Sorry to check out without warning there.

The In-Laws were down for Thanksgiving. I find them pleasant company, but they do play hobb with the online life.

My father-in-law and I went over to Harbor Freight and bought some stuff. He got a good deal on a miter saw and I bought a reciprocating saw for 20 bucks. I saw some whittling tools there that I'd like to have. The fine ones. I already have the crude ones.

I need to take one of those crude ones to the sign I inherited from my uncle that says, "The Erkkila's". I have that on my garage. Tell me what needs changing and I'll reimburse you up to $20 for anything at my store. [I'll be able to find you. (Though, I should actually go over and practice that. Speaking of which, I should go see what's going on with it. The managers certainly haven't been sending me any checks.)]

All right, since I'm talking about my store, I need to weed out some crap that doesn't pertain to my focus, organize things better, and see what else they've got at the warehouse. The place might be good if I'd actually do that work.

Manana.

Did I have something to say when I came here? Uh-oh.

I've been reading Kant in my spare moments. I find him a lot easier to read than I did during my college days, when I was under the gun. He does say something that I can understand would make Ayn Rand throw the book across the room... Damn it! Where'd I set that book down? Oh, well... No, this is Critique of Pure Reason. I'm looking for the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics... Anyway, Kant says right up front that he was looking to save a place for belief (or faith) in the world of certain science and philosophy.

You can see how that'd set Rand off.

So, I'm reading Kant because of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's article, Economic Science and the Austrian Method. As well as everything that Kelley Ross (Ph.D) says. And the fact that Ayn Rand hated Kant's guts.

I mean, look, if you start reading Kant's smallest major work, The Prolegomena, and throw it across the room when you find out he's trying to find a place for mysticism in his philosophy, you're not going to see where he made extraordinary advances in epistemology beyond the Rationalists and Empiricists.

Dr. Hoppe makes much of the "synthetic a priori judgment." Indeed, he says that Economics consists of nothing beyond such statements. And he says that the regression to Humean Scepticism of the Logical Positivists has not been a boon to the science. They've been able to describe past states of human desires with some precision, but they haven't been able to predict future human actions very well at all. And they never will.

But the fact is, neither will Austrians.

What is predictable is the consequences of individual and collective actions. We know things about the human psyche without even looking outside our own skulls. If we need something and the politicos shut off the free avenues to it, we'll find ways around them. They'll face unintended consequences.

Then we'll face a new line of populist demaguogery and they'll enact another bullshit bandaid. With more unintended consequences.