AntiBullshitMan

Segregationist Kool Aid: A Sober Addendum

2011-09-21T18:10:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of this video I pointed out that I would fancy seeing a modern example of a fully fledged segregationist society chalk full of racists, strictly for comparability purposes. I'm not going to go through all the layers of context which preceded this statement, so if it strikes the reader as an odd wish to make, just watch the first 20 minutes of the video and you'll get my drift.

This supposed question of mine (which any dunce with the comprehension skills of an 8 year old will recognize doesn't pass for a question, but don't tell these keyboard warriors that) has been met with a few replies consisting of the following thought process:

Multiculturalism isn't running rampant in Japan. Quite the contrary. Therefore the Japanese population is overwhelmingly composed of racialists cut from the same cloth as the breed of white-only segregationists being addressed in the video. Japan's long term success in [insert applicable fields here] is all the demonstration one needs in order to understand how this question has already been answered.

Several problems with this. All of which, once explained, on more than one occasion, continued going over the heads of the people commenting. They got more trolly with each post, claiming to know the inner workings of my mind and how such workings don't translate over to my replies to them, effectively calling me a liar. It struck me as a mere baiting fest for more replies, so I hope they enjoy the attention they clamored for.

The problems? For starters, Japan's non-existent enforcement of anything that can even remotely be classified as a segregationist policy. This alone is enough to write off Japan as being applicable to the targeted societies and the subsequent thought experiments about the policies of such societies, posed in the video. For those who refuse to accept every definition of Segregation which explicitly outlines the enforced separation of different racial groups in a country, community, or establishment, and insist on cherry picking from definitions which cast it as voluntary: I'm not here to play word games. If your beef with the video is that I didn't preface each use of the word segregation with use of the word forced, you are wasting my time. The video largely revolves around application forms; Contracts to be acted upon if not met with discriminate analysis.

Ironically enough, it was then argued that policies are a non-factor in and of themselves. Some direct quotes:

"Policies that are not implemented are irrelevant".

Not when contingent on the definition of a word placed in the very title of the video the commenter is posting on. The context is perverted anyway, since the spirit of this comment intends to paint a vague picture of separatist policies as if to imply that they currently exist in a posed state, awaiting to be implemented any day now.

"Theory and practice are not the same"

This statement solidifies my suspicions that they're not even bothering to understand what I'm trying to convey to them and are in it for the swagger, last word, or to bait for further replies.

"You can’t understand Japan by studying its laws"

The point of invoking laws into the conversation has to do with the fact that the video revolves around words that have precise and expedient definitions. By deviating from these definitions one deviates from the subject matter of the content itself. The cousin of this predicament is best illustrated with the following: If a given State imposes no legal restrictions on private ownership of industry, property and general free trade, while the vast majority of its citizens still opt to voluntarily organize and collectively invest their savings in co-ops, which end up dominating and ultimately buying out the few individually owned businesses leftover, it would still be a butchering of terminology to call the end result a Socialist State. If one were to critique this system under the guise of critiquing State Socialism, the critic would be doing the term a disservice. Trade would still be uninhibited by regulatory oversight, and ownership/wealth untamed by external forces of redistribution (be they corporate or populist forces). The fact that more individual owners split the ownership pie, business per business, compared to what tradition has generally been accustomed to, is a non-sequitur in so far as the system itself is concerned. The only trespass in definitions arises from suggesting that one ought apply these labels to areas where the policies contradict their very meaning, all because of massive increases in ownership counts, juxtaposed with labor counts.

Conversely, one can't pretend to know that a vast majority of Japanese people harbor racist views which match or boarder on matching views of the actual segregationists I was referring to, simply because of Japan's low immigration count. To argue otherwise is to dogmatically assert that more people would have gone on to integrate or visit had it not been for the prevailing racist attitudes in Japan which currently puts them off. As if this cautionary forward thinking plays a defining role in the decisions of would-be tourists to skip out on the old J. It's just another extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, especially in light of the fact that no Japan tourist within my scope, past or present, has ever complained about having been discriminated against while visiting Japan. Nor have any of them once pointed out how it's the hearsay of this discrimination which made them visit, say, Hawaii instead.

Furthermore, it reeks of closed-mindedness to assert that Person A's flawlessly solid relationship with Person B must result in the 2 of them forming a shared hostility of Person C to such a contemptuous degree that they refuse to tolerate C's mere presence. There is no evidence of this in respects to Japan. Such evidence becomes apparent only once A and B build a wall prohibiting C from entering. Like actual Segregationists strive to do, with the wall being a metaphor for law. Capacity to get along with one's own doesn't necessarily lead to contempt of anyone who is different. The Japanese largely prove this, as they don't get their panties in a bunch over the prospect of their land being legally open for immigration, and thereby race mixing. Which it presently is. Unlike the individuals my video plainly intended to highlight, should actual attention to it have been paid.

Compatibility =/= hatred or intolerance of incompatibility. Not with civilized adults. An elementary example of this: I'm far more compatible with individuals who possess a fluid understanding/articulation of the English or Serbian languages, as those are the only 2 languages I speak. Does this mean that I am by virtue of this self-acknowledged compatibility incapable of recognizing that it would be highly irrational of me to advocate the deportation of those who speak/understand neither of these two languages all that fluidly? It doesn't. Why is it irrational to begin with? For many reasons, most discretely because a hefty dose of low paying positions would stand to see a massive drop in performance quality as immigrants typically occupy such gigs due to factors unrelated to intrinsic intellectual scantiness. Something that, generally speaking, cannot be said of the good old home grown guys and gals who'd fill up those job openings in no time, much like they did before the stamina of all these pesky fresh-off-the-boat competitors got a little too stiff for their upkeep. There's also the inevitably high turnover rate, which would prove disastrous for any environment where more than a few shaky English speakers worked prior to their collective deportation, effective immediately. This is a prime example of weighing the scales and coming to a conclusion where a lack of personal hands-on compatibility isn't always rational grounds for dismissal of shallow incompatibility.

Imagine if I were to point to the happenstance of any given public school consisting mostly of white students and white personnel, with non-whites being allowed to enroll all the same, as proof of those white students and personnel being racists. Consider what would happen if I were to assert that the disproportionate number of minority kids/adults in that institution must be the axiomatic result of intentional but voluntary separatism, where minorities are loathed, though not openly, and certainly not to the level where any of the whites would ask them to voluntarily leave and go to another school. I'd be laughed off the street, yet this is exactly the school of thought the apologists milk with their holy grail example that is Japan.

To cite Japan's success in various areas as an example of Segregation at work is to appeal to a large segment of its populace, as ginormous amounts of people play a role which contributes to Japan's success. With this in mind, one has to ask how are the Japanese, at large, equatable to any given separatist group? How are they similar in a way which isn't superfluous as a means serving their prosperous ends?

1. Because they value their people's culture/tradition just like the racialists: To this I'll simply point out that the mere absence of defiance, be it verbal or other, against one's own ancestral heritage or even modern culture, is no validation for a presumption of its embrace. Especially not a full on fanatical embrace, the vain which sees itself reach a point so fervent that any impure external individual is to be prohibited from visiting, much less settling, regardless of individual merit. The Japanese at large are closer to an indifferent middle ground when it comes to their reverence for "All Things Japanese And Only Japanese", as opposed to the aforementioned defiant angle and its polar opposite, subservience to tradition. Though the 180 turnaround spitting in the face of culture defiance is easily applicable when pegging actual Segregationists. It's crucial never to underestimate the relevance of this incisive distinction.

2. Because they're compatible with their own people just like the racialists: If so, how are we to confirm that it is their compatibility that plays such a grandstanding role in bringing about this prosperity? We wouldn't wish to succumb to the cliche fallacy of conflating correlation with causation. Accepting such muddy conflation at face value would enable any Cultural Marxist to use the exorbitant influx of immigration/race mixing in the US over the last 3 decades, and cite its influence as the primary factor that led to the US economy doubling in size since 1980. Disgusting perversion? Of course. Now look in the mirror.

Alas, let's remember the basis for my predictions: Children. Children who grew up under actual segregation and who are currently borderline senior citizens. The perturbed manner in which all of the ones in my radar recollect on their old surroundings isn't the result of anything that can be pinned on or analogized to Japan's preservation of its own culture, or its open immigration policies, or the beacon of its distinct identity instilled serenely in light of those open immigration policies. It had to do with institutionalized racism in North America, with the kaleidoscopic fog of its progeny cropping up in small doses to this very day, serving as a poignant reminder of how synthetically removed we are from it. And yes, I apply this to the ongoing effects of reverse racism as well, masquerading as affirmative action to the obsequious delight of those it routinely discriminates against.

In any event, it's hilarious seeing ideologues nonchalantly dismiss endless lists of pernicious activities committed in the name of Segregation and as evidence of its history of failure. Ironically enough, failure derived from the very essence of the tribe mentality its own proponents bolster. They deny this, all because certain variables existed in almost every manifestation of segregationist movements in the past, which wouldn't exist in their idealized incarnation. I don't find this humorous because I'm dogmatically asserting that they're incapable of pulling it off exclusively on their own terms, unpolluted by undesirable slippery slopes. I find it hilarious because they'll cling to past variables (Hitler's economic policies going unquestioned due to the astringently pervasive group think present in Nazi Germany) and cite them as deal breakers, yet when I cite the aforementioned variables as it pertains to Japan's achievements, they'll dismiss them offhand insisting that one of the primary causes for its current prosperity is the cohesive herd mentality of its populace. It's the worst case of confirmation bias I've seen in 2 months. Which says a lot considering that I routinely watch YouTube videos.

Having spent the last 15 years of my life in one of the world's most ethically diverse cities (deemed on numerous occasions as the world's best city to live in, mind you... except I'm not ideologically undisciplined so as to pretend that diversity is the causation), I've seen the effects of multi-multiculturalism (that's not a typo) first hand and can safely attest that it's not without its drawbacks, nor is it without its benefits. This is not an appeal to some vague middle ground mush, but rather a simple recognition that modern times have seen individuals of all races relish in and loathe a spectrum of contrasting things. I'm not going detail the interlocked particles of it all as that would make this write-up 5 times as long. The diagnosis is not equilibrium, but not its opposing one dimensional simplicity either, where Segregation is proclaimed as the Kryptonite which will save us from them. Or them from us. Or whichever you prefer. Having encountered an increasing number of individuals who find themselves enriched by the diversity surrounding them rather than impoverished by it, especially in intellectual circles or fields of post-secondary work, I'm leaning towards a positive ratio in favor of such diversity being a net harmless elixir. It's a shame your average racialist brain seems incapable of grasping any of this nuance. Then again, I could pull a Miss Cleo and pretend to know what they truly think, given that I've been the recipient of this exact tactic. So here goes: I know that deep down they understand why they're full of shit, but behave as though they're not seeing as how recognition of any glimmering shade of gray would foster room for undesirable correlation concessions. I will assert this repeatedly with the utmost confidence, because the most primitive part of my brain gleans enjoyment out of hammering home to them my genuine belief that I know what they think, akin to their repeated knowledge claims of what's in my head being equally as genuine and totally not just transparent attempts at trolling, with brilliant statements like "Maybe you should also add that it's clearly not a question cuz you didn't inject animated question marks in the video complete with reflective music, while making these "mere remarks". LMAO". Such wit!

On a personal note, going back to my most sullen age during which I first moved here, I have no recollection of ever experiencing any discomfort due to the sudden blaze of variety. The same applies to everyone I've known and currently recall. If anything, the multitudes of hilarious quirky accents were one of the few things that made it easy to get through the otherwise insufferable average school day.

In other non-news, I'll be doing these short blogs (yes this is what I call a short blog) fairly regularly from now on, with the obligatory addition of the odd novel length blog whenever the bullshit out there calls for it.

Plenty of users who kinda inhabit my neck of the woods, have been migrating away from YT, signing up to other sites in hopes of generating a turning of the tides over to the up-and-coming competition YT is supposedly bound to face at some point. A fruitless task for dozens of reasons, the main one being that GoogleTube will instantly buy out any potential competitor the moment such a competitor displays the least bit of eyeball heat. If only it weren't for the stupid oppressive State, this kind of thing would never EVER happen!!!

That said, I'll be boycotting YT from here. This site is definitely not for sale and stands to garner me just as many if not more views as opposed to starting over at a brand new tumbleweed setting.

I still won't boycott YT altogether, but will stick with the minimal 1-video-per-month provision until the admins show a glimmer of interest in fixing the flagging campaigns.

Thanks for reading,

ABM

ProIndividual Likes Pro-Individualism

2011-03-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

The user ProIndividual left one too many comments on one of my older videos. His comments consisted of arguments commonly made against the existence of the State, and since I hate having to condense my writing when replying to multiple posts left on YT's restrictive comment sections, I'm making a blog out of it. Can you feel the exhilaration yet?

His comments, from first to last:

This video started off badly by presenting a fallacy in it's title. There is no necessity of a state, or involuntary government coerced through a Rights-stealing social contract. If you want a voluntary state, have at it. But do not force me to particpate, as that would be coercion. I don't want to be punched, but I wouldn't outlaw boxing either. You can do whatever you want to yourself, even if harmful, just quit making me do it to. Stop punching me, I'm not a boxer.

First off, the title is not fallacious. For something to be necessary, one must at a certain point simply depend on it. For the subject's notion of that dependency to be proven as being ill-conceived, those asserting it as such must provide ample evidence to back up their extraordinary claim, as they're on the outside looking in, telling someone else that they have more knowledge about a circumstance they themselves don't exist under. So what do they see as evidence aimed at removing any doubt that people commit a fallacy when it comes to their reliance on the services provided by States? This evidence is private charity. Naturally, Anarchists/Anti-Statists dismiss every last example in history where private charity in all its radiant glory still failed to deliver the volume of alleviation covering people's basic needs, as was successfully delivered by States, and continues to be. They dismiss this because, in their minds, the individuals most inclined to contribute to private charities have always been stifled by taxation. As such they weren't in a position to donate as nearly often or as exceedingly as they would have had it not been for the State. This argument assumes far too much about the unknown and philanthropy, while ignoring basic mathematics. Taking a glance at the big picture, one can easily see that the taxed amount is beyond minuscule to warrant anything even remotely approaching the estimates Ancaps like to flirt with. The speculation here is as contrived as their analogies to religion, as they're unable to point to specific examples in the past, approved by credible historians, where Stateless societies managed to cover the basic needs of all their inhabitants through the whims of private charities. No such examples exist, because this has never happened in the past, thus the nascence of States. We would also have to adjust any archaic philanthropic examples brought to the table, to the ramped population growth which can only result in the profligacy of the familiar poor breeds poor domino effect, ad infinitum, leaving us with a gravely higher volume of indigence in need of voluntary alleviation. Make no mistake, the assorted safety nets provided by States are necessary. That is of course, if we are to be the least bit curious to take a look at the undeniable destituteness which makes up a good chunk of the world's population.

Also of note is that under Statism, charitable contributions are often subject to special tax exemptions. This fact flies in the face of the predictions Ancaps like to make regarding the increased number of donations Statelessness is bound to generate, rendering their philanthropy talking points as hogwash. The number of truly selfless donations is rescinded (and then some) by the number of donations made for the purpose of generating good PR, with the donors knowing full well that they'll break even at a later date as long as they claim all the donated goods&plenty on their tax return. If anything, the current tax system offers incentive to donate, contrary to what we've been hearing. Just because the donations may be contaminated with aspirations of PR and special tax exemptions, doesn't mean that poor people are unable to benefit from them.

As for the analogy to boxing/assault, it belongs on a pro-Statism video in which the speaker makes the specific case for world-wide Statism, where ownership of every last acre of habitable land is claimed by States. I didn't argue for that in the video he commented on, so I view this as a non-sequitur. Now, most Anarchists probably don't see it as a non-sequitur because the reality they currently exist in has everything to do with overarching global Statism. What they have to keep in mind, and what I should have made an effort to specify in this video, is that none of this is encompassed under the definition of Statism itself. Merely discussing a concept or theory isn't tantamount to making excuses for every last manifestation of it. I discussed Statism in the context of its definition. Statism is defined as the application of States to achieve societal goals. End of. Anything beyond this amounts to instant speculation. When I defend States, I do so without submitting myself to the whims of Anarchists' projections targeting everything my words may or may not entail. My goal was to illustrate the dogma of believing that everything States touch must eventually turn to shit. Unless a defender of States makes it explicitly known that he/she is arguing for a world-wide overtake of well established markets, it is unreasonable as well as reactionary to just presume that such a mission is inherent to the baggage carried within. The reason States are as widespread as they are is because an overwhelming majority of the world’s population believes in the safety net. If Ancaps wish to change this, they will have to do it with a logical argument, instead of by simply imposing their sensibilities onto the argument and reaffirming them arduously.

Anarchists may also point out that my own lack of preference for State-run global domination is irrelevant, as I'm not attempting to have myself voted into power, but someone else whose mind I do not have the ability to read, whereas I'm merely a component of a tiny fraction of the electorate. This line of thought imposes conveniently impossible standards onto any counterargument anyone can muster up, because they're essentially asking for access inside other people's minds. They don't request this access when it comes to any other profession which they must submit to, only politics. People know that they have to place a certain level of trust in doctors, vets, engineers, lawyers, detectives; All individuals who make money off of issues people deal with on a daily basis. There is nothing about politics that qualifies it to be the lone exception to this submission of dissipating trust routinely made by civilized people. There's nothing rational about believing that everyone who works for a living doesn't mean you harm with their business, except for politicians. If I were to out myself as a candidate in the upcoming election right now, my lack of preference for complete world domination would suddenly become suspect, as I'd be revealing something as irrelevant as my field of study and career of choice. Talk about career-oriented discrimination. I could pass dozens of the most highly advanced polygraph exams, but it would still not be enough to rid them of their suspicions. The good news is, no one is logically obliged to rid them of their suspicions. They can hold prejudiced views towards every last politician all they want. Stateophobia is neither a rational argument, nor an ethical one.

The difference between boxing and assault is voluntary particpation. If you like being beat up, I won't stop you. If you like S&M sex, go for it. But don't equate rape to S&M kink, boxing to assault, or voluntary govt to involuntary govt. If you want that life, go ahead...I will not choose it, and that should be fine. I do not need to trade Natural Rights of Man for civil rights in a social contract, and vote on others' lives.

There is also a difference between assault and self-defense. If people choose to collectively form a self-defense mechanism in the form of public services and safety nets encompassing a geographic district, those ideologically opposed to the project should be prohibited from benefiting off of the services in effect unless they pay into the system just like everyone else. A refusal to pay, simultaneous with a refusal to vacate the area of the project, has nowhere to go but one of the following:

A. You stay and freeload off of those who paid into the system, as the systems in place are widespread and reciprocal.

B. You stay and everyone else is forced to shut down operation so to cater to your sensibilities of right and wrong.

The only time either A or B becomes remotely acceptable is when the State literally forces you to continue living within the geographic region under its rule, either by putting up fences or by prohibiting air travel. Some Anarchists view their current circumstance as being interchangeable with being literally forced to live in a State, because they have no immediate alternative options, and even wrecks like Somalia have too much State oversight for their taste. As mentioned before, it is unfortunate that they don't always have viable options when it comes to their idea of a sanctuary, but this applies to anyone who has any issue with the prevailing system, which includes just about everyone. At the end of the day, people have to come to terms with the fact that a lack of demand for Statelessness (or any other breed of political change) amounts to a lack of justification to impose such change onto those who desire no part of it. The services provided by States are not exempt from demand and supply 101, and there is currently an abundance of demand for them. If people are told to boycott highly popular businesses they find to be ethically depraved, extend that line of thought to States instead of just playing victim; The very same kind of faux victim-playing Ancaps accuse anyone who isn't content with simply boycotting businesses, of succumbing to.

This is usually where they'll complain how "love it or leave it" is not a rational argument, and by doing so they're just ignoring A and B, or are arrogant enough to assume that everyone else should just drop what they're doing so to cater to their ideology.

If Anarcho-George walks into a movie theatre without paying admission and refuses to leave when repeatedly asked to, should the process of his removal from the theatre lead to his assault, it's no one's fault but his own. I'm for the operation of movie theatres for the people who wish to be legally obligated to pay for the services provided by them. Anarcho-George may disagree and is perhaps under the impression that there are too many movie theatres nowadays, and they take up too much space, and that he remembers the good ol’ days when he watched movies for free back in his hometown. Problem is, when Anarcho-George is told that he is actually free to go to back to his hometown, he just cries majority rule. He imposes the theatre onto himself, and then points to the 99.9% of the people who have no problems paying for the tickets, as his oppressors.

Let's do one better. A small community opts to construct a drive-by movie theatre, with a monstrously huge screen as well as intensely loud speakers, the entertainment value of which transcends onto the entire community. In light of this, the community is conned off, with proper notification as to why. Knowing this, Anarcho-George enters the premises and refuses to pay for a ticket each time a movie is played. Should he have a right to do this? No, he should be forced to pay or be forced out of the community. To argue otherwise is to possess overinflated reverence for the individual at the expense of the collective. The fact that lots of Anarchists may not enter this type of community and are instead born into it with no Stateless option within arm's reach, is a grievance they should take up with the procreators who imposed this circumstance on them, instead of people like me, who oppose any and all imposition of life onto individuals whose sensibilities cannot be predicted for until it's too late. In other words, take it up with your Statist parents. If your parents are also Anarchists and still saw fit to impose life on you despite knowing that there’s no chance in hell of a Stateless option available to you during your lifetime, they’re even worse than the Statist parent.

There is still a singular law in anarchism, "Do No Harm".

This "law" is oversimplified mush. He's completely ignoring the fact that with most policies, it's the people themselves that have diametrical views on what Do No Harm means, instead of the evil State. Newsflash: A pro-lifer and a pro-choicer are both under the impression that they're defending individual liberties. If abortion remains legal in any given Stateless society, as the abortion clinics previously owned/overlooked by the State now become private property belonging to a pro-choice advocate, you will still have the same pro-life crowd calling it murder and a perverse oppression of the individual rights of the clunk of cells they deem a human being, under the "Everyone Has The Right To Life" mantra. If abortion becomes illegal in any given Stateless society, since all of the abortion clinics previously owned/overlooked by the State now become private property of a pro-life lunatic, you'll have the pro-choice crowd screaming "The Right To Bodily Autonomy!". Imagine that, unavoidable cries of individual oppression under Statelessness. One side is going to end up feeling robbed, regardless of the non-existence of States, or the fact that a majority vote no longer shapes the legality/illegality of abortion. The system is always accused of being the root of the problem, but is mostly superfluous. And I haven't even touched on the fundamental issue concerning the timeline of the developing nervous system. The mother should not have the right to full body autonomy once surpassing the 6th month of her pregnancy, as the issue of sentience becomes a factor in the thereafter. But absolutists on both sides clinging to extremes will disagree.

As is the case with abortion, those who proselytize the non-aggression principle with mostly (IE: nothing but) taxation in mind, need to wake up to circumstantial nuances impeding on their principles. In other words, quit being raging absolutists. You want absolute property rights for some redneck who buys a bunch of open land right next to your building and decides to use it as a pig farm, effectively stinking up your entire neighborhood? Technically, he's not initiating force against anyone and is keeping to himself. Who decides as to whether he should be allowed to get away with the stench? HOAs? Why? Because they planted a flag on that land? Because they were there first? Sure sounds like Statism-lite to me. Something tells me the redneck will agree with that assessment, but the rest of the residents will not, and vice-versa for the inverse of any such scenario. There are many more examples of how Statelessness isn't going to fix the actual problem, that being people’s fundamental disagreements regarding where the individual rights line ought to be drawn in respects to convoluted circumstances. These conflicts being settled democratically, rather than by a handful of landlords, should be preferable to anyone who doesn't have elitist notions of reality. Or is this just about owning the working class, since a functioning democracy and labor go together like peanut-butter and jelly. I wonder.

Natural Law is converted to common law in order to interpret it case by case. Once interpretted, Natural Justice is used as a "court system". It need not be a monopoly system. Either way, anarchists will not advocate disorder, chaos, and violence...they will advocate such violence causes loss of individual sovereignty, so one can be "tried" in these non-monopoly "courts", and "punished" (more like compnensation/rehab/what have you). You want folks jailed for not giving into theft,us; violence.

The second half of this comment is a little incomprehensible, but in the first half he’s arguing as if I at any point cried chaos to any Anarchist. In the video he’s commenting on, I specified that I’m not addressing Anarcho-Primitivism, so the tangent doesn’t apply to anything I said.

Non-profit monopolies have their positives and negatives. Not having to waste tons of money and resources on patronizingly excessive advertising so to out-compete all your rivals, is a positive. For-profit businesses have to work towards several ends, while non-profit ones need concern themselves with only one. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum, having worked for the gov’t and the private sector, so I know a little something about how profit-seeking owners operate. They don’t sweat shortcuts undermining the quality of service, whenever the wheels spinning in their heads lead them to conclude that they've got a decent shot of of getting away with it. This type of scheming is a non-issue when it comes to any honest non-profit business, since remuneration is never seen as some parasitic blight.

And fuck majorities too, why do you care what the stupid, ficle, and almost always wrong mob wants? Collectives are just tyrants in multitudes.

And we're brought right back to the irritatingly inescapable pickle of having either majority votes shape policies (which will impact those very majorities) or the landlord whose own best interests, as history reveals, have nothing to do with what's fair or humane for most people. You want to see an entire country owned by 17 blue-bloods who inherited their property and have zero reverence towards the value of honest hard work? Awesome, but it's not going to be imposed here. You'll have to find an island of your own for your laboratory testing, and I'd like to see it, because I know that if you deprive people of proper compensation for the value of their labor, and you do it for an extended period of time, these same stupid, ficle, and almost always wrong mob formers will get fed up and actually utilize their mob power, as they've done throughout history, and as they're doing today around the world, albeit in smaller doses.

Besides, defending statism in debate is like masturbating with a cheese grater...not only is it painful and stupid, but it's not nearly as pleasurable as the guy who FORCED you to do it had promised...lol.

This comment suggests that he has had some experience defending Statism. Either that or he's just speculating. Having defended Statism, I can vouch that I at no point felt any of the above mentioned ghastliness. I guess there's a joke in there somewhere about somebody forcing me to defend Statism. Because it's all forced. Get it? Forced! Hahahahaha.

Ugh.

Fringeelements Hates Charts

2011-02-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

So the Fringeelements guy made a stupid video trying to refute my graph video. He said he didn’t even watch my video but knows what it’s about since I'm allegedly this perfect stranger to original thought. So right off the bat, he shoots himself in his impudent foot, since he immediately goes on to list reasons as to why all these shit eater Americanist union labor nationalist socialist types are totally retarded when they ask why can't America return to the way things were during the post-WW2 boom era. After subjecting us to some supercilious mimicking of the way most Americans spoke back in the 50s, he asserts that reverting back to the policies of that time is a fantasy at this stage seeing as how the number of Nations capable of competing with (and surpassing) the States has increased tenfold over the last half century. The argument being that the immense prosperity America enjoyed was damn near unavoidable during the good ol’ days, irrespective of any meticulous examination targeting the policies in effect during that time. He’s under the impression that by alluding to this, he’s refuting an aspect of my video. Had he actually bothered watching the video, he’d have known that I never joined the shit eater Americanist union labor nationalist socialist types in their pondering. I didn't call for a return to the 1950s. My video had 2 objectives; To highlight the outcomes of trickle down implementation and to illustrate why the current extensions of the Bush era tax cuts aren't going to be conducive to anything that will favour the overwhelming majority of Americans. I never called for a return of the 90% rate on the top 2% of income earners. The point was to counter the audacious rhetoric in the States, which has sadly succeeded in convincing many Americans that the current administration's proposed tax hike (now defunct) on the rich will somehow result in the stagnation of job creation. Keeping the rate stuck at 36% instead of hiking it up to 39% will just add to the deficit. It’s pertinent to remember that the contemporary debate in America is about this idea that the richest people in the world must retain the current cuts or the economy will worsen. Blatant bullshit. As I pointed out in the last entry, we’re hardly in Ma n' Pa company here. We’re mostly in CEO/banker territory.

This entire ramble about the impracticality of reverting back to the 50s amounts to a giant non-sequitur courtesy Mr. Elements. As for the specific variables he brought up, they’re nullified by the fact that the Federal taxes deregulated by Reagan were mostly in the capital gains zone, with the deficit being made up for at the local level by sales taxes. Reagan never had a problem with running the gov't on deficit because with his privatization schemes the goal was to bankrupt the State anyway, funneling its revenue into private pockets. Easy to balance a budget when there's less money coming in and staying in.

Without the Fed, interest rates would be set by the banks as they were prior to its formation, with rates going through the roof. Had the Fed not regulated the printing and issuance of currency, money would be in short supply (as would credit) and people would see a real starvation economy like they did during the good ol' gold-hoarding days. The Fed's printing does create inflation, but this gesture is preferable to the short money regime which would cause real suffering and bring us right back to the era of violent labor and populist protest. Maybe that's what it's going to take to pull some heads out of asses. People really ought to read up on the Panic of 1907, as well as several others throughout the 19th century. All sprouting before the Fed, with no system of accountability in place to disincentivize elaborate banker crookery.

One thing about his non-sequitur points regarding American economic privilege at the end of WW2; To place blame on unions is a backhanded way of validating their role in raising living standards of American workers vis-a-vis those elsewhere (places now in competition with the US for global production markets). Driving down costs to the lowest common denominator is just a race to the bottom. Apparently this guy is living in some glass cage where this reality won't affect him. The lag in American production in the 1970s is just as much to blame on unimaginative management. The auto industry being the prime example of this, as it was hammered by imports because Japanese and German car makers catered to what the average driver actually wanted, instead of overblown luxury vehicles catering to executive taste. The contributions of bungling focus-groups along with the absence of managerial responsibility are completely overlooked when it comes to this, and every example he's given, it's always someone else's fault. Just pip-squeaking the corporate line.

The premise of supply-side in its Reagan incarnation is based on the Laffer Curve, the optimum taxation point. The concept of this curve is based on faulty premises. There is no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the non-taxed wealth is re-invested in any revenue-enhancing growth (as opposed to investing in multinational money markets). If the incentive is there, the production is there, Mr. Laffer said. And thus gov't revenue was raised. A complete non-sequitur, because with drastically cut capital gains taxes, there can be no parity between revenue and investment, but such is the theory of supply-sidism.

Freeing capital from domestic regulation, taxation, and investment directly resulted in the expansion of capital on a global level. This is a good thing only if one believes that the purpose of the economy is to make profit for entities that have no responsibility to the publics they putatively serve. Arguing the amount of legitimate profit amounts to playing the corporate game of seeing these entities as persons with rights. The uprising in Egypt is related to Cairo's heavy involvement with foreign (especially U.S.) investment that has devastated its once-independent middle class and locked the mass into a glass ceiling of poverty. This also explains why Hillary Clinton, the Corporate Mouthpiece herself, has been so mealymouthed over Egypt's 30 years of tyranny, but so shrill over Iran's equally-old regime.

On to the snark: His assertion regarding my inability to conjure up original ideas just proves how much of a first-impression reactionary he is. I'm going to keep reiterating this more strenuously the more often I hear it ignored, but I myself declared at the beginning of that video that I intended for it to be about plain statistics, and not about me drilling some notion I have about my originality down people’s throats. Not everything has to be original. There are lots of excellent but terribly unoriginal arguments that most people are still in desperate need of hearing. Yes, even today. If making unoriginal arguments every now and then (or often, depending on who you ask, and how much free time they can afford to spend on comfy YouTube) makes me appear wholly unoriginal to the self-absorbed who analyze arguments with an overbearing focus on originality instead of on practical impact, whose problem is that? It's just pampered psychology imposing itself on the relevancy of my argument, which I myself said needs to be made regardless of originality. I explicitly noted that others have already debunked trickle down, but they primarily focused on the last decade, so I dug deeper. But even if we bypass all of that, all one needs to do in order to see just how superficially he absorbs content, is to acknowledge that a proper analysis of statistics is not contingent on capacity to think originally, it just requires one to lack a bias going in. If anything, excessive aspirations of originality often prove to be a hindrance to objectivity, as the subject's main goal is not to reduce suffering, but to be seen as a trailblazer. It's pure ego. And on top of all that, this guy has made a number of arguments over the last couple of years that I’ve seen Stefbot make way back in 2007, almost verbatim. He has clearly been influenced by Stefbot. Does this mean I’m going to instantly dismiss him as a Stefbot drone? Would that be fair? Only if I felt like playing tit for tat with his Inmendham junior bullshit, which ironically is itself a highly unoriginal insult to throw my way.

I just saw that he made yet another dumb video, this time with a deliberately unflattering shot of me in rant mode selected as the video icon. I'll take that as an invitation to offer some commentary to it. Oh look, it’s another video where he’s just shoving down everyone's throats that he’s ways-away from conventional politics, much more than people who happen to hold positions which (you guessed it) don't place them as far away from conventional politics. Totally righteous and edgy. This doesn’t prove anything, unless one believes that holding views which happen to coincide with mainstream politics every now and then automatically leads to a poorly formed outlook, which isn’t much better than liberals pretending that Fox News reports propaganda 100% of the time.

Apparently I'm also big on patriotism. Good to know. I'll be sure to alert the rest of the people depicted in the stills. They'll be ecstatic to find out.

Suggesting that the conventional wisdom of democracy is as dangerous as the policies pushed by Nazis prior to WW2, simply because both are/were well accepted in their time, is laughable on several levels. Consult my Anarcho-Impracticalism blog to read up on just how conventional and lacking in critique the National Socialist party was during the early 1930s. Had conventionalism been their forte, they wouldn't have decisively lost the elections on 2 occasions, nor would they have resorted to prompting violent riots in order to obtain power. He seems to think that these aren't your standard Nazi comparisons of Glenn Beck proportions, but it really is just like watching the Glenn Beck show. In the comment section he mentions that he's seen all but 5 minutes of Beck. This aptly explains why he's under the impression that Beck's scare tactics are of a vastly more simian nature than that of his own. For every example of a conventional political movement paving the way to disaster like we saw with Nazi Germany supposedly (let's grant him that just for argument's sake), I can cite 100 generally accepted movements which didn’t lead to anything of the sort. He’s just cherry picking with this Nazi crap, and the cherries he's trying to pick aren't even there to begin with. Blatant fear mongering. By this logic, should Anti-Statism ever gain unquestioned support from the overwhelming majority of Americans, that alone will be enough to draw the same analogy to the Nazis. This is too one dimensional for words. Why do I have to argue this simplistic nonsense? Why is there a shot of me in this retarded video? I'm one of the few people outside his camp who has made it publicly known that I oppose the State owning endless acres of land in the middle of nowhere, stiffing experimentations of alternative systems. This video amounts to putting off even the tiny number of State advocates who are at least curious about the potential of unseasoned systems. He's his own agenda's worst enemy.

Listen to him go on and on. Yes, we get it, your overall content alienates approximately 95% of the general public while most other politically motivated vloggers' overall content alienates only about 75% of the general public. You're totally a better revolutionary than the rest of us. Now quit using people’s images as an aid to drive home your stupid points.

As a mildly amusing side note, I've never even advocated democracy in the classic sense. I’ve advocated IRV and knowledge-driven democracy with the merit of vote being proportionate to individual test results. I'm also for participatory democracy, pending no freeloading. Do I have contempt for democracy as most people envision it in the West? Not really, but it is far from functional at present. Despite the imperfection, I shouldn't have to point out all the harm reduced over the last 100 years alone thanks directly to democratic rule and labor virtually being tied at the hip once upon a time. But the joke’s on us you see, because they do little animated sketches where they speed up their voices and portray anyone on the pro-democracy side as a mainstream dunce the likes of Brian from Family Guy, whose own words come back to bite them in the ass at the end. Oh the hilarity. Making sarcastic and sometimes even half-clever commentary parodying people who point out all the good that democracy has done, doesn’t erase the fact that democracy has actually enabled the working class to vote for policies from which they saw their standards of living increase boisterously. This is a matter of public record. The only way one ends up with utterly unshakable contempt for democracy is if one deifies every last individual’s arbitrary notion of what constitutes as a trespass on individual freedom. Deifying this principle to the point where harm reduction takes a back seat is a recipe for an impossible replacement system. No matter which way you slice it, every last society will have to construct rules in the form of laws; Laws which a myriad of minority voices will always object to. The more complex the circumstance, the more complex the law, the more cries of minority oppression will arise. I’m not going to describe all the examples of this again, for that you can consult this blog. The State's role is superfluous in this. Somebody will always be bitching about some law. This is unavoidable. What is avoidable however, is forming these inevitable laws through an oligarchic (Landlords 3:16) method in the first place. So what do we do? Do we form them based on majority vote, or based on what 60 Anarcho-Capitalists on YouTube deem to be better for us? I guess the verdict isn't in yet, because in Anti-Statism at Light Speed Part 3 he’s endorsing some degree of decision making being relied upon 70/30 majority vote victories. So right there, a level of participatory democracy, and I think that’s great as long as there’s no leeching from those opting out.

Contrary to this image he's trying to put out there about the way Statists argue, there's nothing manly about the pro-State argument, and there's certainly nothing feminine about the Anti-Statism argument, which Pro-State meat-heads purportedly macho-posture over. No sale. We're the ones arguing for the safety net. They're the ones arguing that everyone ought to keep a gun nearby in the event of a B&E because the cops' response time just doesn't cut it. How the hell am I (the person uncomfortable with shooting even my intruders) the macho-posturing bubba in this scenario? Fella's got it twisted.

This guy makes too many long videos and I simply don’t have the time to sit through all of them without scrapping other videos off of my must-see list, so if anyone sees a future video of his where he's using my image with the word Nazi in the title, or something along those dopey lines, let me know and I will explain on here why it's anserine to imply whatever he’s implying. And no, I will not waste actual video time referencing any of his over-generalizing rhetoric and downright trollish bullshit.

ABM

RE: The Rich Do Not Pay High Taxes

2011-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to JacobSpinney response blog #2494831. You can find his video attached as a response to my Trickle Down Apologists video. Much like with the Anarchy arguments, it’s clear that the more video time one dedicates to arguing anything that so much as pinches the rich financially (like a 3% tax hike), the more clean-up duties one will plague oneself with in the form of video replies. Seeing as how I already dedicated a combined total of 55 minutes to this topic with my 2 videos, I will be addressing additional arguments here. I also want to avoid any further “enough already” comments from those already in firm agreement with me. On January 3rd I posted a 23 minute video explaining why the correlation =/= causation complaints do nothing in the way of discrediting the initial video where I utilized relevant data to highlight the many instances in which implementation of trickle down failed to deliver the outcome successfully sold to a good number of lower/middle class Americans. Jacob replied to my January 3rd video with the following:

He began by pointing out that I started my video upset over the counterarguments dismissing empirical data as a sufficient tool used to falsify theories and said “that’s just plain wrong”, despite the fact that this is exactly what some of the commenters were saying to me. He believes that this only applies to instances where the data at hand is half-assed. Problem being is that the excuse-makers whose comments I was addressing weren’t capable of admitting even that much. This renders his assertion to be a false assumption of exactly what it is that I began my video arguing against. I received stubborn comments refusing to accept that data can and does play a vital role in falsification, stressing unspecified intertwining contaminants as the deal-breaker when it comes to any data based measurement of efficiency. Jacob on the other hand (at least in this video) seems somewhat willing to accept that data can play a role, but finds the particular data I used to be unsatisfactory. He’d be correct to assert “wrong” had I been addressing him at the time, and not the arguments of actual trickle down ideologues in the comments. He didn’t post any comments on the first video I did, so I don’t know why he felt that I was targeting his argument here. As for the variables, I will reiterate that there is nothing unfair about analyzing the effects of top bracket tax cuts by focusing on the correlation-coefficient pinning GDP, Job Creation, Hourly Wage Growth up against (you guessed it) top bracket tax cuts. If these tax cuts have a history of failure when it comes to competition with externalities, one would assume that even the loudest proponents of trickle down would at some point wise up and recognize that dreadful externalities aren't just going to magically vanish upon implementation this time around. But instead, for some strange reason, there’s always the belief that in this particular instance, it’s going to be different. Why? What reason is there to assume that all the necessary outside forces are going to sway from their standard operating procedure and just play along, just this once? If I assured everyone that I was perfectly capable of walking a tightrope and urged them to bet money on my success, without bothering to mention to them that the slightest effect of wind is more than enough to tip me over and cause my fall, all the while remaining silent as I stand by and observe the tightrope being set up in front of a wide range outdoor area with a hurricane fast approaching, who should be held responsible here? The poor saps who naively bought into my shifty promise, or me? It would be me. I’d be the one who deliberately danced around the vital information. I'd be the one selling snake oil. Just like with the tightrope analogy, proponents of trickle down continue to conveniently ignore any potential contaminate factor prior to the implementation of the tax cuts they argue for, while pointing fingers at nothing but the external factors after the results fail to deliver as advertised. Show me one trickle down advocate who, while proselytizing, points out how a particular externality may prevent the desired outcome, and thus calls for the mandatory elimination of that externality, stressing that the top bracket cuts he’s arguing for will have the inverse effect unless variables x, y and z play along. Point me to an example of somebody who does this prior to the tax cuts taking effect. I’m all ears. In light of the absence of any such examples, it’s perfectly reasonable to apply the above specified correlation-coefficient variants without placing a magnifying glass on every other possible mover and shaker. Constantly measuring every last move of every last trickle is a courtesy never extended to other data-based examinations of policies. Despite this, we still accept that other examinations do a fine job of measuring what’s effective and what isn’t. Why draw the line at trickle down? I asked this question in my video and received no replies yet. Also, to what lengths are we obligated to go to in order to meet the arbitrary “all necessary variables” line? At what point do the variables cease being necessary and start being otiose? Ongoing advocates of trickle down who wish to wash their hands clean of its history of failure must have the foresight to warn their constituents of the importance of particular variables when it counts instead of just pointing fingers to them once the policy is already in effect (and is causing the inverse effect, no doubt to their satisfaction). So for the last time, the onus does not fall on the skeptic to invoke any given externality outside the top bracket policy range, since the skeptic is attempting to analyze the impact (or lack thereof) stemming from nothing but these very tax cuts.

He says that the best way of discrediting a proposition of this nature is by way of deductive reasoning, and that pointing to track records of failure takes a back seat. In addition to the statistics, I did point out the simple fact that the richest Americans don’t need the extra breathing room in the way of tax cuts in order to be left with more than enough capital for the purposes of job creation. The individuals in the top tax demographic who will continue to benefit from the ongoing 36% rate, are by and large well above your average Ma n' Pa income range. Believe it or not, there's a distinct disproportion of big business and small business in that top 2% range, and I'll let the reader figure out which side is vastly outnumbered. If you're going to gripe about the ill effects of Corporatism you ought keep in mind that the top 2% of income earners are not the ones in desperate need of costly tax relief for this n' that. They are for the most part the very recipients of the Corporate Welfare you purport to despise. Consult my plutocracy graph to see just how far away the top 2% have gotten from their former upper-middle class range neighbors. The lack of these 3% cuts didn't result in any uprising from the rich during the mid to late nineties. The reason being is that these are excessive luxury oriented tax cuts, not keep the economy afloat oriented tax cuts.

I brought up a few analogies to this argument, one of them being God, in order to demonstrate why the burden of proof does not fall on trickle down skeptics. According to him, it makes sense to lack a belief in God only because the existence of God is logically unfeasible. The fact that we've never actually seen the slightest bit of evidence for God's existence is a non-factor, apparently. In the context of my entire point revolving around onus, of course it's highly relevant to point to the total lack of a single concrete example of God's existence. The claim that tax cuts for the preposterously wealthy are needed so that they can trickle down to the remainder of the population, is in the range of being almost as logically absurd as the idea that the universe must have had a creator. At least with the universe we are to this day still left pondering how the first ever effect took place without its preceding cause. With the lack of evidence of trickle down, we need not worry about such gaps in knowledge. Also, my rock-lifting-to-find-God verbiage was just a joke meant to mock the extent to which theists will go to in order to try pulling a switcheroo (or if they're agnostics, a 50/50 not-quite-complete-switcheroo) when it comes to the all important onus factor.

I brought up the lack of sting at the hands of loopholes in other nations in order to remind people that it's entirely possible for progressive taxation to work without excessive side-effects stemming from any loophole related root, especially when we’re talking about a measly 3% hike. I know that pointing to other nations while analyzing data from the States can seem like comparing apples and oranges, but I never meant to compare the data in the charts with the fact that loopholes in Europe don't allow for nearly as much Corporate thievery. I'm merely proposing that something can get done in the States so to emulate the European system which successfully restricts loophole driven malpractice. Even when countering in the loophole effect enabling the richest Americans to avoid paying the rate listed on paper, lowering taxes on top of this will not make the loophole effect go away and will only result in the rich paying even less. If the loopholes had the capacity to render a 3% hike to be free of any effect, or even worse, to have the opposite effect by allowing the rich to pay even less as suggested by some of my detractors, then the Republican Party wouldn't have lost their shit over the proposal of the 3% hike in the first place. Everyone knows that Republicans’ reactions to the 3% tax hike proposal only mirrored the reactions of the richest Americans whose interests the Republicans are looking out for, first and foremost. In light of these reactions, it becomes patently clear that raising taxes on the rich doesn't actually backslide them into paying less in taxes, with or without the loopholes. It just means that they don’t necessarily end up paying the exact percentage they're listed as paying on paper. There are exceptions to this, as noted in my graph, but it obviously takes place all too seldom. Had it been frequent, the Republicans would have sat back and welcomed the tax hikes.

He manages to turn even this argument into one about practical incentive. Once again, this is about a 3% hike proposal on the top two percent of income earners. We're talking about people with enough money to last them and their extended families a dozen lifetimes, and that's not even countering in the perks of investment through guaranteed savings accounts which they will undoubtedly still have at their disposal. I refuted this incentive stuff many times in the past and will unfortunately have to continue doing so in the future, because it's clearly falling on deaf ears. He illustrates his deductive reasoning argument against my argument that raising taxes on the top 2% won't stagnate anything, by drawing an analogy to hourly wage earners, suggesting that if people were to be paid less and less per hour as their shifts drone on daily, they’d be more inclined to accept a job without a built in contract providing less pay as the shift progresses. Where do I start with this? Firstly, it’s not a proper analogy, in more ways than one. A proper framework by which to measure whether or not progressive taxation is counterproductive towards worker productivity, is one that focuses on how often people turn down promotions because of the progressive tax factor. It has nothing do to with some imagined nonsense about a decrease in hourly wages as the shift goes on. We have real life examples where people overwhelmingly accept promotions for positions that they're fully aware will result in them paying higher taxes at the end of each day. Despite knowing that they’d be taxed more once accepting the promotion, most are nonchalant about the tax aspect, and are ecstatic to accept promotions to positions which will still result in higher pay for them. This has always been the case, even when tax rates were much higher in accordance to income. People in general are not as stingy about higher taxes when they still obtain a larger paycheck despite the higher tax. But regardless, let’s look at his example of reduction in the form of hourly wage as each working day carries out, which is apparently an apt comparison to draw to the top 2% bracket's burden when it comes to a 3% hike. Anyway, workers would still know what they rake in at the end of each day, so if they’re satisfied with the overall end-of-day amount, to the point where they accepted and maintained the position at hand, why would they risk losing that entire job by performing poorly just because the hourly wage shrinks as hours go by? It’s the same job, and it still pays them the same amount at the end of the day, and more importantly at the end of the two week pay period. If they’re still satisfied with the total amount they earned when it’s all said and done, the fixed hourly reductions will not prompt anything, much less increased slacking off time. And of course if an hourly wage worker is offered two jobs with one job paying more than the other, the worker will take the higher paying job. This would be a fitting point to make only when the progressive tax at hand is of such nature that it results in the promoted worker now grossing a higher income, finding out that he/she is left with a lower net income than he/she would have earned had the promotion been turned down. Luckily, that's not the kind of progressive taxation anyone is advocating here. On so many levels, his analogy does a complete disservice to the current circumstance and debate in the States. It's not an argument for why we cannot raise taxes on the super rich, it's an argument for why middle class earners are especially prone to earning as much as possible, because they truly need every penny of it. Billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates on the other hand, are in such a comfort zone to the point where they're perfectly capable of being more philosophical when it comes to how much they're taxed. Gates, Buffet and many others have gone on record and urged having the current administration tax them higher, and not just by a mickey mouse 3% hike either. There are many others, like Joy Behar, who aren't even near Buffet's and Gates' playing field, but are in a healthy upper-middle class range, who have also gone on record stating that they'd welcome a 3% hike on them as well, instead of just calling for one on the top bracket exclusively. Hell, I'm not in the upper middle class by any means income-wise, but I'd have no issues with paying 3% higher for the time being, or even more. I know it's hard for some people to believe, but there are lots of rich people who are perfectly capable of looking at the bigger picture and ridding themselves of the clutches of purely nepotistic agendas and narrow self-involved outlooks on life. That's not to say that there are absolutely no people who turn down promotions despite the fact that accepting those promotions would result in more net income for them. For some people, the simple fact that a promotion leads to a higher tax bracket, is enough of a deal-breaker in the incentive department. Luckily, these people are very few and far between. It's like saying people on welfare have no incentive to get off of welfare, because welfare provides them with more than enough money to eek out an existence, when in fact it provides them with less and keeps them on their toes just fine with a tiny minority of recipients being the exception, due to their incredibly low living standards. Point being, don't begrudge the entire neighborhood because of a few crazies living in the nut house down the street. Anyway, to answer his "Please explain to me how it's wrong to say that the less you make due to taxes, the less incentive you'll have to produce in the first place" question, I'll simply reiterate that progressive taxation does not lead to a lower net income, and if it did, the incentive argument would be a valid one to make, just like it is currently when it comes to wage earners and excessive overtime. But that's a another topic for another time.

He said that rich people putting their money into savings accounts allows that money to trickle down to the lower/middle class. One shining example of how this works that he didn't bring up is the mortgage bubble crises, where lower/middle class earners get duped into borrowing this very money because of the fine job predatory lenders did of luring them in through the artificially low interest rates. We saw how that turned out. It's not all sunshine and roses. Now, part of the blame should be placed on the idiots who were irresponsible enough to fall for the scam. You don't just buy a home without knowing what the hell you're signing up for by failing to read every single last dot of ink on those snake oil contracts. Their lack of cautionary insight however, does not excuse the malicious intent and practice perpetrated by rich who just wanted to get richer. There are also applicants who lied about their income in order to get approved for a loan, so I do feel the need to make it clear that I oppose any tax payer money being spent to help dig those people out of the hole they dug for themselves. This still doesn't alleviate the banks of any guilt, since the applicants only lied about the level of their income, and not their profession. I doubt a mortgage broker or bank ever believed that working 40 hour weeks at footlocker results in earning anything even remotely approaching a hundred thousand dollars per year, let alone well over. The overseers knew these people lied, they just didn't care. Pay stubs and tax returns? Who needs to see those when talking loans and investment?

He says if the rich burn their money it will create deflation and result in lower prices of all consumable goods in the economy. I don't see why he thinks that that's a point I'd argue against, or if it results in any of my earlier points being discredited. They can burn their money if they see fit to do so, I won't protest. He then brings up the fact that a rich person has to hire and pay construction workers if he/she desires a mansion. Indeed that's true. You can't build a mansion without construction workers. Now, please explain where I advocated taxing people who are on the brink of having a mansion built for themselves but will no longer be able to do so because a tax hike will financially devastate them? If they want a mansion, they're going to get their mansion. You know why? Because they're not just barely squeezing by thanks to the generous 36% rate. Besides, he brought up mansions in order to illustrate that no matter what the rich person does, the money he/she spends will make its way into the pockets of the peons. The problem lies in the fact that this is no different than pointing out how any money spent by any member of any class will ultimately find its way into the pockets of someone else. Everytime a poor person buys a can of coke, they are putting money into the pockets of the CEO of Coca-Cola. Yes, money is going to circulate due to purchasing. Nobody has a problem understanding that. What is problematic, is suggesting that the richest people in the world won't be able to afford having mansions built for themselves because of tax hikes. History proves that one wrong. Also, an investments that result in a higher employment can be undertaken without one rich person financing them. There are many examples throughout history where people of modest means banded together and pitched in to invest for large projects where the final product would be collectively owned by everyone in accordance to how much they pitched in respectively. There's no writing on any stone proclaiming that projects have to be funded by one rich person. Unfortunately, the psychology of the average person of modest means is so owned by economic conventionalism, to the point where the prospect of anyone other than a rich man undertaking these large scary tasks, doesn't even enter into the equation. Us middle class folk ain't smart enough for them complicated investment things. We need the rich man, whose one brain is superior to the combined efforts of a dozen brains. Individualism at its finest.

He responded to my argument towards his assertion regarding the Fed being the cause for the necessity of regulation, by saying that he didn’t say the Fed was the cause for the necessity of regulation, he just said that it was a cause. At 05:33 of his first video reply to my graph video, he said "We would not need to regulate the amount that a bank is able to overleaverage itself with if we did not have the moral hazard of, let's say, Fractional reserve banking, which allows a bank to overleaverage itself...". This is the only thing he provided for me to argue with, so that's why I brought up nothing but that. He then said that the wealth transfer started to blossom after the Formation of the Fed, around the 1920s. As mentioned in my last video, the wealth transfer was in effect as early as the late 1800s, well before the Fed was formed. All one needs to do is read up on the Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic in order to learn all about how a lack of regulation played a pivotal role in causing financial crisis well before The Fed came along. The panic began with a stock manipulation scheme to corner the market, exacerbated by bucket shops and side bets, all wholly unregulated. If anyone is interested in more pre-Fed examples where regulation would have been welcomed, feel free to PM me and I'll provide you with the info. As for when the transfer got out of hand and why, you can consult the Deregulation Causes Surge In Financial Services Wages chart at the 16:53 mark in the graph video. It provides additional insight and showcases how regulation concretely stabilized things.

He then cites the guise of regulations in the interest of consumer safety as another cause of wealth disparity since it stifles competition. I've danced this dance before, but it's clearly another one which isn't going away anytime soon. If you can't keep up with reasonable regulations, it's a good sign that you have no business competing in the first place. What specific regulations are too confining and overprotective of the consumer? It's a genuine question as I'm not familiar with every last regulation in effect in the States, both currently and throughout history. If there are genuine examples, I'll advocate loosening things up when it comes to those examples. Unfortunately, this to me smells like another "abolish the minimum wage so that more people can work" line of thought, which I've refuted more times than I can count. Also, CEOs have preposterously high salaries primarily because they have immunity, not because of a lack of competition. I almost wish that we could just get rid of regulations so that we can see Ma n' Pa fail to compete with Corporations, without the finger being pointed at regulations. But it wouldn't matter, because they'd just point the finger at something else. Then if we were to get rid of something else, they'd latch on to something-something else to point to, and so on. There's no real way to get the last word in arguments with them, because they'll always come back with some single-villain fallacious excuse. I really wish that States didn't claim ownership of a bunch of land in the middle of nowhere, so that they can have their deregulation experiments without regulation advocates being harmed in the process.

Alright, that took me a while to finish. Busy month.

ABM

The Illegitimacy Of The "God/State" Analogy

2010-10-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

One of the silliest things to come out of the Anarchist camp is the term Statheism. I guess yours truly qualifies as a prime example of a Statheist so I might as well take the time to explain why this derogatory term is attributed to a position which is neither derogatory, nor the least bit irrational.

Statheism is nothing more than a waffling attempt at juvenile mockery, thought up by what I can only conclude to be some rather desperate Anarchists. Aimed to target the more gullible and uneducated Atheists who approve of the existence of the State to some extent, the goal is to contrive parallels to God approval in hopes of shaming intellectually insecure non-believers into converting to Anarchism. It has actually worked quite well in the few examples I've observed. Here's a brief overview of the mind-inflating profoundness of the accusation off the top of my head:

While you've succeeded in rejecting religions/deism/supernatural phenomena as irrational and non-existent, you've remained "just as dogmatic" as your religious counterparts because you still advocate the existence of the State, which is as intellectually and ideologically insolvent as any religious text. You succumb to this clearly as emotional compensation to fill the comfort-hole your newely formed irreligious world view has sparked within you.

And so on. I'm uncertain as to whether some Anarchists capable of uttering this crap are aware of the sheer simple-mindedness of this line of thought, or if it genuinely escapes them. I lean towards the former. Most of them are probably aware that the analogy is void of substance. Still, they just don't give a hoot seeing as how their potential converts often strike them as being beyond vapid, which they probably are. Anyone susceptible to being swayed by an analogy this bogus must personify daftness.

For years now we've seen debates amongst atheists on non-religious issues incorporate the insufferable "you're just as bad as the fundies" talking point. It's my biggest pet peeve when it comes to online arguments, and while I disagree with most of what Anarchists say, I still expected them to be the last group capable of pulling this type of lazy stunt in order to gain new recruits. But pulled it they have. And those who haven't pulled it, have approved of it.

And why not? They're an opportunistic bunch, after all. Like any dedicated cult striving to expand by making the most out of the latest fad, Anarchists have milked the current influx of Atheist gatherings on YouTube for all they're worth. To this day they keep parroting the claim that Atheism goes hand in hand with Anarchism, while Religion/God belief goes hand in hand with Statism. They’re hell bent on trying to inculcate the God/State comparison in the minds of impressionable online youth.

The first analogy flaw is the assumption that proponents of the State possess a reverence for being controlled by the State, just like religious folk do with their Gods. The idea is that, just like Theists, these emotions enable us to turn a blind eye to our own brand of God. This is rubbish. I am yet to meet a single advocate of the State who thinks of the State as being infallible while feeling all warm and gooey about the special bond he or she shares with the State. Simply put, no Statheist contemplates the State as an entity entitled to blind trust. The necessity of its existence is a conclusion arrived at through objective analysis of examples involving human progress, not the kind of subjective emotional baggage spiritual people drench themselves with.

But I'm just getting warmed up. Here's the fundamental flaw with the comparison, which they refuse to accept publicly:

God is imaginary. The State demonstrably exists, functioning in reality on a daily basis all over the world. Some of this may come down to confusion over the definitions, as most kids being preached to on YT by Anarchists aren't even aware of the exact definition of the State. The State is defined as a politically organized body of people under a single Government and Nation. Note that the definition incorporates involvement of actual people. Commonly uttered sentences like "they used the apparatus of the State" are thrown together with the idea that His Holiness The Pope uses "the apparatus of God" in the same vain in order to justify and meet his own Authoritative ends. The analogy falls flat on its face straight from the get go, as it proposes that we not rely on the very definitions of the terms at hand. God is not defined as a religiously organized body of people under a single Church/Mosque etc, but instead as an entity entirely separate from the requisite of human involvement. God, as described in scripture, created humans and thus precedes them. The definition and origin of the State, on the other hand, is absolutely contingent on the participation of people (subjects known to actually exist in reality). Now obviously, without people to invent them, notions of Deities would also not exist and resuscitate, but this is a non-sequitur since I'm showcasing how one of the two defined entities (that being the State) has demonstrably been proven to exist within defined reality.

In order to back up the assertion that religious fairytales are analogous to the demonstrated reality of the functioning State, the Anarchist will often proclaim that punitive entities such as Rulers and Deities are equally unnecessary for the end-goal of civility to be achieved. Another paper thin connection. It presupposes that Atheists are naturally inclined to find the mere idea of omnipotence, and therefore God's existence, unappealing. Why? Well, because Atheists disbelieve in God, so they must also reject God. Non-belief ought to amount to rejection, right? Wrong. The hypothetical existence of a well intentioned Deistic God, would be a good thing. Such a God, unbound by irrational and hateful dogmatic scripture, could have easily imposed different rules onto Evolution by scrapping the dog eat dog component of it, or by simply removing the need for Evolution as a survival mechanism in the first place. This would have produced results superior to 2+ billion years of sentient creatures eating each other in order to survive. Sentient creatures who, throughout most of that ugly history, and who to this very day (sans humans) are still incapable of comprehending the sheer uselessness of the game imposed on them. They were built for the purposes of survival and reproduction, while simultaneously being blind to the dead-end writing on the wall. An absence of such sum zero cannibalism cannot possibly be seen as problematic, unless you happen to be a sadist. The fact that a Deity capable of achieving the proposed solution, cannot exist, as such an entity would contradict the laws of physics, doesn’t mean that its hypothetical existence should be viewed as unfavourable to sentient beings, even from an Atheistic point of view. There is nothing irrational about Atheists preferring the aforementioned Deistic brand of Creator, to blind forces indifferent to suffering. An entity whose underlying goal is reduction of suffering has nothing to do with what real believers look for in a God; A God whose feet they'll kiss no matter what deplorable circumstance he plagues them with. They will accept any cards they're dealt, no matter how unfair, and will always end up singing God's praises. No such mental gymnastics occur with any of advocates for the existence of the State I have ever conversed with. Plenipotentiaries will be ruthlessly scrutinized unless concrete actions are taken and positive results emerge. We are not asked or expected to faithfully hope for these positive results to take effect in a non-existent afterlife, but in the here and now. This has nothing to do with anything even slightly resembling what the faithful expect and rationalize.

So, if an entirely natural albeit non-omnipotent rule imposing entity can exist through the construction and ongoing election of human beings, the question is not whether such an entity should exist. The question is, and always has been how do we construct its existence responsibly and efficiently. This is what we’re struggling with. We’re not struggling with it because the concept of Authority is analogous to the supernatural, or inherently subject to corruption. We struggle with it because our core values are constantly in direct opposition, and it shows when you look at all the policy proposals resulting in heated debate amongst the populace. Not heated debate between State officials and the populace, but amongst the populace itself. If something even remotely close one billion of us managed to get on the same page on a good 90% of core issues, while simultaneously maintaining enough enthusiasm to put in the time and effort to ensuring that we obtain representative supply through our overwhelmingly agreed upon demand, imposing accountability along the way, then we would see significantly less inefficiency in all matters of governance. But as long as we continue to accept the charming but naive lessons teaching us that prevailing ideological diversity is, by its very nature, a virtue instead of a setback, all in the name of relativism and "open mindedness", we will remain incapable of electing an honest body of representatives whose job it is to serve the common good instead of special interests, or individually minded nitwits who are unable to look past their own narrow self-interest. Currently, we as voters cannot even agree on what the common good ought to be, much less how to implement it as policy. How can we expect our representatives to figure it out for us? It starts with us. Class warfare and all.

Going back to the initial analogy, Statheists have accepted the non-existence of Deities. An assertion that by the same token no State can possibly contribute positively to humanity, is in no way enough to signal a failure to go the whole way logically. The superglue holding this trainwreck of an argument together is bound by a lone commonality; that being Authority. Even so, while most mainstream Gods are by definition Authoritarians, plenty of other specifically defined Gods are entirely passive. So even the Authority connection falls flat on its face when you look at the characteristics some non-Abrahamic religions have attributed to their God(s).

Then there’s the rugged old school of thought espoused mostly by Libertarians of The Tea Party breed, suggesting that any system other than Laissez Faire Capitalism goes against everything ingrained in us because of the fact that we evolved through brutal competition led by Darwinian principles. They’ll point out how it’s in our nature to compete until we drop dead. The Atheist Libertarians will then add how we never had any benevolent omnipotent entity guiding us along the way in the past, imposing fairness where none could be found, in the natural selection order. They seem proud and almost orgasmic to espouse how, despite this lack of overlooking force, we still survived in the face of insurmountable odds. So the argument basically suggests that we should bow down to that natural order, as it has already proven itself to be the arbiter of survival. Interestingly enough, the back-to-naturists also use this rationale in order to make excuses for their own DNA obedience, which is well below their intelligence level. And perhaps even more interestingly, lots of Tea Party Libertarians are Theistic Evolutionists, meaning they do believe in an overlooking force. Others are flat out Creationists, which makes one ponder as to why they sit idly by whenever the Darwinist this is how it has to be sentiment is espoused around them. And on top of all this, using surivialism by Natural Selection to argue for a system which caters to the individual at the expense of the collective, is absurd. Termites, for instance, have attained their ironically successful survival rate precisely because they work as collectives. Had they been left to fend for themselves individually, they'd be extinct. The same thing can be said about humans. So from all possible angels, the State/Deity arguments fail.

But let’s assume that tunnel vision survivalist outlooks aren't infantile and placate the theory anyway. Yes, we have survived. However, the overwhelming majority of species throughout our planet's history have not survived. Natural selection has a horrendous track record when countering in all the species which have failed to avoid extinction under the rule of its thumb. So if long term survival is the game, Natural Selection ought not to be the civilized game plan. And it isn’t. The problem with (American) Libertarians who claim that we must continue obeying Darwinian Principles because “that's just who we are” is that they tend to forget all about the fact that the Natural Selection game for most civilized human beings has been out of commission eversince the invention of the condom, an item most often purchased and used by the best and the brightest. You know, nature's hand picked winners. If not the condom, then there's body enhancing surgeries and a myriad of other synthetic short cuts circumventing the laws of Natural Selection in the 21st Century through ever evolving technology. But perhaps most importantly, when left to the whims of an evolved society, their notions falsely conflate might makes right with fair makes right or productive makes right. It's the very antithesis of an enlightened perspective.

I could go on deconstructing all the ways in which “State = Religion” arguments are fallacious tripe, but I've already made it obvious enough. It just pains me to see such a bogus analogy work on rebellious, impressionable Atheists. Some of these guys have only come out as non-believers over the last 5 years, so naturally they still have bones to pick with Religion on an emotional level. Linking the State to Religion as a means to lure them in, is shoe in. No wonder the Anarchist movement is most prevalent amongst YouTube Atheists. Anarchists prey on these lightweights using half-baked analogies meant to lump "the enemy" into a neat little package labelled “Authority” and it's working like a charm.

ABM

Anarcho-Impracticalism

2010-10-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

On to JacobSpinney's arguments, which were, again, just recitals of his previous arguments, save for a few original points. I think he's truly oblivious to the fact that he hasn't done my arguments much justice, meaning I can't exactly accuse him of intellectual dishonesty, especially since covering the substance of these lengthy blogs is an impossible task. Even the most well intentioned opponent would fail to contextually refute all of this stuff through a limited video medium. So even though his flaky arguments don't really deserve another response, I'll offer one anyway. I'll be focusing on all of the counterarguments he made in his "Problems with Anarchy?" series (1-6), which are all linked as replies to my videos on this subject. There are a few arguments which I already tackled in videos and in previous posts, but I will have to revisit them, with an even larger magnifying glass.

First off, I brought up my recollection of lawlessness during post-Communism Serbia in respects to employers refusing to pay their employees not because I wanted to pigeonhole every hypothetical construct of a Stateless society to that particular outcome. An outcome which happens to encompass varying degrees of chaos, no less. I brought up post-Communism Serbia strictly because of the ongoing mantra I keep hearing from Ancaps concerning the employee/employer dynamic. The point was to demonstrate, invoking real life scenarios I've observed first hand, that contrary to Ancaps' predictions, employers show no concern over upsetting their staff when mindful of the fact that they wont be faced with any real legal ramifications for doing so. Ancaps seem to be under the impression that workers ought not worry about dictatorship at the workplace because bosses are constantly pissing themselves over the prospect of losing their workers. Because workers can just up and leave anytime they choose, and find another, gentler boss to work for. This amounts to a dream even in the current civilized system we have here in the West. In a wholly deregulated system, it will be a nightmare. The alternative benevolence they envision as a practical option for the worker, exists solely within the confines of their imagination. Meet new boss, same as the old boss... unless of course the worker at hand is an extremely rare commodity in respects to his or her chosen field. This is mostly a negligible point however, given the fact that an overwhelming majority of workers are easily replaceable, which will continue to be the case in any Stateless Society.

He turned my contention about Governments not being intrinsically Totalitarian into me saying that Governments haven't steered towards Totalitarianism throughout history. I'll forgive him for that, because while many governments have turned Totalitarian and have grown throughout most of recorded history, so have they shrunk, without violent revolutions doing the shrinking. Some Governments, on the other hand, remain stagnant for long periods before doing any growing/shrinking. Point is, it was still Statism, just not Totalitarian regimes, so his whole argument goes out the window right here. That's not to say that governments have shrunk more often than they've grown. Quote the contrary. However, this in no way proves that the very nature of governance has to be a Totalitarian or even a Kleptocracy. At times, all a growing Government indicates is proof of an increasing demand by the voters themselves for more services to be provided to them by the State, instead of the tried and failed market. Remember, growth of a Government doesn't necessarily have to coincide with a coming of Totalitarianism through removal of liberties. At times, governments grow in accordance to public demand for their growth. Other times, they grow when more money is poured into the military budget, inducing increased Military activity which takes place outside the country, often under imperialistic motives. Unless this results a draft, the freedoms of the citizens back home are not being taken away. The point is, Governments can and have grown without impeding on the freedoms of their citizens.

Old West: The fact that Americans have a higher chance of dying in 2010 than they did back in the Old West has nothing to do with the existence of the State. It has to do with a myriad of tremendous but hazardous technological advancements, ramped population increase resulting in a vastly higher amount of day to day human interaction, multiculturalism, poverty, etc. But even if I were to dismiss all of these factors, the argument still fails. Today, the overwhelming majority of people die of old age. They don't get killed due to external factors, so the probability of getting killed has nothing to do with the overall quality of most people's lives. Back in the Old West, the overall quality of life was dismal, save for a few bandits and oil barons. It was only when the State, through democracy, forced businesses to abide by worker safety laws, minimum wage laws, 40 hour week laws, consumer protection laws, etc... that the quality of life for the majority inclined by a respectable degree and made the "Mild" West look like the uncivilized dark age in American history that it is.

To shed light on his perceived difference of Home Owners Associations and Governments, he said that Governments always acquire their power by conquering. This is just not true. The formation of many Governments throughout history was a direct result of voluntary organization, often following a revolt. The individuals themselves, who already occupied the region prior to their revolt, opted to construct a State within what they deemed to be their land. They did this because they genuinely wanted to see a functioning State replace the previous one. As is the case with Governments, consenting to abide by HOAs' jurisdictions is applicable to those who are present during the formation of the HOA in question. Those who wish to occupy the land at a later date can only do so if they subject themselves to the rules already established by the individuals preceding them. Why is this acceptable? Because their predecessors planted a flag and called dibs on the land; an act Ancaps are quick to deem as unethical when attributed to individuals forming a State. Under HOAs, if a newcomer wishes to move in and ultimately decides that the jurisdiction of the community isn't his cup of tea, the community will not bend their rules so to accommodate what he sees as his unalienable individual rights. He will instead be told to love it or leave it. Not much different than what we have today. In addition to this, advocates of HOAs haven't bothered explaining what exactly prevents HOAs from entering into already established neighborhoods, other than acts of violence perpetrated by the very occupants whose land is being invaded. These acts of aggression would be justified by nothing other than the fact that the occupants of the targeted neighborhood planted a flag and called dibs on the land prior to the HOA invaders' arrival. Initiating force against the invading HOA members would be chalked up to "you snooze, you lose" rationale, just like it is presently with State owned land (public land) and any occupants thereof who no longer wish to abide by the rules already in tact. In other words: You say tomato, I say tomato.

Pollution: The solution? Get rid of Commons land. Let's see. Ted Turner already owns millions of acres of land. Is there any evidence suggesting that he's a better caretaker of that land than the Federal Government would have been? All evidence points to the contrary. Sue the perpetrators you say? Private land owners would have to get in line, whereas the Federal Government has a free ride in the court system. They have the judges in their back pocket, while a private owner engaged in a lawsuit would have to jump through hoops in order to merely get the case underway, let alone obtain a rational decision. It takes months, sometimes even years to get a lawsuit going, especially if you're pro-say (no lawyers making huge money off of the case). Not to mention all the judges who routinely deny preliminary hearings from taking place via teleconference, resulting in the plaintiff having to travel halfway across the country in order to physically attend a 30 minute hearing. Landowners would likely come to the conclusion that the bullshit is simply not worth it, both time and money wise, and would drop the case once familiarizing themselves with the tediousness of the court system. If that doesn't do them in, there's always the pesky task of having to actually prove who polluted the privately owned land, which is going to be next to impossible without the support of the EPA.

The main reason public land gets polluted in the first place is because the regulations currently in tact are not properly enforced, or at all enforced. This can be fixed through honest implementation of accountability, while with the alternative anarcho-nonsensicalist solution, any notion of accountability is done away with as the privately run mafias can promptly attain thousands upon thousands of acres of land in the middle of nowhere, and just pollute the ever loving fuck out of it, without regard to the hazard inflicted on the environment. So on all levels, it's pure regress. Also, the idea that all land should be privatized to begin with, is beyond perverse. I'm thinking worst case scenario here, but the overwhelming majority of the population would be subject to confinement to their itty-bitty rent space. There would be no system in place to prevent this. All it takes is landlords who feel like putting up no trespassing signs all over their any property from which they make no rent money off of. More on that later.

He once again tried to undo the Democracy/Market comparison. What can I say, see the first few paragraphs of the previous blog for a refutation of that. Here he accused me of gun pointing and all that, but in Part 6 which he made on Oct. 2nd, he finally acknowledged that I advocated for an opt out system. The problem is, he said I didn't make that known until my Sept. 30th video. This is partly why I refrained from continuing to make videos directed to Ancaps who pulled this type of bullshit. He viewed and replied to my Sept. 1st video, and to my blogs which followed and were linked to that video. Both in my video and in my blogs I argued for, at length, the virtue of opting out when possible. This was back in early September. It was no secret that I endorsed Participatory Democracy prior to my Sept. 30th video. In fact, go back to January of this year and you'll see me advocate the same in my videos on Taxation. Omitting these essential aspects leaves me with plenty of reason to conclude that they just don't care and only strive to portray any opposing viewpoint in as much of a one-dimensional light as possible. This is why I didn't remain overly courteous with them as time went on. I now retract the initial politeness I extended to them. Not that I think they care or anything, just saying.

He asked if I'm really arguing that a State run police department provides better service than the thugs hired by private insurance firms would. Yes I am. I discussed this earlier when I brought up Television. Same thing goes for radio, which has no State intervention and caters to demand and supply all the same. Despite those econ 101 virtues, we see what anyone who has any real taste in music thinks of modern day radio. Other examples include airline, transit, ferry, railway, and many other services which in many regions used to be provided by non-profit State monopolies, and have since been handed over to the profit-driven private sector. The result? Higher prices, quality of service declining and customer satisfaction dwindling. No one's denying the existence of examples pointing to the contrary in which people are unsatisfied with gov't services. But when tallying up all the examples I've observed, the non-profit service provider wins out. Now, it is important to note that there are many layers to this and that each example carries its own set of arbitrary circumstances, all of which play a role in shaping each and every separate outcome. So while my conclusion is, to an extent, based on observable evidence, it is also guided by personal experience. I have worked for both the State and the private sector, under the same position and performing the same tasks. My experience with the private sector has been significantly worse, and I've seen first hand how the profit motive hurts workers' ability to perform their tasks as efficiently as possible and thus to provide the best possible service. Under a profit-hungry system, cutting costs wherever possible is paramount. For us in the private sector, this meant management not heeding our advice regarding more (costly) manpower being gravely necessary in order for the job to be done as efficiently as the advertising promises to the customers. More often than not, owners and upper management don't take the complaints of their workers as seriously as they ought to, writing them off as spoiled by comparing them to what workers had to put up with 100 years ago. When removing the fallacious invisible hand as a solution to this problem, it is obvious why non-profit alternatives, regardless of whether or not they're monopolies, are warranted. And yes the State can fill demand without having a monopoly on the market for the service in question. More on that later.

Additionally, State officials don't just charge "whatever they want". Here members of Parliament are constantly at each other's throats whenever the slightest increase is mentioned. They know they have voters to answer to, just like the owner knows he has consumers to answer to. The former is more bulletproof then the latter, because it doesn't rely on word of mouth (the divine public knowledge fallacy). Just this past summer we had the "Harmonized Sales Tax" imposed on us here in BC, which caught everyone off guard as the BC Liberal Party made no mention of its implementation in the months leading up to the previous election in 2009. As a result of the public backlash he experienced in the wake of the HST implementation, Gordon Campbell has recently stepped down as the Premier of BC, and the HST is going to a province wide referendum in 2011. All registered voters will have the opportunity to vote on whether it stays or goes. Reflecting on this, we can see that even with the slightest increases on costs at the hands of the State, the voters are still capable of turning the tide. And yes, the HST was a slight increase. It's important to note the persistent misinformation people were bombarded with regarding the impact of the HST. 64% of the British Colombians surveyed believed that charges on their cell phone bills were going to increase because of the HST. 61% believed that the HST was applicable to purchases on adult clothing items becoming more pricey. 76% thought that basic groceries were going to be impacted by the HST. Overall, only about 20% of goods and services wound up being more expensive under the HST, with costs of a select few items like diapers actually having gone down. Point is, they can't charge you "whatever they want". They can't even pass a mickey mouse tax without suffering resignations, with referendums on the tax drawing near thanks to the public backlash at the hands of the taxpayers. They work for us. Well, at least up here they do.

The freeloading thing: He said that I am in one breath stressing the negatives of free-loading, and in the next I'm arguing "Well what about the free-loader's well being?". As in, I need to make up my mind. Another prime example of the one-dimensional pigeonholing that I mentioned earlier. It's not flip-flopping to recognize and point out two separate problems that exist and can even be at odds with each other, since both problems would be a byproduct of the replacement system I'm arguing against. The fact that I'm capable of recognizing that some freeloaders are inevitably going to be well-off opportunistic weasels who just want to milk a system at every possible opportunity they get, doesn't mean that I'm going to disregard the dirt poor free-loaders who are leeching off of someone else's service as a desperate last resort. So I don't need to pick a side. If this example involved his family members at the opposing ends of the spectrum, I'm fairly certain he wouldn't suggest that a side ought to be picked. There's no side here, there are only rational or irrational solutions.

He accused me of having a wrong impression of the non-aggression principle, because I apparently didn't take into account that Anarchists are aware of the gray areas. Read the blog in which I list the lifeboat scenarios and you'll see that I made note of the fact that the hypothetical stateless community would indeed act in a manner resulting in the same restriction of individual liberty for the purposes of security as he mentioned they would. I firmly acknowledged their ability to recognize the gray areas. What I critiqued them for, was sweeping these non-aggression concessions under the rug when selling Anarchy to beginners, which is when it counts the most. They make it seem as though the principle is absolute, and explicitly assert that no majority would ever be allowed to restrict your liberty if only you helped the Anarchists get rid of the nasty State. They do this in order to set up a false dichotomy, with the idea that only the State permits arbitrary restriction of liberty for security, while in Anarchy you can have it both. My whole point was to stress how absolute notions of liberty cannot not exist under both Statism and Anarchy. I emphasized this because it is a truth which they simply don't advertise in most of their videos. He said he advertises a maximization of voluntarism and a minimization of coercion when it comes to the black and white scenarios. The problem is that even in a stateless society, what some individuals deem to be black and white, others will see as gray. I know I'd disagree with the majority of value judgments they make, as I have no reverence for the US Constitution and its proclamation of what unalienable rights are. I don't see property rights as absolute and my Sept. 6th blog provides examples of a few of those value judgments. So while it is illogical to dismiss all black and white areas on account of existing gray areas which are separate, it is not illogical to point out, using the lifeboat scenarios I used, that any notion of infallible property rights is a failure to acknowledge complexity. This ought to be stated boldly by any serious advocate of Anarchism. I am yet to see the majority of Anarchists admit it though, and therefore my scenarios remain applicable.

The animal rights issue I brought up, in relation to property rights, was brushed away with the freedom of association non-answer. Again, we see how ineffective freedom of association is currently as most people simply don't care about animals enough to limit demand. Then he said that government is exactly what causes the horrible treatment of animals because it subsidizes the meat industry. I'm not familiar with the details of how exactly Government contributes to this in America, but here in Canada as well as in every Country under the United Nations, there are strict laws in effect against factory farming and gestation crates (which are still legal in America, with the latter being illegal in only 7 States). So actual laws have been demonstrated to be more effective than some wishy washy freedom of association non-solution. Also, he said if the gov't were to no longer intervene in the meat industry, the cost of meat would rise which would naturally bring about less people purchasing meat products. This is another bait and switch. According to him, when demand for product A is to be seen as a virtue, then government intervention in the market results in higher costs for said product and is therefore bad, however when demand for product B is to be seen as a vice, then screw econ 101 and just say that government intervention is what keeps the costs low and results in more demand for the vice product, and is therefore also bad. Amazing duplicity.

Then he mockingly said "That's democracy in action, if you don't like it, go ahead and move". Which is not what I argued for, but is pretty much what Ancaps believe in when it comes to anyone who dislikes, say, a popular website. The solution is to boycott the website (move) and attempt convincing everyone else (consisting mostly of apathetic tweens) to do the same, instead of actually fixing the damn site which already has the traffic.

He said that overpopulation is an issue we need not concern ourselves with at present, because "thankfully we don't have overpopulation currently". I rest my case. He did go on to say that later on in the future, should overpopulation turn out to be a problem, with the charities and poor houses approaching capacity due to an abundance of orphans, those without means to support the children they bring into the world, who despite their lack of means still insist on having children, will either have to be fined for prosecuted for essentially initiating force against kids by bringing them into existence without being able to support them. If the parent resists, the community would have the legal right to sterilize the parent, or to ostracize the parent from their society. So it's another gray area, he says. Regardless, he still conceded that even under Anarchy, majorities would have the power to make decisions which would negatively affect individuals in the lower class who use their reproductive organs unwisely. I agree that majorities should have this power, but such majority power is the very antithesis of everything a freedom seeking individual is promised about Stateless societies. It's evident that individuals obsessed with notions of freedom will complain that restriction of bodily autonomy is a fate much worse than some current tax system Statism has imposed on them. I can freely admit that there are countless scenarios in which freedom ought to be sacrificed for security/stability. Evidently, some Anarchists agree with me. The problem is, I have to dig really deep in order to obtain this admission from them. This strikes me as a case of them wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They simply have to accept the non-existence of an objectively defined line outlining what our unalienable freedoms are. Such an absolute cannot exist, and can therefore not be crossed. Most of their accusations of unethical limits on freedom at the hands of a State are subject to nuanced circumstance and a failure or refusal to acknowledge that our lives are reciprocal.

Then he took my balanced "guy storing nuclear weapons on his private property for the purposes of decoration" scenario and proclaimed such an act to, in fact, be a direct initiation of force because to him it practically amounts to the subject holding a gun to his neighbor's head. This would be true if the subject kept his weapon on his person, much less kept it pointed in the direction of his neighbor. He missed the point in that the subject is genuinely uninterested in initiating force against anyone. The weapons are in the basement, out of sight. In Stateless societies, there will be individuals who wish to peacefully store their weapons - weapons which are often going to be more explosive than a firecracker - on their own property. Where would the 2nd amendment line be drawn? Guns? Bazookas? How would it be drawn? Democratically, I hope. But that's intrinsically subject to majority oppression, darn it. Can't have Oligarchy in a Stateless society either, so that's out the door too. Truly a pickle.

Furthermore, if you believe that all the weapons currently in existence worldwide would be destroyed once Anarchy is declared the new law of the land, you're quite the dreamer. If your stateless society hypothetical is not a global one, and is instead just a local one, the need for such weapons will still be a necessity for self-defense due to the continued existence of Statist Superpowers, or just Statist nations with high military budgets. The point is, even though storing bombs is not technically an initiation of force against anyone, but simply a matter of private property and potential self-defense, there is still a collective recognition to control what takes place on any given individual's private property. The more reasonable Anarchists will facepalm themselves when having to inevitably deal with other Anarchists who complain about this being Totalitarianism, just like I facepalm myself now having to explain why every State is not a Totalitarian one. Regardless, Spinney said that storing such weapons is an initiation of force because if the weapon is used, his life or property would be damaged. You cannot prove an is by posing an if. The fundamental difference between speculation and demonstrated reality cannot be overlooked. This is key. By his rationale, any perceived threat to an individual's well being, be it grounded in rational analysis or not, proves that the speculator is in fact having force initiated against him/her. I feel no need to further demonstrate why this is fallacious.

Now he gets into his "Anarchy proposes that the enforcers of laws be held to the same standard as every other human being". I agree with this sentiment, or at least with what I interpret it to entail. To me, this simply proposes that State officials ought to never be granted immunity of any sort. They must have their every professional move subject to constant analysis and scrutiny from the electorate. Basically, a day's work of every State law enforcer should be information available under public domain. To Spinney, the quoted statement means that the enforcer has no right to initiate force against anyone subject to majority>minority victimhood. In light of this, we've regressed right back to the overly indescribable layout which I'm once again left with no option but to dissect. If the enforcers cannot enforce laws through initiation of force, because a minority of individuals have deemed the laws in question to be a black and white violation of unalienable rights, then none of the above concessions of gray area exceptions mean anything. There will be individuals in Stateless societies who believe that it is their unalienable right to create and maintain bazookas on their private property. There is no escaping that. They will argue until they drop that in a truly free society, the enforcers would have zero right to apply force for the purposes of stripping the individual of his self-made property. The more reasonable of us can recognize that their absolute notions of what constitutes an unalienable right, arbitrarily defined as non-binding by the Stateless majority, should not override what is deemed to be precarious. So why does the same not apply under Statism? Because they say so? Keeping in mind everything I've unraveled here, "because we say so" is exactly why.

As for child support, he suggested that upon discovering their pregnancy, women could put together a contract outlining specifically what the father's role would be, financially and socially. As soon as the word contract is injected into this conversation by the Anarchist, the following is a fair and accurate description of a typical outcome: The father denies that he's the father, has never provided a DNA sample to the community in question, and continues to resist providing a sample. At this point, men with guns unabated would be legally permitted to trespass on his property and make him provide a sample through threats of force, or acts of force if worst comes to worst. If the sample proves him to be the father, but he still rejects or breaches this contract, he is deemed as the one who has initiated force. Here we see how the definition of force widens when convenient and tends to shrink when inconvenient. In any event, the solution posed would, once again, require a majority backing in order to be validated. If not a majority, then who? Who decides that these contracts should be given the legal weight over an individual's livelihood under any given spot of land? Because Spinney said so? Because 60 other Ancaps on YT agree with him? We're talking about contracts validated by unelected private mafias who are in a position to put a stamp of approval on any given contract only because they had enough money at the right time to start a business. Authority would still rear its ugly head under Anarchy, the only difference is, their brand of Authority would be dependent not on the approval of the electorate, but on capital and invisible hands. If State courts and State laws are replaced with arbitrary firms, why should any free individual accept their verdict? Because the invisible hand appoints a particular firm as the contemporary suitable replacement, until the next private gang comes along? When justice is bought from a for-profit business, there are no assurances that the verdicts will be fair and impartial. If the verdicts are enforced by private protection agencies, it would seem likely that a dominant protective agency offering the most powerful and comprehensive protection, would eventually emerge under free competition. A de facto territorial monopoly would be formed from the competition among protection agencies which would then constitute a proto-State. The only difference between the "ultraminimal" State of a dominant protection agency and a minimal State would be that its services would be available only to those who buy them. That's about it. Additionally, a father uninterested in the contract can easily flee town and never be found, if we're talking about Global Anarchy without mandatory IDs and with open boarders. If we're talking local Anarchy with mandatory IDs and without open boarders, then he'd have a harder time. However, mandatory IDs and a lack of open boarders sounds nothing like the kind of truly free Society advertised by most Ancaps.

He brought up the inefficiencies of the FDA, as sort of a tit for tat response to the argument I made about it. I already said in the video that the FDA is far from perfect. Most state run food regulatory agencies in other Nations are vastly more efficient than the FDA. My argument was simply that Americans should be allowed to strive for that result instead of throwing in the white towel and surrendering to the for-profit agency as the immediate de facto replacement. And if you don't want your tax dollars wasted on it, fine by me. Just know that in light of that, you'd be prohibited from purchasing all products scanned by the FDA, which would leave you in a pickle in today's world.

More on free-loading: He said that it is my own argument that is contingent on the poor freeloading off of the rich. How so? Because I argue for a system in which workers are paid for the value their work produces, without disregarding the real effect capital played? Ancaps always gripe about the ill-effects of "Corporatism" but then turn around and legitimize the money illegitimately acquired by the crooks who continue to make their living off of this same "Corporatism". It's a word game. They call it theft to tax individuals who they themselves deem to be thieves. What good is it to condemn the manner in which a "Corporatist" makes his money if you just end up relying on paper thin Corporatism =/= Capitalism disassociation rationale to distract from the double-standards you impose on the taxation argument. Take CEOs for instance. Salaries of CEOs and upper management have skyrocketed over the last 35 years by 600%. The workers, on the other hand, have seldomly seen anything even remotely approaching such rewards. Working class salaries have been frozen for the most part, despite the fact that increased worker productivity is what led to the prosperity of the Corporations, by and large. Now this is what I call theft. Theft of labor. Words never once uttered by a single Ancap I've come across. But that's the kind of freeloading I'm talking about, as it steals much more than any poorly run public welfare program does. So why obsess over public welfare so much? Because Rush Limbaugh does it? There are several taxation loopholes which allow the super rich to get their own brand of welfare. Call it Corporatism, call it whatever you wish, just stick to your story when the word "theft" crops up in relation to taxation.

He called "red herring" on the point I made about the inconsistency of an Ancap being opposed to involuntary inheritance of parental debt, while being all for an involuntary imposition of life at the hands of reckless parents. On what planet is this a red herring? Red herring is defined as a diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue of an argument. The main issue here is inheritance. I argued that if individuals are going to be financially awarded for being born to the right family, they should then also be financially plagued with inheriting debt should the parents fail to pay it off prior to their death. Nepotism 101. In his response, Spinney injected the virtue of voluntarism as a barrier to my consistency proposal. It was him who inserted the additional layer into the conversation. I merely scrutinized the inconsistency of the newly injected additional layer by applying it to yet another involuntary scenario, just like I did with inheritance of debt. If you are opposed to a child being imposed with debt solely because of the voluntarism factor, then it is perfectly reasonable for me to hold you to that principle in an effort to see you rationalize a child being imposed with an entire lifetime of poverty bound by the parents financial circumstance, instead of just a bit of debt. If voluntarism is to be the holiest of grails here, then imposing life on people is a serious violation of that voluntarism and is in need of addressing. We know for a fact that a percentage of humans plagued with life end up suicidal due to their dismal circumstance. This minority percentage rises if the person is born into poverty. The lack of voluntarism here is gravely more important than a lack of voluntarism when it comes to inheriting trivial debt. So instead of dealing with this problem, he delved into standard talking points about how Capitalism leads to the reduction of poverty for everyone. It's no secret to any educated human being that it was progressive policies, the very kind of policies rigidly opposed by Capitalists and implemented by Liberals, which have led to the greater living standards over the last century. Any honest human being who is at all familiar with American history from 1930s until 1980s, and the expansion of the middle class during this time, is not going to reject this. If you disagree, just read up on it, then read up on the standard of living for the working class and the lower class prior to the labor strikes of the 30's. Look at how most people lived under a closer to pure Capitalism. Child labor, 14 hour work days, no worker safety laws, etc. This is simply non-arguable, it's a matter of public record.

Then he ripped on Socialism by saying that the more you steal from the rich and give to the poor, the more it disincentives the rich to produce. But again, under the current system, it is the super rich who do most of the stealing, and Ancaps damn well know it, so much so that they refuse to call it Capitalism. So why would they call it theft when they know the money wasn't earned fairly to begin with? How can you steal that which has been stolen, thanks to Corporatism? Why legitimize the theft of Corporatists by saying they can be thieved from? When I see rich people fleeing from countries like Germany because of the oppressive gov't programs that are in effect there, then I may be inclined to swallow the disincentive dogma. If private charity was as effective as they claim, we would have seen poverty rates start to decline well before the implementation of Welfare systems worldwide, not after. Even America, which has one of the most inefficient Welfare systems in the world, saw poverty rates decline once the Welfare system was implemented. It's not ineffective, and it most certainly isn't counterproductive. Which is not to say that it cannot be improved, especially in the States.

Back to the definition of Totalitarianism and its supposed inherent tie to Statism: He brought up Hitler's Totalitarian regime in relation to Democracy under Statism. Hitler never actually captured more than 37% of the national vote. Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Four candidates ran in the presidential election held on March 13, 1932: The incumbent, Field Marshall Paul Von Hindenburg, Mr. Hitler, and two minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were: 1. Hindenburg 49.6%. 2. Hitler 30.1%. 3. Thaelmann 13.2%. 4. Duesterberg 6.8%. Almost 70% of the electorate voted against Adolf, but Hindenburg did not obtain a majority vote, meaning a runoff election was required to be held pitting the top three vote getters. The results of the runoff: Hindenburg 53.0%. Hitler 36.8%. Thaelmann 10.2%. So while his vote total had risen by a small margin, he was still decisively rejected by the majority of the voters. Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of Germany on June 1st of that year. Papen was described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” by Shirer. Papen immediately dissolved the national congress, known as the Reichstag, and ordered new elections, meaning this would be the 3rd legislative election in under five months. Hitler and his Party members were hell bent on doing away with the republic and establishing a dictatorship. They created chaos in the streets, initiating political violence and murder. Martial law was proclaimed in Berlin as a result. Hitler decisively lost the presidential election, but was drawing ever larger crowds during the congressional election. Shirer pointed out "In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in the giant Grünewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard his voice by loudspeaker". The election on July 31, 1932 produced a major victory for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member body. In light of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor, which would grant him in complete control of the State. Otto Von Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg, stating "Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined". Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in November 6, 1932. Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats in that one. So even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest political party, it was obviously losing appeal amongst voters. In order to try and remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German chancellor. Schleicher was unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag and finally succumbed to tendering his resignation to Hindenburg, which was only 57 days after he had been appointed. President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. His party never captured more than a lousy 37% of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50% of seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, this ended up being a walk in the park. He reigned precisely because of the undemocratic tactics his Party employed. Intimidation, riots and politically motivated threats and ultimatums will exist until the day human nature ceases to exist. Bottom line: Citing Hitler doesn't prove how every State is Totalitarian, by any real definition of the word. It also doesn't prove how a Stateless Society is immune to the type of power lust and takeover at the hands of individuals who are as motivated as Hitler was, and who will endeavor to thrive under Anarchy.

He says that Judges maintain their position under a State because of their connections. Some do, and the current justice system in the States is undoubtedly hogwash. There is nothing to suggest that it cannot be fixed though. Start by crushing Judges' immunity clause and work your way from there. Under Anarchy, there is no reason to assume that Judges will no longer be appointed their position based on who they play golf with. The wisdom of crowds cannot aim high enough to even popularize a decent Television show. It's not going to give us honest, competent Judges. Also, if a Judge takes a bribe in a Stateless Society, the transaction is still not going to take place in the middle of the courtroom. The Judge's reputation will only be tarnished if he or she is dumb enough to get caught red handed, and we know that they're too calculating for that, Anarchy or not.

Inheritance again: He says it's about deductive reasoning, so the higher an inheritance tax, the less incentive people will have to make lots of money and be productive. He makes it seem as if I only used empirical evidence to try to debunk his claim, and not basic logic. That's not true. So I'll have to just reiterate the same argument again. Imagine being offered a high paying job which you find fulfilling. Name me one person who, rather than immediately accepting the offer, would instead contemplate the current inheritance tax rate, or to which lengths the rate may rise on the day of their death, before considering taking the offer. Nobody does this. Nobody would be willing to work for less, simply because their kid would not obtain everything after they die. It's the worst argument out of the bunch. Not everyone is that driven by nepotism. Not only do plenty of average people believe their kids should not be given a massive head start, but even a few of the super rich have gone on record stating that they will not be leaving their kids an inheritance. Warren Buffet comes to mind. Only dickless wonders are afraid of imposing any degree of fairness to the race their kids will participate in. It doesn't even remotely approach complete fairness, it's just a "let's not have some jackpot winners start 6 feet away from the finish line" sort of lukewarm fairness. Then there's those of us who work hard without even wanting to have kids, let alone caring about what percentage of our money would be subject to taxation after we die. People are waking up to the fact that nepotism is no better than any other discriminatory ism, and should not be looked upon in high regard during discussions on policy. Ironically, those who firmly believe that the majority of the population is as nepotistic as they are, are the very same people who make the most noise when it comes to philanthropy and how private charities are sufficient in taking care of the have-nots. Apparently individuals driven by nepotism are somehow going to care that much about the well being of perfect strangers. There are so many contradictions in so many of their claims, I could write novel. He said that unless I'm arguing for an inheritance tax of 100%, I'm being logically inconsistent because if the tax is not at 100%, inequality would still exist amongst kids. This is no different than saying if a guy decides to no longer consume meat, but still wants to treat himself to a can of fish once in a blue moon, that he is being logically inconsistent. No, he's simply reducing what he sees to be a negative to an extent he arbitrarily chose. Not every limitation has to be taken to an absolute level in order to be productive. I never argued for total equality. Why not? Well, aside from not being a Communist, arguing for total equality would also require me to consider messing with internal driving forces such as genetics, etc. It's an impossible and repulsive task. So instead we draw a line somewhere and compromise in so far as the extremes are concerned. He said my comment about people not blowing all their money before they die, was irrelevant. It wouldn't seem irrelevant had he mentioned the specific point of his I was replying to when I made that comment. But that's not how he rolls. He also brought up my point about how the standard of living was higher when we had a higher inheritance tax, and then accused me of the correlation =/= causation fallacy, despite the fact that I clearly mentioned this fallacy in the very paragraph he was responding to. I brought it up simply to point out that there is no evidence of a higher inheritance tax resulting in a lower standard of living, and if anything, it may increase the standard of living, but we can't say that for sure either, as I myself pointed out by mentioning the potential correlation issue.

He said Capitalists don't exploit workers, and to prove this he linked to an older video of his in which he outlines a hypothetical scenario where the Capitalist is, indeed, not exploiting the worker. The problem here is that the title of his video is "Capitalists do not exploit workers" when it should be "Not All Capitalists Exploit Workers". The video was made with the intention of showcasing how Capitalists in general don't exploit, but the fish/net dynamic he introduces does not even come close to mirroring the majority of "work or else" scenarios workers are faced with in real life, especially if we're going to include outsourcing. The workers who sacrifice to capital a mere one third of the productivity of their labor, ought to consider themselves lucky. In parts of the underdeveloped world, workers who go so far as to sacrifice to capital a whopping two thirds of the productivity of their labor, should still consider themselves lucky, because their living costs are typically much lower then the living costs of the Capitalist who has taken it upon himself to outsource work to that region. It's the 95% extraction of labor productivity, or any number approaching it, that leaves me in a state of discontentment when it comes to pure unregulated Capitalism. The video he pointed me to is valuable viewing material, if you're a Commie. I'd like to think that Spinney doesn't just assume that anyone who opposes the Laissez Faire model must also be a secret Commie, but I'm just not sure. Seriously, why would he find it necessary to link any non Communist to a video of such basic ABC proportions? He also linked me to another video of his which is supposed to prove that Monopolies would be fairy tales in Stateless Societies. By this stage, I was all Spinnied out, so I passed on that. His proposition is absurd on its face, since we already can point to purely unregulated market systems on the internet, and cite companies like (you guessed it) Google in order to prove that a lack of regulation does not result in the "Monopolies are fairy tales" outcome he likes to pitch. There is no reason to assume the "anything goes" environment of the internet would bring about different results if relegated to non-net markets and infrastructure.

Finally, Part 6. So he's going over the Democracy/Free Market analogy again, while speaking in a tone suggesting that he's really worn out due to the redundancy of my argument. Nicely done, but it doesn't refute anything I said previously and only serves to make his counterarguments look as the redundant commentary here.

"What if I'm in the minority and I hate the President" = "What if I'm in the minority and I hate Google".

Bullshit answer regarding the former: Don't try fixing things, just move the fuck away = Bullshit answer regarding latter: Don't try fixing anything, just boycott the company (IE: move the fuck away).

No fences around your country preventing you from leaving = No one forces you to use Google.

He says the feedback mechanism of the market is much more efficient than that of democracy because "you get to give your feedback every microsecond of every day under a market while in a democracy you only get to do it once every 4 or 2 years". Which would be true if it weren't for the constant polling of the voters and the population at large offering the perfect platform to voice approval or disapproval of the job done by the President and his or her administration. Currently, Obama's approval ratings are down. This has countered into his judgement on the policies he has made recently. Had it not been for the feedback mechanism of the polls, he may have operated differently for all we know. Also, people don't give constant feedback when it comes markets. While consumers are perfectly aware that companies like WalMart are dependent on their business, they still forgo boycotting them, either because of the inconvenience of traveling further than they have to in order to buy a simple product, or because they're generally more apathetic when it comes to their role in shaping the magic of markets, compared to the lesser amount of apathy they exhibit concerning their role as a voter.

He used YouTube's popularity to disprove my claim that YouTube is a prime example of free-market hell. Isn't this redundant again? Firstly, he ignores that tons of people only use YouTube because Google indexes key word searches in a way designed for popularity to breed popularity. It takes the already popular and makes them even more popular, while burying the unpopular further down the ranks. He also keeps ignoring the fact that most people using YouTube are kids/tweens/teens who are too lost in their own bullshit to know what it's like to be on a properly run website. Just like most people who contribute to the weekly "Top 40 Radio Hit List" only do so because they don't have the depth of taste to find the kind of music they would enjoy far more had they been more disciplined and patient with their music choices. There are more examples of this. Bottom line: Popularity =/= Quality, and supply often creates demand.

He said that if video sharing sites were subject to democratic rule, we would end up stuck with only one site and no alternatives. That's not true. Democracy doesn't have to imply a State monopoly. We have democracy here in BC, and yet manage to simultaneously have both private and public Hospitals, Banks, Casinos, etc. There's no reason to suggest that video sharing sites would be exempt from this, under democracy. And again he mentioned that the market feedback mechanism is instant because people can easily just switch to other sites. So once again, no they can't. Not if they're like every vlogger I've conversed with about this, who recognizes the many faults of the site, but who is simply unwilling to compromise viewership in order to go on some dead-end stab in the dark mission aimed to hurt YT. Vloggers (content generators) are simply too focused on obtaining views and you cannot do that on a tumbleweed site. And YT is not simply just rough around the edges. We cannot even get a reply from a YT staff member regarding the sea of complaints sent to them over the last 4 years.

And no I wasn't talking about Spinney when I suggested that Ancaps shouldn't strictly talk Anarchy scenarios, disregarding policies applicable to current systems. I'm aware of his other channel and I get a kick out of those Capitalist/Socialist videos, but he really should just finally replace Soc with a full blown Commie. I particularly like the one on inheritance where he makes it out as if the goal of the Socialists is to legally prohibit rich people from buying porches to their spoiled kids because that's just how Socialists roll. The actual goal is to even out the playing field a bit when it comes to the extremely disproportionate lapses pertaining to the starting line. This would not create some kind of a "single file" type heaven where everyone is equal. I hardly doubt that anyone other than a Communist would even want to see that. Even if a Commie implemented a complete ban on inheritance, it would still not result in everyone being equal, it would just mean that people would excel based strictly on their superior genetics, environment, or jackpot lottery business circumstances. It would still be Capitalism.

He once again said I'm attempting to backtrack because I initially said the richest people today and throughout history inherited their wealth, but then I went on to add that this doesn't mean that the top ten richest people inherited their wealth, because to me "the richest people" qualifier bar doesn't arbitrarily stop at number ten. It can go all the way up to triple digits as far as I'm concerned, given the fact that we have a scope of 6.8 billion people to work with. The main reason I believe the majority of the wealtheist people inherit their money is because of the eradication of the middle class over the last 30 years at the hands of right wing policies, dictated by the richest people in the world. You know, Corporatism. Childeren of Corporatists are often raised in elitist environments and are extremely well educated. They're not going to be dumb enough to invest their inheritance money unwisely. But Spinney wants evidence to counter his anecdotal evidence which to him suggests that people who inherit huge wads of cash usually blow it irresponsibly on cars and such. I spent about 10 minutes trying to look up solid peer-reviewed statistics on how the richest few hundreds of people acquired their wealth, and found nothing substantial that suggests anything either way. I doubt concrete numbers are available for this anywhere and I don't feel like wasting even more time on it. Bottom line: Nothing he said proves that inheritance untaxed would do most people any good.

Landowners driving impaired on their own property: He briefly leaned towards non-association, mentioning the market feedback mechanism, and then said there would actually be clauses for this which the landowner would want to impose on himself equally as much in order to keep his renters satisfied. I don't see why a landowner would be worried about losing customers when most of the land in any given city would end up belonging to a couple of dozen families, at most. Landowners would be all too aware that most of their customers wouldn't want to put up with the burden of moving halfway across town in order to stick it to them, only to end up experiencing similar problems with their new landowner. There's also nothing to stop them from charging renters on taking a walk in the park, or drinking from a fountain. Why not? It's their property and they stand to make a profit. People would rather be subject to the tiny tax burden for those luxuries as opposed to being charged for them on a case by case basis.

I'm spent, gonna do one more on this and then it's over.

If anyone has by any chance made it this far (and I don't blame ya if you haven't) I applaud and thank you for your insane and frightening stamina.

ABM

The Legitimacy Of My "Democracy/Market" Analogy

2010-10-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up to my YT video from September 30th, 2010 where I was timed out well before I got to cover everything I wanted to. It's been a while since I initially said I'd have this entry up. The reason for the delay is that I considered dropping it altogether. The more I contemplated refuting these same arguments again, the more I dreaded the thought of actually going through with the repetitious task. But here I am anyway. It's not so much about Anarchy at this point, it's about me defending my initial premises and the arguments built upon those premises. The last blog already covered many of the counterarguments I received to it. Same goes for the entry preceding that one. And the one before that. So why the hell am I doing this? For starters, someone just sent me a video by qtronman in which he's contriving ferocious laughter at my market/democracy comparison, in a pathetic attempt to write it off, with his dolts cheering him on. I'll take care of that here since he still has me blocked, routinely deletes comments, and is definitely not worth wasting anymore video time on.

So he finds it oh so astonishingly comical that someone like me would gripe about a failed boycott of YouTube/Google, seeing as how I myself upload videos on YouTube/Google! This was the typical response I received from others as well. First off, the boycotts I'm referring to all took place years ago, well before I had even considered making any videos. But regardless, I still made it a point not to log in to my video-free YT account throughout the scheduled two week period of the blackout. Once word got out that the blackout (predictably) made zero impact in the grand scheme of things -- directly thanks to the overwhelming majority's inability to wake up, smell the bullshit and show some "invisible hand" guided restraint -- I logged back in. According to qtronman, I'm a hypocrite for not staying off of YT forever because I still opposed the way YT was run upon my return. That's nice, except for the fact that I found out, through my use of other websites, that YT traffic was increasing daily and would continue to do so with or without my presence. Staying off of YT forever in the face of this fact would have been no different than stubbornly banging my head against a wall. The hypocrisy accusation here is abject nonsense. There was zero hypocrisy in my eventual return to YT, much in the same way that there is zero hypocrisy with people who continue to reside in a particular country despite opposing the way that country is run 95% of the time. People like qtronman are the real hypocrites for continually bitching about oppression of individuals by way of democratically imposed majority preference, while marveling at the exact same majority preference when it takes place in its market incarnation.

I'll stress this again since it's still going over some thick skulls: Telling someone to get off of YT if they don't like the way YT is run, is no different than Statists telling Anarchists to get the hell out of America and go to Somalia, since nobody is technically forcing a single Anarchist to continue living in America, the exact same way that nobody is technically forcing anyone to use Google. Both Democracy and the Market fall prey to the same minority restrictions directly related to the inescapable reality of the fact that majority viewpoints will always shape what is going to be at our disposal in the practical sense, be it regarding policy (democracy) or products (market). No sense in attempting to evade the obvious connotation. The sheer nerve to arrogantly mock my dissatisfaction with the majority choice when it comes to Google, coming from the very same people who upload endless streams of videos bitching about Statists telling them to Love it or leave it when the majority flow supports taxation or any other random policy that they lack an arbitrary preference for. Double standards all over the place. But double standards are inevitable when dealing with individuals whose core philosophy consists of notions like "My personal wants matter more than what's in the best interest of the other 6.8 billion". Accepting an ideology this self-absorbed inevitably leads to duplicity and obliviousness.

If Google still escapes the reader as a prime example of how free-markets limit truly free choices, just consider a TV show you immensely enjoyed that got cancelled all too soon because it suffered poor ratings. I'm sure almost everyone has had this happen to them. You like a show with some substance, but it just so happens to be on at the same time as American Idol or Dancing With The Stars or some other hideous tripe that's a huge draw because it's on a major network and is created specifically to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Your show, on the other hand, happens to be aired on a brand new channel, in development mode, on basic cable. Naturally, the demand is skewed against your acquired taste and your beloved show is immediately killed in the ratings. It ends up cancelled before ever making it past 4 episodes because the very structure of the for-profit enterprise calls for its network executives to focus on nothing but ad revenue in order to please their affiliates. In this system, preserving actual quality programming, when such programming falls prey to seldomly viewed beginnings, is a pipe-dream.

The irony here is that even the most rigid free-market proselytizers complain about these things. The most recent example would be NBC's alarmist handling of the not-so-stellar ratings Conan O'Brien received during his short stint as the host of The Tonight Show. And I do stress short. Only 7 months short. 7 months is in no way enough time to solidify oneself in such a prestigious position. His viewership wasn't that bad either, especially towards the end. But he was still given no options other than to delay his show by 30 minutes, making it The Tomorrow Morning Show, or be fired.

When the entire operation is predicated on the success of ratings and nothing but, those who enjoy creative counter-culture style programming will undoubtedly get the short end of the stick. Their preferred programs routinely sustain premature deaths and as a result these people end up settling for watching shows they otherwise wouldn't have watched had their original preference still been on the air. When we counter in all these vital tidbits, we can see that any absolutist notion of free choices is a vapid delusion. And this is not even taking into account the fact that the Nielsen Ratings system has an insurmountably high margin of error to begin with. Currently, only 25,000 thousand households in America carry the Nielsen ratings box, which is the item used to track viewership. Imagine if elections were determined this way? Only 25,000 randomly chosen votes counting at the end, with the rest being an estimate based off of the tiny, randomly chosen 25K base?

There has never been a proven method of actually measuring how many people are watching, for how long, and the exact portion of the program they view or skip. It's all a shorthand that was created from a panel of several thousand homes which were supposed to be indicative of 100 million television households, to create some kind of a common ground for the sole purpose of selling advertising. It's an immense amount of guesswork carried out from a very small percentage. Regardless of how accurately they can say that each panel member is indicative of a certain amount of a demographic, no matter how closely they can vet that panel, they still don't know. The entire system is designed for linear broadcasting, aimed at a period when households had all but three channels. Now take that, multiply it by a hundred (or however many particular cable channels you receive) and then throw in DVRs. All of this guesswork has basically been standardized as fact over the past few decades and has led to legitimate viewer choice having been unjustly stifled at the hands of extremely loose statistics. The Nielsen Ratings system is flat out guesswork and nothing is being done in an attempt engineer a system with some real precision. Calculating small percentages of viewership based on thousands (not millions) of the households that are selected by the company itself, then adding it all up, so to make round-about assumptions as to how many people this signifies may be watching, and cancelling shows based on the approximations, is the height of recklessness and stupidity. And this is not even getting into the daftness of the notion that the target demographic is always going to be the 18-49 group, as they "always spend more on the ads they view". It's just too inane and transparently sloppy of them.

The funny part here is that I have actually managed to get some Ancaps and Libertarians to freely admit that because these ratings indicate that the majority watches Idol more than any other program, that Idol must therefore be the best show around. They'll actually resort to this, just to defend their tightly-held ideological premise about the market being self-regulating. They will desperately cling to the idea that the consumer base is somehow always capable of identifying the best product around, regardless of the fact that demonstrated reality points in the opposite direction. I shudder at the thought of how many great programs have been scrapped over the years without even having been given a real chance to flourish. The exact same applies to any other product on the market that suffers little to no marketing. It's all about who you have in your back pocket to pimp your product. Basically, it comes down to money, and commercially driven supply creating demand. This is the free-market in action. The best product does not rise to the top. No matter how much evidence you throw their way, they will just come back and regurgitate their idealistic wisdom of crowds argument. To most rational people, this is known as the divine public knowledge fallacy since it argues, vacant of evidence, that consumers are collectively privileged to having complete knowledge of markets and thus have their actions guided by an invisible hand which is always there to ensure that they make the most self-interested decisions. Proponents of this bullshit are out in full forces. They are flooding the comment sections of many political videos on YT, excessively thumbing up their own comments, and militantly asserting that anyone who challenges their pseudo-science needs to take econ 101. This does actually convince many beginners who haven't taken econ 101, or read anything on economics, that perhaps this could all be true and that they just need to read The Fountainhead or frequent the Mises institute (ugh). This is what I despise the most about my opposition here. It's their arrogant refusal to accept that what they are preaching is a political ideology, not a science. As an ideology, it's admirable. Who would argue against pure voluntarism which manages to bring about better, cheaper service overall? Nobody. The problem is, it wouldn't accomplish what it sets out to do.

In 1984, immediately following deregulation, cable prices soared while the quality of programming plummeted. Service providers began selling their channels in indivisible blocs in order to prevent subscribers from voting with their dollars. From 1986 to 1990, the cost of basic service rose by 56 percent, twice the rate of inflation at the time. I can cite many more cases in which deregulation did not bring about the positive results typically sold to us, fairytale style, by fiscal Conservatives, Libertarians, or Ancaps.

I have admitted times over that the same can be said for elections. The 2 party system prevents a true free choice from being viable, so instead we have to vote practically in order to do the lesser of two evils thing. This is a huge problem with democracy. I've advocated actual solutions for these issues. Public access television regarding the current viewer choice debacle, and IRV regarding the democracy debacle, along with testing voters on the issues being voted on. The test results would determine the weight of the vote by correlating it to the percentage the voter scored on the test. The people I argued with didn't want to hear about any of these solutions.

The Fringe Elements hacker guy also made a comment on qtronman's video, along the lines of "This is not the failure of the market, this is just proof that AntiBullshitMan's cause is crap".

So he's too dumb to comprehend that by applying consistency to his rationalization, I can just as easily defend democracy, since the standard he himself imposes on the argument is one dictated by popularity, not substance. Using his market oriented logic, I can point to every anti-democracy argument he's ever tried to sell and write it off as contradictory crap simply because, as with the YT blackout, the majority of people who heard his arguments weren't convinced by them and opted not to assist him in constructing his version of a Stateless society.

"Oh but he hasn't even been heard by most users yet! Just wait until he reaches Stefbot's level of popularity!".

Nonsense. Aside from political adversaries, the guy subs to practically every user that so much as farts in his direction, regardless of whether they make videos or not. On top of that, he sends friend invites to pretty much everyone. A while back he even sent a friend request to me of all people, despite the lame unoriginal insults he threw my way later on. Subbing and sending friend requests to tons of people is known to increase traffic on the sender's channel. It results in people stopping by and checking out the sender's content. Therefore, it is safe to say that he has failed to convince most people who have come across his arguments to get on board with him. Much like Stefbot, who despite his somewhat highly viewed videos, isn't exactly setting anti-statism on fire on the net. The point is, if my cause is "crap" because it fails to draw large enough support, so is theirs. Except for the fact that the YT blackout wasn't even my cause. I didn't propose the damn thing, I was just a participant in it.

He said that I don't try to self-debunk. Point to one empirically debunked fact I have argued for. Anti-regulation and Glass Steagall Act conspiracy theories aren't facts. The idea that regulations are theoretically destined to produce counterproductive results is laughed out of the stage during any serious political discussion outside America. Regulations don't produce counterproductive results. A lack of proper regulation enforcement is what creates the counterproductive results. If Americans were, by and large, politically conscious or involved to the point where they protested State officials giving themselves immunity from scrutiny under the public domain, enforcing proper accountability wouldn't seem like a pipe dream and all these conspiracy theories regarding regulations wouldn't fly in mainstream American politics.

Mr. Elements also seems to be confused about my opt out under a State proposal. He claims that opting out is inherently incompatible with the existence of the State, that I'm arguing against the State just by mentioning opting out, and that I'm too clueless to recognize the contradiction. Thanks for the epiphany. Turns out that I'm living in a Stateless Society as we speak because I currently have the freedom to opt out of my extended health benefits, amongst other State programs. How could I have been so blind. Also, I currently reside in Canada, which to Ancaps is well known for its evil collectivist driven gov't spending, bound for decades now to result in wide spread famine and Gulag death camps. The lesson for Stodles here? Not only is it possible to opt out of gov't programs under a Minarchist state, but so too under a much larger Nanny State so long as you can demonstrate an ability to avoid leeching off of the services you're opting out of, directly or indirectly. All of this has already been explained in my videos. But what do I know? I only live here and experience first hand the ability to opt out, so it's clear that I'm wrong and that opting out does in fact prove that I live in a Stateless Society as we speak. I had no clue that living in a Stateless Society would be so identical to living under its Stateyes Society counterpart. I'm glad Fringey cleared up my confusion for me, in his trademark polite fashion.

He also made two videos about my previous blogs. I watched some of Part 1, where he begins by talking about how I don't respect Anti-Stasits. I actually started this whole debate in a very respectful tone and maintained it for a couple of videos, despite not having been returned the favour straight from the get go. My polite videos are there for everyone to see. I was more respectful to Anarchists than to any other YT cult I've addressed in the past. Then he psycho-analyzed me a bit, saying that I'm the type of person who gets off on the sensation of my own anger. It's not anger. It's called doing off the cuff videos in a lively manner. I realize it's not the standard Data-type monotone speech pattern which most Ancaps seem to find pure and objective, but it in no way implies a lack of objective analysis on my part. And yes, I sometimes *gasp* raise my voice in an effort to stress an important part of my argument. This usually happens whenever I get the sense that my arguments seem to be falling on deaf years repeatedly. I guess to some, anger means not hiding behind a screen while reading a script so to give off superficial notions of being emotionless and thus philosophically disciplined. Very tactful. If I were the scheming type, I'd probably do the same. I'd just never be so dumb to resort to pulling the anger card on anyone who doesn't make videos in the same vain as I do, in an attempt to score cheap points.

He was also original enough to suggest that my arguments resembled that of Inmendham's, dubbing me Inmendham Jr. Cute. I haven't seen all of Inmendham's Anarchy videos, but I doubt he has anything in there about opting out when possible, or testing voters, or pointing out all the instances in which consumers have, by and large, made horrible decisions without having been saved by any invisible hand. If Inmendham has made these points and I just haven't seen them, then I'll gladly sign up to be "Jr." when it comes to this subject.

He said that when most people think of Anarchy, they usually think of Communism. Then I clicked off of his video because I just couldn't believe that he'd still peddle that nonsense. "Most people" are well aware that Communism and Anarchy are, by their very definitions, polar opposites. Any theory to the contrary applies a flawed definition of Communism in order to make the leap. Bullshit sites like Wikipedia peddle flawed definitions of Communism, describing it as being "classless and stateless". That is simply not the definition, that's just how Anarcho-Communism is defined. Mikhail Bakunin's notions of stateless Communism were a pipedream and ought not to be taken seriously, much less injected into modern definitions. Pure Communism is known to most people as being classless with the State owning everything. It is Leftism taken to its ultimate level, while Anarchism is the Right taken to its ultimate level. So no, most people do not think of one as being in any way similar to the other. Most people think of them as being on opposite ends of the spectrum, traditionally or not. End of.

The BarelyLegalDotCa guy also made another reply to me, even though I didn't even fully cover the first one yet. His 2nd reply was much more snarky than his first, so I hereby retract my "thank you" to him for reading the blogs, which in retrospect I don't believe he fully read anyway. I'll cover his video in my next entry since this one is running too long.

Thanks for reading.

ABM

More Holes In Anarchy Logic

2010-09-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

To begin, I will be addressing the argument from ethical relativism in the context of my comment section disputes with Anarchists/Anti-Statists. I keep getting the old "Who are you to say that people shouldn't work for 13 cents an hour while billionaires roam?! Fairness is relative! Checkmate!".

Easy does it, right? Wrong...

My first bit of advice to them would be to phrase the argument differently. It's not about who I am. I could be anybody, from the nicest person on earth, to the biggest scumbag on earth. It would not change the logic of my stance. Furthermore, an admission of the non-existence of objectivity as it pertains to morality/ethics leads to a direct recognition that the very basis of any "majority rule is immoral" or "taxation is theft and therefore immoral" argument cannot rely on an objectively defined sense of superior ethics and must therefore be rooted in mere intersubjective consensus in order to be compatible with the aforementioned admission. Seeing as how democracy is evidently intersubjective consensus in action, the aforementioned admission must also render any rejection of democracy as self-refuting, as it strongly relies on intersubjective consensus to function in place of objectivity.

As mentioned, most anarchists have used moral relativism in an attempt to instantly disqualify all ethically driven arguments I've made so far. The idea here is that any argument grounded in a human-derived sense of ethical truth fails solely on the basis that it is an argument grounded in a human-derived sense of ethical truth. As always, I will humor this as a well established fact and apply rigorous consistency to it. The consistency flaws should already be apparent, since the people I'm dealing with uninterruptedly rely on the existence of raw ethics in order to hammer home their points about theft and mob rule. Given their rejection of objective morality, the crippled value judgement at hand cannot amount to anything other than intersubjective consensus being recognized as the lone component adequate enough to generate just grounds for permitting a certain set of ethical codes to be written in stone in the interest of civility. My opposition has demonstrated a capacity to recognize this, but when applying the criteria exclusively to their own particular positions. It is only when the statist makes an argument heavily in favor of intersubjective consensus being knighted as the shaper of policy, that we see finger-pointing sprout with accusations of mob rule imposition entering into the equation, thereby rendering intersubjective consensus to mean diddly-squat. How commodious. Their arguments are compelling as long as we permit them to be contingent upon the presupposition that only anarchists are allowed to pick and choose when intersubjective consensus amounts to a philosophical no-no and when it amounts to a justification for moral outrage at the hands of taxation, or what have you. U.S. Constitution not withstanding, proponents of the "taxation must be abolished" sentiment would have no qualms applying intersubjective consensus as reasoning for scrapping the current systems they consider to be unfair, as evidenced by their rejection of objective morality. Let's recap all this.

Morality is in the eye of the beholder. Check.
Democracy is the enemy. Check.
Intersubjective consensus is the best we can do when it comes to morality. Check.

Democracy is still the enemy though... Check...

You can't have it both ways guys. You cannot on one hand conveniently dismiss any ethical argument you dislike on the sole premise that any such argument is subjective and must therefore be rendered empirically ineffective, while in the same breath claiming moral high ground when it comes to a particular principle you feel passionately about, which isn't even backed up by intersubjective consensus on a large scale anyway, proving it to be even more contradictory to the presuppositions I've accepted from you. And no, replacing the word "ethical" with the word "preference" when you gripe about taxation doesn't negate my critique. Even if it did, whatever merit the arbitrary terminology of "preference" adds to your anti-tax argument, the same standard would have to be applied to my arguments. So if I added "preference" to my verbiage and had a consensus backing it (which I do), I would by your logic be well within reason to argue my position. But I'm not, am I? Because in the end, we're still left with anarchists cherry picking the particular preferences which are to be held to a higher standard. Even when humoring their code of ethical relativism, the holes in logic are pervasive.

That said, concepts such as fairness are rock solid to begin with and any humoring of relativism is unwarranted. It is mind numbingly short sighted to use the existence of differing opinions regarding what constitutes as fairness as evidence that fairness itself is nebulous. Our ability to disagree on these matters is a result of built in biases, all of which we are capable of filtering out of our system, so long as we possess intellectual integrity. If you don't, then it's perfectly understandable how what I'm advocating here can seem out of bounds and loopy to you. In addition to intrinsic bias, a lack of knowledge in regards to all circumstantially relevant details concerning the matter at hand is also large contributor to our inability to grasp where fairness lies in some of the more convoluted scenarios. It should be noted that this lack of absolute knowledge on our part does not render key elements of reality itself as incomprehensible. Such setbacks don't eliminate the possibility of a 360 perspective, though they do often get in the way of it. None of this is difficult to grasp, so why do people pretend to be incapable of grasping it? We can all concede that it is universally fair to impose identical rules on two teams trying to outperform each other in a sporting event. Imposing only 50% of the rules on one team would be unfair, and only a biased preference for the team that gets a pass from having to abide by half the rules allows us to pretend that there is nothing intrinsically unfair about it. It's painfully transparent that people enjoy having subjectivity to cling to in order to rationalize their selfishness and narrow agendas.

Just as my video time expired, I was talking about democracy being analogous to the free market. I was in the middle of pointing out that, just as ignorant majorities can elect leaders poorly and even take away minorities' rights in some circumstances, these exact majorities can be culpable of the same when left to the whims of the free market. Just as they voted for Bush, they have also empowered abysmal websites like Google by becoming walking dollar signs for them. As a result, Google was made wealthy enough to afford purchasing what 3 years ago used to be a perfectly decent site called YouTube. This resulted in the beginning of the end of YouTube. In their replies to me on this point, the anarchists simply said "Well then that's the consumer choice. It's the free market! Either deal with it, or use a different website". So they rationalize the latter, while being dissatisfied with former and summing it up as mob rule. Should I just make the same rationalization after every election? Should I just say "Well that's the voter choice. It's democracy! Either deal with it or move to another country."? No I shouldn't. I display dissatisfaction with both. Why don't anarchists display dissatisfaction with both? It's only when the free market causes the lowest common denominator to thrive, that they seem to be okay with it. Just as most elections are limited to the two-party system due to financing via special interest groups, the free market has its own "free choice" limitations due to rigid advertising. We know who decides what mass audiences see. Their "options" are mostly guided by outside forces. People aren't simply given what they want, their wants are shaped for them by multi-million dollar driven advertising campaigns. If flicks like Avatar have naturally built in massive audiences, why is it necessary to spend millions and millions of dollars on pre-release publicity hypes in order to create the already existing mass audience it supposedly has? Those who assert that independent films routinely fail to appeal to mass audiences never explain why that is, as if the apparent explanation escapes them. Independent films are kept from the general public due to a lack of distribution and publicity. Creators of independent films don't have tens of millions of dollars to spend so to publicize their work. This entire ordeal is not simply a matter of demand creating supply. Often times, it's supply that creates demand. The first condition of all consumption, is accessibility to the product. Prime time TV shows, along with movies that open in every shopping mall you can name, all obtain large audiences not because there is a spontaneous wave of popular demand carrying them to the top, but because of the strenuous pulling from the top. Emails from individual viewers are rarely considered representative of the general public. Market research and rating surveys are also misleading because they seldom incorporate any viewer reactions to specific content. It's beyond obvious that those who claim to give us what we like, do everything in their power to make us like what they give. I used TV and movies as examples, but this applies to pretty much everything on the market. Why glorify the market when the "free-choice" it entails is about as synthetic as the free-choice people have to vote for an honest presidential candidate? Just as supporters of Ralph Nader have no reason to vote their conscience because they know Nader has no real chance of winning, vloggers by the same token have no reason to leave YouTube because we don't want our content surrounded by nothing but tumbleweeds. Net-Neutrality would fix this problem, just as IRV would fix the two-party system problem. Advocate real solutions people, not free-market fantasies.

I also ran out of time before I had a chance to address JacobSpinney's further spinning of my points. So I'll do that here.

Definitions of Totalitarianism:

1. A system of government where the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control of every aspect of the country, socially, financially and politically. For example a dictatorship such as the Nazi regime.
2. A political system based on absolute power of a single party or dictator.
3. Totalitarianism - dictatorship: a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.
4. Totalitarianism - absolutism: the principle of complete and unrestricted power in government.

So yeah, not what I'm advocating. Give it up already.

He said that I disregarded his entire point about McDonald's and consumer choice. Actually, he misparaphrased my entire point by addressing it with one of his one-liners. My argument, in its entirety, is right there in Part 1 for anyone to read. He keeps asking me "Shouldn't people be able to decide how much risk they put themselves in?" as if I hadn't already made it crystal clear a number of times that they should be allowed to take risks, but only for themselves, not their 5 year olds who are unaware of the risks. Nevermind unaware, they are incapable of even comprehending what a risk is. I guess Jacob only read a part of the blog because I already specified this in great detail. Either that or he blatantly ignored the explanation and just went for the kill by not acknowledging that I made myself clear. My "bait and switch" comment was about the impact of regulations not impeding on consumer rights. It's all there in part 1. Not repeating it here. On top of that, I also brought up the possibility of the non-existence of disclaimers. He said disclaimers would surely exist because the owner wouldn't want to be sued by the poisoned party through a private court.

Number 1: Filing lawsuits costs money which the type of people who can't afford to shop in expensive restaurants (and are therefore subject to cheap restaurants and higher possibility of being poisoned) cannot afford to file. Before you shout "pro-say" at me, take a look at how seldomly pro-say cases actually result in the plaintiff obtaining justice.

Number 2: A Private Court can be formed and overseen by anyone who has the money to generate and operate it. So instead of we the people getting to elect authority, we should just let people with money self-appoint themselves to positions of authority and form decisions that can result in owners of restaurants being physically forced to pay the poisoned party for the damages? As corrupt as it is, we'll keep the public system, thanks.

I also like how he mentioned that a family member of the poisoned party would have to end up doing the suing because the poisoned party wouldn't be alive anymore in some of the cases. You gotta love the nonchalant way in which he mentioned this.

Then he said if a consumer wants to buy a product that has been confirmed to be safe, the consumer himself should have to pay the extra 50% or so which would cover the cost of the safety measures being taken into effect. So in a free market, anyone who wants a 0% guarantee that they're not ordering poison should have to pay twice as much for their food anytime they're hungry. Do I even need to add anything here? What sane person would choose this over simply having a regulatory system in place that takes care of these things? Good luck getting that one past the general public. Not on your life.

Then he mentioned how life insurance companies would drop you from your plan if you eat at unsafe places. Great, so the options are: Go eat at the most expensive place where everything goes under the radar or get dropped from your life insurance plan. Wonderful. Go free-market! I can hear the excitement of the masses already.

Then he summarized my entire return policy counterargument by saying that all I came back at him with was "Well not all companies have return policies. Period." when in fact that was only my opening line, and I only made mention of it because he made it sound as if every company does have them, when they don't. I'm sure he knows why I brought it up and that it wasn't my only point, but it was smack in the middle of my long blog so I guess it's okay to pretend otherwise. I'm not going to repeat the other arguments I made every time it is suggested that I didn't make them.

He accepts full refunds for the shows he does, and that's great. He said that everyone else he knows in the entertainment industry does this as well. He must know some really generous hosts, because all venues I know of don't provide refunds. He said movie theaters offer refunds. Not exactly. In selective regions, each theater sets its own refund policy, but most of the time a cash refund is not offered. Rather, a "see future movie/performance" refund is offered, and you'd have to leave the theater within the first 15 or 20 minutes of the showing if you wish to get your "refund". None of these analogies can be used to suggest that the gov't should offer tax refunds, because as I argued in Part 1, services are fully used up in the case of taxation. No 15 minute walkouts and such. Also, everyone would ask for refunds if it came to taxes, whereas when you're doing a show for a smaller group of people, you get to interact with them. A level of admiration for the host is often formed. This admiration factor would often guilt people away from demanding a refund, even if they find the performance itself to be sub par. It's safe to say that this all important factor is not found in cases where the gov't is providing services.

Inheritance: As I said in the video he replied to, my argument wasn't "Inheritance is a great big evil". The whole point revolved around the way anarchists preface their taxation argument. They keep using the word "earn". Incidentally popping out of a rich pussy has nothing to do with "earn". Not that this alone is reason enough to tax away an insanely large percentage of anyone's wealth after they die, but if you're going to gripe about the lack of fairness in regards to taxation, then at least admit that it is also unfair that a tiny percentage of people are arbitrarily given massive head starts, which they can benefit off of even more through capital gains/interest. So taxation in lots of instances isn't "taking money away from people who earned it" because the act of inheriting is not the act of earning. That was my whole point.

"An Inheritance tax leaves people with no incentive to become rich".

I can't believe people still use this argument. Nobody is dumb enough to live a poor man's life just because 20% of their fortune would be taxed away after they die, resulting in their spawn only inheriting 80% of it. This does not enter into most people's minds when they contemplate becoming rich.

"If an inheritance tax exists, people will just blow all their money so that there will be no inheritance left to tax".

First off, we do have an inheritance tax and people don't blow away all their cash before they die. They didn't blow it away even back when the inheritance tax was much higher. It's asinine to suggest that they would blow it away with today's lower inheritance tax rate. Secondly, even if they blew it all away, so what? The more money people spend, the stronger the economy becomes overall. Why portray high consumer rates as a negative in this case?

"An Inheritance tax lowers the standard of living."

No, the standard of living in the US, for instance, was much higher back when the inheritance tax was higher. If you want to say "correlation =/= causation" then you must also apply the principle in the rare cases where a low inheritance tax correlates to a high standard of living. I'm not sure of any such cases, but maybe they're out there.

"You start off saying that the richest people in the world inherited their wealth. This is empirically false."

He then linked to source citing 10 of the richest people in the world today, 7 of which are "self-made billionaires" (ha!). The problem is, I never said the top 10 richest people in inherited their wealth. I said that throughout most of recorded history, most of the wealth that has existed was passed down from generation to generation via nepotism. All of this family wealth has been growing, to this very day, and combined it makes up a huge chunk of the overall puzzle. Is it all added up on some graph that's been composed somewhere on the internet? Who knows. I'm not going to waste time looking for it because it's evident by default. We know for a fact that all that massive wealth didn't disappear anywhere overnight.

"We're all inheritors in some aspect."

So because some people inherit next to nothing, he's going to pigeonhole the entire issue by equivocating the minimals to the maximums. This is not my idea of a fair or rational argument.

"Some people are born ugly and some are born good looking. Shouldn't that also be a problem then, if inheritance is?"

Well, this is a problem, first of all. The analogy itself is faulty though because good looking people can't obtain better looks just by having good looks in the first place. Whereas with wealth, those who have a birth right to it can simply use it to make more and more through capital gains and such. Good looks don't result in better looks by their very nature, whereas money alone has the intrinsic capacity to breed more money, ad nauseam.

Then he asked me if I started from zero or if I had help from my parents in the food and shelter department throughout my childhood. Err, yes I did, but other kids don't. I am perfectly capable of recognizing and admitting the inherent unfairness here, without displaying a hostile attitude about having to admit it (something I can't say about most anarchists). And yes, we should try to fix the inherently unfair game a bit by taxing fortunate people like me at a higher rate than those who are less fortunate than me. Philanthropy is great and all, but it's subject to the arbitrary whims of an inherently selfish species. Doesn't make for a great safety-net.

By the way, the moment I turned 18 is the moment I started covering all of my own costs, but if someone in my family had offered to give me a large sum of money that I never earned, while others have nothing, I'd take zero issue with the taxation of the transaction. And I say this as someone who is all for allowing those who disagree with my sentiment to have their own spot of land where they wouldn't get taxed.

Self made billionaires: No such thing. Oh, "But the people working for them do so voluntarily. Ergo, billionaires are self made!". Except for the fact that the contracts some of these workers willingly submit to are about as voluntary as your willingness to pay taxes, seeing as how you have the "option" of moving to Somalia where you wouldn't have to pay them. Should I just pretend that you guys voluntarily continue to pay your taxes because you haven't fucked off to places like Somalia yet? This is exactly what you do when asserting that people who work for next to nothing in underdeveloped countries do so willingly because they have the option of starving. Their option of starvation is of the same weight as your option of Somalia. Voluntary, my foot.

Bill Gates is especially unworthy of the "Self-made billionaire" title. Gates didn't even invent the PC operating system, Gary Kildall did. Pick up a copy of They Made America for the full scoop on that one. This kind of incidental "right place, right time" scenario happens quite often with inventors. Asserting that it results in a "Self made billionaire" isn't much different from describing a lucky winner of a one billion dollar jackpot as a "Self made billionaire" because he managed to pull off picking the winning lottery ticket. It is largely a product of the individual's environment rather than the individual's imaginative brain which apparently needs to be showered with more net worth than a dozen third world countries combined.

As for Corporations being enabled by the State: As I've said before, all contemporary corporate privileges wouldn't automatically vanish without the existence of the State. These privileges would still exist in mildly different incarnations. Corporations pray upon free-market individualistic school of thought in order to subsidize think tanks that cater to them politically. The Cato Institute comes to mind.

I've got more to say but this is running too long as it is. Thanks for reading.

ABM

Anarchy Dissected (2/2)

2010-09-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

I already received some replies to Part 1, so a thank you is in order for those of you who took the time to read this stuff. At the same time, I'll have to point out that my arguments were paraphrased superficially and incompletely. The points I'm making here cannot be summed up with one liners. The roots of these issues aren't as cut and dry as the anarchists have described them to be, which is precisely why I had to relegate them to this medium instead of YouTube. All possible contentions, in their minds, have been explained away innumerably. Interestingly enough, every counterpoint I've received so far has been one I already heard years ago, so we're in the same boat there. Consequently, my persistence should be viewed as apprehensible. It's laughable to describe it as closed mindedness on my part.

I'll get into the replies dealing with the supposed non-issues of inheritance and fairness some other time. Right now I'll just post Part 2, which was written before I received any replies to Part 1.

I initially accused anarchists of inconsistency as it pertains to their use of strategies which are often identical to strategies proponents of democracy use. Striving to convert a majority to one's own side by way of relentless argumentation springs to mind, as it is a core tenet of democracy. Anarchists apply this just as statists do. I made mention of this in light of the fact that they constantly bash on democracy or "majority rule" as a concept. Following this, I was told that it doesn't matter if both sides happen to strive towards converting the majority to their line of thought, because the ends justify the means if you're an anarchist who argues for freedom from the majority. Nevertheless, every last one of us is capable of recognizing that, practically speaking, having strength in numbers is a justification for a system. Both anarchists and statists have to do this in order to achieve their respective goals. That said, anarchists still fancy themselves as being exempt from the kind of "mob rule" finger pointing that's reserved strictly for the statists, because unlike statists, they're advocating a system in which "you get to own yourself" and no majority would ever be allowed to tell you what to do with your property or income. For the time being, I will ignore the obvious exploitation of lower and middle class labor at the hands of Group A because I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of any anarchist accepting it as a truth anytime soon. So let's skip that for now and operate as though exploitation is a made up concept when the people involved are engaged in a voluntary contract.

The above proposed freedom from a majority will never truly exist, as JacobSpinney himself inadvertently pointed out when he brought up an example of a free individual looking to move in to a neighborhood located in a hypothetical stateless society. I've heard other anarchists bring this up as well. It is directly stated that if the individual wants in, he/she would ''have to'' join the rest of the community in taking out a "Home Owner's Association Policy" grant in order to help subsidize efforts made to secure the entire neighborhood through a collective means. I'll stress the "have to" part. So it's perfectly fine to impose this rule under the context at hand, where it's just a community guideline existing at the whims of a majority. However, enforce an identical rule using the apparatus of the State and it suddenly becomes barbaric majoritarianism resulting in a supression of individual liberties. We're expected to just let this quirk fly under the radar, apparently. Their point is clear: In a stateless society, a majority can prevent you from moving into the neighborhood occupied by them unless you submit to their "Home Owner's Association Policy" mandate. A practice which only exists because most individuals who live in that geographic region have agreed upon a demand for its existence. So there's no crime committed to the individual's rights in that example, but if a majority has agreed that taxation needs to be one of these mandates, and if they want it to be a state enforced policy, that's somehow an entirely different bargain.

The standards they impose are completely arbitrary. They'll reply to this telling me that analogizing taxation to a "Home Owner's Association" mandate is a comparison that's tantamount to apples and oranges. It isn't. Whether the majority is imposing taxation, or a collectively funded insurance service, is an irrelevancy. In both scenarios, the majority isn't technically forcing anyone to live under these rules. If most people who constitute this neighborhood/country have agreed that either of these programs must exist, and if nobody from that majority is forcing the other 1% of detractors to stay, then we're talking two sides of the same coin.

This is where they'll often accuse the statist of making the "love it or leave it" argument. Make no mistake, I am not telling anyone to get the fuck out of any country. I'm merely pointing out that most people don't buy into the idea that a taxation law tramples on their inalienable rights, just as people in the stateless neighborhood example aren't expected to feel that having to buy home insurance in order to be allowed to move into a neighborhood forces them to give up their rights. If you feel that taxation as a law strips you of one of your basic rights, while you simultaneously still want to live and consume in a place where the majority disagrees with that sentiment, you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that you will continue getting taxed. I say this not because statists are assholes, but because it will be impossible for you to continue living within that region without making use and thriving off of the very infrastructure which the rest of the population still subsidizes. The exact same applies to the individual who yearns to live in your stateless neighborhood. This person would have to chip in to the home insurance collection plate seeing as how he/she would reek the benefits of it. In both scenarios, all the majority is doing is not permitting freeloading. I know anarchists are capable of absorbing the undeniable connection between the two outlined examples. This equivalency is the elephant in the room as far as I'm concerned.

It has been argued that an alternative to having charities fund police departments can consist of citizens taking out a life insurance grant, on an individual basis, through insurance companies. The idea here is that this will prove to be the superior service because failure to provide the necessary protection would result in a huge payoff for the client/estate on behalf of the profit driven insurance company. This alternative automatically grants the insurance company's paid thugs the legal authority to use force in order to protect their clients against instigators of violence or harassment in the similar way state paid pigs obtain their authority for the exact same purpose. So much for the argument from police brutality being exclusive to the state. At least every member of the police department has to undergo long periods of boisterous training in order to serve and protect. I'm predicting the insurance companies would also also have a hand in incarcerating the perpetrators, or would at least play a role in concurrence to the private court's decision to do so in the long term. For argument's sake, let's offer all these insurance companies the benefit of doubt and pretend the people ensured by them would never use their insurance to cry wolf and that the insurance company would never be suseptible to any such shenanigans. We're still left with the same issue of freeloading that I brought up in my video. Insurance companies will offer protection to selective individuals who are ensured, through which others who aren't ensured will still benefit off of. It doesn't always matter who is ensured and who isn't. In the end, criminals will be incarcerated through the efforts of the insurance company. The entire society will benefit from this, regardless of the particular individual the criminal goes after. The less criminals you have roaming the streets, the less of chance someone who isn't ensured has of being mugged in the future. This is still freeloading. At least with taxes, everyone's tax dollars go towards funding a police department which offers these same services. Also, say an individual who isn't ensured is getting violated in broad daylight. Would 911 be an option here? There are no taxes to fund it, and the alternative to charity consists of insurance companies. The police department wouldn't even exist because most individuals would be taking out life insurance instead. The result? If you're uninsured, you're shit outta luck. You'd still be left with no option but to get yourself ensured. Circumstance would force you into it, just like the state forces you into paying taxes. Most people would rather just pay taxes than put up with all the sloppiness, since they'd waste more money on the insurance companies compared to a society where everyone is forced to pay taxes resulting in the existence of a police department.

Let's get into inalienable rights, or god given rights, if you're of the superstitious persuasion. According to anarchist school of thought, these are mostly rooted in the non-initiation of force/violence. Obviously there may be some anarchists who think this is unornamented, but the ones I've seen on YouTube do use the non-initiation principle as a solid enough starting point, so I'll be using it as well. When they get into their talking points about who initiates what, and whether there's force involved, I get the urge to pull my hair out because there is an endless list of stateless society predicaments that would crop up without the initiation of force/theft/fraud being invoked by any of the parties involved. It's not as one dimensional as all of their neat State/Liberty graph videos indicate.

I'll provide some quandaries. And no, I don't care if the following scenarios are redundant to some of you, because I'm yet to hear a satisfactory solution to them. This is common everyday stuff. Say you have a divorced couple in a stateless society. They had four kids who are now staying with mommy. Daddy is of the belief that he owns himself. He's an anarchist who feels that nobody has a claim on him. He owns every penny of his income, his work, his property, his ideas, his vision, his risk taking. Naturally as a result, he believes that nobody has the right to tell him that part of his income must go to his ex-wife due to her raising four children which he had a role in creating. He doesn't want to pay a dime because the private court awarded full custody to the mother. Instead of forcing child support laws on him, would anarchists advise the mother to give her kids away to her ex-husband because she's financially shaken up from having to raise them without his help? Let's do one better than that, let's say daddy just up and left one day because he didn't want to deal with the responsibility of raising four kids. He didn't initiate force, theft, or fraud, but he did leave. Would anarchists still endorse this entitlement he believes he has to every last penny he earns, or would they recognize that he now has a responsibility to his ex-wife who he left high and dry, and that the only way to actualize the fulfilment of that responsibility is to set a law in stone, obliging him to have a portion of all his earnings go towards assisting his estranged wife in taking care of the mess he half-created and then ran away from. Would this be a draconian imposition on the fruit of this man's labor? I'm going to entertain the idea of a private court concluding that he has to pay the child support. Would this majority based court decision trample on his basic liberties by forcing him to give away part of his income? If the anarchists are going to apply consistency to their outlined premise (a premise they constantly regurgitate) they would point out that this man never initiated force against anyone and should by the same token not be forced to pay up. In other words, mommy is shit outta luck, and their advice to her would be to be more carefull next time in applying judgement when it comes to the kind of men she goes around making babies with.

So which one of these is it? Maybe there's something behind curtain number three? The fall back curtain. Maybe mom can go to a shelter designed for single parents so that individuals who had nothing to do with this mess can help her out through charitable means. So instead of the father who made the damn mess in the first place being forced to help her out financially, strangers should help her out voluntarily? Why? Because of this obsession with the concept of freedom, which when taken to its limits, operates on arbitrary standards anyway. Or is there a fourth option I'm missing here which doesn't involve policy? Do tell.

An example I'm sure JacobSpinney would find interesting is one involving a KFC-loving individual's right to torment animals in slaughterhouses. Would torture of highly sentient creatures still be authorized through the excuse of property rights? This is the case now in most parts of the world. Massive lack of progress there on our part. But would it change for the better in a stateless society? Based on all the rhetoric, property rights would still outweigh animal welfare, and then some.

There's the issue of overpopulation. We have people who believe that it is their god given right to have as many kids as they feel like having and to overpopulate the world. If they're broke as fuck and still feel that imposing life on 20 kids is a fantastic idea, a civilized community should have no right to try and create a disincentive to it legally. Even if the soon-to-be-parents have no means to provide an even remotely decent living environment for the 20 kids they want to have, the idea is that we shouldn't come up with a limit as far as how many poor sobs they can breed into horrible circumstances. Sounds like a real non-solution. When people have kids, they are no longer simply exercising their own rights without effecting others. They are, in fact, creating an entire lifetime of effect on others. The imposition of life on another human being is not a voluntary transaction, but something tells me that there's a convenient exception to the rule when it comes to that one. The issue of overpopulation is a bad example to use as far as anarchists are concerned. They seem to be all for a surplus of labor which creates cheap labor from which they hope to ultimately cash in on, so it would only make sense for them to preserve poor uneducated people's freedom to impose life on as many future labourers as possible. 20 years later and a lovely abundance of slave wage labor will still be present. I mean voluntary labor. Where are my manners.

Another example of a worrisome non-initiation of force situation: An ex-con with a long criminal record, who just got out after serving a good 5 years for arson, is building himself some nice nuclear missiles on his property. He's not initiating force against anyone. Nobody has any definitive proof that this individual will ultimately press a buttom and go boom, but everyone has reason to believe so. In this instance I'd imagine that the stateless community would ask buddy to hand over his toys, and if he were to refuse, with all his individualist might, force would be initiated at the request of the majority in order to strip the individual of his property. He can cry and moan about how he wasn't building them for use, and just wanted to decorate his shelf with them. Despite his efforts, the stateless community of skeptics wouldn't just sit idly by. The community would act rationally and force buddy to relinguish his property. He may have been telling the truth for all we know. If we're going to once again be consistent to the premises the anarchists have outlined for us, this individual was stripped of his property by a mob, so it's supposed to be this big travesty. But anyone with a half a brain can still see a rational justification for taking action when something like this crops up.

The point is, anytime you apply consistency to extreme right wing definitions of what constitutes as draconian majority imposition, the above examples are no different than our current real life one; A bunch of anarchists calling taxation theft by way of extortion through force, approved by the majority. Just substitute the anarchist community mob for some democratically elected state officials enforcing the majority's pro-tax wishes.

Say what you will about these examples, but the fact remains that they do illustrate how in any society, you're always going to have individuals feeling oppressed and calling the majority a menace. It is inescapable. You may be thinking "Well there's nobody out there insane enough to believe that building nuclear missles in an inalienable right!". Well, I've known people who firmly believed that it was within their liberty to build high voltage explosives on their own property as long as they weren't harming anyone. A majority taking that right away from them was perceived as a horror, the same exact way taxation is a horror to anarchists. Their line of reasoning was the old "Well if the gov't gets to build WMDs, why can't I? Who the hell is the Gov't to tell me what I can't do on my own property anyway?" which is basically just an extension of the argument from the 2nd amendment.

These hypotheticals are about as simple as it gets, and despite their simplicity, they still pose a threat to the consistency of basic ararchist school of thought. I can come up with a trillion other stateless society head-scratchers, which are much more convoluted, but there's no need. Even these basic ones are a Catch 22.

Anarchists constantly bark lines at me such as "If you want to be enslaved, I'm not standing in your way. Just give me the chance to opt out". I'm not standing in their way of opting out, for starters. The reason they haven't managed to opt out yet has nothing to do with me. It has to do with them not having the necessary numbers to pull it off. When I point this out to them, they proceed to accuse me of "love it or leave it" again. How very obnoxious. And I'm not being "enslaved". I'm a beneficiary of a great number of things my government has invested in. People need to watch this "enslavement" rhetoric. We know the ugly history behind real enslavement. It's a safe bet that individuals who were actually enslaved would not appreciate some stolid capitalist using identical verbage to define an entirely different circumstance. You're capable of making a decent enough argument without resorting to describing your woes with the state using blatantly propagandist rhetoric. When you identify yourself as a slave despite the abolishment of slavery, you're spitting in the face of what truley enslaved individuals went through. Unless you work for minimum wage in Mexico, or something.

They point out how they're not standing in my way, but refuse accept that I'm not standing in their way unless I argue along side with them that the entire system needs to be scrapped, or that they should be allowed to freeload off of the services paid for by our tax dollars without contributing anything themselves. The criteria they impose on the argument leaves statists with no real options here.

I wish there were enough of them so that they could have their spot of land in some deserted part of the world. I'd have zero interest in intervening in their business as long as they don't intervene in mine. Obviously I cannot guarantee that no government in the world will ever invade their land, but the Government I'm defending would not. We just declined a request from the US (which could easily be interprited as a demand) to send our Troops back to Afganistan. We have a rich history of diplomacy.

I'd like to fix government. If you feel it's inherently broken, or have long given up on trying to fix it, fine. I won't lecture you on why you should keep on keeping on. Just don't tell those of us who aren't sick of trying that we're trampling on your liberties by not giving up yet. Exercising skepticism when it comes to your brand of alternative solutions is not a trampling of your rights. Nobody is putting up fences which force you to live under this system. It's beyond time to realize that statists like me aren't the reason you're nowhere near achieving your goals. Your movement, by and large, exists solely within the confines of the internet. Proponents of the state are not to blame for this. Your arguments are.

Thanks for reading,

ABM

Anarchy Dissected (1/2)

2010-09-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

Time to address a bunch of counterarguments I received from anti-statists. I'll be referring to them as plain old Anarchists from here on out. The reason I'm using the blog format is because I will be taking an ultra thorough look into many aspects of this argument, starting with my video and how the Anarchists dealt with it. I may break it up into two parts if it ends up being overly long.

My video dealt with the evils of state control versus the evils of complete privatization. Judging by the replies, I couldn't get even one anarchist to view the conundrum for what it is: A lesser of two evils choice that has to be made. I didn't expect to convert anyone into a statist, but I at least hoped to offer them a moment of pondering. Didn't happen. Every single anarchist who saw my video and commented still views the issue as plainly as "Private Good. Gov't Bad. End Of".

Needless to say that I was also blessed with the obligatory one-size-fits-all descriptions of my position. For example, it was implied that my argument supports the idea that businesses don't really care about making money in general. This doesn't pass for an innocent oversimplification. My argument was clear, both in the video and in the comments. Here it is again:

When the profit motive is assigned the furtive task of being the sole incentive aimed at creating long term deterrence against corporate short cuts and penny squeezing, owners will still be perfectly willing to lose a portion of their consumer base IF it is calculated by their focus groups that said consumer chunk brings in a lower percentage of revenue in contrast to the amount which can be saved through a mere avoidance of catering to said consumer group's wishes. In some instances, this can simply be chalked up to "Well that's business for ya" rationale. Other times, not so much. The alienated consumers may consist of a group of environmentalists and environmentalist sympathizers who fought tooth and nail to stop pollution caused by the company they are now boycotting. Under a profit driven self-regulatory system, these boycotts are nothing more than a mosquito bite on the company owner's left nut. Treating the bite would end up costing him more, so he may as well just scratch it off. The only exception to this would be a scenario in which a large percentage of the consumer base becomes motivated enough to take a stand and join in on the protest. You might argue that you know for a fact that enough consumers will be willing to join the boycott if the matter at hand revolved around an issue as delicate as the welfare of their own environment, and thus health. This is exactly why I brought up a real life example in my video, which suggests otherwise. I'll add to that here by bringing up Google, since I know that even anarchists are displeased with the way Google has been running Youtube ever since the acquisition took place almost 4 years ago. Lots of Google users have considered leaving Youtube to "prove a point" at one time or another. The thing is, many people have actually gone through with it. At the end of the day, this changed nothing. Google is stronger than ever, and Youtube is worse than ever. There are more channels being permanently wiped out now than ever before, despite all the boycotts. This is exactly what happens when consumers are left to fend for themselves. At this stage, it is well within reason to concede that we have proven ourselves incapable of regulating powerhouse conglomerates like Google by threatening to boycott them. The experiment has failed. So what can change all this? Gee, let me think about it. How about an ACTUAL regulation instead of an invisible hand one? How about Net-Neutrality? It offers a fair level playing field, so it would naturally result in more competition. Anarchists are all about competition, so this shouldn't be a problem. But wait, Net-Nautrality is a *gasp* government imposed regulation! It would necessitate horrors such as equal-opportunity indexing, instead of this current crooked-opportunity indexing. The reason we don't have it, is because the internet is wholly deregulated. The Google search engine is the equivalent of what would have happened had we privatized all libraries. Google indexes the net much like a private mainstream library would bury quality content in favor of "Seventeen Magazine" sugar tripe being placed front and center along with other similar garbage that has been proven to be the better draw. It's smart business, and this is what it comes down to at the end of the day under the profit motive. It happened with the internet, and it would have happened everywhere else had it not been for actual regulations.

We rid ourselves of regulations such as the Glass Steagall Act of 1933. This resulted in commercial banks buddying up with special interest security firms, making them infallible and too big to fail.

To elaborate on my point about fast food joints like McDonald's, my argument was that they should face legal consequences when partaking in deliberate food inspection short cuts which can result in 1 out of 1000 products being unsafe to consume. When I said that the business should face a consequence other than a potential decline of consumers, I was asked questions like:

"Well would you legally ban someone from skydiving if there was a 1 in 1000 chance of them falling to their death? Would you take away their right to do as they please because YOU deem the activity to be too dangerous?".

Neat little bait and switch they pulled there. I'm advocating for a regulation which would oblige businesses to take costly measures in producing safe-to-consume products 100% of the time. The anarchists turn around and describe this proposal as me wanting to take away the consumer's right to buy any of the products the companies produce.

Just let that sink in for a minute. Now ask yourselves: How would a regulation do this? Its only function is a legal mandate calling for preventative measures to be taken in the interest of consumer safety. How would this result in the consumer being barred from shopping there? Regulations do not generate the above proposed outcome. The only circumstance in which a regulation may interfere with consumers' opportunity to keep shopping at any particular place, is if the profit strain generated by the regulation proves to be a financial deal breaker and the owner decides to shut down his joint as a result. But even here, it can be argued that it is ultimately the owner who makes the decision resulting in the consumers being denied their desired products. It's a slippery slope argument from both sides. It's also largely irrelevant, because for such an outcome to occur, we'd have to operate under the assumption that this company is already 1 foot in the grave and the only thing keeping it afloat is a lack of regulatory mandate forcing the owner to ensure that every last product placed on the shelf is a safe one. Owners are never in a position where they rely on the absence of such a mickey mouse regulation to be the end-all be-all keeping their entire operation above sea level. The entire argument fails. A regulation such as this one would not bankrupt McDonald's. Ergo, my argument does not result in the consumers being denied anything. My argument only serves to guarantee that they will not have a 1 in 1000 chance of being served a harmful Hot-Fudge-Sunday. Why would anyone in their right mind oppose this?

Imagine a circumstance in which every single private company is bordering on bankruptcy, meaning it wouldn't take much for the owner to get financially crippled by even the meekest of regulations. In light of these circumstances, we allow the companies to boycott regulations, stay in business and as a result to continue serving products that prove to be harmful once in a blue moon. I'm sure that lots of statists would be okay with this, under the prerequisite that every single menu or advertisement of the products at hand makes it explicitly clear to the consumer what the risks are, and why there is no regulation in place. As it stands, products have a tiny text, usually placed the bottom, printed in such a way that it may as well not even exist. If we up the risk level by deregulating, that disclaimer is going to have to get a hell of a lot bigger and bolder. But even then, we are completely ignoring other factors. Reckless parents buying their kids products which haven't gone under the radar springs to mind. It's all well and good when the potentially harmful product is being purchased by an adult who is aware of the risks outlined, but imagine the amount of kids who would fall victim to their parents' irresponsible 1 in 1000 risk taking? The rationale directed at me was "Well if that's the consumer choice, so be it" but clearly it is not always the consumer choice. People buy these products for others all the time, and unwrap them. There is no choice in that.

Furthermore, if the disclaimers aren't going to be mandatory, then most people will be unaware of the risks. And let's face it, if we're going to be consistent with anarchist ideology, these businesses will be given the right to not put up a disclaimer on their products which explicitly reads: "WARNING: DUE TO FINANCIAL CUTBACKS WE NO LONGER CHECK EVERY PRODUCT YOU'RE PURCHASING HERE.". It's just not smart business to do such a thing.

Unless state force guarantees that the above disclaimer goes up, we're left with telling the consumers things like "Oh well you should have done extended research on this fast food joint before shopping here. Don't you know that word of mouth got out about this place bordering on bankruptcy? The owner is unable to afford making safe products all the time. Get with the program!".

Yeah, no thanks. We'll keep the regulations.

This has nothing to do with the consumer not being a "big boy" or "not taking responsibility for your own choices". It has to do with false or incomplete advertising. The skydiver should be made aware by the skydiving company of the number of times their parachute failed to open with the previous divers falling to their death. Once that's done, he can go all out if he so pleases.

As for return policies, it was implied by JacobSpinney that all companies carry them. Nope, not every company does. The ones that do tend to offer a one year warranty for most products. In my experience, these products are usually designed to last a convenient 13 months or so. Don't be naive, they want you coming back for more. Spinney also said that you can return a product with "No questions asked". No you cannot. You will be asked to demonstrate what's wrong with the product you are returning.

Right after this, Spinney asked in a speech bubble "Can you get your tax dollars refunded if you're unsatisfied with the services the gov't is providing?".

No, you cannot get a tax refund from the government. This is because services and products are completely different things. You can return a product because in doing so, you will no longer be able to use said product after you return it. You cannot return a timely service that you already reeked the benefits of in the first place, especially if you are going to continue living in a region where the services will remain being provided to everyone who lives there, which results in you benefiting from these same services in the future. In light of this, expecting a refund is preposterous. When the gov't starts taxing us for actual products that they provide us with on an individual basis, then we can talk about gov't offering tax refunds in exchange for returning their products.

The idea that Corporations wouldn't exist without the state is also a rough one to prove seeing as how a Corporation is basically a group of individuals who merge their strengths in order to conduct business and hopefully create a profit. The State doesn't counter into the end result of this at all.

Spinney also accused me of "massively overgeneralizing" the theories anarchists come up with. Again, very annoying. I never once jumped to the conclusion that charities were the only alternative to taxation. I clearly said in my video that there are lots of different branches of anarchist philosophy and that I would be focusing on one aspect. I didn't preface my video by stating that I'd be covering anti-statism from A to Z in one fucking video. I even ran out of time. Obviously I'm aware that there are other ideas which I didn't have time to address in a mere 11 minutes. So I didn't generalize anything, and it's nice how nobody ever points these things out.

What annoys me the most is that some of them are still pushing the idea that if I defend the necessity of the state as lesser of 2 evils, that I am thereby also assigned the task of having to defend the ugly history of some governments. It's pigeonhole bullshit of the worst kind. So everyone who defends the state as a model must also account for every tyrannical megalomaniac who was either elected or who refused to step down once his term was over? Really? This is no different than expecting a provocatively dressed woman to no longer dress in a provocative manner because it can be argued that her provocativeness triggers the rapist into his rape frenzy. Are they going to make this argument next? Obliging middle of the road statists like me to justify Mao is no different than pointing a finger at a woman wearing a short skirt and branding her as the instigator of the rape act. She brought on the rape herself, because she knows the ugly history of what happens when you dress like that. No. In reality, we know that the rapist is solely to blame for the rape just like we know the fascist dictator is solely to blame for the suffering he himself orchestrated. So no more smartass remarks about the history of certain governments and who foments them. Especially considering that the gov't I defended is the very gov't I'm funding right now in light of my geographical convenience. This is by no means a failure state. It is tremendous progress, proving that state control can be done long term without it resulting in mass starvations and the rest of the shit which anarchists like to peddle constantly. I'm not saying that's it's perfect yet or that it will ever be perfect, but it is NOT a totalitarian state.

Spinney and friends argued the contrary, basically saying that our only two options here consist of a totalitarian state, or their 100% privatized alternative. And of course nobody pointed out that there is a huge middle ground and that the state I'm arguing for is not a totalitarian one. If you can't even acknowledge the existence of a middle ground, then there truly is zero room for any kind of a conversation. It is minimum acknowledgement. Look up the definition of a totalitarianism. It is defined as a government with a non-elected ruler that would control every aspect of your life. Despite Spinney's best efforts to convince people otherwise, Totalitarianism is not defined as a society in which taxation is mandatory and applies to everyone. Taxation is a law, and like any other law, it has to be enforced physically if all else fails. Now in the U.S. it gets a bit tricky because the income tax wasn't properly ratified and is therefore unconstitutional. I actually did a full video on this a while back. But as far as the majority of rest of the world goes, taxation is a law, just like any other law. It only makes sense that a chunk of your paycheck would go towards covering the cost of the infrastructure and protection that you reek the benefits of on a daily basis. It would be nice if anarchists could live in our societies without reeking the benefits of these services paid for by our tax dollars, because if this were the case I'd have no problem with them not paying taxes. Sadly, this is not the case. The military alone ensures our protection, albeit only abstractly, in recent times.

I conceded way back that there is currently no straight line as far as the give and take between the state and the individual. I will delve into these particular imperfections in my next video.

As for all the examples of anarchist societies I was linked to: I didn't ask to be provided with ones that merely existed. I asked for ones in which, amongst other things, lower or even middle class people didn't die horribly due to lack of a safety net. So far I got a bunch of links pointing to "sources" on Medieval Iceland societies. Yes, medieval times. Folks, these are stories. Nobody knows for sure how these people really lived. What we do know is that the vast majority of those people were illiterates. Even today you have to dig deep in order to get the truth and full details concerning daily events, and even then things often go under the radar of independent sources. But we're supposed to believe that stories about medieval societies aren't fabrications? Well, they are. Especially if the "sources" have been complied and decorated by individuals with a vested interest resulting in an anarchist spin. You guys really believe in sagas? No truly skeptical person views sagas as historical accuracy. I might as well start buying into documentaries on the life and times of Jesus Christ which were created by people like Ray Comfort or his creepy little sidekick. It was written, after all.

I already provided an example of an Anarchist society in which people die horribly when I brought up Somalia. I'll add the Old West to that. If you weren't running with a gang back then, you were pretty much fucked. I'd say even countries like Indonesia qualify, since they're deregulated to the max. No consumer protections, no worker protections, no health care plan, no pension plan, no minimum wage, no overtime, no nothing. It's the Free Market, and the quality of life is horrendous.

I'm going to stop here and post Part 2 in a couple of days. In it, I will do an in depth analysis of their forced taxation complaints as well as the majority/minority bitchfests.

Thanks for reading.

ABM

Response To Chad On Islam

2010-05-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

Chad responded to my last blog, but in a 3 parter on Youtube. It has been pointed out to me that doing a blog reply to him instead of a video would come off as disrespectful. No disrespect meant, but I did boldly state in my last video that it would be the last time I speak about any religion related topic unless someone were to provide a substantive counterargument regarding my unrefuted interpretation of religious scripture. This wasn't the purpose of Chad's videos to me, so I will be making my reply to him here. If I could cover everything he said in under 11 minutes, maybe I would make this a YT video instead. But there is far too much content to go over, and I'm not subjecting my sub base to a potential 6 part video series in which I reiterate some of the same points. It doesn't warrant even more Islam talk coming from me. So again, I mean no disrespect towards Chad by posting my reply here.

The other benefit of the blog, is the overall greater precision of text. Chad's arguments will be given a much more detailed analysis, so everybody wins. Unless you hate reading extremely long blogs.

I will split this up in 2 parts, so to ease the load a bit.

As things currently stand, I am under no illusion that I will convince Chad of much. He didn't deal with the main aspects of my arguments from the first blog, so I'm doing this mainly for any potential fence sitters. I predicted that Chad wouldn't deal with the crucial parts the moment I saw him thumb up and favorite MrTaloul's (Muslim Quran "specialist" guy) video reply to me, and leave the following comment to boot:

"I'm Not a Religious Person But This Was a Very Good Video. You Are Type of Person I"m Trying To Tell The Atheist Community About. Western Media Has Distorted The Eyes of Many Over Here. Keep The Vids Coming. Peace."

Yes, this just about sums up Chad's take on this. The sheer eagerness displayed to jump at the first opportunity to favorite that pitiful excuse of a video, is very telling. Let's take an in depth look at the video Chad faved here, shall we?

MrTaloul replied to my initial Islam video, made ZERO actual counter-arguments, ignored the links I left in my video (to this day), twisted my NY Times Article story to suit his ultimate goal, which is simply to create a false impression that every detractor of Islam is also uneducated about Islam. And he was downright patronizing throughout his entire oratory. This is all self-evident, and should have been picked up on the spot by any fair viewer who watched my video first.

When asked in the comment section by user TheAzov, whose question I'll post here:

"Let me also ask you this: in the Mujahadin group you belong to, I see a topic entitled "Death to Satanics." Does that include ABS and present company?"

MrTaloul's reply was:

"mujahadin group? lol... I am a muslim and I do not belong to any organization"

On MrTaloul's channel he clearly has ''Mujahadin'' listed as one of the two groups he belongs to. I've saved a screen shot of his channel just in case his association with the group is removed in the rare case someone points him to me calling him on his blatant lie here. This is just one of many examples of his self-evident bullshit.

Chad, the man whose video you whole heartedly endorsed here is a proven liar. Despite this, I am under the impression that his video will remain in your favorites. The truth seems to not matter as long as a pretty wrapping is on top of it. A slogan. All his video brought to the table was pseudo-diplomacy and shameless dodging of the specifics.

Safe to say I wasn't thrilled by this. So if this is the kind of nonsense which Chad will knee-jerkishly jump to and put his stamp of approval on, then to me, he has his mind made up. And no, prefacing his comment with "I'm Not A Religious Person But" does him no favors. I'll quote the 2nd part of his comment again:

"Western Media Has Distorted The Eyes of Many Over Here."

It's as if he hasn't read my first blog. I'm guessing he includes me in this, and "many" others who don't draw his conclusions. I could be wrong, but when he comments this way on a video that he also faved, a video which dismissed me and my entire argument as "ignorant of true Islam" based on absolutely nothing, then what the hell am I supposed to take from that aside from "Yes I agree with you that ABM is just brainwashed by the Western Media". Very disappointing.

The Argument from "The Western Media Did It" is the most overused, cliche piece of one dimensional garbage that this generation has had the misfortune of peddling.

I haven't owned a television in over 2 years. Haven't read a single newspaper in much longer than that. Basically, every form of Western Media that you can allude to, I have not paid attention to in seemingly forever. And back when I did pay a degree of attention to it, I took nothing at face value. Nothing. So I resent the hell out of this lazy, sloppy, broad and flat out false claim indicating that you guys have a knowledge pertaining to how I or anybody else reached my conclusions. You do not. I reached them through interaction with dishonest Moderates like your new friend here, MrTaloul. And with honest Moderates, who despite their good intent when it comes to all things non-Islamic, still operate on wishful thinking ergo intellectual dishonestly as it pertains to their fable's dangerous teachings.

And let's get this straight again for context purposes: In my first blog, I plainly stated that there may very well exist a level of excessive rhetoric against Muslims coming from *some* Atheists. I have since spent lots of time digging around for it, and have finally found it. All of it in TEXT, however, made by faceless non-vlogger accounts, and located on that Muslim guy's channel (DawahFilms). The initial video of Chad's I blogged about argued that there has been a barrage of Atheist VIDEOS with unfounded categorical critiques against Muslims. Not Islam, but Muslims. I am yet to be presented with that long list of videos. Had Chad provided that list, and bothered to correctly quote this supposed hateful rhetoric against Muslims, I would have tipped my hat to him for his well researched efforts and educational content. But he didn't do that. He made some very loose, two-way commentary which left me with the impression that my Anti-Islam video was on his shit list. Well, now he says that it wasn't. Still, I was justified in having the wrong impression, since I had gotten removed from his "other channel recommendations" list not long after I uploaded my first Islam video. A little too timely there. But then I was placed back on it. And currently I've been removed yet again. So who knows.

Anyway, I will now play Chad's video and reply to it, statement by statement. I'll be referring directly to Chad from here on out:

I appreciate the complimentary words overall, especially saying I'm "badass". Made me feel lame for responding this late.

01:02: You found my blog to be a little more emotionally driven. I'm curious as to which part of the blog substituted logic for emotion? I'm sure we agree that the two aren't mutually exclusive, so I have to ask for a specific substitution of logic for emotion that can be found in the blog.

01:57-02:12: Your video was titled "Muslims Did Not Invent Terrorism" and I said in the first blog that I knew you were being facetious with the title, but at the same time that you also alluded to the title as being credible in some way. You re-confirm this now, by saying "People aren't saying Muslims invented Terrorism, but everyone is ACTING AS IF Muslims invented Terrorism". The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that it can be applied to everything and anything, and when it is, you'll see why it falls flat. For example, a fair analogy would be looking at the recent pedophilia scandals of the Catholic Church, then listening to Atheists ranting and raving at Catholic Priests, and ONLY at Catholic Priests, for committing those acts of pedophilia. What would you say to someone who came by and said "You guys are being childish, immature, and just fucking dumb for ACTING AS IF Catholic Priests invented pedophilia"?

Well, I'm guessing you'd say "They're not doing that". That's what I'd say. But see, technically, if their ruthless ongoing critiques of pedophilia are ONLY addressed to Catholic Priests, and NOBODY else, then by your logic, this comment about "Acting AS IF" would be a fair one to make. The problem is, there's been tons of bad publicity recently due to specific crimes committed by individuals in both camps, so naturally there will be a much higher level of critique that will seem exclusively directed at their respective labels. But realistically, despite the CIRCUMSTANTIAL heightened criticism, you know that nobody is actually acting AS IF the act of fondling a kid originates from being a Priest, in the same way that they are not acting AS IF the act of strapping a bomb to oneself originates from being a Muslim. Despite the recent negative publicity aimed at both camps.

02:53-03:03: Charles Manson was in fact seen as a Christian extremist by lots of people. Because that's what he was. He was a Christian inspired by the good book. That, and his hilarious misinterpretations of lyrics from a few of The Beatles' songs. We don't call him a terrorist because he (and his goons) went around killing people for the sake of killing people, and not for any ultimate goal. You can't just interchange words like "criminal" and "murderer" with the word "terrorist". It's a different animal.

Now, the substance of your argument here is that there are more people using "Muslim Terrorist" than there are people using "Christian Terrorist". But this is because we're mostly surrounded by Christians, outside of Youtube. Plus the fact that we're on the receiving end of the former. If we lived in Iraq, and were terrorized by Christians because of their religious goals (not imperialistic ones) then it would indeed be perfectly apt to refer to American Soldiers as "Christian Terrorists". But we know that most of them are actually Nationalistic terrorists. A bunch of state paid killers. Unlike their counterparts, who do it for their Allah.

As for the American Soldiers who DO actually believe that they are on a Mission from their Christian God to liberate Iraq, then yes, "Christian Terrorist" is a fair label to use for them. And by the same token, if a terrorist who calls himself a Muslim commits an act of terrorism where things like Allah and 72 virgins play absolutely NO role in his motivation to carry out the act, then he should not be labelled as a "Muslim Terrorist". He is simply a politically motivated terrorist, or what have you. Speaking of all this, I have done several videos equating the US Troops to Terrorists. At least those who willingly sign up and re-enlist in the Military, in the middle of a bogus war.

03:45-04:27: It is not fair to equate the Muslim Moderates to Muslim Extremists, yes. But I'm still waiting to be pointed to all these videos in which Atheists took part in the equating of the two brands of Muslims. Now, given the fact that most Moderates (like the one whose video you faved) will attempt to justify the very same text which drives the extremists, it is also NOT fair to pretend that Moderates play absolutely no role in the overall negative picture of Islam. It's absolutely crucial to understand this part, and I get the sense that you're avoiding it. You say that Moderates don't agree with what's written in parts of their holy book. Which parts of the book do you think they disagree with? Do you think the majority of Moderates disagree with world wide implementation of Sharia Law? How about ANY implementation of Sharia Law? Do you honestly believe that most Moderates oppose it? Because if they are in favor of such implementation, then they agree on "enough" as far as the Quran is concerned. I'd actually love to see a poll done on this question, so that we can see the exact percentage of Muslim Moderates who are in support of Sharia Law. Based on my experiences with them, of which there have been many, I can safely say the percentage of those in favor of it is very high.

05:15: You're back on the "Muslim Terrorist" part, and you mention "Atheist Terrorist" in an effort to make it all look silly. So I'll explain again: There would be no problem calling any Atheist an "Atheist Terrorist" if (and it's a big if) he or she committed the act of terrorism purely based on his or her lack of belief in a God or Gods. I have not yet heard of any such cases. If such a case were to occur, and the media used "Atheist Terrorist" to describe the perpetrator, I would not feel the least bit discriminated against. I can't see why any Atheist would.

06:00: You're saying people are making Anti-Islam videos it because it's "too easy" and is guaranteed to generate views. So do you think that I made my video for these reasons? Or do you realize that I had a genuine interest to find out if any Muslim Moderates would agree with me that the verses are in fact putrid and that they shouldn't be so apprehensive in speaking out against those aspects of their holy book? Which they haven't been doing, by and large. And I bet that plenty of other Atheists made videos for that exact same reason. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'd love to judge for myself, but I'm yet to be provided with the links to all these videos that you're referring to. I don't think you can honestly say that thunderf00t did it for views. He gets views no matter what. And he certainly didn't do it because it was "too easy". Those of us who have been around a while are all too aware of just how many YT Atheists flat out refuse to have anything to do with Anti-Islam videos, because of America's and Britain's current occupation of their land, or some other kind of bullshit rationalization. Thunderf00t knew ahead of time that he wasn't going to win any awards for these videos. Nevermind the fact that lots of people still associate "Muslim" to "Race". Because of all this, I saw the fallout against thunderf00t from Atheists coming a mile away. Nonetheless, he still went ahead and made the videos because freedom of expression matters to him, and it was suppressed for that week by Comedy Central, out of fear by way of Islamic threats. Human Nature didn't make Muslims riot against these cartoons. Their holy book did. So it's in no way "too easy" to cover this topic without being lectured by preachy Atheists about how "you're doing it all wrong". The level of rabid political correctness in the YT Atheist circles is overwhelming. You and I are both supporters of people on here who are heavily disliked by a majority of their fellow Atheists, for bullshit reasons, so we know all about this.

I also disagree with you that YT Atheists in general have at any point been focused exclusively on Christians, and have only recently shifted to focusing on Muslims. You should have seen some of the videos from back in the day. Guys like Fakesagan and Kevin "Awesome" received massive support when they spat on, pissed on, and literally wiped their asses with the Quran. So none of this is new. In fact most of today's Anti-Islam content is pretty tame by comparison.

06:40: Very few vloggers intentionally go out of their way just to piss off Muslims for the hell of it. The "Draw Mohammed Day" is about showing Muslim Extremists that we will not cower to their threats, the way Comedy Central did. If this is not done, the Extremists are left with the impression of "Our threats have worked well for us in the past, so they will surely work well for us in the future".

It's a protest, and a much needed one at that. You can't deny the benefit of it. And no, I will not be sympathetic to any innocent Muslim offended at a fucking drawing, in the wake of what happened with Comedy Central. Enough is enough.

07:00: More on this oversimplified "unfair categorization" stuff. I've explained this away on several levels. It's more nebulous than you're making it out to be.

07:30: I was actually talking about religious text there, so the news text analogy is not apt. But how would you have preferred something like 7/7/7 to have been reported? Should the media tip toe around the fact that it was the terrorists' Religion that drove them to commit the act? That's not news reporting.

Now in states like Oklahoma, they probably should remind their hick viewers that Muslim Moderates =/= Muslim Extremists. But that's as far as I'd take it. If Islamic holy text played a role in the Terrorist act, it is their job as news reporters to REPORT every detail of the story.

08:20: I would have accepted your Bush analogy, since Bush's peddling of good ol' Christian values was what played a huge role in him getting re-elected in 04. The Christian assholes voted for him because he was being a Christian asshole. The reason I don't accept the analogy, is because you said "White Christians". Bush wasn't elected because he's white. Besides, there is no such thing as a large sum of "Good American Christians". Most of them to this day still oppose the idea of an organization of Atheists having any voice in congress, or an Atheist running for president. So until I see some brand new polls done demonstrating that the average Moderate Christian in America no longer opposes the idea of having an Atheist president, then yes, Moderate Christians who vote for Bush are still assholes and we should call them on it.

09:20: No Chad, I do not "contribute" to terrorism of any kind. What you analogized here is essentially the same as me calling every single human being who has ever existed a murderer because the living cells on their skin kept dying. Or because they stepped on and squashed a living plant. Do you not see how counterproductive and abhorrent it is to equivocate these terms this way? Terrorism is defined as the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature; This is done through intimidation, coercion or by instilling fear. It's a specific word with specific connotations. When someone thinks of a terrorist act, they should in NO WAY think of a guy drinking bottled water. It's a preposterous slippery slope argument and to use it in a conversation where we are discussing the remorseless, willful and DIRECT act of terror, is indicative of desperation on your part. You cannot just blend terrorism with any random act of harm anyone participates in or indirectly contributes to. It completely equivocates the term. Bad move.

Hilariously enough, I don't buy oil, drink bottled water, wear jeans, or buy shoes made by Korean kids working in shops. And I would never say that others who do any of these, contribute to any kind of terrorism, by any rational definition of the word.

End of Part 1. Since this is turning out to be even longer than I expected, I will post Part 2 in a couple of days. I don't want to bury this long of a blog by posting another long ass one on top of it. I tried to reduce the length, but I can't leave anymore stuff out.

Thanks for reading.

ABM

Chad Defends Moderate Islam

2010-05-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

I just watched Chad's video in defense of "Moderate Muslims" and of Islam, in which he summarized all the recent videos people have been making against Islam as "retarded", "childish" and "fucking dumb". Now I haven't seen many of these videos (Chad didn't link any of them in the under bar of his video) but I will be refuting Chad's efforts here nonetheless, because I get the sense that he's lumping my video in whatever category all these other videos fall into. Chad's a good guy, but I'm not going to just look the other way after being called retarded and childish for making a rational argument, be it directly or indirectly.

Needless to say, maybe there really have been some recent videos on YT that warrant a taming down of the anti-Islamic rhetoric, but Chad certainly didn't bring any of that specific extreme rhetoric up, nor did he make any points aside from the ones which my video only served to refute in the first place. So be mindful of the context here folks.

Chad's video is titled "Muslims Did Not Invent Terrorism" and while I do realize that he is being playful with the title, I will point out that nobody on here has actually said that Terrorism was invented by Muslims, or that the religion of Islam has a copyright claim on all the negative things we routinely point out about its inherent teachings. Chad's video suggested otherwise, so he was arguing a strawman there. And while I didn't preface my commentary by saying that Islam is not exclusive to any of these commonly discussed negatives (aside from beheading people over a cartoon depiction of their prophet. You gotta admit, that's Islam 101), suggesting that negative commentary about "A" automatically implies that "B" is exempt from such commentary, unless the speaker makes it clear that it is not, is a presupposition which I've had to put up with in the comments over the last 2 weeks. So you can imagine my annoyance meter skyrocket as I witnessed this common presumption make its way to a video, in concurrence to where the discussion had shifted.

The only videos I've seen on this anti-Islam topic, aside from the one I made and the one Chad just did, have been the two thunderf00t ones from over 2 weeks ago, shortly after the South Park/Comedy Central censorship incident. Both videos were perfectly fine, as they were attacking an ideology and the specific actions resulting from a literate (and correct) interpretation of the holy book from which that ideology is directly derived. Ideology is subject to scrutiny, regardless of the humongous percentage of harmless Moderates labeling themselves as part of it. And I'm being kind here with the "harmless" part. Whether they realize it or not, their general pro-Islam rhetoric is an indirect aid and comfort to extremist Islamic action. The videos f00t made are not of a discriminatory nature, and although Chad never used the word discrimination, his video lends a vague impression that discrimination on some of the Atheists' parts is a motivating factor here. It isn't. In all my time on Youtube, I have never once heard or read a single comment from an atheist about Islam that aimed to dehumanize Moderate Muslims. I've seen it from Christian rednecks, but not from a single Atheist. Criticizing Moderates for wearing the label of Muslim on their sleeve is in no way equivalent to dehumanization. So why do I get the sense that Chad disagrees? Well, apparently he was in a Stickam room with this guy who advocated cutting off Muslims' finances so that they would no longer pose a threat. Idiotic and inhumane on its face. This was also after he vaguely implied that we need to bomb them to oblivion (eradicate them). If this is what was actually said in that room, then this individual Chad spoke with is an absolute hemroid of a human being who is in dire need of a basic lesson on why all suffering is bad, regardless of who experiences it. Chad and I also agree that it's incorrect to say "Islam is the root of all evil". Flat out wrongness. That title belongs to American Idol. Either that or the re-production of the first single cell organism which got this lovely ball rolling.

Back on track: My problem here, is that the video I made focused on the 109 Quran verses inciting violence against infidels, and how 99.9% of the Muslim Moderates with whom I have interacted, all go out of their way to pervert and distort the context of those 109 verses, instead of having enough integrity to admit what those verses are truly meant to convey. It seems that, according to Chad, criticizing Moderates for these disgusting rationalizations is "childish, retarded and fucking dumb". I'd say defending them for this would be the actual childish, retarded and fucking dumb thing to do. They aren't doing humanity any good by twisting the meanings of these corrosive verses. This can only lead to a Two-Faced Islam, recognized as one. The trick being, it is recognized as one only when it counts (See Sharia Law implementation). Let me repeat that: A Two-Faced Religion, containing at its disposal a book with at least 109 verses advocating violence against infidels, or women who get out of hand, where lying on the Muslim's part is permitted as long as the goal of the lie is to convert the infidel. I can go on. It's not the root of all evil. But to deny that it is the root of a degree of evil is to deny the suffering it has plagued the human race with ever since its inception.

How can anyone not be alarmed at the relentless attempts made by the Moderates to tame the wild beast that is this religion, without admitting that in order to do that, you are going to have to, first and foremost, concede to what it is that made the beast go wild in the first place. Instead of insisting that the religion stands for whatever anyone calling him or herself a Muslim interprets it to stand for. There is such a thing as a wrong interpretation of a holy text. It happens folks. And with a holy text this poisonous, it's crucial to call anyone who stands in defense of it, a threat. Regardless of how well intentioned they may think they are being. Then again, I'll point out that this good intention is still grounded in intellectual dishonesty. There's no way to read the Quran in its entirety and come away with the conclusion that it still represents a religion of Peace. I am sorry, but if the moderates are going to defend what essentially drives the extremists, then they are responsible to a degree. There is nothing wrong with drawing this conclusion. It's not wrong when we say it about any other religion, and it's certainly not wrong when we say it about Islam.

I'm watching Chad's video again now. He really is puzzled as to why this is being discussed so much. Two words: Current Events. Much like the Pope's well documented cover up shenanigans always earn him a nice verbal assault on Youtube, the same applies to Islam and its apologists. Chad goes on to say "You cannot blame an ideal behind the actions of a few". What ideal? Why say that without going on to define the ideal itself? And how are "the few" incorrect in their vision of the ideal? Simply because they're outnumbered? Or because their vision of it leads to stiffening of human progress, such as Sharia Law? I wish Muslim apologists would finally explain this. Chad then says "You cannot say Islam is the reason for terrorism". You see what he did there? A nice broad statement. In reality, the actual statement reads "You cannot say Islam is the reason for ALL terrorism". Some terrorism is directly driven by Islamic holy text, and if you're going to say it isn't, you really should at least try to demonstrate how the standard Moderates' defense of the 109 verses holds water. Chad didn't try doing this. He thinks the text is a non-issue, and all that matters is the intent. He then made this bold statement: "Everybody has participated, in one way or another, in acts of terrorism". Really? That's news to me, because I could've sworn my record was clean on that one. I'd like to know what kind of special powers of omnipresence Chad has, in order to know this about me, much less everybody else. He says Atheists participate in acts of terrorism too. I'll say to him what Dawkins said to O'Reilly: When you point me to an atheist whose act of terrorism was driven by his lack of belief in some form of a deity, I will point you to a pig that flies". Okay so Dawkins didn't actually say that. I just made that up now, but it does go hand in hand with what Dawkins actually said. His exact wording escapes me at the moment. Point being, such phenomenon has never taken place.

Chad then brought up human nature as the actual catalyst in all this. I think that this was the main part of his whole argument. The problem here is that almost all behavior the *human* race has taken part in can be argued to be a result of human nature. But we don't sum it up that way, practically speaking. No sense in injecting such an element of ambiguity into the conversation. It can also been argued that the KKK is a result of human nature. But I bet people will take their beef with the KKK further than that. So if someone as smart as Dawkins were to misinterpret what the KKK stands for, and as a result go out dressed like a Klansman, followed by a refusal to listen to reason when told by everyone that the KKK actually stands for irrational hatred of blacks, and despite this he still refuses to accept it, all because he thinks the white outfit makes his ass look cute, would anyone blame his refusal to give up his silly little dress up game on plain old oversimplified "human nature"? No they wouldn't. They would instead practically single him out and call him out for the asshole that he is. Hypothetically speaking, of course. I'm sure Dawkins' ass looks perfectly fine without a Klansman outfit.

More off topic fun stuff: Chad's now mentioning that it's cool how people are finally starting to talk back to thunderf00t. Guess he hasn't seen many Gary videos from 2009, or the comment sections in those vids, in which f00t was often "critiqued", to say the least. I'll never forget f00t's debate with the "This banana fits in the human hand quite well therefore God exists" guy. Well, at least the 4 minutes of it I managed to sit through.

Back on topic: Chad says that f00t is bullying the ideal behind the Muslim faith. Again, he seems to, by default, accept that the "ideal" is "Religion Of Peace". End of discussion, right? Wrong. But even if it was, it is preposterous to allow this supposed ideal to dictate how we're going to treat (ignore) the remainder of the Quran's agenda. And I'd rather be verbally "bullied" by f00t than death-threatened via PM by some Muslim claiming to live in my city and working on hunting me down. Which has actually happened today. Only I actually got a kick out of it, to be honest.

Chad's friend is at his place now, and they're reiterating the "You can't blame a religion for the idea behind terrorism" point. And I'll point out once again that you cannot at the same time completely disassociate the verses in said religion from all of the driving factors resulting in the terrorist act. These people believe they've got 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven, not because they've been lied to by the evil string pulling Osama Bin Laden types. No, they believe it because that is precisely what their religion teaches.

He points out the fact that the Bible also has some rotten quotes, and on the basis of that, he once again says "It's just human nature". This doesn't follow. Everybody already agrees that all of the monotheistic religions have downright despicable scriptures. But this doesn't justify an oversimplified "it's just human nature" summation of the problem, especially with the implication being that any further in depth analysis is excessive and uncalled for. It's an equivocation. In reality, the excessive analysis is exactly what is needed to limit the ongoing rationalizations of the Moderates. And no, I'm not defending human nature here. I possess no exaltation for it. I'm just saying, if we sat back and attributed everything to human nature, thereby rendering all levels of ignorance as being on some kind of an even playing field, what incentive are we giving the Moderates to let go of their archaic nonsense and join us in the 21st Century?

"It was just a man who wrote a book". Yes. Yes it was. Point being?

He then brings up the intelligent Christians who recognize the negative aspects of the Bible and who according to him should therefore not be categorized with all the other hillbilly Christians. So basically his point is: Christian =/= Christian. I say no dice. Come up with a new label for your belief if you're going to be a cherry picking coward as far as the particulars of the fable you say you're going to follow. Christian = Christian. If capable of recognizing that there exist negatives in the very foundation of the teachings in Christianity, only an asshole would insist on still calling himself a Christian. If it's God's word, why only follow parts of it? It doesn't add up.

Now Chad's telling us to grow up and that "There are so many other things to talk about". Yes there are, but this suggestion can be used in any discussion that someone finds useless. It's subjective.

Well that sure was fun. I'll admit that I was fuming at his video, which is a prime example of weak Atheism. We aren't going to get anywhere if we keep preserving taboos such as "Don't pick on the moderates" or "Don't categorize... ergo don't say anything bad about any religious person labelled a Moderate". And again, I didn't even categorize all Muslims as extremists. I specifically said that they aren't. And still, people fall into the same tired old trap of myopic critiques.

So yeah, another anticlimactic ending to my blog. Apologies for that.

Thanks for reading.

ABM

TheAntiBroadcast Channel: Don't Kill The Messenger

2010-04-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked by a few fellow YouTubers to share my thoughts on TheAntiBroadcast channel and what I think of its long term potential. Instead of just replying to people individually, I've decided to make a blog out of it. And no, not only because I haven't done one of these in ages, but because I actually have quite a bit to say here. Fair warning though, it ain't gonna be pretty.

First off, Youtube will not care. Even if we do miraculously end up with 100K people watching the channel on any sort of a regular basis, Google will still have no reason to promote it. It's apparent to me now that some of us have been so caught up in casually discussing topics otherwise viewed as controversial, that when logged in to a comfort zone on YT with easy access to like-minded people, it's as if we've somewhat forgotten just how much of a Dark Age this era really is. The number of individuals our content stands to alienate far surpasses the number it stands to attract. The ugly truth is, in a system where corporations like Google are allowed to exist and are by the same token legally permitted to get away with owning what has essentially become the 2010 version of the public square, we as participants (and therefore enablers) of that system must come to terms with it. We must finally accept that private companies like Google are perfectly rational in their view of us as nothing but pesky roadblocks to their one and only goal. A goal we're all well aware of. Google has nothing to gain and everything to lose by promoting a bunch of gloomers who talk about and hold minority viewpoints. And to those who have non-minority viewpoints on their video agendas, chances are that you're not exactly what a channel titled "TheAntiBroadcast" needs anyway. There are already enough people preaching to choirs. This channel, in my view, should focus on under discussed topics.

Back to Google. They will never see our numbers, large or small, as worthy compensation for the potential backlash our collective video clicks are bound to generate. This is made evident when looking at users like ZOMGitsCriss, Pat Condell & Thunderf00t, all of whom already have the numbers TheAntiBroadcast mission hopes to ultimately gain so to extort YT. But have any of these already highly popular channels ever received YT's hand in promotion? I know of one instance where a Pat Condell video was promoted on YT's front page, but that's it. And even that was because his video unapologetically targeted Scientology: A minority viewpoint of its own, so no biggie. But we've seen what happens with Condell's Anti-Islam videos. Has anyone ever seen any of those on YT's front page? I haven't. How come? They're his highest viewed videos! Why wouldn't YT capitalize on the massive amount of hits? Obviously, YT strays from those because of the simple fact that Islam has more followers than Scientology. When a site exists for the sole purpose of selling adverts, it's all about pandering to demos, tunnel vision style. A simple example yes, but don't tell me it doesn't hold water with every other position the least bit philosophical or political. And sure, thunderf00t is a partner, but the majority of his content targets Creationism. We all know that if the number of Creationists today came even close to surpassing the number of Theistic Evolutionists, thunderpants would not be a partner. His videos would result in too much backlash, and Google would wash their hands clean of him.

Now, this is all irrelevant anyway since we can't pull off 100K people regularly watching 1 channel to begin with.

If we go with the "merge everyone's subs on 1 channel" theory, it fails seeing as how a high percentage of subscribers are already interchangeable from channel to channel as far as some of the highly viewed content providers' channels are concerned, which is really the only place where we stand to gain a healthy number of new viewers. As for the subscribers that aren't interchangeable from channel to channel, they aren't so for a reason; They have no interest in watching content from channels they aren't already subbed to. I doubt any of this will change if we simply merged content involving 180-type personalities presenting various controversial and contrasting topics, rather loosely. Just look at what Gary has had to do in the past in hopes of garnering rational discourse with some of his proposals. The guy has actually had to segregate his content, subject by subject, since viewers taking issue towards him on Topic A, resulted in them no longer supporting him as it pertains to his stance on Topic B. They still agreed with his stance on Topic B, but did not want to remain subbed to a channel that had become *polluted* in their eyes, due to Topic A having been endorsed. His DMCA use was a perfect example of this. If he had opened up an account strictly dedicated to DMCA related stuff, his other channel(s) would probably never have taken the publicity hits they took. I'm afraid that if TheAntiBroadcast channel was created with the specific purpose of merging various controversial viewpoints and personas, it will fail for this very reason. Often times people become so passionate about what they oppose, they will discard any other potential good that may come from the opposed source. And I can't really fault them.

Sadly, the best way to get YT not to bury your content, aside from not being stupid enough to put the word shit in your username (bah), is to partner with them. So far, I am yet to hear of a single partnered account that has fallen prey to YT's algorithmic demotion, or plain old censorship through index distortion. So forget front page promotion, just be happy if your content doesn't get buried for its controversial message.

Having said all this, you guys can feel free to use anything I put out, as long as you don't chop up my vids and make me say shit I'd never say, like ''oojamaflipper makes very good videos''. Sorry, I have a reputation to protect. :P

I'll do my best to support the channel. That is, of course, as long as the issues endorsed/discussed are rational/relevant in accordance to my standards of what's worthy of endorsement. I'm not going to turn my individual judgement into a sacrificial lamb for the sake of a movement. Never have, never will. If for example the average upload consists of nothing but relentless indignation at cyber bullying or at porn or at atheists being told by Christians that they're *gasp* going to hell, or at any other type of trivial nonsense that we've seen preoccupy way too much of people's time, I'll pass. Don't get me wrong, I'm curious to see how this thing unfolds, but at the same time I'm just pointing out that I ain't playing movement cheerleader unless genuinely impressed by the movement. The really big name atheists who we hope to glean numbers from tend to think the same way.

As for end-of-week stickam gatherings, doesn't this already exist in its DebateInmendham incarnation? Do we really need another one of these? If you can pull off having even a fraction of vloggers and viewers who followed the content from that week, actually attend at a certain scheduled time on a weekly basis, then great. I just don't think that's feasible. I know that weekly routines are not something I'm good at keeping track of, and I bet many others aren't either.

This is running way too long again, so to conclude, I'll just say that I'm not trying to rip on the people attempting to make a change. I know the overall mood of the blog may give off the impression that I'd oppose even bothering to try anything out. This is not the case. I just don't want to see a bunch of people get their hopes up way too high, only to end up severely disappointed. You know, skeptic stuff. As for my predictions: I have never looked forward to being proven wrong more than I do here.

Thanks for reading.

ABM

Last Word On RIC

2010-02-09T04:14:00.001-08:00

It's weekend time, which means I finally have some real time on my hands. Before I begin with the content, I feel the need to explain in much greater detail why I'll be doing these here. As stated in the profile, I've been swamped at work and the last thing I want to do when I get back home is make YT videos & waste more time tackling the same fall out over and over. Secondly, Gary (inmendham/DoNotGod/massive cunt) has said that my "claim to fame" on YT is now going to consist of me making videos against him, as those types of videos are always going to, with ease, attract legions of his detractors. Nevermind the fact that it was Gary who made video after video ragging on my content and psycho-analyzing me for it, initiating this "war" as he calls it, to the point where I had to respond -- That not withstanding, I'll still refrain from doing another YT video against him. Mainly because I DON'T want to get subscribers through that "weak-ass" method. In addition to this, I'm of the opinion that Gary needs to be ignored on YT altogether, mostly because of his argument tactics, which I'll go into later. And unlike Gary, when I say "I'm not going to have a conversation with a total jackass" I don't casually proceed to make video after video responding to that jackass. No, instead I actually do what I say I'm going to do, and that's "not have conversation with the jackass". Consistency, imagine that. Now, as for his psycho-analysis of our intent, here's the breakdown: My last 3 YT videos have dealt with the subject of circumcision, and in addition to the 3 "official" Gary response videos I received, Gary has also made plenty of other rambling style critiques in some of his throwaway walk videos and in his WTFs as well. He has also been randomly throwing this topic into his other videos completely unrelated to circumcision. Basically, I've spent about 26 minutes of my overall video time talking about circumcision, totaling up in only 2 and a half videos. Gary has spent hours & hours of his overall video time talking about circumcision, totaling up in so many videos that I've long lost track. But we're the aggressors here, we're the insecure petty weasels. The truth is, unlike Gary, I have the utmost disdain for redundancy, and I'm not about to do a 4th video in a row on the same topic, especially when 95% of the people who commented already "get it" and the few who have supported infant circumcision make stunningly simplistic arguments such as "I'm cut and I like sex, so what's your problem?". Oh that's right, Gary has made the same argument too. After all the video time he's put into it (at least 5 times more than I have) he still keeps stressing that "it's a stupid subject". That remark right there is a clear sign of someone who is completely & utterly incapable of the least bit of self-analysis, since that's all it would have taken for him to, for a split second, pause and ask himself "So why am I talking about it so much then?". But of course, no such introspective question was asked. So what do you think is going to happen if I do another video? You think Gary is going to ignore it, even though it's a "trivial" subject? Hell no. He'll likely do another hour long video response, and probably another hour long video on the comment sections, related videos, etc... in which he'll say MORE crap that I'll feel the need to respond to. It will never end. Also, if I were to put this on YT, I'd have to do a 5 parter response since I have the 11 minute restriction to work with, whereas Gary just posts his 50+ minute 2nd part on his own site and he's done. So since he has the benefit of his own website, I'll use this blog site as an equalizer, for now at least. So no wise cracks about the location of this content. I have more than adequately explained the logic behind this move, and if this is retreating, so is him using his own damn site all time. If I had my own video site where I could do videos exceeding 11 minutes in length, and have unlimited time in which I can make them, that'd be a different story. Now, on to his bullshit arguments:

He starts out distorting my sidebar, saying that in it, I wrote down that he has blocked me. I wrote no such thing and it's there for all to see. The sidebar commented on his obliviousness concerning what he said in his WTF, compared to how he acted after watching my BTW. Here's the sidebar:

"I also wanted to mention that in his WTF, Gary psycho-analyzed those who unsubbed him over this issue. He speculated that they may have done so due to some possible deep-seeded insecurity they have stemming from all of them knowing that Gary is actually right in his counter-argumentation. This was just so funny, since he went ahead and unsubbed me over this exact issue only HOURS after making this point, after he heard my counter-argument. So by his logic, the unsub = insecurity rule applies to him as well. I'm not bringing this up because I care about being unsubbed, I'm doing it because it was just a classic example of someone committing the exact same act he finger wagged others for while being completely oblivious to how the same applies to him. What a guy! Now behold as he blocks me, as if I give a fuck."

I didn't say he already blocked me, and he damn well knew it. I said he likely would, and that's exactly what he did. Despite the fact that I didn't meet any of his blocking criteria. But that's irrelevant, since I don't care about being blocked. My "blocked" apathy is made blatantly obvious by the fact that I never put my videos in his (or anyone else's) face by attaching them and hardly ever commented on his videos anyway. And when I did comment, it was never to argue. So I threw his own conclusion that "This excessive crap proves you're all insecure" in his face. His attempt to make it seem as if I lied about being blocked, at a time when I actually wasn't, was a desperate attempt at a distraction.

Also at the beginning, he accurately describes the context of all our previous interactions, none of which stemmed from any kind of a social motive. This was my favorite part of his video, as it was the most accurate. I'm mentioning this here because I saw a comment saying "Maybe ABM is just as depressed over all of this?". I'm not. Irritated at having to once again refute the ravings of a knee-jerk reactionary shithead? Yes. Depressed over no longer being on civil terms with him? No.

He delves into his redundant and overly dramatic insistence that mutilation is excessive rhetoric when it comes to describing circumcision. He calls me a fundie propagandist over it. I laugh. Recalling his extreme stance on certain issues, along with his argument tactics. He reads the definitions of mutilation that I have up on the sidebar. The definitions specify deliberate cutting off of a vital part. He denies that foreskin is a vital part, because circumcised men can still function, in more ways than one. It's not about the capacity to perform in bed though, it never was. Demonstrating his ignorance more than ever now, he says that foreskin is just as useful when it comes to contributing to sexual pleasure as eyelashes are, deeming both equally non-vital. Now, we all know that there is no set list specifying vital body parts from non-vital ones. Many would view eyes as a vital body part. But by Gary's logic, a person who has been blind from birth can still get by, since the experience of sight is one which the subject's brain never got accustomed to in the 1st place. Blindness should therefore not be seen as a burden, as it is the only state of being the subject is accustomed to. How could we have been so foolish to pity those without sight? They're just like us, after all. But in reality, if we are to follow the logical dots connected by those who discount the necessity of 20K nerve endings, on account of the above described mental gymnastics, we would have to acknowledge that, in the case of eyes (or any other arbitrarily defined "vital" part of the human anatomy) the persisting functionality of the subject, regardless of his or her lack of eyesight, would render sight itself as unnecessary, as evidenced by the plethora of human beings who lead comfortable lives without ever having experienced eyesight. So by show of hands, how many here would therefore remove your infant's eyes, if eyes were known to develop "cheese" (instead of just crumbs) as a result of poor hygiene? The analogy will seem excessive to those who view RIC as the norm or as an open ended question, but of course, the above demonstrates just how fitting it truly is. Meanwhile, Gary brings up tattoos and piercings in further attempt to discredit the mutilation rhetoric, all the while failing to realize that in the case of both tattoos and piercings, nothing is removed. Epic fail on that one. Then there's the "to physically harm as to impair use" definition. This again deals with the function that the 20K nerve endings serve in the pleasure department. He keeps asking for evidence of this, and at the same time keeps deleting the evidence. All the comments containing useful information from profoundly non-propagandist sites where he can find this, in great detail, have been deleted from his comment section. Who's the propagandist again? So instead of tutoring him, I suggest that he look into his own damn YT inbox to find the evidence he keeps clamoring for, since plenty of people have gone above & beyond to educate him, and got blocked and called propagandists as a result, with their efforts wiped out from his page. But to those who do accept the scientific information that can be found on sites that are still up on my video comment sections (can't post links here) it's easy to see how the definitions of mutilation fit the crime.

He says he's not arguing for circumcision, but that "there's a decision to be made here and it can only be made by the parents". Ergo, he's arguing for the enablement of all infants to be subject to the possibility of RIC; A surgery that no secular medical organization endorses today, as far as perfectly healthy infants go. He says there are doctors and psychologists claiming it's the right thing to do. There are religious doctors who endorse it, yes, but credible psychologists? Names please? And on the basis of what exactly? Their scripture? Unaccessible hygiene products? Myths? What?

And sex-therapists endorse it apparently? They have SEX-therapists now?! Do people actually go to those? It's bad enough that anyone believes a plain old regular therapist can solve THEIR life oriented problems because of some degree acquired through a bullshit profession, but a sex-therapist?! No folks, don't talk to the people familiar with you and your history, go pay a man in a suit to talk to you instead. Sum up the entire context of your issue in 10 hours worth of sessions, and let the life advice roll. He'll know you better than you've gotten to know yourself through a lifetime of being you. That's just how broken you are, "10 hours > lifetime" level of broken.

Moving on, he says that most infants cut in America over the last 40 years were not cut for religious purposes. But given the overwhelming majority of Christians in the U.S. and the utter lack of familiarity they have concerning their scripture of choice, I'd say that religious motivations play a role here. All too often we see examples of American Christians' inability to separate the old testament from the one they espouse belief in. They're clueless, but still obedient in the process.

He then says that masturbation with foreskin is "noisy" and results in "skin flying all over the place". Even more stunning ignorance out of Gary, said loud and proud. He says "It's important for what? It has no physical functionality anymore". Really? Here is one of the many useful pieces of commentary that can be found on the sites which Gary has deleted the comments pointing to:

"British Journal of Urology 99 (4), 864-869,
Vol 99 Issue 4 Page 864, Apr 2007

Circumcision removes the most sensitive part of a man's penis. Sorrells & others enlisted 159 men, 91 of them circumcised, & conducted touch-sensitivity tests, on 11-17 different places on their penises. The transitional region from the external to the internal foreskin is more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. The five most sensitive areas of the penis are on the foreskin."

Keeps asking for evidence, keeps deleting comments with evidence. Calls evidence propaganda, calls doctors with whom he disagrees with propagandists. Unless they're for RIC of course, then they're legit doctors. But if they're against it, they're "flaky coocs". Again, who exactly is propagandizing here?

He brings up baby sentience, and as a result criticizes those who are pro-reproduction. Obviously I'm not pro-reproduction of any sort, but as far as the abortion line goes, I am against 3rd trimester abortion because all studies indicate that pain is sensed around this time. But if the woman insists on it, it should obviously still be her right to abort, unless she's due in a week or such. Regardless, newborns do feel pain, that's why during RICs in developed nations, anesthesia is used. Someone should probably ask Gary why medical professionals insist on wasting anesthesia on "non-sentient" infants. But even with anesthesia, every RIC that I've witnessed, and I've seen plenty, the infant starts screaming once the operation begins. Not before, but during.

But the most disturbing part of Gary's argument is his insistence that pushing a 3 year old to the ground causes no harm as long as the 3 year old sees that our follow up reaction to pushing him/her contains laughter and smiles. So now 3 year olds apparently don't feel physical pain either? Gary's dismissal of the pain factor is tantamount to science denial.

He lumps me into his hater club because I ragged on him for tucking his entire video away on his site. He says it was done because it went 21 minutes and he didn't want to snipe it in half. Fair enough, and I'll retract my chickenshit accusation. But he sure as hell seems to have no issue snipping all his other videos at the 11 minute mark, and uploading the rest on his site. So why was this one the exception? He's been "doing business" with YT again for a long time, so it's certainly not that crap. He did go on to mention that he didn't want to deal with people's bullshit comments by putting in on YT. So yeah.

When I brought up him not getting that many comments on the site video, I did so because I was showing how perhaps the videos on this subject don't have to carry on forever since he isn't swaying many people (or anyone). He took this as some sort of a shot at him not getting many comments in general, and said that he didn't get that many because he blocked damn near everyone who commented on YT the 1st time around. This excuse was unnecessary, but makes no sense on top of that, since he only blocked those 150 YT channels on his DoNoTGod/inmendham YT accounts, and on not his website.

He says "Yeah right" and eye rolls while playing the part of my video in which I explain why I'm not playing his video, and am instead only paraphrasing him. So apparently, not playing a 22 minute video, the same video that also plays 10 minutes of my BTW video, is supposed to be viewed as some sort of a cop out? And this is what he's going to call fair debating tactics? Get real. I'm not about to make a 90 minute video, that plays his parts, that play my parts during his parts. It's inane, end of.

He played the part of my video in which I'm just pointing out that I always gave him the final say in previous debates. He took this as an invitation to argue one of those old subjects again. While doing that, on the subject of "knowledge should determine the merit of vote", he says, in order to justify his accusation that I want to take ENTIRE votes away from people, he pretty much says that ignorance and minorities go hand in hand, and as a result so does poverty. No Gary, ignorance and laziness goes hand in hand. He brings up blacks in general. Why? It's the 21st Century, every person in America has the opportunity to educate themselves if they wish. They don't all have the opportunity to become the next Gates of Buffett, but they do have the opportunity to gain enough knowledge needed to score damn near perfect on a test of this basic nature. You can't turn around in today's America without information at your display. So no, the black race wouldn't automatically lose 90% of their collective vote because of this, and him being so confident that they would is very revealing of his lack of confidence when it comes to their intelligence. This is not a minority rights issue. People of all colors are raised in poverty, and have been since the dawn of time. And on top of that, being raised in poverty in no way prevents a human being from remembering what the candidate they want to vote for would do once in office, since the whole campaigning thing is kinda hard to miss, regardless of how little money you make at work. I'm not asking people of low income wage to go to Harvard for fuck's sake. I'm asking them to find out where their candidate stands on things like foreign policy, before voting him or her in. And no, subject A scoring 95% on the test does not itself in any way shape the vote of subject B. The only thing that shapes the vote of subject B is subject B's test score. This is basic school grade stuff, and Gary is confusing it with racially motivated "win or lose" competition. Just baffling.

He says that we're against circumcision because we're all about the natural state. He even used the word "holistic" in his last WTF (where he just had to rag on it some more). Yes, I'm all about the holistic movement. I'll be the ring leader if appointed by all my phantasmagorical subscribers. Since apparently I love Evolution now. Forget all the rants, all the suffering sucks lectures I gave, forget all that. No, I believe that Evolution ALWAYS gets it right. Why? Because I believe that Evolution doesn't ALWAYS get it wrong. This is the kind of simplistic, black and white thinking that Gary draws his counter-arguments from. And I already pointed out twice, both in the BTW and in the last video, how I obviously don't give a shit about what's natural. But sadly, Gary really is incapable of comprehending how our contentions on RIC might have to do with something completely unrelated to what he's painting them out to be. And that something is the right to one's own body, one of the most fundamental rights that exist.

Pretending that being conditioned into eating meat, or learning to play the piano, or playing catch with dad, or even merely wearing clothes -- pretending that having any of those imposed on you by your parents is anywhere near the same department of drastic as having an unnecessary irreversible operation done on you as an infant, reeks of complete and utter desperation. I'd like to think that his bogus analogies were not taken seriously by anyone, including RIC enthusiasts, as they belong in a different league, since they can actually be given up. You cannot give up circumcision, not unless you try foreskin restoration surgery. And even then, you're not at 100% in terms of foreskin sensation.

He keeps saying over and over, it's a decision parents have to make, because "there's no way that the decision is going to be made by the individual once he reaches adulthood... no fucking way!". This only reinforces the anti-RIC argument. Yes, in 99% of the cases, it won't take place during adulthood. This is because circumcision is a completely unnecessary surgery. So how is this a tragedy then, if it doesn't take place later on? It's not. At least not to anyone other than brainwashed RIC nuts who've falsely been led to believe that intact men leave a trail of cheese behind them everywhere they go. Except Gary admitted to purposely using the cheese rhetoric as a way to strike back against the mutilation rhetoric. So here he actually admits that he will say things he knows are untrue, just because he has contempt for the rhetoric of his opposition. Very revealing, again.

As for the 1% of cases in which circumcision does take place during adulthood, I've already mentioned in videos that there have been tons of comments on YT alone from guys stating that they've had it done as adults and got accustomed to it. Gary's response to this was that getting "accustomed" to it isn't good enough, and they have to be without foreskin starting from 10 days after birth, if they are to truly enjoy the circumcised state. So 1st there was the celibate excuse, then he just kept saying "No way is anyone gonna do it later! No way is anyone gonna do it later!" and now that we see how there are those who actually make the CHOICE to do it later, and they go through with it without regretting it, it's still not good enough for him and the choice must remain with the parents, regardless of how ignorant the parents may be. If he's going to use the parents argument, he has to at least concede that he is not for the right to choose, as the choice must pertain to the patient, not the "owners" of the patient. His arguments have nothing to do with choices. Nothing.

And finally, the argument from "there are greater things to worry about". And yes, there are. This is precisely why I haven't done a circumcision video in well over a year after opening up my YT account. But I brought it up now, in what was supposed to be one 11 minute video, and nothing more. It was Gary who turned it into a pandoras box, and it was Gary who has in the process lost another chunk of the little support he had left on YT. If there are so many better things to worry about, then why did he get so angry about it? The same can be said about the DMCA. How many videos has he done on that? He even said that his friends who disagree with him on the DMCA should just stay quiet. Well Gary certainly didn't feel like staying quiet when in came to the issue of RIC. So why the double standard? I know why, it's obvious why. Because Gary views himself as being on a higher level of playing field than the rest of us, and tragically, he doesn't even realize it.

So I say to oojamaflipper, who didn't take too long to crawl right back up to Gary with overly excessive pleasantries so to compensate for that one video he made against him, and to the few remaining supporters of Gary's who will undoubtedly stick by him no matter what, because they share his core philosophy, I say to all of you; Have fun with that, but you're on a redundant ride to nowhere, and the ticket price just skyrocketed.

Thanks for reading, and sorry about the ridiculous length.

ABM