shout-out to arthur silber. i just rediscovered this guy.
it’s not the sex. it’s never the sex.
it’s not the drugs. it’s never the drugs.
it’s not the terrorists. it’s never the terrorists.
…but where can we go? when will it be a place where it really is the sex? where it really is the drugs? where it really is all about the terrorists?!?!
i don’t think that place exists. so where do we go?
read an article on the campaign for liberty website this morning about “bush’s ninth year.” not the best way to start the day.
The answer to the Obama problem is the same as it was to the Bush problem, the Clinton problem, and the problem with every president who overstepped his bounds, waged unconstitutional wars, denied due process to suspects, violated the Fourth Amendment and spent so much as to make his predecessor look like a piker — philosophical revolution. Until the American people are swayed by the arguments for sound money, free markets, constrained government, the rule of law and peace in international affairs, they will continue to elect presidents whose distinctions are greatly overshadowed by their similarities with the men they replace. The hope for real change will be dashed, just as it was when Bush embarked on a presidency of unconstitutional terror policies, stimulus, bailouts, and huge expansions of Medicare and other domestic programs. Just as it is now for so many Obama supporters, who have seen their agent of hope and change continue on the path laid out by his predecessor, except with some window dressing and more rhetorical emphasis on social programs and economic regulation.
i can’t help but imagine moving through a swiftly-spinning revolving door in front of a gargantuan new york office building. anyone who dares try and stop the door will only have their fingers cut off. so no one dares.
in september ‘09, let-off studios’ editor was interviewed during the baltimore book festival. in a chance meeting, steve was taking a break from staffing the radical book fair tent and was asked a few questions about the election and subsequent presidency of obama. here’s his response.
as it turns out, the interview is part of a much larger project (thank goodness!) carried out by a staff member of towson university and their students. find out more regarding the obaltimore project and see more interviews.
happy anniversary to us: a nation of shiftless, easily-led automatons; the avaricious slime that exploits them; and the despair-addled, cautious ones who don’t know where to turn.
i read an article this morning about a FEMA documentarian currently living in exile in south america; apparently, he was too good at finding evidence about foul play related to the u.s. government’s collusion with and involvement in the 9/11 attacks in new york city. here’s a fantastic response the documentarian has to an initially benign question, emphasis in bold is mine: [Read more →]
found an enlightening article that points out various ‘complimentary services’ provided by the planet we inhabit. here are a few of the fundamentals: [Read more →]
in the recent article by glen allport, in which he enumerates all the poor countries of the world who adopted socialism and then became prosperous (spoiler here…the answer is 0), the crippled economics of sweden–ostensibly one of the most famously socialist and to all outside perception one of the wealthiest countries in the world–are described in detail. with a real unemployment number of about 20%, and a per-capita income of $37,000 or so (which is actually less than the united states with $48,000), sweden is clearly no longer the wealthiest nation in the world. sweden has done little to increase business during its socialist watch, with only two companies going into public trading since 1970, and the number of jobs in the country has been static since 1950. allport describes the dilemma of socialism, and why it eventually (and always) causes the downfall of a country, in the following (i was unable to transfer most of the formatting and all of the hyperlinks; please see the full article on strike-the-root.com for all citations):
Short answer: human nature.
Slightly longer answer: the nature of life itself.
Despite how obvious those answers are, many people seem not to understand them. Somehow, many of the same people who believe that government should “adjust” human behavior via rewards and penalties – higher taxes on tobacco or alcohol, for instance, or fines (such as speeding tickets), or prison sentences, or specific income tax deductions (e.g., for mortgage interest or for purchasing a hybrid car) – also believe, rather bizarrely, that when government penalizes the creation of wealth with high taxation or onerous regulation and rewards non-productivity with transfer payments and corporate welfare and other forms of wealth redistribution, human behavior does not change in response.
The reality is quite simple:
Penalize a behavior and you get less of it, and/or unintended consequences.
Reward (or protect) a behavior and you get more of it, and/or unintended consequences.
This is true with cats, dogs, pigeons, and all other animals, including humans. Yes, there are nuances and seeming exceptions, but few things about life are more broadly true: make a behavior more difficult or painful in some fashion, and organisms will tend to display that behavior less often, or will attempt to shield themselves from the unpleasant effects when they do display the behavior – and not always in ways you might expect. Reward an organism for doing something, and the organism will be more likely to repeat that behavior; here also, unintended consequences (including “gaming the system”) are likely and may be significant.
This is perhaps the most fundamental and important macro-behavior genetic programming in the animal kingdom: avoid pain and seek out reward. Would life have survived for long without such programming?
Income taxation is a fine on income. Increasing that fine is likely to cause aversive conditioning and result in changed behavior. Sample result: Bono and U2 moved their financial affairs to the Netherlands in 2006 after the Irish government changed the tax code in a way that would have cost Bono and his bandmates huge amounts of money. That is, the band responded to an increase in the fine on their income by removing their income from the taxing authority’s jurisdiction. If someone like Bono, who is famous for complaining that governments should spend more tax money helping the poor, prefers to spend his money as he chooses rather than have it taken by politicians under threat of force, then how likely is it that other high earners are unaffected by attempts to confiscate more of their income?
Government-provided welfare payments, be it to the poor or the rich, are rewards for non-productivity and for misallocation of production and resources. Use tax dollars to subsidize a corporation’s foreign advertising or anything else it does, and the pressure for efficient operation is reduced. Pay unemployed single mothers to stay home, and you not only encourage them to not find jobs but – if the mothers must remain single to qualify for the “free” money – you also ensure that millions of children will grow up with unmarried parents and, in many cases, without their fathers, as has happened in the United States.
“While it is widely recognized that this type of means-tested program discourages work, it is less commonly understood that means-tested aid also discourages marriage and rewards single parenthood. Subsidized housing and other means-tested welfare programs penalize marriage because a single mother will suffer a substantial reduction or elimination of benefits whenever she marries an employed male.”– Millennial Housing Commission Policy Option Paper, 2001
a message from our government to welfare mothers of the world: stay unmarried, stay out of work, because we pay you to stay that way. furthermore, if you have more kids, you’re paid more. the government is compensating people for their lack of productivity…just the same as the bank bailouts that so recently were passed.
this is relatively old news; at least, the notion isn’t a sudden epiphany. but the part that most concerns me is: what can be done to push people “over the hump”? what can be done to encourage people to abandon their public assistance, build and enhance their marketable skills, find an entry-level job, and live life on their own terms? what’s the incentive?
of course, the impending bankruptcy of the united states government might foist this upon all of us, but i’d rather people accept this new paradigm without the attendant rude awakening.
awesome commentary from the blog ‘american armageddon’:
…Leaving aside what appears to have been blatant political manipulation by the present US Administration of key economic data prior to the November election in a vain attempt to downplay the scale of the economic crisis in progress, the figures are unprecedented. For the week ended December 6 initial jobless claims rose to the highest level since November 1982. More than four million workers remained on unemployment, also the most since 1982 and in November US companies cut jobs at the fastest rate in 34 years. Some 1,900,000 US jobs have vanished so far in 2008.
As a matter of relevance, 1982, for those with long memories, was the depth of what was then called the Volcker Recession. Paul Volcker, a Chase Manhattan appendage of the Rockefeller family, had been brought down from New York to apply his interest rate ’shock therapy’ to the US economy in order as he put it, ‘to squeeze inflation out of the economy.’ He squeezed far more as the economy went into severe recession, and his high interest rate policy detonated what came to be called the Third World Debt Crisis. The same Paul Volcker has just been named by Barack Obama as chairman-designate of the newly formed President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, hardly grounds for cheer.
…Needed is a radically new strategy to put virtually the entire United States economy into some form of an emergency ‘Chapter 11′ bankruptcy reorganization where banks take write-offs of up to 90% on their toxic assets, that, in order to save the real economy for the American population and the rest of the world. Paper money can be shredded easily. Not human lives. In the process it might be time for Congress to consider retaking the Federal Reserve into the Federal Government as the Constitution originally specified, and make the entire process easier for all. If this sounds extreme, perhaps revisit this article in six months again.
people have been saying ‘the emperor has no clothes’ for some time now; the above referenced article spells it out excellently. iceland declared its government’s collapse just yesterday, and there are riots and uprisings being reported all over that country. might they be coming here, as soon as this year? what about the jobless rate, and whether or not people will have food to eat, let alone a roof over their heads?
i’m to be interviewed on the radio about the day job and how we help people find jobs. i’ve found myself sounding more and more like a marketing manager these days; particularly so when talking about writing resumes. interesting to note is the fact that, if we don’t increase the number of clients who have been hired threefold by the end of may, funding may be cut and i’ll be out of a job myself.
and people wonder why i don’t want to buy a house…?
…is humanity, by definition, a virus: replicating itself, consuming all resources within reach during its brief life span, to eventually burn out and starve to death?
i doubt i’m the first to come to this notion. but this morning, it’s pretty much the newest epiphany i’ve experienced. i’ve routinely thought that humanity is simply one more type of organism; the double whammy of the current world economic situation and attending a paradigm-shifting permaculture event last evening has me thinking in more absolute terms.
life may be shit, but a better world is possible.
EDIT: as the embedded youtube video was messing up this page’s layout, i opted to include a link to the video instead. the modified post is below.
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found this just moments ago, on this holiest of holy days.
i’m going to be a lonely demonstrator this evening.
