1984 Or Brave New World?

When I was in high school, we were required to read both "1984" and "Brave New World".

When we were done, the teacher asked which of the two do we think most likely to make itself real. Most of my classmates felt 1984 was the likely candidate, whereas my answer was "both". Being the odd man out, the teacher demanded I defend my position. I'd come to the suspicion that our immediate future was to have the face of BNW, but that its black heart, which was precisely the same as that of 1984, would become less candy coated, and thereby more 1984-like, with time.

At the time I was unable to articulate why it would be so, but I believe my instincts have proven themselves correct over the decades since. The face has mutated from that of a bright future full of wonder, to that of a vacuously inane clown where the superficiality of life becomes caricatured in itself. This is reflected everywhere we turn in the outward behaviors of far too many young people these days. Huxley's depiction of the idiotic mantras of BNW's dopey "alphas" are made manifest in the meme culture that has arisen as one result of the network technology we now "enjoy".

The standards of assessment for what it considered knowledge is now so low as to leave me wondering at times how it is that the human world does not come flying apart, though we appear in some ways to come closer to it by the day.

The emphasis has run wildly away from the classic virtues of individual freedom, learnedness, mutual respect, honor, love, and self control, to that of utter self indulgence. The manifestations of this are everywhere made apparent, particularly on the network, which has become a major source of influence in the ways that young people come to see the world, and their places in it. Aided and abetted by "media" and the so-called "educational" system, all former senses of the world appear to be slipping away as the fog of what was once pure relativism has been transmogrified into what I will call the New Absolutism. This has taken place either by the wildest set of coincidences, unimaginable, or by some very clever artifice. It mirrors most perfectly the absolutism of our religious past, and against which it continues to rail and shriek to this day. Anyone failing to subscribe, subordinate, and prostrate themselves to the new Absolute Truth as doled out by the Oracles of Eternal Progressive Wisdom, is to be condemned for heresy. This is most literally the case now.

Could anyone of a now-older generation have imagined a time where "men" who swear that they are not homosexual, publicly proclaim, nay brag, that their girlfriend's "peg" them? If you do not know what that is, look it up. It's hilarious and miserably sad and pathetic all at once.

What passes for knowledge in what seems a vast horde of humanity, is something at which one can only marvel whilst shaking his head as if to wake himself from a goofy dream of killer klowns, soon the turn into a black nightmare.

As I suspected, the cancerous heart of this innerly rotten apple, has become ever more apparent in time, with the once nearly latent tyrants now having made their presence and position most painfully apparent to anyone taking but a moment to notice. In 1984-style, we are seeing a reversal of everything. Good is bad, evil is virtue, up is down, yet the candy-coating of BNW persists, even if it becomes more gossamer-like with each passing year.

It's the old stick-and-carrot act. People have been bent toward the weakness that arises through excessively indulgent self-centeredness and the pleasure seeking that arises most predictably therefrom. The ready availability of the most base forms of self-seeking, namely that of the sexual variety for example, is universal in the "west", with porn sites more popular than ever, acting as a primary source of indoctrination of the young. Make no mistake, I am not on a diatribe against sex - far from it. But when it is made a focus out of proportion such that other life considerations of equal import take a far back seat to it, it requires no feat of rocket surgery to figure out that something is not quite right in the world.

Concomitant with the carrot of strongly advocated self-worship and gratification, is the stick of ever more draconian results for those who fail to adopt the new orthodoxy of obedience to naked, bald-faced evil. Do not question anything, lest ye be stricken from Facebook and Twitter, heaven forbid!

And so in time, my suspicion that with the years we would see an ever expanded edging of encroachment upon the rights of the individual has come to pass and continues to wreck its way through the lives of every man on the planet, the exceptions representing a vanishingly small subpopulation. My perception of the tyrant's nature proved close enough to correct in that he cannot contain and control himself, such that he is no different from those over whom he presumes to lord, save in the dint of his having landed into some seat of power that enables his rot and corruption to be realized in ways the mean man will never know for himself. The tyrant is ill-disciplined in his apparently insatiable lust to exercise ever greater management authority over increasingly minuscule details of the lives of those over whom his tyranny reigns.

The question that arises is whether the tyrants, having perfected their system of domination, will be able to contain themselves over the longer term to the metes and bounds of prudence in the administration of that system. Or will they themselves fall to the perennial human failing of never being satisfied, thus creeping or even leaping over that hazily defined line that would give the now utterly cowed dullards cause to rebel? My suspicion is the latter, if left to their devices. But our technologies stand as the wildcard predicators in that question, and here I speak very specifically of artificial intelligence. If Theye (those in material social power) are smart, and I cannot with certainty attribute their successes thus far to intellect, versus pure determination, they would endeavor to cause the contrivance of an AI sufficient to the task of general, central governance. Were Theye to hand their prerogatives largely over to such a system, elevating it to the effective status and function of an oracle, they might be able to hold on to power indefinitely into the blue future.

The problem with tyrants has always been a lack of self-control in the respects to which I here refer. Having the correct measures programmed into a system which would then be trusted to maintain the proper balances between tyrannical interest and the boiling point of the proletariate, could become the near-guarantee of dominance with no foreseeable end.

Only time will tell, and we old geezers will likely not live to see the longer term outcomes. But it would be quite interesting to be a fly on the world's wall, witnessing how this all pans out over, say the coming century or two, assuming we don't send ourselves to hell in a nuclear fireball, the prospects of which have been recently revived from their former states of rest.

But if you defocus your gaze and zoom out to a broader view of things, the one thing that stands out in all this is the eternally immutable principle of change. Things always change, and so bearing that in mind, it is no wonder that that which we knew and accepted as right and proper is swept away in the currents of time. This may be the only real hope remaining to us: that the need for change is so embedded in the very fabric of our existences, even the most technologically enabled tyrannies must eventually transform, replacing themselves with... well, what exactly?

It seems I have wandered adrift from my original purpose... or have I? You decide.

Be well, be prosperous, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Mr. IQ, Meet Mr. MQ and Mr. SQ

The concept of IQ, or Intelligence Quotient is well known to many people as a measure of basic, innate human intelligence; the ability to dope out very basic patterns, essentially.  While there remains some controversy over the merits of the actual measurements used to arrive at the relevant numbers, the basic idea that there are differences in intellectual magnitude between individuals is well accepted across a broad cross section of the human population.

I would now like to introduce the idea of two more measures: The Moral Quotient (MQ), and the Smarts Quotient (SQ).  I would like to think of these as close analogs to the IQ assessment, only relating to a man's "moral intelligence", and that for his smarts, respectively.  The latter, of course, is as yet something of problematic, given that the body of human knowledge is so large.  This raises the question of for what shall we test?  Knowledge of physics?  Machining? Painting?  Farming?  Medicine?  Professional wrestling?  I would suggest that the useful bit in determining SQ would lie in establishing a method for calculating a normalized score for knowledge on any given narrowly defined body of knowledge such as the Principles of Proper Human Relations, for example.  

As for MQ, that is a slightly different issue in that it is a far narrower channel.  We must obviously begin by choosing the standard of measure.  There are many who would complain and wave their hands in dire and urgent warning that such a standard could never be objective, nor could everyone agree upon it.  To the first objection I say "nonsense!"  The Principles of Proper Human Relations are a very likely candidate for such a standard, seeing as they recognize the inherent sovereignty of the individual whose rights are sacrosanct, save when one is committing a crime against one or more of his fellows.  As for the wailing and the gnashing of teeth over the claim that not everyone would stand in agreement with such a standard, of course they would not, and that it matters no whit.  The hard core criminal objects to the standards of criminal Law.  After all, who would expect him to cheer for and accept and abide by it?  He is, after all, a criminal.  Does anyone of sound mind, reason, and moral makeup care whether criminals object?  No.

In an analogous vein, those whose moral senses are objectively and demonstrably failed cannot be taken seriously as to their opinions on such matters.  Would anyone wish to give heed to the opinions of a pederast; of one who condones the violation of the rights of some human beings?  Methinks not.  And so we can readily see that not all opinions on the matter are valid, meaning that the indigestion of such people are inconsequential to the issue and may be validly set aside.

Imagine being able to measure a man's MQ and SQ and have the numbers publicly available of those people seeking to run for public office.  If the measures were reliably and predictably accurate, it could go a long way toward dissuading the wanker wannabe tyrants from bothering in the first place, and failing that, providing a trustworthy starting point from which voters could make their choices.

It is just an idea, but I thought I would toss it out there to give you all something about which to think.  Imagine making it a requirement that all candidates for any government position take such tests, as well as that of basic personality types.  Naturally, the viability of such things would necessarily require the honest and competent administration of such assessments, but if we assume it for conversation's sake, perhaps it might give voters and edge against the scoundrels.

That's it for now.  Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

The Means Of Production

Socialism/communism and all other similar authoritarian collectivists paradigms are the philosophies and attitudes of bitterness and capitulation before the challenges of life.  They found upon a mindset that surrenders to those challenges without so much as the thought of meeting them head-on. They are the philosophies of defeated men.

So absurd and cowardly are these ridiculous notions that it stultifies the intelligent man's mind to consider the manner and shocking degree to which these architectures of collapse fail.  How is it possible that human beings are able to accept, much less advocate for, arrangements so bereft of understanding of basic human nature, not to mention basic moral sense?

Marx inanely brayed and bloviated about seizing the means of production, and idiotic idea on its face, given the bankrupt assumptions upon which his ranting polemic was based.  To this day, his low-IQ adherents continue to parrot Marx's mantra of bitter idiocy, essentially calling for the violent expropriation of private property, allegedly to be redistributed to "the people".  This continuing faith to Marxist stoogery represents a monumental failure of creative thought - of capitulation to the challenges of life such that rather than meeting them head-on, such people believe we should devolve and degenerate into robbery for the sake of distributing the petty wealth of the world to those "in need" such that everyone on the planet may be equal.  Sure, equally poor.  Equally miserable.  Equally enslaved.

The other failure to which this mindset of drooling stupidity gives rise is that of paying attention.  While the "left" were grinding on with the endlessly repetitious repines about seizing the means of production, the people who have been actually solving the world's problems through inventive entrepreneurship have brought to the common man the first generations of digital production instrumentalities that actually put those means into the hamds of pretty well anyone who wants it.

There was no need for blood-soaked revolution, but only the freedom of individual people to come together and use their brains as more than mere hat racks.  The 3D printer is slowly revolutionizing manufacturing such that anyone with ten square feet of space and a modicum of creative intelligence and the diligence to follow and idea to its end is now capable of going into manufacturing, whether on a small scale, large, or anything in between.  We no longer have to steal what is in our neighbors' houses in order to make our ways in the world in good prosperity and, presumably, happiness and freedom.  Advances in technology are enabling that which was heretofore not possible for want of instrumentality.

But have the lefties given up on their demands to eliminate all private property and to steal the means of production from those who built those means with their own diligent effort?  No.  They have, in fact redoubled their demands several times over with ever greater stridency and threats to those who oppose them.  This tells me that their agenda has nothing whatsoever to do with freeing men from the shackles of evil capitalist overlords.  Very much the oppoiste, their agenda is all about grabbing power into their own grubby mitts to the exclusion of all others.  In other words, it's the same old pig with a different color of lipstick.

The means of production  are well within the reach of any man willing to do what it takes to acquire them in morally just ways.  We have no remaining excuse fro advocating widespread destruction, theft, and murder as means to the purportedly just end of "equality".  Work your minwage joh if you must, saving those pennies for however long it may take until you have enough to purchase the machines you need to produce the products and services you imagine.  At that point, the rest is up to the quality of your ideas in the context of the markets and the times.  There are no guarantees, but there are opportunities just about anywhere one may care to look.

So to the Marxists and their manifold ilk I say this: if what you purport as your true intentions are in fact as you claim, then cut your revolutionary talk of overthrowing the evil capitalist world and get on board with the objective reality that now stares you in your kissers.   Opportunity is pretty well guaranteed for anyone seeking it.  Success, on the other hand, is not.  Such is the nature of actual freedom, vis-à-vis the nature of the absurd fantasy of the authoritarian collectivist.

If you want to seize the means of production, you need go no further than you keyboard.  Amazon and a thousand other vendors carry the full spectrum of instrumentalities at low low K-Mart prices.  So relax, forget about violence pursuant to crimes you once thought noble, have a beer, see friends rather than enemies in your hard-working fellows, and join in the animating game.  The only reason not to is fear, and the box awaits us all over the long horizon, so why give in to that most counterproductive of emotions?

It's a big pie and it gets bigger by the day.  Go grab yourself a slice, but without committing the very crimes against which so many rightfully complain.  Don't become that which you claim to deplore.  Just imagine how satisfying a feeling it is to make your own way without riding the backs of others in criminal fashion.  Until you've experienced it, you cannot imagine what it is like - the sheer joy of it.  There is no need to rob and kill.  Where you see scarcity, there exists abundance, but it must be made and you can be a maker - a PRODUCER.  You are the means of production, so seize yourself and get to the good you say you wish to see for the world.  That is how you will help make the world a better place.

Be well, be prosperous, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Have We Finally Learned The Lesson?

The patterns of "government" are steady and predictable.  Tyranny and lies are Theire stock in trade.  Speaking in net terms, "government" brings nothing other than repression of our natural freedoms, violence, poverty, disease, and misery to the world.  The evidence in support of this assertion is so overwhelming as to render absurd, prima facie, any and all attempts to argue to the contrary.

Humanity, having crossed some threshold of technological capability, has now provided "governments" with levers of power so mighty, a single individual given the false authority of dictator is able to threaten the wellbeing of the entire global population, human and otherwise†.  The amounts of power now resident in the hands of those whose stewardship is rarely, if ever questioned, and yet stands eminently questioanble, are such that all life on the planet stand in peril precisely due to the dubious characters and agendas of those holding its reins.

The world is in the hands of madmen, and as the common perceptual sphere of the human race continues to wander ever farther from a central line of basic sanity, the average man becomes ever more accustomed and acclimated to ever wilder dangers such that those in power, the proverbial "Themme", are also swept along with the tide of perceptual change.  This perforce renders the once unthinkable ever closer to becoming things to be considered.  This is demonstrated by the recent threats of nuclear war by a head of state whose mental condition must be called into question by virtue of the very fact that he has so much as mentioned nuclear conflagration as an option.  It is prima facie proof that the mind in question is either unhinged, or headed in that direction.  To threaten such a thing is manifestly insane, and yet into such hands have we, the rest of humanity, placed such power.

Consider doddering old fools with nary the mental faculties to tie their own shoes, much less to lead a nation through a crisis brought on by the foolery of himself and his foreign counterparts, each chasing their respective, idiotic political agendas pursuant to ultimate goals perhaps unknowable, but which can be soundly assessed as incompatible with basic human freedoms and basic survival sense.  What do such people want?  The answers are irrelevant.  All we need to know is that Theye violate their fellow human beings with cheap fanfare, hand-waving, and braying sounds; that it endangers every soul on the planet, and that time is long past for mean humanity to rise ever upward to a new and better standard of being, and take action to eliminate all tyrants and their rotten tyrannies from the planet now and for all time.  To fail at this ensures the ongoing march toward abject chattel status of every human being on the planet, including that of the tyrants, for they build prisons of their own design about themselves, thinking they are somehow in better positions than those over whom they presume to lord.

Will you choose to see that which stares you in your face, or will you continue to buy and propagate the idiotic lies of "government"? The claim that without Themme, the world will fall into bottomless and unrecoverable chaos is the damnedest of all lies anyone has ever told.  Are we so corrupted that we will, for the sake of our manifold duplicities allow the tyrant to achieve the goal of global hegemony such that the proverbial face being smashed by a boot will finally be your own?  Is the standard you hold for the quality of your own life so timid, low, and paltry, that you will sell your soul in the form of all your freedoms and the rights that derive therefrom for the sake of a hollow existence of mere convenience and cheap, shiny trinkets?

Time is here, and the choice stands before you as it always has.  You will make the choice, if only by default, because to not make it is to make it in fact, by the cheapest and most shamefully cowardly route possible.  Is that the way you want things to go for you and everyone you purport to love?  Doing nothing guarantees your inevitable fall into slavery so stark and obvious, that even the most willfully blind among us will no longer be able to deny the condition.

How can it be that anyone finds this circumstance acceptable?  How is it possible that anyone could be so stricken with utter rot of the spirit and mind that they would stand for the dangers to which Theye expose the entire world?  How can you stand for it without a sense of burning and agonizing shame, knowing that you are throwing away the only things for which life is worth living in exchange for lies of all sorts whose only intention is to secure your capitulation?  How can you allow yourself to plumb the depths of individual depravity such that you quietly acquiesce to the stick and carrot show by which the tyrant both entices and threatens?  Do you not see the power in the greater mass of humanity to put tyranny to its rightful end in virtually no time at all, the only requirement being that people simply refuse to cooperate?

Humanity debauched presents the single most pathetically sad spectacle imaginable.  At one time people may have been able to justly claim ignorance, but in this era of readily available information, that era is now well past us, all the old excuses rendered invalid.  We have no just basis for doing nothing in defense of that which should be defended to our last breaths.  There is no excuse for failing to place the dissevered heads of all tyrants and their minions on the ends of spears; to physically destroy with grim non-equivocation all in "government" who trespass against their fellows; to finally show that least shred of self-respect that drives a man to remove from the book of life without hesitation, compunction, or the least tranche of mercy, each man and woman who steps up to don the mantle of the public trust, only to violate that trust in the manifold ways that those in "government" so commonly tend.

The time for equivocation and phony baloney pedantry is past.  It is time to choose and then to act, for what time remains in opportunity for that choice, grows thinner by the day.  People are beginning to awaken, but it is not enough.  Wakening and expecting the problems newly perceived to be solved by others, much less by those who are the very source of those troubles, is no solution, but only the guarantee that the tyrant shall prevail.  Wanting better is worth nothing when one is willing to make no effort toward it.  In the case of liberty, the stakes are life itself.  If you are unwilling to take that risk, then you are unworthy of your freedoms and deserve what horrors may then befall you.  But being unworthy of salvation may in any event see you liberated nonetheless, for the relatively few of us who do in fact love their freedom sufficiently to merit saving, may drag the rest along in the wake of the fight which will have to come if humanity is to see anything of the better.  But is that how you want it recovered to you, by din't of another's work and risk?  Low will you have had to have plunged on the evolutionary scale to allow such a thing to occur, and cheap will you hold your freedoms if indeed you allow others to do the heavy lifting where you could have done your part, but failed to even try.

Mors tyrannis!  Death to tyrants I say, and it is to this idea I pledge my life, my liberty, and my fortune, meager as they may all be.  Will you do the same?

I pray for the people of America and of the greater earth to come to better sense; to rid themselves of the filth and stench of fear and the manifold other shortcomings that have lead them to this dolorous condition of meekly accepting the mandates of bloviating men unworthy of cleaning the average man's boots after his having stepped into a great steaming pile.  May you all find the respect of self necessary to shake you from your stagnation in the great pools of filth into which you have allowed yourselves to be wallowed through the lies and false promises of devils pretending to be men.  May you rise to displace and destroy those who would see you brought to ruin and misery.  May we all find the better way, for the current conditions of privation and unnatural constraint are not mandatory, but are fact only because we have chosen them.

Have you learned the lesson yet?  Rise and be free; rise and refuse further abuse!

Death to tyrants!  God bless America and the promise it yet holds out to every man within its borders, and may that promise spill forth to every land, to every soul, and let us put tyranny to the sword, never again to be tolerated in the least measure.  

Resist!

Refuse!

Defy!

May you find your way to the good, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.

† The current situation between Russia and Ukraine is a most recent and prime example of how one man, in this case Vladimir Putin, threatens the future of all life on the earth as he single-handedly initiated the invasion of Ukraine and has threatened nuclear war against his perceived enemies.  How much more of a lesson does one need to see that "government" is never to be trusted to tell us water is wet?

Why Tyranny Is Self-Perpetuating

I an certain that many people wonder how it is possible that despite our long human history of tyranny upon tyrannies, how could it be possible that no significant population in the civilized world has broken with it, save perhaps for a few precious moments, even in the face of manifold revolutions throughout the past several thousands of years by people yearning to be free of the yoke.

Well, I'm here now to spell it out, and the answer is a very simple two-part explanation.

Firstly, and perhaps trivially seeming, is the fact that human beings are corruptible and, once corrupted, are wildly difficult to return to the fold of virtuous and honorable behavior.  This is especially so of larger populations.  I cannot precisely give a number, but it seems clear that when a group or population grow past a certain size,  mutual support pursuant to the maintenance of proper behavior becomes non-viable in practical terms.

Then there is the most unfortunate phenomenon of entropy, the tendency of things to simply fall apart.  In order to retain a structure's integrity, effort must be invested in its maintenance, of else it crumbles.  If one fails to conduct maintenance on a house, for example, it will eventually fall and it will do so much more quickly than if it is properly maintained, all else equal.  Thus we find it with the structure of a culture - a nation if you will.

Combine the entropic nature of things with the human predilection of not wanting to strain oneself, also known as laziness, and it takes no great feat of the intellect to see the possibilities.

Further combine those qualities with the other base human bent for free and easy living at little to no cost to oneself, and the DNA for misery and failure is thereby established on both sides of the tyrannical fence.  That is, both oppressor and the oppressed end up with sufficiently strong incentives for establishing and maintaining tyranny, including their respective roles in such schemes.

Each party, being constituted of human beings, wants something for nothing.  The tyrants are willing to say and do whatever is required to live off the necks of those over whom they presume to lord.  The oppressed are willing to be tyrannized, as they conveniently choose to see the tyrannies imposed upon them as something more benign, and in fact beneficial.  They may go so far as to choose to regard bald-faced tyranny as freedom itself!  This can be seen at any time one wishes, just by observing with unclouded eyes.  The tenets of Big Brother are alive and well in the world, and have been since long before Orwell was born.

In the golden age of establishment, there arises what I like to call a "balance of corruptions" where the lies that the new Tyrant tell pursuant to his ends mesh well enough with the corrupted desires of the people who are more than willing to believe those lies pursuant to their own objectives, usually for free stuff and illusions of security and false freedom, a condition I call "pretty slavery".

The general pattern is that of the political scoundrel promising whatever it is he thinks the masses want to hear, whether it be security, free stuff, or what have you.  Those who guess wrong tend to have short-lived careers as politicians, though this is by no means always the case.  But those who guess correctly usually score in a big way with the people ready to carry his water, chop his wood, and build him. a very nice palace.  So long as the Tyrant keeps himself in check such that he delivers enough of the illusory promises (which are never what the people think they are in reality), the people who corruptly want what they want, tend to remain quite happy to live the lies peddled them for as long as they might live.

It is the common error of the Tyrant, however, to allow his own corruptions to get past his better judgment, which invariably leads him to overstep some line, upsetting the balance of corruptions, which in turn upsets the apple cart of the rotten-at-best social harmony, and gets people in a humor to grumble.  If the Tyrant fails to come to his senses, the downward spiral of dissatisfaction grows ever more steep in time, eventually turning to talk of treason.  Eventually threats surface and finally actual violence erupts as the once well-disguised trespasses of the Tyrant become so blatantly that which they actually are, even the most rank and corrupted dullard can no longer accept them.  If the revolution "succeeds", victory is met with much drinking, carousing, the making loud and happy noises, and is likely punctuated with much celebratory sex.

This leads us directly into part two of the tyranny phenomenon: it is built into the very architecture of civilized life.  It cannot be argued that civilization has provided humanity with enormous benefits, even if many of them were a long time in being realized.  But along with those miraculous benefits there have come many dangerous and destructive liabilities of which the average man appears largely unaware.

It all seems to have begun innocently enough, long ago with the realization that there is strength in coherent, properly coordinated numbers, what I like to call "superorganization".  Humans likely posed sufficient threats to other humans to prompt someone whose name is lost to us, to twig to the possibility of not only strength in numbers, but the idea that building a walled dwelling might provide a measure of security that was theretofore non-existent.  And so arose humanity's first city, the identity of which remains debated.   It may have been a glorious place, but because of the nature of what it took to bring such a place to realization, superorganization was required.  Superorganisms require management, which perforce implies the existence of at least one chief, or "leader".  In such matters, hierarchy cannot be entirely avoided for reasons we shall not go into here, but you may take it on faith that at least some level of hierarchy is absolutely necessary in order for the organization to occur in the first place, much more so to maintain it and direct its actions to good effect.  That means bosses and bossees.  The Walden II notion of the bossless society is a childishly unrealistic fantasy, save in those tribal circumstances where populations are small and the ambitions of such small groups are meek in the extreme.  But the moment those ambitions reach beyond that which but a tiny handful of men can accomplish, superorganization begins to come quickly into play, and you now know the rest.

It would appear that at some point, some fellow in that mix realized a few things that were to alter human destiny in ways I bet they could never have imagined.  One was that it was good to be the king.  Yes, there were many responsibilities associated with the role, but the benefits were spectacular.  Live in special quarters, get to tell people what to do, especially a labor force in which you did not have to toil, not to mention your pick of the best women, and so on down a list I'm sure you are well able to conjure without help.  Another realization was that it was actually possible to get huge numbers of people to do your bidding if you bent the truth in the right ways, or even lied through your teeth on certain matters.  

Any of this sounding familiar?

Since the earliest moments of civilized life, people have been trained to think in certain ways about the civilizations of which they were part.  Those societies were home to those people, as they are today, and no doubt the open tyrannies people accept as facts of life today were not quite so blatant in the early times.  But people are prone to creep - the slow and perhaps imperceptible alterations of mind that occur as seemingly innocuous change is introduced, most often by authority figures, but also by the people who live as denizens of their cultures at any given time.  The earliest steps toward what we now call "tyranny" may have been very sensible changes imposed by leaders upon the people for the most solid and practical of reasons at those times.  Once acclimated to the new reality, further impositions were undoubtedly made upon people by chiefs, this practice continuing until the chief held so much power that he became a king, emperor, or perhaps pharaoh, no longer human as the rest, but a living and breathing god in the flesh; a most convenient evolution of circumstance... for the king, at least.

From such a point, the rest is easy to dope out.  Once the authority of the chief became unassailable, he became more than just a leader; he most often became unquestionable.  The minds of people were by then so trained to thinking along the lines of the absolute authority of "government", the fate of humanity was more or less set in concrete precisely because of the fundamental and usually utterly tacit set of assumptions under which nearly all humanity labors, and of which has yet to break itself.

It is precisely because we tend to think in the ways we do about such things as leaders, "government", authority, and so on, in league with the general bent toward corruptions of all manner, that we have failed to break the cycle of tyranny.  In. brief, we don't really want to, and in large part because the Tyrant absolves us from a vast litany of responsibilities in which we have no interest in assuming for ourselves.  We revolt, kill the Tyrants and sometimes even their entire families, and what do we do in the aftermath?  We seek more of the same, somehow thinking that things will be different this time.  It is the perceived need for leaders that gets us into trouble - the convenient belief that we are incapable of leading ourselves and that order must be imposed upon us from without, rather from within ourselves, that leads us inevitably to instate the new tyrant-du-jour every single time we manage to shake the old one from our necks.

Until we sufficiently break ourselves of this most self-destructive of habits and couple that with a will to dispense with our manifold corruptions petty and grand, humanity will continue its race to the bottom, with the dangers now more threatening than ever before due to the great technological advances of the past several decades.  Furthermore, looming advances in cybernetics promise technological manacles so unbreakable, freedom may fall beyond humanity's reach for good.

How do we accomplish so monumental a feat?  Once again there are two factors.  Firstly, there is education, a necessary yet insufficient requirement.  Education here entails the apprehension and complete understanding of the principles of proper human relations.  The principles are simple and easy to understand, yet are not easy to accept for the average man due to the fact that humans so willingly accept their roles as functional slaves to scoundrels and criminals they call "leaders", which leads us directly to the second factor: the human "heart".  Education, however proper, is of no value until the individual's attitude, his "heart", is right.  People reject real freedom in preference of pretty slavery precisely because real freedom is no picnic.  Our individual corruptions tend to lead us to want all the benefits and shiny bits associated with freedom, without having to pay the piper.  This, of course, is a dog that doesn't hunt, for one cannot enjoy the benefit in any temporally sustainable way without bearing the high burdens of becoming free and remaining that way.  Remaining free is the real trick, for it is a relatively small affair to fly into rage against a tyrant, and go on a made killing rampage to oust him.  The real question, the trick, lies in what comes afterward.  If history demonstrates nothing else on that point, it is that we as the human species have failed universally.  No matter who the felon at the top, every one we have toppled, have we replaced with another of the same rotten cloth.

Proper freedom demands everything of a man.  The Freeman must be intelligent, loving, smart, courageous, intolerant, honorable, eternally vigilant, must have vast integrity, must know right from wrong and be devoted to living righteously while shunning evil, and must be generous.  Here, generosity is not the forced giving from his wallet to the less fortunate as the communist would demand at gunpoint.   Rather, generosity in this sense is that of allowing your fellows to live freely as they please in exchange for their equal considerations to you.  The Freeman gives unto others that which he expects of them for himself, even when the choices of his fellows offend or even appall him.  The Catholic must allow the Jew, the black the white, the homosexual the heterosexual, and so on, as well as vice versa.  This is not to say we must tolerate criminal acts - for how could we be free under such conditions?  But for those whose life choices others find disagreeable, perhaps even disgusting, so long as there is no criminality involved, the Freeman is bound by the requirement of liberty to eschew hypocrisy, and by his honor to freedom itself, to be tolerant.  This is the only viable way forward that stands even the least chance of stamping the life from tyranny, as we adopt and embrace an attitude of eternal vigilance against, and utter intolerance for, trespass by one man upon another.

Freedom is at least as frightening as it is exhilarating, and so it should be, for who wishes life to be dulled with the poison of excessive ease?  In freedom there are no false guarantees as we find so prevalent these days in the world of pretty slavery that is hailed and praised with fictitiously concocted and fraudulent appellations and monikers like "socialism", "collective/social obligations", and so forth down a depressingly long list of notions that have wreaked endless havoc, chaos, misery, poverty, disease, and death upon our numbers.  We are given life, inherent freedom, and our valid claims to both.  All the rest is up to us as individuals to make of it what we might, the only rightful prohibition and constraint being that we commit no trespass against our fellows, and that when we do, we amend and restore those whom we unjustly damage.

It is a simple formula that is endlessly challenging to live by on a daily basis, which is largely why the mean man rejects it with such raw and utter violence, in preference for the lies and bends of good truth that underpin the pretty slavery that he chooses to embrace.  He makes his choice under the false belief that it absolves him of responsibility to his fellows, not to mention himself, for to be a Freeman is the single most difficult and challenging thing in the world.  But is it also by far the most exhilarating and rewarding.  To be in complete and utter possession of yourself as a matter of choice, and to understand most fully those choices and the will to devoting oneself to the greatest of all challenges, the mastery of Self, is the greatest of all human accomplishments.  There is no more worthy a life possible, the second greatest choice residing so far below that it cannot even be observed.

Fear you neither hardship, work, great challenges, or being without, for these are the summons to the superior man, the FREE man; the man whose foremost master is of himself.  He is clear, confident, in control of himself, and is utterly invincible, unconquerable, ungovernable.  The Tyrant has no purchase over such men and in their presence is reduced to choosing between backing way down or showing himself for what he truly is through escalation, ultimately to that of physical violence that includes murder.  The Tyrant can never win, regardless of how many he may put down even to the point of taking away life itself.  The Tyrant can but only debase himself as he allows his corruption to dictate his thoughts and actions, because he is an abject cur, unworthy of a Freeman's consideration, save that the latter dispatch the former in defense of all that is good between men.

Tyrants and their games can be eliminated, but doing so requires the absolute commitment of men willing to don the mantle of the Freeman.  Without this in critical mass, humanity stands doomed.  What will you choose for yourself, the bracing competition of free living amid your peers, or the timid and tepid snooze-fest life of Weakman?

May this missive find you in good health, happiness, prosperity, and on the warrior's path of the Freeman.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Time Is Here

Fifty thousand trucks have settled themselves in Ottawa... Canada, that is, of all places.  Unlikely as that may seem to some, this is where the nexus of humanity and its innate, natural, and rightful freedom has broken the surface in a way I was unsure I'd ever see.

I have read that there are now half a million people connected to this protest in Ottawa, against the tyrannies of the endlessly corrupt Canadian "government", which makes this event non-trivial in the global context, so much more that of Canada.

Justin Trudeau has thus far acquitted himself in the poorest imaginable fashion, which should endlessly please everyone of good character.  Faced with the choice between hearing what the truckers have to say, and reacting like a wholesale despot, Trudeau chose the latter as he finally emerged from the sad little bunker to which he'd fled at the outset.  His reaction was to offer naught but threats and promises of criminal violence against those who dared question his unilateral edicts.  Having invoked "emergency powers", Trudeau has effectively declared martial law in Canada, himself emperor, and has by his lone hand criminalized all activities related to advancing the protest cause.  Trudeau has single-handedly declared the truckers as "terrorists" and has pronounced all aid to them as crimes, regardless of source.  

As if all that were not enough tyranty stuff to fill Trudeau's sottish, gas-inflated ego, he has further qualified himself as a foot-stamping little corporal by authorizing Canadian banks to seize the accounts of anyone or any entity so much as suspected of aiding the protesters.  The significance of this move would be difficult to overstate, as it is overt, bald-faced despotism that cannot in any way be credibly justified or otherwise explained away as not being old world styled repression.  In a way I find this very surprising, as the tyrannies of the "west" have been very soft in character since the end of World War II.  This is surprising because soft tyranny has proven so thoroughly successful over the past six or seven decades, leading one to wonder why this sudden stab backwards into so obviously totalitarian a move.  On the surface, it makes little sense, save that Trudeau is a true political imbecile.

Many will deplore Trudeau's admittedly rueful reaction to valid protest, but in point of fact we should all be beering it up in righteous and joyful celebration.   The cause here is that wittingly or otherwise,   Trudeau has painted himself into a very tight corner by acting as an amateurishly transparent oppressor.  In responding as he has, Trudeau has cut himself off from all other options apart from either his violent promises made manifest, or a crushing defeat in having to step off because he has thrown down the gauntlet, effectively declaring war on the protesters, and could not make good as dictator.  He could not have responded better than this, from the standpoint of pushing the central issue that has needed to come to the fore now for many long years.  He has narrowed his options to two: escalate into violence, or capitulate and look more the fool than he does now.  Either way, he loses.

The question of basic human freedom has now come under attack in the ostensibly "free" world in a way so blatant that nobody can credibly dress this third world tactic in a way that will make it appear as anything other than what it is.  And so with this development, which at first may have seemed not quite significant, an opportunity that may never again present itself has arisen in a most prominent manner.

Between the large-scale refusal of common men to be further abused by the cookie-cutter globalist runts, and the uncharacteristically foolish response of a third-rate, low-rent^†.  autocrat, a door of opportunity has swung wide for not only the Canadians, but a vast swath of humanity that could conceivably encompass even the Chinese.  We must force Theire hand.  Force it and keep forcing it until THEYE make the choice that WE impose on THEM.  We can do this.  We could stop Themme dead in their tracks, one way or the other, but we have to get a sense of what is needed, which really not much more than an utter and intransigent refusal to cooperate, and the will to stick with it to the better end, no matter what.

The question of liberty and the rights that follow most naturally, logically, and undeniably therefrom has come to the fore with unexpected clarity and force.  That question has been further put into type, italicized, bolded, and underscored by the wonderfully careless and myopically fumbled response of a true political nitwit, Justin Trudeau.  Perhaps most significantly, this wild blunder has come off not in some third-world backwater where the people of the "west" have come to expect such rank evil, but in their own house, where it has been blatantly turned on them in a way many have foolishly believed not possible.

I cannot overemphasize the significance of this turn of events, come what may.  If we allow this opportunity to pass, humanity stands to remain indefinitely in the New Dark Age in which it finds itself.  But if we see this development as a once in a thousand generations chance to set tyranny back on its heels and we decide to seize the opportunity and see it to its logical end, the quality of our lives could change immeasurably for the better.  That choice is the nexus to which I refer.  A gift of choice that I never thought to see in my lifetime has fallen into humanity's lap, as if by some dint of the Miraculous.  

A CHOICE.  When was the last time we saw a choice presented to us that rested beyond which laundry detergent, beer, pornographic production, or feminine hygiene product we might select for ourselves?

Time is here, and it is now.  If we fritter this away, our posterity will rue our decision.  WE will ultimately rue it because so far as I can see, the global Despot has shown his true face, whether by intention, or the feckless blundering of a nincompoop.  It has happened, it is fact, and I am not nearly convinced that Theye can now go back to things as they were, pre-covid.  Neither am I nearly certain that Theye wish to go back.  The gloves seem to be coming off and that puts the ball in our court: accede to the whim and caprice of the Tyrant, or stand firm, no matter what.

Be aware that in this endeavor, half-measures will avail us nothing, save the same end we would find if we  were to capitulate upfront.  We are at the doorstep of an all-or-nothing struggle where Theye are playing for keeps.  The only unanswered question is whether we, too, are playing in the same earnest devotion to our liberties as Theye are to our effective destruction.  Do not step up unless you intend on going all the way because there are no waypoints between here and there.

Finally, loathe as I am to give advice, I will do so this time by stating that the only correct answer in all this is to sign on against tyranny and give to the cause of freedom more and better than everything you've got.  The chances are that nobody alive today will ever again see such an opportunity.  Please don't allow this to simply fade into nothing.  Grab the chance to put the Tyrant down like the rabid beast that he is.  We don't have to become violent.  We just need enough of us to refuse cooperation.  If violence is to come, make Themme fire the first shots.  Never before has civil disobedience been more important.  Stand up and tell Themme "NO!"  I promise that it will make your life better than it is now, no matter how things work out.

Be well, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.

† I wanted to use "cheap suit", but could not in all good conscience do so because dopey and despotic trash that he may be, Trudeau's suits are simply impeccably tailored, almost as good as my own.  Credit where due, even for cheap scoundrels.

There's Inflation And Then There's Inflation.

Today we will address "inflation", the great. nemesis of economist and politician alike, not to mention the great wallet-rapist.

Before we can speak intelligently on the matter, it would seem fair to consult the dictionary in order that we may understand the meaning of "inflation".  To wit:

dictionary.com:  

 

inflation, noun

1. Economics. a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency (opposed to deflation).

Mirriam-Webster:

2: a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services.

 

wikipedia:

In economics, inflation refers to a general progressive increase in prices of goods and services in an economy.  When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduction in the purchasing power of money.

As we can see, these definitions are neither very technical, nor are they rigorous.  They do, however, offer enough for the purposes of this discussion.  Almost.

The problem with most definitions of "inflation" is that they address only the most broad sense of its effect: the loss of purchasing power as made manifest by rising prices.  What they do not explain are the reasons for it, a problem we shall remedy forthwith.

To begin with, you should be made aware that in general there exist two basic sorts of inflation, each stemming from different causes and usually manifesting slightly differently in ways that are important to understand.

The two broadest categories of inflation are monetary and push-pull.

Monetary Inflation

So-called "monetary" inflation is more accurately termed "currency inflation" because the nations of the earth no longer use money, but only mere currency, the differences being fundamental, very significant, and constituting a discussion for another time.  The cause of currency inflation is the generation of ever higher volumes of currency.  But what does that actually mean?  Glad you asked.

Imagine a simple economy which has 100 units of commodities in its market, and 1000 units of currency in the hands of the people who constitute that market.  A simplistic statistical view of this arrangement might say that on average, for each item available for sale, there exists ten units of currency with which to purchase those commodities.  The imporant idea here is to realize that there is some notion of a ratio between what is available for purchase and the currency available for making a purchase.

If my some magical means we suddenly find our economy "blessed" with 2000 units of currency (yay, we're rich!), the ratio of commodities to currency has now halved from 1:10, to 1:20.  While this may superficially seem a good thing, there is a <AHEM...> price to pay for this turn of fortune, both literally and figuratively.  Now that people have twice the amount of cash in their wallets, what will they do with it all?  Save it, or spend?  Once again, keeping things simplistic, the tendency is to spend and in our little economy that is precisely what people do.  The deterrent to spending, which was the 1000 unit cap on available money, economy-wide, has been raised to twice its value, meaning a lowered deterrent.  People now feel freer to spend, and that tends to be precisely what they do.

As spending rises, the supply of available commodities falls and in classical economic fashion due to what must inevitably become competition between buyers for that which is available, prices rise.  This phenomenon is as predictable as the sunrise.  

Now, we all know that all else equal, when demand rises, producers will increase output, which tends to minimize inflationary increases, but we often still experience momentary increases in pricing until supply can catch up with demand, which leads us to the other type of inflation.

Push-Pull Inflation

The other type of inflation to which economies may be subjected is what I call "push-pull".  There are other names for it, but let us stick with this to keep things once again simple.  Push-pull inflation refers to the causes and consequences of supply and demand. 

Imagine once again a simple market within our economy, that for widgets of which there are 10 units available per unit of time and a consumption rate of 10 units per unit of time.  In other words, the push (supply) side and the pull (demand) side are in equilibrium. Let us further say that the current going price of a widget is 2 units of currency.  

A change in the push-side circumstance leading to a decrease in the number of available widgets will cause stresses in the pull-side of the economy.  The same number of people will be competing for a decreased number of widgets.  The same result is realized when the demand for widgets rises, once again illustrating how the ratio of demand-to-supply is the key factor in determining price in this type of inflation.  

A fine real-world example can be seen in the precious metals markets from a few decades ago when several of the largest platinum mines in South Africa were taken offline for necessary upgrading.  When the mines announced the projected five-year shut downs, Japanese car manufacturers immediately begain buying up ever scrap of rhodium on which they could get their hands on in anticipation of shortages.  Rhodium is a byproduct of platinum mining and is essential to the production of catalytic converters as the actual catalyst.  No catalyst, no converter.  No converter, no can sell cars in first-world markets.  No sell cars, no eat supper or pay mortgage.  This was a very big deal.

Because of this precipitous rise in demand, the price of rhodium shot up from $900/ozt to over $27K/ozt!

To make this example even more perfectly illustrative, when the mines announced their reopening two years earlier than predicted, the price of rhodium fell through the floor even more quickly than it had risen, and many people lost their shirts in the deal, which further teaches us that it is unwise to speculate in precious metals markets, especially under such conditions.

As the supply-to-demand ratio lowers, prices rise (inflation).  If the ratio rises (increased supply-to-demand), prices tend to fall (deflation).

So What's The Difference?

If the net effect of inflation is increased prices regardless of cause, then why should we be concerned with the differences in those causes?  Precisely this: the tendency with push-pull inflation is to be momentary with eventual correction to normal, all else equal.  Free markets by their nature tend to adjust to the vicissitudes of supply and demand.  Any sudden and sharp changes in either supply, demand, or both tends to lead to changes in prices, but these changes tend to be narrow in effect, though that is not always the case.  

For example, if there is a sudden drop in the availability of Unobtainium, the raw material from which widgets are made, the price of widgets will rise, but the price of milk and bread are likely to remain unmoved.  If, on the other hand, the economy finds itself suddenly short of crude oil, the effects may be far more widespread because petroleum is a far more basic commodity than is Unobtainum. While the one effects only the production of widgets, the other makes itself felt in plastics, energy, lubricants, transportation, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, and a host of other areas.

But on the whole, push-pull inflations do tend to be far less deeply and widely felt, and tend to correct themselves over time.

Currency inflation, on the other hand, tends to be very long term at best, and is most often permanent with far broader and deeper effects because the currency touches quite literally every corner of the economy.  One thing that should be understood here is that currency is also a commodity.  It is, in fact, the universal commodity.  In this respect, its effects are very much like that of physical market commodities such as Ubobtainium and petroleum, and we can now clearly see then that the ratio of the universal commodity to the demand side is crucial to the state of prices in the economy.  As that ratio rises (supply goes up), it's price (effective value) falls in perfect harmony with the theory of supply and demand.  The value of a unit of currency is directly tied to its ability to purchase, say, a widget.  The more units required per widget, the lower the value per unit currency.

The reason currency inflation tends toward the permanent is because money supplies rarely contract.  Once generated and released into the wild, a unit of currency becomes somewhat difficult to retrieve, mainly because people generally do not much cotton to giving up their cash for nothing in return, which is the very definition of theft, and which is why people are typically unhappy about taxation.  Imagine that.

It ain't rocket surgery.

And So Summing It All Up...

We now understand the two basic categories of inflation and how they tend to effect prices.  We have learned that it's really all about relative values as expressed in the ratios of things like units of currency available for spending in the context of given amounts of available commodities for purchase.  We have noted that with push-pull inflation the rises in price tend to be momentary and narrowly applied, whereas with currency inflation the rise in prices tends toward the very long term or permanency and hits the economy universally, leaving no market untouched.

And so we can now readily see that when the great intellects of "government" begin churning out currency in the ways we have been witnessing with the central banks like the Federal Reserve, it is no wonder that the currency inflation has been so high over the past century, especially after nations abandoned the so-called "gold standard" where a unit of paper currency actually represented a corresponding unit of physical gold, which for example was the original definition of a "dollar".

I will finish by stating without the least trace of equivocation that currency inflation serves you no whit of good, especially if you have cash savings.  Currency inflation is always induced and has, along with outright taxation, been a primary means of stealing away the accumulated wealth of presumably hard-working and honest people.  This is a topic all its own and has been covered extensively by others far better qualified to expound on the matter than am I.

It is my wish that you will come away from this little discussion a little more smartly aware than you were prior and that this knowledge with serve to motivate you to make better educated choices based on improved views on the matter at hand and that you will realize the import of these issues.  Discuss them with your families, friends, and anyone else who will listen, for this is the brand of information of which Theye are well pleased to have you remain ignorant.

Don't let Themme win.  We still retain the ability to throw the vampires from out necks, but it isn't going to happen by itself and you can be damned certain that there is no cavalry on its way to save the day.  We either save ourselves by coming together as Freemen watching each others' backs as effective covers of our own, or we sit idly, perhaps wringing our hands as the Tyrant closes the noose we have allowed him to place around our necks.

Give it all some good thought, and here's to hoping you come to the good conclusions and decisions.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

The Chinese Labor Trap

The flight of American manufacturing to China represents a colossal failure of creative thought and, perhaps more significantly, effort... not to mention basic intelligence.

When the cheap slave labor of China was dangled before stupid American businessmen as so much obvious bait, it was snapped up rapidly with no apparent thought to the strategic implications of acceptance.

Like a horde of cow-eyed idiot-children, boards of directors flashed to accept the shiny objects held out to them, failing to consider that those false jewels were resting in the maw of the largest economic trap of all human history. Those people CHOSE to naively accept the Chinese promise of increased profits, etc., with no regard to the broader economic and political implications of placing one's own testes into the hands of a smiling, reassuring, yet bitterly covetous enemy.

The failure of intellect, care, regard, and moral sense must rank in the top three since the days of Sumer. We have not only abandoned our own better interests by investing so much as a penny into the Chinese economy, we have aided and abetted the raving evil that is the Chinese government in the industrialized enslavement of their own people.

It may now be too late to repair to better circumstances. The economics of our foolishness having shifted so fundamentally in a direction that superficially appears an improvement, it has in fact proven the handing over of our own economy to a dangerous adversary. The CCP is keen on seeing America neutralized and perhaps even eventually conquered in some manner and degree, That seemingly unlikely reality can be well argued as already having occurred.

I contend that it lies in America's interests to abandon China, if it is in any way economically feasible, and return to a more vertically integrated economy. The lie of global interdependence, replete with its concomitant sub-lies such as just-in-time inventory, are all very appealing on their surfaces, but they operate on the grand assumption of everything remaining hunky dory between potential enemies. This is not commonly paid due attention in the business schools, this single underlying assumption that ignores the very real politics that underpins most economic reality. This grand lie of global economic harmony between happy workers waving their little red books and their foreign counterparts and consumers is so glaringly flawed as to defy belief that anyone with a shred of sense would forward such an absurdity. Add to that the failure of American businesses to stockpile strategically vital resources in anticipation of hard times due to the beguiling lie of "just in time" inventory, and you have basically chosen to play Russian roulette with all six chambers loaded.

Neutralizing the labor cost advantage of Chinese slave workers is key to the extrication of America's head from China's ravening and rabies-contaminated jaws. Tariffing Chinese imports would seem the only viable way toward repatriation of American businesses. The economic forces are just too powerful to do it any other way, barring some quantum advance in manufacturing technology that would itself serve to render China economically irrelevant to broader global economic interests. THAT is the creative American genius that appears to have vanished in the wake of foolishly misguided visions of unprecedented profit, as if such extreme transformations occur without commensurate cost in some other form. There are no free lunches, a maxim the great tycoons of the 1980s willfully abandoned for the sake of a necessarily temporary competitive advantage.

China must be thrown off, or we will be inevitably consumed by their soulless regime, which I suspect is the Chinese objective for America and much of the rest of the world.

Finally, as China cannot maintain the same slave labor rates indefinitely, Chinese wages have risen and will almost certainly continue to rise. This spells eventual doom for American manufacturers who relied so heavily on what was essentially free labor for their competitive advantage and the ability of offer those low low KMart prices. So what then, once the labor cost advantage is wiped out to the degree that it is no longer even worthy of the mention? The prices everyone sought so frenetically will be history and we will all be paying the same old high prices regardless of country of origin. The trap will have been sprung and we stand to be stuck in it. I suppose we might be able to extricate ourselves, but consider the waste it all represents, not to mention the dangers.

It will be interesting to observe how this evolves over, say, the coming decade or so. One cannot predict what the future will hold, save to say that things will change as they always do.

Good luck and keep your chins up, for all is not yet lost

Until next time please accept my best wishes.

The Curse Of Mediocrity

Today it is my intention to wax a mite stridently opinionated on matters that may not seem to have much to do with freedom, but actually do. Proper human freedom requires much of men, including intelligence, smarts, generosity, honor, courage, and a whole host of other characteristics that many neither possess nor have any interest in acquiring.

I must beg your patience and indulgence for my little vent. Thank you in advance.

Planned obsolescence strikes me as a colossal failure of creative thinking. It reminds me of the Patent Office official who resigned because he had decided there was no point in continuing because everything that could be invented, had been.


I saw this brand of failure daily and for forty years had to deal with it in my profession (software/business R&D) and the fact that it is so interminably widespread leaves my brain numb. Far too many people are far too willing to simply give up.


On the one hand is the vulgar man whose dullardly lack of creative imagination and drive befouls the earth. On the other, we see his diametric opposite: those who press on regardless, working each problem as it arises, perceiving them as challenges and puzzles to me met and solved, rather than causes to quit.

The engineers at Chrysler in the 1960s were such men. When the Hemi came on to the NASCAR scene, ca 1964, they crushed the competition. NASCAR, being an example of the dullard, imposed restrictor plates on the hemis to reduce mass flow into the cylinders.


Undeterred, the Chrysler engineers worked the problem to the point that the engines produced more power with the restrictor plates, than without, leading said dullards at NASCAR to ban the Hemi outright. This is the way of the common-as-dirt human world, where the mean man - the inarticulate mob of mediocrity - hates the superior man because of the shame to which their betters put them. And so the excellent, if they become too excellent, must be shouted down. A fine example of this is a passage in the novel "Shibumi" by Trevanian, ca. page 108 where the General speaks to Nikolai on this very point. The one paragraph alone makes the entire book worth the reading.  To wit:

“Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring — but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.” 

True excellence is hated by lesser men stemming from the shame of the mediocre man who understands his willful insufficiency, even if only unconsciously.

In his book "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig makes valid and eminently worthwhile arguments concerning not only the nature of quality, but its lasting and forward-looking value.  His other truly significant point lies in the emphasis on the development of rhetorical skill in the individual, the single most important capability any human being has ever acquired, or ever will.  The stronger the rhetorical skill of a man, the more powerfully is he able to reason.  The significance of this cannot be overstated.  The tome is very much worth the reading and I recommend it to anyone seeking deeper truth.

Obsolescence in many areas comes naturally as new technologies emerge. There is nothing wrong with this, and it has in fact brought many good things into our lives. But the mindset that intentionally designs and builds junk, either in the morbidly mis-proportioned  pursuit of profit or the anticipation of new technologies to come is a cancer that should, and indeed one day may, be excised. Looking back to the days when General Motors started down the path of this rotten and ultimately myopic world view of quality, the consumer was very naive, and understandably so. The result was unspeakable waste, but today we can no longer afford to be so spendthrift in our habits, and because of all this the consumer is beginning to push back, which is a good thing.

Consumers are tired of the junk coming to them from places like China.  And yet, they remain reticent to pay more for articles of higher quality.  This is a very big problem, but perhaps with sufficient disappointment may come a change in those attitudes.

Old habits die hard and that of our miserable paucity in creative problem solving remains stubbornly ensconced in the minds of those whose very livelihoods are centered on finding better solutions to the challenges of providing for a growing world, the process of which places ever greater stresses upon resources. We can no longer afford such failshort habits. Time to find our love of true excellence, rather than the low-standards that have hitherto been mislabeled as such. Time to grow up.

Be well, pardon my rant, and until next time please accept my best wishes.

Kill The Tyrant

How do we effectively neuter the Tyrant without resorting to open war as the party to fire the first shot?

How do we reduce the Tyrant to irrelevancy?

In a word, we starve him out. 

It is quite that simple, if not quite that easy. 

To wit, we:

1. Pay him no heed or tribute, effectively ostracizing him by simply turning our backs to him
2. Resist him at every turn through non-compliance with his command; make him sweat and toil maximally for his every violation, giving no quarter such that his wretched existence becomes a misery of toil with every breath and twitch of his rotted mind.
3. Defy him openly, head high so he knows he is flouted, which tends to enrage him.  Feed that rage until either he quits in frustration, or looses his dogs.  Either way, he loses.
4. Show him naught but utter, cold, scientific indifference, for that is one of the greatest weapons one has over an enemy. In so doing, the Tyrant is diminished by his own hand, as we cause his sick mind to act against his own interests.  We become as a great black hole, giving him nothing whatsoever in return for his foot-stamping edicts and tantrums.  He destroys himself, the beauty in it being that it all transpires in his own mind, the bad place being the only one where such people ever go because it is the only place they can go.  That inevitability leads him to consume himself.

Make the Tyrant sweat blood for every trespass he commits against you and your fellows. Defend the rights of all men, even those who curse and disparage you. Always be the better man.  Always be better than the Tyrant and his rotten lackeys.

Make the price of playing his cheap game so high, the Tyrant comes to hate his days for the anguish of his interminable frustrations and outlays. Leave him unable to enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of his felonious labors.  Become obstreperous and intractable to all who forget themselves and so foolishly choose the path of the Despot and his oppressions.

Never forget that the Tyrant cannot succeed without the willing cooperation of those upon whom he directs his crimes. When enough of us stop obeying, turning our backs upon him and his petty tantrums, he will become an embarrassment to himself before the world, forcing him to that nexus where he must choose to step aside, tail tucked, or escalate to physical violence. Either way, we win. 

Either the Tyrant recedes into ignominy as he diminishes and disparages himself in the effective admission of his status as a self-mocking disgrace to Existence itself, or makes his ultimate error in escalating to open, physical violence. In the latter case, we then strike the life from the Felon and his lackeys, relegating them to the dustbin of history as just another coterie of anonymous scoundrels who met their condign ends at the hands of Freemen who would not be abused.

The only way we lose is by aiding and abetting the Tyrant's crimes against us, thereby defeating ourselves through our continued obedience.

That these artlessly ham-fisted examples of feckless humanity have succeeded so wildly, stands as glaring testament to what utter failures we have all of us been.  We should all burn with shame, that those boobs have managed such domnation over us, for without our effective cooperation, it never would have been possible.

All we see transpiring worldwide should give us cause to reflect and consider with great care that which we have become and to further consider and decide what it is that we wish to become, both individually (most important), and as societies.  Do you really want to be slave to a raft of petty, third-rate, vicious buffoons?  It is one thing to be subjugated by an indomitable adversary worthy of some respect for his capabilities, but to willingly place your head into the noose of an all-thumbs, blithering incompetent to your own destruction... that's just cause for endless, searing shame and embarrassment.

We should all endeavor to do better.  If we fail, Theye will have us for good before much longer.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

SCOTUS Offers Little Basis For Optimism In Second Amendment Case

I'm not seeing why anyone would be particularly impressed with the intermediate results in the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case. Cautious optimism is about all I can muster, and only with supreme effort. I heard the oral arguments and can only say that I was singularly unimpressed with the performances of most of the justices. Roberts, for example, either fails to understand rights, the Constitution, or both. The Constitution does NOT "grant" rights, yet he asserted that it was so. The Constitution RECOGNIZES and PROTECTS them. Roberts showed himself insufficient to the task of hearing these arguments by that virtue alone, even if he appears to otherwise lean in favor of the 2A. I am tempted to put money on his not understanding that which constitutes (defines) a right, were I in a betting mood. Furthermore, I would almost bet money I do not have that Roberts, and perhaps several other members of the bench are unaware of the different sorts of rights that exist, much less that they would be able to describe them in a show of understanding.

Furthermore, the justices' tone bordered on the wishy-washy in several instances as they posed questions and responses to Underwood, counsel for the state of New York. I would have let her know in no uncertain terms that she was absolutely mistaken on her points of logic, which were embarrassingly failed. They did point out the failures, but I do not believe they did so with sufficient force, as they indulged in the brands of equivocation for which SCOTUS is so notorious.. Perhaps they feel clarity and sufficiency is not important. Regardless, where questions of fundamental rights are concerned, clarity, correctness, and completeness on one's knowledge, deliberations, and responses to flawed argument are absolutely paramount.

Another problem readily apparent is that the arguments made by plaintiff's counsel is based on a reliance on "text and tradition", which is a non-principled basis for justification of the right.  It is perhaps necessary to argue so weakly because the system only recognizes such things, but if this is the case, so much more damning is it of the train wreck that is American jurisprudence.

Rights are non-negotiable and may not be circumscribed in the ways that the Court has so erroneously asserted for many decades. Rights are absolute, but with those rights come the obligations of each man not to trespass upon the equally valid claims of his fellows. The assumption that rights may be regulated and through regulation, effectively attenuated is cancer to all freedom, immediately reducing a man to some degree of servitude, thereby rendering him as no longer properly free.

The correct view on this is as follows. Rights are absolute, PERIOD. So, too, are the obligations to bring no unjust harm to others. Therefore, exercise your rights as you may wish, bearing in mind that you will be held accountable for any unjust results of your choices. Carry your gun where, when, and how you deem fitting for yourself, but if your comportment brings another to unjust harm, be prepared to pay the price. The notion of prior restraint pursuant to the assumption that a right is not absolute and may therefore me circumscribed and thereby effectively circumvented for ostensibly noble reasons is yet another cancer upon free societies. It is a perfect case of ends justifying means, which is a principle that courts routinely reject with much hissing and stamping of feet for right and proper reasons. And yet, they hypocritically accept it in the cases of rights, doubtlessly because it suits the agenda of governmental power to do so. No doubt deciding that this case is one of those instances of "but this is different...", we get treated to the egregiously abusive vagaries of equivocation and the evasion of the most basic truths as embodied in the principles of human freedom and the rights that evolve therefrom. Such behavior is, at best, gross incompetence, but because they presume to wield the authority and men with guns will kill you if you protest too effectively, they get to dictate and we get to kowtow.

I will be glad if they strike down the NY permitting system, but feel inclined to bet money I don't have that they will leave doors wide open for disingenuous circumvention through the language of exceptions, much as Scalia did in Heller, which effectively nullified the decision in great measure.

There appears much left to be desired in this challenge to NY state's phony baloney restrictions on the sovereign rights of free men of that land. The fact that the justices are not quite right about rights and their nature leaves me with threadbare reasons for optimism here. I fully expect them to ruin this opportunity to make a clean, clear, and perfectly non-equivocating statement on the relevant issues by muddying the waters with the language of half-measures that will allow the corrupt governments of NYS to effectively continue as they have, at least in great majority, moving forward.