose only goal is to get home alive to his wife and kids.

I do not think that waterboarding should be used. It is terrible. But in our obsession with waterboarding, we have also eliminated other methods — such as sleep deprivation and subjecting the individuals to loud music (sounds absurd that this is considered torture) — that certainly (in my mind) do not go beyond the line of a reasonable tactic to use on high-level terrorists to gain intelligence necessary to save innocent lives.

That is the important debate: where do we draw the line between justified coercive techniques, and torture? How much physical and mental discomfort should be used? Jon’s (stated) position, that no coercive techniques should be used at all, is as reactionary as the far right’s belief that any tactics should be on the table.

Unfortunately, we haven’t had this debate. We’ve only debated whether intelligence agents and lawyers should be prosecuted. We’re missing the point here: what is and isn’t torture? It isn’t such a simple question.

During the attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel, staff saved many lives by hiding guests, or in one case, taking bullets to protect a husband and wife.

I received this gem in my feed reader today from Tim Bray’s Ongoing, as the opening of his description of what regulations he thinks should be implemented in wake of the financial crisis:

Oh, and if any right-wing fundamentalists or Randroids want to explain how if government just gets out of the way the market will protect us, please first read this and then go away. Thank you.

Rather than go away, however, I have decided to respond to his linked piece.¹

Business is a magnificent paradox. The Free Market, with its parade of cheerleading ideologues from Adam Smith right down to today’s Economist pundits has, more or less, worked. It succeeds in creating immense quantities of (unevenly distributed) wealth, lifting people out of rural poverty and urban slums, in arranging that most people have jobs, that most things that are built are needed, and that most things that are needed are built. These are not small accomplishments.

Bray’s short piece starts off well enough. These are indeed not small accomplishments.

And yet, and yet, and yet; business is often a filthy practice. It encourages both vile venial and monstrous mortal sin. Most people who are successful CEOs are just not people you’d want to spend time with. Business, left to itself, would rape the earth we live on, fill food with poisons, theatres with stupidity, streets with gas-guzzlers, and legislatures with puppets. All as an organic consequence of the competitive marketplace.

Let’s make sure Bray’s claim and evidence are clear here.

His claim is the last sentence, that the evil he highlights above is a “consequence” of the competitive market, that is, the free (competitive) market causes those evils.

That is his claim. For any claim to be valid, it requires evidence. Bray’s evidence is the bolded sentence, where he states that “most” people who are CEOs are not people you’d like to be around, e.g., in this context, they’re bad people who do evil things.

This “evidence,” however, is nothing of the sort. First, it is but a claim itself — his claim is that most successful CEOs are people you would not want to be around, but he has no evidence of this claim, either. Thus, logically, his evidence can be rejected on face, because it isn’t evidence.

Second, to illustrate my point, let’s grant for a second that many CEOs are evil.² There are factory workers, teachers, scientists, and social workers which I would much rather not spend time with. They have done things I find morally reprehensible — lie, commit adultery, et cetera. They are on the whole terrible people.

Yet these professions are not derided as evil. I haven’t heard the argument that lying, cheating, and generally being a poor human being is an “organic consequence” of teaching, and I wouldn’t make this argument because it is without value. Bad teachers certainly do not invalidate teaching as a profession, and nor do company executives who conduct themselves poorly.

Third, and most damaging to Bray’s argument, is his own opening statement. Bray begins his article by pointing out that the free market has “mostly worked,” by increasing the standard of living for most of the world (and an increasing number of those who did not benefit in the last two hundred or so years). The free market has coincided with, and promoted, the greatest economic and technological expansion in the history of humanity.

Let’s put Bray’s two comments together. Bray claims that the free market causes the evils he lists, but acknowledges the free market has led to the incredible advancement we have seen. Those two statements are fundamentally incompatible, because it was that same system which created the good we enjoy. Perhaps CEOs are evil — but it is the free market system which turns their “evil” into a social good, and thus to impede it only encourages evils.

A prime example is one of Bray’s evils — that businesses fill “legislatures with puppets.” Bray’s solution to this problem is to give government more control, because they don’t yet have enough to stop the evil businesses from corrupting the legislature. But remember that the only reason it is beneficial for businesses to lobby government is because government has the ability to “regulate” — control — large areas of the economy. If the government had no right, lobbying would decrease by an incredible amount, because it would be a waste of money.

It is certainly correct that harms have arisen out of the free market, but that logically does not mean they resulted from the free market system. People have plotted to harm others since recorded history, in the state of nature and in the totalitarian state. Government control — or government control beyond its proper role, the protection of individual rights — has not stopped this, and in reality, has magnified its effects.³

The takeaway is this: evils seen in a free market (or in our case, quasi-free market, as the U.S. does not have a free market by any stretch) cannot by default be placed on the system. To do so requires evidence to corroborate the claim, and sound logic justifying why the system was to blame. But what we can clearly see is the free market has used sometimes (or even oftentimes) unsavory motivations on the part of individuals to, in the aggregate, advance humanity to incredible heights that only years ago seemed impossible. And that should never be forgotten.

1. It should be noted that I have been influenced by Objectivism in individual ethics, and in political philosophy, primarily by Locke and Nozick. [↩]
2. Note that for Bray’s argument to have any validity we would first have to develop a standard for what is “bad,” and this standard would necessarily stop short of violating someone’s rights, because in a free market, the government stops any rights violations or punishes the aggressors. [↩]
3. See the Soviet Union’s environmental destruction, Mao’s government-induced famines which killed tens of millions of people, and on a lesser scale, the U.S. federal government’s magnification of the financial crisis through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal reserve’s low interest rates. [↩]

In endorsing Barack Obama, Colin Powell made several comments on McCain’s campaign and on taxes.

I admire Powell very much. Along with Condoleezza Rice, they are some of the few people in Washington who, from my view, are non-partisan patriots in the true sense of the word — they love their country without bias, and when it errs, are not afraid to recognize and try to fix the problem.

His comments on McCain’s negative campaign are true enough. McCain’s intent was to run a honorable and dignified campaign, but I think his advisors won out on hitting Obama on the rather trivial Bill Ayers issue.

Powell’s discussion of taxes, however, is not as spot on. Powell said that all taxes are “redistribution of money,” and that most of it is “redistributed” back to the people who paid them through benefits — roads, schools, police, et cetera. Thus, taxes are justified and we should not be angry when taxes increase.

On both counts Powell is correct, but the implication, which is that because the people paying taxes see a benefit from it taxes are justified, is false. Taxes, which is the forcible taking of wealth from individuals by the government, is by its very nature wrong. It is not hard to understand why; taxing entails taking wealth from someone who does not consent to it, but must because of the government’s threat to jail them. It is stealing.

Seeing a benefit does not justify something that is itself wrong. For example, if I take your Mac without your consent, sell it and use the capital raised to plant a beautiful garden in your neighborhood, you will see a benefit from my taking your Mac. You will be able to enjoy the wonderful new garden I designed and planted, but I don’t think you would say that justifies my taking your Mac.

Of course, there are two replies. The first is that it isn’t stealing because people tacitly agree to pay taxes by living in society. Perhaps this is true, but the problem with a tacit agreement argument is this: if, by living in a society I tacitly agree to the government’s rules and laws, then all actions the government takes becomes justified. The government could ban free speech, require segregation, and any other noxious action that most would be hard-pressed to support.

If this seems absurd on face, that is because it is. Government is not bound just by what the people have agreed to, but by preexisting, a priori, natural rights the individual has. Hence we have a Constitution which defines what and what not the government can do. The government cannot abridge free speech or freedom of the press, because it is wrong to do so.

So we see that there are preexisting rules which government must follow.

The second reply is that while taxes are wrong, they are necessary to support the government, and people will not pay them voluntarily. I wonder, though, if we are receiving an equal return on our taxes (e.g., however much roads and education are worth to the individual is equal to, or greater than, the amount paid in taxes, which is what Powell’s statement presumes), which on infrastructure I would tend to say is true, why wouldn’t people voluntarily pay to support the government? Why must taxes then be involuntary?

The reply to this is that even if the return is equal or greater than their payment to the government, people still will not pay them because people do not like paying taxes. Remember, embedded in this argument, is still the presumption that taxes are wrong. So even if this is true, taxes are necessary, then they should still be minimized as much as possible.

It doesn’t follow, then, because taxes are necessary (but not moral), that we should not complain when a candidate’s tax proposal plans to increase tax rates. It means that we should do all that we can to keep them as low as possible, through more efficient government and eliminating wasteful and/or unjust spending. Increasing taxes is not the default answer when government spending is higher than its “revenue” — it is a last resort. At best.

Cowen writes:

The end result was that both markets and governments failed miserably — at the same time and on the same issues. With hindsight, it is easy to argue that regulation should have done more, but in most countries, governments were happy about rising real estate and asset prices and didn’t seek to slow down those basic trends. (You’ll note that greed doesn’t play an independent role in this explanation because greed, like gravity, is pretty much always there.)

Threats, bribes, and shameless corruption. The Washington Post has a long-ranging story on Fannie Mae’s business — securing special favors and winks and nods from government oblivious, or all too knowing, of the monster it created.

This is what happens when government is allowed to intervene in the economy to further its goals:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed the nearest thing to a license to print money. The companies borrowed money at below-market interest rates based on the perception that the government guaranteed repayment, and then they used the money to buy mortgages that paid market interest rates. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called the difference between the interest rates a “big, fat gap.” The budget office study found that it was worth $3.9 billion in 1995. By 2004, the office would estimate it was worth $20 billion.

As a result, the great risk to the profitability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was not the movement of interest rates or defaults by borrowers, the concerns of a normal financial institution. Fannie Mae’s risk was political, the concern that the government would end its special status.

So the companies increasingly used their windfall for a massive campaign to protect that status.

The company is not subject to market forces, because the government will bail them out. Instead of focusing on sound business, they focused on receiving special favors from the government. The Clinton administration allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to become this corrupt because they provided affordable loans, which fulfilled Clinton’s agenda of increasing home ownership, even if it meant complete and utter corruption in Fannie Mae and government.

The Bush administration fell into the same trap with their “Ownership Society” goal. The ends for both administrations justified the means, and now we are seeing the results. This is what happens when government is allowed to intervene in the market so forcefully.

Crooked Timber writes on perhaps the most dangerous effect of this financial crisis – the discrediting of free-markets, even if they are not to blame:

Very roughly speaking, when a crisis occurs that is difficult or impossible for the prevailing wisdom to explain or deal with, intellectual entrepreneurs have an opportunity to create a new (partly self-reinforcing) collective wisdom. We’re most likely in just such a crisis now. Which set of intellectual entrepreneurs are going to succeed in reshaping a new collective wisdom – economic nationalists like Sarkozy and Putin, social democratic globalizers like Dani Rodrik, or some other crowd entirely – I have no idea.”

Unfortunately, whether the free market is to blame or not (and in this case, although partially at fault, companies were encouraged by law to give risky loans, and interest rates were too high in 2003), it tends to receive all of the blame. Even if government involvement played a large part in crises, people tend to respond that we need more government power, effectively calling for more poison that lead to the sickness.

The New York Post is reporting that while meeting with Iraqi officials, Obama tried to convince the Iraqis to delay the withdrawal agreement, and said the Iraqis should negotiate with Congress rather than the President because he is weak and politically confused:

‘He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,’ Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops – and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its ‘state of weakness and political confusion.’”

If this report is true, this goes beyond election politics — he is directly undermining a sitting president’s negotiations with an ally during wartime, and may be a violation of the Logan Act. Whether you agree with the President’s policies or not, acting to diminish the president’s — and thus the U.S.’s — negotiating power is beyond words.

I hope that this is false. I strongly disagree with Obama’s domestic policies, but tend to agree with his stated foreign policy, and I think he is a good man. But if this is true, this is quite close to sedition. If it is true, Obama in no way deserves to be president, or serve in any office at all.

Update: Obama’s campaign has denied the report.

John Stuart Mill, ostensibly a proponent of individual freedom, wrote in Principles of Political Economy:

But it is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms. Further, in the social state, in every state except total solitude, any disposal whatever of them can only take place by the consent of society, or rather of those who dispose of its active force. Even what a person has produced by his individual toil, unaided by anyone, he cannot keep, unless by the permission of society. Not only can society take it from him, but individuals could and would take it from him, if society only remained passive; if it did not either interfere en masse, or employ and pay people for the purpose of preventing him from being disturbed in the possession. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.

Mill argues that, because an individual’s keeping of their property depends on government protection, then the decision-making power of who has wealth and who does not, and to what degree, lies with the government, or for Mill, a majority decision of the people.

This is false. First, an individual does not rely upon the government to protect them from a thief — they can defend themselves if they choose. They depend first on themselves, just as they depended upon themselves to create the property in question, or earn the capital to obtain it.

But second, Mill has this relationship backward. Humans, individuals, exist before government or society. They can create without it. Government is as man-made a tool as any other, and like all tools, was created to serve a purpose — and that purpose is the protection of the individual’s rights.

Why do we have rights? Because humans are rational beings, which exist and succeed only through our ability to use our minds.

Some claim that this is false, because man is not rational, but an emotional animal, one that feels rather than thinks, holds deluded wishes and flails blindly when they are not met. They point to examples of people committing terrible atrocities — murder, genocide, holocaust, robbery — and argue that no rational being could do that.

Others claim that man is all too rational, that reason leads to these atrocities, and if only man felt more, the world would be a much better place.

But see the inherent contradiction in the first claim. If one claims that man is irrational, and then attempts to justify it with evidence — they are using reason, they are thinking. Their very thought that man is irrational, as wrong as it is, makes it impossible for it to be true.

The second claims that harming others for your own gain is rational, and thus reason is our problem. Is it rational to rob someone? To murder them?

Reason — and by its extension, self-interest — is quite simple. At its base, reason is the recognition that one thing is itself. A tree is a tree, and not a dog; that A is A, that reality exists. Reason is to recognize this, and apply it.

The first objection is partly correct — no rational being could commit those acts. Reason is not a state humans are locked in — reason is a choice. They have chosen to deny reality.

Reason, rationality, is a choice, and it is man’s means of survival. Humans cannot live through blind struggle — they can only live through thought. Fire was not discovered by unthinking beasts, but by individuals observing, learning, and creating. But it is by choice.

Humans can either choose to live, or choose to die — that is their choice. But their life is their purpose. I exist to live, reason is my means, happiness my measure.

Individuals cannot live without recognizing reality. I will die if I claim and believe that I do not require food and water to live. No matter how faithful I am in this belief, no matter how strongly I deny I require food and water, it can only lead to death.

For any human which wants to live, and succeed, their life is their value. To hold your life as your value is also, if one is honest, to grant that other people’s lives hold the same value. If you value your life, you must value the lives of others, which means you cannot harm theirs. You must deal with them through voluntary choice, just as you would want them to do unto you.

To value their own life, and make happiness their purpose, the rational man creates a guiding rule for them: they will always recognize reality.

If I mean to write a great novel, but rather than write it I steal someone else’s work and publish it as my own, I have gained nothing. My novel, even if it is a financial and critical success, is a fraud — I still did not write it. I have only tried to deny the reality that I did no real work and the novel is not my genius. I gain no happiness — just the sadness, shame and guilt of defrauding myself and others. What is wealth and recognition worth when I have gained it through stealing? Nothing.

To value one’s life, then, is to live for real achievement. Real achievement cannot come from defrauding others — it is only derived from productive work, thought, and mutual consent of others where they are involved.

This is where rights are derived. Because people properly value their life, and with it (because they are inseparable) their liberty and property, they form, or accept, government. Government comes after the individual. It is created to protect their rights from violation, and that is its only proper purpose.

In this way, Mill has his relationship backward; he states that the individual can only retain his property because of government, but in reality, government can only exist to protect the individual’s rights and still be moral.

The “distribution of wealth” in society depends on the voluntary arrangement of individuals, not the laws and customs of society. How wealth is “distributed” properly depends as much on “laws and customs” as it does robbery, but it is an unjustifiable distribution. Any law which requires the taking of an individual’s property is robbery, a violation of his rights, and thus a violation of the government’s reason to exist. Any government which does so is illegitimate.

Fareed Zakaria argues that Russia’s invasion of Georgia is more akin to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 than their invasion of Hungary in 1956, a strategic blunder rather than a sign of Russia’s assertiveness and future.

He makes a decent point: Russia’s invasion of Georgia has driven the Ukraine and Poland into the open arms of the West, and isolated Russia from their traditional supporters against the West — former Soviet central asian states, and China.

But I think he misreads Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Zakaria states that Russia invaded Georgia and all it has to show for it is a lousy t-shirt, err, south Ossetia.

During the invasion, Russia attempted to bomb a central oil pipeline running through Georgia and into Turkey. This was not a mistake. Russia targeted the pipeline to show the West, and Europe particularly, who controls their oil. Europe depends on Russian natural gas running through the Ukraine, and has shut it off before.

Zakaria reads the invasion as a re-assertive Russia attempting to re-take a former sphere of influence and state while it is rich with oil wealth, and failing because the globalized world does not look favorably upon Russia’s ambitions. Not completely inaccurate, but it misses the big picture.

Putin, still firmly in control of Russia in his Prime Minister position, has re-created Russian autocracy, and is now showing Russia’s power in all senses — military, with Georgia; economic, with Georgia and Russian oil flowing to Europe through the Ukraine oil pipeline; diplomatic, through their alliance with Iran, Venezuela, et al.; and espionage through their assassinations and attempted assassinations in the Ukraine and Europe.

Ubiquity for Firefox

Mozilla Labs has released a video of something they are working on called Ubiquity, and the best way to describe it is it’s Quicksilver for the web.

Ubiquity is a great idea in the general sense. The idea is that we have all of these great services already — Google Maps, Craigslist, Twitter, GMail, et cetera, and most of them have APIs which allow developers to connect them and make them even more valuable; but why should we rely on developers to create these connections?

That’s where Ubiquity comes in. It is a browser-based, command-controlled and extensible tool which allows you to connect different services and do some really cool things, like highlight a list of apartments on Craigslist, invoke Ubiquity, type in “map it” (or whatever the command is), and it does it — it takes the location data of the apartments and maps it in Google Maps.

It is also extensible, so others can write plugins for Ubiquity and connect even more services together or create new functionality.

This is all great (and I don’t mean that sarcastically — it really is. I love that Mozilla Labs is pushing forward the idea of a web browser), but this makes me wonder a bit, should this all be within a web browser, or should web APIs be better extended to support al kinds of desktop and web applications?

Rather than Ubiquity, I think we need an all-encompassing framework which allows web service developers, and application developers, to easily connect with each other. For example, the framework should build in micro-formats so they are easy to build in to your service, and it is easy for, say, a desktop collaboration app to, using standard calls in this framework, easily find whatever kind of data the user is looking for.

Basically, we need an end-to-end web framework for services and apps to build in, so all sorts of applications can develop, rather than just develop plugins for a web browser.