Obama was warned by Bush, along with the other democratic candidates, that once he gained office he would not be able to exit either country. The one who paid attention to that warning was Clinton. Obama softened slightly but was more reliant on the radical left. So he wasn’t as careful. Now that he’s in office he can’t fulfill his promises to his radical left supporters. Contrary to some of the nonsense I’ve been reading from the left lately, we aren’t colonizing the muslim world. We wouldn’t want to. It’s thankless work. It’s expensive. And they’re too primitive to be of value to us as colonies. The labor is too ignorant and uneducated to function as laborers. The people are too poor to function as consumers for advanced goods. The institutions and infrastructure are too corrupt and unreliable to assist in production and distribution. So, It isn’t colonialization. It’s containment. Americans spent the last century containing communism, and the result was a conversion of the marxist economies to totalitarian capitalism, and perhaps the greatest shift in human standard of living since the invention of farming. While communism was a religion masquerading as a political movement, Islam is a political movement masquerading as a religion, and is the current replacement for marxism – a means of the world underclass to counteract the effect of modernization on their primitive social orders. Like marxism, islam is a primitivist and economically destructive political movement – perhaps more destructive than was it’s prior instantiation, which we call Roman era christianity. The underlying military and political problem is that Islamic Civilization does not have a core state, and that of the core state candidates (iran, pakistan, saudi arabia and turkey) three choices are corrupt, despotic and terrible, and the fourth is unlikely. The impact of the schism is still with the civilization. From a strategic geopolitical position, Core states can be pressured to keep fringe states in line and out of military action. Islam (magian or perhaps magical civilization is a better term) cannot be contained without a core state. Therefore Islam is the new communism until there is enough of a reformation in one of the states that a reliable core state can be formed. THE STRATEGY IS TO DESTABILIZE UNTIL A CORE STATE CAN FORM DUE TO INTERNAL PRESSURE. This is probably too grown-up an analysis for people who think that people who have grown up, real jobs, and real responsibilities, are not acting on emotional or antiquated mystical fantasies like ‘colonialization’ rather than pragmatic economic and security concerns. But that doesn’t mean that the truth shouldn’t be told to those who actually have the capacity for such understanding. The best answer is for us to build 200 nuclear power plants and to get off of oil, and let the middle east fall back into barbarism until they are ready to abandon their magianism and join the modern world. CURT
Category: Politics, Power, and Governance
-
Is There A War On Police?
There have been a large number of police deaths lately.
“It’s not a fluke,” Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC.com. “There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on.”
This is not rocket science, but it cannot be attributed to one thing alone. Instead:
It is not one issue on it’s own. It is the cumulative effect of the changes in american society due to a century and a half of policy. That policy was enacted during a period in which the USA had a strategic economic advantage. Because of that advantage, the class, race and cultural factors were suppressed by a period of extraordinary temporary wealth. But now that the circumstances have been reversed, and the consequential renormalization of human behavior has emerged as that economic advantage has been removed by the spread of capitalism’s economic institutions – particularly to Asia. The result is that the west is being destabilized again, just as it was when the american west opened up to development and caused shocks and price recessions in Europe. Add to that, that white folks are now starting to act like a diasporic minority, and less willing to support their system politically or fund it economically. In western literature, holding together a stable political system is an advantage. But it is also a high cost to the holders and comes at great sacrifice and discipline. The west (england and germany) has the most stable political system ever developed by man. But it comes at high cost. And people are no longer willing to pay that cost. Thorsten Veblen and Joseph Schumpater were correct. The political class will inevitably destroy the civilization under democracy.
-
Putin: Your Cow Better Be Silent
Putin Slams West for Wikileaks’ Assange Arrest : Putin Suggests U.S. Criticism Is the Pot Calling the Kettle http://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-slams-west-wikileaks-arrest/story?id=12364345 Putin criticizes supposedly democratic institutions for clamping down on a dissident.
“The villagers say, that if your neighbor’s cow is mooing, yours better be silent”. Which is the Russian equivalent of ‘the pot calling the kettle black’.
[callout] In fact, what’s impressive about the Wikileaks data, is that the USA actually looks like a pretty benevolent, if mildly overstretched and incompetent, empire, whose only material problem is creating a responsible, peaceful, core state for Islam[/callout]
I wrote two days ago that arresting Assange is nonsense unless we have a real property crime. Unless property is transferred (technology secrets) and unless there is material harm ( our people get killed), or a trust is broken on a contract with a foreign government (we are trying to help rescue some government from oppression) there is not really a crime. In fact, what’s impressive about the Wikileaks data, is that the USA actually looks like a pretty benevolent, if mildly overstretched and incompetent, empire, whose only material problems are assisting in the maturity of market-participating states everywhere, and in particular creating a responsible, peaceful, core state for Islam – solving a serious problem for the world by helping modernize a violent, non-market, ignorant, superstitious and primitive expansionist culture so that it can play with the rest of the grownups in the world. Putin is one of my personal Heroes. I think, for Russia, he’s a perfect leader, and the leader that they need. Is Russia, and is all of Byzantine Christianity corrupt? Yes. Is the state an oligarchy? Yes. Is that bad for Russia at this point in it’s lifetime? No. Democracy, or at least, civic republicanism is NOT something that’s intrinsically good. Corruption is bad. Democracy can be a check on corruption. But only when the middle class is fully active, and fully enfranchised. Otherwise, the people will vote themselves into totalitarianism. Russians in particular will do so. Putin should be Tzar. Russia needs a King. The west needs kings. We all need kings. Not kings that can write laws. Kings that can veto abuses of the law. We may not know what we should do. But we can know what we should not do. And that is a job of a great monarch. Kings make it impossible to compete for political power, and force people to compete for economic power. That’s the beauty of monarchy.
-
Arresting Assange For What? Say Again?
OK. I just dont get arresting Assange for getting women to sleep with him, and not using a condom. We’d need an awful lot of additional jails. Either arrest the guy for the real reason that you want him, or you’re abusing the justice system. I’m not a fan of this guy, and I think public opinion will crowsdsource his guilt or innocence correctly. But this kind of legalism is simply abusive. I don’t let the state use my violence on my behalf for injustice. I give my violence to the state to use on my behalf in order to prevent and resolve disputes between my fellow citizens over theft, fraud and violence. I do not give my violence to the state to use on my behalf to trump up bad manners into illegal actions for the purpose of political nonsense. It’s just proving his position that our governments are corrupt. Arrest him for distributing state secrets (even if they are meaningless so far). Make an example of him if you want. But we’re going to have to legalize prostitution, universally license all women, and men are going to have to ask for receipts in order to have sex and prove it was voluntary. Ridiculous. Brits should be ashamed.
-
to this point, other than as a diplomatic inconvenience, the information leaked
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11923766Up to this point, other than as a diplomatic inconvenience, the information leaked has been a non-event, and nothing was in the cables that wasn’t discussed in the community, right out in the open. Actually, what’s been interesting is just how mundane the content has been – illustrating nothing more than the natural incompetence that arises from imperial overreach. But if this new list exposes potential targets I thi
Source date (UTC): 2010-12-06 01:46:00 UTC
-
More weekend writing: “And I do not understand, why we grant particular grace to
More weekend writing: “And I do not understand, why we grant particular grace to current democracies – the merit of which is still in play, until we observe how we fare now that the rest of the world has adopted capitalist instituions, and erased our prior advantage. It certainly appears, that instead of Democracy, the award goes to capitalist institutions, calculation and incentives. Democracy is irrelevant.”
Source date (UTC): 2010-12-05 14:19:00 UTC
-
No Surprises In Wikileaks: It Only Illustrates The Obvious: Overreach By Our Bureaucracy.
SURPRISE? NO SURPRISES IN WIKILEAKS AT ALL. These are common diplomatic cables, written in the common business-language-of-state. Anything ‘shocking’ is simply the result of how people speak when they believe that their communications will remain private. Look at your own email, or personal conversations. We all trash-talk whenever we can. It vents our frustrations. For example: Everyone knows that Berscolini is a vain and incompetent man. But he’s a politician in Italy. Putin? We’ve all known Putin’s ambitions and position for years. Is confirmation something we needed? There is nothing so far in these docs that hasn’t been discussed to death. The docs only give legitimacy to those previously debated topics. *** Fools will always find a source of conspiracy in the natural incompetence of bureaucracy. *** WHAT WE LEARNED: There are only three things to learn from these docs:
[callout]There is no competent leadership in washington, and it is possible that there cannot be competent leadership, that can develop a consistent policy across that divergent a set of interests.[/callout]
1) The people who work on these communications are simple white collar government clerical bureaucrats, covering the communications of a vast and diverse state department, running a large naval empire during a time of enormous economic and political power changes. 2) The state department bureaucracy is too big, and american political and military reach is larger than the competence of the individuals in the State Department can coordinate — which is true of all bureaucracies. 3) There is no competent leadership in washington, and it is possible that there cannot be competent leadership, that can develop a consistent policy across that divergent a set of interests. HOWEVER The solutions to most of these diplomatic issues has been covered by Huntington in the Clash Of Civilizations. That is the only policy document necessary to coordinate the vast national interests abroad. We need a strong russia. We need a non-nuclear iran. Islam needs a different core state. We need to help south american, asian, hindu and the vast, ignorant, poor islamic states come into power, while we gracefully reduce our scope of responsibilities.
-
A Method For Moderating Dialogs
“The Cult Of Offensive Moderation” Note: I am in the process of creating a plugin for political moderation of debates, without censorship. There is far too much censorship on debate sites and blogs. Especially censorship of in-group language. The sentiment of inclusion in Democratic Secular Humanism (our current religion in the west) is at odds with the change in our word-wide status and economic position as a polity. In-grop sentiments are becoming increasingly important again.
[callout]Solution? Categorize posts in a debate as to whether they are:
1) content free or off topic
2) sentimental expressions
3) mythical, Platonic, or scriptural reasoning
4) Objective rational arguments
5) scientific arguments (using survey data but which are very fragile in the social sciences) and
6) economic arguments (which because of scale and aggregation allow cultural comparison.)
If you could filter conversations by these arguments,the reader could participate in a conversation of his own level of capacity.[/callout]1) The strategy of moderating sentimental (non rational) expressions will not work, because it leads to regression – increasing sensitivity as a means of ostracizing people to the point where commenting becomes more an act of policing until the board declines. It increase the transaction cost of participation. 2) As someone who runs a large advertising agency that must help companies and groups understand ‘social interaction’, I spend a great deal of time trying to educate editorials that the ONLY thing people find interesting is CONFLICT. Talking head shows are either internally engaging in conflict (crossfire), or externally (oprah/hannity). Conflict leads to ratings and ratings to participation. WIthout conflict, in either a novel, sort story, or a talk show, there isn’t much to hold anyone’s attention. And the more attention that you hold (the more viewpoints included) the more likely one is to have a member of the audience identify with one of the participants, and become involved. 3) People learn by first identifying the SENTIMENTAL statements that they agree with, and then seeing those statements refuted. If you eliminate the religious nuts, or the racists, or the culture-ists, you’re actually killing off the social value as well as the attraction of your medium. Because all people operate by sentiments. They may learn to articulate those sentiments as mythology, as reason, as science, or as economics, but they are still, almost universally, articulating their sentiments – simply with a different degree of precision. 4) Personalities (contributors) cannot be allowed take over the board or its brand and become the show itself. That’s board-hijacking, rather than thread-hijacking. So if you have permanent troublemakers that begin to draw too much attention to themselves then it is better to heavily moderate them. But not because of the content and form of their arguments. You ban them because they dominate the conversation and make their own ‘show’ on your dime. Losing participants is dangerous for any medium. Even bad ones. Sanitizing a board usually ends up with no board at all. 5) Increasing the number of editors so that they split posts into new threads is better than banning or correcting. Remember – people are largely seeking attention for their niche fantasies. Ignoring people is the most effective means of negative reinforcement. 6) Sentiments (unarticulated expression) are the most common form of narrative. They are analogical arguments. Reason (to the degree that few people can actually articulate causal properties of categories), science (directly measurable subsets) and economics (indirectly measured supersets). Religion as we mean it, refers to scriptural command, or external non-human knowledge, in the monotheistic meaning. Polytheism and history are simply differences of degree. It is scripture. 7) it is particularly troubling to eliminate what is called hate-speech or inter-group expression of sentiments. That ‘s because the most important dialog of our age is the change in group sentiments now that the worldwide change in status and power hierarchies has come about because of the worldwide adoption of western economic and material technologies. SOLUTION? Editing and moderating are hard. It is very, very, difficult to ascertain the quality of an argument in the social sciences. We are fairly sure that the entire Marxist religion, masquerading as a political movement, is as irrational as the Islamic political movement masquerading as a religion, are both extremely dangerous to mankind. But since we live in a POLITY, and the member of that polity largely use SENTIMENTS rather than reason in debate, and that their beliefs and debates are highly influential upon the outcome (more than reason by a long shot), and that most people criticizing these sentimental arguments lack causal depth in their own arguments, then the best board, the best discussions, the best social outcome, is determined by keeping an argument on track, rather than censoring it. An alternate solution, (and I have done a little work on this) categorizing posts in a debate as to whether they are 1) content free or off topic 2) sentimental expressions 3) mythical, Platonic, or scriptural reasoning 4) Objective rational arguments 5) scientific arguments (using survey data but which are very fragile in the social sciences) and 6) economic arguments (which because of scale and aggregation allow cultural comparison.) If you could filter conversations by these arguments, you would be able to stack them by methodology, and the reader could participate in a conversation of his own level of capacity. DIFFERENT IDEOLOGIES Although, we should note, that as scripture, you will have a hard time actually arguing against catholic doctrine as it’s based upon natural law: the observation of what men actually do. WHich is, what appears to be, the general sentiment and strategy underlying most semi scientific argument on this board. (Which I admire). If you want to argue using reason, the libertarian methodology will most likely lead you to correct conclusions. However, libertarianism consists of a set of branches, some of which do NOT correspond to reality, including 1) Rothbard’s principle of non-violence which is a silly argument, since the entire problem of social order is non-violence 2) free trade would lead in the end, to as state of affairs not any different from world-governance 3) libertarians have not included the cost-of-forgone-opportunities which is how we pay for the creation of some set of property rights, and therefore, failed to account for the cost of developing social order. As such, it’s a platonic fantasy counter to evidence. Conservatism is the best strategy for preventing social destruction, revolution and un-meritous rotation of elites. It is very skeptical of power – power should be obtained by public service in the market, or in the military in the defense of the market. Any other grab at power is specious. That’s the sentimental origin of the western city-market building shareholder system we call ‘citizenship’. But conservative philosophy has not provided a solution to our vast increase in the division of knowledge and labor. It has not provided us with an updated set of institutions for the contemporary world. And FWIW : Conservatism is largely an unarticulated sentiment that is more complex than left-liberalism, as conservatives rely on at least five axis the most important of which is group persistence, and liberals only one (harm/care). The combination of harm/care simplicity, egalitarian equality, Keynesian macroeconomic policy (statistics, full employment, liquidity) and democratic government, are ideal tools for competing with a sentiment thats primary purpose is to avoid hubris, and protect the group for the long term. In other words, consumption on the left versus capitalization on the right.
[callout]The balance between liberalism (Pareto’s Instinct for Recombination, or Machiavelli’s Foxes) and conservatism (Pareto’s Preservation of Aggregates, or Machiavelli’s Lions) is a necessary conflict between the forces of stability that must allow change, but not disruption, and those that desire change regardless of consequences – because both innovation and stability are valuable to a civilization This debate in sentiments is particularly useful because reason is insufficient for solving this problem, largely because we have failed to make the same progress in induction and the social sciences that we have in deduction and the physical sciences. And partly because the physical sciences are vastly less complex than the more heuristic social science governed by the properties of the human mind.[/callout]
The balance between liberalism (Pareto’s Instinct for Recombination, or Machiavelli’s Foxes) and conservatism (Pareto’s Preservation of Aggregates, or Machiavelli’s Lions) is a necessary conflict between the forces of stability that must allow change, but not disruption, and those that desire change regardless of consequences – because both innovation and stability are valuable to a civilization This debate in sentiments is particularly useful because reason is insufficient for solving this problem, largely because we have failed to make the same progress in induction and the social sciences that we have in deduction and the physical sciences. Partly because the physical sciences are vastly less complex than the more heuristic social science governed by the properties of the human mind. And just so we’re all living in rational reality not committing the error of confusing our own religion with neutral objective science, much of what is argued for on this board by well meaning products of our the past sixty years of western educational system, most often is doctrine of the RELIGION of Democratic Secular Humanism (which is a religion as it is contrary to the facts). Or of egalitarian equality, which is is a property of the Democratic Secular Humanist religion, and is also contrary to the facts. Or the assumption that freedom is the desire of the majority is counter to the facts. That is, as long as we realize that people are racist, culture-ist, class-ist, nationalist, cultist, members of competing civilizations, and they all are, because they all act that way under DURESS, and that it’s advantageous both for elites and for the underclass to be ‘anything-ist’, and that these traits are beneficial to economic man, beneficial to individuals, and an enduring part of the human experience. And if one doesn’t think so, then truth isn’t one’s objective, platonism is. Truth is correspondence with reality.
-
The Child Of Democracy And Secularism Is Stillborn
(Posted in the comments section of the NYT) In response to the comments section of one of Paul Krugman’s articles: British Decline I felt that all the people that were commenting were right. They understood the failure of conservative policy. The same way that conservatives understand the failure of liberal policy. But they are working on different axis. Neither to do with one another. Our ideological war has now become a race and class war. New elites are emerging. They are less invested in the previous order. They are messianic. They are driven by the one force that is unstoppable: the loss of status and power, which no group will tolerate, and which whites only tolerated because of the combined guilt of slavery and colonialism, and the attack on men by feminism. The elites widthrew from society, participated in the commercial marketplace, left the arts to immigrants, and abandoned high culture. This was fine until the middle class was threatened. At this point, not only is the middle class threatened but so are the working class whites. Under duress people rely upon the mirror test: people who look like them. They are under duress economically. And they feel that their government, the very government that they surrendered, is against them. The ascendency of europeans and the protestant reformation is being undone. Classical liberalism is being undone. It is being undone for exactly the reasons conservatives stated it would be undone. The inability of conservatives to produce a cult (romanticism) and the abilty of conservatives to produce an economic and political model to compete with socialism and social-democracy, using the tools of monetary policy, and the state, to transfer power and advantage. RE: “Japan has a big asset: a leadership that honestly cares for its people. This caring (amateur sociology, according to professional economist), is due to their tribal unity.” This comment correctly states the issue: that despite hardship and demographic changes, the japanese remain under solidarity.
[callout]Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Economics is not a sufficient means of organizing a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.[/callout]
This is scientific data, not amateur sociology: The japanese are a homogenous racist society. Economic success by any group will not lead to political disenfranchisement of another group, wherein the dominant group will lose privilege and opportunity, or the competing groups will not eliminate but simply alter the baises of privilege and opportunity. The USA is an empire. People of different races, cultures and religions, do not mix except under very rare circumstances at the margins, largely to do with status economies and the resulting access to mates and opportunities. The human accounting system is status, not money. Because intra-group status is more rewarding than extra-group status. We will not have multi-culturalism when different groups have the ability to obtain political power, and can undermine the majority status system. There was far more multi-culturalism under the great monarchies of europe than today. Simply because commercial excellence was the only status route available to minorities, because the political system was not open to them. Power is not meritocratic. It just is power, and the most important objective of power is to deprive other people of it. And the most important feature of western culture was that it allowed status gain by market activity even if denied access to political office which might alter that dichotomy. The conservative movement was a reaction to a violation of its core principle of long term group cohesion – a necessary component of land holding and trade-route holding – persistence which cannot be maintained through economic means alone. Only tribalism and pure military strength are strong enough to hold trade routes. THe conservative movement since the end of the war was a reaction against the disintegration of the sentiments of group-persistence, due to immigration, post-slavery political problems, feminism and anti-colonialism, as a coalition against the established political order. And instead of obtaining their ‘rights as englishmen’ of property, and market participation, these groups sought political power – political power is not meritocratic. It is just force. This process s playing out, and will play out, as materially important and highly predictive. Our culture will not assimilate and unify. It will not achieve the grand vision. We are demographically adopting the south american model. We will, and are, fragmenting to the point where the government may lose the ability to govern. If we get only two states to make use of nullification that will be the end of our multi-cultural, melting-pot fantasy. And three more years of low employment will almost guarantee it. Good economics is not macro economics. All economics is micro. Because the vast movement of human beings over time is determined by what they cannot sense by quantitative means, and what they can sense by qualitative means: the loss of their status and opportunity due to enforced competition, and competition from people who are no longer asked to integrate and to be ‘american’ and adopt american values, but to oppose those values and retain their culture at any cost, because en-masse, it is a way to obtain political power, rather than participate in the market and become an american by earning status in the market. All your criticisms of the free trade movement are correct. Conservatives were attempting to preserve the cult of american classical liberalism, preserve existing status hierarchies, and force people to conform to that value system – their cult – and therefore force people into the market under the monarchic classical liberal model. THe conservative policies that you are railing against are simply means of undermining the attack on the classical liberal cultural order. Justified as economic nonsense maybe. But pursued for precisely conservative reasons. Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Because economics is not a sufficient means of decision making in a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.
-
Anarchists and Elitism?
From The Liberty Defense League, an exceptionally intelligent posting on the weaknesses of anarchism.
Some libertarian friends call for anarchy to prevail. While such a state of affairs may be offering momentary delights, we need to remember that if we stand for nothing, we will fall for anything. Anarchy is government of nothing, and is only a transitional period between different states of order. Order always arises from chaos, and anarchy is often a tool of leftists. I am sure true libertarians are well meaning in upholding individuals’ self-rule in looking to a utopian anarchy, but I believe they are being used, even misled, to merely be creating conditions for another tyranny to prevail. The libertarian anarchists are correct in stating why the current Federal Union of Criminals Unlimited gives us ample reason to secede. But to what goals do we truly aspire?
(My comment posted from the site, copied below for recording purposes.) Exceptionally intelligent article. Thank you. A couple of insights for context.
[callout]The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of Keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. [/callout]
The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. (I realize that this is a mouthful, but it is the correct analysis.) Mises, Hayek, Parsons, Popper, Rothbard, Nozick, fall failed despite great minds, to provide a solution to the semi-rational tools provided by the above listed models. The conservatives from Kirk onward produced sentimental historical references, but no rational philosophical framework. Especially that could compete with the heady religious scripture, rational philosophy, and volume of production of marxism and marxists. They failed because government consist of both the associations you refer to, as well as the institutions that limit the use of free associations to become governments themselves, and therefore have the ability to project their will by edict, rather than the ability to advocate their will upon the desirous. From this viewpoint, the anarchic research program, when approached as a program of research in limiting government (as largely done by Hoppe), has accomplished more than all other freedom-driven intellectual programs. But as a practical political movement it will fail. It wil fail for the reasons you have stated. However, it has contributed greatly to the philosophical debate. We just do not yet know how to change our institutions to make use of the libertarian anarchist framework of privatization in order to balance the use of monetary policy and redistributive sentiments, with freedom. Libertarians figured it out. Most of it. And we should thank them for it. The primary change in the nature of government was that western government ceased attempting to increase economic productivity after the great war, and instead, emphasized expansion and redistribution. And this treat to our freedom was started by the Louisiana Purchase and our fate sealed with the civil war. Liberty is for small homogenous states. And as Federalist 10 states, any time you have a government over people with dissimilar economic and cultural interests, it’s not a government, it’s an empire, and as an empire, it’s oppressive. – a member of the anarcho capitalist research program.