The Real Problem with Democracy

It is said that the problem with democracy is that the people will vote themselves ever-larger government benefits and bankrupt the society. This is, of course, utterly false. Just look at what is going on in the United States today: Wall Street is being given trillions of dollars in subsidies while little people get zero percent interest on their savings, and pensions and social security are set to be ravaged to help pay for this largesse to the plutocrats. A mandatory private health system was enacted that will radically increase the profits of for-profit insurance companies while the average person faces costs so high that they cannot actually afford to use their insurance. Trillions of dollars are spent in wars whose only obvious point is to enrich politically connected defense contractors, while roads and bridges in this country are allowed to fall apart. The borders are being thrown open to massive third-world immigration so that wages for the many can be driven down and profits for the few driven up.  None of these things are happening because the people themselves want them. 

No, the problem with democracy is that it is so easy for the rich to bribe elected representatives, and use the government to steal from the people. People vote for a candidate who says one thing, and after being elected, they do what they have secretly promised their wealthy patrons.

What do I think of direct ‘mob rule’ democracy? I think that it might be a good thing (Switzerland anyone?). Or at least, not as bad as rule by kleptocracy masquerading as democracy.  (Curiously the elites tend to think of direct democracy as fascist, and rule by unelected bureaucrats as the only real democracy.  But I digress).

So why do we have a representational democracy? I think the problem is information. In a large and complex society, it is impossible for any single private citizen to be up on all the details of all the issues facing the society (especially if they have a day job. And we like day jobs). So they have to delegate political power to elected representatives, and therein begins the rot, because these single individuals can be so easily bribed… Same with the press: no single human being can evaluate all the information directly, they must have journalists to research and condense the issues for them: and these journalists can be, and increasingly are, bought and paid for.

All politicians will lie, to a greater or lesser degree.  However, if there is a robust and independent free press, this puts a damper on it.  If a politician promises A during the campaign, then after being elected immediately turns around and does B, in the past such a politician would be subject to derision and shame, would be considered a laughingstock, and would lose considerable power and prestige.  This would encourage the others. 

Now, however, the organized corporate press refuses to hold lying politician’s feet to the metaphorical fire – it is just culturally accepted.  Commenting on the dishonesty of a political candidate is regarded as being rude and disrespectful.  So increasingly they get away with it. 

However, there is one ray of light.  Current presidential candidate Marco Rubio promised during his senate campaign that he was against amnesty for illegal immigrants.  After getting elected, he became one of the ‘gang of eight’ senators that wrote and pushed for a bill that would open the doors of the United States to effectively unlimited illegal and legal immigration, likely turning the nation into a miserably impoverished third-world hell-hole within one generation or at most two.

Of course the donor class loves Marco Rubio – cheap labor uber alles! - but Rubio is having serious problems living down his past treachery with the voters, who, unlike the press, apparently still have some sense of memory.  Good.  If Marco Rubio’s career is ultimately crippled and destroyed because he said one thing and did another, that will have a salutary effect on politicians for yeas to come.  If only we could apply this to Obama and Hillary Clinton and John McCain etc., we might really have a semblance of a functional democracy in this country again…

And of course there is the old system of the false choice.  The oligarchs use their influence to make sure that both major party candidates are in their thrall.  Hillary vs. Rubio, McCain vs. Obama, Kerry vs. Bush.  Heads they win, tails we lose. 

And then the American people are blamed for their actions!  Ridiculous.  Say there are two levers.  Pull one lever, and we declare war on Syria.  Pull the other lever, and we declare war on Syria.  Pull neither lever, and we declare war on Syria.  There are no other levers (the rich and powerful have seen to that).  So we declare war on Syria.  Now “we” in general are responsible, and “we” (meaning everyone other than the rich who rigged the system in the first place) must sacrifice in order to accommodate all those refugees fleeing the wars that “we” started.

Economists often speak of “privatizing profits and socializing costs.”  So if I own a paper mill plant that dumps toxic waste in a river, I get all the profits from the paper mill, but the cost of the pollution is born by everyone who lives on the river.  Increasingly our faux democracy is a system for privatizing power and socializing responsibility: the rich get to make the decisions, but the people themselves have to take the blame.  Because you see it’s a ‘democracy’ and we can’t blame the elites for what has happened, oh heaven forbid…

And if I had a good solution for this I'd be king.  I would only say that pretty near any system can be made to work, sort of, if the elites have a sense of honor and duty to the nation as a whole.  And there is no system that cannot be corrupted if the elites care only for themselves.  Technical democracy is not a panacea and cannot substitute for a sense of honor and mutual patriotism amongst the citizens of a nation.

The fascist German Chancellor Angela Merkel is now Time magazine's 2015 person of the year

So Time Magazine has announced that the fascist chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is to be their person of the year.

Yes, Angela Merkel, the shrunken-apple head fuhrer whose unilateral and undemocratic decision to open up all of europe to unlimited third-world migration so that her wealthy patrons can have ever cheaper labor, has certainly made her a political leader with an impact.  I note that not only does Ms. Merkel not intend to make any personal sacrifices herself to this end, she was previously just fine with the Greek people starving to death in order to placate the big central banks.  So we can rule out compassion as any sort of motivator for the new German Iron Chancellor.

One notes that this opening up of borders has coincided with a plan by her to eliminate the minimum wage.  The two go together: having enough surplus labor to drive wages down to 2 euros/hour won't make much profit if it is illegal to pay less than 10 euros/hour, will it?

Cheap labor über alles!

Fascist?  The word is chronically over-used, but as she has asserted absolute authority over the demographics of europe - not just Germany - insisting that its population be massively increased and made wahhabist muslim, without any consultation with or concern for the people themselves, is surely dictatorial and yes I would think that fascist is an appropriate label.

It was in 1938 that Time Magazine named Adolph Hitler as the man of the year.

Karl Marx was wrong about many things, but he got one thing right.  History does repeat, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

When politicians say that we must not give in to fear, be afraid. Be very afraid.

One of the most common rhetorical tricks of a corrupt politician is to say that 'we' (meaning you) should not 'give in to fear', or that 'fear is a poor guide to the future.'  

Any politician making such a statement should be subject to extreme skepticism.  It is likely that they are engaging in a policy that people should fear - the statement is designed to quash debate, by removing specifics from the conversation and making the object the alleged neurotic fearfulness of the public rather than the specific policy.

The same goes with change.  Beware the politician who defends a policy by saying that 'we must embrace change', or 'we must change', or 'we must not be afraid of change.'  These are all blatantly dishonest statements.  The real issue is WHAT change, exactly, and will it be good or bad?

So Angela Merkel has opened the european union to potentially unlimited third-world immigration, and her response is simply 'fear is a poor guide'.  That's because she is out of ammunition.  To say that we should not fear a horde of people who have already so overpopulated their own lands that they find it intolerable to live there, is not something that can be defended - so take out the specifics and make a direct attack on the morals of the skeptics.

And of course, because there is essentially no vetting of these refugees, many of them are doubtless drug gang members, murderers, rapists, government thugs and torturers, etc.  Should we fear an influx of rapists and murderers and drug gang members?  I should hope so!

Now suppose someone said that we should not fear these third-world refugees because most of them are decent and hardworking.  It's wrong, but at least it is a rational argument.  It's wrong because who cares if MOST are decent and hardworking - when playing Russian Roulette, MOST cylinders are empty.  Still want to play?  Most of the time when you drive a car you won't need a seat belt - still want to buckle up, right?  And in any event the real threat of all these third-world refugees is their numbers.  They will swallow up all jobs, all resources, and all capital, turn the place into another Bangladesh, and still be hungry for more.  Just consider the hellish lands these people are escaping from, and realize who made those lands so hellish.  Yes corrupt politicians caused a lot of the misery - but even more yes, people having more children than they could afford to support.

This begs the question: why don't people like Merkel say that we should not fear all these third-world refugees BECAUSE of something (however dishonest or wrong)?  Why only say that we should not fear, period?  Again, it is because this is a rhetorical trick, that attempts to throw the onus on the skeptic.  

I suggest that whenever someone says that you should not fear anything in general, that you don't defend yourself but only declare it to be a cheap rhetorical trick and that the person in question is not arguing in good faith.  Throw it back at them.

So when you hear a politician say that you should not give in to fear, or some variation on that theme, be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Better the Devil You Don’t Know than Certain Doom

Imagine you are in an airplane, and the pilot is deliberately flying towards a mountain.  The mountain is still a long ways off, but it is coming, and if the plane flies into it it’s all over.

The passengers vote on a new pilot who swears that he won’t fly into the mountain, but as soon as he is elected he continues on towards the mountain. 

A calm and rational person with a long track record of trustworthiness presents themselves as a candidate for pilot who definitely will not fly the plane into the mountain.  However, this person is barred from using the public address system, so most people never hear what she has to say.  The people that want the plane to fly into the mountain scream that this person is a racist, that she is unbalanced, that she is not experienced enough to fly the plane.  Every time this person picks her nose it is publicly reported, her every possible mis-statement is blown out of proportion, vague allegations that she is a child abuser are made – and of course, her proposal to not fly into a mountain is never mentioned.  Towards the end of the election most people are embarrassed even to mention this person’s name in public, and the establishment pilot wins the election.  And the plane continues to fly towards the mountain.

Then along comes a maniac.  He’s big, he has weird hair.  He is an arrogant loudmouth, a clown, who routinely makes outrageous statements.  He also states, very clearly, that if he is elected pilot he will definitely not fly into a mountain, and it’s going to be great, and he’s going to redecorate the washrooms in the style of Louis XIV.  The establishment tries to ignore him, but he’s too loud.  They try to get him fired from his job, but he's independently wealthy and they have no leverage. They try to embarrass him, but his ego is so colossal that he’s beyond embarrassment. 

The mountain grows ever nearer.  The establishment candidate is cool and collected, he is supported by all the official announcements on the PA system, and his past record has made it clear that he is going to fly the plane into the mountain (though he often says differently in public pronouncements).  The maniac says that flying planes into mountains is really really dumb, and that a famous supermodel is no longer a “10.”

So who do you vote for?  Me, I’ll take my chances with the maniac.  He might be a disaster – heck, he might change his mind and decide to fly the plane into the mountain just like all the other establishment hacks.  But he might not.  And the other one will.

Let’s go back to the real world, and consider the establishment candidates.  What are they going to do?

- Open the borders to the overpopulated third world, let in anyone who wants to come: MS13 drug gang members, Islamic terrorists, people with exotic diseases, anyone at all, as long as the population can be driven up and wages can be driven down.

- Attack countries that do not threaten us, destroy moderate secular governments and replace them with post-apocalyptic wastelands, ally with Islamic jihadists like ISIS and Al Qaeda, and run up trillions of dollars in debts.

- Give trillions of dollars to corrupt and incompetent bankers, starving main street of capital and boosting parasitic financial engineering.

- Slash social security, because you know we spent all that money on stupid wars and bailing out Wall Street, and deficits are bad, right?

- Sign trade agreements that will tear up the constitution and bring in rule by unaccountable foreign corporate lawyers meeting in secret whose decisions can be neither appealed nor over-ruled by democratic statute, that have full plenary legislative power, and whose authority has no limit.

The establishment candidates may be saying something different about some of the above lately, but a quick look at their track record proves convincingly that they are lying.  Donald Trump says many crazy things, but he clearly states his opposition to all of the above, and there is no evidence that he is lying.  There are more moderate and soft-spoken politicians who are also actually opposed to the above – and you don’t even know who they are, do you?

Let’s go back a bit – under Hillary Clinton the United States became a de-facto ally of ISIS and Al Qaeda.  You know, Al Qaeda, the crazy guys that flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers and killed a few thousand Americans?   Yes really.  Now Donald Trump says many silly things, but he doesn’t say that we should ally with ISIS and Al Qaeda to attack secular Arab governments.  Hillary Clinton doesn’t say this either – instead, she has actually done it.  How is Trump the crazy one and Hillary Clinton respectable?  Objectively?  Really?  The power of the monolithic corporate press to take the most corrupt blood soaked monster and hammer home that they are ‘respectable’ is astonishing.

The future comes apace.  The United States does not have a vast excess of resources like it used to.  Open-borders immigration is building up a demographic momentum that will soon lock the nation into permanent third-world poverty.  A foolish politeness as you are being led to the slaughter is the hobgoblin of sheep and other domestic animals.

Trump 2016.  Because in a corrupt politics only the maniac can give you a chance.

The Vile Scourge of Naziphobia

1941

It has come to my attention that a surprisingly large number of people are expressing an unreasoning and racist hatred of Nazis.  This ‘Naziphobia’ is unworthy of an enlightened western society, and I call on all those of good spirit to help stamp it out.

Some complain about the Nazis executing large numbers of Jews by throwing them into gas chambers.  But really, there are today many millions of Nazis in Europe.  At any one time only a tiny fraction of these Nazis are throwing Jews into gas chambers – the vast majority are driving trucks and going to school and playing with their families, even as are we.  It hardly seems fair to condemn an entire culture because of a few bad apples.  Besides, western so-called ‘civilization’ has had it’s own extremists: Torquemada, Caligula, Vlad the Impaler, Justin Bieber, and so on.  We are hardly in a position to pass judgment upon the Nazis.

If in fact a few Nazis are acting badly, I blame the campaign of vilification, which has been waged upon them.  I mean, imagine some young Nazi, who only wants to do his job and settle down and raise a family.  Every day this poor Nazi encounters hostile microaggressions from Jews and Poles and even Frenchmen, and he must listen on the radio to that horrible xenophobic racist Winston Churchill and other far-right politicians comparing them to wild beasts.  Is it any wonder that sometimes the Nazis lash out?  I blame those intolerant haters for inflaming the situation.

Now many populist demagogues in countries like Poland and France want to close the door on the Nazis, and prevent them from entering.  Some of the more extreme compare the immigration of Nazis to an ‘invasion,’ a ludicrous and hateful charge. These young and hard-working Nazis only want to make a better life for themselves and their children, and by increasing the labor supply their entry will be good for the economy.  Only those consumed by fear and hatred of other people wish to barricade themselves in their countries, but of course that cannot work – not only is it morally wrong to prevent people from moving where they will, it is impossible.  Barriers and armies never work, and fear is a poor guide to the future.

I also hear complaints that when the Nazis move into another country, that they do not assimilate but rather set up their own laws.  Well I can only say that how can we judge our laws to be better than theirs?  The Nazis feel very strongly about their culture and we must respect that. Perhaps we can learn from them.  Certainly adding Nazis to our nation will enrich that multiculturalism which is so vital to human progress.  In any event the notion that the Nazis have set up  ‘no go’ areas where Jews and homosexuals fear to go, is an urban myth with no substance to it at all.

It is said that the Nazis should be condemned because they routinely preach hatred of Jews and Gypsies and Slavs.  I note that the great philosopher, Karl Popper, has commented on the ‘paradox of tolerance,’ noting that a tolerant society must actually be intolerant towards those expressing intolerance.  Therefore we must be intolerant of those expressing hatred towards the Nazis, and do everything in our power to suppress their vile maxims.  Saying that you hate the Nazis because they hate the Jews is hatred, pure and simple, and I for one will not put up with it.

Recently there was a report of some Nazis killing a few gypsies in a theater in Paris.  Now as regrettable as this isolated action was, the real threat is of an anti-Nazi backlash.  Doubtless this is the plan of the extremist elements within the Nazi party: to fuel the fires of hatred, thus creating a war between the Nazis and everyone else.  We must not allow these sorts of things to poison the well of friendship: we must use this as a spur to redouble our efforts at creating a world free of bigotry ad intolerance.

We must build bridges to the Nazis, and welcome them with open arms.  I call upon all media outlets to join me in banning any and all ‘hate speech’ that aims to inflame tensions with the Nazis, and the laws against anyone slandering the Nazis must be rigorously enforced.

Nazism is a philosophy of peace – the leader of the Nazi party, Adolph Hitler, has often said this, and so it must be true. 

On another note I have recently heard of something called “Godwin’s Law,” but I refuse to give it any credence.  I stand by “Jerner’s Law,” which says that there is no work of fiction that cannot be improved by adding Nazis – and that many works of nonfiction can be so improved, as well.

And after we have rid the world of the scourge of Naziphopia, we must then work even harder to fight against cancer phobia, rabid-dog phobia, falling-down-stairs phobia, rape phobia, arsenic-phobia, and all those other irrational phobias that so bedevil us all.

The Truth About Education: It Mostly Doesn’t Matter

Most jobs only require a basic solid high-school level education, and a lot of people are simply unsuited to the academic life. 

If we could train everyone to be a PhD computer programmer (and we can’t, not if standards are to be maintained), there would be a lot of un- and under-employed PhD computer programmers.  Having truck drivers with PhDs in truck driving won’t make the trucks go any faster or carry more freight.  ‘Educating’ everyone is not a panacea.

People who are talented and motivated enough to excel at academics will find a way to do so (as long as they have a solid base in high school, and as long as they aren’t living in a third-world country and are too malnourished or forced to work in the fields etc).  It was not that long ago that you didn’t need a PhD to do research: just get the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree and find someone doing interesting work in a lab or company and work with them (that’s really all a PhD is, we’ve just formalized it).

As far as public education goes, the major factors are:

1. The native ability of the student

2. The socioeconomic status of the parents

3. The socioeconomic status of the other children in the school

That’s it.  Sure, you need the teachers to be basically competent and professional, but they don’t need to be superhuman.  Throwing money at administrators and fancy buildings etc., having teachers with PhDs in educational pedagogy etc. does basically nothing.

To the extent that private and charter school have an advantage over public schools, it’s more because they have better students than better teachers.

As far as our increasing fetish with standardized testing, this is becoming a zero-sum game.  Sure, if you train a child from birth to take standardized tests, they will get better at taking standardized tests.  And so will everyone else’s child, and the net result will be zero, except that massive effort will be wasted. 

Albert Einstein did not spend his first 16 years being drilled in standardized test taking and I think he turned out just fine.  But today someone like Einstein would first have to get perfect exam scores or they would be condemned to working the fields.  That’s not really raising the intellectual level of a society. 

The problem now is that, with the job market so horrible, people are being forced into ever greater zero-sum competition with their peers, hoping to be the one person to rise to the top as the rest fail.  It’s like if there are a hundred people drowning in the middle of the ocean: perhaps one can survive by clambering on top of everyone else, but that’s not a strategy that everyone can succeed at simultaneously.  It’s also not a constructive strategy: it does not increase the overall level of the society.  The solution to a hundred people drowning in the ocean is not, I think, to train people to better compete at climbing on top of each other, but to provide lifeboats with enough seats.  Or to not have them dumped into the ocean in the first place.

If we had a better labor market, people with less academic talent would not be under so much pressure to boost their test scores or become what they are not: they could just make a decent living driving trucks and filling out customs manifests.  People with more academic talent would still compete with each other, of course (as did Einstein), but they could be more focused on things of true value and less on test taking per se.

This simple reality, however, has been clouded by vested interests. 

We are increasingly outsourcing jobs to poor countries, and insourcing workers from poor countries, in order to drive wages for the many down, and profits for the few up.  Which is the major reason that wages are falling.  But that doesn’t sound very good.  So the rich blame the victims: oh we have to import foreign workers, because American schools are so bad that they are not producing enough skilled workers.  And wages aren’t falling because we have radically increased the labor supply, no, it’s because American children aren’t getting a good enough education to be competitive in the jobs of the future (like waiter or Starbucks barista).

Of course this is rubbish.  A truck driver in Japan makes a lot more money than a computer programmer in India.  Education is fine, and for an industrial society it’s important that everyone be numerate and literate.  However, other than meeting the basic standards, the overall standard of living is not set by educational attainment.  If today everyone in India could magically be given a PhD in neuroscience, there would be 500 million chronically malnourished PhDs in neuroscience.

Ah, but the educational bureaucracies and unions have bought into this.  They like pushing the idea that schools are more important than they really are.  ‘Oh if the inner cities are collapsing it’s not because there are no jobs and no money, no, it’s because we haven’t thrown enough money at the schools!’ 

In the short run the educational mafias made some bucks off of this fantasy of teacher as miracle worker.  They got big raises, and lots of juicy high-paying positions in administration (where you have the added advantage of not having to do all that grubby work of actually lecturing and grading papers etc).

But now the jig is up.  The inner cities are still failing, real wages are headed down, American corporations are still importing massive numbers of foreign workers ‘because there just aren’t enough skilled Americans’ (hahaha), etc.  The teachers are now being blamed for what is not under their control, but they have so long pushed the idea that it is under their control, that they are screwed.  A backlash is coming, and teacher’s unions are going to be broken, and public schools starved of funds in favor of crony-capitalist ‘Charter’ schools, etc. 

Nevertheless, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for the teachers.  They should have realized what a toxic bargain it was to join forces with big business in blaming so many of the ills of society on the quality of the schools.  They should have realized that ultimately it would turn around and bite them. 

They also should have realized what it meant to join with big business in favor of cheap-labor immigration policies.  In the short run a massive boost in school-age children would increase the demand for teachers, and the size of the base of the pyramid upon which the educational administrators can build their bureaucracies.  However, this forced population growth also impoverishes the society at large upon which the teacher’s salaries ultimately depend.  You can’t get blood from a stone.  As lower wages drive down per-capita state and local tax revenues, there will be less and less for the teachers – and as wages and benefits for non-teachers keep falling, it will be so easy to attack the educational unions as being overpaid (when the reality is that everyone else is underpaid, but that’s a hard argument to make nowadays).

Look at what teachers make in places like Guatemala and Haiti and Pakistan.  Slowly but surely, American teachers are going to learn what that feels like.