“From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards”

via HIGHLIGHTS-Greek FinMin unveils tax reform, wage policy | Reuters.

Enjoy cash while you can. I think it’s already pretty common for cash transactions in the US to seem suspicious. At some point, the government will decide that cash is primarily used to avoid taxes and cash will be phased out. As usual, the logic of state economics is pretty easy to predict.

“The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.”

According to Anne C. Heller, that’s an Ayn Rand quote, but I’m not familiar with it. Does anyone out there know the source for this quote? It’s also quoted on the web, but I haven’t seen any specific attribution beyond “Ayn Rand”.

In the case of egoism, the arguments against it typically try to imagine some sort of scenario where failing to follow non-egoist principles results in some sort of morally disgusting result. This type of argument is fairly common in ethical reasoning, as well as any other field where you’re prefer to not reason from first principles. But it’s a type of arguments that, by its design, fails to even notice that there may be some positive argument for the principle in question. In fact, the argument type I mention really just results in begging the question, as the “morally disgusting result” is typically evaluable as morally disgusting from non-egoist principles. One rarely comes across an anti-egoism argument that actually engages the egoist argument on egoist terms. Anti-egoists, like anti-Darwinian, prefer to stay within their own premises and then show that, by golly, you can’t be both a creationist and a Darwinian, so Darwinism must go (you can’t be both an anti-egoist and an egoist, so egoism must go).

As it turns out, there isn’t a coherent alternative to either neo-darwinism or ethical egoism. Additionally, neither evolution or ethical egoism result in morally disgusting situations. Evolution, so far, results in humanity, among other things. Ethical egoism, as I live it, is full of creativity, co-operation, compassion, and love.

I suppose that if it were true that ethical egoism required me to violently subjugate every person I encountered and that I could only feel true happiness when sunbathing by the side of a river of human blood…well, I would probably reconsider ethical egoism. In this vein, if everyone shit ice cream, then restrooms would be restaurants. But, as things actually stand, ethical egoism has made me a decent person and nobody is eating out of their toilet.

Moving out of MA has really enabled us to enjoy life so much more. Almost everything we do on a day to day basis is cheaper, easier, and often better than the equivalent in MA. Our house is WAY cheaper than the equivalent in MA. Driving from place to place is insanely easy compared to any driving in the Boston area and we can park anywhere at anytime. And here in Colorado Springs, virtually everything is newer and nicer than in metro Boston.

I do miss some aspects of MA. I miss the ocean most of all, but I do have an amazing mountain range nearby for a great view. I miss the oxygen at sea level, but I miss it less all the time as my body adapts to the high country. And I do occasionally miss some of the cultural content that Boston offers, but we do have some of that here, too.

I am glad we moved from Quincy to Colorado and I would do it again in a heartbeat, unless we moved to Austin or somewhere like that instead. I don’t know if I’ll ever move back to Boston, but I really, really doubt it.

What I am in favor of is neighborliness. I think most people like me (middle/upper class westerner, fairly smart and fairly well educated) have a pretty good sense of what being a good neighbor means and it may be the case that virtually everyone has that sense, too, I just am not familiar enough with most cultures to make the claim. I am, however, certain that knowing what it means to be a good neighbor means is not universal.

Some aspects of neighborliness that are important are simple things like respecting your neighbor’s property, privacy, and autonomy. I don’t try to control my neighbor’s house or car or whatever. Nor do I pry into their lives beyond what parts they’ve invited me into. And I certainly don’t make any attempts to tell them what they can and can’t do with their lives within civilized norms.

I can’t, and won’t, give any sort of definitive list of what makes a good neighbor or bad neighbor. I tend to think that people really can figure that out for themselves and that most folks who aren’t in the thrall of an ideology like marxism, compassionate conservatism, or islam will agree that that neighbor is best who governs least.

All that said, it’s clear that modern politics, emphatically including in the US, is anti-neighborliness. I’m sure I’ll post more on this, but I hope that it’s not too hard to see how US politics, at least, makes it difficult to be a good neighbor.