The Books on My Bookshelf

 It has become a trend to talk about the books on someone's bookshelf that you see in the background of people on their Zoom meetings, and to analyze what their books say about a person's personality. The way my webcam is set up, my bookshelf is not in the background, so you would never see it. So I thought I would share a list of the books on my bookshelves:

Harry Potter Books 1 through 7

Dragons of Autumn Twilight

The Crystal Shard

A Spell for Chameleon

ElfQuest Volume 1

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

John Locke's Second Treatise of Government

F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

A copy of all of my own books: Rob Seablue and the Eye of Tantalus, The Office of Heavenly Restitution, Project Utopia, The Prince, The Girl and The Revolution, The Golden Wand Trilogy, The Apple of Knowledge, Golden Rule Libertarianism, What They Won't Tell You About Objectivism, XYAB Economics, A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs, A System of Legal Logic, and On Forgiveness

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead

Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mortimer J. Adler

That's it (other than some "Teach Yourself How to Speak Spanish" books that I bought when I went through a phase where I tried to learn Spanish, only to learn that I am not good at learning other languages.) The reason why there aren't more is that, usually, after I read a book, I donate it to my local public library! Or buy a Kindle edition.

About Me

 I was reading the entry entitled "Contemporary Philosophy" on Wikipedia and reading the subsection on "The Professionalization of Philosophy" and it said something like, and I paraphrase: "Now only philosophy professors can be philosophers, and philosophy is something that is done by publishing academic papers in highly technical trade journals, which non-philosophers cannot understand and which are not designed to be read by non-philosophers, and the age of the amateur philosopher with no technical training and no PhD who writes genius philosophy books intended for a mass audience, the age of philosophers like Descartes or Spinoza or David Hume, is over," and I remember thinking, "That's me! They're talking about me! I'm a precocious amateur genius who writes philosophy books! They are saying the age of me is over!" And I don't think my age is over. Here I am.

Objectivism in Ten Quotes

1. "Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?" (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, which is an almost verbatim statement of one of the ideas of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, although Rand spent her entire life denying that Nietzsche influenced her.)

2. "...for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being. ... For a principle which every one must have who understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis. ... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect..." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged, quoting Aristotle.)

3. "No one survives in this valley by faking reality in any way." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

4. "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island--it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his seed stock today--and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

5. "I am, therefore I'll think." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

6. "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists--and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

7. "Reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. The most depraved sentence you can now utter to ask is: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

8. "Life, Liberty and Property." (John Locke's statement of basic human rights, which America's Founders, lacking the political consensus to use that phrase, changed to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.")

9. "In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was God, and Logic was of God." (Alternate English translation of the original Greek version of the opening passage of The Gospel of John, The Christian Bible. Although a Platonic doctrine based on the Greek philosophical concept of logos, which means "the logical understanding understood expressed in words" but which is often mistranslated in Bibles as "The Word", this might as well be an Objectivist slogan.)

10. "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

Top Ten Famous People Quotes

These are my 10 favorite quotes by random famous people:

1. "Always do right. This will please some people, and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain.

2. "Lack of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain.

3. "Suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain.

4. "The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain.

5. "Learn like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow." - Mohatma Ghandi.

6. "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, himself quoting Pablo Picasso, while discussing the Mac Operating System.

7. "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde.

8. "It's a republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had chosen for the USA.

9. "You are never alone, when alone." - Cicero.

10. "I'm gay, and that's a good thing." - quote attributed to the first openly gay Mayor of Berlin, Germany.

Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche - The Top Ten Quotes

These are the top ten (my ten favorite) quotes said by philosophers Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche:

1. "How can you return to me if you do not leave me?" - Nietzsche

2. "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours . . . and could have been mine." - Rand

3. "Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you." - Nietzsche

4. "Insist on it." - Rand

5. "God is dead, and we are the ones who killed Him." - Nietzsche

6. "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" - Rand (Yes, this is Rand, not Nietzsche - she is referring to him. It's one of my favorite lines from The Fountainhead.)

7. "I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - Rand

8. "A philosopher must always be forgiven for his first followers." - Nietzsche

9. "It's the soul, Peter, the soul, not whips or swords or fire or guns." - Rand

10. "He didn't want to make money, only to get it." - Rand

The Top Ten Virtues from The John Galt Speech in Atlas Shrugged

 I have not seen a simple list of the virtues enumerated in Atlas Shrugged, so I made this list:

1. Reason

2. Purpose

3. Self-Esteem

4. Rationality

5. Independence

6. Integrity

7. Honesty

8. Justice

9. Productiveness

10. Pride

For Ayn Rand's explication of these virtues, see pages 932-33, Atlas Shrugged, Signet Paperback Edition.

One can further subdivide this list: Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem are "the Big Three Virtues," Rationality, Independence and Integrity are "The Intellectual Virtues," and Honesty, Justice, Productiveness and Pride are "The Social Virtues." These three sets of values comprise the bedrock foundation of Objectivist morality.

What is the Libertarian Axiom? Politics, Reimagined

Most libertarians would point to the principle that one should never initiate violence and use force only for self defense as the core axiom for liberty—the axiom that I call NVP, the Non-Violence Principle. Here I write to propose a second axiom, based on some recent conversation with my fellow Libertarian Party members.
I know one LP member who opposes big government except for public education to give poor kids a leg up. I know another who opposes big government except for Social Security for retirees, on the belief it isn't fair to deny someone benefits they paid into for decades. I know a third who opposes big government except for welfare and food stamps for the very poor. This person is convinced that a Marxist revolution will happen if all welfare is cut. I have also heard a Libertarian talk about the "real" pain and suffering of the poor that is alleviated by welfare, as if the pain caused by big government is not equally real.
These people, and I now suspect most Americans, understand libertarian economics, but they think that theft (in the form of taxation) is justified if it is for a good, worthy cause. Each person has his own pet cause that he wants government to fund, even while wanting taxes cut to pay for anything else.
I propose a new axiom: that the ends never justify the means. I term this the Anti-Marxist Axiom. If you believe this, then theft is never justified, even for the noblest purpose, and even if the rich have more money than they need. My justification for this axiom is moral, not pragmatic, and, in a weird way, Kantian. Kant's signature contribution to ethics is the theory of the Categorical Imperative, which I interpret to mean that, for something to be good, it must be right at all times and places universally. If there is an exception to an ethical (or political) principle then it was not rational or true, it was merely an expediency of the moment. To be a coherent theory, libertarianism needs the Anti-Marxist Axiom, otherwise it is just a rule of thumb to be compromised or abandoned when someone feels justified in doing so. If you use evil means to achieve good ends, logically the result will not be ethical, because you conceded to evil in order to achieve your goal.
If you want to fund a good cause with taxes then you conceded the validity of statism. If you accept that people make and earn money, and thereby morally deserve to own wealth, and then say that you can take someone's money away from them to spend as you see fit, even for a good cause, you have conceded and condoned widespread systemic theft. It should not then surprise you that a bunch of crooks, literally thieves, actual criminals, will run for office to acquire this opportunity and then will raise taxes on you to pay for evil things while spouting all sorts of virtuous good causes to justify it. There is a saying "power corrupts, and power attracts the corruptible." (Attributed to Frank Herbert.) I can say something similar: theft attracts criminals. This is a necessary and sufficient explanation for why big government is evil and will always become evil even if it begins as good.
Absent this axiom, you will find good cause after good cause, requiring tax raise after tax raise, and more and more theft to pay for your virtuous plans, until, from a libertarian starting point, you inevitably collapse into socialism. Either you have a universal, absolute axiom, or you face a very realistic slippery slope--even if sliding down it takes a nation 200 years.
Libertarians should consider abandoning their pet causes and commit to the Anti-Marx Axiom, to protect the purity of our principles. Libertarianism as a political theory needs an axiom, a self-evident principle to justify itself. If it does not have a principle then it is not a theory, it would be a mere pragmatic movement, or merely a feeling that government is bad. NVP is a good axiom, but many libertarians feel justified in making exceptions. The axiom that the ends never justify the means says there are no exceptions. If people want compromise, let them vote for the establishment. If they want principled politics, then they should vote for us. But how can we be a party of principles if we don't know what our core principle is?

Are libertarians left or right?

Are libertarians left or right? This is not an easy question to answer, for several reasons. First, no one definition exists of what is a libertarian. Ask twenty libertarians, by which I mean people who self-define as libertarian, what is a libertarian? and you will get twenty different answers. Being libertarian might mean you consider yourself a member of a libertarian movement, or a Libertarian Party, of that you believe in one of the many different types of libertarian philosophy, like Austrian or AnCap. Second, when you ask are libertarians left or right, you assume that left and right are the only two options. Many libertarians think of themselves as neither left nor right.

What is left? what is right?

Many libertarians say that the left vs. right analysis is a false dichotomy. The famous libertarian Nolan Chart was designed to be a visual explanation of this fact. These libertarians do not choose to see things as left vs. right. They see left as social freedom plus economic control. And they see right as economic freedom plus social control. Libertarians want economic freedom plus social freedom. This is why libertarians sometimes say they are fiscally conservative, socially liberal. In fact, this became an old pun. Libertarians are fiscally conservative and socially awkward.

However, libertarians exist in the GOP who self-define as being on the right, are pro-life, support the conservative Republican movement, and support Donald Trump. The conservatives and the libertarians share many positions. We support free market capitalism. We take pride in the United States of America. And we hold a belief that the rich are good for society. Libertarians and the right hold a strong desire for tax cuts. Also, we both express staunch opposition to gun control legislation. The libertarians on the right may hold even more in common. They oppose immigration. They say abortion is murder.

However, points of disagreement exist between libertarians and the right. Many libertarians support legalized abortion. And many libertarians want open borders and free and open immigration. Libertarians are usually antiwar pacifists. In contrast, most conservatives on the right want a strong military. Libertarians are isolationists. Isolationism has grown in the right under Donald Trump. But previously, conservatives had wanted a strong foreign policy that would aggressively police the world. The Afghan and Iraqi Wars under George W. Bush are examples of right foreign policy.

Furthermore, most libertarians support legalizing marijuana. That position is almost universally hated on the right. Some libertarians would even go as far as legalizing sex work and all recreational drugs, things like cocaine and opioids. As you might expect, conservatives turn pale at the thought of such things.

What is libertarian?

Are libertarians left or right? In fact, you can have many different answers to that question. My own answer is that some libertarians are right, but most are neither left nor right, and a very small minority are left. The ones on the left are sometimes referred to as left-libertarians. The left-libertarians have carved out their own special niche. But they are a small minority within the movement.

Libertarians are right in some ways. And we are left in a few ways. Also, in some ways do not fit neatly into a left vs. right analysis. We simply do not have a place in the world seen from the left-right Democrats vs. Republicans point of view. We have our own unique worldview, where we are the alternative to both liberals and conservatives.

Links to My Newly Released Nonfiction Books: On Forgiveness, and A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs

I have to share links to my two new books on Amazon--just to make it easier for you to find them!

A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs: The Proportionality Test for E-Discovery Law

And

On Forgiveness

Love them or hate them, this nobody can deny: my nonfiction books are unique!

My Two Newest Books: On Forgiveness and Law and Economics

I recently pushed two new nonfiction books:
On Forgiveness
And
A Law and Economics Approach to Litigation Costs.
On Forgiveness explores forgiveness, not from a religious point of view, but instead from a psychological perspective. It explains self-forgiveness, and the way your self-esteem benefits if you forgive yourself for your own flaws.
The other book is aimed at lawyers, and people who hire and pay lawyers. If you are grappling with understanding why your lawsuit is so expensive, this book may help. Fans of the Law and Economics jurisprudence also have to read this book. I present some new ideas on that topic, and those ideas are must-read ideas.
Please do check them out on Amazon!

The Government is Borrowing Money to Fight Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?

The Government is Borrowing Money to Fight Coronavirus. What Does That Mean?

Russell Hasan

Where is All This Money Coming From?

The federal government is borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for the coronavirus bailout. What does that actually mean? Where does that money come from? Who pays for it? And if the government can give away $2 trillion, why don't they do so more frequently?
The best analogy is a farmer and seed stock. A farmer harvests seed. Some of the seed, he and his family eats. Some of the seed, he saves to plant a future harvest. The seed he saves? That's his seed stock.

Economics is simple, with a few basic premises. To spend money is to consume stuff. To make money is to create stuff. You pay for the stuff you consume with the stuff you create. If someone spends money to eat food, that's like eating some of the seed. The consumer's money pays for the seed. If someone invests money, that's like paying for seed stock. If someone gives you a loan, it's like they're buying seed stock for you. You pay them back from next year's harvest.
The American economy has an enormous amount of what is metaphorically seed stock. Americans invest wealth in productive activities and reap their profits in the future. For example, an investment in real estate buys food to feed the workers who are building a skyscraper set to open in five years.

When government borrows money to give to people for them to consume with no return on investment, it is taking wealth that was slated to pay for future profits, and consuming it today. You pay the workers so they can eat, but the building isn't built.

Death Now, Death Later

The government borrowing money to give to people during the age of coronavirus is as if the farmer is about to starve to death, so he eats some of his seed stock. That is the correct decision for him. He would die otherwise. But he can't eat so much of his seed stock that he doesn't have enough left to plant for next year's harvest. If he did, he would die of starvation when next year's harvest is due to be eaten.

So the government can borrow the money, and the economy can pay for it. But there is a serious, fatal risk if Trump and Pelosi borrow and spend too much. They need just the right amount: enough for us to survive the coronavirus crisis, but not so much that the economy can't pay off the debt and goes bankrupt. Everyone dies if the government does too little or too much. Theirs is a grave responsibility. I hope they get it right.

Infrastructure and Jobs

Another recent policy proposal from Trump and Pelosi is borrowing money to build infrastructure to create jobs. That is not rational. The only reason why all the jobs went away is because of the coronavirus. If the coronavirus crisis ends, the jobs will come back. They will have no reason not to come back. And if the coronavirus crisis isn't over yet, then it's the wrong time to be gathering large groups of workers for construction projects. One infected worker could spread it to all the others. So it's pointless.

With small business loans so easy to get now, that money will be invested in private business if it doesn't end up in a federal infrastructure project. To return to my farmer analogy, it just shifts which fields the seed stock gets planted in. It does not actually create more seed for anyone to eat.

This concludes my explanation of federal debt for coronavirus relief.

Can Donald Trump Win in 2020?

The short answer is: no, and it's because of the coronavirus. In chess, when a player can take two of your pieces on his next move, if you move one to safety, then the other is lost, and this is called being forked. Donald Trump is forked. If he eases social distancing to save the economy, your grandparents die (along with up to a million other people), and the voters will blame him. If he doesn't, the economy dies and we all lose our job and starve to death. There is no winning move for him to make.
Voters won't understand, or won't care, that it is not his fault and the virus is to blame.
Ironically, the Democrats were weak foes whom I believe Trump would have beaten easily, but in the coronavirus, Trump faces an enemy as tough, as resilient, as crafty, and, yes, as contagious as he is. It is precisely the type of opponent he is ill equipped to handle and was not ready for.
I'll be voting Libertarian and have no skin in the RepPa vs. DemPa game, but right now this is Biden's election to lose.

What is the Libertarian Party?

Today we're going to learn about the Libertarian Party! Come on! It will be fun!
Everyone knows about the USA's two party system, with the Democrats and the Republicans. Did you know that there are other political parties in the United States? Well there are! And the Libertarian Party is the largest third party in America.
Generally, Democrats are liberals and Republicans are conservatives. Members of the Libertarian Party are usually libertarians. There is no one definition of what makes a person be libertarian, but their ideas are often based on one of four thinkers: philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, economist Murray Rothbard, or economist Ludwig von Mises.
Libertarians support unregulated free market capitalism. Issues they feel strongly about include: legalizing drugs, giving people the right to own guns, and cutting taxes. The Libertarian Party generally supports any policy that maximizes individual freedom and limits government intrusion.
Did you know? America is a republic, not a direct democracy, and when you vote for a president, you're really voting for your state to send an elector to the electoral college, which chooses the president. When Nixon was elected, there was a rogue elector who voted for the Libertarian Party candidate in the electoral college!
The Libertarian Party is divided into various caucuses, each of which promote different issues and a different point of view. The Anarcho-Capitalists (also called AnCaps) want anarchy. The Pragmatists Caucus wants to win elections. The Radicals Caucus wants to take extreme and shocking policy positions. And the Mises Caucus tries to promote the ideas of Mises and Rothbard within the Party.
Did you know? The Libertarian Party's first presidential candidate was John Hospers, who was not a politician but was instead a philosophy professor. He told a colleague "I'm running for president" and they said "of the American Philosophy Association?" and he replied "no, of the country!"
The Libertarian Party asks its members to take a loyalty pledge that they will never advocate for the use of violent force in society. Some members of the party disagree with requiring a pledge, but it remains to this day. Other areas of internal disagreement include immigration and abortion, which some in the Libertarian Party support and some oppose.
Did you know? The Libertarian Party is America's fastest growing and largest third political party!
As a third party, the Libertarian Party routinely does not have ballot access, and must petition and collect signatures to get on the ballot, unlike Democrats and Republicans. Despite this, many Libertarians have run for office, and dozens have won positions at the town and city level across America.
Did you know? Ron Paul, the longtime Republican Congressman from Texas, was a member of the Libertarian Party for many years, before switching to the GOP. His son Rand Paul went on to become a Republican Senator from Kentucky. The Koch Brothers, who were famous as billionaires who donated vast sums to conservative causes, also supported the Libertarian Party at one point, although they later shifted their allegiance to the GOP.
The Libertarian Party is actually a patchwork of organizations: the National Libertarian Party exists, and each of the 50 states has its own State Libertarian Party, and towns and cities can have their own Libertarian Party Affiliate. Joining one organization does not automatically sign you up for the others, so you could be a member of a state Libertarian Party but not the National Libertarian Party, or vice versa.
The Libertarian Party has an official mascot, the porcupine, to answer the donkey and elephant of the two major parties. The porcupine was chosen because it is typically non-violent but uses its spikes to defend itself if attacked.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the Libertarian Party! I'll bet you thought there are only two parties, right? Now you know better!

What is Objectivism?

What is the philosophy of Objectivism? Let's learn about it together! I bet you'll learn something new!
Objectivism is the name of a philosophy--a set of ideas--developed by novelist Ayn Rand in the 20th Century. Objectivists are people who practice Objectivism. What do Objectivists believe? They think that a person should be happy, and that your happiness is the moral and ethical purpose of your life. They claim that rationality and reasoning are your main tools to succeed in the world, and that success causes happiness. They promote capitalism and individualism, feeling that the individual is more important than society.
Did you know? The 1980s were called The Decade of Greed because many people were influenced by Objectivism at that time, including high-ranking officials of the Reagan Administration. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was also a known Objectivist.
Who was Ayn Rand? She was born in 1905 in Russia to Jewish parents. She lived through the 1918 Communist Revolution in Russia, which gave her a lifelong hatred of Communism and socialism. Eventually she escaped the USSR and fled to the USA. She achieved wealth and fame with her bestselling novel The Fountainhead (1943), and followed it up with her novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Atlas Shrugged is the foundation of Objectivism, and is over 1000 pages long!
Did you know? There was a surge of interest in Objectivism in the 1960s, and a large Objectivist movement, centered around New York City. But Ayn Rand had an affair with another one of the leaders of the movement, a man named Nathaniel Branden, and when they broke up in 1969, an explosive conflict developed and the fallout destroyed the Objectivist movement of the 1960s.
I hope you enjoyed learning this lesson about Objectivism as much as I did! Thanks for reading!

Online Classrooms and Remote Work Might be Here to Stay

As the coronavirus crisis triggers a forced switch for schools and colleges to online learning and for office workers to work from home, it is worth speculation that some of these changes are permanent. Schools and businesses are figuring out how to do everything remotely online. That know-how is worth money, and, even after the crisis is over, they will need to recover their investment in that know-how, probably by continuing to use it. Also, real estate costs money. People are always going to pay for their homes, so if people work at home or learn at home, then the cost of the office or the campus vanishes, costs go down, so profit goes up. Sadly the joy of the experience of being on campus or in the office is lost, but once people get used to its absence they may not care. Tomorrow may be here today, earlier than any of us wanted to see it.

What did the stock market do today? It went crazy

The coronavirus crisis has caused an unprecedented level of volatility on Wall Street, accompanied by one day which saw the largest single-day drop on almost 30 years. Why stocks are collapsing is simple: the coronavirus is going to cost every business money, so they will have less profit and pay smaller dividends, so their stock is worth less. Such a correction is actually how the market is supposed to work: prices send signals to tell people what things are really worth, and the stocks are now not worth as much as they were in our recent economic boom.
A more interesting question is why is there so much volatility? It has been reported in WSJ, and is obvious if you look at recent charts of the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average, that most of the volatility is either right when the market opens or right before it closes. They say that investors buy and sell based on news. I think the major institutional investors have ways to buy and sell US stocks while the market is closed overnight, perhaps by using futures which they are covering, and then they all cover at the opening bell and buy their collateral for overnight at the closing bell. Not only is this causing chaotic wild swings every day, but it isn't fair to the small investors who can't afford to do this.
One solution would be for markets to be open 24/7, and be staffed by online systems only, not by floor traders. Such a move would create a more fair and less volatile stock market. If there is news at 2AM and 4AM those trades should be made at those times, not at the opening bell. This (and many other problems) need to be addressed--after the coronavirus pandemic is over.

6 Million Android Phones Hacked? Really?

It was recently in the news that "6 million Android phones are at risk of being hacked." Then if you dig deeper it turns out these are the older devices in poorer countries with versions of the Android OS which Google has stopped supporting. Let me explain what "not supported" means. It means if the OS developer finds a bug or exploit (a vulnerability a hacker can exploit) they are not legally obligated to push a fix or security update. So, yes, an unsupported OS is a hacker's paradise, but that's not news, every tech person already knows that. A lot of people say a lot of things are fake news these days, but that one might really actually deserve to be called fake news. It would be like saying that people have invented this great thing called the wheel and that's worth a headline. Wheels are great, but that's not news.

The Other Astros MLB Cheating Scandal

While everyone is aware now that the Astros stole signs using a camera in center field during their tainted World Championship 2017 season, everybody seems to have forgotten the initial allegations that made reporters begin to dig: New York Yankees players alleging the 'Stros were stealing signs during the 2019 playoffs. Why isn't MLB investigating and handing out punishment for that? Maybe because MLB in its fear of the players' union cut a deal for prosecution immunity if the Astros confessed, which is reason why the culprits, those Astros players, were not and never will be punished by MLB. Were the League to do its job and rake some muck, the Astros players and the union would call their lawyers and sue, and MLB fears messy litigation. Do you job, Rob Mansfred!

A System of Legal Logic: Using Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Analytical Philosophy to Understand the Law, Interpret Cases, and Win in Litigation (A Scholarly Monograph)

Master legal reasoning. Improve your writing and hone how to draft a brief. Understand the intersection of political philosophy and the law, and how that should shape your legal arguments to judged and juries whether you are a seasoned lawyer or pro se. Impress your friends with your grasp of logic.
This paper provides a new system of logic, including philosophical principles and logical notation, based on the work in logic done by Aristotle and later by Ayn Rand but also with a nod to modern Analytical philosophy, which is extremely useful to lawyers for analyzing facts to determine whether they satisfy the elements of a claim, as well as organizing arguments to a jury and presenting evidence. A libertarian politics emerges from the system of logic as a byproduct of the logical analysis of the intersection of law, politics, and philosophy.
Required reading for lawyers and citizens who want to understand the law and how and why it impacts them.

Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QX3DT8K/

Please see my books at RussellHasan.com

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