On the (Inevitable) Failures of Government

This post is a formal response to Benjamin Greschler's "Middle Ground" blog - middlegroundblog.blogspot.com. I'd encourage you to follow the link and read what he has to say, though I'll be frequently referring to the text in my critique.

Ben starts, after a quick analysis of the Reagan administration, with:

"In turn, we lost a government that worked for the people and gained a government that simply worked for profit."

Tell me, when has a government, in the history of the world, ever been truly - in anything other than rhetoric - "for the people?" Or, for that matter, "for profit?" Government actors seek to stay popular and in office, and if that means pretending to help, that's a very different thing than the altruistic motive so ascribed.

Public choice theory - applying economics to government - making the same assumptions about people in office as to people outside of it - that they're self-interested and limited, rather than all-knowing white knights - has been so immensely accurate a tool for predicting government action that it cannot be denied. We don't have tariffs on steel because some virtuous, enlightened group of people sat around a table and decided it was "for the people." We have them - to the detriment of the entire industry and market - because somebody in some very large steel company paid a very large sum of money or otherwise complained to the government. This is common knowledge. We don't have agricultural subsidies and tariffs on sugar because there's some economic externality that the government is cleverly accounting for - we have them, and for no good reason - it is perhaps the single most universally-agreeable waste among all economists, from Krugman to Rothbard - because the firms of that industry are willing to stick their boots in the hind of politicians to get what they want; and the dispersed harm inspires not one regular old soul - who pays an extra .50 for his soda to get that American corn syrup over cheaper Brazilian sugar - to stop them.

There is not one solution for this problem. It will plague us until the government is gone.

He later acknowledges:

"The lobbyists endorsed their candidates through large donations, and in turn, when they were in office, they repaid them through legislation that benefited them and continued turning in profits."

Bingo. Welcome to how the government is and has always been working. This is the vicious government process that cannot be stopped - interest groups with concentrated wealth will inevitably overrule the interests of society at large through the political arm - unless we cut it off. But there's no pretending that this is some newfound happenstance thanks to Reagan. This is always and forever, amen.

"So while it benefits the average American and world citizen to support research into alternative energies that can be sustainable and efficient, our country at least is brought down by these lobbyists who cap our knowledge for their profit. While these lobbyists remain in charge of our government, there is little doubt that our system will remain as it has, for it isn’t in the benefit of those with the lobbying power to change the system at all."

Like the words came right out of my mouth - but when is it ever not like this?

"The government (in turn, us as a nation) can’t afford to leave the market to its own devices like they have the last 40 years"

The market was left to its own devices? looks left, looks right Where?

"But what line should they draw? Where should they create legislation, and where should they let the market work its usually effective devices? Well, while just about every economist has a different perspective about that"

The government does not care what the economists think. What line they should draw, and what line they will draw are forever separate things. The former is not even worth our consideration - it will never ever manifest. The only thing the government should is be very not there.

"there are two places that I would argue require the attention of the government. I’ll start off with the need for price of a product to factor in larger amounts of costs that are currently being ignored. When a tree is chopped down and sold, the person who chops down the tree doesn’t charge for the damage to the ecosystem that the lost tree influences. In large part that is because the damage has no visible effect on our lives. . . So the market would naturally not factor this into a price, as it has no short-term impact."

Again, this is the type of scalpel-reasoning that the government is entirely unresponsive to. The options are: government, and no government - give a bunch of guys guns, badges and ultimate uncheckable authority, or don't. There is no "government that Ben directs" option. There is no "government that is kind, patient and caring for the needs of the forest" option.

Fortunately, the problem is solvable through market forces, whose adequacy betrays the shortsightedness Ben ascribes. The market doesn't fail to account for the ecosystem damage of felling trees because it has 'no short-term impact' and there is no 'visible effect on our lives' - it's just because there is barely any impact to that particular lumberjack. He doesn't care about our lives - he cares about his life. Externalities 101. You solve an externality with law, that's true - but that law can come from the private sector, and doesn't (evidently) come from the government.

Make the forest someone's property, make them care about that ecosystem, and presto - externality abolished. Now, he's not going to care specially for the critters or the tree-spirits, but he's going to care about its value (yes, long-term - when it's no longer his it's because he sold it) to human beings, which may include those things.

"it would be difficult to even quantify a price that the chopping of a tree had for the ecosystem, especially if you had to calculate the future cost to the ecosystem. It was impossible to put a number on that."

It is difficult, but it is possible. That's what makes the market so complicated, and the government such an abominable substitute.

"The second role government should play in our economy is another controversial one, but in my opinion more immediately important, being the redistribution of wealth. The rich are enjoying a period of wealth unlike what has ever been seen or conceived, and the poor and unfortunate will only continue to be worse off without policies that redistribute wealth back into their hands"

Once again, to beat a dead horse, Benjamin Greschler does not decide where the government distributes wealth. The people who do decide that are not white knights, nor can we ever count on them to be as such. The government hands tax breaks to people who lobby, subsidies people who lobby, tariffs against competitors in favor of firms that lobby, and gives really, really awful schools to poor people. If you can't afford servants to be in bed with politicians, and you're simultaneously part of an income group vastly outnumbered by middle-class voters, this system dooms you to the stick's short end.

What the poor need, who spend a much larger percentage of their money on food and gasoline, who are constantly out of work, is no more food and gas tax, and no more minimum wage. Is everyone in the room aware that excluding the possibility of a voluntary transaction between a worker of low skill and his employer makes both of them worse off?

I hope so.

Why do we have minimum wage laws? Why were they originally conceived? Because people with jobs don't like competing with people willing to work for less, so they kick the government. Plain and simple. And if all you can do is work for less on your journey up the corporate ladder - guess you're not working! Better not educate yourself among your terrible public school options either, since you need to get on the job right away to get anything at all.

But you can't live on minimum wage or less! I'm sorry, did you know that people lived 200 years ago? Like, before the hydraulic press? If America wants to build a damn wooden shack and there's someone willing to buy it, it's done. The reason you don't see them is because there's not even a market for them. The "living cost" of society is itself conceived by the richness of society - it costs that much to live here because there does not even exist a substantial market of people poorer. Why does that market not exist? Why is everyone richer than they were? Capitalism. Face it or squint your eyes at history, on pain of your intellectual integrity.

What's more, this is entirely predictable by economic theory. Why do the rich get richer and the poor get richer when the government doesn't stick a gun in the way? Because competition demands that an increased output of labor be accompanied by an increased wage, which wage is constantly itself improved by the profit-driven advances in technology that increased the labor output, vastly multiplying its value. 

All of this is digression, of course, since the government, one way or another, is not helping the poor as Ben proposes. You may stick up for that government or see it gone - there is no third route.

Let me explain that another way: suppose Ben Greschler becomes president someday. Ben only wins by signing his soul to the will of a forever uninformed public, and he only stays by confirming that signature, and he only gets anything done by acting the same as everyone else with that signature, and he only gets favorable press by scribbling that signature onto everything he writes. His predecessor will have done the same, and he will be predecessor to one who does the same. The institution excludes all other possibilities - which is why we dismantle the institution.

Why is the public forever uninformed? For the basic reason that none has incentive to become informed! They get one vote to make one say that is guaranteed to have no effect on the ultimate outcome. It is, from the cost-benefit perspective of any regular Joe, a total waste of time. If economics predicts anything, it is that Democracy is total idiocy.

"In the end, our actions and will to change as a nation will boil down to if we can represent more than the lobbyists"

And in the end, you lose.

Anarchy, please and thanks.

How to: Mind Control

Mind control is very real. This article is not for the type of skeptic who sees the evidence from a laboratory as divine and "if p then q, p, q" as metaphysical nonsense.

In other words, I'm going to tell you how it works, I'm going to tell you why it works, and I'm going to give you a yet-to-be-seen metaphysical proof for its existence and power, without providing a single peer-reviewed article. Please enjoy.

And please read the article. Otherwise, it will not make sense to you. I'm going to make it as nice and simple as I possibly can, just for you.

MIND CONTROL. What does it mean? As I will explain, it's not what you think. To start this explanatory process, we'll begin with the first rule of my metaphysic:

1. No ego can be coerced.

We're not talking toaster waffles here. And we're not talking about coercion with guns, either. An ego is what you are. It's what I am. For those who don't know, metaphysics is entirely concerned with the nature of being, so we're going to get down to the nitty-gritty details.

What are you? Are you your body? - head, arms, legs, hands and feet? Or maybe you are your brain? - all the neurons and particles that make it up? Tell me, what if you lose an arm? What if half your brain is surgically removed from out of your head? (Yes, it has happened.) Are you still you? Of course you are. What else would you be? :)

No, you are not your body, nor your brain. You are a perceiving, thinking and acting entity. You are an atom, in the Greek sense (something that is indivisible). You do not exist at a location, you exist outside of space. You are not perceivable, not thinkable, and not coercible. In other words, you have existence and a volition that is only yours.

2. No ego can be visualized.

You can not be seen, smelled, tasted or touched, and you cannot be visualized. I can visualize, "in my head" (but not really in anything), your body, or your brain - but I cannot visualize you, nor can you visualize yourself! This is because visualization happens in space - a person's mental space (which, as I will explain, is all the space there is) - and you are not in it! This will become very important later as we discuss what properties make something a creation (hint: being visualized is a big one.).

This should give some insight as to why no ego can be coerced. You can force the movement of my arm, but you cannot force the action of my will. You can move my body, but you cannot move me. After all, being outside of space, I don't move.

I'm sure there are a bunch of questions popping up in your head right now, least of which: "how is this relevant?" All I can ask is that you be patient - all will be explained.

3. All things are perceptions.

Allow us to consider the nature of things. A table, for instance. What makes up the existence of the table? You see it, you feel it, and you can perhaps smell or taste it if you wish. In other words, it exists as sensations. Seeing, feeling, touching, tasting and smelling are all perceptions, and the table is ultimately reducible to only these. If it were reducible to something else, you would not perceive it, and it would, thus, not be an aspect of the table.

4. There is a dualism of existence.

Now, I say things, but I categorize these as being outside the category of egos, which are not sensations. Egos cannot be reduced to any simpler form (thus, an "atom."). Here we acknowledge a dualism of existence: egos and things, or, egos and perceptions (or sensations). No sensation is reducible to "ego" and no ego is reducible to sensation (it is an entity of sensing). They are wholly different.

Just to get this straight, remember that your body is sensations, while you are an ego. That means that you are wholly different from your body.

 5. The world was created by an ego.

As you can easily attest to, the ego may produce thoughts "ex nihilo" - from nothing. Just as you can visualize a table, so other egos can create objects in space. But there are two great differences between your visualized table and the tables you do not visualize. The latter are of a far superior quality, and they also are not of your making. But that does not mean another did not make them. Indeed, a far more powerful mind than yours - a God, we'll call this creator - produced from his thought the tables you see just as you produce tables from your own thinking. There are two ways we know this, and several very important implications that result.

In philosophy, there is a well-known problem of induction proposed by David Hume in the eighteenth century. It states, and correctly, that a knowledge of the present and past does not provide a knowledge of the future. Quite simply, that the apple has fallen from the branch a hundred times before has no bearing on whether or not it will fall an a-hundred-and-first time. And yet, we do predict the future, and are quite successful. We know things about it. The explanation is also simple: God, creator of the things we see, keeps them constant such that we can apply our own interference. Without laws, which are not necessary, but constant by the will of God, we would not be able to use our agency in ways conducive to our own progression. Thus, as we only ever have the past state of affairs as a basis, God establishes the law as a Schelling point by which man can predict the future. (Those more interested on the subject are welcome to talk to me further. I would recommend learning about Schelling points first. :) )

If the world were of a random existence, we could not establish any reason for its staying constant. We would be at a total loss to predict any future event. The problem of induction would literally destroy all inductive reasoning ability, and we would be lost in void.

Furthermore, knowing that the ego and things are of a separate fundamental existence, it is altogether impossible that the happenstance would so arrive that perceptions are made perceivable by various beings, all of which are granted the same perceptions. There is no "link" between your mind and mine - that we both perceive the same things is surely by virtue of an intelligence which desired it.

6. Thought imposition is necessarily possible.

And now we begin our steps toward mind control - first by acknowledging that which God has done to us. God has not only produced visualizations of extraordinary vividness - he has imposed them on your mind and mine. He has visualized His thoughts into our own mental space. God is no fundamentally different from you and I - he is an ego - one that acts, thinks, and perceives, and is relatable to us, building an entire world for the sole purpose of our own progression. This entity, of a fundamental nature no different from you or I, can impose his thoughts into the mind of another.

Can we do the same?

There is no proof that extends further than this, except by your own experimentation. As it happens, we can. Telepathy is the simple process of two egos imposing thoughts in each other's minds, and it is completely doable.

So, what about mind control?

Mind control is no fundamentally different from telepathy. Indeed, it is telepathy - but with a notable twist. Most minds happen to be in a state of total pandemonium. Most people do not have a direction for their lives. It is when you impose a thought as a mind quieter than theirs - as a mind that is obviously purposed and with direction - that they assume it to be a thought of their own, but an extraordinary one, and they obey, without consciously knowing why. This is mind control - an awesome responsibility, with as much potential to do harm as it has to bring great reward. But I extend it to you as an option.

Here is how it is done: visualize a funnel above your body, or above your soul if you can so manage. Visualize another funnel above the body (or soul) of another. Make your mind exceedingly quiet. Now imagine your thought being produced from your head, and coming out of your funnel, then place it into the funnel above the other's head. Watch the results. Keep in mind that the thoughts are not literally entering another's head - as we have already discussed, they are entering the mental space of another entity that has no location, and whose space is inaccessible to you. You are forcing your thoughts into their space by visualizing something meaningful that connects to the understanding you currently have. You must be persistent. The mind grows stronger with practice.

Again I say, mind control is a great responsibility. I advise those who practice it to bear in mind all appropriate ethical considerations, while making sure to have an extraordinary time.

Blessings!

Metaphysical Oneness vs. The Multiple Egos Hypothesis

What I am about to describe is a rift between two metaphysical outlooks, both of which have enthralled me, and one of which I lean toward.

Metaphysical Oneness is the belief that all things are one - that any being is a slice of a whole cherry pie, which is the universe.

The Multiple Egos Hypothesis, as I will call it, is the belief that individual "egos" are totally distinct from one another. An ego, in this context, means a perceiver-actor-thinker - it is you at your most fundamental level, and I at mine - we are each separate egos.

I happen to believe the second of these, though I feel that I am outnumbered in this respect (among metaphysicians).

The key separating factor in this dispute is whether all things can be reduced to a similar substance. Christopher Langan, the world's smartest man, has posited, for example, that all is reducible to "infocognition," which has the dual aspect of perceiving and being perceived, thinking and being thought, acting and being acted upon, but which is a single substance. Underlying all universes, he claims, is an infinite expanse of cognitive potential, which manifests every universe in a way that maximizes the utility function of the infocognition. There is no fundamental difference between you and a toaster.

Many religious metaphysicians believe something similar. The universe, they say, is God, and God extends through creative thinking power. He/She/It produces beings and things, which follow the trademark of Godhood. Nothing is outside God, nothing is without God, All is God - manifested in many forms.

My problem with these is simple: I do not believe that I am an idea. I believe in ideas and idea-creators, thoughts and thinkers, perceptions and perceivers, visualized and visualizers, acted upon and actors - I believe in a fundamental dualism in the universe. I believe that I am an ego, that you are an ego, that there are billions and billions of other egos - each with its own volition - and that together we co-create the visible universe. An ego is not perceivable, thinkable, visualizable, coercible. It creates ideas ex nihilo at the cost of some labor, has existed always and forever will exist.

I think it's an interesting dispute.

A Plea to Libertarians

I speak to you as a fellow Libertarian.

It is the natural instinct of the Libertarian to announce that he has the greatest features of "both sides." From the fascist Republicans he takes the economic freedom, and from the socialist Democrats he takes the social freedom. The result is a kind of man who hates the government and wants nothing to do with the IRS, social security, the military, nor food stamps.

The first problem with this is that the Republicans and Democrats don't actually sponsor either of what has just been suggested. Not in actuality. You can find fringe-members of each party, be it Ron Paul or the Democrat-equivalent, but the party itself, and the units they elect, are much closer to one another than they are to either of the ideals expressed. Economic and social freedom - freedom - is lost to the two-party system.

The second problem is much more complex, and regards how one defines "freedom." Freedom is a buzzword that most are inclined to support, but it doesn't so easily stand behind a single platform in the face of the interpretations of many people. Right-libertarians, like myself, are captialists. That means property establishment, and that means guns and borders. That means: cross that line and you're dead. Not exactly "free." But freedom is denied to man in its perfect form, so saith these types. The right-libertarians posit that a world without property is less free than a world with it, because property establishes a space in which you may act freely, where propertylessness produces only chaos. A world where every man has his own land is a world that utilizes that land the best, and also where people can freely pursue their own interests, so saith we. But that's a very different statement than "social freedom," or "economic freedom," the latter of which simply means adhering to the exclusive ownership rights of property.

I have been, at one point in my life, drawn away from right-libertarianism for this the property issue. It is hard to support property based largely on its inequitable distribution and exclusive nature. My plea is that libertarians come back to the old ways of natural rights, and forget the argument of establishing property on the basis of consequentialist jabber.

Natural rights are hard things to support. How could it be that what matters more than the outcome is... anything? Don't the ends justify the means? - it is what we're looking at after all, what we're considering. To these I say, yes - I hold no contention. There is no problem with pursuing the best ends, but we must acknowledge that these ends can only be pursued in the first place, insofar as those ends are good, by establishing property rights. Whatever value a man has and wishes to pursue, whatever good value - be it peace, love, friendship - these values are lost automatically in a world ravaged by conflict. Conflict-avoidance is a goal that comes temporally prior to the pursuing of ends, thereby establishing it as an a priori ethic. Property rights are the means by which conflict is avoided. It is initially appropriated by homesteading - the act of utilizing virgin resources - because the goal of land, for man, is to be utilized, and once utilized there is no sense in the removal of that title for the sake of another. Moreover, such 'first come, first served' with regard to the unutilized world is natural - it is what any man would expect, and so establishes itself as a Schelling point - a thing that man will respect on the basis of a mutually-agreeable point in the vast land of unagreeable ones.

To establish libertarianism on this basis is an inherently more powerful argument. It side-steps the values debated by the consequentialists by imposing a natural law that supersedes them. Its support necessitates the libertarian code and its many extensions, where the consequentialist would have to painstakingly enumerate. None of this is to say that a consequentialist argument doesn't serve the libertarian well - indeed, supporting the use of property rights as a means of conflict-avoidance would need to also suggest that values could and would be pursued in a state of peace, and in this avenue such arguments are welcome. But to stand on these alone is to lose a powerful advantage.

The Enlightened Mistake

Shining light dons overhead
Grimbles and grumbles gone off to bed
Missiles and weapons are blocked, locked and dead
Never a word harsh to hear near was said.

Flight to the moon and the sky's left behind
Space is a world to be molded by mind
Not but a soul screams "there's too much to find"
Scraped are the worst from a crisp orange rind.

Where is this world, this utopia, this place?
Where not but a soul has a shout left to make
Where not but a child is free to behave
In every which way makes the soul the most brave.

Too often the enlightened are stuck in this view
That all are like they, know they not they're the few
There's too much to scream and to shout and to hear
That's harsh when near to the ear, bringing fear.

Stay clear.

The Kingdom of Truth and Love Explained

It is the belief of some men that life is better suited under conditions in which he strives for a more ideal knowledge - that is, a knowledge of things as they most directly relate to his well-being. One could contend that the idle chatting of the common man is sufficient for this cause - that speaking in terms of women, boys, clothing and food is all that is needed for our greatest happiness, but many of us think differently.

I contend, and by this contention hereby state the existence of my kingdom, that man is best-suited to ponder that which defines his existence. He is best-suited to think of what he is, what he can do, and what of the universe that binds him to things he does not understand. He is best-suited to stretch his boundaries of knowledge in ways entirely abstract from experience - in aprioristic ways, i.e., in those ways which are not related to the outside world, but to thought alone.

Consider that man does not know his true nature - I say this to the metaphysical idealist, or to the dualist, or to the man who believes he is ego - non-physical, but spiritual, or to he who acknowledges the impossibility of the statement: "I am my body", when in fact the faculty of his perception denotes the meaning of a being far greater. Consider that for all his uniqueness - his strange functions and powers when compared to the things he observes, these being his ability to observe, to think, to conceive and comprehened, to act - that for all this, man craves the material as though he were friends and equal peers with its nothingness, its dust-composition. I speak to the man whose bosom boils with that feeling of his superseding the temporal and mundane, to he who screams in agony at the thought of acquiescing in mere finitude - to he I say: join me.

The kingdom is a forum for discussion. It is a means to enlightenment, or to progression, or satisfaction in knowledge, to the man unsatisfied with his cognitive lot. It is a means for establishing a higher end, and then pursuing it by logical discourse. It is that medium by which men become gods - and one of many, but one nonetheless, if I do say so myself. The great compliment comes not from arrogance, but from acknowledgment in that possibility, and from the optimism that things get much better the much harder one strives. It is that driving optimism that leads me to the establishment of a kingdom for the like-minded.

Which is not to say the kingdom is for alone the theistic metaphysical idealist like myself, but for the man, who like myself, is of the mind that he can progress with the aid of his own thoughts and those of others - the man who believes this is purposeful, useful, and possible. To he I say: join me.

There is no commitment, there is no obligation, there is no binding force, there is no dictator, there is no leader, there is no establisher of say-so - it is the anti-cult, and not that which so many ascribe to it merely on the basis of its name. That name serves to promote the seriousness of the concepts it seeks - and be there other concepts to arise from the mount of knowledge shared, they would be ammended thereto were it not for the complications and confusions of an establishment's name-change. To those so infatuated with those ideas as I, and to the other noble virtues and values that make up man, to he I say: join me.

By any messaging - a comment here, a facebook message, an email (jacob.oveson@gmail.com), a text message (7203944411) - it is irrelevant by what means I am notified - by any such attempt to seek the truth through this medium, I will respond with a 4-page document of questions. Feel free to examine them first, then decide. Feel free to ask for the questions without even the intention to join. But read these, answer them, think through them, establish yourself, to me, as one who looks throughout the fringe of his mind, and you will be welcomed to the kingdom.

So far, cotented members have joined me willingly in this cause, eccentrically. Show me your enthusiasm and I will welcome you to that which I organize for our betterment.

Discussion should flow within the next month or so. All applicants are welcome.