Continuously opining, intermittently publishing.
24
January

Jurisdiction In Personam, In Rem

Posted by oshane | Leave a comment at the end of this post.

Why am I blogging?
Friends and colleagues have, from time to time, asked me to blog generally and about specific ideas. There is never a dearth of intriguing things to talk about. I had been avoiding starting, because I had no presentational design worked out, and design matters to me; I like things to be perfect before I ‘release’ them, but sometimes starting and iterating improvement as one goes along is the better way. I also didn’t want to presume my ideas were important or interesting to others, but I realized:

a) the cost of publication (labor plus other costs tending toward zero) is relatively low compared to the potential benefit that might be gained: i) by me in the continuing practice of organizing my thoughts, ii) by you if you’re edified, iii) by me and “you” in a mutually pedagogical way through commentary and the feedback loop;

b) Google Analytics will help me infer whether this is a meaningful exercise;

c) Meaningfulness cannot be tested if a light is hidden under a bushel;

d) Chaotic and arbitrary free expression is highly overrated. Thoughtful public free expression is underrated. It is my American birthright to do either, but in practicing the latter, I believe I hone the skill of uplifting and defending the rights of others, especially in the face of a legion of writers who seek to limit freedom under the guise of promoting it.

My hope, thus, is that this is mutually edifying. This principle will be the lodestar of my blog.

What will I talk about?
The following is a non-comprehensive first-order list of what I may write about:

Libertarian Thought
Legal Theory
Law School
Design
Childhood education
Photography
Scuba Diving
Google
Technology
Books
Math
Economics (not the “mathematical” pseudo-science but the study of human action)
Capitalism
Yeshua
Theology

-O.Shane Balloun

2 Responses to “Jurisdiction In Personam, In Rem”

  1. Gian Smith says:

    c) Meaningfulness cannot be tested if a light is hidden under a bushel;

    Damn I wish I had said that first! Therefore, that was not mutually edifying for me and thus your mission has failed. That being the case, since you are in contradiction to your own principles, I hereby relieve you of this blog and of course all material herein. This is of course only singularly edifying, but that’s fine cause I don’t have the same goals as you anyway.

    Besides… what’s an anti-socialist such as yourself spending time trying to be mutually edifying anyway?

  2. oshane says:

    You are too funny. Of course it was mutually edifying for you, because you realize you should have said it first! You see it’s good, which builds you up.

    On a serious note, anti-socialism does not imply anti-people or anti-helpfulness! Not believing in the inherent right of the government to steal one’s work and labor to provide (inefficiently) for another does not imply a lack of desire to *voluntarily* give to others in one way or another. Philosophically, it’s a matter of upholding the freedom of the individual to act without positively harming another person. Practically, the government is a horrendously bad allocator of resources fairly anyway.

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