Why Taxation Cannot Be Avoided

Those who claim to be of a liberty-oriented bent tend to go on at some length, at times rather drearily so, about the evils of taxation.  Normatively they are correct, but their views on the matter tend to be errant in that they fail to see all sides of the positive reality in which we all exist.

For one thing, unless enough people were to refuse to pay, all the talk is pointless. But there's more; a whole lot more.

It behooves us to acknowledge that there are matters of positive reality that cannot be wished away with normative fantasies. The main reality relevant to all this is that of superorganization. When a group of people come together to act as a single body, they become very powerful when compared with the individual. The larger and better integrated the group, the more powerful it is. When properly managed and applied, and perhaps with a smidge of luck, the superorganism becomes a formidable entity against all people, including its own. Pay close attention to that point because it is very important.

Being human constructs, superorganisms become complexes of not just individual bodies, but of human motivations and incentives. Let us call this the "m-complex". It is basically the sumtotal of the motivations of those who make up the superorganism, usually massaged by those at the top. It is very powerful, and it is very human. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but perhaps the idea is made clear. We have on our hands something we could call "ultrahuman". It effectively acts as a single entity and it is by no means of necessity benevolent. Furthermore, it suffers from many, if not all of the failings of human individuals. They are feudalistic, clannish in nature, and THAT is where the trouble roots in terms of much hated taxation.

I once forwarded the notion of "lowest denominator" as one of the most significant dictating factors in human political affairs. He who will be the least constrained in his actions will be the most powerful, all else equal. Oftentimes, all else is not equal, so we cannot rely utterly on what I am about to describe, but it is a very good guideline in statistical terms regarding how things are likely to go between groups.

If, for example, group A is constrained not to involve civilians in warfare, but group B is not, in a war between the two group B holds a material advantage over A. A will not bomb B's cities, whereas B will unhesitatingly bomb those of A. We could go on with examples of how one group becomes more powerful than another, but perhaps the point is made clear.

So now to the point about taxation. Superorganizing costs. It costs lots. That is the cold, ugly truth of the matter. And if your clan does not keep up with the Joneses with respect to some set of basic capabilities, philosophical, political, economic, and military, you will be consumed by your unavoidably predatory neighbors.

This is an all-or-nothing deal. If so much as a single group retains a materially superior level of superorganizational capability, all other players must also retain theirs. Otherwise, the one who has retained their capacities, including and perhaps especially the m-complex, then rises above the rest in terms of its raw ability to dominate, and it WILL. This is human nature. We are predatory apes.

Why do you think the Soviets had to get the bomb? They were lowering themselves to the same denominator as America, Britain, and France for the sake of their survival. Israel stole the bomb for what is safe to assume are similar reasons.

We, the humans of planet earth in the time we call the "twenty first century" are of so wretched a condition in spite of our Teslas and iPhones and other fancy trappings, we are reduced to having to make the choice of acceding to taxation so that rival clans don't eat us, or risk being so eaten, either by the Other or even our own; those who run our side of the three-ring Cirque du Bullshit.

And of course the real kicker is that we cannot be certain of how real are those external threats. Are they? Or are they just more smoke being blown up our backsides? But if we decide to stand tall and refuse on mass scale the demands made by our own, the tax vampires, I suspect that the maybe phony baloney threats would suddenly become very real. Why? Because Theye are One. The rulers probably don't care whether they live in America, or London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Bumfuck... so long as they retain their exalted positions and enjoy all the highest advantages of material life as they hover, high above the rabble over whom they lord, mostly unbeknownst to the wad of the unwashed vulgar.

So you see, we are in a catch-22 of the grandest scale. If we stop paying taxes in numbers sufficient to alter the status quo nontrivially, something Theye would certainly be unwilling to tolerate, either we would fall prey to the external threats as our military and other presumably defensive institutions went dark for a lack of funding, or some other reaction would be concocted as a sap against the rebellion.

Theye are very powerful and they are endlessly covetous of their power. Theye are devious, very clever, very smart, very disciplined, endlessly treacherous, and are therefore very hard to overcome. Given our current state of technological capacity on the one hand, and our state of moral decay and rank ignorance, it may prove the case that Theye are now undefeatable. I don't know one way or the other, but I do know that we are in feces so deep, were the vulgar to awaken fully to their tenuous positions, I'd wager the suicide rate would go through the roof. That the common man doesn't pass his days in paralytic terror is testament to his capacity to turn his eyes away from reality, mostly on the softly spoken lies of his keepers.
There you have it.  Mr. Rock, meet Mr. Hardplace.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Trump May Have Overlooked An Option Regarding Fentanyl

During the cold war, the American "government" put the economic gronk on the Soviet Union in many ways in order to hamstring Russia's capacity to make practical advances in technology, including the ability to augment the quality and reliability of their "products", such as they may have been.

Among the strategies was the restriction on exporting certain material capabilities to the Soviets, constituting a technology embargo.  Silicon chips, for example, could not be sent into the Soviet Union, nor could any sort of computer or computer controlled machinery. Even manual machinery such as lathes made my Hardinge were part of the embargo.  

The manner and mechanism used to make such restrictions legally binding was to declare them as "munitions".  Just as rifles, artillery, explosives, tanks, aircraft, and ammo were restricted based on the fact that they were munitions, the selling of which would constitute aid and comfort to an enemy†, so it was declared for other technologies, the provision of which would expand an enemy's capacity to bring harm to American interests.

That ability remains intact, and my idea is to apply it to fentanyl.  Consider the devastating potential of the illicit forms of a drug with approximately 300 times the potency of morphine in the hands of an enemy who might balk at the idea of engaging America in direct military conflict, knowing that they would be crushed.  Fentanyl is an obvious candidate forf bringing America to a state of sufficient decay and chaos to allow its enemies to then control it from within with no immediately obvious ties to the enemy forces responsible.

This may be the reality we now face.  China is not an American ally.  The Meso-American and South American drug cartels are not American allies.  These are all enemies and they are all shipping large quantities of fentanyl into the United States.  The Drug Enforcement Agency estimates about 7 metric tons of fentanyl enter the United States every year.  At an assumed LD50 of .667 mg/kg, 7 metric tons of pure fentanyl would be enough to kill about 115 million people.  This, of course is idealized, the practical reality being likely very different due to factors such as losses in administration of the drug to vast populations in places such as cities.  The more practical likelihood is about 10% of that 6.8 tons is actual fentanyl, which is still 680 kg and enough to kill about ten million people, were it to be distributed in lethal dosages.  While this modified scenario greatly decreases concern for a chemical warfare strike on America, the possibility should not be dismissed quite completely because technologies advance daily and human conniving for the sake of political gain never ceases.  The combination of those two factors with the raw potency of pure fentanyl, not to mention its far more potent derivatives is the stuff of nightmares and must at least be held in mental reserve.

But all paranoid speculations aside, fentanyl is by all means proving a threat to American lives and to America's security.  The estimates of overdose deaths at this time is about 74,000 per year in America.  This figure appears to be on a plateau for now, but it is anyone's guess where it may go, though my hope is for a downward slope.  In any event, given the potential for use by an enemy as a weapon of mass destruction or as one of slow and steady decay, fentanyl could and perhaps ought to be classified as munitions.  This would open the door to a broader menu of possible responses to nations known to be supporting the manufacture, smuggling, and distribution of this chemical agent.  

Nations like China have been skating in terms of any consequences for their clear complicity in the illicit and illegal fentanyl trade.  Perhaps it is time to alter the cost-benefit dynamics for these enemies of the American people.  If we can classify a lathe as munitions, I hold little doubt we could do the same for a potent and readily lethal drug such as fentanyl.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.


† In other words, an act of treason.