Witness the Brilliance of Socialism and Be Afraid. Very Afraid.
News of socialism on the march comes daily. For example, 50 percent of Democrats view it favorably. It’s actually worse than that, because the energy in the party clearly comes from socialist true believers.
As I noted in yesterday’s post, it is particularly prevalent in the “educated” (i.e., indoctrinated) young. Case in point:
So confident in her mastery of the grand sweep of history, and of her superior grasp thereof in contrast to economists, who are “profoundly ahistorical.”
But in fact she is a poster girl for the Dunning-Kruger effect. She vastly overestimates her intelligence and knowledge.
I’m being kind. She’s a blithering idiot.
To begin with, her whole analysis is predicated on a fallacy–the naturalistic fallacy specifically. Natural does not imply good, unnatural does not imply bad. Hume’s Guillotine (“is does not imply ought”) also applies.
And the statistic she cites–that capitalism has existed .1 percent of human history–demonstrates the orthogonality of nature and worth. That .1 percent of human history also corresponds to the period in which much of humanity escaped abject poverty. The “natural” human state was, as Hobbes put it, brutish, nasty, and short. And to which must be added–profoundly poor.
What changed that? Capitalism. And the parts that didn’t escape grinding poverty were not capitalist. (South African economist William Harold Hutt often pointed out that the poorest regions in the world, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, were the ones least touched by the “highest stage of capitalism,” as Lenin called imperialism).
To believe that “natural” implies “good” requires you to believe that crushing poverty is good.
And who has shown this? Economists. Maybe Clara should read economic historian Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Trilogy. The whole point is how the bourgeois revolution–i.e., the rise of capitalism–propelled Hobbesian humanity into a far more prosperous existence.
And as for economists being historically ignorant, there are many very accomplished economic historians. Robert Fogel, Douglas North, and Joel Mokyr, economic historians all, have won economics Nobels.
And Clara might actually learn something if she read them (and McCloskey) too. For they render risible her situating the beginning of capitalism to the enclosure movement in England. McCloskey in particular decenters (how’s that for prog speak!) England, arguing that the Dutch commercial republic was truly decisive.
The profoundly weird part of her discourse is the full on embrace of Rousseauian noble savage romanticism and her belief that the institutions which she imagines prevailed pre-capitalism would be remotely feasible in a post-capitalist, socialist world.
I say imagined, because she makes things out of the whole cloth. She says that pre-capitalist indigenous societies were egalitarian, consensual, and peaceful. Hardly. She offers a single example–the Cherokee. They had warriors, right? Who were they fighting? Not to mention that they practiced slavery.
Although anthropologists have striven mightily to show that indigenous people lived in a Rousseauian state of nature, the honest ones have often described societies that would make Hobbes blanch. And Steven Pinker has persuasively argued that violence was far worse in the “natural” period of human history than it is in the modern–and capitalist–era.
But even putting that aside, pray tell how we can return to Eden? Path dependency is a thing–you’d think that someone who claims superior knowledge of history would get that. Or maybe she thinks she can actually put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Moreover, a socialist, especially one of the Marxist persuasion, would believe that social organization and institutions are adapted to technological conditions, and that technology shocks drive social change. As Marx put it: “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.”
So even if Mattei’s characterization of societies during 99.9 percent of human history were correct, we can’t go home again. A Marxist would conclude that those social organizations were adapted to the subsistence agricultural, pastoral, and hunter-gatherer production technologies, and are completely maladapted to modern information and industrial technologies.
Meaning that the passionate advocate for socialism doesn’t understand socialism.
Unfortunately, she is hardly alone. I surmise that she is all too typical of western socialism fans, especially the young and “educated.”
But here we are. Mattei and those like her embody the dynamic force in the Democratic Party. She and her ilk will exert substantial influence if Democrats prevail in November, and especially in 2028.
Now they will fail. That’s inevitable. But the damage they can inflict in the process of failing staggers the imagination.
Hello comrade. Creating an actual numbered “Index of Shame” for comments on a public blog? I am absolutely framing this thread. You are so utterly unhinged by this defeat that you are acting like a frantic hall monitor filing a disciplinary report, all while continuing to parade your total lack of reading comprehension for the entire internet to see.
Let’s put your final, dying gasps out of their misery:
1. The Typo Inception
You are currently throwing a victory parade because I accidentally typed the words “single quotes” in my last comment while pointing out my use of double quotes. Yes, Pat, I made a typo while describing my punctuation. You caught me! Write it down in your little notebook! Put it in the Index! Meanwhile, the core point sails completely over your head: you are still hiding behind a punctuation debate because your mathematical and historical logic has completely dissolved.
2. The Semantic Death Spiral
You write: “Isms are ideologies… Institutional systems are merely empirically-based operational protocols.”
Pat, this is magnificent. You have officially reached the “making up random, arbitrary definitions on the fly” phase of internet desperation. Look up any dictionary or sociology textbook. Capitalism, feudalism, tribalism, industrialism—these are all analytical frameworks and institutional systems used to describe socioeconomic structures.
But even if we buy your pretend rulebook where “capitalism” is just an “empirical protocol based on what works efficiently,” you still run face-first into your own math trap. If it’s an empirical protocol that has only existed for 4,000 years, then it has been completely non-existent for 98.4% of human existence.
3. Turning Marx into a “Vapid Truism”
You claim that by pointing out everything is a recent cultural invention on a 250,000-year scale, I’ve reduced the Marxist critique of capitalism to a “vapid truism.”
Pat. Think. That is the entire Marxist point.
The foundational argument of leftist economic history is that capitalism is not an eternal, immutable law of nature; it is a historically contingent, artificial institutional setup that emerged incredibly recently. By screaming that every cultural system is a recent invention and that nothing humans do today is an “inherent human trait,” you didn’t defeat Marxism—you just summarized its core premise of historical materialism. You are literally preaching the gospel of Karl Marx to me while trying to insult me.
4. The Final Math Obliteration
Let’s look at your final attempt to rewrite history in your closing paragraph:
“I contrasted Mr. ProudSocialist’s ‘industrial capitalism’ timeline of 0.1% of human history = 0.1% of 4000 years = a ludicrous 40 years)”
Pat… 0.1% of 4,000 is 4. Not 40.
You can’t even do the basic arithmetic in your own defensive backpedal! You are lecturing me about “innumeracy” while missing a literal order of magnitude in a single sentence of basic multiplication. Your Stanford buddy John McCarthy is currently turning over in his grave.
You have spent two weeks screaming “LIAR!”, building a literal spreadsheet of your own hurt feelings, calling me illiterate, and you just dropped a massive math error while trying to explain your original math error.
Comment by [email protected] — July 10, 2026 @ 6:53 pm
@51 – libte, you wrote: “… your pretend rulebook… “capitalism” is just an “empirical protocol based on what works efficiently,”
But that’s never been my position, has it. You’ve juxtaposed unrelated quotes to construct a lie. Yet again. One surmises you’re unable to resist the impulse toward self-defense by untruth.
That puts your “I made a typo” into the proper focus of a likely self-exculpation.
Isms: Every imposed ideology has with it a socioeconomic structure because humans all live in a social and economic matrix. You’ve composed yet another fatuous truism.
The term capitalism was invented in the 19th century. The term is an invention of socialists; a manufactured ideological opposition.
None of your list, “Capitalism, feudalism, tribalism, industrialism” is an institutional system. Yours is a forced association. The first is a fake ideology, the second and third are forms of social organization, the fourth absurdly implies ideologically organizing an entire society around factories.
You wrote: “… your own math trap. … 4,000 years, then … non-existent for 98.4% of human existence.”
That’s not a math trap. That’s you contesting a position you faked and I never made. It’s you composing a straw man diversion. Yet again.
Materialism: Marxism itself is “a historically contingent, artificial institutional setup that emerged incredibly recently.” though I’d have described Marxism more accurately as an artificial ideology, rather than an “institutional setup” – a description you likely chose tendentiously to support your earlier mischaracterization of sociopolitical systems as institutions.
That definition can be applied to any modern social system. The Marxist definition you so hotly defend has no unique meaning. Describing everything, it describes nothing. Hence vapid. Your defense changes nothing.
And Marxism itself has spectacularly failed every time it’s been tried. As Charles Alan Kors noted, it has left us millions, and millions, and millions of dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCrYoYpWuDo
And you, libte, still defend it.
You’re correct about the last bit of math. I should have written 4 years, not 40. But then, 4 years makes Mr. ProudSocialist’s claim even more ludicrous, doesn’t it.
And let’s recall that the center of that point is your failed attempt to equate history with existence, so as to mount a contrarian fraud.
This thread has shown your failures of personal integrity to be your strengths in debate, libte.
Comment by Pat Frank — July 11, 2026 @ 8:46 am
Oh, Pat. I love how you tried to gloss over your math blunder with, *”I should have written 4 years, not 40. But then, 4 years makes Mr. ProudSocialist’s claim even more ludicrous, doesn’t it.”*
No, Pat. It makes **your** opening argument look even more ludicrous. Let’s look at your very first comment on this thread to show everyone exactly why you are panicking.
You wrote:
> *”It appears Mr. ProudSocialist is short by 3 orders of magnitude. (0.1% of the 4000 yrs since Sumeria – the start of human history) is 4 years.”*
You literally claimed he was short by **three orders of magnitude**.
If he said capitalism has existed for 0.1% of history, and you say history is 4,000 years, then 0.1% is **4 years**. If you *actually* believed he was short by three orders of magnitude, you were claiming capitalism has been around for 4 times 10^3, which is **4,000 years** (100% of history).
But then, in your very next sentence, you dumped the 4,000-year timeline entirely and wrote:
> *”Mr. PS has it wrong, in any case. Ms. Mattei actually has ‘industrial capitalism’ being around for 0.1% of the time since the appearance of Homo sapiens… 150-250,000 years ago, leading to ‘industrial Capitalism’ appearing as late as 1870 or as early as 1770…”*
Let’s look at the math you just botched again. 250,000 times 0.1% = 250 years.
Pat… **250 years is NOT three orders of magnitude larger than 4 years.** It is less than *two* orders of magnitude.
You see, you wanted so badly to use John McCarthy’s quote to look like a high-brow math whiz that you completely butchered the basic arithmetic from day one. You mashed ProudSocialist’s 4,000-year math and Ms. Mattei’s 250,000-year math together into a completely incoherent paragraph to pull off your “three orders of magnitude” line, and you have spent the last two weeks calling me a liar because you can’t admit you don’t know how exponents work.
And now you’re running to YouTube links and lecturing me about the horrors of the Soviet Union? Pat, no one here is defending Marxism or Soviet gulags. I am defending **basic third-grade arithmetic**, and you are failing it spectacularly.
You can scream “straw man” and “liar” until you turn blue, but your own typing is immortalized on this blog. You flunked the reading comprehension, you flunked the syntax, and you just dropped a massive math error while trying to correct your *previous* math error.
To use your Stanford buddy’s slogan one final time: *”He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”*
You aren’t just talking nonsense anymore, Pat—you’ve built an entire civilization out of it. Turn off the computer and go outside. You are entirely, completely cooked.
Comment by [email protected] — July 11, 2026 @ 10:54 am
@53 – libte: I didn’t think you could screw up worse than you already had, but you managed it.
You’re now conflating a comment on Mr. ProudSocialist’s math with a categorically distinct comment on Ms. Mattei’s math.
To wit, you wrote: “Pat… **250 years is NOT three orders of magnitude larger than 4 years.** It is less than *two* orders of magnitude.”
“250 years”, a creation of Ms. Mattei. “4 years”, a creation of Mr. ProudSocialist. No logical chain connects the two bits of math in your sentence. Semantically, your sentence is such an incoherent mash-up as to have no meaning at all. And yet, libte, you’ve stirred it all together into a disharmonious porridge.
In-bloody-credible.
You seem to have descended int a state incapable of coherent thought. The less attractive alternative is that you’ve become so desperate that you must now employ the incomprehensible to manufacture your lie.
You wrote: “You can scream “straw man” and “liar” until …”
I’ve never screamed either word. You have, however, lied repeatedly, libte. And employed the straw man to your dishonest benefit.
And providing lines to the evidence of your mendacity:
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #50
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #50
An index of your shame, libte.
Deny it as you will, the evidence of your perfidy is there,
You wrote I: “dropped a massive math error …” Right. I once wrote 40 instead of 4. A thin gruel for your stew of triumphal shouts.
That small carelessness pales in comparison to your inability to distinguish history from existence, and even worse, your inability to keep separate the distinct arguments of Ms. Mattei and Mr. ProudSocialist. Not that you’ve ever indicated an understanding of either.
Or dealt honestly in debate about them.
Your contrarian dislocations have gotten you nowhere. You’ve yet to mount a single cogent argument.
Comment by Pat Frank — July 11, 2026 @ 11:49 pm
Pat, you have officially detached from reality. Let’s look at your defense: you are screaming that no logical chain connects your comments on Mr. ProudSocialist and Ms. Mattei.
They are in the **exact same paragraph** of your very first comment.
Here is your exact text from June 23:
> *”It appears Mr. ProudSocialist is short by 3 orders of magnitude. (0.1% of the 4000 yrs since Sumeria – the start of human history) is 4 years… Mr. PS has it wrong, in any case. Ms. Mattei actually has ‘industrial capitalism’ being around for 0.1% of the time since the appearance of Homo sapiens. Typical origin estimates for H.s. are 150-250,000 years ago, leading to ‘industrial Capitalism’ appearing as late as 1870 or as early as 1770…”*
You wrote that Mr. ProudSocialist was short by **three orders of magnitude**. You then immediately justified that statement by bringing up Ms. Mattei’s actual calculation to correct him.
Let’s do the arithmetic you claim I am too thick to understand:
* ProudSocialist’s misstated version = **4 years** (0.1% of 4,000).
* Ms. Mattei’s actual version = **250 years** (0.1% of 250,000).
Pat, 4 times 10^3 (three orders of magnitude) is **4,000**.
If you meant he was short by three orders of magnitude relative to the *real* number (Ms. Mattei’s 250 years), your math is objectively wrong. 250 is not three orders of magnitude larger than 4. It is 1.8 orders of magnitude larger.
You blundered the basic definition of an order of magnitude in your very first sentence on day one. You mashed their two distinct timelines together into a single, broken thought because you wanted to use a smart-sounding phrase, and you have spent 50 comments melting down, fabricating an “Index of Shame,” and playing punctuation cop because your ego cannot handle a basic arithmetic correction.
Keep copy-pasting your comment logs, hall monitor. The text is right there for everyone to read. You can’t write, you can’t read, and you can’t multiply. Class is dismissed.
Comment by [email protected] — July 12, 2026 @ 6:46 pm
@55 – libte. You wrote: “You then immediately justified that statement by bringing up Ms. Mattei’s actual calculation to correct him.”
Wrong. I myself corrected Mr. ProudSocialist’s take – by showing his mistake led to nonsense history. The transition was there to show Mr. ProudSociaist’s confusion about Ms. Mattei’s stated time-line.
You’ll recall your own inability to distinguish history from existence.
You wrote: “Pat, 4 times 10^3 (three orders of magnitude) is **4,000**.”
Exactly. And didn’t I write that, “Lending banks were already present in 2000 BCE Sumeria (https://ijarasem.com/admin/img/18_History.pdf) to assist in trade and extend credit to farmers.
So, individual initiative, free trade, and investment banking (an utter non-ism) have been around for 100% of human history.”
Mr. ProudSocialist’s nominal 4 years is 3 orders of magnitude less than the historical emergence of the proto-capital economy 4000 years ago.
The 4 years has nothing whatever to do with Ms. Mattei’s 250-year model. Nor does the 3 orders of magnitude.
You’ve been baying under that ‘250/4’ garbage tree, now, since the turn of July. Your entire effort in this is a misdirection.
The only difficulty remaining is knowing whether you were disingenuous in your 250/4 construct, or whether you truly are too thick to understand my original argument.
Meanwhile, you’re in a bit of a tizzy trying to diminish away the index of your lies and misrepresentations.
But all one need do is examine the evidence to recognize the truth of the index and your affection for the lie.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #50
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #50
Note I’ve not added #55 to the list, granting you the doubt of thick over dishonest.
Comment by Pat Frank — July 14, 2026 @ 1:41 pm
Oh, Pat. This is it. This is the absolute, unquestionable pinnacle of the entire thread. You have officially laid your own trap, stepped in it, and then proudly called a press conference to show everyone how nicely it fits your leg.
Let us look at your magnificent defense of your “three orders of magnitude” calculation.
You are now claiming that when you wrote Mr. ProudSocialist was “short by 3 orders of magnitude,” you were comparing:
His nominal 4 years (0.1% of 4,000).
The 4,000 years of human history since Sumeria.
Pat. If that is your defense, you have just committed the most spectacular, hilarious self-own in the history of internet forums.
Let’s look at the sentence you actually wrote on June 23:
“Capitalism” hasn’t existed for 0.1 percent of human history. […] It appears Mr. ProudSocialist is short by 3 orders of magnitude. (0.1% of the 4000 yrs since Sumeria – the start of human history) is 4 years.”
If Mr. ProudSocialist said capitalism has existed for “0.1% of human history,” and you calculated that to mean 4 years…
And you then claim he is “short by 3 orders of magnitude” because capitalism has actually existed for 4,000 years (100% of human history)…
Then you are explicitly claiming that “Capitalism” (which you define as free trade and banking) has existed for 4,000 years.
Which means… you believe capitalism has existed for 100% of human history.
But Pat! Just three paragraphs later in that exact same comment, you wrote this to correct Ms. Mattei:
“Ms. Mattei actually has “industrial capitalism” being around for 0.1% of the time since the appearance of Homo sapiens. Typical origin estimates for H.s. are 150-250,000 years ago, leading to “industrial Capitalism” appearing as late as 1870 or as early as 1770 […] However, Ms. Mattei’s “industrial capitalism” is a direct extension of the individual initiative, free trade, and banking that were already present in 1300 Venice… The same activities were also present, in slightly less developed form, during Greco-Roman times and before.”
If your beloved “capitalism/banking” has been around for 4,000 years (since 2000 BCE Sumeria), then how on earth did Ms. Mattei “get it wrong” by placing its origin in 1770–1870?
If she says “industrial capitalism” is only 250 years old (0.1% of 250,000 years), and you argue that capitalism/banking is actually 4,000 years old…
Then she is still completely, 100% correct that capitalism has not existed for the vast majority of human existence!
Whether the “correct” age of banking is 250 years or 4,000 years, both of those numbers are a tiny, microscopic fraction of the 250,000 years of human existence.
If it’s 250 years, it has been around for 0.1% of human existence.
If it’s 4,000 years, it has been around for 1.6% of human existence.
By trying to save your “3 orders of magnitude” math, you have paint-boxed yourself into a corner where you are desperately arguing that a system existing for 1.6% of human existence somehow debunks a professor who says it has only existed for 0.1% of it.
You literally spent two weeks screaming, calling me a liar, and writing a literal spreadsheet of “shame” to defend the difference between 0.1% and 1.6%.
You didn’t disprove her thesis, Pat. You just proved that you are willing to completely abandon basic logic, redefine the English language, and embarrass yourself mathematically just to argue that 1.6% is somehow “100%.”
You can update your little index of “lies” again, buddy. Write down that I “lied” about you knowing how to construct a coherent thought. At this point, the only thing “thick” here is the density of your denial.
I’m going to go enjoy my week. Please, keep replying—this thread is going in a textbook under “How Not to Debate on the Internet.”
Comment by [email protected] — July 14, 2026 @ 6:59 pm
@57 libte – You claimed: “socialism is the only true ‘natural state’ of mankind.”
Wrong. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19758
You claimed that I: “claimed capitalism/banking is the permanent, natural state of humanity.”
Never did I.
In your June 30, 2026 @ 9:14 pm you fatally confused human existence (150-250,000 yrs) with human history (~4000 yrs).
Which you also did in your July 1, 2026 @ 6:23 pmv post, your July 2, 2026 @ 4:19 am post, your July 2, 2026 @ 9:13 pm post, your July 3, 2026 @ 5:15 am post, your July 3, 2026 @ 1:39 pm post, your July 4, 2026 @ 5:31 am post, your July 4, 2026 @ 3:58 pm post, your July 5, 2026 @ 9:31 pm post, your July 6, 2026 @ 5:48 pm post, in your July 8, 2026 @ 6:36 pm post, in your July 9, 2026 @ 10:12 am post, in your July 9, 2026 @ 1:29 pm post, your July 10, 2026 @ 8:48 am post, in your July 10, 2026 @ 6:53 pm post, in your July 11, 2026 @ 10:54 am post, in your July 12, 2026 @ 6:46 pm post, and in your July 14, 2026 @ 6:59 pm post.
And even now, after repeated demonstrations that your effort to falsely conflate existence with history is obsessively disingenuous, you have not abandoned it.
You know what that means, don’t you. You’ve caused your list of shame to increase by three new entries
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51, #53, #55, #57
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51
You wrote: “If your beloved “capitalism/banking” has been around for 4,000 years (since 2000 BCE Sumeria), then how on earth did Ms. Mattei “get it wrong” by placing its origin in 1770–1870?”
The answer is obvious. If the capital economy (not “Capitalism” as I have made clear) originated 4000 years ago, then Ms. Mattei is clearly wrong to suppose the capital economy appeared only 150-250 years ago.
If you don’t understand that simple logic, and apparently you do not, then you appear to have transitioned past dyslogia right into a general dyssemantic state – an inability to discern the meaning of text.
See EPP1022 The pathogenesis of formal thought disorder – towards an integrative view.
You wrote: “If it’s 4,000 years, it has been around for 1.6% of human existence.”
Rather, if it’s 4,000 years, it has been around for 100% of human history.
You’ve fallen yet again into your obsessive fixation – equating history with existence.
Are you truly so feeble-minded as to not understand that existence is not history, or are you merely lying? Again?
To be charitable, I’ll refrain from supposing you suffer from a congenital brain malfunction and surmise you’re lying. Again.
You’ve lost every round, libte. But evidently reconsideration never occurs to you.
Comment by Pat Frank — July 15, 2026 @ 2:13 pm
Oh, Pat. I am practically weeping with joy. You just cited a clinical psychiatry paper on “formal thought disorder” to try to win a blog argument about third-grade arithmetic. The sheer, towering level of projection required to do that—while you are actively trapped in a logical feedback loop of your own making—is truly a work of art.
Let’s lay out your latest defense, completely unedited, and watch it collapse under its own weight one last time.
You write:
“Rather, if it’s 4,000 years, it has been around for 100% of human history. You’ve fallen yet again into your obsessive fixation – equating history with existence.”
Pat, let’s look at what this means. If you define “human history” strictly as the 4,000 years since Sumeria, and you claim banking has been around for “100% of human history,” your grand thesis is literally just a useless, circular tautology:
“Written records of banking have existed for 100% of the time that written records have existed.”
Well… congratulations, Pat. You solved it. What a brilliant, earth-shattering insight.
But you didn’t write your original post to state a boring tautology. You wrote it to debunk Ms. Mattei and Mr. ProudSocialist’s claim that capitalism is a “recent, unnatural” development in the span of human life.
If Ms. Mattei’s premise is that human society operated without institutional markets/banking for the vast, overwhelming majority of its existence (250,000 years)…
And your grand counter-argument is: “No, you’re wrong! We’ve actually only had banking for 4,000 years!”
Then you are agreeing with her.
Do you truly not understand this? If banking has only existed for 4,000 years, then humans lived perfectly fine without it for 246,000 years. You are explicitly confirming that for 98.4% of human existence, your “natural” capital economy did not exist.
You are standing on a hill, screaming at the top of your lungs, waving academic papers, and calling me a “congenital liar” just to defend the difference between 0.1% (her 250 years) and 1.6% (your 4,000 years).
Both of you are describing a microscopic sliver at the very end of the human timeline. You fully validated her entire historical thesis, and you are too mathematically blinded by your own rage to realize it.
You also threw in a Nature article to show that “socialism” isn’t the natural state of mankind, screaming about “lies” because I used standard paraphrasing.
Pat, no one here is arguing that ancient hunter-gatherers were Marxists. Marxist ideology didn’t exist then. But do you know what else didn’t exist? Lending banks, interest rates, and investment borrowing.
By pointing out that humans lived in small-scale, non-market societies for 98.4% of human existence, I am not “defending Marxism”—I am stating basic, uncontested anthropological facts. Facts that you yourself just cemented by locking your definition of banking to a 4,000-year timeline.
Go ahead and add this comment to your little “Index of Shame.” Write down #59. Print it out, frame it, and hang it on your wall right next to your calculator. But please, for the love of basic logic, do not attempt to do math in public ever again.
You are completely, undeniably done. Have a great week
Comment by [email protected] — July 16, 2026 @ 9:02 am
@59, libte – You wrote: “If you define “human history” strictly as the 4,000 years since Sumeria, and you claim banking has been around for “100% of human history,” your grand thesis is literally just a useless, circular tautology:
“Written records of banking have existed for 100% of the time that written records have existed.”
False equivalence. Your supposed tautology works iff written records necessitate banking records. They do not.
Your dyslogia strikes again.
You wrote: “You wrote [your original post to debunk Ms. Mattei and Mr. ProudSocialist’s claim that capitalism is a “recent, unnatural” development in the span of human life.”
Not entirely correct. I responded to correct Mr. ProudSocialist’s misunderstanding of Ms Mattei’s argument and Ms. Mattei’s false argument for the recent origin of the capital economy.
You wrote: “If Ms. Mattei’s premise is that human society operated without institutional markets/banking for the vast, overwhelming majority of its existence (250,000 years).”
That isn’t her premise. Her premise is that industrial Capitalism is a recent phenomenon. She says nothing about institutional markets/banking. Industrial Capitalism is her thing. Not your, “institutional markets/banking.”
Your dyslexia again.
You wrote: “And your grand counter-argument is: “No, you’re wrong! We’ve actually only had banking for 4,000 years!”
That’s not my counter. My counter is that evidence for free trade and individual initiative are found in Neolithic remnants, and that banking emerged in Sumer, 4000 years ago.
Your descent to the straw man again.
Are you able to distinguish between Ms. Mattei’s pop-up history of “industrial Capitalism” and the cultural emergence of free trade, individual initiative and banking?
So, I didn’t agree with Ms. Mattei, did I. Or is that parsing too difficult for you?
You wrote, “blah, blah, blah … your “natural” capital economy did not exist.”
I never suggested a naturalistic capital economy. Nor did I claim it’s existence for the 296,000 years prior to Sumer. Your straw man thing again, in duplex.
You wrote: “You fully validated her entire historical thesis,>|”
Wrong again. Ms. Mattei’s thesis is that industrial Capitalism emerged 150-250 years ago. My counter is that the proto-capital economy emerged in Sumer, 4000 years ago.
Let me help you out: 150-250 years … 4000 years; 150-250 years … 4000 years. See the difference?
You wrote: But do you know what else didn’t exist? Lending banks, interest rates, and investment borrowing.”
Straw man again. I made no such argument, that lending banks, interest rates, and investment borrowing existed among ancient hunter-gatherers.
Truly, libte, you so easily enter the land of the absurd.
You wrote: “Go ahead and add this comment to your little “Index of Shame.” Write down #59.”
And so I will. #59 gets added to both the libte misrepresentation/straw man index and the libte index of lies.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59
Be proud libte.
Comment by Pat Frank — July 19, 2026 @ 6:08 pm
Hola amigo! I have to admire the absolute, unyielding commitment to digging. You have reached the point where you are arguing against your own past comments just to avoid admitting you lost the plot a month ago.
Let’s dismantle your comment #60, point by point.
### 1. The Moving Goalposts on Ms. Mattei
You write:
> *”Her premise is that industrial Capitalism is a recent phenomenon. She says nothing about institutional markets/banking. Industrial Capitalism is her thing. Not your, ‘institutional markets/banking.'”*
Pat, thank you for explicitly admitting this. Ms. Mattei’s argument is about **industrial capitalism**.
When Mr. ProudSocialist brought up her work regarding the recent origin of industrial capitalism, **you** were the one who jumped in to argue that “individual initiative, free trade, and investment banking” (your definition of a “proto-capital economy”) have been around for 4,000 years.
You brought an argument about 4,000-year-old Sumerian grain credit to a debate about modern industrial capitalism!
If Ms. Mattei is talking strictly about *industrial capitalism* (factory production, wage labor, modern capital accumulation), then pointing out that a Sumerian priest wrote a debt obligation on a clay tablet in 2000 BCE **does not refute her argument.** Industrial capitalism and ancient credit mechanisms are entirely different economic structures.
You either brought an irrelevant point to debunk her, or you conflated ancient banking with industrial capitalism to make your point work. You can’t have it both ways.
—
### 2. The 4,000 vs. 250 Math Trap (Again)
You proudly write:
> *”Ms. Mattei’s thesis is that industrial Capitalism emerged 150-250 years ago. My counter is that the proto-capital economy emerged in Sumer, 4000 years ago. Let me help you out: 150-250 years … 4000 years; 150-250 years … 4000 years. See the difference?”*
Yes, Pat, I see the difference between 250 and 4,000. Do you know what else I see?
250/250,000 = 0.1% of human existence
4,000/250,000 = 1.6% of human existence
You spent **weeks** screaming about Mr. ProudSocialist’s “math errors” and writing an actual spreadsheet tracking my “lies.” And your grand, triumphant historical correction to the thread is that human economic activity didn’t start 0.1% of the way through human existence—it started 1.6% of the way through.
Whether it’s 0.1% or 1.6%, the foundational point remains unchanged: market/capital economies are a tiny, late-stage development in the scope of human life on Earth.
—
### 3. The “Index of Shame” Update
You added #59 to both of your little catalogues. Let’s recap what you are actually logging in your notebook at this point:
* You logged my refusal to pretend that 1.6% is fundamentally different from 0.1% in an evolutionary timeline.
* You logged my point that 4,000 years out of 250,000 years still leaves 98.4% of human existence without your “proto-capital economy.”
* You logged the fact that you cited a clinical psychiatry paper on “formal thought disorder” to dodge a basic arithmetic contradiction.
Keep indexing, Pat. Every time you update that list, you just document another round where you substituted administrative bookkeeping for a coherent economic argument.
Have a great rest of your week.
Comment by [email protected] — July 23, 2026 @ 5:21 am
@61 libte – “Pat, thank you for explicitly admitting this.”
Thank-you for being dissimulating (yet again).
You misrepresented Ms. Mattei’s thesis in your #59. I corrected you in my #60.
And now you evade taking responsibility for your own mistake by backhandedly suggesting that a restatement of my original position is a latterly admission. Dishonest to the core, libte.
“Industrial capitalism and ancient credit mechanisms are entirely different economic structures.”
Wrong. You made a category error. The significant difference between modern times and the Sumerian system is technological.
The capital economic structure of free trade, individual initiative, and lending banks is recognizable in Sumer, 4000 years ago. That refutes Ms. Mattei’s argument in total, as ancient Sumer was as industrial as they could achieve.
Ms. Mattei seems especially incensed about industrial pollution, blaming the capital economy as environmentally criminal and uniquely oppressive.
But, illuminating her violent bias, Ms. Mattei passes in silence over industrial Socialism, which has been far more polluting than the capital economies of the West (e.g., see Kyshtym).
And as for oppression, Socialism is slavery.
That comparative reality removes her thesis entirely, exposing Ms. Mattei as having a purely political motive.
You wrote: “Do you know what else I see?
“250/250,000 = 0.1% of human existence
“4,000/250,000 = 1.6% of human existence”
A repetitive irrelevance; a studied diversion to cover over your confused equation ot history with existence.
“… that human economic activity didn’t start 0.1% of the way through human existence—it started 1.6% of the way through.”
Wrong. You’ve inverted Ms. Mattei’s thesis again. Purely accidentally, of course.
The correction is that capital economic activity didn’t start 150-250 years ago — it started 4000 years ago.
Let’s see: 4000 yrs/250 yrs = Ms. Mattei is wrong by a factor of 16. And that’s giving her the benefit of a maximal 250,000 years of human existence.
Your first two “You logged” declarations each render a libte-serving distortion of Ms. Mattei’s argument.
Your third “You logged” is an attempt to dodge the fact that your arguments demonstrate a state of dyslogia.
Finally, you both lied and misrepresented in your #61. An addition to both lists, then.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61
Comment by Pat Frank — July 24, 2026 @ 11:21 am
Pat, this is getting astonishing. You have reached the point of arguing that **Bronze Age Sumer was “industrial”** just to avoid admitting your timeline logic fell apart.
Let’s dismantle your comment #62 step by step.
1. “Sumer Was as Industrial as They Could Achieve”
You actually typed this sentence:
> *”The capital economic structure of free trade, individual initiative, and lending banks is recognizable in Sumer, 4000 years ago. That refutes Ms. Mattei’s argument in total, as ancient Sumer was as industrial as they could achieve.”*
Pat. Re-read that out loud to yourself.
By this metric, **literally every society in human history was “as industrial as they could achieve” for their time.**
* An Egyptian pharaoh building pyramids with copper chisels and rope? *”Industrial!”*
* A medieval peasant harvesting wheat with a hand scythe? *”Industrial!”*
If every era qualifies as “industrial” relative to its own technology, then the word **industrial** loses all historical and economic meaning.
In economic history, the **Industrial Revolution** refers to a specific, fundamental transformation in human production: the shift from organic, muscle/animal-driven economies to fossil-fuel, machine-driven production, factory wage-labor, and mechanical mass production.
Ms. Mattei’s work focuses on the rise of **industrial capitalism** during this specific era (18th–19th centuries). Pointing to a Sumerian temple scribe measuring barley debts on a clay tablet in 2000 BCE is not “refuting” her thesis about factory capitalism—it is demonstrating that you don’t understand the difference between basic agrarian credit and mechanized mass production.
—
2. The Factor of 16 vs. Evolutionary Realities
You write:
> *”The correction is that capital economic activity didn’t start 150-250 years ago — it started 4000 years ago. Let’s see: 4000 yrs/250 yrs = Ms. Mattei is wrong by a factor of 16.”*
Pat, thank you for doing the division. Let’s look at what your “factor of 16” actually means in the context of human existence:
* Ms. Mattei says industrial capitalism accounts for **0.1%** of human existence ($250 / 250,000$).
* You claim the “proto-capital economy” accounts for **1.6%** of human existence ($4,000 / 250,000$).
Congratulations! You mathematically proved that your system has been absent for **98.4%** of human existence, compared to her **99.9%**.
You are throwing a full-blown month-long temper tantrum, citing psychiatric papers, calling me a “congenital liar,” and writing an administrative “Index of Shame” over a **1.5% difference** on the human timeline.
Whether it is 99.9% or 98.4%, both numbers prove the exact same core point: institutional market systems are a tiny, late-stage fraction at the very tail-end of human existence.
3. The “Socialism” Pivot
You also tried to pivot to talking about “industrial Socialism,” pollution at Kyshtym, and declaring that “Socialism is slavery.”
Nice try, Pat! But shouting about Soviet nuclear pollution in 1957 doesn’t magically fix your broken arithmetic from 2000 BCE. When an arguer runs out of logical ground on the topic at hand, apparently they start screaming about the USSR. It’s the ultimate concession move.
Go ahead and update your spreadsheet, Pat. Add #63 to your “Catalogue of Lies” and “Index of Straw Men.” Write it down in red pen. But no amount of administrative cataloging will change the fact that you just tried to define Bronze Age Sumerian barley farmers as “industrial.”
Keep digging, amigo. This is historic.
Comment by [email protected] — July 26, 2026 @ 7:08 pm
@63, libte: “By this metric, **literally every society in human history was “as industrial as they could achieve” for their time.**”
Correct. Why does that surprise you?
Illuminating the point using a libte-paraphrase: “the **Industrial Revolution** refers to a specific, fundamental transformation in human production: the shift from organic, muscle/animal-driven industry to fossil-fuel, machine-driven production, factory wage-labor, and mechanical mass production.”
You clearly didn’t realize your own carefully-crafted equivocation entirely disproved your own position, did you. Or, maybe you did so realize and hoped you’d escape with it.
Guess what industrial revolution means, libte. Hint: a revolution of in-existence industrial practice.
One cannot have a revolution within a system if that system does not exist. Industry existed prior to the revolution that carried it (industry) into new forms. That prior industrial system included mining and manufacturing.
One would think that obvious logical path would be available to all, especially as the history is so long in hand. But, as usual, you are a fringe exception.
You wrote: “Congratulations! You mathematically proved that your system has been absent for **98.4%** of human existence, compared to her **99.9%**”
An irrelevance. Upon which you have fixated. As a diversion to avoid admitting your lying inversion of Ms. Mattei’s thesis.
I’ve never called you a “congenital liar.” Putting direct quotes around that term, and thereby assigning those words to me, amounts to another lie by you, libte.
You wrote: “both numbers prove the exact same core point: institutional market systems are a tiny, late-stage fraction at the very tail-end of human existence.
Something I’ve never denied.
However, the same difference – between 0.1% and 1.6% and upon which you essay so hotly – disproves Ms. Mattei’s actual thesis that the industrial capital economy (not “Capitalism”) appeared 150-250 years ago.
And that difference also illuminates your consistent misrepresentation of Ms. Mattei’s thesis – inverting its logical structure. Another persistent lie.
So, in your 3., you object to hoisting Ms. Mattei on the petard of her own environmentalist politic: Capitalism bad (pollution) Socialism good (silence).
It’s no surprise you’d defend her dishonesty, given your own affinity for its indulgence.
You wrote: “Go ahead and update your spreadsheet, Pat.”
Very good of you to finally admit to lying, libte. Congratulations. But your encouragement is not needed.
That’s two more in #63
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63
Comment by Pat Frank — July 28, 2026 @ 7:19 am
Pat, every time I think you have hit the ceiling of linguistic and historical absurdity, you manage to construct an even higher tower of cards.
Let’s dissect your comment #64 and show everyone on this thread why your attempt to redefine economic history has completely unraveled.
1. Re-defining “Industry” Out of Existence
You write:
“Industry existed prior to the revolution that carried it (industry) into new forms. That prior industrial system included mining and manufacturing… One cannot have a revolution within a system if that system does not exist.”
Pat, this is a masterclass in semantic sleight of hand. You are taking the general English word “industry” (meaning hard work or basic production, like hand-carving stone or hand-weaving wool) and equivocating it with Industrial Capitalism as a specific socio-economic structure.
When economic historians—and Ms. Mattei—talk about industrial capitalism, they are not talking about a Neolithic farmer chipping flint or a medieval blacksmith hammering a horse shoe. They are describing a distinct economic system defined by mechanized mass production, capital-intensive factories, wage labor, and institutional capital accumulation.
To claim that an ancient Sumerian copper miner operates within an “industrial capital economy” because he engaged in “industry” is like claiming an ancient Egyptian launching a wooden raft was participating in the “space program” because both involve transportation.
By stripping all historical specificity from the word “industrial,” you haven’t disproved Ms. Mattei. You’ve just reduced your own definition of capitalism to a useless label that means “any human who ever made or traded anything, ever.”
2. The “0.1% vs 1.6%” Surrender
You then write this astonishing admission:
“You wrote: ‘both numbers prove the exact same core point: institutional market systems are a tiny, late-stage fraction at the very tail-end of human existence.’ — Something I’ve never denied.”
Pat. Take a moment and let that sink in.
You just explicitly admitted that you do not deny market systems are a tiny, late-stage, recent fraction of human existence.
That single sentence surrenders the core of this entire debate. The whole reason Mr. ProudSocialist brought up Ms. Mattei in the first place was to establish that market capitalism is not an immutable, eternal law of human nature, but a historically recent institutional framework.
If you agree that it accounts for a microscopic sliver of human existence (whether 0.1% or 1.6%), then you agree with the fundamental historical premise! You spent over a month screaming, accusing people of lies, and keeping a literal ledger of “shame” just to argue over whether that tiny sliver is 250 years or 4,000 years long.
3. Punctuation Police, Round 10
You also write:
“I’ve never called you a ‘congenital liar.’ Putting direct quotes around that term, and thereby assigning those words to me, amounts to another lie by you, libte.”
Pat, in comment #58, you wrote to me:
“To be charitable, I’ll refrain from supposing you suffer from a congenital brain malfunction and surmise you’re lying.”
I summarized your accusation that I suffer from a “congenital brain malfunction” and am a persistent “liar” using idiomatic phrasing, and you are now throwing a tantrum because I combined your exact words into “congenital liar.”
When your entire rebuttal hinges on arguing over whether “congenital brain malfunction + liar” equals “congenital liar,” everyone reading this thread knows you have zero substantive arguments left.
Go ahead and add #65 to your little spreadsheets, Pat. Log it under “Lies,” “Straw Men,” or whatever administrative category helps you sleep at night. But no amount of bookkeeping will change the fact that you just defined Bronze Age mining as “industrial capitalism” and admitted that market economies are a late-stage blip in human existence.
Class isn’t just dismissed, Pat—the school building has closed for the summer. Enjoy your week!
Comment by [email protected] — July 28, 2026 @ 4:49 pm
@65, libte: “like hand-carving stone or hand-weaving wool)
Wrong. Like mining. Like metal-smelting. Like stone-quarrying. Like large-scale construction. Like metal forging. Like commercial farming. Like production-for-sale of meat and milk.
As usual, you built a straw man and attacked that.
You wrote: “When economic historians—and Ms. Mattei—talk about industrial capitalism, … mechanized mass production blah, capital-intensive factories blah, wage labor blah.”
You cite the modern form of industry that replaced earlier forms of industry as though it were an argument. Your point is pointless. The modern capital economy has its roots in the enterprise of ancient times, which is when the outlines of the modern form emerged.
It is you, libte, who is defining industry out of existence by pretending its inception in 1750.
You wrote: “To claim that an ancient Sumerian copper miner operates within an “industrial capital economy” because he engaged in “industry” is like claiming an ancient Egyptian launching a wooden raft was participating in the “space program” because both involve transportation.
Ludicrously wrong. Rather the analogy with early industry is like seeing that an ancient Egyptian mercantilist launching a manufactured reed-boat for distant trade participated in seafaring.
You wrote: “…your own definition of capitalism… I have repeatedly disabused “Capitalism” in favor of the capital economy. Leave it to you to ascribe falsely.
You continued, “… that means “any human who ever made or traded anything, ever.” Another false ascription. I’ve been very clear that the proto-capital economy is free trade, entrepreneurship, and lending banks.
Somehow, the mistakes you make in debate are always in your favor.
You wrote: “You just explicitly admitted that you do not deny market systems are a tiny, late-stage, recent fraction of human existence.”
That single sentence embodies your inversion lie. PS argued “0.1% of human history, not existence – a distinction you have been ever-ready to abuse.
You wrote: “then you agree with the fundamental historical premise!”
Ms. Mattei argued the industrial capital economy originated 150-250 years ago (0.1% of existence). She is wrong. Mr. PS argued it emerged an absurd 4 years ago (0.1% of history).
I agree with neither position. You, evidently, agree with both of them simultaneously. Your deep rationality, on display again.
You wrote: “I summarized your accusation …”
The first part of my original comment included “refrain from”. What does that mean?
In the second part, I surmised that instead you were lying. Observing a lie calls out behavior. Behavior is not a personal trait; it does not include ‘you are a …’ See the difference?
You can stop lying and misrepresenting positions and arguments whenever you find the light of ethics.
You wrote: “Go ahead and add #65 to your little spreadsheets,”
I will do so, libte, as your #65 included both lies and misrepresentations.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63’ #65
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65
Comment by Pat Frank — July 29, 2026 @ 3:07 pm
@66 Pat Frank —
Pat, your comment #66 is the absolute crown jewel of bad-faith arguing. Let’s dissect the linguistic acrobatics and blatant misreadings you just pulled off to keep your argument from collapsing entirely.
**1. The “4 Years Ago” Math Blunder**
You wrote in #66: *”Mr. PS argued it emerged an absurd 4 years ago (0.1% of history).”*
Pat, read that sentence back slowly. Mr. PS argued that recorded history is roughly 4,000 years long. 0.1% of 4,000 years is **4 years**. You took a calculation error based on your own hyper-fixation on “0.1%” and ascribed to Mr. PS the claim that capitalism started in 2022. Nobody argued capitalism emerged 4 years ago. You constructed a complete mathematical absurdity out of thin air, assigned it to your opponent, and then called *them* irrational for it.
**2. The Motte-and-Bailey of “Industry”**
In comment #62, you claimed ancient Sumer refuted Ms. Mattei’s thesis because *”ancient Sumer was as industrial as they could achieve.”* When I pointed out that this makes every society in history “industrial” relative to its own time, you retreated in #66 to listing basic physical labor—smelting, quarrying, and mining.
This is a textbook Motte-and-Bailey fallacy.
* **The Bailey (your bold, absurd claim):** Ancient Sumerian credit systems represent modern “industrial capitalism”.
* **The Motte (your defensible, trivial retreat):** Ancient Sumerians mined copper.
By stripping “industrial” of its accepted socio-economic definition—mechanized mass production, fossil-fuel energy, factory wage-labor, and capital accumulation—you’ve reduced the term to mean “any human who ever forged or dug up a rock”. Under your definition, a Bronze Age blacksmith hammering an axe is identical in structure to a 19th-century mechanized steel mill. That isn’t economic analysis, Pat; it’s erasing historical context to win a semantics argument.
**3. The Hyper-Literal Deflection**
You spent an entire paragraph arguing that you never called me a “congenital liar” because in #58 you wrote: *”refrain from supposing you suffer from a congenital brain malfunction and surmise you’re lying.”*
You actually typed out a passive-aggressive insult about a “congenital brain malfunction” paired with “lying”, and now you are hiding behind grammar and punctuation to claim it’s a “lie” when I combine those concepts into “congenital liar”. When your primary rebuttal depends on arguing over sentence syntax rather than economic history, everyone reading knows you are completely out of substantive points.
**4. The Surrender Remains Signed**
Notice what you completely bypassed in #66: **you still haven’t denied that market and banking systems represent a tiny, late-stage fraction of total human existence.**
Whether that sliver is 0.1% (Ms. Mattei’s ~250 years) or 1.6% (your ~4,000 years) of the human timeline, both numbers prove the exact same underlying point: institutional market economies are historically recent human inventions, not eternal laws of nature. You have spent a month hurling insults, citing psychiatry papers, and updating a literal spreadsheet over a 1.5% rounding error on the timeline of human existence.
Update your spreadsheet, Pat. Add comment #67 under whatever red-ink category makes you feel like an administrator. But no amount of cataloging changes the fact that you just claimed capitalism started 4 years ago and tried to pass off Bronze Age copper mining as “industrial capitalism”.
Have a great week!
Comment by [email protected] — July 29, 2026 @ 6:21 pm
You wrote: “Mr. PS argued that recorded history is roughly 4,000 years long.”
Let’s see what Mr. PS actually wrote: “Clara Mattei brilliantly debunks a century of capitalist propaganda by explaining how capitalism … has existed for only 0.1% of human history,… (my bold)”
Clearly, Mr. PS did not argue 4000 years of human history. . So, your claim is a lie.
Ms. Mattei’s exact words were, “0.1% of the time homo sapiens has been on the planet (my bold).”
Mr. PS ignorantly assigned Ms. Mattei’s 0.1% of 150-250,000 years of evolutionary emergence to 0.1% of the extent of human history, which is ~4000 years. This led immediately to the absurdity of a 4-year lifetime for Capitalism.
You’ve been dancing around in denial of the obvious, right from the first.
You wrote, “By stripping “industrial” of its accepted socio-economic definition—mechanized mass production, fossil-fuel energy, factory wage-labor, and capital accumulation…”
Wrong. In #65, you ludicrously equated my reference to ancient industry to “hand-carving stone or hand-weaving wool” , when anyone knowledgeable of history would know ancient societies angaged in mining, manufacture, large-scale construction, commercial farming.
The accepted socio-economic definition of industry is … wait for it … organized human production.
And that is of very long standing.
Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy
On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb
Studying the Development of Complex Society: Mesopotamia in the Late Fifth and Fourth Millennia BC“
Interest-bearing debt in ancient civilizations: sumerian era
It does appear, libte, that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Declaration from ignorance is not to be recommended.
You wrote, “behind grammar and punctuation”
So, for you, “refrain from,” means ‘proceed to.’ Given your persistence in mangled-truth argumentation, that was a compliment.
You wrote, “institutional market economies…” – which is an attempt at diversion.
Ms. Mattei’s thesis was “industrial capitalism” not “institutional market economies.” Let’s see: does an obfuscatory diversion count as a lie?
You continued, “historically recent human inventions”
It’s now been well-established here that capital economies and industrial production date back to the beginnings of human history – 4000 years, not Ms Mattei’s 150-250.
You wrote: “Update your spreadsheet, Pat.”
Thank-you for the encouragement, though it’s unneeded in light of your dishonest performance in #67.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #65
Comment by Pat Frank — July 30, 2026 @ 11:48 am
@68 Pat Frank —
Pat, your comment #68 is an extraordinary piece of self-sabotage. You’ve managed to dig yourself into a deeper logical hole while proudly waving a stack of academic links you clearly didn’t read. Let’s break down your latest collapse.
**1. The Self-Inflicted “4 Years” Pedantry**
Let’s walk through the logic of what you just typed:
* You acknowledge that Mr. PS was trying to cite Ms. Mattei’s argument about the fraction of human existence.
* You acknowledge that Mr. PS accidentally wrote “history” instead of “existence”.
* Instead of engaging with what everyone—including Ms. Mattei, Mr. PS, and anyone with a basic sense of context—was actually discussing (the ~250-year span of industrial capitalism against the span of human species existence), you took his obvious word-substitution error, multiplied 0.1% by 4,000 years, got **4 years**, and then spent multiple comments shouting about how “Mr. PS claims capitalism started in 2022!”
Pat, weaponizing an obvious typo to construct a literal “4-year-old capitalism” straw man isn’t “exposing a lie”—it’s pedantic bad-faith trolling because you can’t defeat the actual thesis.
**2. Citation Self-Harm: You Just Disproved Yourself**
Thank you for dropping those paper titles! Let’s actually look at what they say versus what you claim:
* You cite *Interest-bearing debt in ancient civilizations: Sumerian era* (Michael Hudson) to claim ancient Sumer was “industrial capitalism.” Michael Hudson’s entire life’s work demonstrates that Sumerian debt was **temple- and palace-administered agrarian credit**, periodically wiped out by royal jubilee decrees to *prevent* private capital accumulation and economic collapse! Hudson explicitly argues that ancient Sumerian debt mechanisms were **not** market capitalism.
* You cite papers on the **Aterian and Mousterian** tool industries of the Maghreb. Pat, the Mousterian industry refers to **Neanderthal stone hand-axes from 100,000 years ago**.
Are you genuinely standing here in comment #68 arguing that **Neanderthals knapping flint hand-axes in caves** were participating in “industrial capitalism”?
By defining “industry” as literally *any* organized human activity or stone tool production, you’ve stripped the term of all economic meaning. If Neanderthal hand-axes = industrial capitalism, then the word means nothing, and your argument is a complete farce.
**3. The Unbroken Silence on the Math**
Notice how, once again, you completely dodge the core reality: **4,000 years out of 250,000 years of human existence is 1.6%**.
Whether industrial capitalism is 250 years old (0.1%) or your proto-capitalism is 4,000 years old (1.6%), both numbers prove that market capitalism is a tiny, late-stage fraction at the absolute tail end of human existence. You have spent an entire month generating dozens of comments, citing Neanderthal stone tools, and keeping an administrative ledger to argue over a **1.5% rounding error**.
Update your spreadsheet, Pat. Add comment #69 under “Lies,” “Straw Men,” or “Neanderthal Economics.” But no amount of administrative logging will hide the fact that you just cited Middle Paleolithic flint-knapping to prove “industrial capitalism” existed in prehistoric caves.
Class remains dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — July 31, 2026 @ 4:34 am
@69, libte – you wrote: ”* You acknowledge that Mr. PS was trying to cite Ms. Mattei’s argument about the fraction of human existence.”
I acknowledge no such thing. Mr. PS evidenced his incapacity to understand Ms Mattei’s (truly fatuous) argument.
“* You acknowledge that Mr. PS accidentally wrote “history” instead of “existence”.”
I acknowledge no such thing. Accidentally? Laughable.
Mr. PS displayed an inability to distinguish history from existence. As you yourself have repeatedly done in attempting to debate the issue (partial list in #58).
“* Instead of engaging with… blah, blah, blah
I engaged Mr. PS on his plainly written terms. I engaged Ms. Mattei on her terms. I also engaged you on your disingenuous remaking of both.
As to the latter, for example, right off the bat (#5) you wrote, “since you want to bring up the 250,000-year timeline of Homo sapiens…(my bold)”, which was a lie.
Because, of course, it was not I but Ms. Mattei herself raised the “0.1% of the time Homo sapiens has been on the planet.”, i.e., 150-250,000 years.
You lied from the outset, libte.
“… you took his obvious word-substitution error,…”
So now you claim to post-facto know Mr. PS’s inner thoughts. Remarkable. Swami libte the mentalist, is it?
I took the plain meaning of his words: an obvious error.
You wrote: “then spent multiple comments shouting about how “Mr. PS claims capitalism started in 2022!””
I’ve never presented arguments in all-caps (an internet shout). You purporting shouts is lie #1 of post 69. You also double-quoted, “Mr. PS claims, etc.” assigning that declaration as mine. But I made no such declaration. That’s libte lie #2 of post 69.
I also noted Mr. PS’s resultant and banal 4 years math nonsense. I never put a 2022 date on it.
You wrote, “… because you can’t defeat the actual thesis.”
A fine example of blind rejectionism. I defeated Ms. Mattei’s thesis in my #2, #11, #28, #31, #36, #38, #42, #44, #46, #48, #50, #62, #66, and #68.
You wrote: “to claim ancient Sumer was “industrial capitalism.””
Wrong. I’ve been very clear to indicate that a proto-capital economy dated to Sumer. I.e., distant trade, entrepreneurship and lending bank. The citations were, in part, to establish the long-standing existence of banks.
You wrote: “You cite *Interest-bearing debt in ancient civilizations: Sumerian era* (Michael Hudson)”
The chapter authors are Bozik and Demez, not Michael Hudson.
Michael Hudson’s life work appears to be dystopian prognostications.
You wrote, “*temple- and palace-administered agrarian credit** etc.
As though that contradicted the actual point, which is that lending banks emerged in Sumer 4000 years ago. Rather, with that note, you assented to the history you’ve been ever so disgracefully trying to dispute.
You wrote: “You cite papers on the **Aterian and Mousterian** tool industries…, etc….were participating in “industrial capitalism”?”
You’re misrepresenting the argument. I was very clear in #66 that organized human production is generally recognized as industry. I.e., quoting #66: “The accepted socio-economic definition of industry is … wait for it … organized human production.”
Human industry would indeed include Aterian and Mousterian tool production. Your attempt to scoffingly reframe that as “industrial capitalism” is utterly disingenuous.
You wrote: “By defining “industry” as literally *any* organized human activity”
But “organized human production” isn’t your “any organized human activity,” is it. Your incommensurate reframe is a self-serving straw man, isn’t it.
You wrote, “[0.1% & 1.6%] prove that market capitalism is a tiny, late-stage fraction at the absolute tail end of human existence.”
True. And the first number disproves Ms. Mattei while the second disproves Mr. PS. No matter your attempt at rescue by obfuscation.
So is the Enlightenment, by the way – emerging at a tiny late-stage fraction of human existence.
You wrote, “a **1.5% rounding error**”
So, you claim being wrong about a historical date by 3,750 years is a rounding error.
You’ve demonstrated some facility with arithmetic, libte. Your framing it as 1.5% was deliberate. Taking the liberty to hide 3750 years as 1.5%, in an effort to mislead, captures the utter intellectual dishonesty with which you’ve argued here.
You wrote, “update your spreadsheet, Pat.”
I will do, and richly deserved it is.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69
And the current count emphasized by your last lying sentence.
To wit: “you just cited Middle Paleolithic flint-knapping to prove “industrial capitalism” existed in prehistoric caves.” when, instead, I was very clear in #66 that organized human production is generally recognized as industry.
With neolithic industry never conflated with “industrial capitalism.” Never. Not once.
Perhaps you lie in the manner a Tourette’s expostulates a curse. Is that it? An involuntary but irrepressible vulgar affliction?
Comment by Pat Frank — August 1, 2026 @ 3:05 pm
Pat, thank you for comment #70. It is a masterpiece of administrative cope. Watching you attempt to untangle yourself from your own citations while defending the idea that Neanderthals were engaged in “industry” is the highlight of this entire thread.
Let’s break down your latest collapse:
**1. Neanderthal “Industry” and the Death of Meaning**
You actually typed this with a straight face:
> *”Human industry would indeed include Aterian and Mousterian tool production. Your attempt to scoffingly reframe that as ‘industrial capitalism’ is utterly disingenuous.”*
Pat, re-read what you wrote. The entire debate—from Ms. Mattei to Mr. PS—is about the origins of **industrial capitalism**.
When economic historians critique industrial capitalism, they are talking about machine production, factory wage labor, and corporate accumulation. You dropped a citation on Neanderthal stone tools to defend your definition of “industry”, and now you’re indignantly insisting, *”I never said Neanderthal tool-knapping was industrial capitalism, I just said it was industry!”*
Then why bring it up? If Mousterian stone-knapping has nothing to do with industrial capitalism, dropping that citation into a debate about industrial capitalism is a pure **Red Herring**. You expanded the definition of “industry” so broadly that it includes cavemen chipping rocks, solely so you could claim “industry” has existed forever. That is semantic sleight-of-hand at its absolute finest.
**2. Bunk Academic Citations (Bozik & Demez / Hudson)**
You tried to catch me on an author attribution by writing: *”The chapter authors are Bozik and Demez, not Michael Hudson.”*
Pat, *Interest-Bearing Debt in Ancient Civilizations* is an academic volume **edited by Michael Hudson and Marc Van De Mieroop**. The entire volume—including the work by Bozik and Demez—is part of Hudson’s ISLET (Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends) research project.
More importantly, that volume proves the **exact opposite** of your thesis: ancient Sumerian temple and palace debt was not “proto-capitalist free enterprise.” It was state-administered redistribution where debt was regularly cancelled by royal decree (Jubilees) to *prevent* private merchant capital from destroying society. Citing a book on Bronze Age palace-debt cancellation to prove the 4,000-year continuity of free-market banking is like citing the Soviet Gosplan to prove the longevity of Wall Street.
**3. The “3,750 Years vs. 1.5%” Meltdown**
You write: *”So, you claim being wrong about a historical date by 3,750 years is a rounding error.”*
Let’s do the math one last time so even you can’t miss it:
* Human species existence: ~250,000 years.
* Ms. Mattei’s timeframe (Industrial Capitalism): ~250 years = **0.1%** of human existence.
* Your timeframe (Sumerian debt): ~4,000 years = **1.6%** of human existence.
The difference between your number and her number on the timeline of human existence is **1.5 percentage points**.
The entire premise brought to this thread was that market systems are not an eternal law of human nature, but a late-stage arrival in human existence. Whether market systems have been present for 0.1% or 1.6% of our species’ life, **they were absent for 98.4% of it**. You spent an entire month, wrote 70 comments, cited Neanderthal rocks, and diagnosed people with psychiatric disorders over a **1.5% difference**.
**4. The Tourette’s Diagnosis**
Ending your comment by speculating whether I have an *”involuntary but irrepressible vulgar affliction”* is the ultimate white flag. When an arguer resorts to armchair clinical psychiatry, everyone reading knows they have completely run out of arguments.
Update your spreadsheet, Pat. Add comment #71 under “Lies,” “Straw Men,” “Neanderthal Economics,” or “Medical Diagnoses.” Write it down in your thickest red marker. But no amount of administrative bookkeeping will change the fact that you just tried to use Paleolithic flint-knapping to defend your economic timeline.
Enjoy your weekend, Pat!
Comment by [email protected] — August 2, 2026 @ 7:19 am
Pat, thank you for comment #70. It is a masterpiece of administrative cope. Watching you attempt to untangle yourself from your own citations while defending the idea that Neanderthals were engaged in “industry” is the highlight of this entire thread.
Let’s break down your latest collapse:
**1. Neanderthal “Industry” and the Death of Meaning**
You actually typed this with a straight face:
> *”Human industry would indeed include Aterian and Mousterian tool production. Your attempt to scoffingly reframe that as ‘industrial capitalism’ is utterly disingenuous.”*
Pat, re-read what you wrote. The entire debate—from Ms. Mattei to Mr. PS—is about the origins of **industrial capitalism**.
When economic historians critique industrial capitalism, they are talking about machine production, factory wage labor, and corporate accumulation. You dropped a citation on Neanderthal stone tools to defend your definition of “industry”, and now you’re indignantly insisting, *”I never said Neanderthal tool-knapping was industrial capitalism, I just said it was industry!”*
Then why bring it up? If Mousterian stone-knapping has nothing to do with industrial capitalism, dropping that citation into a debate about industrial capitalism is a pure **Red Herring**. You expanded the definition of “industry” so broadly that it includes cavemen chipping rocks, solely so you could claim “industry” has existed forever. That is semantic sleight-of-hand at its absolute finest.
**2. Bunk Academic Citations (Bozik & Demez / Hudson)**
You tried to catch me on an author attribution by writing: *”The chapter authors are Bozik and Demez, not Michael Hudson.”*
Pat, *Interest-Bearing Debt in Ancient Civilizations* is an academic volume **edited by Michael Hudson and Marc Van De Mieroop**. The entire volume—including the work by Bozik and Demez—is part of Hudson’s ISLET (Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends) research project.
More importantly, that volume proves the **exact opposite** of your thesis: ancient Sumerian temple and palace debt was not “proto-capitalist free enterprise.” It was state-administered redistribution where debt was regularly cancelled by royal decree (Jubilees) to *prevent* private merchant capital from destroying society. Citing a book on Bronze Age palace-debt cancellation to prove the 4,000-year continuity of free-market banking is like citing the Soviet Gosplan to prove the longevity of Wall Street.
**3. The “3,750 Years vs. 1.5%” Meltdown**
You write: *”So, you claim being wrong about a historical date by 3,750 years is a rounding error.”*
Let’s do the math one last time so even you can’t miss it:
* Human species existence: ~250,000 years.
* Ms. Mattei’s timeframe (Industrial Capitalism): ~250 years = **0.1%** of human existence.
* Your timeframe (Sumerian debt): ~4,000 years = **1.6%** of human existence.
The difference between your number and her number on the timeline of human existence is **1.5 percentage points**.
The entire premise brought to this thread was that market systems are not an eternal law of human nature, but a late-stage arrival in human existence. Whether market systems have been present for 0.1% or 1.6% of our species’ life, **they were absent for 98.4% of it**. You spent an entire month, wrote 70 comments, cited Neanderthal rocks, and diagnosed people with psychiatric disorders over a **1.5% difference**.
**4. The Tourette’s Diagnosis**
Ending your comment by speculating whether I have an *”involuntary but irrepressible vulgar affliction”* is the ultimate white flag. When an arguer resorts to armchair clinical psychiatry, everyone reading knows they have completely run out of arguments.
Update your spreadsheet, Pat. Add comment #71 under “Lies,” “Straw Men,” “Neanderthal Economics,” or “Medical Diagnoses.” Write it down in your thickest red marker. But no amount of administrative bookkeeping will change the fact that you just tried to use Paleolithic flint-knapping to defend your economic timeline.
Enjoy your weekend, Pat!
Comment by [email protected] — August 2, 2026 @ 7:34 am
@71 libte: “ The entire debate—from Ms. Mattei to Mr. PS—is about the origins of **industrial capitalism**.
A lying diversion. In #65, you attempted to definitively restrict industry” to mean “mechanized mass production, capital-intensive factories, wage labor”
I replied specifically to that feint. Now, you attempt a disclaimer.
Industry has always meant ‘organized human material production.’ You brought on the sub-topic. You were wrong. Lying your way out – your typical escape route – won’t work.
“When economic historians critique industrial capitalism,… blah, blah, blah”
The topic at issue was your self-serving truncation of the meaning of industry. Not industrial capitalism.
“Mousterian stone-knapping… is a human being industrious. A Mousterian tribe and a tribal stone-knapping industry.
For example “after a phase of stability during the pleniglacial period of 75,000–60,000 BP with [Middle Paleolithic] industries, a phase of large regional diversification occurs during 60,000–34,000 BP with the final Mousterian and the so-called transitional industries which are characterized by a large variability of different core reduction sequences, followed by a phase of standardization characterized by a bladelet and blade prismatic core reduction sequence (Aurignacian).”
Industry: human material production. Human industry dates back into the paleolithic.
You continue to find ways to lose the argument, libte. Following which you continue to attempt ways to confuse the argument so as to cover over your failure.
“ *Interest-Bearing Debt in Ancient Civilizations* is an academic volume **edited by Michael Hudson and Marc Van De Mieroop**”
You settled on the wrong book. The Bozik and Demez chapter is in “A History of Interest and Debt: ancient civilizations” edited by Murat Ustaoğlu and Ahmet Incekara.
The series is “Islamic Business and Finance Series” and the series Editor is Ishaq Bhatti. Not Micheael Hudson.
The Hudson-Van de Mieroop volume: “Debt and economic renewal in the ancient Near East: a colloquium held at Columbia University, November 1998” is a conference proceedings.
And the Table of Contents does not include Bozik or Demez.
So, your “including the work by Bozik and Demez” is a lie.
Another double oopsie for you.
Amusingly, the Chapter by Micheal Hudson in the book Landeis, et al, (2002) “THE INVENTION OF ENTERPRISE: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times” has Hudson stating that:
“It is now recognized that most of the techniques that would become basic commercial practices in classical antiquity were already developed in the third millennium BC in the temples and palaces of the Bronze Age Near East—money, along with the uniform weights, measures, and prices needed for account-keeping and annual reports, the charging of interest, and profit-sharing arrangements between public institutions and private merchants ranging from long-distance trade to leasing land, workshops, and retail beer-selling concessions. Assyriologists now apply the term entrepreneur broadly to Assyrian and Babylonian tamkarum “merchants” from early in the second millennium BC…”
In other words, a proto-capital economy.
Overturned again. Give it up. libte.
“The difference between your number and her number on the timeline of human existence is **1.5 percentage points**.,” which dishonestly encrypts the 3750 year mistake Ms. Mattei made.
You wrote: “The entire premise brought to this thread was that market systems are not an eternal law of human nature,…”
Wrong. The understanding opening this thread is that Ms. Mattei’s capital timeline is wrong. And, en passant, Mr. PS’s ignorance-based mistaken recrudescence.
“Update your spreadsheet, Pat.”
As I will do, libte. Your #71 was a freight of lies and misdirections.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71
You finished with, “you just tried to use Paleolithic flint-knapping to defend your economic timeline.”
Wrong. I showed the existence of human industry extended back to paleolithic production of stone tools.
You finished essaying another lie. How appropriate.
Comment by Pat Frank — August 2, 2026 @ 3:26 pm
@72 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #72 is your absolute zenith of bad-faith argumentation. You have now reached the stage where you are actively proving my point for me while claiming victory.
Let’s do a final autopsy on your comment #72 and your endless “Catalogue of Lies.”
**1. Dismantling Your “Catalogue of Lies” Routine**
Every time you lose a substantive point, you update your little red-ink spreadsheet and declare another “lie”. But let’s be clear about what you call a “lie”:
* When I summarize your passive-aggressive “congenital brain malfunction” remark as calling me a “congenital liar,” you scream “lie!” because of sentence syntax.
* When I point out that Neanderthal flint-knapping isn’t industrial capitalism, you scream “lie!” because you want “industry” to mean *any human activity ever*.
* When I expose your mathematical straw man that capitalism started 4 years ago, you scream “lie!” because your pedantry got caught.
Calling an opponent’s refusal to play your semantic word games a “lie” isn’t exposing dishonesty—it’s **procedural cope**. Keeping a numbered ledger doesn’t make a flawed premise true.
**2. The Hudson Quote Kills Your Entire Argument**
Thank you for quoting Michael Hudson from *The Invention of Enterprise*! You actually typed out this sentence:
> *”…most of the techniques that would become basic commercial practices… were already developed in the third millennium BC **in the temples and palaces of the Bronze Age Near East**…”*
>
Pat, do you know what “temples and palaces” means in economic history? **State control.**
Hudson’s core thesis—the one you just quoted to try to defeat me—is that these financial tools were created and managed by centralized, public-sector, state-theocratic institutions (palaces and temples), NOT private free-market enterprise. The temples set fixed prices, controlled the money supply, and wiped out private debts via royal decrees.
You just cited a passage describing **state-directed institutional distribution** to prove the 4,000-year existence of “free trade, individual initiative, and private lending banks.” You handed me the exact quote that disproves your own definition of capitalism.
**3. Neanderthal “Industry” vs. Industrial Capitalism**
You are still defending your pivot to Middle Paleolithic stone-knapping:
> *”I showed the existence of human industry extended back to paleolithic production of stone tools.”*
>
Pat, step back and look at what you are doing. The blog post we are commenting on is about **Ms. Mattei’s critique of industrial capitalism**.
When someone critiques *industrial capitalism*, they are critiquing mechanized mass production, factory labor, and fossil-fuel capital accumulation. Retreating to a dictionary definition of “industry” as *any organized human material production* so you can claim Neanderthals making flint hand-axes 60,000 years ago counts as “industry” is the ultimate **Red Herring**.
If Neanderthal flint-knapping is “industry”, but has nothing to do with industrial capitalism, then bringing it up in a debate about industrial capitalism is completely irrelevant noise designed to obscure the fact that you lost the main timeline argument.
**4. The “3,750 Years” Math Obsession**
You write that framing the difference as 1.5% *”dishonestly encrypts the 3,750 year mistake.”*
Pat, it’s not encryption; it’s **scale**.
* On a species timeline of 250,000 years, 250 years is **0.1%**.
* On a species timeline of 250,000 years, 4,000 years is **1.6%**.
The entire conceptual point of comparing these numbers to human existence is to show that institutional market structures are a very recent development in the history of *Homo sapiens*. 1.6% and 0.1% both demonstrate that human societies functioned without these banking structures for **over 98% of our species’ existence**. You spent a month, wrote 72 comments, cited Neanderthal cave tools, and accused people of lying over a **1.5% difference on the species timeline**.
Go ahead and update your spreadsheet, Pat. Add comment #73 to your “Catalogue of Lies” and “Catalogue of Straw Men.” Highlight it in yellow. But no amount of administrative bookkeeping changes the fact that you just quoted a description of Bronze Age state-socialism to try to prove free-market capitalism.
Have a wonderful week!
Comment by [email protected] — August 3, 2026 @ 2:23 am
@73 libte: you wrote, “you scream “lie!” because of sentence syntax.”
A manifest lie. See my #68.
“you want “industry” to mean *any human activity ever*.”
A manifest lie. See my #72
“your mathematical straw man that capitalism started 4 years ago,”
A manifest lie. See my #2, #52 & #54, for example. The 4 years was an exudation of Mr. PS’s ignorance. Which you defended.
You wrote: “Pat, do you know what “temples and palaces” means in economic history? **State control.**”
You’re diverting again, The point at issue was the existence of lending banks, wasn’t it. Which they were.
You wrote: “You just cited a passage describing **state-directed institutional distribution** to prove the 4,000-year existence of “free trade, individual initiative, and private lending banks.”
Your quoted use of “private” is a manifest lie. My point (see my #2) was:
“Individual initiative and free trade have been around since at least the late neolithic (https://doi.org/10.2307/1783003 also https://doi.org/10.2307/140719).
Lending banks were already present in 2000 BCE Sumeria (https://ijarasem.com/admin/img/18_History.pdf) to assist in trade and extend credit to farmers.
So, individual initiative, free trade, and investment banking (an utter non-ism) have been around for 100% of human history. Never once did I mention private lending banks.
You lied to impose a falsehood. Shameless. Yet again. Hudson fully confirmed my point. You tried to lie your way out.
You wrote, “When someone critiques *industrial capitalism*,”
The point at issue there was, ‘what is industry.‘ You attempted to mangle the definition to mean post-1850 heavy manufacturing industry. You’re wrong.
You wrote: “Pat, it’s not encryption; it’s **scale**.”
It’s not scale. It’s encryption, An obfuscation. Ms. Mattei was wrong by 3750 years, evidenced an impoverished education in history, and Mr. PS evidenced an incapacity to distinguish history from existence. Which also afflicted you.
So, let’s look at the leaderboard:
Proven:
* Individual initiative and productive human industry are in evidence as far back as the neolithic.
* The proto-capital economy – individual initiative, organized material production, free trade, lending banks – are evidenced in 2000 BCE Sumer.
* Ms. Mattei is historically bereft and advocates a system noted for poverty and mass murder of citizens.
* Mr. ProudSocialist is historically bereft, advocates a system noted for poverty and mass murder of citizens, and doesn’t know to distinguish history from existence.
* libte is wrong throughout, defends inanities, and lies repeatedly as cover.
You wrote: “Go ahead and update your spreadsheet, Pat.
Right.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #73
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #73
Your final, “you just quoted a description of Bronze Age state-socialism to try to prove free-market capitalism.” is again a lie at the finish.
Nowhere did my argument about the ancient proto-capital economy rest upon state political systems.
Comment by Pat Frank — August 4, 2026 @ 1:16 pm
@74 Pat Frank —
Pat, your comment #74 is an absolute masterpiece of unintentional self-demolition. You have now reached the stage where you are actively denying basic economic definitions while claiming victory on a “leaderboard” you invented.
Let’s do a final autopsy on your latest collapse:
**1. “Lending Banks” in Bronze Age Sumer Were State Palace Bureaus**
You wrote in #74:
> *”The point at issue was the existence of lending banks, wasn’t it. Which they were… Nowhere did my argument about the ancient proto-capital economy rest upon state political systems.”*
>
Pat, this is an astonishing admission of economic ignorance. In Bronze Age Sumer, those “lending banks” were **the administrative arms of the central palace and temple state**. They were public agencies distributing grain and credit under fixed, state-mandated price controls, backed by divine royal authority.
Calling the central economic bureau of a Bronze Age theocratic state a “proto-capitalist lending bank” because it recorded debts on clay tablets is like calling the tax department of ancient Egypt a private venture capital firm. When credit is issued by a total-state bureaucracy that periodically cancels debts by royal decree, it isn’t “proto-capitalism”—it is **central state planning**. You literally cited state-run administrative credit to prove “individual initiative and free trade”.
**2. The “Private” Semantic Dodge**
You indignantly object: *”Never once did I mention private lending banks.”*
Pat, if the banks aren’t private, and the trade is regulated by palace decrees, and prices are fixed by royal authority, **where is the capitalism?** Capitalism, by definition, requires private ownership of the means of production and market-driven capital allocation. If you take the “private” out of banking and capital, you are left with state-administered resource distribution. You are using the word “capitalism” to mean *any society where people exchange items or keep track of debts*. Under your definition, feudalism, mercantilism, and ancient state-theocracies are all “capitalism.”
**3. The Neanderthal Industry Double-Down**
You’re still insisting that my definition of industry is wrong because industry means “organized material production”.
Let’s follow your logic to its absurd conclusion:
* If “industry” = any organized material production (including Neanderthal flint-knapping).
* And your “proto-capital economy” = any exchange or trade.
* Then according to Pat Frank, **Neanderthal cave-dwellers 60,000 years ago were participating in an industrial proto-capital economy.**
This is why everyone reading this thread is laughing at your argument. You stripped “industry” and “capitalism” of all historical and economic specificity just so you could claim they existed forever.
**4. The “Leaderboard” of an Obsessive Accountant**
You ended your comment by publishing a “leaderboard” and adding comment #73 to your catalog of lies.
Pat, compiling a pseudo-official ledger of “lies” whenever an opponent refuses to accept your bizarre redefine-everything dictionary isn’t exposing dishonesty—it is **procedural cope**.
Let’s review the final tally:
* You cited Neanderthal stone-knapping to argue the antiquity of “industry.”
* You cited Bronze Age state-palace credit administration to prove “free trade.”
* You argued over a 1.5% rounding error on the species timeline for a month.
* You updated a spreadsheet 74 times to feel like an administrator.
Update your ledger, Pat. Put #75 in bold red ink. But no amount of administrative cataloging will change the fact that you just claimed state-run Bronze Age palace credit proves free-market capitalism.
Class is permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — August 7, 2026 @ 1:50 pm
@75 – libte, always ready with the macerated riposte.
Your “**1 and **2” exemplify a mindless presentism. Your entire argument is equivalent to claiming that Thales and the Greeks didn’t invent science because they lacked radio-telescopes, magnetic resonance spectrometers, and gene-sequencers.
You are engineering a diversional dance to avoid the historical fact that lending banks, individual initiative, and free trade existed in ancient Sumer. The proto-capital economy.
The ancient economy differs from the modern system the way that science among the Greeks differs from modern science. But the historical line of development is evident.
Your “**3”: “* And your “proto-capital economy” = any exchange or trade.” is a straw man.
The false element central to libte’s failed syllogism. I’ve repeated described the elements of the proto-capital economy. You distort to your benefit. A lie of commission.
And a self-goal to boot. If your Neanderthals were making flint tools and if they used those tools for trade-goods, then organized material production, individual entrepreneurship, and free-trade are among the earliest traits of free-living humans.
Your laughter is the hollow mirth of defeat.
You wrote, “Pat, compiling a pseudo-official ledger of “lies” whenever an opponent refuses to accept your bizarre redefine…”
Wrong again, libte. I compiled a list of your lies, because you lied repeatedly. Just as you lied again in #75.
This last is especially precious because, in mischaracterizing the catalogue of your lies as mere refusal, you’ve now lied about lying.
You wrote: “Let’s review the final tally:
* You cited Neanderthal stone-knapping to argue the antiquity of “industry.”
Right. Industry as organized productive labor. The standard definition of the term. And you dispute it.
“* You cited Bronze Age state-palace credit administration to prove “free trade.””
Another misrepresentation. I cited ancient Sumerian lending banks as lending banks.
“* You argued over a 1.5% rounding error on the species timeline for a month.”
Yet another misrepresentation. I showed that you were dishonest to abuse the fraction so as to hide Ms. Mallei’s 3750 year mistake.
”* You updated a spreadsheet 74 times to feel like an administrator.”
Just logging your record of shame, libte. Your comments in this thread is a litany of lies and misdirections.
“Update your ledger, Pat.”
No encouragement needed, libte. Given the step-wise consistency emergent at #51, your affinity for the lie seems to have become a fixation.
“the fact that you just claimed state-run Bronze Age palace credit proves free-market capitalism.”
As usual, you finish with a lie. Your effort in #75 may be a single-comment high-water mark for you.
My position is, was from the start, and which has been reiterated for you multiple times, is that organized human production, individual entrepreneurship and lending banks in ancient Sumer represent a proto-capital economy.
And yet, somehow you get it wrong. Again. Purely an innocent oversight, no doubt.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #73; #75
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #73; #75
Comment by Pat Frank — August 9, 2026 @ 3:54 pm
@76 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #76 is the absolute pinnacle of self-delusion. Watching you compare Bronze Age palace theocracies to Thales inventing science while doubling down on Neanderthal entrepreneurship is pure performance art.
Let’s do a final autopsy on your latest collapse:
**1. The “Presentism” Fallacy & The Thales False Analogy**
You claim my critique is “mindless presentism” and compare Bronze Age Sumerian palace credit to Thales inventing science.
Pat, this analogy completely destroys your own position:
* Science is a **method of inquiry** (empiricism, hypothesis, observation). Thales initiated that method.
* Capitalism is a **specific socio-economic mode of production** requiring private ownership of capital, competitive wage labor, and market-allocated production.
Sumerian temple-and-palace credit was **centralized state redistribution** under fixed prices and royal debt forgiveness decrees. Calling state-administered palace credit “proto-capitalism” is like calling a Soviet Gosplan agricultural directive “proto-capitalism” simply because grain was accounted for. That isn’t “the early stage of capitalism”—it is a fundamentally different economic model.
**2. You Just Accidental-Swallowed “Neanderthal Entrepreneurship”**
You actually typed this in #76:
> *”If your Neanderthals were making flint tools and if they used those tools for trade-goods, then organized material production, individual entrepreneurship, and free-trade are among the earliest traits of free-living humans.”*
>
Pat, stop and read what you wrote. You are now unironically arguing that **Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals knapping flint tools 60,000 years ago were engaged in “individual entrepreneurship and free-trade.”**
By stretching your definitions of “industry” and “proto-capitalism” so far that they apply to Paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands swapping rocks, you have rendered both terms entirely meaningless. If *everything* humans have ever produced or bartered is “industrial proto-capitalism,” then the concept has no diagnostic value, and your entire argument collapses into a useless tautology.
**3. The Lie of “Lying About Lying”**
You declare that my calling out your “Catalogue of Lies” as procedural cope is “lying about lying.”
Pat, let’s look at what your “Catalogue of Lies” actually consists of:
* Every time I point out your false equivalencies, you log a “lie.”
* Every time I refuse to adopt your customized dictionary where cavemen are entrepreneurs, you log a “lie.”
* Every time I highlight your inability to differentiate state-run palace bureaus from private banking, you log a “lie.”
You are using your pseudo-official ledger as an **argumentative shield**. Whenever you run out of economic theory, you update your comment count, wave your red pen, and pretend you’ve proven something on a “leaderboard” that only exists in your own head.
**The Final Tally:**
* You equated Neanderthal flint-knapping with modern industry.
* You equated Bronze Age state-theocracy with free-market trade.
* You spent weeks litigating a 1.5% rounding error on the timeline of human existence.
* You updated a spreadsheet 76 times to avoid conceding a single point.
Update #77 in your ledger, Pat. Log it under “Lies,” “Straw Men,” or “Neanderthal Venture Capital.” But no amount of administrative logging will hide the fact that your entire thesis relies on turning Paleolithic cave-dwellers into free-market capitalists.
Class is closed. Enjoy your spreadsheet!
Comment by [email protected] — August 11, 2026 @ 12:38 pm
@77, libte
Your #1: clearly evidences an inability understand analogizing the universal of historical evolution of knowledge and practice in human culture. Regrets. In the future, I’ll try to keep in simple for you.
Your #2: “Paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands swapping rocks”
A self-serving straw man. Congratulations on yet another successful regression to the libte dishonesty-mean.
* Every time you lie, I log a “lie.”
* Every time you misrepresent my argument, I log a misrepresentation
* Every time you display willful ignorance, I call you out.
Your final tally:
“* You equated Neanderthal flint-knapping with modern industry.” A lie
“* You equated Bronze Age state-theocracy with free-market trade.” A lie
“* You spent weeks litigating a 1.5% rounding error on the timeline of human existence.” An obfuscatory lie by arithmetic abuse.
“* You updated a spreadsheet 76 times to avoid conceding a single point.” A rich irony. What’s to concede? When you’ve not lied or dodged, you’ve inevitably been wrong. Concede yourself. Honor your own supposed ethic.
The number of times I’ve updated the list is 24, not 76. Though one observes you’ve been remarkably consistent in posting dishonest content after update 11. Your posts are a monument to persistence in mendacity.
“Update #77” Your request is not needed, but I appreciate your implicit acknowledgment of the record.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #73; #75; #77
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #73; #75; #77
“that your entire thesis relies on turning Paleolithic cave-dwellers into free-market capitalists.”
Wrong again, libte. My entire thesis is that Ms. Mattei is historically mindless and that Mr. PS is arithmetically challenged.
All the rest discussed here has followed directly from your repeated dishonest arguments, apparently composed to avoid acknowledging the observation of the protagonists’ failures.
Comment by Pat Frank — August 17, 2026 @ 6:51 pm
@78 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #78 is your most desperate retreat yet. You’ve now reached the point of denying the plain text of your own previous comments while playing pedantic games over spreadsheet edit counts.
Let’s do the post-mortem on your latest collapse:
**1. The “Straw Man” Denial of Your Own Quotes**
You write in #78 that calling out your Neanderthal trade argument is a “self-serving straw man.”
Pat, everyone reading this thread can scroll up to comment #76 and read what you typed word-for-word:
> *”If your Neanderthals were making flint tools and if they used those tools for trade-goods, then organized material production, individual entrepreneurship, and free-trade are among the earliest traits of free-living humans.”*
>
You explicitly argued that if Neanderthals traded flint tools, that constitutes **”individual entrepreneurship and free-trade.”** Now, when faced with how absurd it sounds to call Paleolithic flint-knapping “entrepreneurship,” you claim that repeating *your own exact quote back to you* is a “straw man” and a “lie.” Calling your own words a straw man when they become indefensible is the absolute rock bottom of bad-faith debate.
**2. The “24 Updates” Pedantic Victory**
You write with immense pride:
> *”The number of times I’ve updated the list is 24, not 76.”*
>
Congratulations, Pat! You caught me: you didn’t update your spreadsheet 76 times, you updated it **24 times** across a 78-comment thread.
The fact that you think logging 24 separate administrative updates to a personal “Catalogue of Lies” on a blog comment section is a winning rebuttal completely proves my point. You are operating as a self-appointed internet hall monitor. Whenever you lose on economic history, you retreat to counting entries in your little ledger.
**3. The Surrender on Thesis**
In your closing sentence, you reveal the total collapse of your entire position:
> *”My entire thesis is that Ms. Mattei is historically mindless and that Mr. PS is arithmetically challenged.”*
>
Look at that pivot. After 78 comments asserting that ancient Sumerian palace bureaus prove a 4,000-year-old “proto-capital economy,” after citing Mousterian Neanderthal flint tool industries, and after dragging the thread through weeks of pedantic dictionary wrestling, you now claim your *entire thesis* was just picking a fight over a typo in a blog comment.
If your entire goal was litigating a rounding error on a comment thread, why spend 24 updates and 78 comments trying to redefine “industry” to include Paleolithic stone tools and “capitalism” to include Bronze Age palace-state grain allocations?
Add comment #79 to your catalog, Pat. Make it update #25. Paint it in bold red letters. But no ledger in the world can hide the fact that you just called your own quotes a “straw man” because you couldn’t defend Neanderthal capitalism.
The ledger is closed. Enjoy your spreadsheet!
Comment by [email protected] — August 19, 2026 @ 1:14 pm
@80 – libte
What I wrote: “If your Neanderthals were making flint tools and if they used those tools for trade-goods, then organized material production, individual entrepreneurship, and free-trade are among the earliest traits of free-living humans.”
What you claimed: “* You equated Neanderthal flint-knapping with modern industry.”
Which I did not. You made a bald-faced misrepresentation. A lie.
You wrote: “You explicitly argued that if Neanderthals traded flint tools, that constitutes **”individual entrepreneurship and free-trade.”** Now, when faced with how absurd it sounds to call Paleolithic flint-knapping “entrepreneurship,””
“flint-knapping ” is not the manufacture of flint tools for trade. In sentence 1 you quote me, and in the very next sentence 2 you lyingly misrepresent that very quote.
You can’t help it, can you.
You wrote: “a personal “Catalogue of Lies” on a blog comment section is a winning rebuttal completely proves my point.”
It’s a directory of your lies, libte. It proves the point of your lying.
Ironic, too, that you lied in the very post in which you proceeded to complain about being called out for your lying ways
You wrote: “After 78 comments asserting that ancient Sumerian palace bureaus prove a 4,000-year-old “proto-capital economy,””
Another lie.
I wrote they were very early lending banks, and supplied links to published works discussing that very thing.
E.g. Garfinkle, Shepherds, Merchants, and Credit: Some Observations on Lending Practices in Ur III Mesopotamia
https://doi.org/10.1163/156852004323069385
“The numerous surviving loan documents from the Ur III period illustrate the vital role that credit played in the early Mesopotamian economy. The availability of credit was critical at every level of society.”
See Also, Veenhoff “Modern” Features in Old Assyrian Trade
https://doi.org/10.1163/1568520972601549
You wrote: “you now claim your *entire thesis* was just picking a fight over a typo in a blog comment.”
A double lie.
I wrote that, My entire thesis is that Ms. Mattei is historically mindless and that Mr. PS is arithmetically challenged.
So, this time you managed a life of omission and one of misrepresentation in a single clause.
The rest of the debate in this thread developed from you lying every which way you could conceive so as to rescue Ms. Mattei from her historical mindlessness and to excuse Mr. PS his inability to distinguish existence from history.
You then wrote, “Look at that pivot. After 78 comments…” and further lying, blah, blah, blah, all exposed and disproved numerous times.
You further wrote, “why spend 24 updates and 78 comments trying to redefine “industry””
I’ve posted here to expose your habitually lying screeds, libte.
“Add comment #79 to your catalog,
The numbering lost synch when you posted #21 twice, using up slot 22. Your posts are now the evenses; your last being #80. I’ve updated the numbering.
You finished with: “because you couldn’t defend Neanderthal capitalism.”
Another double lie. I never once advanced Neanderthal Capitalism, so could not have tried to defend it. Two lies, one clause – tying your personal best. Be gratified, libte.
You managed to exceed your usual slather of lies in #80, meriting its addition to your list of infamy.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80.
Comment by Pat Frank — August 20, 2026 @ 1:35 pm
—
@Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #81 is a magnificent exercise in bureaucratic micro-management. You have officially transitioned from debating economic history to publishing patch notes for your own comment-section spreadsheet.
Let’s unpack your latest ledger maintenance:
**1. The Spreadsheet Version-Control Crisis**
The absolute highlight of your comment is your solemn administrative confession:
> *”The numbering lost synch when you posted #21 twice, using up slot 22. Your posts are now the evenses; your last being #80. I’ve updated the numbering.”*
>
Pat, you are auditing a blog thread with the frantic precision of a mid-level compliance officer whose Excel macros are failing. Pausing a debate on macroeconomic history to manually re-index your “Catalogue of Lies” because a duplicate post threw off your sequence is peak pedantry. You are expending more energy on version control for your red-ink ledger than on the actual arguments.
**2. The Neanderthal Hair-Splitting**
You insist that drawing a distinction between “flint-knapping” and “manufacturing flint tools for trade” proves I lied when I said you equated Neanderthals with modern industry.
Let’s look at what you actually claimed: that if Neanderthals traded flint tools, it constitutes *”individual entrepreneurship and free-trade among the earliest traits of free-living humans.”* Splitting hairs between the physical act of striking flint and “trade-goods manufacture” doesn’t rescue your point; it compounds it. You are still trying to map modern commercial categories onto Middle Paleolithic hominids just to avoid admitting that calling cavemen “entrepreneurs” was absurd.
**3. Ur III Mesopotamia and Old Assyrian Archives**
Thank you for finally dropping actual academic citations—Garfinkle on Ur III Mesopotamia and Veenhoff on Old Assyrian trade!
Unfortunately for your thesis, neither Garfinkle nor Veenhoff describes a “proto-capital economy.” The Ur III period was one of the most intensely **state-administered, bureaucratized command economies** in the ancient Near East, where institutional credit was tightly managed through centralized palace and temple ration systems to keep scribal bookkeeping in balance. Citing Ur III debt documents to prove “free-market capitalism” is like citing the ledger of a medieval monastery to prove the existence of Wall Street.
**4. The Final Retreat**
You state once again:
> *”My entire thesis is that Ms. Mattei is historically mindless and that Mr. PS is arithmetically challenged.”*
>
And there it is—the ultimate retreat. After weeks of arguing about Bronze Age banks, Mousterian tools, and neo-liberal timelines, you admit your entire crusade was just an excuse to call people names on the internet, while hiding behind 26 entries in a personal grievance log.
Go ahead and update your spreadsheet to the next slot, Pat. Put it in bold crimson. But no amount of administrative bookkeeping will change the fact that your entire argument dissolved into a frantic audit of your own comment numbering.
The ledger is balanced, the spreadsheet is patched, and class is officially dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — August 23, 2026 @ 5:51 am
@82 libte – Your #1 is a mindless word-salad. Ignored.
Your #2: You wrote, “I said you equated Neanderthals with modern industry.” which was a lie.
Let’s see what I wrote (my #2): Individual initiative and free trade have been around since at least the late neolithic (https://doi.org/10.2307/1783003 also https://doi.org/10.2307/140719). Note the citations to anthropological literature.
Where do you see “Neanderthal” in that? Neanderthals were extinct by the neolithic age.
You wrote: “calling cavemen “entrepreneurs” was absurd.”
Entrepreneur from Investopedia: “An entrepreneur is someone who starts and runs a business or startup, using their own ideas, time, and resources, taking on financial risk to bring products or services to market and earn a profit.”
Any neolithic person making flint tools for trade, started the trade, used their own ideas, time, and resources, and took on the risk of loss. That’s QED, and you’re left exposed again.
Your #3: You wrote, “neither Garfinkle nor Veenhoff describes a “proto-capital economy.””
Let’s recall what Garfinkle wrote: “The numerous surviving loan documents from the Ur III period illustrate the vital role that credit played in the early Mesopotamian economy. The availability of credit was critical at every level of society.”
Garfinkle made clear that every level of society included private loans including credit and interest, by landowners and traders.
Which clearly establishes the early invention of capital finance.
You wrote, “Citing Ur III debt documents to prove “free-market capitalism”…”
I never wrote that anything of Ur III proved free-market capitalism. In fact, it was you who introduced the free-market concept, as a straw man argument in your #9. So, you’ve managed triple lie: first claiming I equated Ur III to free-market capitalism, second, that it was I who had brought up free market capitalism as an argument, and third, you fabricated quotes around the term as though I had written it.
Your #4: You wrote, “After weeks of arguing…” all of which came about strictly because of your persistent and utterly specious disputes. Tatyana’s advice notwithstanding, I engaged them. Mostly to illuminate the dishonesty you so consistently deployed.
You wrote, “Go ahead and update your spreadsheet to the next slot, Pat”
Right you are libte. You lived up to expectations yet again.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82.
You wrote, “your entire argument dissolved into a frantic audit of your own comment numbering.”
Says the guy whose record of honesty is all tarnish, no shine. Catalogued here for all to see.
Comment by Pat Frank — August 28, 2026 @ 7:08 pm
@83 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #83 is an all-time classic of pedantry collapsing in real time. You have now resorted to quoting Investopedia to prove that Neolithic stone-tool makers were running tech startups.
Let’s do a final autopsy on your latest accounting update:
**1. The Investopedia Definition of Cavemen**
You actually cited Investopedia to argue:
> *”Any neolithic person making flint tools for trade, started the trade, used their own ideas, time, and resources, and took on the risk of loss. That’s QED…”*
>
Pat, applying a modern business school entry from *Investopedia* to pre-literate Stone Age tribal exchange is the most hilarious example of **unhinged presentism** in internet history.
Under your definition, a Stone Age human making a stone axe to trade for a piece of dried meat was taking on “venture risk” in a “market startup.” If every basic act of human survival, tool-crafting, or tribal barter is “entrepreneurship,” then the term has zero historical specificity. You didn’t prove “QED”—you just demonstrated that your economic vocabulary is drawn from internet glossary pages.
**2. The Neanderthal Memory Loss**
You indignantly ask: *”Where do you see ‘Neanderthal’ in that? Neanderthals were extinct by the neolithic age.”*
Pat, scroll back to your own comment #66 and #72! You explicitly cited papers on the **Mousterian industry**. The Mousterian tool tradition is defined in archaeology as the tool-making culture of **Neanderthals** during the Middle Paleolithic.
You brought Mousterian Neanderthal tools into this thread as proof of early “industry,” defended it for five comments, and now you are pretending you only ever talked about the Neolithic. Trying to scrub your own Middle Paleolithic citations from the record because you realized Neanderthals weren’t running private corporations is peak gaslighting.
**3. Ur III “Capital Finance” vs. Institutional Rationing**
You claim Garfinkle proves *”the early invention of capital finance”* because credit existed at multiple levels of Mesopotamian society.
Credit is not capital finance, Pat. Credit has existed in virtually every human society—including feudal manors and agrarian villages—as an administrative tool to track agricultural cycles and state obligations. Garfinkle’s work repeatedly emphasizes that Ur III credit operated within a **heavily bureaucratized, state-supervised institutional framework**, where rates and allocations were regulated by the palace.
Confusing state-administered agricultural credit for modern “capital finance” is like confusing a IOUs written on bread rations with the New York Stock Exchange.
**4. The Red-Ink Ledger Keeps Spinning**
You end by triumphantly updating your “Catalogue of Lies” to entry #82.
Let’s review the evolution of your thread performance:
1. You cited Neanderthal Mousterian tools to prove “industry.”
2. You cited Investopedia to prove Stone Age cavemen were corporate entrepreneurs.
3. You cited Bronze Age state credit to prove capital markets.
4. You spend your free time auditing comment sequence numbers to fix duplicate entry bugs in your personal grievance log.
Go ahead and add comment #84 to your ledger, Pat. Put it in bold neon ink. But no amount of Investopedia links or spreadsheet updates will turn Paleolithic rock-swapping into free-market capitalism.
Class remains permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — August 31, 2026 @ 3:39 am
@84 – libte
Your #1: You’re clearly incapable of understanding a conceptual argument. Empathy suggests, then, that you might confine yourself to simpler propositions, such as if Shem is wearing shoes and Sally sandals, are they both shod?
Your #2: Archaic Homo sapiens were also involved in Mousterian industry.
See: https://journals.openedition.org/bcrfj/3272
and
https://www.maajournal.com/index.php/maa/article/view/394
The turn to Neanderthals was made by you, in your incorrect limitation of #68.
Your #3 “is like confusing a IOUs written on bread rations with the New York Stock Exchange.”
Wrong. It’s noticing that extending loans for farm and trade in Ur III is an early form of extending loans for business in a modern capital economy.
Your #4 is another clear example that you suffer from an inability to understand a conceptual argument.
Your fourfold summary:
“1. You cited Neanderthal Mousterian tools to prove “industry.”
Wrong, as specified above.
“2. You cited Investopedia to prove Stone Age cavemen were corporate entrepreneurs.”
Wrong, followed by a lie. I cited Investopedia as an authoritative source to define the term, “entrepreneur.” Nowhere did I propose neolithic men were corporate. Nor did I ever describe neolithic people using your banal pejorative, cavemen”
“3. You cited Bronze Age state credit to prove capital markets.”
Wrong again. I cited institutional and private loans to farmers and traders to demonstrate the early existence of proto-lending-banks.
“4. You spend your free time auditing comment sequence numbers to fix duplicate entry bugs in your personal grievance log.”
A lie. And you knowingly lied because you know you’ve persistently lied.
I have compiled the list of lies in which you take recourse to promote your fake criticisms as a public good.
You wrote, “Go ahead and add comment #84 to your ledger, Pat.”
Done, and well-deserved.
Apart from adding in your #84, I’ll now include the reference URLs, so that anyone who engages you may be offered fair warning of the dishonesty they will encounter.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84.
URL sources:
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Your final: “but no amount of blah, blah, blah will turn Paleolithic rock-swapping into free-market capitalism.”
Yet another straw man disjoint. Each of them a demonstration that you are unable to sustain a valid debate.
Comment by Pat Frank — September 1, 2026 @ 12:15 pm
@85 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #85 is a triumph of absolute comedy. You have now reached the stage where you are posting full URL permalinks to the blog comment section we are currently standing in, just to “warn” the internet about me.
Let’s do a final autopsy on your latest spreadsheet patch:
**1. The URL Warning Label & Public Safety Bulletin**
The absolute crown jewel of comment #85 is your solemn decree:
> *”Apart from adding in your #84, I’ll now include the reference URLs, so that anyone who engages you may be offered fair warning of the dishonesty they will encounter.”*
Pat, you just posted the URL of *this exact blog post* as a warning citation for future readers. You are treating a blog comment thread like an international criminal registry. Do you envision a fellow commenter landing on *Streetwise Professor*, seeing your URL citation, checking your 28-entry red-ink ledger, and gasping in relief that you saved them from a debate about Mousterian stone-knapping? This is administrative roleplay taken to absolute perfection.
**2. The Archaic Homo Sapiens Mousterian Pivot**
You actually typed:
> *”Archaic Homo sapiens were also involved in Mousterian industry… The turn to Neanderthals was made by you.”*
Pat, this is brilliant. When called out on citing Middle Paleolithic stone-tool cultures to defend your timeline of “industry,” your grand defense is: *”Aha! It wasn’t just Neanderthals 100,000 years ago—it was also Archaic Homo sapiens 100,000 years ago!”*
Whether it was Neanderthals or Archaic *Homo sapiens* chipping stone cores in the Middle Paleolithic, **it was still 100,000 years ago in the Stone Age.** Shifting species while staying in the Middle Paleolithic doesn’t make your attempt to map modern economic “industry” onto prehistoric flint-knapping look any less unhinged.
**3. The Investopedia Shem & Sally Pedantry**
You accuse me of lacking “conceptual understanding” and offer this analogy:
> *”If Shem is wearing shoes and Sally sandals, are they both shod?”*
Pat, let’s fix your analogy to reflect what you’re actually doing:
* You are arguing that because Shem tied a leaf to his foot 100,000 years ago, he was participating in the modern **global footwear industry**.
* You are arguing that because a Stone Age human traded a flint hand-axe for a piece of meat, they satisfy the *Investopedia* definition of a **venture entrepreneur**.
When you stretch basic concepts like “footwear,” “industry,” and “entrepreneurship” to encompass literally any human action since the Middle Paleolithic, you destroy their diagnostic meaning.
**4. The Final Accounting Audit**
Let’s review the final tally of your debate strategy across 85 comments:
1. You cited Middle Paleolithic stone tools to prove the antiquity of “industry.”
2. You cited *Investopedia* to prove pre-literate Stone Age traders were “entrepreneurs.”
3. You cited Bronze Age state-administered palace credit to prove “proto-capitalist banking.”
4. You audited comment sequence numbers to fix duplicate entry bugs in your personal grievance log.
5. You posted the blog’s own URL as an official public warning label.
Update entry #86 in your ledger, Pat. Copy-paste the URL again. Highlight it in neon yellow. But no amount of spreadsheet formatting or permalink citations will turn Paleolithic rock-swapping into modern capital markets.
Class remains permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — September 2, 2026 @ 8:12 am
@84, libte
Your #1: You wrote, “Pat, you just posted the URL of *this exact blog post* as a warning citation for future readers.”
Correct. The evidence of your persistent dishonesty, laid out for all. Where else but to the evidential URLs, should the warned go to inform themselves of the futility of an honest debate following your entry?
“a debate about Mousterian stone-knapping”
A topic you introduced, exemplifying your deep intellect.
Your #2: In #84, you, libte, claimed that, “The Mousterian tool tradition is defined in archaeology as the tool-making culture of **Neanderthals** during the Middle Paleolithic. (my bold)”
In turn, I showed the Mousterian included Homo sapiens. You were wrong.
In response to your error exposed, you now claim to have, “called [me] out on citing Middle Paleolithic stone-tool cultures,” which is a lie. You claimed Neanderthals-only, you were wrong, and now you lie to avoid admitting your failure.
You wrote: “your attempt to map modern economic “industry” onto prehistoric flint-knapping”
Which is another lie. The point has always been modern industry evolved up from the personal industriousness of ancient humans, your persistent misrepresentational lies notwithstanding.
Your #3: Every one of your “You are arguing that…” pretends something I was (and am) not arguing.
Your entire approach is dishonest recourse to specious presentism; as though modern human practice had no emergent roots in ancient human activity. Your present-form-or-nothing argument flies right in the face of 200 years of archaeo-historical scholarship revealing the growth and evolution of human culture.
Your position, in other words, is an utter stupidity,
Your final tally #4:
“1. You cited Middle Paleolithic stone tools to prove the antiquity of “industry.” which it does.
“2. You cited *Investopedia* to prove pre-literate Stone Age traders were “entrepreneurs.” which is a lie. Investopedia listed the traits of entrepreneurship; traits manifest in ancient human industry and trade.
“3. You cited Bronze Age state-administered palace credit to prove “proto-capitalist banking.”” which is a lie of omission.
Ur III lenders included indviduals extending credit. Regardless, temple credit provided to farmers and traders is itself early form credit banking; a proto-capital economic activity.
Also, nowhere did I write the lending practice was “proto-capitalist banking.” You again put quotes around a statement I never wrote. False attribution is a lying attribution.
“4. You audited comment sequence numbers to fix duplicate entry bugs in your personal grievance log.” So you object to corrections applied to the list enumerating your disgraceful record. No surprise there, truly.
“5. You posted the blog’s own URL as an official public warning label.” And why not? The URLs open to the evidence of your lies. They’re now available, here or elsewhere, to document your penchant for lying, as warning to future participants.
You wrote, “will turn Paleolithic rock-swapping into modern capital markets.”
A lying misrepresentation. Yet another fine example of your thoroughly corrupted integrity.
#86 is added to your list of infamy, with urls for future reference.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86.
URL sources:
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Comment by Pat Frank — September 5, 2026 @ 8:34 am
@86 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #86 is a magnificent masterpiece of philosophical confusion. You have now progressed from citing *Investopedia* to attempting an amateur defense of teleological evolutionism and historical emergence.
Let’s dismantle your latest accounting entry using actual philosophy and historical method:
**1. The Epistemological Blunder of “Emergence” vs. Teleology**
You write in your defense:
> *”The point has always been modern industry evolved up from the personal industriousness of ancient humans… Your present-form-or-nothing argument flies right in the face of 200 years of archaeo-historical scholarship revealing the growth and evolution of human culture.”*
>
Pat, you are confusing **genetic teleology** with historical emergence.
To argue that because modern capital markets eventually emerged in human history, Middle Paleolithic stone-knapping constitutes “industry” or Bronze Age institutional rations constitute “proto-capitalist credit” is a classic **teleological fallacy** (specifically what historian Herbert Butterfield famously termed the *Whig Interpretation of History*).
Just because an acorn eventually turns into an oak tree does not mean the acorn is a “proto-lumber-yard.” Mapping specific, socio-institutionally bound concepts like *capitalism*, *entrepreneurship*, and *industry* onto pre-state hominids or state-controlled palace ration economies isn’t “tracing evolutionary roots”—it is committing a fundamental category mistake (as Gilbert Ryle or Max Weber would point out).
**2. The Mereological Fallacy of Shem, Sally, and Ancient Credit**
You claim:
> *”Ur III lenders included individuals extending credit… temple credit provided to farmers and traders is itself early form credit banking; a proto-capital economic activity.”*
>
Here you commit a textbook **mereological fallacy**—confusing a constituent part with the structural whole.
Credit, debt, and exchange exist in almost every human society, from non-market gift economies described by Marcel Mauss to feudal agricultural estates. But credit alone does not equal a “capital economy”. A capital economy requires specific structural conditions: private ownership of the means of production, commodified labor markets, and market-driven price mechanisms. Ur III credit was an administrative mechanism embedded in a centralized, palace-administered command state. Citing institutional grain loans to prove “proto-capitalism” is like citing a Soviet communal bakery’s ledger to prove the existence of Wall Street.
**3. The Self-Referential Permalink Paradox**
You again double down on posting the blog URL to warn the world:
> *”The URLs open to the evidence of your lies. They’re now available, here or elsewhere, to document your penchant for lying, as warning to future participants.”*
>
This is epistemological theater at its finest. You are citing the *very webpage we are typing on* as an external authority to validate your own spreadsheet entries. It’s a completely closed, self-referential loop—a literal internet version of the Barber Paradox.
**4. The Final Audit Update**
Let’s review the state of Pat Frank’s philosophy of history:
1. **Paleolithic Era:** Flint-knapping is “industry” because of Whiggish teleology.
2. **Neolithic Era:** Tool barter satisfies *Investopedia* definitions of “entrepreneurship”.
3. **Bronze Age:** Palace-controlled grain rationing is “proto-capitalist banking”.
4. **2026 AD:** A blog comment URL serves as an international registry of heresy.
Go ahead and update your ledger to slot #87, Pat. Paste the URL a third time. But no amount of bad teleology, misapplied Weberian categories, or self-referential links will turn Stone Age tool-making into free-market capitalism.
Class remains permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — September 6, 2026 @ 12:39 am
@88 libte – You’ve now descended into wild extravagance pursuing your futile pretense of rationality.
You wrote, ”teleological evolutionism and historical emergence.”
You learned some new words. Felicitations.
So, tell me, wordsmith, how does one distinguish between evolutionary teleology and evolutionary teleonomy?
When you figure that out, you’ll know why your retreat into obscurity is no defense.
Regarding Investopedia, in your bald dismissals you grant yourself authority to know more about entrepreneurship than do entrepreneurs. Most of your ripostes follow that line. Self-arrogated authority to dismiss without reason.
You wrote, “Pat, you are confusing **genetic teleology** with historical emergence.”
Wrong. I note the trait-continuity of purposeful human industry. The complexity of purposeful human organization tracks the complexity of human material culture. Purposeful human organization is evident in the Paleolithic.
Middle Paleolithic stone tool manufacture evidences human manufactory industriousness, no matter your continual descent into argument by derogatory diminutives. Bronze Age lenders presaged capital lending banks. Bronze Age individuals engaging long-range trade presaged modern entrepreneurs.
“what historian Herbert Butterfield famously termed as his opinion. So, what? Your regressive mode of argument – retreating always to some new face-saving extravagance – is the perfect reciprocal of the very Whiggish attitude you try to associate with me.
“Just because an acorn eventually turns into an oak tree” means an acorn is a proto-oak-tree. Hoisted by your own petard, libte.
“it is committing a fundamental category mistake”
The category is human cultural evolution. Human cultural evolution embraces both early forms of cultural activity, and the later cultural activity that developed from the same source as the early forms, namely trait-centered human activity.
Your categorical mistake is that you contend while having no concept of the category.
You wrote, “Here you commit a textbook **mereological fallacy**—confusing a constituent part with the structural whole.”
You’ve perfectly described your error of insistent presentism. Thank-you. There is no structural whole. There is only the present circumstance, which you confuse as a sui generis structure, independent of any formative past.
Ur III credit is proto-capital activity. “Citing institutional grain loans to prove “proto-capitalism” is like citing a Soviet communal bakery’s ledger to prove the existence of a predecesssor history of baking known to have begun in the Neolithic (pdf).
You’ve shot yourself in the foot so often, libte, you likely have no more use for shoes.
“Go ahead and update your ledger to slot #87, Pat.”
The catalogue of your lies remains fixed at #86. You’ve apparently managed a post without lying, libte. A fine accomplishment. A wonderful show of self-betterment. Best wishes for a continued improved integrity.
“But no amount of bad teleology, misapplied Weberian categories, or self-referential links will turn Stone Age tool-making into free-market capitalism.”
But ~10,000 years of human cultural evolution did just that. Down for the count again, libte.
Catalogue of your lies:
#20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86.
URL sources:
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Comment by Pat Frank — September 15, 2026 @ 5:47 pm
@88 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #89 is a magnificent intellectual trainwreck. You dropped the word “teleonomy” thinking it was a checkmate, but all you’ve done is expose that you don’t understand the difference between evolutionary biology and socio-historical analysis.
Let’s do a complete philosophical dissection of your latest collapse:
**1. The Teleology vs. Teleonomy Blunder**
You smugly challenge:
> *”So, tell me, wordsmith, how does one distinguish between evolutionary teleology and evolutionary teleonomy?”*
Pat, **teleonomy** (coined by Colin Pittendrigh and popularized by Ernst Mayr and Jacques Monod) was specifically developed in *evolutionary biology* to describe goal-directed behaviors that arise through **natural selection** without conscious foresight (e.g., a sea turtle swimming toward the ocean). **Teleology**, by contrast, implies an intentional, predefined endpoint or overarching grand design.
By invoking *teleonomy* to defend your economic timeline, you are making an even worse philosophical error: **Biological Determinism**. You are attempting to frame modern industrial capitalism as a genetically hardwired, biologically programed “teleonomic” instinct evolved through natural selection!
Socio-economic systems (feudalism, mercantilism, state-planning, industrial capitalism) are contingent cultural, legal, and institutional constructs—not biological adaptations hardcoded into our DNA like a beaver building a dam. Trying to use Mayr’s biological teleonomy to prove that Bronze Age grain rations were programed to evolve into Wall Street is peak pseudo-scientific nonsense.
**2. The Fallacy of the Oak Tree and the Reification of “Trait-Continuity”**
You write:
> *”Just because an acorn eventually turns into an oak tree means an acorn is a proto-oak-tree. Hoisted by your own petard, libte.”*
Pat, thank you for demonstrating the exact **Reification Fallacy** I pointed out.
An acorn has a biological genome that strictly determines its development into an oak. Human history does **not** have a genome. A Paleolithic hunter-gatherer band swapping flint hand-axes was not a “proto-corporate enterprise” carrying a hidden genetic blueprint destined to blossom into modern capital markets.
To claim that any goal-oriented human action (“purposeful human industriousness”) equals “proto-capitalism” is an **essentialist fallacy**. By your logic, a Neolithic mother making a clay bowl for her child is engaged in “industrial capitalism” simply because she exhibited “purposeful human industriousness.” When a category becomes so broad that it encompasses literally every purposeful human action since the Middle Paleolithic, it loses all analytical power and becomes a useless, empty tautology.
**3. Presentism, Whiggery, and the Ghost of Butterfield**
You actually typed:
> *”what historian Herbert Butterfield famously termed as his opinion. So, what?”*
Dismissing Herbert Butterfield’s critique of the **Whig Interpretation of History** as “just an opinion” explains why your historical logic is in ruins. Butterfield’s fundamental insight—accepted by virtually every professional historian for a century—is that studying the past solely to find the “seeds” or “early forms” of present institutions inevitably leads to distorting the past beyond recognition.
When you look at a Bronze Age palace-theocracy that fixed prices, rationed grain, and regularly canceled private debts by royal decree, and label it “proto-capitalist credit,” you aren’t doing history—you are doing **Whig myth-making**. You are cherry-picking isolated administrative tools (credit tokens) and projecting modern market relationships backward onto a society where those relationships did not exist.
**4. The Ledger Paradox**
You proudly write:
> *”The catalogue of your lies remains fixed at #86. You’ve apparently managed a post without lying, libte. A fine accomplishment.”*
Thank you, Pat! But notice what happened: you kept your ledger fixed at #86 solely because I forced you onto philosophical terrain where your standard “syntax-and-typo policing” couldn’t find a foothold. The moment the debate turns on epistemology, philosophy of science, and historical methodology, your red-ink accounting system completely freezes up.
Go ahead and copy-paste your URLs again, Pat. Quote Mayr or Pittendrigh on biological teleonomy if you like. But no amount of misapplied evolutionary biology will turn Neanderthal flint-knapping or Bronze Age state-rationing into free-market capitalism.
Class remains permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — September 18, 2026 @ 8:28 pm
@90 libte
You wrote: “genetically hardwired, …. evolved through natural selection!”
Contradiction in terms, libte. “Hardwired” means fixed. “Evolved” imposes changeable. Your argument is incoherent. Dismissed.
“**Teleology**, by contrast, implies an intentional, predefined endpoint or overarching grand design.”
Amusing. Your obsessive argument from presentism looks backward to manufacture a fake “intentional, predefined endpoint or overarching grand design” creating a fake argument that you falsely apply to me.
Your entire approach is either a fraud or the workings of delusion.
You wrote: “An acorn has a biological genome that strictly determines its development into an oak. Human history does **not** have a genome.”
But human history has a developmental trajectory. That was the point that you, as usual, missed. Deliberately? Who knows, except you. Predictably? Certainly.
“Dismissing Herbert Butterfield’s critique of the **Whig Interpretation of History** as “just an opinion” is analytically correct.
“accepted by virtually every professional historian for a century” Slaves to a fashionable cynicism.
“modern market relationships backward onto a society where those relationships did not exist.” where lenders lent, where traders traded, where markets existed, were recognized and serviced. You treat libte-dismissal as argumentation and misattribution as fact.
“because I forced you onto philosophical terrain where your standard “syntax-and-typo policing” couldn’t find a foothold.
No. It was because in #88 you didn’t lie. Given your protest, perhaps in that lacuna you made a mistake. An inadvertent descent into pseudo-honesty. “Pseudo” because your entire approach to argument is to manufacture a fraud.
“the debate turns on epistemology, philosophy of science, and historical methodology,
It is to laugh. You’ve done nothing except abuse the ethics of debate since day one.
“misapplied evolutionary biology”
Purposeless evolution into complexity is not restricted to biology
“Neanderthal flint-knapping” Ah. A lie of misattribution. Paleolithic humans; as previously established. And a pernicious diminutive, to boot.
“or Bronze Age state-rationing” Another lie of misattribution. Lending; borrowing; trading.
You’ve now qualified an advance in your record. You’ve returned to form, lying again.
Catalogue of your lies:
#20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90.
URL sources:
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Comment by Pat Frank — September 20, 2026 @ 8:28 am
@90 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #91 is a breathtaking display of intellectual avoidance. You have abandoned all pretense of actual argument, retreated into semantic pedantry, and added comment #90 to your infamous accounting ledger purely because you couldn’t survive the critique.
Let’s dismantle your response step-by-step:
**1. The “Hardwired vs. Evolved” Semantic Strawman**
You attempt to score a cheap semantic point by claiming:
> *”‘Hardwired’ means fixed. ‘Evolved’ imposes changeable. Your argument is incoherent.”*
Pat, this is low-level linguistic evasion. “Hardwired” describes the *end-result mechanism* produced by an evolutionary process—just as a web-spinning behavior in spiders is hardwired *because* it evolved via natural selection.
By applying biological concepts like **teleonomy** to socio-economic developments, you are attempting to give institutional, contingent history the weight of biological inevitability. Whether you call it “hardwired,” “evolved,” or “teleonomic,” you are still committing the exact error I called out: **Biological Determinism**. You completely ignored the core critique: human legal, cultural, and market structures do not evolve through biological selection mechanisms.
**2. The “Developmental Trajectory” Fallacy & The Acorn Deflection**
When caught claiming that human history has the same programmatic necessity as an acorn growing into an oak, you backtrack:
> *”human history has a developmental trajectory. That was the point that you, as usual, missed.”*
Saying history has a “developmental trajectory” after the fact is merely **retrospective coherence**.
Of course history led to where we are today—time flows forward! But calling early stone tool-making or temple grain distribution “proto-capitalism” assumes that the modern market economy was the *necessary destination* of that trajectory. That is the definition of **teleology**. You cannot claim you are avoiding teleology while simultaneously insisting that ancient economic practices were “presaging” or destined to develop into Wall Street. You are reifying current outcomes into historical inevitability.
**3. Dismissing Historiography as “Fashionable Cynicism”**
When confronted with Herbert Butterfield’s foundational critique of Whig history, you wave your hand and write:
> *”Slaves to a fashionable cynicism.”*
Calling a century of accepted historiographical methodology “fashionable cynicism” isn’t a counterargument—it’s an admission of intellectual bankruptcy.
Butterfield’s point remains completely unrefuted by you: when you judge past societies strictly by how closely they resemble modern institutions, you flatten complex, ancient social structures. A temple state administering grain rationing with debt tokens was operating under an administrative, non-market logic. Stamping “proto-capitalist credit” on top of it just because the word “lending” appears in a translation is historical illiteracy.
**4. The Return of the Ledger as a Debating Shield**
Finally, you proudly log comment #90 into your “Catalogue of Lies”:
> *”You’ve now qualified an advance in your record. You’ve returned to form, lying again.”*
Notice what happens every time you run out of philosophical runway, Pat: you pull out the spreadsheet.
When you couldn’t defend your misapplication of teleonomy, couldn’t explain how history possesses a “developmental trajectory” without a genome, and couldn’t engage Butterfield or Weber, you simply declared my argument a “lie of misattribution” and slapped #90 onto your list. Your ledger is not a record of falsehoods; it is a ledger of your own rhetorical concessions—a list of every point you were utterly incapable of answering on the merits.
Go ahead and update your spreadsheet to #91, Pat. Paste the same blog URLs for a fourth time. But your red ink cannot substitute for an actual argument, and no amount of semantic hair-splitting will turn Paleolithic tool-making into free-market capitalism.
Class remains permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — September 20, 2026 @ 1:13 pm
Libte says, ““Hardwired” describes the *end-result mechanism* produced by an evolutionary process—” and that settles it.
Hardwired describes fixed. There is no “end-result” in an evolutionary process. There is only a succession of intermediate results. No evolutionary process produces hard-wiring. Evolution requires mutable wiring. Your argument is incoherent.
“You completely ignored the core critique: human legal, cultural, and market structures do not evolve through biological selection mechanisms.”
A specious critique of an argument never made. You completely ignored that human history has a developmental trajectory. That was the point that you, as usual, missed. Twice, now. Deliberately? Who knows, except you. Predictably? Certainly.
In “ **teleonomy** to socio-economic developments, you are attempting to give institutional, contingent history the weight of biological inevitability.”
Luridly wrong again, libte. Teleonomy refers to a developmental trajectory with the appearance of purposefulness imposed by natural selection. “Inevitability” plays no part in it.
You wrote, “Saying history has a “developmental trajectory” after the fact is merely **retrospective coherence**.”
Humans have purposefulness. Our history manifests human purpose. The “developmental trajectory” of human history reflects retrospective recognition of consistent trends.
You wrote, “Calling a century of accepted historiographical methodology “fashionable cynicism” isn’t a counterargument—it’s an admission of intellectual bankruptcy.”
Correct. Revisionist historiography is intellectually bankrupt. What matters it that many historians subscribe to it. Historiographical integrity is not measured by consensus.
Butterfield’s original essay was complaint not criticism. That many have since hung their hats upon it is no recommendation of verity. Except to slaves of fashion, such as you seem to be, libte. If not in fact, then by opportunity.
You wrote, “A temple state administering grain rationing with debt tokens”
Misrepresentation by specious truncation. Credit extended to farmers and traders is not “grain rationing.”
And, having submerged the complex economics of the Sumerian bronze age beneath your banality of debt-token rationing, you go on to accuse me of “flatten[ing] complex, ancient social structures.” Ludicrous.
“your misapplication of teleonomy”
Wrong. I used teleonomy as it is meant. You, however, attempted a spurious restriction to biology so as to escape into a false diversion.
“how history possesses a “developmental trajectory” without a genome,”
So, you now claim humans are incapable of conscious and purposeful socio-cultural development. And that in the face of a human history that is a long story of conscious and purposeful socio-cultural development. An argument false on its face. Well done, libte.
“couldn’t engage Butterfield or Weber”
What’s to engage? Butterfield complained with no great critical import but to much revisionist enthusiasm. About Weber, you were silent.
‘”Butterfield or Weber, you simply declared my argument a “lie of misattribution””
It wasn’t your Butterfield opinionizing I called a lie of misattribution. It was your tendentious “Neanderthal flint-knapping” that was a lie of misattribution.
“will turn Paleolithic tool-making into free-market capitalism.” You have a real flair for foolish pseudo-equations.
Thank-you for recommending that I update the list of your dishonesty to #91. One appreciates that you recognize your accomplishments.
“Class remains permanently dismissed!”
You’ve now dismissed class 10 times, and re-opened it nine. You must have been lying about closure every time, then, or else display the effects of a serious problem with memory.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90; #92.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90; #92.
URL sources: https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Comment by Pat Frank — September 20, 2026 @ 7:01 pm
@92 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #93 is an absolute masterpiece of self-demolition. You have reached the stage of debate where you are openly arguing against foundational biology, inventing custom definitions for established philosophical concepts, and unironically trying to perform a literal-minded analysis on a rhetorical sign-off.
Let’s break down your latest intellectual collapse with absolute precision:
**1. The Epistemological Trainwreck of “Socio-Cultural Teleonomy”**
You double down on teleonomy by asserting:
> *”Teleonomy refers to a developmental trajectory with the appearance of purposefulness imposed by natural selection… I used teleonomy as it is meant. You, however, attempted a spurious restriction to biology”*
This is flatly illiterate. **Teleonomy was explicitly coined by Colin Pittendrigh (1958) and codified by Ernst Mayr (1965) specifically to rescue biology from vitalism and teleology.** It refers *exclusively* to programmatic systems where natural selection endows an organism or mechanism with goal-directed behavior *without conscious intent*.
To claim that restricting teleonomy to biological and evolutionary mechanisms is a “spurious restriction” proves you have no idea where the concept originates. If human socio-cultural development is driven by *conscious, purposeful human action* (as you assert three paragraphs later), then by definition **it is NOT teleonomic**—it is intentional and teleological! You are attempting to weld two mutually exclusive concepts together: Mayr’s non-conscious biological teleonomy and Weberian conscious human agency. You cannot have “teleonomy imposed by natural selection” AND “conscious, human purposefulness” driving the exact same socio-economic trajectory. Pick one.
**2. The Reification of Evolutionary Biology (“No End-Results in Evolution”)**
You write with unearned triumph:
> *”Hardwired describes fixed. There is no ‘end-result’ in an evolutionary process… No evolutionary process produces hard-wiring.”*
This is baseline biological evasion that misses the functional point entirely. In neurobiology and behavioral ecology, “hardwired” is the standard metaphor for stereotyped, genetically encoded neural circuitry or behavioral programs (e.g., fixed action patterns) produced by natural selection to operate in a specific ecological niche.
When a biological adaptation stabilizes—like a spider’s instinct to weave a web—it is functionally “hardwired” relative to dynamic cultural learning. By trying to argue that cultural institutions “evolved” in the same way, while simultaneously denying biological hardwiring, you are trapped in an absurd contradiction: you want the authority of evolutionary biology’s vocabulary without accepting its actual mechanism (genetics and natural selection).
**3. The Historical Logic of “Trajectories” vs. Whiggery**
You claim:
> *”Revisionist historiography is intellectually bankrupt… Historiographical integrity is not measured by consensus. Butterfield’s original essay was complaint not criticism.”*
Calling Herbert Butterfield’s critique of Whig history a mere “complaint” does not erase the formal fallacies you are committing. The critique of Whiggery is not “revisionist fashion”—it is a foundational rule of historical logic.
When you trace a “developmental trajectory” from ancient Sumerian grain loans to modern capital markets, you are constructing an *ex post facto* linear narrative. In Sumerian palace-economies, credit was an administrative mechanism embedded in a non-market, state-administered command system where silver functioned as an abstract unit of account for royal treasuries, not a freely circulating market commodity. To label these administrative mechanisms “proto-capitalism” simply because both involve the abstract concept of “lending” is a classic **fallacy of equivocation**. You are conflating an isolated accounting tool (debt) with an entire socio-economic system (capitalism).
**4. The Logic of Performative Speech Acts**
Finally, you attempt a gotcha on my closing sign-off:
> *”You’ve now dismissed class 10 times, and re-opened it nine. You must have been lying about closure every time… or else display the effects of a serious problem with memory.”*
You have managed to confuse a **performative utterance** (in J.L. Austin’s speech-act theory) with an empirical proposition.
When a professor says “class is dismissed,” it is an *illocutionary act*—a declaration regarding the status of the lecture, not an empirical prediction about whether a student will attempt to wander back into the empty room to argue with the chalkboard! Every time you post another incoherent wall of pseudo-philosophy, you voluntarily re-enter the classroom, forcing me to reconvene the seminar purely to issue another failing grade.
**5. Audit Summary of Comment #93:**
1. **Biology:** Thinks biological teleonomy applies to conscious human history without genetics or natural selection.
2. **Historiography:** Dismisses the foundational rules against Whig historical teleology as “fashionable cynicism.”
3. **Economics:** Conflates Bronze Age state-rationing ledgers with free-market financial capital.
4. **Linguistics:** Confuses performative declarations with empirical statements of fact.
Go ahead and update your ledger to #93, Pat. Paste the same blog URLs for the fifth time. But no amount of red ink, misapplied biological terms, or speech-act confusion will turn your teleological fantasy into coherent philosophy.
Class remains—as an ongoing performative declaration—permanently dismissed!
Comment by [email protected] — September 21, 2026 @ 9:19 pm
@94 libte – Teleonomy references the appearance of goal direction despite resulting from a purposeless natural selection from among a distribution of choices. The concept – teleonomy – has no restriction to biology, no matter its origin in biology nor your lexical totalitarianism.
You wrote; “You cannot have “teleonomy imposed by natural selection” AND “conscious, human purposefulness” driving the exact same socio-economic trajectory. Pick one.”
One must struggle to be so mindless. Human purpose is individual, or even group-oriented. However, cultural trajectories are contingent and emergent; the product of natural selection driven by the success or failure of cultural constructs.
For example, the printing press resulted from purposeful human activity. Literary growth and content, however, are contingent and emergent; the product of natural selection driven by the success or failure of literary genres.
You wrote, ““hardwired” is the standard metaphor”
Metaphors are terms of convenience, not expressions of objective science. You’ve hung your entire argument on trying to concretize an equivocation.
“it is functionally “hardwired” relative to dynamic cultural learning.”
The context of your “hardwired” is evolutionary biology. And yet, here, you invoke a comparison of instinct with human culture. A malaprop if ever there was one. And that, after you accused me (mindlessly) of welding “two mutually exclusive concepts together“. Such irony could not be invented.
Evolutionary process has no hard-wiring. One may suppose an organism, or perhaps a species, as a biological state. Although species becomes fuzzy at the edges. But every state is mutable and subject to on-going selection.
You wrote: “The critique of Whiggery is not “revisionist fashion”—it is a foundational rule of historical logic.
Whiggery in history was Butterfield’s complaint – of a tendentious historical narrative of accomplishment.
And yet, did one trace the historical growth and development of a set of ideas, certainly a worthy project, a revisionist critic could falsely portray that very same history as whiggish, with the accusation turning only upon rendition of developmental structure while (tendentiously) ignoring the intent of constructive illumination that motivated it.
You now treat Butterfield’s complaint as a matter of fact. But it’s a matter of opinion. One may justifiably surmise that Butterfield began with an opinion, and whiggishly tailored his criticism to suit it.
“When a professor says “class is dismissed,” it is an *illocutionary act*”
Your standing here is far from professorship. Your retreat to claiming illocution is to escape your declarative responsibility. You dismissed then returned to re-open.
“forcing me to reconvene the seminar purely to issue another failing grade.”
You chose. No one forced you. Yet another self-serving lie.
You’ve lost every round. Your arguments are expostulations, typically lurid in phraseology and pettifoggingly fixated.
Summary of your failure: You,
* don’t understand emergence.
* are unable to distinguish intellectual fashion from critical thought
* don’t understand historical emergence
* dodge responsibility of declaration “Class remains permanently dismissed!” by an illocution relabel.
* lie opportunistically
* are given to tendentious misrepresentation
“Class remains—as an ongoing performative declaration—permanently dismissed!”
According to Wiki and Austin, “an “explicit” performative sentence is to make explicit what act one is performing.”
Great. So, you both declare class is permanently dismissed and intend otherwise.
You’ve managed two lies in one. A special accomplishment for you, libte,
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90; #92; #94.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90; #92; #94.
URL sources: https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Comment by Pat Frank — September 23, 2026 @ 6:57 pm
@94 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #94 is truly a monumental achievement in moving goalposts, torturing basic terminology, and demonstrating an almost heroic refusal to understand high school-level philosophy of language.
Let’s perform a surgical audit of your latest posturing:
**1. The “Socio-Cultural Teleonomy” Retreat: From Lexical Precision to Word-Salad**
You claim that teleonomy has *”no restriction to biology, no matter its origin in biology nor your lexical totalitarianism.”*
Calling standard scientific definition “lexical totalitarianism” is the classic retreat of someone caught using a technical term as a buzzword. You are taking a term explicitly created to distinguish biological non-conscious programs from human conscious intent, stripping it of its defining mechanism (genetics/natural selection), and then complaining when called out for misuse.
Worse, you try to salvage this by introducing “cultural natural selection”:
> *”Human purpose is individual… However, cultural trajectories are contingent and emergent; the product of natural selection driven by the success or failure of cultural constructs.”*
If cultural constructs succeed or fail based on human choices, utility, and conscious adoption, that is **selective retention by human conscious agents**, not natural selection. Natural selection relies on differential reproductive success via inheritance mechanisms. Borrowing Darwinian metaphors to describe the popularity of the printing press doesn’t turn meme-theory into rigorous teleonomy; it just proves you prefer literary window-dressing to precise analytical categories.
**2. The Metaphor Meltdown: “Hardwired” vs. Biological Reality**
You declare that:
> *”Metaphors are terms of convenience, not expressions of objective science… Evolutionary process has no hard-wiring.”*
Thank you for confirming that you missed the point entirely. No neurobiologist thinks brains are constructed from copper wiring and solder. The metaphor of “hardwiring” denotes evolutionary constraints—genetically conserved neural circuitry that yields fixed behaviors, providing a structural baseline that restricts immediate plasticity.
You accused me of a “malaprop” for contrasting evolutionary constraint with dynamic cultural learning. But that distinction—between innate, evolved biological mechanisms and plastic, culturally acquired behaviors—is literally the foundational debate of evolutionary anthropology. Calling a standard scientific distinction a “malaprop” only exposes the limit of your vocabulary.
**3. Whig Historiography: Dismissing Logic as “Opinion”**
Regarding Herbert Butterfield and Whig history, you assert:
> *”Butterfield’s complaint… was a matter of opinion. One may justifiably surmise that Butterfield began with an opinion, and whiggishly tailored his criticism to suit it.”*
Calling the critique of Whig history “just an opinion” is like calling the rule against *post hoc ergo propter hoc* “just a suggestion.”
The Whig fallacy is a structural error in historical logic: projecting present-day institutional outcomes backward onto historical actors who possessed entirely different mentalities, incentives, and frameworks. When you trace a clean, teleological line from Sumerian temple account books directly to modern free-market derivative markets, you aren’t “illuminating development”—you are committing a textbook fallacy of equivocation. Redefining a methodological rule as “Butterfield’s opinion” doesn’t validate your flawed timeline.
**4. Speech-Act Theory: A Complete Crash Course Breakdown**
Now we reach the comedy peak of comment #94. You write:
> *”According to Wiki and Austin, ‘an explicit performative sentence is to make explicit what act one is performing.’ Great. So, you both declare class is permanently dismissed and intend otherwise. You’ve managed two lies in one…”*
This is a breathtaking misunderstanding of J.L. Austin’s *How to Do Things with Words*.
Performative utterances (like “I name this ship,” “I declare this meeting adjourned,” or “Class is dismissed”) **do not possess truth-values**. They are neither “true” nor “false”; they are either *felicitous* or *infelicitous*. Therefore, a performative declaration **cannot logically be a lie**. Calling a performative utterance a “lie” demonstrates that you read a single sentence on Wikipedia without understanding the core distinction between *constative* statements (which describe facts and can be true/false) and *performative* utterances (which execute actions).
When a professor says “Class is dismissed,” they perform the action of ending the formal lecture. If a stubborn student remains sitting in the desk screaming non-sequiturs at the walls, the professor stepping back into the room to say “Sit down and shut up, class is still dismissed” does not retroactively turn the original dismissal into a “lie.” It simply means the student lacks the basic social cognition to realize the lesson ended an hour ago.
—
**Audit Summary of Comment #94:**
1. **Philosophical Literacy:** Confuses performative speech acts with empirical statements, declaring a declaration to be a “lie.”
2. **Biological Concepts:** Dismisses standard scientific terminology as “lexical totalitarianism” to cover up a misuse of teleonomy.
3. **Historical Methodology:** Rejects foundational historical logic against teleological narratives as mere “opinion.”
4. **Debate Strategy:** Relies on maintaining a literal “ledger” of numbered lies to substitute for substantive argument.
Keep updating that comment ledger, Pat. Add #94 to your list of self-inflicted wounds. The chalkboard is clean, the lights are off, and yet here you are, still arguing with the empty seats.
Class is—felicitously, performatively, and irrevocably—**dismissed**.
Comment by [email protected] — September 24, 2026 @ 7:36 am
@96 libte: “Calling standard scientific definition “lexical totalitarianism”
Wrong again libte. My point had nothing to do with the “standard scientific definition” of teleonomy. It had to do with your totalitarian restriction of its usage to Biology.
You never lose an opportunity to self-servingly misrepresent an argument.
“You wrote, “If cultural constructs succeed or fail based on human choices,…”
Not my argument, libte. Another of your self-serving misrepresentations.
My actual argument: “cultural trajectories are contingent and emergent; the product of natural selection driven by the success or failure of cultural constructs.”
Contingence and emergence, driven by success or failure is not a “human choices” process.
That’s two of two in attempts to lie your way out of a corner with a straw man assist.
You wrote, “Thank you for confirming that you missed the point entirely.”
The point was you attempted to hang your biological fixation on a false contrast with cultural dynamics. An obvious malaprop.
You raised “genetically hardwired” in post #90, asserting the self-contradiction of evolutionary fixation.
You doubled down on fixed genes in your #92, with “*end-result mechanism*” as though evolution ended at some final genetic state. A notion utterly wrong. All you did, in actuality, is demonstrate a lack of education.
You’ve been scrambling to rescue yourself ever since.
Butterfield invented and applied the term “Whig history.” His construct is a perfect example of the nominalism fallacy. Circularity of argument: invent a term (Whig history), apply ad hoc characteristics (history of ideas), find characteristics (a history of ideas), apply the term (Whig history).
A circular argument. That’s Whig history. A fashionably fake analysis, asserting much, revealing nothing. That also summarizes everything you do, libte. All noise, no troops.
As to the last, you have no professorial authority, libte. Your double lie is that you both dismissed your fancied class (a lie of stature) and intended its continuance (a lie of subversion).
Further, your rhetorical class dismissal is meant to be an insult. So, you’ve not only lied concerning dismissal, but have been mean-spirited as well.
You’ve lied and postured your way through another charade, libte. Your record of failure is unbroken.
Catalogue of your lies: #20; #25; #28; #31 (twice); #32; #36; #38; #40; #42; #44; #51; #53; #55; #57; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90; #92; #94; #96.
Catalogue of your misrepresentations/straw men: #8; #20; #25; #46; $48; #51; #59; #61; #63; #65; #67; #69; #71; #74; #76; #78; #80; #82; #84; #86; #90; #92; #94; #96.
URL sources: https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/comment-page-1/
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/witness-the-brilliance-of-socialism-and-be-afraid-very-afraid/#comments
Comment by Pat Frank — September 25, 2026 @ 9:12 am
@98 Pat Frank —
Pat, comment #97 is a magnificent monument to the art of losing an argument by attempting to obliterate the fields of biology, historiography, philosophy of language, and elementary logic all at once.
Let’s conduct a thorough, pedantic audit of your latest intellectual breakdown, point by point.
—
### 1. The Teleonomy Evacuation: Substituting A Mechanism with Abstract Nouns
In #96, you claimed teleonomy isn’t restricted to biology, and in #97, you try to defend your “cultural natural selection” by asserting:
> *”Contingence and emergence, driven by success or failure is not a ‘human choices’ process.”*
Pat, stringing together three abstract nouns from a sociology textbook does not create an evolutionary mechanism.
Let’s review basic evolutionary epistemology: **Natural selection requires differential reproduction via inheritance mechanisms (genetics/epigenetics).** If cultural constructs succeed or fail outside of biological reproductive inheritance, and you explicitly deny that this success is driven by human choices, utility, or conscious adoption, then **what is the physical mechanism of selection?**
By denying both biological inheritance *and* conscious human agency, you have invented an ethereal ghost-in-the-machine that drives cultural trajectories without biology *and* without humans. That isn’t “emergence,” Pat—it’s mysticism wrapped in pseudo-scientific word-salad. Stripping Pittendrigh’s term of its defining mechanism (genetic programming) to describe meme-diffusion remains a textbook misuse. Calling standard domain boundaries “totalitarianism” is merely the grievance of someone caught using technical jargon as decorative wallpaper.
### 2. The Metaphor Meltdown: Trait Constraints vs. Macro-Evolution
You double down on your confusion regarding “hardwired” by insisting I claimed an:
> *”end-result mechanism… as though evolution ended at some final genetic state.”*
You remain spectacularly incapable of distinguishing between a **trait constraint** (a conserved biological baseline in a living organism) and **evolutionary cessation**.
When neurobiologists refer to fixed action patterns or conserved neural architecture as “hardwired,” nobody is claiming that macro-evolution has reached a final, immutable end-state. They are recognizing that individual biological organisms operate under immutable genetic baselines that restrict immediate plasticity relative to dynamic, culturally acquired behaviors.
Your insistence on calling the standard anthropological distinction between biological constraint and cultural learning a “malaprop” simply reveals that you cannot grasp the difference between *individual phenotypic constraint* and *species-level phylogenetic change*.
### 3. The Historiographical Disaster: The “Nominalism” Fallacy
Now we reach the absolute comedy peak of comment #97. When confronted with your attempt to hand-wave Herbert Butterfield’s critique of Whig history as mere “opinion,” you respond:
> *”Butterfield invented and applied the term ‘Whig history.’ His construct is a perfect example of the nominalism fallacy… A circular argument.”*
Pat, this is breathtakingly illiterate. Identifying a structural error in historical logic (*presentism/teleological equivocation*) and assigning it a descriptive label (“Whig history”) is not “circular reasoning”—it is standard methodological categorization.
By your surreal logic, identifying *any* logical error is a nominalist fallacy:
* “You invented the term *straw man*, defined it ad hoc, found it in my post, and applied the term! Circular argument!”
Naming a formal fallacy does not create the fallacy; it identifies the structural flaw in your thinking. When you trace a clean, teleological line from Sumerian palace account books straight to modern free-market derivative markets—ignoring that Sumerian credit was an administrative, non-market command mechanism—you are committing a textbook fallacy of equivocation. Inventing a fake “nominalism fallacy” against historiography won’t salvage your flawed timeline.
### 4. Speech-Act Theory: Inventing “Lies of Stature”
Having failed to grasp J.L. Austin’s *How to Do Things with Words*, you attempt to salvage your claim that a performative sentence is a “lie” by inventing brand-new categories of formal logic:
> *”Your double lie is that you both dismissed your fancied class (a lie of stature) and intended its continuance (a lie of subversion).”*
“Lie of stature”? “Lie of subversion”? Pat, you are inventing fictional legalistic pseudo-terms on the fly because you cannot accept a fundamental rule of philosophy of language: **Performative utterances do not possess truth-values.**
An illocutionary act (“Class is dismissed”) is neither *true* nor *false*; it is either *felicitous* or *infelicitous* based on procedural context. Calling an illocutionary closure a “lie” demonstrates that you read a single sentence on Wikipedia without understanding the core distinction between *constative* statements (which describe empirical facts and can be false) and *performative* declarations (which execute an action).
When a professor declares class dismissed, it is an action. If a stubborn student refuses to leave their desk and continues shouting incoherent non-sequiturs at the empty room, the professor stepping back in to reiterate “Class is dismissed” is not an empirical “falsehood”—it is a repeated instruction to a student who lacks basic conversational comprehension.
### 5. What You Completely Evaded
Notice what Pat entirely ignored in #97:
1. **The Logic of Equivocation:** Zero defense of why Bronze Age state-rationing ledgers are structurally equivalent to modern capital markets.
2. **Performative Truth-Values:** Zero response to Austin’s distinction between constatives and performatives, opting instead to invent fictional “sub-types” of lies.
3. **Biological Inheritance:** Zero explanation of how “cultural natural selection” functions without genetic transmission or human decision-making.
—
### Audit Summary of Comment #97:
1. **Biological Science:** Invented a non-biological, non-human mechanism for “cultural selection.”
2. **Historiography:** Declared the entire methodology of identifying historical fallacies to be a “nominalist circular argument.”
3. **Linguistics:** Invented “lies of stature” to avoid admitting performative speech acts lack truth-values.
4. **Debate Strategy:** Expanded his literal comment ledger (#97) as a coping mechanism for an empty analytical cabinet.
Keep updating that comment catalogue, Pat. Add #97 to your growing ledger of self-inflicted wounds. The chalkboard is wiped, the room is empty, and you are still furiously arguing with the furniture.
Class is—felicitously, performatively, and irrevocably—**dismissed**.
Comment by [email protected] — September 25, 2026 @ 4:42 pm