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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Criticism of the Zeitgeist Movement

A third movie in the "Zeitgeist Movement" was released on January 15th, 2011. I should warn you that I never watched any of these movies. So how can I make a criticism? Because I read the summary of the main ideas that are expressed in these movies. I looked up the main points Zeitgeist brings forward. I will tell you what I think of the main claims the movies make.

Well, first let me begin with something positive. Everything that I will write after this paragraph will be a negative criticism, so I guess it is fair to begin with a positive criticism. It is refreshing to see a documentary on social organization that does not push for statism. It really disturbs me of these so-called "intellectuals" in colleges and universities who write articles in favor of heavy state control. It is disturbing to see all the heavy statism in the world and for documentaries to come forward and push for even more state control. I have to give credit for Zeitgeist for not falling into this trap. Even though I think it is filled with mostly false conclusions I do have to give it credit of not promoting statism and sometimes even making anti-state remarks. For example, Zeitgeist argues that there is a threat of a One World Government in the future. The fear of this happening suggests that Zeitgeist is not pushing for more statism. Another example, is Zeitgeist's objection to the income tax of the United States. Zeitgeist says that the income tax is unconstitutional. I agree with Zeitgeist that it is unconstitutional, but that is not a very good argument. Whether something is constitutional or not should not give us reason to do or not to do something. We need a different argument. However, the fact that Zeitgeist is critical of the US taxation system does suggest in an implicit manner that it is arguing for less statism, which is refreshing to see - for once.

Zeitgeist is filled with a lot of conspiracy theories. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories because they have no reasonable justification for them, and they are not even necessary to explain the problem that you are describing. Let us take something like Christianity. Zeitgeist argues that Christianity was a myth. I agree with this part. But it is not necessary to create a conspiracy theory. We can say that religion emerges from superstition and irrationality. Then once its irrational ideas become popular they create a moral code within the people. The followers of these moral codes then create an authoritarian system the reflects the religion that they foolishly inherited. Thus, I do agree that religion is a method of controlling people. But religion was not created in a conscious manner. In other words, there were no inventors of Christianity sitting around a large round table telling themselves, "haha, we shall create a religion, known as Christianity, because it would be easier to control the world that way". There is no reason to assume that this ever happened. The control of religion, in general, over the masses was not done in a conscious manner, but rather in a spontaneous manner. Religion simply developed in such a way that it became the tool of the rulers to use to control their subjects. There is no need to create a conspiracy theory here at all when a much simpler explanation, like the one I briefly provided, would do. You can read more about the birth of religion that I wrote in the past here.

The first movie of Zeitgeist (from 2007) claims that 9/11 was an "inside job". The US government was in on the attacks against its own citizens because they wanted more power for themselves, so they used 9/11 as an excuse to expand their powers. My basic argument against the 9/11 truth movement is what I wrote back here. The US government is so incompetent, so clumsy. It cannot even run a post office nor a public school for Science's sake, what makes you think it has the ability of a mastermind to plot such a successful conspiracy against the entire world? What Zeitgeist is doing is looking for an excuse to hate the US government. And I agree, the US government should be hated. But you do not need to come up with lies to hate your enemy. Just look around you. Look at how many lives the US government has ruined, count the number of people they killed, count the number of people they enslaved, count the debt they brought upon the public. You do not need to come up with lies to hate the US government. They have done plenty of stuff to be despised for.

The next conspiracy (still in the first movie) is the claim that the bankers of the world (thank Science that Zeitgeist did not blame the Jewish bankers, though many of these bankers are Jews) manipulate the currency. It is true that the currency is being manipulated. This is done through central banks of the world. In the US, and the most powerful bank in the whole world, this is done through the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is not part of the US government, it is its own separate entity. It is a "private" bank. How exactly is it not part of the US government, I have no idea, but from what I read about the Federal Reserve it said that the Federal Reserve is a private bank entirely separated from the US government. It is true that the Federal Reserve and the US government futt buck each other every day with their pong lenis, but they are somehow not the same. Yes, it is also true that the Federal Reserve system does manipulate the currency. By the way, Ben Bernake happens to be Jewish. His predecessor, Alan Greenspan was Jewish also. Oh no, Jews are controlling all the world's money! But is there a conspiracy theory? Are the bankers and the government in on the whole manipulation of the monetary system? Not consciously. There is no conscious part of the government nor the bankers to control the money system. They do manipulate it, but there is no banker meeting. The bankers of the world do not sit around a large round table and say, "haha, we will use the Federal Reserve system to steal the money from the rest of the world". They do steal money from the world. And in the process lead to economic instability, but there is no conscious effort on the part of the government nor the bankers to control this. Consider for example the 2008 economic collapse in the US. It was caused by artificially low interest rates in the housing market that were set by the Federal Reserve. Why did this happen? Because some politicians thought it would be a good idea to push the public into becoming homeowners. These politicians decided that the interest rates were too high and they lowered them. This economic collapse and the manipulation of the currency that inevitably followed was not done with bad intentions, but with good intentions. Free market economists call this the "unintended consequences of good intentions". Though not all consequences are from good intentions. Some are the result of bad intentions. There are politicians that are brided. The government does sometimes move into a direction of more power or more profit itself. So some intentions are also bad intentions. What I am saying is that it is not as simple as the Zeitgeist movement describes. It is not just politicians and bankers deciding to screw the people. Sometimes that does happen. Sometimes it happens with good intentions. Sometimes it happens out of pure incompetence. Together all of these failing of the currect system come together and emerge into a system that does manipulate the currency. However, just like with religion, there is no conscious effort on anyone to make this kind of manipulation. This is just the nature of the beast, known as statism.

The first Zeitgeist movie ends with the claim that the media is being controlled for the sake of the government (and I guess the bankers too) being able to seek and secure power for themselves. I can certainly understand why it is tempting to propose this. If you see the media covering celebrities and what politician says what (by the way, politicians are just another form of celebrities) then I can understand why some people get very furious with this broadcast and feel that it is purposely being controlled to dumb them down. Yes the media and the news do dumb you down (which is part of the reason why I never watch news). The conclusion that some people reach is that this is proof that the media system is being controlled by the government (or the bankers, or the corporations) to prevent the people from having accurate access to information about what is going on. If this is true I see no way how to demonstrate this, instead I have a different explanation to why there is so much dumb content on the media without creating any conspiracy theories. It is very simple. The population is dumb. The population wants to see celebrities and entertained by what politician said what. If you go to the CATO Institute YouTube channel and watch their top most viewed videos you will notice that the most viewed videos are all flashy media news from their perspective. The actual intellectual video content, which gives brief talks on economics, does not even have a 1,000 views, it is just so boring to watch that people rather watch the flashy fireworks on the media then to sit through a boring economics video. Is the government controlling CATO's YouTube channel by limiting the number of people who can access their content? No. The people are just not interested. People rather have quick one liners than long boring explanations. The media simply reflects the desires of the people. If you make your own media program which was an intelligent program, it will never take off. Because people do not want to sit through one hour of boring intelligent presentation. Yes, the media is controlled, but not by the capitalists nor the government nor whoever, there is no need to assume a conspiracy, it is controlled by the wishes of the people. The public sucks, the public is dumb, so what do you expect? If media is showing Michael Jackson for 2 months, then do you not think this is because that is what brings in a lot of ratings? So even though it is tempting to suggest that the media is being controlled by some Illuminati it is just not a necessary hypothesis when there is a simpler one that explains this phenomenon well.

This ends the first Zeitgeist movie and I want to finish off my criticism of the first movie by saying that all of its conclusions point to a conspiracy. But just keep in mind that the supposed conspiracy masterminds that Zeitgeist claims are so incompetent of doing anything their job is to do that it is very hard to imagine such a global conspiracy from ever happening. The spontaneous (and non-conscious) alternative explanations that I proposed to a better job at explaining the supposed conscious action of the conspiracy masterminds.

The next Zeitgeist movie is a follow-up to the first and it there were the Venus Project is first introduced as an alternative to the other model's of the world. I am not going to tell you what I think of the Venus Project because I have already gave my reviews of the Venus Project. If you want to read why I consider the Venus Project to be a utopian fantasy build around terrible economics read this.

Now we reach the most recent Zeitgeist movie that was released about two weeks ago. The summary of its positions, that I will be reading from, is what I found on Wikipedia here. The first part of the movie is about human nature. What this has to do anything with anything else that was mentioned in this post before I have no idea, I guess there is some sort of connection, but I cannot see it. The position that is presented is that the environment has influences over human behavior. I am not sure what is the intent of Zeitgeist to bring this point up, perhaps they are trying to say that we need to strive to equality. I wish I knew more about what they are trying to say here, but I just have no idea why they start off with saying that environment has an influence over people. I will just say that humans also have a nature to them that is not influenced by the environment at all, it is inherent in how people are themselves. Anyway, I have to skip over this point because of my ignorance.

The second part of the movie is a criticism of modern economics. The movie starts by saying that the current economic model is based on John Locke and Adam Smith. This is not true. First of all, John Locke was not an economist. He was a political philosopher who laid down the ideas of classical liberalism (libertarianism). But the world does not follow this kind of political structure. So John Locke has very little to do with the current political world and therefore should not be mentioned. Second of all, nobody follows Adam Smith. Adam Smith was a classical economist, there are no classical economists anymore. Adam Smith was mostly a laissez-faire advocate when it came to economics. There are modern economists today who are laissez-faire, the more popular ones are from the Chicago school. But the Chicago school is not popular at all when compared to mainstream economics, and it is far away from classical economics. There is also the Austrian school which is also a free market economics school but it is even less popular than the Chicago school. Laissez-faire economics is just not mainstream at all. The most common economics that are practiced in the world today are either from the neo-classical school (which, despite what the name suggests, has little to do with classical economics) and Keynesian economics. There is even Marxian economics, but I rather call it Bullshit economics. Okay, those are the economics schools of thought today in the world. Very little has anything to do with laissez-faire economics and nothing has anything to do with Adam Smith. So Adam Smith, just like Locke, has little to do with the world today and should not be mentioned.

Zeitgeist goes on to criticize free market economics by alluding that it is like a religion. Because the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith is like the "hand of God" that magically solves any problem.

Before I say anything I have to state the obvious. As I explained just above the world does not follow free market economics, and the few free market economists do not follow Smith. So Adam Smith and the free market have nothing to do with the mainstream world at all. Would you stop bringing them up? How would you feel if I criticized the US for being Marxist? You would think of me as a fool who has no sense of economics to possibly think the US uses Marxian economics. That is exactly how I look at you. Every time you keep on criticizing the US for free markets or the world for those principles, I look at you as a fool who has little sense of economic theory to make such a statement.

The other thing I want to mention is something I really hate. It is comparing what you disagree with to a religion. I see this done by atheists all the time. When atheists become atheists they think they became some deeply superior intellectuals because they finally realized there is no magical magic man in the sky. So they think that atheism is this deep intellectual position. Hence, when they want to refute their opponent's position they are likely to compare it to a religion, because comparing something to a religion, in their view, automatically disqualifies the other viewpoint as entirely foolish. This is what Zeitgeist is doing when it compares the invisible hand of the market to the hand of God, they want to present it as a religion, they want to paint it as magical superstitious thinking. This tactic of comparing something to a religion is neither right nor wrong, it is just a tactic, I hate this tactic a lot, so I am only bringing this up to say how much I hate this tactic of comparing ideas you disagree with to a religion. It has nothing to do with the review at all, but I wanted to say it anyway.

Let me get back on topic. Is the invisible hand of the market like the hand of God, as Zeitgeist claims? If the producers of Zeitgeist actually understoond the metaphor of the invisible hand I doubt they would ever make this comparison. The entire metaphor of the invisible hand is that the market system needs no designer. Adam Smith's argument was that the market is a spontaneous system of order, it is self-emergent, it needs no designer at all. He describes the principles that drive the free market as the "invisible hand" because it seems as if there is a hand organizing the markets, but there is no such hand, this organization is spontaneous, hence the "invisible hand". That is to say, it seems as if there is a hand, as if there is a designer, but there is no designer, hence the word "invisible". Free market economics is the atheism of economics. Because free market economics says that there is no need to have a designer and no need to assume a designer. This is like saying natural selection is the "invisible hand" of life. Evolution works in such a manner as if it seems there is a designer, a hand, over life, but there is no such hand, that is, it is "invisible". It is therefore, a lot more accurate to compare free market economics to atheism, than to a religion. On the contrary, the central planners and the socialists who claim to be able to design society with a hand, are the ones more likely to be called "religious". Anyway, it is a silly point to determine who is more "religious" when it comes to economics. But I did not go there, the Zeitgeist movie went there, and so I played along with their religious game.

Zeitgeist continues to ask whether private property is really necessary, and do we really need money? Of course these are necessary. I will give you brief explanations to why they are necessary. Property is necessary to deal with the problem of scarcity. Almost everything in the world is scarce. There are some things which are not scarce. Air for example. There is no property system over air because there does not need to be one. But 100% oxygen is a scarce resource, and so there is a property mechanism for 100% oxygen. Property is necessary to deal with the problem of scarcity. The market economy functions in such a way so that people would be able to trade scarce resources. Hence, the necessity of property and hence the necessity of a price system. Price systems require money, hence the necessity of money. Money is also a tool to increase the efficiency of trade. If you would like to know what money is, and why it is dangerous to abolish it, you can read this.

Zeitgeist also criticizes the free market for wasteful resources. Waste occurs in a non-free market. You have a lot of waste in government programs, for example, because there is no free market system there. If supply meets demand, which is what happens in a free-market, there is no waste. If supply exceeds demand then there is waste. The problem of waste is inherent to any system of social planning, the free market, through it self-emerging price system, is able to handle the problem of waste most efficiently, the same cannot be said for any other kind of a system.

The next criticism of the movie is "planned obsolescence". Planned obsolescence is the idea that businesses purposely make bad products so that they will break after a certain time period in order that their customers will continue to shop there. What is up with Zeitgeist and conspiracy theories? At every turn they need to set up a conspiracy theory. There is no need to assume that businesses are doing this on purpose. There is a much much simpler explanation for bad quality products. People want cheap products. Cheap products are usually of low-quality therefore they are likely to break apart after a few years. There are high-quality products out there too. Why do people generally not buy them? Because they are expensive. There is no need to introduce the hypothesis of a planned conspiracy theory, when this simple explanation does fine. Businesses supply what people want. If people want cheap stuff instead of expensive stuff then it is likely that the products will last only a few years. The economist, Walter Block, in his book "Defending the Undefendable" wrote in detail about the false theory of planned obsolescence. You can read the book for free (Block does not believe in copyright laws) here, if you go to pages (on the PDF, not the book) 231 - 238 you will read an in detail explanation.


The movie then turns to the monetary system. It claims money is evil (to briefly summarize) because its supply is manipulated, the interest rates are controlled, and it will eventually destroy its value through hyperinflation. Can you say that guns are evil because bad people use guns? Can you say that knifes are evil because bad people use knifes? No, because guns are knives are fine, the problem is the abuse which results from them. The money system is fine, the money system is important, it is the blood of the economy. The problem is not money. The problem is not even fiat currency nor fractional-reserve banking. The problem is central control over currency. The problem is having the state (well more specifically the Federal Reserve) control the currency, to control the interset rates, and to be inflate the money supply. That is where the problem lies. Not in money, and not even so much in the banks, but in the central authority over currency.


Now we reach the third part of the movie which describes the "resource-based economy". What is that? I am not even too sure. That seems to be a certain kind of economy where the problem of scarcity is solved and there is no need to have property anymore. A review that I watched of the new Zeitgeist movie humorously called it "Marxism with robots", a forum that I seen called it "Marxism 2.0". Basically, replace the proletariat not with people but with an automated city. What exactly is the difference between what Zeitgeist advocates as an economic system and Marxism?


There is a reason why Marxism and socialism always are much less efficient when compared to a market based economy (even a heavily regulated one as in mostly everywhere in the world). Because socialism cannot get passed the calculation problem. How do you calculate exactly how much needs to be done with what given price with a scarce number of resources? In a market economy this problem usually settles itself through the competative and pricing system. But what about a "resource-based economy"? This is never addressed. Unless, you claim there will be no need to perform economic calculations. Well, if you really believe in that then you are just utopians who think this is not a serious economic problem. There is no place where socialism functioned as efficiently. Why should I assume that socialism in the Venus Project would prove to be the exception? Of course, you are not calling it "socialism" but a "resource based-economy", however this resource-based economy is a centrally planned and operated economy.


Finally, we reach the last part of the movie. It mentions that the world is running out of oil. I agree that this is a problem but I cannot see how one can blame the free market on this. There is a finite amount of oil in any given fixed economy system. What makes the free market so special? You think there will be no oil problem in a "resource-based economy"? Everyone needing oil is a problem that is universal and independent of an economic system. If anything the free market is the best way to deal with this problem. The market based system, as explained above, is the best way to deal with shortages and waste. Having a central agency decide just how much oil is needed is a terrible policy to use. Consider this potential problem with oil in a non-free market economy. There are alternative fuels out there. I am sure over time they will become more popular. But I would like to illustrate how state intervention with the market can prevent this change from happening. Say alternative fuels cost $3 per gallon and gasoline costs $2 per gallon, for sake of argument. Gasoline is more preferrable because it is cheaper. As gasoline depletes the dimishing supply will push prices up until it exceeds $3 per gallon. If the state decides "oil is too important" and legislates price fixing back to $2 per gallon, gasoline is still more preferrable to alternative fuels. But if the market price is not manipulated with it will become more preferrable to use alternative fuels. And it is at this time when people will start to look for alternative sources of energy. But if the state decides to prolong the illusion that everything is alright it will hinder the progress of looking for alternative fuel. This is the danger of having state control over fuel (just like state control over anything). Again the free market is revealed to be the best way to deal with this serious problem.

The movie blames the free market on pollution. As explained, for the n-th time, there is no free market operating at this moment. But let us just consider how pollution and environmental questions are settled in a free market. Pollution is a form of intrusion into the property of someone else. If I pollute I am producing waste that will do harm to another's property. That person has the right to demand a price for my pollution or insist that I end my pollution. The best way to deal with the problem of pollution is by using private property. If property is respected and there are defined laws on what constitutes property and how pollution damages property then pollution will be an imposed cost on the polluter. It is in this manner that environmental policies and pollution problems can be settled through the free market system.

Deforestation is another problem that is blamed. There are two questions here. Why is it inherently assumed that deforestation is a bad thing? It can be bad in certain contextes and good in other contextes. Deforestation is not something which is always bad. The best way to decide at whether deforestation is positive or negative is by considering cost vs benefits, which the free market, by its mechanism, is again the most efficient means of doing. The second question is, are you sure deforestation is happening? Last I checked the number of acres of forests in the United States has increased since the 1900's or something like that. I also read that lumber companies which sell their lumber for paper end up reusing their land by replanting new trees. In other words, they are not just consuming up trees and moving to a new forest. Rather they have their own plot of land which they keep on reusing and reusing. I am not sure about the state of forests in other countries but I think that in the United States forests are doing fine, there is no deforestation crysis on our hands.

Zeitgeist also blames climate change on the free market system. I do not want to go into climate change now because that would be way off topic but I just want to say that the government is the biggest polluter in the world. You just admitted, and I agree with your conclusion, that the US government has no interest in your welfare or your safety or your money. What makes you think they have an interest on your climate? None. Looking at the government to "solve" climate change is like asking them to watch your bank account so that it is not stolen from.

Next it talks about the overpopulation problem. There is no overpopulation problem. And the overpopulation problem is a precieved threat that is not a threat at all. If you want to read why there is nothing to fear from overpopulation read this.

War is also blamed on the free market. How? Why? Do you really think there will be no war in Venus utopia? Say some Muslims are unhappy that the citizens of Venus utopia approve of gay relationships. They decide to declare war on Venus utopia. This cannot happen? Note that this has nothing to do with the free market. War does not have to be about profit nor about seizing resources. It can be just dislike and hatred. War can also be an excuse of more power for yourself. The Nazis wanted more power and world domination. What is to prevent this from happening in Venus utopia? The Nazis hated various groups of people, not for profit, not for resources, they just hated them, and wanted to kill them, what will prevent this from happening in Venus utopia? My point is that war does not need to have anything to do with wanting resources. So you cannot blame war on the free market system. Furthermore, the free market is what prevents war. Trading prevents war. If no trade takes place then war might follow. Think about this. I have a call girl that regulary comes over to my house and I fuck her. I pay her well and she is good looking, nice to fuck too. Say she decided to kill me one day and steal my $200 instead of fucking me for that money. What happens? She will lose a costumer. Her short term gain is $200 but her long term gain is a lot of money. What happens if I kill her to steal my money back after fucking her? I will lose a call girl and my business would be terminated. So I would be in a long term loss too. So even though I have no feelings for her and she has no feeling for me, she still fucks me without killing me, and I still pay her without killing her. Business keeps on going. And we end up trusting each other. Trade is what creates trust between people. The free market is the most peaceful method of interacting with people, and it is the best means to maintain peace.

Zeitgeist claims the wellbeing of people of the world is worsening by using some statistics. As you know I hate statistics. They are not reliable and give no causation argument. Zeitgeist says that 18,000 people day a die from starvation. This is, of course, terrible, but we need to ask the question of how many people would die a day if it was not for at least a semi-capitalist system? A lot more. The socialist experiments of the world that tried to centrally control farms, for example, have ended up starving millions of people to death. So as bad as those numbers are they will be a lot worse if it was for a non-capitalist system. Consider that the population of the world has greatly increased since 1900's. And it is still on the raise. How can it if the economic system is as brutal and inefficient as you claim it is?

There is an interesting statistic from Zeitgeist which says that global poverty has doubled since 1970's. Everything that I know of points to the overall wealth of the world improving. So I started to wonder what this statistic can mean. I am going to make some suggestions to the problem of this statistic (which once again shows why statistics are often not reliable). Perhaps the definition of "poverty" in the 1970's differs from the definition of "poverty" in 2011, therefore, it is possible to gain higher numbers of poverty by simply changing the definition of "poverty"? Perhaps the number of people from 1970's has greatly increased in number resulting from the improved efficiency of capitalism and so those in poverty are only there because they were born into already poor homes (in other word's there are more people in the world, so can it be that this is why poverty has doubled)? Perhaps the rich got a lot wealthier over 1970's that the larger formed income gap redefined more people as "poor" even though their real wages have improved? Do you see how many questions and possible refutations are available to this statistic? Perhaps the UN is a secretly controlled by the new world order and all their statistics are made up lies? I know, the last one is a conspiracy theory, but since Zeitgeist loves conspiracy theories I figured I might use one too. It would be ironic if the Zeitgeist movement is anti-UN (not sure if they are) by saying they want global government and in the same time use their statistics which are reported as unreliable.

The last thing I do want to get to is the gap between the rich and the poor. I do think there is a gap between the rich and poor, I also think it must always increase. For purely mathematical reasons. Say I am a billionare and you are poor. If I increase 2% of my assests and you increase 10% I will have way more money than you do. The rich getting richer at a faster rate than the poor is not some conspiracy of the market, but just a mathematical necessity. Is this an inherent problem of free markets or capitalism? No. I explained why wealth inequality is no problem at all here. Inequality is one of those terms politicians throw around to appeal the masses without any of them giving any critical thought about what it means. Inequality and equality is a bullshit measure.

Let me end with something positive about the Zeitgeist movement. It is nice to know there are other people, like me, who are strongly against the status-quo. It is healthy to distrust authority. Good for you in doing that. But you do not need to invent non-sensical conspiracy theories to defend your own viewpoints. I have very anti-mainstream views too but I do not create unnecessary hypothesis to explain the problems that are happening in the world. I hope you see me more of your ally than your enemy. Because I have no problem if like-minded people such as yourselves in the Zeitgeist movement want to find people to test your ideas with (even though I think they are going to be utter-fail).

Friday, January 28, 2011

I am God

People constantly seek something "greater than themselves". For some people it is to stick to a religion, in where they are part of a greater whole, serving a powerful being that is greater than them. For others it is to stick to their nation, as something greater than them, develop pride and love to their nation, in terms of nationalism, to feel safe and secure that they are part of a greater whole. For the ones who reject religion for its superstition and irrationality still feel the void of being part of a greater whole. So they make the universe or Nature as their own God, it appeases them to think they are part of a greater entity themselves known as Nature. And there are those who make their beliefs objective, either the belief of objective purpose, or morals, or goals, those who pursue these beliefs make themselves feel that they are part of a greater whole.

I have rejected those answers! That is the philosophy of the weak. It is the mind of a slave to make himself part of something greater than himself. I do not need a God. I do not need anything greater than myself. I am God! Instead I make myself the greatest. I do not need a master over my own life, I am my own master. Nor do I make myself a master over others. The others can become strong also by making themselves their own masters. We can all be our own master. We can all become strong. I am the greatest human who exists. I have killed God, and in the process, became a God myself. Let us look for a day when the world consists of the strong and powerful men rather than the weak and the pathetic.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Liberal Lunacy 7: Violent Video Games

I am not sure if it is fair or not to associate anti-video game violence to liberals. Because there are many conservatives that are angry over the content of video games. It seems that conservative mostly rail against the sexuality and promiscuity and "moral decline" of video games. Conservatives who are against Grand Theft Auto games are against them because of drugs, sexuality, and breaking the law (such as robbing games, driving over innocent people, or killing police officers). Conservatives main problem with a game like Grand Theft Auto is that they claim it teaches children crime i.e. "the moral decline of our civilization", violence is not their complaint in a game like this, since these very same people end up buying their children Halo for Christmas.

It is true that you can find people both on the left and the right who hate video games. Being anti-video games is both a liberal and a conservative position. But it depends on what the video game is about. If the video game is very sexual then you can be assured the conservatives will rail against these games by saying, "these games are teaching our daughters to be promiscuous". Liberals do not have such a big deal with these games. Violence in video games seems to be mostly a liberal complaint. Indeed, if you consider the UK the main objection to the video games there is their violence, not sexuality. The controversial games of the US, which are noted for sexuality, are not controversial in the UK, but the controversial games of the UK, which are noted for violence, are much less controversial in the US. The UK is rather liberal and the only games that seem to bother them are violent games, not sexual games.

Furthermore, you have lots of people on the left who are blaming Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, along with some other right-wingers, for the promotion of violence that lead to the Arizona shooting. If these liberals say something like this then you would expect them to have the same reaction to violent video games. After all Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are nowhere as "violent" as violent video games, so if you blame Palin or Beck, then it is only reasonable to conclude that you would blame violent video games too for the promotion of violence.

There are also liberal politicians who are against violent video games. Hillary Clinton, that fascist, is very strongly anti-games. One of her platform positions was speaking out against violent video games. Joe Lieberman had his legal fight with Mortal Kombat, he wanted the state to be involved in the control of video games, but the most he was able to get was to pass a rating system on video games. Bloomberg has said some of his own very negative views of violent video games. I tried to find some conservative politicians who have similar views but I was not able to. I am sure they exist. But I would figure that most conservatives are against video games for their sexuality not violence.

Since this post focuses only on the violence that video games glorify I consider to be fair and reasonable to associate this post with liberals. The goal to control the violence in video games is mainly a liberal policy.

The standard argument against violent video games has been this. Violence in video games influences violence in children who play these games. These games bring out the violent character within children and it makes them more violent. We do not want to teach our children such violence. Especially when it is about torture and cruelty. Therefore, the state needs to intervene with games, control their content, before they can be sold to children.

This is once again the "what about the children?!" argument that never gets old. Anytime you want to control something just mention the children. But let us suppose that this argument is true. Let us suppose that it really is true that violent video games make people more violent. I do not believe in that, and the rest of my post will be addressing this fallacy, but for now I will assume that this is true. Okay, violent video games influence violence in people. So what? There is speech that offends people too much, do you get rid of this speech? If your words cause people to commit suicide or protest, does that speech now get all of the sudden banned? Not if you support free speech. There is very violent and offensive art. Does the artist now deserve to be censored because you fear the art? I consider video games (some of them) to be forms of art themselves. These video games allow you to express yourself as you play them. Must the art of video games now be censored because you do not approve of the content? Will you censor the artist? There are people who will object and say that video games are not art. Who said? You said. Maybe they are not art to you. They are art to others, because for others video games can be very beautiful, or very terrifying, and it enables people to express themselves through playing the game. Will you now make the state the single authority that can decide what is art and what is not? And what about novels that feature violence? Must those works of art be censored also because you do not approve? There is definitely one book that promotes violence, the Torah, the Bible, or the Quran. Hardly anyone ever mentions to ban those. It would seem to be consistent that if you are anti-violent games that you would also be in favor of censoring or heavily controlling the Bible. So even assuming that video games lead to violence I do not care. This argument fails to be a convincing argument at all.

Now let us ask whether or not it is really true that violent video games influence violence in people. Does this not remind you of something the conservatives complain about? This sounds so familiar. What about the argument that today's movies influence teenagers to be sexually active? What about the Bill O'Reillys of the world who go after MTV and claim it teaches children to be sexual? If you are able to see why the argument that TV and movies influence teenagers to be sexual is non-sense then perhaps you can see why the argument that video games influence violence is non-sense also.

The fallacy is confusing the cause for the effect. Someone like Bill O'Reilly will tell us that sexual movies and MTV (cause) makes teenagers have sex more often (effect). Therefore, Bill O'Reilly goes after sexual movies and MTV because he puts the blame on them.

But really it is the other way around. The question that needs to be asked is why does sexuality sell? Why are there hardly any movies or television programs that teach about modesty (not that I think modesty should be taught, fuck modesty, long live promiscuity)? When was the last movie you seen where everyone was dressed in modest clothes? You hardly ever see it. But why? Clearly, because sex sells. But why does it sell?

Why does sex well but modesty does not sell? To understand this you need to understand the workings of the market. The market supplies the demand of the people. If people demand modest movies with no violence and no vulgarity then that is what the movie market will supply. But if people demand movies with sexual themes then that is what the market will supply. The market does not influence anything. The market does not control the people. The people control the market. The desires of the people control what the market supplies.

It is rather the other way around. Teenagers like sex, they like hot looking boy and girls, and special effects. Since that is what they like, the market shifts into those demands. Teenagers do not need to learn sex from movies or television or anywhere else. Sex is innately evolved into people. People are nothing but sexual machines. Especially teenagers. Teens are obsessed about sex. How many times does a teenage boy masturbate in a single day, like 5 times? As opposed to a male adult who would do it like once or one time per two days.

Teenagers are sexual by their natures so they like MTV, they like movies with sexual themes. It is therefore foolish to blame businesses who supply the teenagers with sexuality. Those businesses simply reflect the desires and natures of teenagers.

Violent video games are exactly the same way. It is true that people are not violent nor murderous by nature. But people are cruel creatures. Cruelty and torture run through the blood of most people. People often do not act on cruelty because we usually consider that to be wrong. But cruelty is something part of us as a species. Sometimes the news talks about "inhuman cruelty". Have you ever seen the methods of execution and torture that people have invented over history? People are quite creative and obsessed with cruelty. Cruelty is very much a human passion. There is nothing inhuman about excessive cruelty.

Video game developers simply appeal to the interests of the gamers. Gamers have absolutely no interest in running around in the street and giving out money to homeless people. That will never sell. Video games need to appeal to human desires. The deepest human desires are cruelty and sexuality. That is why so many games are sexual games and so many games are violent games. Violence sells.

Anyone who blames video game developers are also confusing the cause for the effect. The cause is the cruel and sexual natures of people. The effect therefore is the creation of video games that reflect the deepest desires of all people: cruelty and sexuality. Video games are nothing but a reflection of what the human species are.

It is funny to watch people's reactions to video games that illustrate just how irrational they were and motivated by fear. You can read this about the history of violent video games. It is really funny that Death Race from 1976 caused more controversy than any other game. By today's standards Death Race would probably get a PG rating for its terrible graphics. But back in those days it lead to enormous protests. The standard games today that nobody complains about are millions of times more violent and cruel than what you seen in Death Race.

Parents who are against video games need a scapegoat. If their little son, Johnny, get depressed, angry, does badly at school, they need someone to blame. These parents do not want to acknowledge that their irresponsibly parently made Johnny turned out this way. So they need a scapegoat. They need someone to blame for ruining their Johnny. Just like a "family values" group these parents against video games target games so they can shift their responsibility on someone else. Either video games like GTA or MTV, whatever, as long as it is not them. Parents have the greatest influence over their children than anything else in the world, it is about time parents started to accept the responsibility of their actions towards their children.

One final note, you know what really causes violence and makes people fight with one another? Not video games, no violent sports games, but something else that most people think is the most virtuous pursuit in the world. Politics. Politics is the most decision and violent of all activities people engage in. How many violent political protests were there? How many violent revolutions were there? How many political assassinations were at least attempted? How much anger results from politics? A lot. Politics is the ultimate form of violence. Way more violent than any video game ever made. It would seem consistent for anyone who objects to video games to support a complete and total ban on all politics.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Controversial Video Games

There are controversial books, movies, and art. But I think video games have always taken the largest of all the controversy. The reason is that video games allow the player to be in on the controversy, to control the actions that are controversial.

All of these games that were released created a lot of controversy. But there is a something good that I want to say. None of these games ever got banned in the US, not that I know of. Many of them got banned from other countries. Many of them are still banned. For once the US can stand proudly for being the strongest defender of the freedom of speech ahead of all countries in the world.

This will will be in chronological order. Tell me if you think I missed an important game.

1976: Death Race. It is silly to look at this game now and call it "controversial" when compared to all the games which are made now. But this game is the mother of all controversial video games. The graphics are terrible and there is hardly any violence visible, but when this game came out there sure was a lot of controversy. The game is a 2D (obviously, it is 1976 for Science's sake!) racing game where the objective of the game is to drive over gremlins, kill them, and they scream a sound of pain as you drive them over. That is it. When you look at this game today you would say to yourself, "that is it?!". But it did cause a lot of controversy, because people, well, to put it nicely, are stupid and fearful. Protests resulted from this game. There are even reports of people burning arcade consoles that featured this game and throwing them into the street. The message of course was: artifical make believe violence is bad, but real life violence in response to violence is okay.

1982: Custer's Revenge. This is one of the worst games ever made in gaming history. The worst game that I know of is "Big Rigs", but that is a separate discussion. This game is unbelievably terrible. The graphics are horrible. And I think the entire point of releasing this game was to offend as many people as possible, not because it had anything of value. The game is very simple. You are a naked cowboy with an erect penis. You need to get across the screen, by avoiding flying arrows on you, and rape a helpless Indian women. The game also shows the sexual intercourse that is taking place between your charachter and the Indian. Surly, there was no point to this game. It was probably done solely for the reason to offend as many people as possible. It definitely succeeded. It made Indians angry. It especially made feminists angry. Made the parents angry.

1986: Chiller. This game managed to push too far and scare the people of the UK that they permanently banned it. I believe that to this day this game is banned. It makes no sense. It is such an old game with terrible graphics but still banned. The objective of the game is to score points by shooting people, their body parts, and various forms of torture, before the time runs out. I never played it. Sounds pretty stupid to me. But it did cause quite a bit of controversy.

1992: Wolfenstein 3D. Ah, finally we get to an important game. Unlike all the previous games I have mentioned, this game is a revolution. This game is among one of the most important games made in gaming history. It revolutionized first-person shooters (my favorite genre). This game itself is not exactly the greatest game of all time, but it is pretty good. It had great reception when it got released. This game makes me happy, I played this game when I was a little boy. I still remember it. Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter game set in a Nazi castle, called Castle Wolfenstein. The objective of the game is to kill Nazis and to get out of the castle, and to overall fight evil. This is a violent game, as you kill Nazis and their dogs. Wolfenstein 3D is also filled with a lot of Nazi imagery. The main theme for this game is Horst-Wessel Leid, the Nazi national anthem. There are pictures of swastikas and Hitler everywhere. Wolfenstein 3D created such a controversy that it is, to this very day as I write this, permanantely banned in Germany. The Germans banned this game not because it involves killing Germans and Nazis, no no, of course not, they claim it is rather because Nazi imagery is censored in Germany. Because of its deep controversy and violence Wolfenstein 3D has been remade into much more friendly version, which, to but it briefly, sucks. If you want to play this game, play the original, it is pretty good and fun, even though it is almost 20 years old.

1992: Mortal Kombat. Another game that I adore ever since I was a little kid. Played this one as a little boy too. Mortal Kombat is a revolutionary and important game. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are the first fighting games developed that influenced the rest of the genre. Unlike Street Fighter which featured more anime looking (it was a Japanese game after all) fighting, Mortal Kombat featured realistic, bloody and gory fighting. There was a lot of blood in Mortal Kombat. Furthermore, you were able to kill your opponent in a gory manner. You can rip off the head of your opponent, for example, with the spine still attached. Or you could have punched so hard into the chest of your opponent that you broke the rib cage and got to the heart, then you would rip out the beating heart watching your enemy fall to death. This game was so controversial that the US established a rating system for games because of Mortal Kombat.

1993. DooM. This game is unbelievable. Another game I played as a little kid. But this game is really spectacular. There are some people who go so far and call this the greatest game of all time. I would not exaggerate its greatness that much, I would definitely put it on the top 10 list of all games, perhaps even on the top 5 list of all games, but not #1. DooM was influenced by Wolfenstein 3D. Whereas, Wolfenstein was a very plain game, DooM expanded on the concept of Wolfenstein and created a more realistic environment of Hell. DooM is a bloody and gory game. Which is what made is so controversial. Not only did you shoot your enemies to death. You were able to blow them up, into pieces, with a rocket launcher, or an explosion. You also had the ability to saw through your enemies using a chainsaw. DooM was also set in Hell. There was a lot of Satanism references in this game, which even further added to the controversy. Though by today's standards the graphics are really bad and it is hard to see exactly what is so controversial. But for its time it was highly controversial.

1996. Duke Nukem 3D. Influenced by both DooM and Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3D expanded the first-person genre. Duke Nukem had already inherited the violence and the gore that was passed on from DooM and Wolfenstein. But in addition, and what most likely made this game controversial, was its sexual references. Your main charachter, Duke Nukem, found himself seeing some nude girls or some videos of dancing girls within the game. Duke Nukem pushed on the whole controversial video game movement by combining sexuality with violence. This is a pretty awesome game too.

1997. Carmaggeddon. Is this the game that influenced the notorious Grand Theft Auto series? Perhaps, we will never know. The game is a racing game, with a car, in where the objective is to drive over civilians in the streets. You kill innocent people in the game by driving over them. The game does certainly sound stupid, but it had great reception with great reviews for its time. Violence in video games was now mainstream in gaming culture. So there was little complaint about the violence. Carmaggeddon pushed the controversy put using innocent civilians. So it was not just violence, but violence against the innocent.

1997. Postal. This game sucks. It is a piece of garbage. I think that just like Custer's Revenge the entire point of Postal was to offended as many people as possible. There is no objective in this game. It is just a running around on a rampage game in first-person mode and killing people. You can shoot them or you can cut them up into pieces. Once they are dead you can mutilate their bodies some more. Or if you prefer you can light them on fire. Let us also not forget your powerful ability to urinate on people. You can light people on fire (oh and dogs too), watch them die, then cut them up with a sword, and finish off by urinating on their body parts. You also are able to shock people (with a stun gun) until they urinate themselves, take out a shovel and wack them to death. The game also has stereotypes about different kinds of people, for example, gays are shown to be these really weak men. And other kinds of people you kill have their own stereotypes. It is not hard to make a game that is controversial. What is hard is to make a game that is great and controversial at the same time. What surprises me is how this game got an extension to it as Postal 2 and even more surprising Postal 3 is coming out soon, I guess people really enjoy these kind of mindless rampages.

2001. Grand Theft Auto 3. It is impossible to talk about video game controversy without ever mentioning Grand Theft Auto. Every single GTA game brought about controversy, the first two much less because they were simple graphic 2D games. But all of them brought controversy, especially the third one. In GTA 3 you play as an escaped convict. You get yourself a job by working for crime. The game features drugs, sexuality, and violence, especially violence against the law. This was part of the big controversy. War games at least make you play as the "good" guys. But in GTA you play as the "bad" guy. You kill people for money, you rob banks, you get involved in drug wars, and with prostitutes. Parents got really angry with this game believing it is teaching their children all of these terrible values. My favorite part of GTA 3 was that you can hire yourself a prostitute to increase your health, as you fuck her and pay her money, you can beat her up with a baseball bat, kill her, and then rob her of the money you just paid her. Unlike other bad controversial games, GTA was revolutionary, this game revolutionized the open-ended environment that you found in this game. This was a fantastic game with great story line. One of the great games in all gaming history.

2002. BMX XXX. This game sucks. As the title suggests this is a sexual game with bikes. And that is exactly what it is. It is a biking racing game that featured naked girls, strippers, and unlocked videos of dancing girls. There was nothing violent in the game but the sexuality made the game very controversial. The funny thing is that in Europe this game was not so controversial. Europeans are not so worried about sex, but they are worried about any sort of violence. Americans are not worried about violence, but they are worried about sex. In Australia this game got banned.

2003. Manhunt. It is hard to gain controversy in violence due to that violence is now everywhere in gaming culture. But Manhunt did it. Manhunt put the player into the role of a serial killer. You play in a third person view of a serial killer. You do not only kill people, but your task is to kill them in gruesome ways. The more gruesome the more points. If you simply shoot an enemy you get little score, but if you strangle them from behind with wire you get more points. Some of the methods of execution are even more cruel and gruesome than that. Manhunt got into a lot of controversy for its increadibly cruel uncensored scenes. This game is banned in New Zealand (illegal to even own this game), banned in Australia, and in Germany. This game had very little controversy in America, though, but this is not surprising. In the UK this game was blamed on the murder of a 14 year old boy by another friend who was claimed to have been obsessed with this game. Manhunt is decent game, but not that good.

2003. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Grand Theft Auto 3 was not done with making parents angry. Rockstar soon released a follow up game which allowed the player even more freedom to destroy the world around them. Vice City continued the same themes of violence, sexuality, prostitution, and drugs, as the third GTA game. It was again targeted by angry parents who complained that this game teaches their kids about crime. Vice City, I would say, was a little better than the third GTA game, but GTA 3 had a better story. GTA Vice City is also set in a ScarFace setting. If you ever watched the really controversial movie of its time, ScarFace, you would immediately be able to realize that the plot and settings in Vice City exactly resemble the same plot and settings in ScarFace.

2005. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Grand Theft Auto does it again. Another continuation of the same old crime elements of violence, drugs, sex, and prostitution. But San Andreas was more controversial than all other Grand Theft Auto games. Because in San Andreas there was a sex scene in where you recieve a blow job from a girl, Oh my science! To be fair the controversy was not whether this game should be banned or not, but the controversy was whether such a game can be sold to minors for showing a sex scene. The US House of Representatives, on C-SPAN, devoted their time in discussing this game. I am not joking. I once was watching C-SPAN and I saw the House discussing this game. I guess the economy is not important, I guess the war is not important, I guess the destruction of freedoms is not important, all what is important is whether or not San Andreas can be sold to minors. I never played San Andreas so I cannot say how it compares to GTA 3 or Vice City, though the reviews says it is about of the same quality, just a little less better - in other words, really good.

2007. BioShock. To be fair I never played BioShock. But I really want to. BioShock seems to be one of those really deep video games. BioShock is inspired by Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged". The game is set in a city, the Rapture, which is free from government oppresion and the oppresion of religion. Indeed, the opening entrance title in the city reads, "No Gods. No Kings. Only Man". Everyone in Rapture is able to rise to his greatest heights without worrying about smashing his competitors. Here is the opening speech of the game. This game is phenomenal. Its MetaCritic rating is at 96 (out of 100). It has among the highest rating of any video game, just behind Half Life, Half Life 2, Orange Box, and GTA 4. The only controversy within this game was its use of little girls. To advance your charachter you need to harvest little children. Clearly, the controversy was the use of children in a negative setting. But this controvesy never really escalated.

2007. Manhunt 2. When Manhunt 2 came out you could already sense that this game was going to be controversial by just considering the controversy the first one caused. Manhunt 2 made torture more realistic by allowing the player to use this controller as if he was moving his arm. So if you cut someone up with a buzzsaw you need to move your control in the direction you would like to saw your victim. Manhunt 2 simply extended the torture and cruelty of the first Manhunt, it never got that much attention as the first one did. The game itself was nothing great at all. It has mixed reviews, most of which give it a pretty bad score.

2008. Grand Theft Auto 4. Seriously what is it with Grand Theft Auto games? Every time a new one comes out it gains a lot of controversy. That is the one unchanging law about Grand Theft Auto games, there is always some controversy. I remember when I used to watch YouTube discussions back in 2008 there were a lot of references to GTA. I seen Christians going after this game and saying how terrible it is, I seen atheists defending this game as free speech, with the funny part of no one actually playing it. It is amazing just how much controversy this game has caused. Perhaps even more controversy than the first controversial game, Death Race. There is even an entire Wikipedia article all devoted to the controversies of this game. Hillary Clinton, the anti-freedom loving fascist, went after this game. The council of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), or which I like to call, "mothers who have way too much time on their hands" went after this game because you can drive under the influence of alchohol in this game. There are stories within the US and UK of people who terrorized people who brought this game, or stores which sold this game. Which tells us the great message: it is wrong to play artifical make believe games of violence, but violence in real life is perfectly alright. In New York City (which seems to be the location of a GTA 4) there were blames of putting crimes on this game as an inspiration. GTA 4 got banned in Thailand because of a story of a kid who killed someone for money to play this game. And not let us forget sexuality in GTA, they featured a nude male in this game, which I guess did not make that many people angry because feminists are only angry with naked women, not men.

2009. Left 4 Dead 2. It is funny how Left 4 Dead, a game where you play with four teammates and fight a zombie infestation never got this sort of controversy, but the follow up game did. This game is very violent and graphic. But there was other sort of controversies sorrounding it also. In the UK the cover for the game was required to change because the peace symbol, for some reason, is considered to be offensive for English, what a bunch of pussies. Not a surprise that this game got banned in Germany, as Germany now has a big giant hard-on to ban any violent game that shows severed human body parts. This game got banned in Australia too for its extreme violence. The game was also called racist because it showed some black zombies, oh no. Showing all white zombies, that is okay, that is alright, but the moment a black zombie is used, oh my Science, no, no, the racism is unbearable.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Rather be Hated than Lonely

Loneliness is the first thing that God's eye named, not good. The soul fears emptiness so much that it will rather be hated, despised, and have enemies than remain empty, without anyone. A lonely man has no one to share anything with. At least one that is despised by his enemies can share his thoughts with them. His thoughts are not alone, but they are shared. He knows that there are others who learned of his thoughts. They may hate him, but at least he knows there are others with whom he shared a portion his soul. Loneliness is the only feeling that can never be shared with another. What horror. Loneliness is the dominant feeling of life, it is our main feeling. We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Everything else that we do in life that involve other people, are only illusions, only distractions from the fact that we are alone. Friendship is only an illusion, that for a moment, we are not alone. Those who cannot find those that like them, will seek out after those who hate them. Because the horror of a vacuum is too much. We would rather have enemies that hate us than not have anyone at all.

Friday, January 21, 2011

The Myth of Equality

The prevailing view of American and European countries is that of equality. There are many different people in the world, from different nationalities, different races, different genders, different sexes, and so forth, and they are all equal. The view is that any job a man can do a woman can do just as well, anything a black person can do a white person can do just as well. Thus, people say that sex, race, gender, are all irrelevant in determining the differences in people, rather these are simply social constructs that people invented and hence falsely believe in the difference between people. Therefore, if everything was perfectly kept equal, there should be perfect (or nearly perfect) equality between all kinds of people in the world. In this equalized world model there would be no wage gaps between men and women, blacks and whites, Mexicans and Asians, and so forth. There also would be no disproportionate amount of races and sexes in all jobs. But there are wage gaps and there is a disproportion in all jobs. Hence, the conclusion is that there is discrimination in the world that is preventing this equality from taking place. If there was no racism or sexism or discrimination in the world then the world will set to its natural equilibrium state with no wage gaps and the same proportions in all employments as in the total population. Thus, we must conclude there is a lot of racism and sexism in the world.

This argument is a valid argument, but it is not a sound argument. The premise on which this entire argument is founded, equality, has never been justified. Never in my life have I ever heard anyone give an argument in favor of equality. I have heard people argue for equality, but they argued for equality as a prescriptive statement, that is, that we should treat one another the same way, and I agree. But this notion of equality that we are discussing here is different, it is a descriptive statement, it is making the statement that differences between people are simply social constructs. This is the view I heard many times in college. But never have I heard a vindication of this view. It is a given that I must accept. And I refuse to accept it.

Most people, sadly, come to believe ideas for entirely wrong reasons. Beliefs should be formed around rationality, empiricism, skepticism, philosophy, and science. But most beliefs are formed as the result of superstition, authority, appeal, majority, fear, tradition, and indoctrination. The myth of equality has been accepted by people as a result of indoctrination and appeal. Originally, the myth of equality was stated as a view that had a lot of appeal to people. It is appealing and comforting to believe that the world is fair, just, and equal in every way and that it is people who perverted this equality with their sexism and racism. This is how the myth of equality became so popular. Not as a result of rationality but simply because it appeals to so many people, this version of the world is so much more comforting to believe in. Once this view gained a lot of popularity it spread down to the next generations through indoctrination. Either from their parents, or their teachers, or their professors, whoever it was who indoctrinated these students. And now we live in a world where such a falsehood is not only a prevailing view but a major view in much of public policy around us.

But I do not accept this view and openly say my strong disagreement with it. I often find myself being accused for being a racist, a sexist, and homophobic for daring to suggest inequality as the natural state of the world. I am used to this at this point, it does not bother me. Other people do challenge me for saying that. They tell me to prove that they are wrong. And to show that the world is not equal.

Who needs to prove himself? Is it me who disbelieves in equality? Or is it the one who says that equality is true? The ones who preach equality never defend themselves. They say it as if it is a given. But I would like to see justification for that view. Once I am given a justification then I can be asked for my disagreement and where I find flaw. But before such a justification can be given I cannot be demanded to give me justification first.

Nature is not fair and equal, nature is brutal and unfair. Entire solar systems can exist for billions of years and then be destroyed in a matter of hours by a passing black hole. Solar systems that possibly had sustaining intelligent life on them. Natural selection only cares for struggle and competition, not fairness nor equality. Why then can we possibly believe that humans, who evolved from nature, evolved in equality, rather than evolved in a brutal struggle and in cruelty? The notion of equality is simply not compatible with the known world.

Even if one was to propose a God who instead superseded in the development of life, the problem of equality is still not addressed. In most of the world religions God does not believe in equality. Take Judaism for example. Judaism teaches that men and women are different. They have different roles in life, Judaism might say that God loves them just as much, but they are made for different roles, that is, they are unequal to one another. Equal in their love to God, but unequal in their tasks in life.

The liberal versions of Judaism which insist that not only does God love men and women just as much but he is okay with them having the same role, such as women Rabbi's, run into the obvious problem of assuming a God exists in the first place. A position that has no evidence whatsoever.

It is therefore foolish to believe in equality if the natural world itself does not care for equality. It would truly be miraculous if it turned that every kind of race and sex in the world turned out being equal despite the inequality of nature. This could be true, I highly doubt it, but it may in fact turn out being true. The only way to justify such a grand proposition would be to test the world around us to whether or not it confirms this equality theory. But we cannot test such a theory because the world is filled with inequality almost everywhere. Of course, the proponents of equality will insist these inequalities are the result of discrimination. But if they use such an argument then their reasoning is circular. The argument of theirs foolishly becomes: equality exists but we cannot test it because of inequality, but inequality exists because of discrimination, and discrimination must exist because of equality in the first place. Clearly, this is a circular argument.

In absence of any kind of rationality in favor of equality it is therefore reasonable to reject equality as a myth.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent




I know it is late to review a video game that was released by October 2010 in January 2011, but it is not too late. I got this game by the end of December and finished it about 2-3 weeks ago.

I have never been a fan of horror games or horror movies. I do not know why, but the horror never scares me. I guess it is because I realize that I am watching a movie or playing a game so that I have nothing to be afraid of. Furthermore, if I die (in the game) all I have to do is load a save. The general rule of gaming is to save a lot, and that is what I often do. So when there are dangerous scenes in the game that I should be concerned about, I am just not too concerned about, because I know that if I die all I have to do is load a save and replay that scene. It is for this reason that horror never scared me.

Well, actually there was one movie that I found disturbing. I still have no idea what was up with that. That was "Eyes Wide Shut". I turn on this movie on TV once and I see a bunch of naked people walking around with masks of bulls. What the fuck? That was really scary because it made no sense whatsoever. But other than that I never seen any movies that bothered me or even made me disturbed.

Online I heard about Amnesia and how it is the most horrifying game made in the past 5 years. Some even called it to be the most horrifying game of all time. The reviews also gave very positive reviews of this game. So I figured I should play the game to see what it is about.

Is the game scary as people say? Well, I did not really find it scary. But as I said I seem not to be bothered when playing video games or watching movies. Asking me to review a horror game is like asking a color blind person to review a picture of a rainbow.

There were instances in the game when I said to myself "oh great, do I really have to venture down into there?", in particular with the Storage room and the Prison cells. I was not afraid to play, but there was a feeling of not wanting to be there. I also had this feeling in the Choir. Which is a huge room (not even a room, it is outside) with red fog surrounding you, I had no idea where I was going. And I knew there were enemies around me. It was not a pleasant feeling to be in the Choir, though the rooms that you explore in the Choir are cool. When I finally got everything in the Choir and I found the exit door out of there - which was all luck, since I had no idea where I was going, I just walked and walked until I found it - I was relieved to never have to go into that place again.




Amnesia does successfully create a survival horror game. In Amnesia you have no weapons whatsoever. Your character, Daniel, is completely defenseless. To create the feeling of "you" the game is played entirely in first-person mode. There is an instance in the game when Daniel (you) finds a crowbar. I found this part pretty funny because I thought to myself, "if this was not Daniel, but Gordon Freeman, he would have used the crowbar to hack the enemies to death".

Most games that call themselves "survival horror" fail at making the game about survival. Take F.E.A.R. for example. There is no feeling of survival in the game at all. If you have a rocket launcher, an assault cannon, and are covered in body armor, what exactly can you be afraid of? Not to mention your character in F.E.A.R. has nearly perfect reflexes.

Amnesia is different. In Amnesia you have no method of defense at all. You are entirely helpless. And you do feel helpless. This is what a survival horror game is supposed to be about. Amnesia is not the first game to implement a no-weapon system. Fatal Frame (which to be fair I never played, but it is regarded as a masterpiece of horror gaming) has preceeded Amnesia many years prior to doing that. Having no weapons was definitely the right decision for a game such as Amnesia.

Amnesia is therefore not an action game. It is an adventure puzzle solving game. You explore the castle (the game is set in a castle which is falling apart) and solve problems to move on in the storyline. The puzzles are generally easy, but at least their solutions make sense, unlike in other puzzle solving games where the solutions are really messed up. But there is no action. You occasionally have to hide or run from monsters to avoid being killed. Most of the time there is no threat to you at all, there is just a feeling of suspense that something is about to kill you.

Amnesia also added an insanity meter. Not only do you have to watch out after your health you also need to pay attention to your insanity levels. If Daniel experiences a lot of paranormal events, or is captured in darkness, or is being chased by monstrosities, he will become insane. This seems to be some sort of new system that I never seen before added to a video game.

The story is good but not excellent. The game begins with Daniel waking up in the middle of a castle not remembering anything. He only knows, after reading a note he wrote to himself, that he made himself forget the past for reasons that will become clear to him. As you play the game you discover the events that led up to Daniel ending up in the castle and why he made himself forget the past. The story is fantasy-based, a little. So if you not a fan of those kinds of stories then you might not like this one too much. I think the developers of Amnesia could have made an excellent story if they worked a little bit harder on it, they did have a good idea on the storyline, and I just wished they did a better job.




I will give my review for this game based on five factors: (i) graphics and sound , (ii) story, (iii) gameplay, (iv) value , (v) revolutionary. Let me explain what I mean by each one. Each one will be rated out of 10 and then the final score of the game will be the average of the five scores.

I am one of those people who do not care about graphics. Graphics do not make a good game. They never did and they never will. I know a lot of amateur reviewers always like to talk about a game's graphics, but that is pointless. You can have a masterpiece of gaming with sucky graphics and you can have a piece of garbage with awesome graphics. Graphics do not make a good game, graphics can only enhance a game that is already good to be even more enjoyable to play. But since a lot of people do seem to care about graphics I will include graphics in my review, together with how good the sound is. In games there are only two senses, graphics and sound. So (i) will be based on how good the game appeals to your gaming senses. I will give it a 10/10. The sound is great and the graphics are good. Especially the lighting. The interplay of dark and light areas is very important in Amnesia, they do create a good effect of bright streaks of light entering into dark rooms quite well.

Story (ii) should be self-explanatory. Amnesia is a story-based game so it should be judged by how well it tells and develops its story. Amnesia begins with no story at all and you discover the entire story as you keep on playing the game. Not excellent but good. I give the story 9/10, I did really like the Amnesia aspect, and how you do not remember anything.

Gameplay (iii) refers to how fun the game is to play, how friendly are the controls, how friendly is the interface. The developers of Amnesia really put in a lot of care into this one. When you load Amnesia they ask you to adjust your gamma settings to achieve the correct balance on light/dark areas with the pictures that they show you. There is no difficulty settings in Amnesia, but why should there be? It is not an action game. Amnesia has no in game save option. Well it does, but there is no quicksave. You need to save and then exit the game, only again to load up the game. If you are someone who likes to save often then this will be a hassle. But I guess the developers of Amnesia felt that you feel more helpless if you have no quicksave option. One more thing about the game saving system. Amnesia does not let you name your saves, nor delete them. It just collects all of them with a date and location. I find this to be a problem. It is really sad how well they put so much work into the game and messed up with saving a game, which should be the easiest part to make in a game. That is why I give it a 9/10 instead of a perfect score.

Value (iv), refers to how much you get out of this game. Amnesia is not a long game. It is a medium length game, I completed it over a course of a week by playing a little bit everyday, I spend like 11 hours beating it. You can replay the game again for the second time if you are interested, but since you already know the story you will not gain much out of it. Furthermore, the game is entirely scripted. Whenever a monster appears, it is not spontaneous (as in first-person shooters) but a scripted event that the game was designed to show. So everything you seen before you will see again. Obviously a game like Amnesia has no multiplayer option. For this reason I will give it a 7/10.

Revolutionary (v), refers to how much of an impact does this game have on the art of gaming. I would say a lot. Amnesia is really a unique game that moves away from excessive action towards a more adventure-like and story feature. It does give a very good name for survival horror. Hopefully, there will be new games influenced by the elements of Amnesia. I think it is fair to give it 10/10.

The average of 10,10,9,9,7 is 9. Which is my final rating 9/10 for Amnesia. It is a game I highly recommend. Amnesia is something you should not forget to buy.

I do want to say one last thing. If you are into dark gaming, and by dark I do not mean dark as in dark lighting, but by dark story. As in death, horror, fear, pain, suffering, that kind of stuff, then this is a game for you. Amnesia is extremely dark. I will not give away the story here but it is based upon death, mutilation, dead corpses, suffering, execution, and torture. This is something you discover near the ending of the game. This extreme darkness was my favorite part of the game.


Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Where Laws Come From

There are different kinds of laws, there are mathematical laws, there are naturalistic laws (science), but the kinds of laws that I will be speaking about here are human made laws restricting interaction and what people can do (or cannot do). The Arizona shooting story has made me realize the main source of the formation of laws - irrationality and fear.

See the common understanding of how a law comes into place is that an intelligent group of people discuss among themselves the proper laws that need to be put into place and they legislate those laws into place with a lot of care. Laws are developed because they are necessary. A function of the state is to create laws based on empiricism and rationality so that it will result for the best of everyone living under the state.

This is what most people think of laws. I used to view laws in the same manner too. I imagined that all these laws in the books that are now in place have been put into place because of necessity, and furthermore they were developed based on a lot of thought and rationality.

But this is not how most laws come into being. Most laws are made for utterly foolish reasons, often motivated by the passions and by fear. Some laws are bribes some people pay to others so that they can benefit from this law. I am sure you can find examples of laws that were based on rationality and a well-thought out argument, but most of them are not. I will demonstrate this proposition by observing the reaction to Arizona shooting and past history of law making.

You need to keep in mind that statism is not usually a respectable political philosophy (if it can even be called a "philosophy", more like barbarism to me, "obey or die"). Most statists and arguments in favor of statism that you will come across are motivated by fear. More specifically, the fear of the unknown, you can read more about what I wrote in the past here. Statists are fearful to live in an uncalculated world so they would prefer to deceive themselves that a calculatable world is possible, in order to live with less such fear. Statists also run into the problem of providing an ex-post facto justification of their beliefs (for an exaplation of what I mean by this you can read this). Statism very rarely results from a thought out philosophy that builts upon certain concepts and principles. Instead, statism comes up with justification after it claims itself to be a legitimate institution. This is why I say that your common statist is motivated by fear, his passions, and irrationality. You can find some statist political philosophers that were able to transcend this, I guess you can say Karl Marx, but those are rare, and exceptionally rare within the statist population.

There are two laws that got passed or are going to be passed or at least considered to be passed in response to the Arizona shooting that will illustrate how fear, passions and irrationality drives the law making behind statism. I will begin with the Westboro Baptist Church. This Church got banned from attending the funeral of the girl victim of the shooting. To be fair the law has not banned the speech of the Church, it only put a restriction on how far, and when, they must be distanced from the funeral. But the intend of this law is clear, to drive away the Westboro Baptist Church as far away from the funeral service. Arizona called this an "emergency law". Why all of the sudden did this law get passed? Westboro Baptist Church has been protesting funerals of many different people already. Why suddenly is there an "emergency" that this law needs to get passed? All the other protests were not "emergencies"? It seems to be rather obvious that because this is a funeral of a kid people got a lot more driven by their passions. You know how irrational people are around children, even think they are better than other human beings (which is why the news will always say "30 people were killed including 5 children", as if this matters, all human life is supposed to be equal, no need to put emphasis on children). If restricting the Westboro Baptist Church in this manner is so important why has it never been done before? Because the people were not as motivated by as much passions. The fact that this was a kid changed the normal response people would have otherwise. The people of Arizona did not work out well thought-out arguments for or against this law. Instead, they knew the Westboro Church might be coming so they got angered by the thought that they might come. This is how this law got inspired. Not by rationality, but by the chaos of passions within the people of Arizona. There was nothing "necessary" about it, nor was there any kind of "emergency", that was rather the excuse people came up with to support a law for which they done so directly out of their passions.

The second law in response to the shooting was more gun control. I am not sure if there was a new law signed or not (obviously, I am not up with the news as you can see) but some new gun regulation was proposed. Whenever a shooting takes place you can always be sure there will be gun control nuts fighting against gun nuts (I am a gun nut myself). But in this case the gun control nuts are irrational and driven by fear. As I say numerous times, statism is driven by fear. The gun control nuts are frightened that if no control is put into place then there will be chaos in the streets, babies will be shot, and be an all out war between all gun owners. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating, but there are people who do believe in what I just said, not all gun control nuts are that scared. But, I have came across these people in my life that do hold this parodied view of what gun ownership will imply (usually Europeans who support a complete ban on guns). Regulations are very funny to me. One hundred years ago there might have been 50 pages of regulations (in the abstract, not referring to any specific regulation, just as an illustration of a point I am trying to say). In 2000 there were 30,000 pages of regulations and by 2008 there were 35,000 pages of regulations. And somehow problems still happen. How foolish must someone possibly be to suggest another 1,000 pages of new regulations? Why should we expect this time to prove an exception if all the past history shows otherwise? This is why regulations make me laugh, it really is insanity to keep on regulating and regulating and somehow never being able to achieve what they wanted. Gun control is no different. The gun control nuts see one bad shooting, in response, driven by their fear, they scream for more regulations, foolishly ignoring all past regulation history, and thinking that this time the regulations will prove to be an exception.

It is in human nature to look at the bad and completely overlook the good. When one bad gun shooting happens it is natural for people to start blaming guns for this shooting. Sadly, the gun control nuts are not being rational here if they only considered the number of good people. There were 50 million gun owners yesterday who did not kill anyone, or anyone in the past week. It is completely irrational to pick one bad case of a shooting and compare it to millions of good people who were responsible and did nothing wrong.

There is no gun shooting crisis in the US when you make this numerical comparison. And for that matter there is no airplane accident crisis anywhere in the world. Millions of people fly on the airplanes everyday and nothing wrong happens. There are a few exceptional cases of people dying in airplane accidents, but those are just that, exceptions. They are far far from the norm. People who are afraid of flying on airplanes are not coming to this conclusion because of rationality but because of fear. They are afraid of flying and so they let a few tragic airplane stories scare them. What is funny is that not so many people are afraid of driving cars. But cars are responsible for way more deaths than airplanes and guns. Your chances to die in a car accident is much higher than to die by being shot or an airline accident. However, since the car is very common and it is on the ground people are not driven by fear, they are a bit more rational, and say "I will take my chances, I am a safe driver".

The gun control nuts who use this Arizona shooting are therefore driven by fear. It is not a surprise why this occurred directly after the shooting. Before the shooting people were not as fearful of guns. But the moment they heard a bad story they get captured by fear and abandoned their rationality for a false promise of security that will alleviate their fears.

Perhaps you are one of the people who do support gun control. Sure you can consider this position. And you might even have well-thought out reasons for your position. However, this is all irrelevant. All what I am writing here is not pro gun vs anti gun, instead I am showing how fear, not rationality, was a response for a law.

This fear driven anti-rationality approach to laws has always existed. I will give some examples of past history how fear was used to motivate newer laws, exactly as they are being used today. There was a time when the US had no consumer protection agency (its official name is the Consumer Product Safety Commission). According to Milton Friedman (you can watch the full video here) the push towards the CPSC resulted from a car that was suspected to have been unsafe to drive. The people were terrified. They said that if the wise overlords of the state do not intervene in their satefy then they might be killed by unsafe vehicles, or even products. People said you cannot trust the market for satefy. And so the people were motivated to support an agency like the CPSC not because or any kind of rationality on the matter but rather because they were fearful and scared of what will happen if a CPSC would not exist. The funny and sad ending to the story is that by satefy standards this condemned car was considered to be safe. Talk about fear.

We can go past 2011, past 1972 (CPSC), all the way to 1906, the FDA. It is hard to find people today who agree that the FDA needs to be abolished. The common argument that I hear in defense of the FDA is, "you greedy psychopath who only cares about money, if the market was so perfect and wonderful as you say then why would the FDA come into being, the fact that it exists is proof that it is necessary". No, I disagree, the fact that a law exists does not make it necessary. In the middle-east homosexuals are stoned to death, is this necessary? During the medieval ages witches were burned, was this necessary? In Uganda, a democratic government, a new law has been passed to imprison or kill homosexuals, is this law necessary? The Ugandians certainly claim it is "necessary". How do I know, because I saw the interview with the president of Uganda, or whoever the fuck he is, who said this view. The silly Ugandians might see it as necessary, but we do not. Hence, let me repeat what I said, the fact that a law exists does not make it necessary. Indeed, my three previous examples demonstrate that fear is the driving force in the formation of these laws, not rationality. The people did not sit around a table and in a reasonable manner develop their thoughts on these subjects, instead they were motivated by fear which drove to the formation of these laws.


What inspired the FDA? Was it really true that food and drugs was poisoning people all the time that laws were necessary to prevent this from happening? Not really. The push towards the FDA was inspired by fear-mongers who greatly exaggerated any problems that existed without the FDA. Perhaps, the most influential fear-monger was Upton Sinclair. I remember a brief mention of "The Jungle", in high-school history, about how this book was a criticism towards the free market system of food and drugs. I have to admit that I have never read this book, nor do I plan to. But from reading what it is about online I can form my review of this book. This book is a fear-monger text, nothing more to that. Why do I say this? Well, consider that "The Jungle" is not a non-fiction book. That is right, "The Jungle" is a fiction book. It is a novel. It is not intended to be a researched book on the quality and standards of food in the market, rather it is a novel about immigrants who come to America. Furthermore, the book does not even focus on the lack of food regulations so much. This book was intended to be a socialist book, Upton Sinclair spends more time discussing wage slavery, than what the book became known for - lack of food regulations. Upton Sinclair, and similar people like him, were successful in driving people into fear. So it is no exaggeration to call "The Jungle" as a book of propaganda. Genuine socialists would have it in their best interest to distance themselves from this guy as much as possible. As I said numerous times before, the food regulations laws were not put into place because of a well-thought out position that was formed by the pro-regulators, instead the laws were a reaction to the fear driven outrage of the public.


I am not suggesting that people who support the FDA are irrational and foolish. It is possible to be reasonable and support the FDA. I am saying something diffrent: if you believe that the FDA going away will lead to chaos of people dying in the streets because of lack of regulations, then you are driven by fear, and yes, you are being foolish in that. If you do support the FDA then your argument needs to be that the FDA leads to a higher quality of satefy which is desirable and something which the free market cannot give itself. Instead, of creating a fantasy chaos world of where people are dying non-stop. This chaotic doomsday scenario is sadly portrayed by a lot of people I speak with when I tell them my anti-FDA views. Which once again shows that their support of these such laws is out of fear.


Not all laws are reactions to fear mongering. What I discussed above does not apply to all laws. Some laws are bribed into place. The common term for that is "lobbying", but I hate political euphemisms. Euphemisms hide the true meaning of words, so I would from now on refer to this as "bribery". What is even more surprising is that bribery for new laws is often done under the name of "regulations" or "protection".

There is this myth out there that businesses hate regulators. To explain why this is a myth let me first explain how the masses view the job of regulators. In explaining how people view regulators I will use the terms of the masses, these are not my own terms that I use, but I will stick to what they say.

The masses believe that there are two conflicting interests. The business interests and the public interests. The business interests are all in it for themselves, the business interests are only to make money. The public interests are justice, fairness, equality, support, protection, and other noble causes. The business interests have no interest in any of the public interests because they are anti-profit. If someone is too far to the right then he is pro-business interests, and if someone is too far to the left then he is only pro-public interests. If you move too far to the right then you are a laissez-faire capitalist and you only care about business interests with no concern for the public at all. You only care about making money. But laissez-faire capitalism is unjust, it is brutal, it is harsh. The opposite point of view is moving too far to the left, that would make you a communist/socialist. That is when you entirely reject business interests and only think about the public interests. Though this is a more noble cause it does not work. Because as harsh as business interests are they are important to keep running the economy. So it not possible to have a well-functioning economy without any sort of business interests. It is also not a good idea to only go towards the side of the business interests because that will create the brutal laissez-faire world where everyone is trying to out compete his fellow man. So there needs to be a balance between business interests and public interests, a balance between capitalism and socialism, so that there is a well functioning economy without the brutal competative struggle for money. The free market is for the business interests to make money and thereby run the economy. While the government is for the people, to make sure that the interests of the public are satisfied. Regulations are government controls on the market to make sure the country does not only work in the favor of business interests, but also public interests. The job of regulators is to put controls on the market and make sure the businesses are not in it only for themselves with no regard for the people around them.

This is the prevailing view of what the function of a government is today. Both by liberals and conservatives, conservatives happen to be a bit more skeptical about the government and its efficiencies. It is understandable then that if someone holds this view of government why someone would often support government intervention (the degree to how much is what separates liberals and conservatives).

This is a myth that does need to be abandoned, because it is very wrong. The government is not an entity that sits on high in a temple of pure justice and divinity with the ability to judge the world beneath them. It has its own interests too, which include money and profit, in a way it is a business too. And its interests can be bought by the wealthy through bribery. I know that certain politicians get on stage and say, "this government is by the people, for the people, and it will be such, no more government for the powerful, no more government for the well-connected, this time for the people!". Of course they say that, they give a message of hope, but like all other promises that politicians say it will once again turn out being a false promise. Barack talked the same game when he was a politician, but his promises and hopes were again false promises and false hopes. If people are being fed millions of dollars under the table it is foolish to suggest that the bribed will refuse the bribes. Why should the government be any different, unless, you believe they have some magical moral powers to prevent this from happening.

Now let me get specific with what I mean. A large business might support higher taxes on itself if it means its forgein competitors will be hit with an even larger tariff. Yes, they are now paying more taxes, but their competitors are paying even more. A business may support strict licensing of its workers if most of their workers are already licensed. This will protect this business from present and future competitors who need to meet these licensing procedures. Or consider, for instance, the catalytic converter that was installed on US cars. The US car making companies supported a regulation requiring all cars to have a catalytic converter, which was said to be more safe, because it meant that Japanese competitors will have a tougher time getting past the regulations since they did not install catalytic converters. These are just a few examples, there is an entire myriad of such examples all the way from healthcare, tobacco, and environmental regulation. I will post a video that mentions a few more real examples of these favorable business regulations, here.

Not only do such regulations act in the interests of the businesses some of them have been used to establish and secure monopolies. It is often said that government is the enemy of monopolies, that is what we learn in schools. However, the same kinds of bribery that has been used to protect businesses has been used to secure monopolies , again contrary to what we have been taught and what most of us believe.

There is this funny cartoon that I seen. It is cartoon making fun of libertarians by saying they are just anarchists for the rich, here. This cartoon would have a point except that this cartoon assumes the common myth that government is against the rich and against business interests. It is true that libertarians are not anti-business, but they are neither pro-business; so a business that seeks to gain protections or monopolistic power is much more likely to vote for Republicans than for libertarians.

I am not saying that all laws that ever get passed get passed either because of fear, irrationality or the promotion of business interests. You can find laws that have been passed in the public's interests, and you can find reasonable laws too. There is no conspiraciy of the Illumaniti ruled by wealthy capitalists and Jews who control the government. The government is not some conscious entity. Instead the government is up for grabs, and the rich just have more money, and so an easier time to grab the power in the government. What I am saying is that a lot of these laws that many of us consider to be sacred and assume that without them society will erupt into chaos and disorder do not achieve this at all. Many of the laws that we assume are there to stabalize the country and economy have rather been put into place out of our fears and irrationalities.

And this returns me back to my main point that I was making in the beginning of this post. Namely, that laws, contrary to popular believe, are not created to keep society in check and to prevent chaos. Instead, these very same laws that we consider to be so vital come into place out of fear and sometimes even greed.