Even if Hebrew is not your preferred language, check out anything posted here from Kav Yashar. They are not as consistent as, say, Rafi Farber, but there are often well-argued articles promoting a less-predatory government. Such as this here on the anti-social effects of redistributionary economic policy (I call them ‘decrees’). Non-radical writers possess a certain charm in their very moderation.
Did you know color blindness has a fix? I didn’t. It’s called Enchroma glasses. Here’s the latest article from Rafi Farber; his personal experience.
The last few words in Yerushalmi Kiddushin are famous:
רבי חזקיה ר’ כהן בשם רב עתיד אדם ליתן דין וחשבון על כל שראת עינו ולא אכל.
Not sure how to translate or copy this, but here is an approximation:
Rabbi Chizkiya and Rabbi Cohen both said in the name of Rav, “Man will be held fully accountable for any food which he saw and did not eat”.
I wonder: if one has color blindness or partial deafness or the like, and one is aware of the deficiency (according to the above Yerushalmi), must one seek out ways to experience the world in a fuller way? The answer is not obvious to me.
For basic analysis of the Yerushalmi, see here. By the way, it appears this Yerushalmi (properly understood) is obligatory Halacha.
P.S. Although modern Judaism has been corrupted by Cursedianity, in truth, we are not to have ‘contemptus saeculi’.
I had heard of this article ages ago. Reading Rafi Farber’s brilliant new academic essay I finally found it. Highly recommended. Want to understand the history of Israel’s relative free market improvements by Bibi Netanyahu? Why the Israeli high tech industry is so hot – and why it took off precisely when it did? What Intel’s part is (partial treatment)? Read this by George Gilder, of Silicon Israel: How Market Capitalism saved the Jewish State.
Rafi Farber wrote another worthwhile article on sociology, scientism, statism and more. Here is an excerpt from The Jewish Libertarian, here:
If NASA or SpaceX were to build their hardware based on the methods in sociological studies, everyone who ever blasted off in a rocket would be dead. No hard scientist would ever risk anyone’s life on the basis of a study conducted via the methods of sociology.
But when “social scientists” with certain political opinion conduct studies on minimum wage, gun control, or whatever other political issue and then these studies are presented to politicians who make laws based on them, then logic is thrown out the window and laws are passed. People literally become lab rats, testing the policies of the political elite with their lives. This is incredibly immoral.
Based on pseudoscientific minimum wage studies, low skilled workers will lose their jobs. Based on gun control studies, it will become more difficult for nonviolent people to buy and carry guns. Nevermind the a priori logic that higher minimum wage means a labor surplus AKA unemployment, and never mind the a priori logic that criminals do not follow gun control laws.
Let’s say a bunch of academics study which gun control laws correlated with the lowest gun violence. This could be done, but proves nothing of a causal link. Let’s then say they piece together the “perfect gun control legislation” they have pieced together from their correlative hunt based on what they think are the best aspects of each “successful” gun control law. Then they give it to the politicians and they pass it into law.
That would be like putting astronauts on a rocket engineered by sociologists who conducted studies of rockets that have worked in the past but have no idea why because they are not physicists, and combined what they think are the best features into a new rocket, and then test it for the very first time when it’s fully loaded with people on the thing.
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