Dismal Moments of Zen Thread

[Doktor Howl]

If a free market - as described by free market proponents - were possible then by that definition, that's what we would have, because any attempt to prevent it or dislodge it would be derailed by market forces.

Same thing goes for "true Libertarianism" because there'd be nobody around to stop monopolies and police departments from just forming out of thin air

Isn't that how the police force literally started, the thief taker became organised

No, the Met formed separately from the Bow Street crowd.

[Doktor Howl]

Robert Peel organized them specifically as a counter to the thief takers.

[Faust]

Ah ok, and that sounds like two separate groups that sprang up specifically to impose a structure of order. Liberatarianism can never work because self organising systems impose their own emergent government and limitations of untethered civil liberty. If we were to abandon all government today, it would be back in ten years

[Doktor Howl]

Ah ok, and that sounds like two separate groups that sprang up specifically to impose a structure of order. Liberatarianism can never work because self organising systems impose their own emergent government and limitations of untethered civil liberty. If we were to abandon all government today, it would be back in ten years

Well, the Bow Street dudes were basically hired thugs that answered only to the rich dudes that hired them.  They were goons.

The Met started out as an actual attempt to make things better.

And we see how that wound up.

[Doktor Howl]

The universe can be described as the hole in which we and everything we love has been consigned.

[The Wizard Joseph]

If nothing is permanent then nothing is the only thing you can have, and you can never lose it. Everyone has nothing, but only a few realize that they have nothing and that nothing is the only thing of value, yet literally priceless.

[Doktor Howl]

If nothing is permanent then nothing is the only thing you can have, and you can never lose it. Everyone has nothing, but only a few realize that they have nothing and that nothing is the only thing of value, yet literally priceless of no value.

FTFY.  It's the same thing, really.

[The Wizard Joseph]

If nothing is permanent then nothing is the only thing you can have, and you can never lose it. Everyone has nothing, but only a few realize that they have nothing and that nothing is the only thing of value, yet literally priceless of no value.

FTFY.  It's the same thing, really.

Yeah I quibbled with myself a bit over using the word priceless out of a sense of style, but went with it out of a sense of needing to finish before my quibbles ultimately led me to not immediately post until I felt it was clear enough, and probably forget it entirely. There are a lot of things I began writing with intent to post here that have suffered and ultimately stagnated from such quibbles and fretting over the minutae of HOW to say something.

This being an expression of a linguistic paradox that even more paradoxically expresses a great truth by permutation of grammar, I like your fix better than what I wrote.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Even should one manage a deal to get "something for nothing" you still have nothing. Should you manage to trade nothing for everything you still have nothing. Nothing is a real asset. The pursuit of Slack therefore is to strive in abject silliness for nothing you already have.

The Subgenius strives
in vain
To attain
something
For nothing

I want my money back

[tyrannosaurus vex]

So you're saying that life, like Seinfeld, is a show about nothing?

[minuspace]

It. was LMNO that once said something like "expect disappointment." I still think that's very Zen.

[The Wizard Joseph]

One can seek and so find nothing, yet find and so seek nothing.

[The Wizard Joseph]

We must not imagine Sisyphus at all 

[minuspace]

One can seek and so find nothing, yet find and so seek nothing.

As such, nothing is distinguishable.

We must not imagine Sisyphus at all 

He has always been already real

[altered]

Applying a simple fix to a complex problem is acceptable if the result becomes someone else's problem.