Theme: Civilization

Those questions that appear big, meaningful, or difficult rarely are – but if deprived of meaningful history (demographics, technology, economics, and law) they appear so.

1) Corporations: We invented Markets to force cooperation (legislation), Markets to Cooperate in (markets for consumer goods, services, and information), and Markets To Suppress violations of cooperation (Courts.) The State disintermediated the people on purpose from suing corporations, so that they could increase tax revenues. (research coal and rail damage in England). This violates the Common Law tradition of sovereignty and reciprocity decided by tort (trespass) and is easily reversed and restored. There is no reason whatsoever that we lack ‘standing’ to sue corporations (politicians, bureaucrats), in matters of the commons (class actions). Restore it, restore libel and slander. Although hard to do, we might want to restore laws against Shrews and Shrewing (Gossip, undermining, and shrill behavior. look it up. Your screaming leftist would be in stocks for most of our history.)

2. Free speech. Free speech is not a difficult problem. It became a difficult problem with the end of the Duel, and the extension of that prohibition to prohibition on interpersonal discipline (inflating assault), and inflation into the prohibition on self-defense, defense of marriage, family, and property. There weren’t many extra-judicial punishments in our history but there isn’t much evidence that they weren’t justified. The reason our ancestors were better mannered was that the costs of ill-mannered behavior were high. It’s terribly easy to tell the difference between free and unfree speech: It’s either testifiable, reciprocal (ethical and moral), and warrantable – or it isn’t. If it isn’t testifiable, reciprocal, and warrantable, then its not possible to claim it’s truthful and moral. We test this every single day in courts here and around the world. We prosecute companies every single day. It’s not difficult to extend this law from commercial to political, to intellectual speech. We do it somewhat in the hard sciences – although the soft ‘sciences’ would nearly disappear, and economists would be hanging from lamp posts.

3. Social Media Companies. Legislation always lags when it doesn’t impact state authority. There is no argument to be made that Google-search (yellow pages, library), Wikipedia (Encyclopedia), Twitter (news), Facebook-messenger (communication), and Youtube-Instagram (publication, media) are not necessary infrastructure. that is indifferent From Electricity, Yellow Pages, Telephone, Network, and Cable. All of which are (heavily) regulated to ensure free movement of information EXCEPT pornography or conspiracy to commit crime.

4. The underlying problem is whether we are going to preserve the American experiment in the ‘third way’ of Majority Middle-Class Meritocracy under the common law of equals, or revert to continental ( church, aristocracy) division of ruled and rulers, under the Napoleonic (totalitarian) code. The answer is of course, that we can afford to do either, and have immigrated so many underclasses that it’s not possible to preserve our American experiment, in extending the rights of Englishmen, anglo Saxons, germanic peoples, and west Indo-Europeans that has been the secret of our success: Truth before face regardless of cost, Duty before self, sovereignty, reciprocity the jury, and the natural common law of tort. … and the problem it leaves us with. The dirty secret of western civilization is that we have been eugenic since our beginning. And both Christianity in the ancient world and in the modern Boas, Freud, Marx, Adorno et al, Derrida et al, and the current neoliberal -postmodern dogmatists are advancing a host of different ‘re-wildings’ of mankind in order to achieve their ends: ending the eugenic civilization we call the west.

People were not oppressed. They were domesticated. And that’s what we see in the genetic record.