\cdot master race. \times users should just use Microsoft Word (unless it’s for a Cartesian product or for cross product, of course)

Just because you are not familiar with any other word doesn’t mean that every bad ideology is fascism.

I used to consider myself a libertarian because I believe, as you say, that government authority is responsible for all these things and we are better off without it. I never went to the extreme of saying we should get rid of it (I can elaborate, but that’d be digressing). But I still believe in the core values of libertarianism.

Thing is - in all the libertarian communities I’ve visited/joined online, I’ve noticed that the other libertarians treat these values not as principles but as aesthetics. Half of the activity there (the other half was criticizing everything the government does, whether it’s good or bad) was about using the NAP as a creative limitation - how do we control the populace without technically infringing on individual freedom?

• Want to censor people, but you can’t because “freedom of speech”? Just take their stage from under their feet (other than the air though which their voice vibrates, everything was considered “public property” which they are not allowed to use for their “personal” agenda) or have their employers fire them (they don’t have to employ them - that would infringe the employer’s liberties)
• Want to enforce regulations? Just use insurance companies. Make it so it’s impossible to operate without insurance, and then the insurance companies can impose whatever regulation they want or else they won’t insure you.
• Want brutal law enforcement, but that’s a literal violation of the NAP? Just call it “private security companies” and everything is okay. Actually, the idea here is that the private security companies won’t want to fight each other, so they’ll come to an agreement between them and force that agreement on their customers. And if that sounds like how organized crime families work, then
• Slavery is a big no no, so how do we get slaves? Debt slavery to the rescue!

And these are the relatively reasonable things. At some point I had to conclude that either none of them was a true Scotsman libertarian - or that maybe I should just abandon libertarianism itself (though not necessary all its teachings)

Post title is incorrect. Women’s clothes don’t have pockets.

They’re anteaters.

There will always be a difference between the two-things-in-a-basement mentality and the oh-god-won’t-somebody-think-of-the-shareholders mentality.

Take me home

I only use homeopathic placebos.

There is no need to actually bribe researchers. IT is much more effective to find some that happen to already be in your favor and boost their signal.

Say that out of 100 scientists of the relevant field, 90 think your product is toxic, two think your product is perfectly safe, and the remaining eight think that the evidence is not strong and/or significant enough to determine the product’s danger. Because as much as we’ve wished science to be clear-cut and deterministic, and as much as the scientific method tries to root it out, human’s opinions and prejudices will always have some effect. Maybe after many decades science will reach a (near) 100% consensus - but your product is still new, so disagreement can still be found.

You can try to bribe these 98 scientists to say that your product is safe, but that’s a risky move because even if a handful of them has some conscious they can go public with it and you’ll have to deal with bad PR. So instead, you reach out to the two scientists that already think that it is safe. You fund their research, so that they can publish more papers. You send them to conferences all around the world, so that they can talk to other scientists and to journalists and spread their opinion on your product. You get your marketing/PR/social media teams to increase the reach of their publications.

These two scientists are not being “pressured” - they can still honestly claim that their belief in your product is not a result of the money you spend on them, and that will be true. The thing that is a result of the money you spend on them is their impact. These 90 scientists that warn against your product can’t conduct as many researches, because they need to find funding for these researches themselves. They can’t go to as many conferences, because they don’t have anyone working their connections to get them invited (and to pay for their flight tickets). They don’t have professional promoters advertising their findings.

So even though only two scientists support you while 90 oppose you, these two scientists have - thanks to your money - more impact on the public opinion than these 90.

All without any scientist having to utter a single lie.

Yes, but you don’t want to make it a primary source for government funding.

Jesus’ version or Roman version?

At least he didn’t try with a cylinder.

No, this was written by NS.

Just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean Musk won’t do it. On the contrary.