Skeptic but Jewish

Copyright Destroys Free Speech

2011-03-31T22:48:00.014-04:00

Intellectual Property is not something I think about much as it is one of those topics that does not interest me. But I did have a slightly new idea against copyright laws that I never heard anyone use before.

People usually say that copyright protects the incentive of businesses to innovate more and since their innovation is important their needs to be intellectual property laws that prohibit other people from using the works of someone else.

However, as with almost everything, this goal (a benefit) to protect innovation comes at a cost. There is a cost imposed upon us with intellectual property in place. Not just the cost of having to pay more, rather than just downloading stuff, but a much more fundamental cost, a non-monetary cost. The internet is at the risk of more control whenever there is an intellectual monopoly created. Because now it means that websites can be shut down for copyright violations.

If a website is illegally posting content which is copyrighted then it can be shut down by the state. And I understand that this is not a free speech violation, because the website is not being shut down for what it said but for completely different violations. However, it is still problematic. Consider a website which features an open discussion for ideas, but it ran into copyright issues as some of the members posted copyrighted material there. This website is now at risk of being shut down or at least controlled.

And this is a problem, as such a law does inadvertently destroy the speech of the internet. What is more important? A free internet where people can post ideas without fear of being shut down, or an internet where people are constantly second guessing themselves if whether or not they crossed over the copyright line?

Over the years these copyright laws are getting worse and the internet is at most risk of being censored for potential copyright violations. I would imagine that most people would agree with me. I am sure people would say that some of these laws are getting out of place. However, they would mostly likely tell you that these laws need to be reformed. I do not buy this. As with almost every law put into place it has grown to exponential sizes of pages of regulations. Convince me that these internet copyright laws are not going to grow like a disease and seriously damage the internet? It is foolish not to assume this will happen. So I would say that the internet needs to be protected against copyright laws even though technically such laws are not violations of free speech.

If you want to support copyright laws then at least support copyright with regard for profit. Leave non-profit, as most places on the internet, alone. That way websites are not at risk of being shut down just because of some trivial copyright violations.

Humans are Repulsive

2011-03-31T22:48:00.010-04:00

Who is the most beautiful person you ever seen? What celebrity or what famous porn actress amazes you with their beauty? But that beauty that you see is only an external beauty, an illusion over what people really are.

How do people look inside? You should watch (or perform if you ever get this chance) an autopsy. Autopsy is such a humbling experience. It is a revelation for any person of how we really look on the inside. Our outside bodies which is only a covering of what we look on the inside. If we remove this cover then we really see how we look like.

We are pathetic meatbags on the inside. Every single one of us. Among the most beautiful people to the most ugly people we are all equally hideous on the inside. Our organs are a horror sight. Blood pouring all around us bones shattering within us. We are all the same.

Civilizations worship the human body for its amazing beauty. But they never consider what the human body really looks like. An ultimate form of repulsion and disgust. And that is how we all end. This is how we die. We can be the most beautiful people in the world but in the end we are blood and worms. In the end we are all a horror sight. We focus on the outside beauty to ignore the repulsion that lies within ourselves. An ultimate reminder of how worthless we are and how terribly unimportant we are in comparison to the universe.

Dick Sucking Morality

2011-03-31T22:48:00.006-04:00

Something been really bothering me. I have asked some people online (as I am a loser with no friends in real life, which is why I write online because other losers get to read me) if I paid them a lot of money in the condition they suck a dick. And like all of them tell me that they will never do that.

Why the fuck not? How stupid can you possibly be? Okay, maybe not money, maybe something else. How about immortality? Or how about a perfect healthy life? Or a perfect happy life? Whatever, some sort of reward for sucking on a dick.

Why the fuck would you not suck on a dick if you have a chance to make yourself so much better off now than you been before? It makes no sense at all. Think about this. If I offered you 100,000 dollars to suck on a cucumber you would do it. You have no sexual attraction to the cucumber but you would still do it. You just stick it in your mouth, suck, and done, finished. Now you are 100,000 dollars richer. That was it. Big deal. For such a trivial action you had an amazing amount of compensation.

You know what I think of you if you tell me, "I will not do it". I think you are retarded. You seriously need to be stupid not to accept such a deal like that. Think about it, a dick in your mouth feels almost like a cucumber in your mouth. All you got to do is shut your eyes and pretend you got a cucumber in your mouth. Finished. It is over. You need to have a terrible intelligence not to accept this.

I call this the "dick sucking morality". So many guys think it is moral to not suck dicks. They think there is something virtuous or profound about refusing to suck a dick for a reward. Virtuous? It is dumb. There is nothing moral in it. I can understand you refusing to kill someone for money because in that case you can at least come up with some sort of argument to why you should not do it. But a dick? Come on. What is wrong with you? What is holding you back?

I will tell you what is holding you back. Morality. The invented concept of morality whose function is to control people. Any amoral rational person will realize that a dick suck is the most efficient means to maximize his utility. You are being controlled by an external force. And for that you are weak. But you do not think of yourself as weak. You think you are strong as you refuse a reward. But this is not true. You are weak, as you cannot overcome your fabricated morals against homosexual practices, you cannot overcome the social fabrication that homosexuality is repulsive. The fact that you cannot overcome that means you are the weak one.

Torah im Derech Eretz vs Yeshivish

2011-03-30T23:24:00.009-04:00

As much as I have my issues with Judaism one good thing to say about it was the approach of Rav Hirsch to influence the idea that Orthodox Jews can involve themselves like normal people in the secular world. You come across a lot of Orthodox Jews in many top universities who work in science or mathematics or medicine.

I live in an Orthodox Jewish community. So many of these Jews have achieved great things in their lives. Many of them are enterpreneurs, capitalists, work in business, or make a lot of money, and just in general know how to navigate around in the world. I personally know several millionaires some of whom I am friends with. I have respect for these people, as they achieved something in their lives. But every single one of these Juden fit into the description of being im Derech Eretz.

In my graduating class there were some yeshivish boys. Who did not go to college, who did not get a job, but instead are still learning in Israel or where ever it is where they are learning. It has been years already and they achieved absolutely nothing in their lives. When they get married they will not need a way to support themselves. Their rich parents, who have achieved success, will simply support them. I have no respect for these kinds of Jews. They have wasted their lives entirely. They consume and do not produce anything of value. They are a waste of a species and any human talent.

Maybe I am wrong on this but it seems as if the idea of Torah im Derech Eretz is losing popularity in Judaism. As the current generation can live off their parents and then move to Lakewood (Israel). This was not something that was possible 50 years ago and hence the popularity of being yeshivish is growing in the Orthodox world. Yeshivishness is a disease that will retard the Orthodox Jewish world back to the bronze-age (at least Hirsch was open-minded enough to consider the theory of evolution as a possibly true theory and he was alive right at the time of Charles Darwin).

However, there are good news. Orthodox kids are leaving Orthodox Judaism at the faster rate than ever before. So maybe the fact that Orthodox Jews are moving back to yeshivish is not a big deal as it is much more likely they will simply leave Orthodoxy.

Skepticism to War

2011-03-30T00:45:00.003-04:00

It seems to me that the very same foolish mistakes that lead to the Iraq, and other Middle-East wars, are recurring again. People need to be extremely skeptical about claims of war. That is sadly what is missing, there is a lack of skepticism with regard to war. Let me begin with the first obvious problem. Whenever somebody says "your cause is just to go to war", I find that statement funny. Can you think of an example where the soldiers are being told to go to war because "your cause is not just to go to war". I cannot think of an example at all. All wars are always called 'just' by the people who initiate the wars. The Soviets call their wars just, the Nazis called their wars just, the United States calls its wars just, what al-Qaeda does it calls just, and the enemies who oppose these call their wars against them to be 'just' also. Somebody got to be wrong. In fact, almost everyone is wrong as they claim to be the right ones. Thus, a simple declaration of that a war is 'just' is just not good enough. Now the basic argument used in favor of more war goes something like this. It is wrong for us not to intervene. The military should go into war to overthrow the dictator so that the people can settle their own problems from there. We have the ability to help a group of people somewhere in the world, it is wrong of us not to help. When the argument is phrased in this manner it sounds appealing. But we need to ask a lot of questions. Is the US really going into war because they want to help some forgeiners overthrow a dicator or is it because they have something else planned? Almost all wars are based on lies so why should we think of any new current war to be different. Does this not sound noble? Another important question that needs to be asked is to question the implied assumption in all of this. That is, that the US will simply go in, make what is right, and then leave. This has not been the case at all with any previous wars. The US has no credibility to achieve what it wants to achieve. In all the previous wars it got held up in what it claimed it was going to do and did not achieve its objective. Why should we assume this is going to be different? Anyone who does advocate for more war must explain all of these important assumptions about war which are often overlooked and it is a given that the war will achieve what it claims to achieve.

Response to Jewish Atheist

2011-03-26T23:40:00.005-04:00

JewishAtheist wrote a question asking about whether morality is just an excuse for the selfishness in people, here. I have basically expressed all my views on morality scattered all over this blog so some of this will be repetative.

The first point, and perhaps the most important point, with regard to morality is the confusion of morality with empathy. This is a scientific error of thinking. The purely scientific way to discuss questions of morality is to ask how did they evolve? And when one asks such questions one is stuck discussing questions of empathy, altruism, compassion, and kindness. This is not equivalent to morality. There have been a myriad of civilizations with their own moral codes. Many of these moral codes did not corellate with these feel-good feelings. There were civilizations that were against helping the weak as they believed the weak are weak as punishment from their past lives so helping them is evil. This kind of moral code went entirely against any evolved sense of empathy. Most of the morals that people have believed in have extremely little to do with any evolved feeling within people. Indeed, most morals are against human natures, and as such if morality was evolved then it would not contradict people's natures. Therefore, the question of morality cannot be studied scientifically. At least not with natural selection.

I myself separate feelings of altruism and compassion from morality. So that I can tell people, "I have no morals". If they were to ask me why I would help another, I will simply say that I do not consider the desire to help others as a "moral". Morals have always meant something more than just empathy. And since I do not hold any higher interpretation of morals I reject all of morality and live without morals. I would encourage all people to take the same approach. Rejecting morals is in a way rejecting God. When one rejects God one loses his belief that reaffirms his life, so one needs to learn to live himself without being able to reaffirm himself. I view morals in a same way. When one rejects morals one has the challenge of not having any reaffirmation of ones actions, so the challenge is to be strong enough to be able to live without needing to reaffirm your actions.

Besides what kind of moral code is, "be nice to those people who deserve it" (which is essentially all I do, it is nice to be nice, and that is it, I need no greater reason than that)? Moral codes are very complex. They involve honor, sanctity, discipline, loyality, holiness, pureness, so on and so forth. The desire to just act nice is not something which I even consider to be a moral.

Then JewishAtheist talks about morality as being used for our selfishness. The truth is that morality, for its history, has always meant the complete opposite. Wanting to do something to yourself, such as pleasuring yourself, is wicked and people must move away from that. Morality has been a rebellion to people's natures. I strongly disagree with that. People acting in their self-interests is a very recent concept. One of the influences Adam Smith brought to the world was the idea that there is nothing wrong about wanting to act for your self-interest - his book Theory of Moral Sentiments was in a way a prelude to his economic theory as a moral defense.

The selfish aspect to morality is extremely recent and through out past history it has meant something entirely different.

So if morality cannot be explained through natural selection, and if morality is a rejection to people's own desires then from whence did it originate from? I have had my own idea to where morality came from. I believe that the function of morality was used as a tool to control the masses. Indeed, morality is authoratarian, it commands people to act in a particular manner. Its original goal was to control masses of people. Today the morals that are present are really mostly remants of dead moral systems that are not used anymore for domination, but that was their original function. If you are interested to the history behind how morals first developed you can read this - which is entirely my own guess, but it does sound reasonable.

Right About Everything

2011-03-26T19:08:00.003-04:00

I am sure there are people who would react to my arrogant personality by saying that, "you think you are right about everything". I agree, I do think I am right about everything. In fact, you probably think you are right about everything. Indeed, if I did not think I was correct about a certain position then I will change accordingly. The fact that I am stable and unchanging in this particular moment in time means I am currently satisfied with every single belief that I have. And so I do think I am correct about everything. If you can make me doubt something and change to a new position then in my newly accepted position I will think I am right about everything.

I do not think I will end up being correct about everything. I have noticed a lot of mistakes that I have made in regard to many questions. The overwhelming chances is that I will very soon discover another mistake that I made and have to change accordingly. However, in the time being I do not see any mistakes in anything that I belief, and so because of that do think I am correct about everything. I am not very certain about that position, very little certainty, but as far as what I think, yes, I do think I am correct.

And this kind of attitude is perfectly okay. Each one of us who thinks rationally argues with others as we think we are correct and others are wrong. We are convinced of what we belief, so that is all okay. As long as we are willing to change our beliefs when they start to fall apart then it is completely acceptable to insist that we are correct about everything.

The Sane are Insane

2011-03-26T02:14:00.005-04:00

What is insanity? Insanity is defined to be the state of losing ones understanding of the world around them. Someone who believes he is Jesus and jumps of the cliff to show he can fly is said to be insane, as that he cannot understand that he is not Jesus and that humans have no ability to fly.

What is interesting to realize is that what the masses believe is delusional as it is entirely separate from how this world really is. Most of the world is still religious, one big delusion right there. Almost everyone in the world believes that you should vote for a politician as they really care for you and will act to make you better, another huge delusion right there. How many people believe that they have a goal to their lives? How many people believe that a relationship is based entirely on altruism and the spouse really loves the partner more than themselves? How many people believe that family is more important than anything in the world?

All of these are insanities, as they are false with the world around us. I will not bother to explain why these are insanities as I have explained every one of these points somewhere elsewhere on this blog.

Keep in mind that the masses believed in ridiculous stupid things about in the 1500's. They believed that the planet was flat. They believed that dragons existed. They believed the king cared for them. Today we recognize all of these ideas to be ridiculous and so by today's standard these people would be insane. But in their current time, if you lived in the 1500's, these ideas that they shared were called "sane".

This trend of the masses believing in insanity has existed with humanity since the beginning. Why should we think that these days are different? We have less insane people today as we have gotten smarter, but we are still very much insane.

However, the masses are the majority. They are the common rule. And as such they will always declare themselves to be the "sane". Remember that winners usually write the history books.

Then there are individuals who reject the interpretation of the masses and they rebel against their ways. However, these individuals are called "insane" for being different and believing in something else. Do you not think that as an individual beings to understand the problems with the world around him that he will eventually separate himself from the world? That he will disconnect with almost everything that the masses believe? In doing so he will become the "insane" one. Not because he is necessarily wrong, no, but rather because he is different. And it is the majority that decides how he shall be treated. They declare him to be insane as they see themselves as the sane ones. Insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.

Just as the Church and the man of God has called himself to be moral, and called the atheist the immoral one, while in actuality being the immoral one. Just as the state and the statist has called himself to be peaceful one, and the anti-statist as the dangerous one, while in actuality being the violent one. So too do the sane declare themselves the sane and all others who disagree with them to be the insane.

I may be insane. I have never said nor claimed to say that the insane are the sane as they themselves may be entirely wrong also. I rather said that the sane are the insane themselves.

Sarah Palin for President

2011-03-24T00:21:00.004-04:00

Not very many people want Sarah Palin for president, not even the Republicans. But I do. I think it would be awesome. This country is in free-fall mode, it is just a matter of time until it crashes. We can have a little fun, at least, before everything blows up. So how about we get a good looking GILF into office? We can say we have the hottest grandmother in the world. Something to be proud of. We can have some fun. You know, if a doctor tells you you got a little while to live, you would go and do something crazy before you die. Well we should be enjoying ourselves now.

There is no way out of the problems that will face us in the future. Looking for politicians that you think will help you is just another utopian fantasy. To hope that some guy has the magical power to solve the problems that are waiting to happen. So stop looking for people who tell you false promises. Have fun at at least. Get someone as dumb as they can be. Imagine how much more the news would be interesting if Sarah Palin is president? Do you not think it is worth it for the entertainment?

In a strange way Sarah Palin might be good for the US. She would be so incompetent that nothing will get done. That is fiscal responsibility by default. If she is president for 8 years then nothing will get done. Which is actually a good thing. It is the US going into hibernation mode for 8 years, a little break, before everything breaks down.

So you can form your own little groupthink sessions talking about how terrible Sarah Palin is as you are too intellectually weak to discuss new unpopular ideas among yourselves so you stick to your comfort zone where each of your congratulate another for Palin bashing. But I will be having fun. I will sit back and watch the country fall apart. I think it be pretty funny to watch your try to fix it. I just want more entertainment, so get Sarah Palin in there, she entertains me.

The Universe is Finite

2011-03-19T23:49:00.004-04:00

I am sure physicists have addressed this question many times before, but I never heard it addressed, so I offer my own explanation which may be totally off - but it sounds correct.

The question is "what is at the end of the universe?". Of course, to ask such a question one must assume to begin with that the universe is finite in size. All the current knowledge that science has learned about the universe points to the conclusion that it is finite in size and there are even estimates to just how large it is. Furthermore, the universe is expanding, it is getting larger and larger, but at every moment it is finitely large.

There is an obvious question that every person must ask, "if the universe is finite in size, then what lies beyond it?", or to put it another way, "what can lie beyond empty space?". Is there some sort of magic barrier that if we are to reach the edge of the universe we will crash into? Because saying that the universe is finite in size sounds as if there is an edge that we cannot walk over for if we were able to walk over then we will still be in a universe.

I believe that the explanation is very simple. This question of "what is at the end of the universe", or "what is beyond the universe", or "where is the edge of the universe?" sounds so surprisingly similar to the question of "what is at the end of the world?". This question was once asked, 500 years ago. People used to insist, 500 years ago, that the world was flat as it is finite and so that if we reach its edge we will fall off the world.

Intuitively such a primitive answer makes sense. But we know what the answer to that question is. The world is a sphere, there is no edge to it, when we move on the world we are simply moving along an arc of a circle. If we keep on moving in the same direction long enough, we will not fall off, but return to the same place where we were standing!

I believe the same answer can be generalized to the universe. The world that we know of is the surface of a two-sphere (two dimensional sphere) living in (embedded) a three-dimensional space. We can so too say that the universe is a surface of a three-sphere (three dimensional sphere) embedded in higher dimensional space.

The consequences of such a way of looking at the world immediately leads to an interesting conclusion. It means that if we are to move straight (relative to ourselves, but really curved with relative to higher dimensional space) long enough we will eventually return to were we started in the universe! However, this cannot happen. For the reason that the universe is expanding, and as we travel, the universe expands as well, thereby increasing our total travel and making it impossible to return back again.

There is a problem however. The version of geometry used in cosmology is hyperbolic geometry, and I am thinking of the universe in terms of elliptical geometry (as I am thinking of us living on a surface of a higher dimensional sphere). This is inconsistent with cosmology, so I am not sure how to resolve this contradiction.

Jewish Racism

2011-03-19T12:12:00.005-04:00

If you go to a shul you will realize that everyone, or almost everyone there, is white. Even if you go to modern progressive shuls you will still realize this, maybe such a shul managed to bring in one or two black guys among hundreds, but it will overwhelmingly dominated by whites.

Is this because Orthodox Jews are racist? Well they are, to an extent. They do very strongly believe in Jewish superiority over the non-Jews. And of the blacks they think they are a cursed group of people by Noach destined to live lives of slavery. These kind of ideas already make them racists.

However, to be fair, Orthodox Jews are not as racist as many of the bloggers make them out to be. There are many different forms of racism in the world. There are racists who want to rid the entire world of opposing races and only have their own kind. These are usually white nationalists or the Nazis. This is worst kind of racism.

There is a kind of racism where you hate the different races among you but you have no plans to dominate them, or oppress them. You just feel hatred towards a group of people. This is the kind of racism you do sometimes find in the US with regard to Mexicans. Because Mexicans are "stealing our jobs" so some people hate them for job stealing. Note that this kind of racism is not like the nationalists kind above. The Americans who hate these Mexicans for job stealing only hate them as they now see themselves as victims of undercutting, not because they are nationalists.

The least lenient kind of racism is to judge the virtues of others by using their race as a factor. This is the kind of racism that is all over the world, you see it on TV all the time. There are policies that use this kind of racism - like Affirmative Action. This is the best kind of racism as it does not have any kind of hate associated to any group of people, it just fails to look at people individualistically, but rather collectively. But this kind of racism does not carry any messages of superiority or hatred that the others ones do.

The kind of racism that Orthodox Jews have is a superiority complex. They think of their own kind as better than the world around them. Orthodox Judaism is a religion, yes, and so their superiority is partial religious superiority. But Jews are also in a way a kind of ethnic group. One can determine if one has any "Juden blutig" (Jew blood) in him by DNA tests. And Orthodox Jews, as an ethnic group, still insist that the Judenblutig makes Juden superior to the people of the world. Thus, Orthodox Judaism is racist in that it carries with them the message of superiority.

However, this kind of racial superiority does not carry with it a message of hatred. I know the Orthodox Juden quite well. I do not really sense a feeling of hatred among them to black people. They do believe they are superior to blacks, and they do often make jokes about blacks. But they do believe in their jokes. So when they say the theory of evolution is true, for blacks, as they descended from monkeys, they do mean it seriously in that they think they are superior to blacks. But there is no hatred. They hire black janitors to work for them in shuls. And they treat them with respect. They might have black neighbors with whom they are very friendly. They even can speak positively of these people at the Shabbos table.

So I think it is fair to say that Orthodox Jews do not have the hateful kind of racism towards other people, but rather they have the superiority complex kind of racism towards themselves. It is like having a dog. You have a dog as a pet, you can love your dog, be friendly with it, but you will always see it as inferior to you. This is essentially the kind of racism that Jews have.

Let me return back to what I started talking about - an all white shul phenomenon. The reason why Orthodox Jewish shuls are white (or almost all purely white) is not because they ban black people (or other kind of people) from entering. If you are a black person and you enter into their shul they will not say anything. They will not stop you in any way. Even though you would be black they will recognize you as a Juden before a black. So they will ignore your blackness and just accept your Jewishness. As I said since the Juden are not the hateful kind of racists they will not be bothered with black people coming to their shul. I have seen black people in shul, and asian people in shul, it is not very common, but it does happen. And when it happens nobody cares and nobody talks about it at the Shabbos table.

The most basic, and the best, explanation to why shuls are an almost all white phenomenon is simply because Orthodox Jews marry other Orthodox Jews, and hence most of the Jewish people will be white. The only way to have a black person in shul is if he converted to Judaism, which is not too common because Orthodox Judaism is so crazy that essentially only those born and indoctrinated into it will remain Jews.

So yes there is Jewish racism but it is not as bad as many other kinds of racism.

The Good Old Days

2011-03-15T16:53:00.002-04:00

I really hate it when people, especially old people, talk about the "good old days". You know, the days when everything was perfect and wonderful.

You often hear old conservatives talk about this. Especially when it comes to the "moral decline of our society", and the "perversion of our times", also the "promiscuity of our generation", and its "extreme stupidity". They remind us of their good old days, days which they claim did not decline in morals, and were superior to our modern values in every way.

Here is the problem. Every generation was perverted and promiscuous. You know why? Because for the necessity of survival people fucked all the time. This is not some new recent phenomenon, the cavemen were doing it 100,000 years ago. Boys masturbated just as much 100 years ago as they did today. Because masturbation is a way to satisfy the necessity for promiscuity. There was no evil conspiracy to make the boys masturbate, they did it on their own. Blame nature for making us promiscuous. And there was just as much adultery and cheating going on back then than as it is now.

Except one thing has changed. People are much more comfortable being open sexually. That is all that changed. Back in the "good old days" if you came out as homosexual people would hate you. Back in the "good old days" if you told people you like porn or sex people will think you are perverted and evil.

What changed between the "good old days" and the modern days is that in the modern days people are more honest about themselves. It was in the good old days when people were ashamed of their own desires, it was in the good old days when the people were mentality weak and had to confine themselves to the mentality of slaves to be disgusted with themselves. But the people are still the same.

And it gets worse and worse with age. The older someone is the more they miss the good old days. Just to remind you that people owned slaves, and when there were world wars, and when women were on a sub-human level to men. How is that exactly looking up to the past? The past sucks. And yes the present sucks. But at least the future is unwritten. Instead of deluding ourselves for the past, we can try to make the future more enjoyable. And you know why you miss the "good old days", because you were young once, and you miss that portion of your life when you were young. Young people have the freest minds, they have lowest control from authority, and that is what you really miss. It is only when you become an adult do you accept the bullshit around you that your life becomes miserably pathetic, so you miss your teenage years.

Political Non-Sense Test

2011-03-14T14:21:00.002-04:00

I am sure you have seen this test many many times before.

I am amazed and astounded by how many people take this test seriously. This test is complete garbage. When I took this test some time ago, and no, I am not taking it now, it is too much of a waste of time, I ended up in the middle! That is right, according to this test I am some sort of moderate. Me, a moderate, that is funny. I am extreme in my views, I am crazy, I am a nut-case and I am madly insane. There is no way I can be in the middle. But according to this test I am in the middle.

I have taken tests before that have given the correct results. This test is complete garbage. It would be excusable if this was a bad test since a lot of stuff on the internet are stupid, but it is not excusable because so many people take this test seriously. People have told me I should check out where I stand politically and gave me this test.

But this test gets even more ridiculous. You can look at this chart:

Look at where they put Hitler. According to them Hitler was on the right-wing. Since when? Since when has Hitler been on the right-wing? Since never. Hitler ran for the National Socialist Labor Party of the Workers. That is as left-wing as you can possibly be. Hitler should way over to the left wing right next to Joseph Stalin. In truth there was not a big difference between Stalin and Hitler. If you are on the right-wing you are in favor of capitalism. Ayn Rand was on the right-wing. Milton Friedman was on the right-wing. Because they are capitalists. I am on the right-wing for I am also a capitalist retard myself. If you are on the left-wing then you are in favor of social programs by the government, rather than those programs being done privately. Nowhere in Hitler's platform did he stand for such an idea, he was in favor of heavy government programs. To say that Hitler was a right-winger is to be completely ignorant of what left-winger and right-winger means.

Then look at where they put Milton Friedman. According to them if Milton was to take that test he would end up all the way on the right and near the authoritarian division. I took the test, I am influenced by him, I think it is fair to say that what I score on it would be similar to what he scored on it. But I ended up nowhere close to where he is. This test is garbage.

What troubles me even more is that they put Friedman near the authoritarian dividing line. Let us consider Friedman's social positions. Friedman would be in favor of gay marriage. Okay, he would probably want to abolish all state marriage, but in the time being I am sure he would support gay marriage. He was in favor of getting rid of all the drug laws. In that way he is even more liberal than the liberals who only want to cut the drug laws for marijuana. I have actually never heard Friedman talk about guns but I am pretty sure he was in favor of them too. He would oppose any kind of FCC control of content. So how can he possibly be put near the authoratian division line? Milton should be all the way in the bottom right corner.

This test is clearly biased. I would guess that it was probably made by liberals. I have no idea, it is hard to imagine conservatives coming up with such a test. It is biased against anyone on the right-wing. Their implicit message is that anyone who is on the right-wing shares a similar economic position as Hitler - which is not true, and that they are close to being authoritarian as Friedman. They want to discourage people from being on the right-wing. Furthermore, I cannot get to the right-wing when I take the test. If it is hard to score right on this test then perhaps the message is that you are a liberal so you should vote as one.

And let me make this clear. I have no problem with bias. I am biased as fuck. I have no problem with anyone being biased about anything, bias is good. The big problem here is that the test is not fair. The test seems to be rigged in a way to be anti-right and move you to the left. I am biased but I am fair. I may make fun of people who disagree with me but I do honestly listen to their position. If this test had fair results then its bias can be excused. But it does not. It is both biased and unfair.

I have taken political compass tests that were fair and accurate. They put me exactly where I belonged. Take those tests. But whatever you do, ignore this test like a plague, its unfairness is equivalent to dividing by zero.

Economic Fools

2011-03-12T22:04:00.006-05:00

I am not the first person to realize this, some other people already brought this to attention. But I am not surprised that they are saying this. The argument that a lot of people are using right now is that the earthquake in Japan is good for the economy because all the work needs to be done. In a way the disaster in Japan is stimulating their economy. This is the exact same non-sense argument people use with regard to war. They say that war is good for the economy because all the work needs to be done drives up the economy.

If you do not believe me here are some sources that say this point-of-view:
Here
Here
Here

One of the people in those links is Larry Summers, strangely I just mentioned him in one of my recent posts. Somehow I am mentioning him again. That is right, Larry said that this earthquake is good for the Japanese economy because it increases spending.

Here is the really funny part. If you go to Wikipedia and search for Larry Summers, Wikipedia already linked to the economic error he mentioned in his article (and people say Wikipedia is slow):

In March 2011, in relation to the earthquake disaster in Japan, Summers made
himself supposedly guilty of what is known in Economics as "the broken window
fallacy" by stating in an interview on CNBC that the earthquake could
temporarily boost the economy of Japan.

Paul Krugman did not seem to say anything about this earthquake positively affecting the Japanese economy, though he did say, "the catastrophe will, of course, require large public spending to aid recovery". Is that an allusion to the broken window fallacy again? Could be, I am not sure.

Why is this a fallacy? The answer is very simple. There is an entire good book written on this called, Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. The general argument of the book is that the single common mistake in economics is to look at the seen and overlook the unseen.

Consider this story. Suppose I break the windows of your car. You catch me and ask me what I am doing. I respond to you, "I am stimulating an economy". You would ask, "how?". And I will respond, "because now you need to go to a car shop which will fix your window, and so my destruction is creating jobs". This argument is actually appealing to a degree. Most people would fall into it. Most people would probably say, "I guess you are right, it is just wrong to break people's windows". But this argument in favor of stimulating the economy is wrong. For the following simple reason. If you pay attention to what is being done (the seen) then it is clear that a lot of work is being done and the economy is being stimulated. However, it makes much more imagination to realize the unseen forces. In other words, if the window of the car was not broken, then you would be richer, and so you would spend that money elsewhere. If it costs 500 dollars to fix a window, and I did not break the window, then you would spend that money on something else. You would probably buy yourself some books or whatever on that extra money. And so you are still stimulating the economy in a different way. However, people do not realize this because it is unseen. In the end of breaking the window there is no actual stimulation, and you lost a window, so there is a total economic loss as a result of that. The exact same argument is applicable to war and to earthquakes. It is sad that these economic "experts" cannot realize such a basic common sense notion.

Public Teachers and Schools

2011-03-12T12:38:00.006-05:00

Let us suppose that I hire some guy to repair my house. The next day I come over and my walls are painted over. Something I never asked for. He tells me that all I have to do is pay him more and he will paint the walls to what they were and repair everything. I come over the next day and now the walls are scratched up. He tells me the same thing, he just needs more time. The next day my walls are beginning to crumble. What kind of a mad-man must I be to continue to employ this guy? If someone is not able to do his job, you fire him. No reasonable person will continue to employ him and expect to get something out of it.

Now consider public schools. They have been in place for a long time already. And they are only declining in their value. For the past ten, twenty, maybe even thirty years the public schools have been doing downhill. Their results are embarrassingly bad, test results are getting worse. And what is the solution that most people propose to this problem? More money needs to spend! Somehow not enough money is being spend on public education. That is what has been going on already, more money was being spend - and there were no positive changes. By what madness and insanity can people propose to spend even more and more money? If this behemoth is falling apart then it is time to fire it. The whole public education system needs to end, or at least changed in very radical ways.

And of course when you say that public education needs to be fired. People think of you as some sort of manic, "what you do not want children to be educated?", they will tell you. Look, you had decades to do something about this education problem and nothing been done, stop telling me how you contribute to the education of children. I actually care about proper education, this is why I oppose this behemoth. I can guarantee you if there was no public education and we only had private schools here in the US that were in such a bad condition as public schools people would be screaming and furious for the state to take over education. However, this kind of outrage is passive when it comes to the already existing model.

Then there are the teacher unions. Who are not happy with their current salary. These public teachers have benefits to them that most other people do not have. They do not have to work in the summer time. They also get to retire earlier. I believe they also get their retirement deals without any of the risks attached that other people do. These teachers are protected from competition, it is really hard to fire them, if you get a position as a public teacher you can be sure you will have the job till the end of your life. And finally they have much higher salaries when compared to the national average, more than private school teachers.

Somehow these people are not happy with their current salaries. They want more and more for themselves. You know what that is called: greed. But of course, it will never be called "greed" because these are public teachers who are selfless servants for the education of poor children. And even if their benefits get cut they are still better off than the national average.

But why are benefits being cut for these holy selfless servants who have no self-interest whatsoever? Because there is no money available to sustain all of these benefits. And why not? Because government is a big giant ponzi-scheme. You take money from one group and give it to another. You promise the current citizens all the good benefits and they get supported by the working generation, and when the working generation retires their benefits get supported by the next working generation. So forth and so forth. That is how much we suck as a species. We take from the unborn to pay off the people now. And we never stop to think that perhaps ponzi-schemes are not sustainable. If ponzi-schemes are not sustainable then what would happen in 50 years from now when all of those good fortune promises turn out being empty? We never stop to think about the generations below us, as long we are are doing fine, fuck them, we are all that matter. So all of these cuts that are being done now you are going to see more of them in the future, that is what happens with these schemes, some people are going to be fucked over.

Do not misunderstand me though. I am not blaming the public teacher unions. It is really not their fault. One of my messages that I try to communicate is not to look for scapegoats. Do not search for people to point to and say "they are the fault of all our problems". Not only it is a wrong thing to do, it is entirely counter-productive as it stops you from looking for real answers that explain the problems we are facing. The problem is not the president, the problem is not teachers, it is not the rich bankers, it is not the homosexuals in California, and it is not the Jews. The problem are ideas. The problem is the irrationality on what the whole system is based on. That is what we need to be fighting against, ideas, not people. Let me give you an analogy to clear this up. Consider religion - one of the great evils perpetuated against mankind. It is okay to hate religion, but not to hate religious people. Religious people are simply the result of indoctrination that was put into them as children. They are not the problem. The problem is the idea that was put into their head. So we should look at ideas within our existing system to understand where the problems are coming from and not put that blame on groups of people within this system. Yes, it is true, public teachers suck, they want to get as much as possible for as little risk and work as possible, but guess what, we all do, we all want that, we all suck.

An Inquiry Concerning the Necessity of Unions

2011-03-10T22:49:00.006-05:00

Before I say anything about unions I want to say a few things which are entirely unrelated to this discussion.

The first is that I cannot possibly care any more or any less about the discussion of unions. It is such a boring topic for me. It is like Israel. Israel is so unbelievably boring to me that I just cannot possibly care for it. If tomorrow I hear on the news how Israel got bombed out of existence I would probably not care. Israel is like ballet for me, something I have absolutely no interest it. So if I found out that all ballet dancers mysteriously died of AIDS tomorrow it would cause no interest for me. But I do not mean this in a bad way. That is, I am not saying I hate Israel. I just do not care about it. Nowhere do I hope for a destruction of Israel, for that would mean I have an interest in it, a negative interest, but an interest nonetheless. I genuinely have no interest in Israel. And maybe I am ignorant. That is possible, maybe Israel really is an important topic to know, but it was just so boring to me that I cannot make myself find any interest in reading about it. Same thing with unions. I genuinely have no interest in them. I am not anti-unions, I am not pro-unions, I have no interest. Boring topic that I never enjoy discussing. And again, maybe I am being really stupid right now, maybe I should care and take a position because it is so important. So I struggle to force myself to write this post because I a lot of people are talking about unions at this moment so I figured I should say what I think about them - since we all know I am the God the ideas, anything I say is 100% absolutely true forever until the end of time.

The second thing is that I am not anti-unions. If you are a proud hardcore Marxist I should be the least of your worries. Because I will not in any way try to stop you and the workers of the world uniting against the evil greedy Jewish capitalist factory owners. If the proletariat wants to unite, go ahead, have fun and enjoy yourself. I believe in the freedom of association and assemblies. Workers certainly have the right to form their own associations together. And I am fine with that if they think they can increase their wages that way. So if you want to live in your collectively operated world, go ahead, have a commune, also have the worst economy in the entire history of the world, but you get to at least enjoy yourselves. It is in this way that I am not your enemy as that I will not use any means to stop you. I will only tell you that you are being stupid in that you believe in central economic calculation. However, the ultimate decision is yours. What I am against are union legal monopolies that prevent labor through state intervention. That is a separate kind of a union. That is a legal monopoly enacted through the state. And that I would oppose as I oppose the state itself. Thus, it is not really my opposition to unions, as I am neutral about them, but rather my opposition of state monopolies.

There is only one thing that I want to say about unions. I think this is extremely important to keep in mind, and at the same time common sense. This is an idea that is very often overlooked in conversations about unions.

Let us assume that I propose a law to stop airplane accidents by suggesting to pass a law against gravity? People will find it really dumb of me to push for such a law. The law of gravity is a natural law of the universe, while any bill that is written is just a human made law that cannot override natural laws. Suppose for a moment that market forces in the economy are just as real natural laws as the law of gravity? I know most people do not believe in this, and if you are reading this you probably do not accept this, but for a moment accept it to see what that would imply. This would imply that any human made law, no matter how well intentioned, or thoughtful, or virtuous, can ever override the natural laws of the market. Such made laws will be doomed for failure.

Now I will resume my discussion about what I think is the single most important idea concerning the necessity of unions. Wages. Wages are determined not by the desire of the capitalist but by market forces. And so any laws trying to override such forces will be doomed to fail - hence showing that unions have very little importance. I will be more specific.

There are many factors that go into determining wages. The capitalist wants to give as little as possible for maximum work. The workers want to get as much as possible for the least amount of work (hence showing that workers are also "greedy", yes the capitalist is greedy, but so is the worker as well, of course, this obvious statement is hardly ever mentioned because workers are assumed to be immediately innocent). If there are more workers than usual then competition among them will drive wages down. If there are more capitalists than usual then competition among them will drive wages up. Some capitalists can be good people (yes, that can happen) and give their workers a "decent wage" (whatever that even means) out of his compassion - though this is more rare.

All of those are just some of the factors in determining the wages of labor. However, I purposely left out the most fundamental component to the wage of labor. And that is productivity. Productivity is the fundamental law that determines the wages of labor. Even if you are someone who is the biggest socialist in the entire world, and someone who rejects all the ideas of the market economy, and someone who thinks anyone in favor of free trade must be working for corporations, you must accept the proposition that productivity determines wages (as the main factor) for purely mathematical reasons. There is no economics at all in the statement that wages are determined by productivity. This is a purely mathematical statement.

Consider the following situation. Say that a worker produces 10 dollars per hour of value to the capitalist. The capitalist "exploits" the worker by "stealing" his labor when he earns profit on his labor. For illustrative purposes let us say that the capitalist earns 1 dollar for ever hour on the worker. This would mean that the wage of the worker would be 9 dollars per hour. Simple, right?

There is no way that the capitalist will pay a worker beyond 10 dollars an hour. As that would make the capitalist run on a loss. Why would a capitalist employ a person to loss money on him? The capitalist will not operate for any wage above 10 dollars. Even if the capitalist was the nicest, sweetest, and altruistic capitalist in the world, he will not pay a wage of anything above 10 dollars per hour. It is mathematically impossible. This is not even any kind of economics. As I said, this is nothing but common sense.

Therefore, it means that as the levels of productivity decreases then the wages of labor must decline. This is, as I said, essentially a law of nature. It would be foolish then to propose a law to change this wage decline from happening.

Now let us put all of this into perspective. Humans have for the most part lived terrible lives. They had to do a lot more work in the past than they had to do in the present. And so the workers of the past were much much poorer than today's workers. The reason why they were so poor was precisely because labor was unproductive. If you plow in a farm for 12 hours a day and only produce 10 dollars of wages in 1800 your wage must be lower that 10. However, if you want to earn 60 an hour it means you must be living in a world for which your labor is productive enough. Otherwise, it is purely impossible to be payed a higher wage.

This is precisely why I say that unions have little necessity to them. If workers are earning very little money then it does not mean that it is the fault of the capitalists, it simply means that their labor is incredibly unproductive. A law cannot change that from happening. If workers are earning only 2 dollars a day because they product 2.50 per hour then the maximum they can earn is only 2.50 per hour. Anything beyond that will make the capitalist shut down the work and these workers will lose jobs - which is even worse.

So why have wages raised? They raised because the productivity of workers has increased. This transitional period happened during the industrial revolution when the productivity of workers increased more than any time in history. As capital accumulation continued to take place the productivity of workers rose which in turned made it possible for them to have higher wages.

This is true not just for wages but for working hours and working conditions and benefits. Working conditions and benefits are added costs to the capitalist. If the security the capitalist must pay and the benefits he gives exceeds the productivity of working he will simply shut down the job as he is running on a loss. Working hours were determined by low wages. If people are earning extremely low wages (as it naturally happened with little productivity) then they must naturally work extremely long hours and days to maintain their own substinence.

When people talk about the important impact of unions they forget this simple point. They give an exaggerated story about how workers were exploited in low wages and terrible conditions, it was only the state and unions that stepped in to rescue them. The way way more accurate and honest story is that one hundred years ago capital was so weak that worker productivity was low - which must, for common sense reasons, lead to low wages, no benefits, bad working conditions, and long hours.

If you are someone who truly supports unions the only kind of argument you can say in favor of them is that they make the life of workers easier. But you cannot say how it was the unions that lead to increase in wages and conditions - because that simply rejects the fundamental connection between worker productivity and wages. You may argue that unions had a positive effect in increasing wages or conditions. That would be a completely separate argument from what I am saying. But you cannot say that it were unions alone that are accountable for the vast increases in wages. The increase for the repayment for workers was only possible as capital improved. Indeed, if it was really true that unions alone account for everything positive in work then it would mean that 200 years ago the unions were able to achieve this great standard of living through collective bargaining. Though that never happened, and for a simple reason, it was purely impossible for these changes to take place pre-industrial revolution as it is impossible to stop plane crashes by passing laws on gravity.

Studies Show that Studies are Non-Sense

2011-03-07T23:41:00.005-05:00

If you want to say something so that nobody would ever question or challenge you, start your sentence by saying "studies show". That is the ultimate winner in a conversation. Because studies are irrefutable scientific facts that nobody can object to. Anyone who was to challenge you must mean he is a primitive caveman who rejects science.

You know how studies are collected? I have no idea. They can be collected in any way. They can be collected by fifty years of the highest quality of testing. Or they can be collected by a bunch of graduate schools who who were busy fucking eachother more than paying attention to their actual experiments. They carelessly preformed those experiments submitted it as part of their research project as they were on a week trip in Paris.

Unless you can tell me exactly how those numbers were collected and who did the collecting I am not interested in what any study said. Just say what you want to say without claiming what you are saying is irrefutable true because some study shows it.

But the basic reason why I do not pay attention to studies is that they contradict themselves more than the Bible. One week I see a headline which says, "new study shows that drinking coffee causes cancer". In a week I see a new headline which says, "a study says that drinking coffee helps reduce risks for cancer". Next week later it is the other way around.

It amazes me, I just cannot comprehend, how these poeple who read these studies take them seriously. Do these people not realize that every week there is a new contradiction to their previous study? Some people actually take this kind of stuff seriously. If they do, how can they deal with the never ending contradiction to what they do in response to these studies?

Just relax. Stop being so worried and concerned. Ignore these studies and enjoy yourself with what you enjoy eating or drinking. If you die a few years younger then you lived a happier life with less worries.

I made my own study, if you are interested. My study shown that all studies are non-sense and are always wrong.

Teenagers Have Freest Minds

2011-03-07T01:41:00.002-05:00

What I love about teenagers, other than fucking them, is that they have interesting minds. Teenagers are often that part of one's life when they are a rebellious and sometimes individualistic. Not always though, they very often form their own groups and stick to the implied rules. But adults do that too, and to a larger degree, I would say.

Life is eating bullshit. From the moment you are born your brainwashed indoctrinated parents feed the bullshit they were fed when they were children. It is not their fault. They are feeding you much of the same bullshit they ate when they were children. And this process continues. Parents feeing their children bullshit. Their kids grow up and then feed their children the bullshit they were fed. And so on.

It is not just our life it is the entire history of people. For nearly every part of history people were eating bullshit. Eating so much bullshit that it was coming out of their mouth, nose and ears. Then people had wars with one another, because they ate different bullshit. They would tell one another, "my bullshit is better than your bullshit". Then they went to war and died over bullshit.

The most abundant element is not hydrogen but bullshit. And I know there is going to be some chemist who will tell me that bullshit contains hydrogen. Well, do you know what hydrogen contains? Not quarks, deeper than that. No, not strings, deeper than that. What is at the bottom of the rabbit hole, Alice? Bullshit, that is what. This world is entirely bullshit.

It were only a few select individuals who were able to see past through this bullshit. All the slight improvements people have went through in history was the result of an inspiration of some person who was able to influence the world to see the bullshit, or at least question their bullshit. But largerly the world was unchanged otherwise, still running on the very same bullshit.

That is life for you, eating on bullshit. Children are helpless victims of having bullshit stuffed down their mouths as they are growing up. Adults are even worse. Adults been eating their bullshit for their entire lives. For fifty years, for sixty years, the bullshit that they ate no longer fits into them anymore.

Teenagers are the only age group that I look up to more than others. Sure they are dumb and stupid, but so is mostly everybody. Adults are also extremely dumb, they just have experience how to live life (or to put it another way, how to live with this bullshit and be used to it). But teenagers have something special.

Teenagers still have a chance to escape from the bullshit that is being fed to them. Teenagers have the mind to question the bullshit they were taught as children. While at the same time not yet in the world of bullshit. It gives them a little of hope to try to live their lives to avoid bullshit whenever possible.

Why Free Speech is Important

2011-03-05T12:19:00.006-05:00

A while back here I explained exactly what free speech means. To summarize the point of that post, free speech is when speech is free from any kind of control. That is why it is called "free". If you notice this is synonymous with the term "free market". A "free" market is a market which is free from control. That is all what free speech means, it is a rather simple concept, that what people say and what people believe, and write, is not controlled in any manner, or prohibited from being expressed or written. Indeed, the First Amendment makes this very clear when it says that "... shall pass no law ... ".

It is sad enough that a lot of people do not know what free speech even is. How many people believe in restrictions to what people can say, especially if it is towards race or sex? What is just as bad, or perhaps worse, is that these people cannot explain to you why free speech is important.

The general response to why free speech is important that you would most likely hear is that free speech allows for all ideas to express themselves. So that people would be able to decide for themselves what they want to believe and what not. In a free society people should be able to decide for themselves what they want to believe, and free speech is what allows for that.

And that is true. I am not disputing the above answer. However, I have a question on that answer. If the importance of free speech is that it allows for people to spread their ideas freely amongst themselves then why not have the state set standards?

I think we can all agree that anyone spreading the ideas to kill the Juden is not really spreading any idea, but spreading hatred around. And hatred is harmful for society. Hatred is not any kind of idea that has any kind of value at all, instead it is extremely negative. So the state should set standards to what people can say? Hatred should be made illegal. No one can publish a book that puts hatred towards a particular group of people, that is not an idea anymore, and so it have no value to it. Offensive remarks made about individuals have no purpose either other than to offend. Offensive speech directed toward an individual in a book or on TV, or any other place that spreads information, should be illegal. This kind of speech does not add anything to the marketplace of ideas, we can agree to that. Rather it just makes people fight amongst themselves, it is counter-productive.

The sad thing is that a lot of people do agree with what I just said. If I expressed that above position with respect to free speech a lot of people would agree. They will say "yes, I agree, there needs to be standards set for a better society".

So what makes free speech important? The answer is very simple. Free speech is important because no one has the power to decide what can be said.

If a group of armed people has the power to what can be said and cannot be said do not be surprised that they will use that kind of power to their own advantage. You cannot trust power, you cannot trust the state that it will "set standards", as people claim, but rather it will gain an enormous amount of power over the content of what can be said.

The First Amendment was put there not for porn, but for speech against the state. If the state is doing something terrible it cannot have the power to silence the opposition and attempt to prevent those ideas from being spread. It is true that porn, just like anything else, falls into the category of free speech. But the true intent of free speech, its real intention, is to oppose tyranny.

Now I take it one step further and I call it the Zero Amendment, which was never part of the Constitution, which says " ... the state shall pass no law with regard to anything ... ". And this is a radical idea, I agree, but it is based on the same concept. You cannot trust the state with anything. A lot of people say the state should set standards for the economy. But just like with my position with free speech I simply do not buy into that premise. I do not accept that they are on your side and that they care about you, rather they are a power structure which will grow in its power over time (as they clearly have, by enormous amounts). So when people say that the state needs to "set standards for the economy", I simply think to myself, "do I want them to set standards for free speech?". Just like the fear with speech is that they will silence opposition, so to the fear with economics. That is, they will use their control over the economy to benefit themselves and gain more power. You simply cannot trust this kind of a power. Their monopoly on power must be broken.

Man Down by Dan Abrams

2011-03-04T19:24:00.005-05:00

I heard about this new book that was recently released called Man Down. This post is not going to be a book review. Because I did not actually read the book. Nor am I interested in reading the book. Rather I am going to use this book as an example of something which illustrates a point that I have been saying over and over again.

There is a double standard between how women are treated and how men are treated. There is also the double standard between how races are treated, in particular blacks and whites. The double standards is anti-male and anti-white, it is a message that only the male can be a sexist, and it is only the white that can be a racist. Of course, liberals for the most part will always deny this, but I am amazed at what kind of world they are living in to not realize that this is going on around them.

You hear in a news story about two white kids beating on a black kid. The reaction of the news is that this is automatically a hate crime. The white kids must have done this because they were racist and were motivated by the KKK. You will start seeing the Al Sharpton's and the Jesse Jackson's of the world appearing the news and talking about what a racist act this was and how terrible this was. We have seen it thousands of times.

Now reserve this story. Say a news story mentions two black kids beating on a white kid. A liberal would never admit that this was motivated by racism. Rather it was just a conflict. It was just a conflict between two people that turned out being black and white.

And I agree. I agree that this story was probably just a conflict where race was just a coincidence. Racism is mostly dead. I know liberals love to repeat that racism is big and alive, but there is no reason to believe in that. There is a black president, there many other blacks that held over high positions recently, so there is no need to assume this anymore. It is just not consistent with what we know of the world. Racism only really exists in old people. But who even cares what old people think anyway, they are old and stupid who are going to die soon. Therefore, if two teens fight with one another and they happened to be opposite colors, it is much more likely that it was just a teenage conflict that they often have amongst themselves.

But what I do not agree with is the double standard. When a black teen beats on a white teen that is a just a conflict (which is probably true as I said). But when a white teen beats on a black teen that must be racism and hatred. For many liberals racism is a one way street.

Want another example of a double standard? When people carried signs of George Bush comparing him to a monkey there was no outrage. When a newspaper referenced a bill by Barak as being written by monkeys (which is even less lenient than comparing George to a monkey) it was a bit controversy.

The same exact double standard exists with regard to women and men.

I have no problem at all when anyone saying "women are better than men". It is probably true if measured as a statistical average. I am not sure why that is something to be proud of. Men are dumb pathetic selfish meatbags, but women are too, just a bit morally better. How is that a compliment to be better than a man? It is like finding out you have syphilis instead of AIDS, sure syphilis is not as bad, but it still sucks. Anyway, let me get back on topic.

But my problem is the double standard. So when I say that women on the average suck at math because mathematical abilities require a high end on the intelligence distribution and women have a lower standard deviation than men, that this statement would not be interpreted as a sexist statement. If a woman says something about a man, that is acceptable. When a man says something about a woman, it must be because he is sexist. Sexism is a one way street.

That is my problem. I want this double standard to end. I want both men and women putting down each other without being concerned about whether they are sexist or not.

This book by Abrams illustrates the problem. A book on Man Down is perfectly acceptable and nobody will ever think of Abrams as a sexist. But if such a book was called Woman Down then Abrams would probably be fired from his job for being a sexist.

If Larry Summers was Louis Summers and Louis was a female professor that said something about men, even if it was nasty, nothing would have happened to her. But Larry, being a man, and making an honest observation about women in science, must have been a sexist because he is, oh my Science, a man.

There are female professors whose entire careers are putting down men. They are called feminists. Again, I got no problem with them putting down men. My problem is that a man says something that they start crying their own eyes and want to silence him. This is a double standard.

There is a double standard that exists between normal people and retarded people. If a retard called a normal person "retarded" then nobody would ever object or get offended. But if a normal person called a retard a "retard", then people would get all offended and say that is an inappropriate thing to say (I myself am not sure why that would be inappropriate, the retard does not understand the insult anyway, he is retarded, so why should it matter?). There the double standard is obvious. But why should women be a protected species? If they are equal to men then they need to be treated the same way men are treated, not like little children. It is much more acceptable for women to say bad things about men, and not at all acceptable for a man to say even reasonable things about women. Women are not retards and they are not children. It is about time they get treated the same way as everybody else, stop giving them this special treatment.

Half-Life: Greatest Video Game

2011-02-28T12:55:00.004-05:00

There are many great games and for many people it is hard to choose which game deserves the very first spot. But for me it is no difficult choice at all, Half-Life (1998) easily gets the first place spot with no close competitor.

Anyone who does not recognize Half-Life as the top game, or at least as one of the top games ever made I consider such a person to be a video game fool who has no understanding of gaming history and the influence of which games brought.

What makes Half-Life so special is how it revolutionized the first-person genre completely. FPS games fall into pre-Half Life and post-Half Life era. Consider FPS classic games like Wolfenstein, DooM, Quake and Duke Nukem. All of these games are classics and a game like DooM or Quake would probably even make the top 10 list. But all of these classic shooters lacked something.

All these shooters were pure action games. There was hardly any story. Sure the game had a story. In Wolfenstein you were escaping from a Nazi castle. In DooM you were fighting an invasion from Hell. But that was it. None of the story developed. Each level was the same. It was just more intense. You collect keys, or cards, to open doors and move on. That is not really a modern FPS game, that is an old fashioned FPS game that is purely action/arcade based.

It took one game to change them all, and that game was Half-Life. Half-Life had a revolutionary different way in which FPS games were presented. For one thing in Half-Life the game started before the story. You began playing as if nothing happened. All other games put you into the middle of the action. Half-Life allowed you to see how the entire story develops from even before the beginning.

There were no levels there were no cutscenes there were no messages boxes to tell you a story. You get to see the story. You get to experience it. You develop the story with your actions rather than the story being handed over to you.

The story itself was superb. The ending was special, in that you choose your own ending. The gameplay was fantastic. The artificial intelligence was amazing. The graphics were decent(for its time, though this was the weakest part of Half-Life, however, lucky for me, I always say that graphics do not define a good game). All of these elements together created the finest game that were made.

Just consider the following fact. When Half-Life came out it got over 50 "game of the year awards". PCGamer called it to be the greatest game of all time in its 2000 and 2004 edition (not sure about other editions, if they ever even had those). GameSpy had a 64 playoff battle between all great games which were decided by voting members. Without a surprise Half-Life won the first place followed by Super Mario Bros. Recently GameSpot (not 8 years ago, recent, 2010) had a playoff between the best video game heroes, Gordon Freeman (the charachter from Half-Life) got the first place. Consistently Half-Life dominated these sorts of contests.

There is a reason why this is the most decorated game in history, because it is the best. The problem is that games are not like books. A game which is three years old is already considered to be "old". Half-Life is 13 years old, I remember playing it as a little boy. So it is largely forgotten by a lot of people. It has become forgotten how revolutionary this game really was and how much it influenced all following first-person shooters. Whenever you play any modern first-person shooter there is a remnant of Half-Life in all of them.

Of course, it is possible to make a modern game today with a 10 gigabyte memory, powerful graphics, and a stronger AI that is better than Half-Life. That is not amazing. What is amazing is making a game like Half-Life back when computers were not so powerful. And it is not so amazing because it will be influenced by the structure of Half-Life itself.

Atlas Shrugged: The Movie

2011-02-28T12:53:00.001-05:00

It came to my attention that there is going to be an Atlas Shrugged movie that is going to be released. Upon hearing this I said to myself that the world needs an Atlas Shrugged movie just as much as it needs another Duane Reade.

I seen the trailer for the movie. It looks terrible. And I would be surprised if the movie even turns out being average. But I am excited about seeing it. Not sure why. I even found someone to drag along with me to the movies. I never go to movies. Last time I was at a movie was about two years ago. So I guess I am excited not so much about that I get to watch such a movie but rather that I have an excuse to go and watch a movie with someone. Most movies have no appeal to me at all. But this has a small appeal to me. Not because I like Ayn Rand but rather because I never read her book. I am not a fan of fiction and I am not interested in reading a 2000 page book when I can instead spend that time reading something else instead. However, Rand's ideas do preach liberty, though from a very different approach that I take, and for that reason alone I am interested in seeing what the theme of the movie is about.

I am skeptical to how much of the themes will be in the movie that are related to the original Atlas Shrugged. My "movie date" told me that because it is made in Hollywood they are not so interested in staying close to the themes but instead to make it more action based. She is probably right, though I would still like to see the message of the movie.

The movie will be appropriately released on April 15th.

Gay Rights

2011-02-28T01:02:00.005-05:00

There is something that I noticed is not really discussed about gay rights. It is something that I am sure everybody realizes but hardly every brought up. Gay activists (or whatever they are called) sometimes compare the movement to treat gays equally with the black movements of the 1960's. This is not fair at all.

The big huge distinction between how gay people are treated and how black people were treated is that gay people have not been really oppressed in the US. I did hear of anti-sodomy laws but those were very local. I never heard of a federal or even state law that targeted gay people. Maybe I am ignorant of such laws, but I think I am correct, if those such laws did exist we would expect the gay activists to quote them from past history as proof of gay oppression. The hatred, evil, and oppression that was done to gay people was very decentralized. It was nowhere as terrible as what black people had to go through.

Black people were slaves for much of US history, after the end of slavery they were treated as sub-humans compared to the whites, and in some states they were oppressed for simply being black.

Where has this kind of oppression ever happened to gay people? Sure, it happened in other countries. Gay people are one of many people to have been brutally oppressed for being different. You can still see the tyrannical oppression against them in the Middle-East. But we are talking about the US here. Where in US history have gays been treated as if they are beneath human?

Gays were not made to walk on different sidewalks. They were not told they cannot use a public bathroom. They were not enslaved to others and made to do work. That never happened.

I live in New York City, you can find a lot of gay people here. Sometimes when I walk down the streets I see a gay couple holding hands. Nothing happens. No people in the street get angry and complain. No police officer arrests them. And if this couple goes to their apartment to have buttsex nothing will happen to them.

There are no laws anything (that I know of) that prohibit gay people from living with one another. Or kissing one another, or even having sex with one another. Sure in Texas a lot of people would probably get really offended and scream at a gay couple, but I doubt there will be any kind of law brought against them for being gay and having sex.

The problem with gay rights has never been the oppression, as there never was any oppression to gay people in the US. The problem is different. The problem is that they were (and still are) denied benefits that other citizens have.

As you probably know I do not agree in gay marriage as I do not agree with any kind of a marriage. Marriage needs to be an agreement between the couple (or more people) to live together, and that is it. Though what I think is irrelevant because currently marriage does bring benefits for the couple. Gay people were denied this benefit that other citizens have. And so there was inequality before the law.

However, today they have civil unions which I believe have the same benefits as marriage. From what I heard civil unions grant them the benefits as if they were married. But there is still a problem. The law does not recognize them as married, just in a "union". So there is still inequality before the law between how it treats normal citizens and gay citizens.

But we must be honest. We must admit that there is no oppression towards gay people. Gay people can have their pride parades without being silent. They can live the life that they want without being stopped. They can dress as girly as they wish without breaking any kind of law. Essentially anything they want to do they can do just as a straight person.

And this is a good thing. It only shows how much progress has been done towards gay rights. We just need to stop comparing gay activism to black activism, and stop blowing the problems gay face out of proportion as if it is some sort of an oppression against them. Injustice, yes; oppression, no.

Ignored in High School

2011-02-26T01:58:00.005-05:00

I went to an Orthodox all boys school (obviously). I got my high school diploma from there. Despite how much I have changed over a short period of time since graduation I still am very happy to have went there. The people were nice and there are Rabbis that I like. Of course, my respect for all these Rabbis have diminished as I now realize they live in a lie that they indoctrinate to children and who they themselves were victims of indoctrination. But they can be respected in other aspects. I also love my class. Most of them are nice people.

But what I always hated was that the main principal Rabbi of the whole school always ignored me. From day one till I graduated. I have been in high school from 13 to 18, and all those years he kept on ignoring me.

And I know that he ignored me because the way he treated other people was very different from how he treated me. Other students he was very strict with. He told them what they needed to do. But never, not even one time, did he ever dictate to me what I had to do. I never got in trouble by him all my years being in high school. If I did not come and daven he did not say anything. If I did not study for his Chumash test he did not say anything. If I entirely ignored all my Jewish work in high school he did not say anything.

You might imagine that my situation was a student's dream - to never be bothered about what they do. Students wish for this gift. But it is was really a curse. Because even though he never did anything to do, or got me into trouble, or tried to control me, he at the same time avoided me. If I had a question to ask him he did not want to respond to it. He would tell me "no time for questions" and move on to what he was doing, or something like that. He would speak with other people in high school.

He was (is) a very nice person, just very strict at the same time. A very funny guy and smart too. Makes good jokes and puns. He has a very likable personality. He would joke and talk with my fellow classmates but never talk in such a manner to me. But at the same time he would discipline them and be strict with them.

But I never got that kind of attention. He did invite me for Shabbos and for Yom Tovim. Quite often. And I would happily come because I get to see his likable personality. But it was never really about me. He just invited me because I would need a place to eat for Shabbos. He did not converse with me much at Shabbos. I really spoke with his sons at the Shabbos table, not him.

I should say that he was very nice to me all the years I have known him. But he just avoided me. Near the end of high school he got on everyone's case about what they are planning to do after yeshiva. He repeatedly had talks with all my classmates in high school to figure out what they are doing. If they were not sure he would pressure them to find out. If they still did not find out he would recommend for them a yeshiva to go to after high-school.

Here is the really strange part. For that entire senior year of high school he never asked me once what I am planning to do. Not once. Not even a suggestion. Not even a yes or no answer. All my classmates had this talk with him plentiful of time but not me. I even remember that I decided to walk over to him and tell him myself what I plan to do after high school.

I was different though. All my classmates went to a yeshiva upon finishing high school but not me. I was the only one in my whole class who went to college immediately. Looking back I am happy that I never went to yeshiva, happy to know I did not have to go through another year or two of indoctrination. In fact, it is possible that if I went to yeshiva I would have never broke free from this indoctrination. So looking back I am definitely happy to not have went to yeshiva.

He probably knew I was different. He probably knew that I am not planning to go to yeshiva. But he never made a word about it. That day I walk over to him and tell him that I plan to immediately go to college upon graduation. He responded to me by basically saying "okay". That was it. He had nothing to say, he had no question to ask. I just told him a piece of information and he accepted.

I always wondered, and still wonder, why he ignored me. I cannot figure it out. When I told my classmates my situation in high school they joke and tell me that "he was afraid of you". Some are more serious and just tell me "he knew you would not listen anyway to what he would say, you will just do your own way". But none of those answers make any sense. Is it not the role of a principal to suggest to students ideas, not necessarily to push them to do them?

He never gave me any suggestions. And so I felt ignored by him. I guess I should ask him one day. Maybe with these years that passed he would not ignore me. If I ask him why he ignored me perhaps he will tell me. This riddle does haunt me constantly. I need to know his reason. I must ask him one day before he dies, for lest I will never know.

Gay Pride Parades

2011-02-25T01:43:00.004-05:00

Gay pride never made any sense to me. It is like straight pride. Or bi pride. Or white people pride. Or black people pride. How can you be proud of something which you had no control over. You are gay precisely because you were born that way. Then how can you take pride in something you had no control over? It makes no sense. Are you also proud of the fact that you have two eyes?

This is my problem with gay pride parades. I got no problem with gay parades. I love that. That is awesome. It makes me happy to see morals being turned over. It amuses me to see the religious people go angry over this and how these gay people are going to destroy the world. I completely support having gay men kissing in parades in public places, and I would also support gay men having buttsex in public places. That be really awesome.

Often even gay people themselves have issues with pride parades because they are directly in your face. They say the gay people should not be so excited and all flashy about it in the streets. I do not share in this problem, in fact, the part of parades being in the face of everybody in the street is what I love about them. I have a different problem with them. The pride part is what I got a problem with. If gay pride parades dropped the pride and simply became gay parades then I would stand in complete support of them.

Some people question the necessity of pride parades. Are they really necessary to get your message out? Well, I ask, what message? There is not really much of a message to pride parades. It is more of an excuse for overly sexual gay men to be intimate with one another. It is really more of a celebration of the fun of being gay than really any kind of message. And there is nothing wrong with doing this. There is no message in pride parades that I can see, but there is a purpose to them. They are an ultimate big giant middle finger staring in the face of all the people who dislike gay people. It is a way of saying, "we are gay and we are not ashamed of it, so now we will go and make out to prove our point".

Do not fall into the whole "tolerance" trap. Do not ask for your haters to tolerate you. Instead do not tolerate them. They hate you, so love each other in front of their faces, as a message of insult to them. It is a way of saying that you are not going to conform to what they want you to conform to.

Geometry Problem of Regular Polygons

2011-02-23T11:16:00.003-05:00

There is a little well-known problem in geometry about equilateral triangles. Prove that it is impossible to have an equilateral triangle in the plane whose vertices are rational coordinates (a rational coordinate is a point (x,y) where x and y are rational numbers).

I found a one line proof of this problem that in fact generalizes this classic problem.

The problem is to find what kind of polygons are able to appear in the plane with vertices as rational coordinates. If you play with this a little bit you should realize that squares easily appear with rational coordinates. It turns out that only squares are the only such polygons that have this property.

Where are all the Jews at?

2011-02-22T00:44:00.004-05:00

I have noticed that a lot of Jew bloggers are now missing. Either they shut down their accounts or basically stopped posting. I am not saying there is anything wrong with taking such a decision but it confuses me. I seen a lot of Jew blogs out there that were often updated. So I figured that I can get to say what I want to say since there is already an existing Jewish (and ex-Jewish) community on Blogger.

I do realize that I often post non-Jew related stuff. But that is because I have a lot of different interests and I do not want to keep this blog only focused on Judaism. How much is there to even say on Judaism? How many different ways are there to explain why Judaism is a stupid and evil religion (not the people though, the people are fine, the ideas are evil however)?

Somehow after I spend many months on Blogger it seems that these Juden are disappearing. Maybe they are really busy now. I do not know. Whatever it is there seems to be a Holocaust of Jew blogs.

Let me guess, Google stopped paying them for AdSense. It is about the money. It is always about the money with these Jews. Typical Juden-schwein.

Worst Math Books Ever

2011-02-18T23:30:00.008-05:00

I know it is very common for math people to discuss among themselves their favorite math books, just like normal people discuss their favorite novels. And I can name my favorite math books, but I wanted to do something less discussed, the worst math books you ever read.

I am sure there a lot of terrible math books out there. And what I write will only represent the horrors I have experienced. Perhaps you have some more terrible ones.

Elementary Differential Equations by Boyce and DiPrima: Stay away from this book if you want to learn anything about differential equations. It is a piece of garbage. As the title suggests this is an elementary course in differential equations. It does stay honest to its name. This is an elementary book. You just really only need to know calculus to be able to study this textbook. This book has no rigor at all, just a discussion of different differential equations. And I am not complaining about that. It is okay for a book to have a lack of rigor if it actually manages to teach. The theory of ordinary differential equations will use analysis that most undergraduates will not know. So it is perfectly acceptable and understandable to write an elementary textbook that teaches some ideas and methods without much theory. However, this book fails at teaching. I remember I once wanted to learn about stability and non-linear equations. It was terrible, I did not learn anything. I also remember that I wanted to read the extra chapter in the book on Sturm-Liouville theory, and again, I was really unhappy, it was hard to learn anything. The authors do a terrible job at explaining. This book belongs in the trash or at a book burning festival, not in colleges.

Partial Differential Equations by Walter Strauss: I never actually studied out of this book but I did take it out of a library because I was interested in learning some of the material in it. I was really unhappy with it. No matter what chapter you turn to the author has no ability to explain himself. Even the very introduction to the book he cannot explain himself at all. But what is worst of all is the ridiculous price on this book. Books that are this bad do not deserve any kind of price to them. Strauss should be paying me for reading out of this monstrosity. If you want a great introductory book on PDE's that is like 1/3 the price get yourself "Basic Partial Differential Equations" by Bleeker and Csordas. It is an intro book on PDE but it does develop basic theory also. I was happy with it.

Advanced Calculus by Gerald Folland: Basically this is an advanced calculus book in general Euclidean spaces (multivariable). The book starts off well. Folland's first chapter on basic topology in n-space is well written. His second chapter on differentiation starts of alright but it progressively gets worse until the very end. By the time you reach the implicit function theorem of chapter three you ask yourself why you are reading this book. That chapter is a disaster. His fourth chapter on multivariable integration is lousy. And the fifth chapter on vector analysis is terrible, it gets progressively worse as one reads through the chapter. You get the impression that Folland does not want to be writing this book. The sad thing is that Folland is generally a good author. I have briefly looked over his Fourier Analysis book, though it was not appealing to me (a matter of personal preference) it did look well written. I also had an occasion to study a little bit out of Folland's real analysis book in one of my courses. I thought it was written in a reasonable manner, not perfect, but good enough. If you want to learn advanced calculus in several variables avoid this book entirely. There are better books. Any of Apostol's books would dominate Folland, so avoid it.

A First Course in Probability Theory by Sheldon Ross: The title is honest. This is a first course in probability. But the book sucks more dick than a gay porno (which I happen to watch, by the way, sometimes, to get a break from straight porn). The thing about this book is that it never explains its concepts. Its first chapter on combinatorics is reasonable. But after that the book falls apart. Math is a completely precise language. In math books concepts should be defined clearly. Nowhere in the book does he talk about what a random variable is. He mentions it a bit, but never really defines it. It is hard to follow him in the later sections of the book. This book also has non-ending examples. I know students often complain about books and say they do not have enough examples of exercises, well this book is filled with them. It does not stop. A single chapter will have a little to mention and then be bombarded with examples. The exercises at the end of the chapter also never seem to end. Too few examples is terrible, but an uncountable many, is not good either.

Discrete Mathematics by Goodaire and Parmenter: This is without any exaggeration the worst math book I have ever read. I am not even sure what makes it so bad. It is just bad. Worst of all it is boring. It cannot explain the material in any kind of exciting way. I brought this book upon first entering colleges because I was hoping to learn some basics of graph theory. I hate it.

Algebraic Topology by Allen Hatcher: What would you say that somebody writes a book on mathematics without having any definitions? You would certainly think that such a person destroyed the subject he wanted to write. Well, that is exactly what Hatcher did. I do not really have a problem that he wrote such a book. I have a problem that the book is presented as if it is some formal treatment of algebraic topology while it is largely handwaving. There are no definitions. He sets up intuition, which I have no problem with, but never really defines his terms. Then his proofs are hard to follow. First, he cannot explain himself well. Second, you have no idea what the definitions he is using since he never defined them rigorously. Third, he skips over a lot of steps. This book is homotopy equivalent to a trash can. And it shocks me that so many professors use this book as an introduction to algebraic topology. There are books on algebraic topology that are good (Massey), Hatcher's book serves no purpose. The only good thing about the book is that it has a lot of exercises and it is available for free online. Other than that, it sucks. It is disgrace to mathematics. And again, do not misunderstand me. I got no problem with informal treatments of mathematics, as long as they make it clear. I did enjoy Needham's book "Visual Complex Analysis" even though it was a non-formal geometric treatment of complex variables, but he never claimed the book to be a substitute for rigorous treatments of complex variables. This book mascarades as if it is some formal text on topology, and it is just not.

Mathematical Methods for Physicists by Arfken and Weber: Here is a general good rule about math books. Math books should be written by mathematicians, not by physicists. Physicists do not know math. They know how to use it in solving problems but they do not actually know the mathematics. And it really shows when a physicist is trying to explain mathematics, especially more advanced mathematics. When I read through Afrken and Weber (by the way, if you are wondering, no I did not read every page! the thing is like 1500 pages long) the impression I got was that the authors actually do not really know what they are talking about. If you had a professor who was confused and did not really explain a subject then you would get the impression that he does not know the subject. That is exactly how I felt reading this book. This book does not explain. It tries to but it ends up not explaining anything. There is not a single chapter that is well written. Even as a reference book I would not recommend it. The only good thing about the book are the exercises. It has enough exerices. But you are not really going to solve the exercises as the book fails at explaining the material. If you are wondering if there are any good books on mathematical physics, the answer is: yes! You can read, "Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics" by Byron and Fuller. This book is only like 15 dollars and of excellent quantity. I have read through some of their sections (the one on Green's functions is really good). Compare that to the trash by Arfken and Weber which is like 10 times more expensive.

Luckily, I do not have much experience with bad math books. I usually read reviews about them to know if they are good or bad. But a few of those books did come up, usually in courses I took, and so I had this unpleasant experience with them.

Why Pedophiles Like Children

2011-02-18T01:10:00.004-05:00

I was a few days ago thinking about what exactly is so sexually appealing about children. They do not appeal to me because their bodies are so under developed, they are like old people, not appealing at all. Except Sarah Palin, who by the way, is a grandmother. I heard of a MILF but never of a GILF, I think Sarah Palin makes it possible.

But then I realized a reason why pedophiles do like children. It is not their under developed body that they like so much, but a much simpler reason. Children lack hair. A (straight) pedophile does have a similar sexual attraction to women like a normal person does. When he sees a little girl (say ten years) he does after all see a minature woman. She looks like a woman. Okay she is a little under developed but she has similar proportions to a woman.

But for a pedophile there is a big difference between this girl and an adult woman. The girl has no hair (except for her head). Women do. Most women shave off their hair, but some traces of it can still be visible. Especially near the vagina area. Some women have some hair there, while others shave it off. But even the ones who do shave it off still have some remanants of hair.

A pedophile does not like hair. I should said hair different from head hair. Head hair is fine, it even looks pretty. A person with no head hair is less attractive in general than one who does have hair. But for the rest of the hair on the human body it is not appealing any more. Children are precisely the age group that have head hair and lack of body hair. Their bodies are perfectly smooth and clean, free from all hair. Especially their genitals, they are perfectly clean.

This is what attracts the pedophile. He sees a humanoid body which is perfectly smooth, and that is what attracts him to the children. In fact, what I just describe is often the reason why a lot of pedophiles are interested in anime'. In anime' the girls are shown to be hairless. It is a cartoon after all, so the artists can draw human bodies, often resembling little girls, that are perfectly free from any hair.

Maybe I am entirely wrong here as I do not know how the mind of a pedophile works. But this is my best guess that I have to what I think is causing the pedophile to be attracted to little children.

Sales and Designer Clothing

2011-02-17T23:22:00.004-05:00

There are two things that seem so easy as everyone else understands them but I just cannot make sense of them. What is up with sales? I hear some people tell me they are going to go and shop in a store because of a new sale?

I have a question. Is it not true that everyday is a sale day? It seems that anytime somebody mentions a clothing store there is always some sort of sale. I am assured that if I got up right now and walked into a random clothing store there would be a sale going on.

Or consider stores that has a "going out of business sale". How many "going out of business sales" can a store have already? If your store is open for seven years it is not exactly going out of business if you have such a sale.

When I pass through the streets of New York City I constantly see sales all around me. Clothing store after clothing store filled with some new sale.

So if it is true that sales happen everyday with every store then what makes them so special? It rather seems that the true intent of sales is to trick the people into thinking that they are saving money, while in all actuality the clothing stores you shop at just screw you over to make more money for themselves by attracting as many people as possible.

How many people live the rest of their lives seeing "SALE" every time they shop and not realize that if they see sales everytime then perhaps they are not as special as people think they are? Am I wrong here? I have no idea. I do not really shop for clothing so I have no idea. What am I missing? You would imagine that eventually people will realize that sales mean nothing anymore if they take place everyday.

The other thing that makes no sense to me is designer clothing. I never cared for designer clothing. All clothes that I have are way cheaper than the same exact clothing one would buy with a magical brand name. I can be wearing a suit, tie, jacket, everything, and the total amount of clothing on me would be over twice as less as someone who buys himself brand designer jeans. What is the point? Does it really matter? They look exactly the same. I would be interested to try an experiment. Buy some Walmart jeans, buy some designer jeans, rip off the labels, and ask someone to identify which one is which. I am sure they will be correct, about 1/2 of the time.

Speaking of clothing I have another thing I just cannot understand. What is up with all the excessive clothing shopping? This seems to be a problem to a lot of girls. I once was hanging out with a girl and before we departed she told me that she is going to go and buy herself something. I asked her how much clothing she owns. She said something to the effect of: 10 shoes, 15 pants, 20 shirts, 5 jackets. I was really surprised with that number. If you multiply all of those numbers together you get 15,000. This is the number of permutations of all articles of clothing she can wear. This means if she was to wear a different permutation of clothing every day it will take her 41 years to go through all of them! She can go through half a life with the clothing supplies that she already had. But somehow that is not enough. She needs more.

I do not understand. What is up with all of this excessive clothing shopping? My mom is like that. She buys herself lots of clothes and perfumes and never really has much of an occasion to use it. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. If it makes girls happen then so be it. But it makes no sense. Well, I guess it is not supposed to make sense, they are girls after all, they are not supposed to make sense, as they have no idea what they even want. As Freud said the one question he was never been able to resolve is what a girl wants.

Killing Spree

2011-02-16T01:26:00.004-05:00

A few days ago, in New York City, there was a killing spree. Some guy killed four people (with some wounded too, if I remember correctly). Not with a gun, but with a knife. Then several days later another stabbing took place, I think it was two people, or three, again in New York City.

When I heard these stories I was surprised to know that none of them generated the same attention as the recent shooting. Why is that that when there was a killing spree with a knife that killed close to the same number of people as the recent shooting that it does not get as much attention?

It does not make sense to me. Also, where are the knife control advocates? I never heard of them. Knives need to be abolished because they are so dangerous, and what about the children, the children can be hurt! How many stabbing happen every year as a result of knives? How many children accidently hurt or kill themselves with knives every year? Where are these knife control advocates who want to ban all knives.

Nowhere. Well maybe a few exist. If scientology has a place in this world then I am sure knife control advocates have a place in this world too. But I never heard of such a group.

Somehow people understand that if knives are avaliable everywhere, and anyone can carry one at anytime with them with no license whatsoever, then a few stabbings will take place. Maybe even a few killing sprees once in a while. Any reasonable person is capable of understanding that. And most of us understand that if knives are everywhere avaliable then we can expect some murders happening.

But here is the interesting thing. We learn to live with it. We are fine with this idea. It does not bother us really, it does not scare us much. This is the world we are used to. We are used to living in a world with knives. So we are comfortable with such a world.

But guns for some reason just scare the very same people who are perfectly comfortable around knives. Why is that? People often tell me, "if there are gun then you got to admit some shooting will take place". Sure, but what about knives? If there are knives then you got to admit some stabbings will take place also. Is that an argument to attempt to get rid of knives. (I do not believe for a moment that knives or guns can be get rid of by just passing a magical law, just like drugs, but that is a different discussion).

So the next time you hear about a shooting that took place. Just keep in mind that a lot of people die from knives also. But we are just so comfortable living in a world with knives.

I Hate Valentine's

2011-02-14T23:06:00.002-05:00

I hate Valentine's day because it is a reminder of that I am alone. This day is not special to me, never has been. My day today went like all other days. I am not bothered that there are other people who are happy on that day. That does not concern me, they certainly can be happy and I have nothing against that. It is just that whenever Valentine's day passes it is a continual reminder of what a social loser and loner I am. I get reminded of this message almost everyday. But on Valentine's it gets magnified by a lot.

There is also a lot of uncertainty on this day. I always wonder and ask myself, will I ever like Valentine's day? That is, will I ever have someone to share it with? Or shall I forever despise it as a dreadful day of the abyss? Do I want to be with someone? From a purely philosophical point-of-view I find all relationships to be irrational, but it still is appealing.

Statistics is not Math

2011-02-12T12:29:00.003-05:00

I am proud to say that I never taken a statistics course in my entire life, and I have never intentionally studied it. Why? Because I hate how statistics tries to mascarade as if it is a real math subject while it is not.

Does statistics use math? Of course. But so does string physics and quantum field theory. And so does electrical engineering. But we all understand that modern physics uses mathematical concepts, very often quite advanced mathematical concepts, to solve problems related to physics, and we understand string physics to be physics, and not math just because it heavily uses math. (By the way, the math used in modern physics is actually interesting unlike the math used in boring statistics).

Statistics is a science for collecting and interpreting numerical information. Just because it uses calculus and probability theory does not suddenly transform it into a math discipline.

Many statisticians like to identify statistics with probability theory as if they are one and the same. No, this is false. Probability theory is a real branch of mathematics. In fact, till the 1920's most mathematicians did not even acknowledge probability theory as a legitimate branch of mathematics. It was the work of Soviet mathematicians, mostly that of Kolomogrov, who were able to built probability theory on a solid mathematical foundation. And since that time probability theory has been accepted as a legitimate branch of mathematics.

But this legitimacy problem has never been addressed in statistics. All what statisticians do is collect numbers, draw them on various charts and graphs, and then attempt to make predictions about them. Which is why doing this is a science.

The sad thing is that the course I am teaching this semester has a little bit of statistics in it, near the end of the semester. But I hope to skip over that if I could. I really do not want to go through the pain of teaching how to draw a histogram or a pie chart. I rather have more fun time working on probability problems.

Nullhomotopy on Spheres

2011-02-11T12:06:00.001-05:00

Quotient spaces are important concepts in (algebraic) topology. But they are also difficult to deal with. The best way to deal with them is to develop an intuition about quotient spaces. I came up with an exercise (inspired a little by Munkres) that I think illustrates the idea of quotient spaces well. It is both intuitive and formal. I hope any mathematics student who wants to become more comfortable with quotient spaces will find this helpful.

Let $n\geq 1$ be a positive integer. Suppose that $f:S^n\to Y$ is a continous function from the $n$-dimensional sphere to some arbitrary topological space $Y$ that can be extended (continously of course) to the $n+1$ dimensional (closed) disk $D^{n+1}$, that is, we can extend the domain of $f$ so that we have $f:D^{n+1}\to Y$ and $f$ restricted to the boundary of $D^{n+1}$ (which is $S^n$) is the original $f$ we started with. Then $f$ is nullhomotopic. The reason for this is very simple. The space $D^{n+1}$ is contractible to a point.

The converse statement is harder to prove, but not too hard, and we will illustrate how to use quotient spaces in proving that $f$ can be extended to a continous function on the whole $n+1$-dimensional disk if it is nullhomotopic.

The intuition here is that the sphere $S^n$ is hollow inside. It has no hole, but it is empty, and somehow if a map is homotopic to a constant map then such a map can be extended to all of region within the sphere. (The $n$-sphere is not contractible to a point, it is intuitively obvious, but just in case you do not trust your intution in higher dimensional spaces, notice that the homology groups of the sphere and a point are not the same, so clearly a sphere cannot be contracted to a point).

By assumption $f:S^n\to Y$ is nullhomotopic so there is a homotopy $F:S^n\times I\to Y$ such that $F_0(s)=f(s)$ for all $s\in S^n$ and $F_1(s)=y$ for some $y\in Y$, we will denote this homotopy as $F_t(s)$. Consider the space $S^n\times I$. You should think of this as a cylinder. To visualize this consider $S^1$ then $S^1\times I$ is really a cyclinder. But in general $S^n\times I$ should be thought as some sort of high dimensional cyclinder. The homotopy $F$ maps the upper face of the cylinder all to the same point $y$ i.e. $F(S\times 1)=y$.

The intuition now is that if we collapse (identify) the top face of the cylinder to one point then we will have defined a continous function on a cone. Formally, we construct the set $X=S^n\times I/S^n\times 1$. Let $\pi: S^n\times I\to X$ be the quotient map, we topologize $X$ by saying $U\subseteq X$ is open if and only if $\pi^{-1}(U)$ is open. Hence, we have constructed a topological space (intutively thought as a cone) $X$.

Let us get a sense of what $X$ is, just as a set. It will consist of points $\{(s,t)\}$ for all $0\leq t<1$ (we are slighly abusing notation here, $(s,t)$ is not really a pair, but an $n+2$ coordinate in $\mathbb{R}^{n+2}$ because $s$ is itself an $n+1$ coordinate) and it will consist of the point $\{S^n\times 1\}$. A cone is homeomorphic to a disk, by a simple projection operator. That is, define $p:X\to D^{n+1}$ by $p(\{(s,t)\}) = (1-t)s$ (remember $s$ is an $n+1$ coordinate so $(1-t)s$ is just a scalar product) for $0\leq t <1$. And set $p( \{ S^n\times 1\} ) = 0$. Check that $p$ is well-defined and then check that $p$ is also continous. Proving that $p$ is continous is easy but tedious so I will not do it. For example, if $U$ is open in $D^{n+1}$ and it does not contain $0$ (as an $n+1$ coordinate in $D^{n+1}$) then $p^{-1}(U)$ will be set of points $\{(s,t)\}$ in $X$ which have the condition that $s(1-t)\in U$. To show that such set of points is open in $X$ pull them back under $\pi$ (the quotient map) and check they are open in $S^n\times I$. Then consider the case when $0\in U$ and $U$ is open in $D^{n+1}$. It is straightforward but tedious so I will not do it. I think it is more important to have intutition that will convince you that $p$ must be continous. Cleary, $p$ is also a bijection. To prove that $p$ is a homeomorphism we will need to show $p^{-1}:D^{n+1}\to X$ is continous also. But we will use the following useful trick. Since $p:X\to D^{n+1}$ is a bijective continous function from a compact space to a Hausdorff space it forces $p$ to be continous (this is true for general topological spaces).

Now we will use the "univeral property" of a quotient map. So far we know that $F:S^n\times I \to Y$ is a homotopy. We also know that $\pi:S^n\times I\to X$ is a quotient map. So we can "factor" $\pi$ through a continous function $g:X\to Y$ such that $F=g\pi$. Remember that $F(s,0)=f(s)$, so it follows that $g(\pi(s,0))=f(s)$ that is $g(\{(s,0)\})=f(s)$. Finally consider the composition $gp^{-1}:D^{n+1}\to Y$. This is continous. We claim it has the desired property that $gp^{-1}$ on the boundary is the original $f$. To see this write a point in $D^{n+1}$ as $s(1-t)$. On the boundary of $D^{n+1}$ we have $t=0$, so under $p^{-1}$ the image is $\{(s,0)\}$. But by what just said $g(\{(s,0)\})=f(s)$. Therefore, we proved that if we set $h=gp^{-1}$ then $h:D^{n+1}\to Y$ is a continous function with the property that $h|_{\partial D^{n+1}} = f$. And with that we proved the theorem.

Suicide is not the Answer?

2011-02-10T01:18:00.004-05:00

There are a lot of things that people repeat over and over until it gets accepted as some universal truth. The police are on your side, the soldier is fighting for your freedom, US is the land of the free, respect your elders, family are more important than anyone else, and so forth. One of these thing that I keep on hearing people say is that "suicide is not the answer".

Why not? See the interesting thing about indoctrinated lies that people learn from constant exposure to these ideas since they are children is that these concepts never have much of an argument to them. They are never really justified, just repeated to the point that people repeat it themselves. I heard many times that suicide is not the answer in my life. But no one ever said why it is not.

Suicide can be a means to deal with a problem. Suppose that a person is in a lot of pain. He has no more reason to keep on living. Why should he continue to suffer if he can die peacefully? I would argue that it makes more sense for him to kill himself (or delegate that right to someone else so that his friend can kill him) in such a condition.

A lot of friends think it is noble to say "I will never assist you in suicide", but why is that a noble statement? You are a friend, you are supposed to be there for him in his darkest hour. And your friend has thought through his position and came to the sad conclusion that his life needs to end. If you do not help him then you are a bad friend. I am not talking about whether you can make yourself to help him or not. That is a different issue. You might want to help him but be too weak to assist his death. I am talking about a friend who refuses to help him and think he is doing the right thing. Why not assist?

Or perhaps a dreadfully lonely person who has lived half his life, all alone, and cold. He has no goals, he has nothing to aspire to. He just works everyday. And been doing that for most of his life. Does such a person really have a life? Not really. He is really a drone, in a way, for his employer, a personal machine for his boss. Say this person wants to end his life. Is it really so bad? How is suicide not the answer? Why should he continue to live through his terrible life until he dies?

Suicide is sometimes the answer.

Illegal to Help People

2011-02-08T23:21:00.004-05:00

I just heard on the news that a dentist was arrested for being a dentist without a license. So let me get this straight. A guy, who was helping out people with their problems, was arrested because he did not have a magical piece of paper that gave him permission to help other people?

I do not understand people who support this license law (which is like 98% of all the population). Conservatives, well, those people are one big confusion and self-contradictory all over the place, so they can excused. Liberals, the very same people, who make the argument in favor of gay marriage by saying "we have no business what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their homes", these very same people, who make this argument, turn out to be against two consenting adults to agree to: one to fix teeth and other to pay. The inconsistency is astounding to me, what an extreme case of cognitive dissonance.

On top of that this law is beyond stupid. It is not against the law to help your friend and fix his teeth, right? I do not think so. You can use dentist supplies on your friends to help them with their teeth without having any kind of license. That is okay. So what is it not okay to sell this service? It makes no sense. It is considered legal, probably but almost all people, to help another person as a act of kindness, but not okay to help those people for a price? I do not understand. This makes no sense at all. I cannot imagine how this makes sense to people, who are these people who see the world this way?

This law is almost as stupid as the law against prostitution. It is okay for a girl just to have sex with any guy, at any time. But not okay if she sells that service. How? Why is it illegal to do something which is perfectly fine to give? Same with non-licensed dentists. These dentists can give their services without any problem for free, but they cannot charge for that. Did I say that this makes no sense at all?

But I want you to keep this in mind. This accused dentist was not caught for being a bad dentist. But simply because one of his patients tried to find him online and could not. He got concerned and then told the cops.

Why is it illegal to help people? This guy was helping people with his services. He was making their lives better at a cheaper price. Why is that illegal? Why should that be so wrong? How does this not violate the "consenting adult" argument that liberals are so happy to make with regard to gay marriage but foolishly ignore when it comes to a problem like this?

I have been to several illegal dentists in my life. And I have been to legal dentists. Do you know what the big difference is? About 200 dollars. That is all. The service is exactly the same. Feels no different. Just that the illegal ones are cheaper. Since when is bringing something to market at a cheaper price illegal?

Can someone explain this to me because I just cannot make any sense of this.

Is Goy Derogatory?

2011-02-05T23:15:00.006-05:00

As you know I do not care about derogatory terms. I could not care less what words other people use. Words themselves are meaningless, it is the context in which they are used that makes them good or bad. What is derogatory is simply a social consensus. Fag can be derogatory today but not derogatory a few hundred years ago. But the idea of "homosexuals are sub-human and need to be killed" has always been universally a bad thing to say, despite that in the past others did not acknowledge it. So the only thing that I care about are the ideas and the context in which words are used. Focusing on words themselves is the wrong way to go, since it ultimately comes down to social consensus to what is okay to say and what not. For these reasons I could not care less for derogatory words.

However, for the people who for foolish reasons care about such words a common question to ask is whether the Jewish word "goy" is a derogatory term to refer to non-Jews. A lot of gentiles think that when a Jewish person says "goy" he is referring to non-Jews in an offensive manner.

Why do they think that? Perhaps because most derogatory words are short words. It just sounds like a derogatory term. But there is nothing within this word that is derogatory. All what "goy" means "nation". Not the Jewish nation, but the rest of the nations of the world.

Consider for example Pslam 126. It is sung on Shabbos and is generally simply referred to as Shir HaMalos. One of the words is "goyim", that is just a plural of "goy". In verse all what the word means is simply "nation". There is nothing derogatory about that.

Even though the word "goy" is not derogatory many Juden have a superiority feeling. They are the great ones of the world and the rest of the non-Jews are inferior to them. When they say "goy" they do mean it in a negative way. For them a non-Jew is a sub-human. Their lives are below the lives of a Jew. So when these kind of Juden say "goy" they do mean it in a negative way, since for them non-Jew is a negative thing. But the word itself has had nothing derogatory about it at all.

If you happen to be non-Jewish and are once called a "goy" do not be offended. Because he is calling to the fact that you are non-Jewish. Which is in fact a good thing, since you are not brainwashed into their religion.

End the Tenure

2011-02-04T23:48:00.002-05:00

The argument in favor of "academic freedom" (which is just a euphemism, it is not freedom if it infringes upon the right of the university to fire their professors) is that professors and intellectuals should be able to publish their ideas, no matter how controversial, without the fear of being fired. If professors and intellectuals knew that their job is threatened by what they say then they might suppress their controversial ideas because of this fear. Hence, the argument goes, that these ideas need to be protected. So that professors and intellectuals would be able to express their true intentions.

This is something that concerns me. I got no tenure, I am just a professor who lectures classes. But I do see a future in where I hold a regular position with tenure. In a way I am speaking of my own future. I do not agree with a tenure. I should not, nor should any other professor, be given this privilege. If universities are happy to give such positions to their professors then that is okay, but there should be absolutely no mandate requiring universities to always keep their professors.

Not just tenure but everything else about being a professor is wrong too. Take for example the Sabbatical. Every number of years a professor takes a year (or half-a-year) off and gets paid in the meantime. Why? What did a professor accomplish exactly that makes him deserve such a privilege? Being a professor is by far, without any exception, the laziest job in the whole world. You work like 10 or 12 hours a week, sometimes even less. You have off during the winter time, off during the summer time. There is no any physical hard work in being a professor. But somehow they get off for a half-a-year to a year because it is such a hard job. Miners who dig for 12 hours a day with an extremely dangerous job and very physical work get no such privilege. Nor does any other kind of profession that I know of. But somehow professors, the laziest of all the lazy people, get so much time off. Why?

If professors want to make themselves some extra money they should go and work (or start a business, which in a way, is work also). With all the free time that they have I am sure they can hold a temporary job, with a good pay since of their high level of education. They should work instead of having all of these bonuses given out for them for free.

I do not believe in any kind of protected species of people. Because this is contrary to equality before the law. If professors are given all of these benefits by law that other people do not get that is not exactly legal equality.

I remember I once heard an argument in a forgein country that reporters should be protected from certain speech put against them because that would enhance their reporting abilities. How is this argument really so different from academic "freedom"? Why should reporters be given this special protection status above other people? That is inequality before the law.

But really now let us just consider whether or not it is true tenure actually helps professors express themselves? Do most tenured professors write deep works of controversy? None at all. There are some professors who do, but that is rare. Most professors are exactly just like most people. Most people repeat the mainstream ideas that are currently held. Why should we expect professors to be any different.

Even if it was true that professors and intellectuals were expressing ideas that are controversial to the public there will still be something holding them back. The outrage of the public. People do not just stop themselves from saying controversial things because they fear they will lose their job, they also fear how other people will think of them. In simpler words, collectivism. Professors, just like most people, are stopped from sometimes saying their true thoughts and ideas because they are afraid of how other people will treat them. Thus, I do not see how academic "freedom" really helps remove this fear that professors supposedly have about saying their true thoughts.

Tenure is not a harmless policy. It disincentives professors from working hard to be professors. Professors with tenure often come late, become irresponsible, and other negative traits they would not have if they had to work for their position. And who suffers? The students. Well not just the students who have to sit in the lectures of these terrible professors. But also the future professors would are excellent and who are able to do a superior job than these lazy irresponsible tenures. This policy is harmful and produces very little that is positive, it should be abolished, entirely.

Johnny Weir Out of the Closet

2011-02-03T18:38:00.003-05:00

Johnny Weir, or who I prefer to call Johnny Queer, recently came out of the closet. And the national response was "finally!".

For those of you who do not know Johnny Queer is an Olympic male figure skater. He competed in the 2010 games in Vancouver and the 2006 games in Tourino. Johnny Queer is a very controversial figure skater. A lot of complaint was drawn that Johnny Queer makes the sport "too feminine". If you would like an example of what I am talking about you can watch this.

He was the most controversial athlete by far of the 2010 games. There were people who wanted to bar him from competing in the Olympics because of the "disgrace he brings to the sport".

Now I am not exactly sure what these people are complaining about. This is male figure skating, the gayest of all the sports. How can this sport be made any more feminine? And who cares if he is gay or not? He is not hurting the sport. Do you know how many people, especially girls (because they find him hot), love to watch him skate? There is a reason why he was probably everyone's favorite skater. Even though he did not make it to the medals people really enjoyed him. How can you say he is "harming the sport" if he is making it more modern? How is he hurting this sport if more people watch it? As much as you traditionalists hate to admit this but Johnny Queer drew the most attention than any skater. Not even any skater, but more attention than any Olympic athlete. He was the most heard about Olympian than anyone else, probably the favorite one too if you ran a poll.

He was my favorite athlete also. Because I love individuals who are not afraid to be individuals and make all the traditionalists angry. It was fun watching all the commentators about him get angry about how he makes the sport girly. I enjoy this kind of rebellion. And Johnny Queer did not even make a slight attempt to feminize the sport, he went all the way, he did not let any taboos hold him back. That is why he was my favorite.

But he never said he was gay. Every time reporters questioned his sexuality, and they always did, he avoided the question. A few weeks ago he came out of the closet.

Nobody was surprised. Everyone knew Johnny Queer was gay. Mostly everyone who was curious about his sexuality did not do so in a bad way but because it was obvious that he was gay and everyone was just waiting for him to finally admit it.

How did people know he was gay? Because of stereotypes. Stereotypes often come to be precisely because there is truth to them. A guy, in ultra tight clothing, dancing to girlish music, having a lisp voice, who is into fashion, come on, we all know that such a person is gay. But many of us do not want to admit it. For some reason we decided that stereotypes are evil and should never be used. But deep down inside each one of us who know Johnny Queer knew he was gay.

Using the Dictionary

2011-02-02T01:10:00.003-05:00

There are some debating strategies that are a sign that your opponent has nothing of value to add anymore. I discussed one before here where I made the argument that grammar is useless to bring up in a debate. A debate is not an English class, it is a debate, it is supposed to be a battle of ideas. Mentioning to your opponent that he has bad grammar or spelling instead of addressing his ideas is the same as not making any response back to him.

But there is another debating tactic that is just as useless. That is the use of a dictionary. I never do this but I seen other people do this often. Especially on YouTube because I like to watch arguments that people sometimes have over one another on YouTube. It is often that I see one of the people in a video take out a dictionary or link up to a website which has a dictionary and say that his opponent is wrong because he is using the wrong definition.

There is no such thing as a right or wrong definition. The entire point of definitions is to make arguments easier to follow. One can, if one is truly mad, ignore all the definitions, and just have all arguments which use only the premises. But this often gets very difficult in many discussions, especially complex ones. So definitions are used to simplify arguments. Definitions are not really necessary within an argument. They are only used to make ourselves easier to understand. Thus, there is no such thing as a right or wrong definition. Definitions should rather be determined by their usefullness. For example, let us say I define "crocoduck" to be a hybrid between a crodocile and a duck then this definition is utterly useless. It is not wrong, but it is useless because it will never come up in any sound argument since there are no crocoducks.

Definitions should be judged instead by how useful they are to have. One of the things I started noticing is that there are certain words that the masses define in a useless manner or lack to have any good definition for. For example, the word "racism". I have struggled to understand what this word means. Never been able to figure it out. Until one day I realized that the definition people use is useless. So I entirely rejected the mainstream definition of racism and I made my own. (If you are interested you can read this).

There are other words whose my definitions differ from the definitions of the masses. All what I do is simply reject the mainstream definition and use that very same word to define what I want to define. (For instance, I reject God, and make myself one).

Perhaps, my re-defining approach will be more appreciated by those who read math books. If you open up two math books on topology, for example, you are almost certain that a lot of their terminology (and notation) will differ from one another. There can be some definitions in one book which are theorems in another, while these very theorems are the definitions in this other book. Or in other cases the definitions may actually be a little distinct. But in the end both of these books are correct. They just approach the subject a little bit differently. And it is okay to use any approach that you use from the book of your choice. There is no absolute way of writing such a math book.

The same should be among all discussions among people. Whenever people use terms they may have differences with, they would simply define their terms and stick to what they mean. From there they form their arguments. But to use the dictionary as an absolute measure of what a word means feels like there is an absolutely correct definition - which there is not. Thus, I say, those who use dictionaries in debates are nothing but alchemists of argumentation.

You should learn from me. I am a master-debator.

Criticism of the Zeitgeist Movement

2011-01-29T14:54:00.011-05:00

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).

I am God

2011-01-28T12:56:00.002-05:00

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.

Liberal Lunacy 7: Violent Video Games

2011-01-26T12:19:00.011-05:00

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.

Controversial Video Games

2011-01-23T19:26:00.008-05:00

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.

Rather be Hated than Lonely

2011-01-22T00:21:00.002-05:00

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.

The Myth of Equality

2011-01-21T00:32:00.008-05:00

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.

Review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent

2011-01-20T12:21:00.011-05:00

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.

Where Laws Come From

2011-01-18T00:26:00.016-05:00

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.

Fleshlight vs Girlfriend

2011-01-17T00:35:00.008-05:00

If you are a guy reading this then you probably know what a fleshlight is. A fleshlight is a male sex toy that replicates the pussy. Well, it can also replicate the mouth or anus, but let us just stick to pussy (actually, it would even be more preferable if we can stick it into a pussy, though that would take us off topic). This is an extremely popular male sex toy. Boys always think about sex, all day long, but they do not want to go through the hassle of finding themselves some pussy. Or these boys might be losers who lack social skills and physical appeal to attract a girl. So instead of going through all those challenges now guys have a place to stick their penis into that feels very close to an actual vagina. I would post a link to how a fleshlight looks like but Google is going to get all butthurt on me because this blog is not labeled "adults only", so to avoid the risk of making the great Google angry how about you just search for this yourselves, on Google (for irony), to see how it looks like if you are interested in seeing it.

Now we need to ask what is a "relationship"? I basically gave you my views (which are infallible, by the way, and if you do not believe me you can go fuck off and die) on this subject many months ago here. Let me summarize my arguments here again.

A relationship is a complex form of prostitution. Prostitution is monetary exchange for sex. A relationship is just like prostitution, just more complex. The boy is expected to do stuff for the girl, and the girl is expected to do stuff for the boy. The boy might have to buy her flowers, take her to movies, go on a dinner with her, or just listen to the bullshit girls talk about and pretend that she has anything of value to say. But this is of course for a price. The boys expects stuff from the girl. The girl cleans his floors, makes him a sam'vich, and sucks on his dick. Both the girl and boy probably have a desire for sex and both of them satisfy that desire when they fuck together. That is all what a relationship is. It is not some selfless act of love, it is not some eternal holy union, it is not some supernatural state of mind, it is just prostitution.

The fleshlight is better than a girlfriend depending on the kind of relationship you want. If you want a girlfriend that makes you sam'viches and cleans your house then I guess it is more desirable to have a girlfriend because the fleshlight is not capable of doing that kind of stuff. But to be fair those girlfriends are a real pain to have. They will constantly complain and talk about how they are "equal members of society". So you will have to get yourself a whip and beat them up a couple of times a week to discipline them into obedient girlfriends. But that is too much of a hassle, you might rather just hire a maid to clean up your house than dealing with this trouble maker girlfriend.

But if your goal in a relationship is to have sex and to satisfy your sex drive then dump your girlfriend. The fleshlight is so much better than a girlfriend in that regard. Just consider the cost of a fleshlight, like 60 or 70 dollars. It depends, some might be even cheaper. I got my fleshlight for only 20 dollars because I brought a used fleshlight on e-Bay from a 62 year old male seller who goes by the name "Aids2U". That is all it costs. Now consider a girlfriend. A girlfriend you need to listen to. And this would not even be a big deal if girls had anything intelligent to say, but you have to listen to them ramble on and on about pointless non-sense. Time is money, the time you waste listening to her adds up, a lot. Then you need to buy her gifts. If you do not buy her gifts then she will get angry at you and not want to fuck you. And those gifts cannot be cheap gifts, they need to be diamonds and gold necklaces. But it does not even stop here. You need to take her out to dinner and to movies. This would not even a big deal but you need to listen to her. You need to go to the dinner she wants and the movie she would like to see, which, without much surprise, turn out being extremely boring movies. That is more money you have to waste. And even if you do everything right girls are unpredictable. They are even more confusing than the quantum world. At any one moment they can start crying and leave you forever, for no reason at all. All that investment you put into her ended up being a failure. But the fleshlight always works for you, so much cheaper, and predictable (since it was designed by a man).

Other than the cost, the fleshlight has a lot of great advantages over a girlfriend. First, your girlfriend might not be in the "mood". In fact, she is usually not in the mood. You are always in the mood, because you are a guy, well except the 30 minutes after you have sex, that is when you are not in the mood, but soon again you are in the mood again. Whenever you want sex you can only have it if she is willing to give it. With a fleshlight this is not so. The fleshlight is always in the mood. Second, you do not need to take out your fleshlight to the movies, or to dinner, or listen to it complain about utter non-sense. Just put your fleshlight away and at any time use it when you need to. Third, the fleshlight is free from all diseases. You can fuck your fleshlight for as long as you like and never worry about contracting diseases from it. Your girlfriend might, in a small chance, end up giving you a disease. The fleshlight is the safest form of all sex. Fourth, the fleshlight cannot get pregnant. No matter how much sperm you pour into the fleshlight it will never get pregnant, even with a quart of sperm. No need for condoms, not need for worries. And definitely no need for unexpected child support 9 months later by your angry girlfriend that one day forgot or was too drunk to take the pill. Fifth, the fleshlight does not get jealous. If you want to use a different fleshlight, go ahead, it will not get jealous and end up keying your car the next day. Sixth, if you ever get angry at your fleshlight you can kill it, your can destroy it, without having to suffer first-degree manslaughter charges (by the way, this is unrelated, but I put laughter into manslaughter). And finally, your fleshlight comes with a warranty.

So fuck girlfriends, not literally speaking, and fuck the fleshlight instead. It is superior to a girlfriend in every aspect. All the worries, costs, hassles, and problems you go through girls you no longer need to go through a fleshlight. They are better than girlfriends. Do not listen to what your girlfriend tells you about the fleshlight. They are jealous of them. Girls are jealous of fleshlights because they finally realize they are obselete. The only real purpose of girls is to fuck, with the fleshlight, they lost all their purpose. No wonder they are so pissed at them.

Defense of Video Games

2011-01-15T13:25:00.009-05:00

It occurred to me that I can probably make a good video game critic. I cannot be a book critic because I am not interested in literature, never been my kind of thing. I cannot be a movie critic because movies are mostly boring for the most part so I have very little interest in movies. I cannot be a music critic even though I listen to music. But I cannot be a music critic because the music that mostly interests me is classical and war/nationalistic music, I am not up with the modern times, and I do not know anything about music theory. But the one thing I can be a critic of are video games.

I love video games, and not only that, I have grown up on video games ever since I was a little boy. I grew up as the video game revolutions were happening around me. So not only do I have a lot of experience of video games I have lived through the short history of video games. It is in this regard that I think I can make a good critic of video games.

I would say that the golden age of video games is the late 1980's and early 1990's. This was the time period when games really started to take off. I lived through this period, well, the early 1990's is when I started playing games, but I did play the predecessor games also, so I can say that I lived through this time period. And I have continued to play video games up to the modern games which are released today. I do not play anymore as much as I used to when I was back in high-school, but I am at least up to date and familiar with what is coming out and what is being made.

I figured that I need to defend video games because they are a condemned art. And yes, that is right, I called video games an "art". Because that is what they are, and I will explain my reasons for calling them that.

People often condemn video games by saying it is a waste of time, that is it games for little children, make you uncultured, make you stupid, and they make you violent.

See books never have to defend themselves. It is always assumed that books are these great wonders of pure wisdom that no one has a right to condemn. You hardly ever hear anyone bad mouthing books. But you hear the bad mouthing of video games all the time. Why is it that books are mostly accepted by everyone as good while video games always need to prove themselves to be good?

I want to make it very clear, I have nothing against books. When I say "books" I mean fiction literature novels that people read. Obviously, scientific texts are entirely filled with important knowledge. Rather I am talking about books that people read for mere entertainment. I have absolutely nothing against books. If you like them, then read them. If you enjoy reading a story about someone else then go ahead and read it. I do not think there is anything wrong with that at all.

People read books not because they really make you smarter, but rather because they are a form of entertainment. If you read "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown you are not becoming smarter about history because it is not intended as a historical book, it is intended to be a work of entertainment. And again, there is nothing wrong with that, if you enjoy this kind of stuff, then go ahead and enjoy yourself, you deserve some relaxation time, so I am not complaining and I am not saying there is anything wrong.

But my problem is that book readers do not grant me the same level of respect. They often assume that because I do not read literature and that I do not like it, it must be because I am stupid. Furthermore, that I like to play video games must immediately mean that I must be stupid and childish.

A video game is nothing but another form of entertainment. Back in history, 300 years ago, even 100 years ago, even 40 years ago, there were no video games. Basically the only means that people had to entertain themselves was through books. Books that were just story books, that told a story and motivated the reader to be interested in this story. This was the form of entertainment that people have often gone through most of history.

However, in the modern age there are many different new forms of entertainment. Movies are one of them, another one that I do not have an interest towards, but some people do. Another form of entertainment is video games.

A video game is exactly like a book, except the story is told very differently from how it is told in a book or in a movie. Video games have their own stories, and they also seek to express their stories in such a way to interest their players. Video games also tell stories, not just books or movies. In fact, video games have this advantage over books (and movies). In a book you read a story about someone else, in a movie you watch a story about someone else. With video games the experience is so much more special. In the video game you are the story. You are the one who makes the story. You are not reading a story about someone else. You are not watching a story about someone else. Rather you are experiencing the story yourself.

Books are limited in that they have no senses. Books are based upon your imagination, again this does not make them inferior or superior to video games, or to movies, it just makes them different. And if you prefer the imaginative method of story then good for you, I have no problem with that. I am just suggesting that there is a limitation to what a book does. A book cannot appeal to the sense of sight or sound. It relies on your imagination to construct a world in your head with these senses. The beauty of video games is that these two senses are immediately constructed for you.

If you are reading a horror book it needs to construct a world in where the setting is very scary. The book needs to develop the atmosphere for the reader. The book will mention how it is dark, raining, and there are growling sounds in the background, and you can feel something chase after you. In fact, the story is not even about you, it is about someone else, that the book reconstructs, and you need to imagine being that person of the story. But in a video game this story telling is drastically different. The video game does not need to tell you about a scary environment because you can see it and you can hear it. It does not need to tell you it is dark, you can see it yourself through the video game. It does not need to tell you about the growling and chasing sounds after you, because you can hear them yourself.

But the best part of all between the difference between a book and a video game is that in the book you have no freedom to develop the story. The story is developed and set into motion by the narrator. In a video game this is different because you are the narrator also. You are the one who develops the story. If you are playing a horror video game and you find yourself in a scary environment you know how to react. You know you need to run and hide from the horror that is following you. The story does not need to tell you what to do. It feels so different in a video game as it feels in a book.

In fact, this is just one kind of video game. This is the kind of a game in where you discover the story by playing through it. It can be anything. It can have a mafia based storyline, or a fantasy based storyline, or a sci-fi based storyline, whatever it happens to be the story telling mechanics are the same. You are the main character who develops the story through your own actions in the video game.

There are other kinds of video games which do not have much of a story to them. You just blow stuff up. Or stack bricks together before times runs out. Whatever it happens to be. But those kinds of games also can be defended as a method of entertainment. Playing pool is a rather pointless game, but there is nothing wrong with that. You have fun doing that, so what is the problem? Playing tetris, for example, is the equivalent of virtual pool on a computer screen. Pointless, no story, but it can keep you entertained.

The last kinds of games are the massively mutliplayer games. Perhaps, you heard of World of Warcraft, or Modern Warfare, whatever they happen to be. Those are the games that are entirely played by humans through the internet. It is a world that consists of other humans players and you play among yourselves. Either you play in teams with a single objective, or individually - each one for himself, whatever it happens to be the game is set to be an interaction between people. It is just like basketball, except this game is not very physical.

There is also a challenge element to all video games, something all books lack. There is no challenge to read a story of a book, unless the book is incredibly boring that you need to force yourself to finish it. In video games there is a challenge to defeat the game. Games often come with different difficulty settings. Some harder some easier. So not only do you develop the story (if you are playing one of the story based games) but you need to challenge yourself to be able to beat the game in its entirety. Challenge is part of the appeal of video games to people. Some people go out of their way to play the most challenging games to see how well they can deal with them.

I sometimes get this feeling that the anti-video game people who call them silly and foolish have this 20 or 30 year old view of video games. These are the very same people who probably think that modern video games is some stupid graphic game with a man collecting mushrooms and jumping on heads of enemies. Do you realize how much video games have evolved ever since the days of Mario? It is quite spectacular to see how modern video games look.

Over five years ago I played "Elder Scroll's IV: Oblivion". I am not into RPG's but I had to get myself this game because I heard of its amazing reviews. When I finally got it and installed it on my computer I was amazed at the world of this game. The world is huge. I have no idea how large it is. I am just going to pick a number because I never measured, just saying how I felt. I would guess it felt like it was something as 4 square miles of exploring area. With unbelievable detail. You were able to look down on the ground and pick up a rock and then throw it. That is the amazing detail that this game had. After I played this game I was amazed at how people can develop such a huge game with so much detail. It felt like an artificial world. And this is over five years ago! Just imagine what games developed into today.

This is why it is not exaggeration to call video games as a form of art. Just consider the amount of work and time people had to put into it to construct such a complex world. As I said they develop their stories through your own character that you control, differently from books, but such games also have good stories too. This is not even mentioning the social part of video games, that you can connect with other people and play with them.

With all of these positive things to say about video games you would think there would not be people in the world who will be old style traditionalists and insist that we can only read books and cannot entertain ourselves with games because games are for losers.

Let us look at some of the complaints about video games and refute all every single one of them.

The first complaint is that video games are a waste of time. They are. I agree. But so is reading books. Why are books not a waste of time? You read some arbitrary made up story. You do not spend that time productively in creating something new. There is nothing wrong with wasting time. Wasting time is okay to do as a form of relaxation. Each one of us has to waste time at some point in our lives. And that is okay. Some people might prefer to waste their time playing video games other might prefer to do with books. But neither one is superior to another.

The second complain is that video games are for little children. I do not really even see why this is a complaint at all. Ever since when did little children invalidate an action? Little children also like to eat food does not invalidate the action of eating food? You can find little children who also like reading books, does that make reading books a childish pursuit? Besides why is the statement, "this is so childish" even a bad statement to make? For me saying, "this is so adultlike" is much more offensive than saying "it is childish". Because children at least have an imagination, and are free to explore it, unlike many adults who end up being trapped in a "mature" lifestyle with little imagination. I would rather be childish any time over being an adult. So I do not see how calling a video game childish is even an insult to video games. And it is not even true that adults do not play video games. There are a lot of adults who do. It is rather that adults have to spend their time in other ways, such as working or spending time with their family, so they do not have so much free time on themselves. But if adults did have this free time I am quite sure many of them would play with other people.

The third complaint is that video games make you uncultured. But this is just silly. If you read books from 300 years ago you are not exactly "cultured". How many people do you know of who read "Paradise Lost" by John Milton? How many people even know that there is such a poem? How many people know that there is also "Paradise Regained"? Not very many. If you read old books, which as I said, there is nothing wrong with, you are not up with the times. You cannot relate to the interests of the common man. But now let me ask you a question. Do you know what the Companion Cube is? Do you know who Gordon Freeman is? Do you know anything about Duke Nukem? If you do not play video games you will not know. Everything that I mentioned are quite popular characters in the video gaming world. The young generation does kinda know who these are. You might sometimes use references to stories and books in your discussions, well my gaming generation of people may at some point use references to stories and characters that they picked up from video games. Video games have also inspiration. Reading old books does not make you up with the times, it does not make you cultured as you would claim, but video gaming does more so.

The fourth complaint is that video games make you stupid. This can or cannot be true. It depends on the game. If you play "Sarah Palin: The Video Game", which is a first person shooter where you shoot for moose out of a helicopter, then I am pretty sure that makes you dumber. If you play "Barbie's Pink Adventure", we can also assume that game kills your brain cells. But most games, I should say the more popular and better made games, do require a certain level of thought to beat. Many games today have puzzles in them. Usually really easy puzzles that a standard gamer can figure out instantly without much thought, but they do require you to think. Some games make slightly harder puzzles. There are pure puzzle games that make hard puzzles that are designed for you to spend a lot of time on them. I would argue that the good games of the year that are released take more thought to beat than it does to read a novel. Games, again depending what you play, improve your problem solving skills. Books do not. They do improve your language skills and you pick up more words and expressions but they do not improve your problem solving skills. So this criticism is another weak criticism of games.

Finally, there is this criticism that video games make you violent. Look at me. I have been playing games ever since I was a little boy. I have played games were I have ripped off a head with a spine attached from my enemy. I have played games were I robbed a bank. I have played games were I had sex with a prostitute then killed her to rob her of the money I paid her. Despite all of this I am a perfectly normal person. There is nothing wrong with me at all. Everyone will agree with me when I will say that I am the most normal person you would ever meet in your life. I have no psychopathic tendencies whatsoever. So fuck off and die.

This is pretty much everything I wanted to say about video games. There are so many good reasons to support them and play them and hardly any good objections to why not to play them. But somehow there remain people in the world, usually the generation above the current young generation, that just hates them - though these people have no good reason for their dislike at all.

Sarah Palin's Blood Libel

2011-01-15T01:36:00.004-05:00

I guess I am going to break my rule about avoidance of politics (and only sticking to political philosophy) again.

From YouTube and various blogs a lot of people are outraged that Sarah Palin used the term "Blood Libel". How dare she say it, these opponents ask, this is an insult to the Jews that were condemned by the Church for murdering Christian babies.

This story actually makes me laugh. Just another reminder of what stupidity and how meaningless politics is. Politics, in America, is just a form of entertainment. It is not enough that celebrities are shown on TV all day long. Now there is politics, which is another form of celebrities. Where the public watches the politicians say one thing, which is not even that bad, and then complain and scream about it for days to come. Politics is not a serious intellectual discussion in philosophy, it is just a game, a show of politicians and the crazy outrageous things they say. Why ever talk about the dead people in Iraq, or the ever increasing debt, when you can spend the next few days being entertained about what a politician said or should have said and think of yourself as educated? I am not some sort of conspiracy nut (I am a different nut in other cases though) to believe that the media is controlled by some illumanati elite. But I really can see why the conspiratists believe in this. It really feels like someone is trying to blind the public from the important issues so they can continue to fuck the public in the ass with a big giant hard cock called "freedom" that shoots in an orgasm the colors of red, white and blue.

Stupidity of politics is one thing that, the other thing, I do not even know how to call it. I have struggled to find a good term for it but I just cannot. I just call it "groupthink" for lack of a better term. I see this all the time in politics. And not just in politics but in all other issues, though especially in politics. Groupthink is when you say viewpoints so that you can identify yourself to belong to some group. If you have a liberal following audience then you need to constantly make videos or posts about Sarah Palin and how dumb she is. You need to get accepted by your group. You will repeat obvious and boring points-of-view just so that you can score some more audience points and get more accepted. The same goes to any other kind of an audience, but I just singled out Sarah Palin because it is a post devoted to her.

How many times does Bill Maher need to make another Sarah Palin moose shooting joke? How many times did Bill Maher need to continue to make another George Bush IQ joke? He does it to be accepted by his crowd. He needs to make a rather empty point-of-view, that we heard, or assume he will make, so that his audience can praise him for doing so.

You see this on blogs too. When you want to score some victory audience points pick a really really easy topic and then refute it. This is why Sarah Palin is so popular to discuss. Not because there is much to discuss about her but because it gives vloggers and bloggers an and excuse to score more audience points. The audience will tell him, "omg, u are so brilliant!", and he will get more accepted.

I call this "groupthink", since I fail at coming up with another term. And everybody does this groupthink. Even strict individualists end up making this mistake at some point. It is a disease we inherited from tribal primitive cavemen. How many times you seen libertarians make fun of the post office? They seem to have some sort of strange fantasy about the post office that they need to make fun of how terrible it is. Even though the post office is the one thing the government does semi-right. Yes, I know, it is going bankrupt. And yes, I know, mail delivery would be more efficient in a competitive market. But out of all the things the government does, this is like the one thing they do right. I use the post office, I am quite impressed with their complex information system that you know exactly where your mail is. If anything the post office should be an example of government "working", but libertarians will forever laugh at the government by using the post office example that at this point is so over-repetitive. So as I said, everybody, even individualists, end up falling into groupthink.

Why do I hate groupthink? Because it contributes absolutely nothing to discussion. What is the point of saying a point-of-view that everyone already agrees with? How does repeating the obvious or the well-supported contribute anything to discussion? Nothing. People already know this and believe in this. Intelligent discussion always needs to be about rebellion. Because it is only the rebellious ideas that contribute something new. Even if they are wrong, they are at least now considered. Nothing will ever change if the same old ideas are repeated over and over again in the pursuit of groupthink for gaining audience victory points.

So I will take the opposite view for arguments sake. What is so wrong with what Sarah Palin said? She said that people use her as a blood libel against what happened. I think that was a good metaphor. Blood libels are false cries of guilt on the innocent. When Palin used this metaphor she was, for once, making a good point. People who put blame on the shooting on her are putting false crimes on her, for which she is not responsible at all. This is why "blood libel" is an appropriate term. Now some people would say it is exaggerated and so it is not politically correct to say this because it involves Jews. Fuck political correctness. Might it have been an exaggeration? I can see that. But so what? It was a good metaphor. She did nothing wrong with using this metaphor. The people who are wrong here are the ones who need to use her as an instrument of hatred by putting blame on her.

Keith Olbermann is a Fool

2011-01-13T17:47:00.004-05:00

I learned about this story from someone else's site but I had to mention it here because the foolishness of Keith Olbermann, and most of his followers, is astonishing to me. I seriously did not think that these kind of people are this foolish.

Keith Olbermann made a special report on MSNBC in response to the Arizona shooting here. The title of his report is "Violence and threats have no place in a democracy". Keith Olbermann also begins with the note by saying that "we need to put the guns down".

If you are reading this cannot see the foolishness of Keith's statement then you should probably just shoot yourself in the head. You have a mind that is worthless and you live an unexamined life. An unexamined life is not worth living, so I would encourage you to do your only wise decision in your life and end it right now.

I am astounded by the foolishness of Keith's statement. How can a man in his fifties, who lived for so long already, not realize that politics is just the act of using violence against groups of people to achieve your goals? That is all what politics is.

This is precisely why I hate politics and consider it to be meaningless time waster. I have stayed away from discussing politics on this blog for quite a while now (all my other seemingly political posts are not politics, but political philosophy, there is a big difference). You see, the masses have this really foolish view of politics. They think that politics and government is just "society" (whatever the fuck that word means) getting together and cooperating about what needs to be done for the "country".

I have mentioned this many times before on this blog but I will have to mention it again. Politics is the act of using violence, or the threat of using violence, on groups of people. That is all what politics and governments are about. When a politician signs a piece of legislation that requires a all citizens to pay a new tax he is saying, implicitly, that violence or the threat of using violence will be used against any person who breaks this law. It is as simple as that.

When a politician signs into law the mandatory health insurance law he is saying that violence, most likely the threat of violence, will be used against any citizen that disagrees to comply with this law. Violence is not used immediately, but it is used ultimately, first there are warnings, then threats, then violence. But ultimately violence is the method that will make sure that the citizens comply with the law.

There is an ongoing war right now that has killed something as much as 200,000 or 300,000 people (different sites count this number differently) in Iraq. This war is part of politics.

Everything about politics is the call to use violence ultimately. Politicians are simply people who direct the flow of violence to one aspect of society. Sadly, most politicians do not realize this, they are not philosophers after all, if they did truly and honestly realize it, they will most likely not be politicians. Sadly, most political commentators do not realize this either, they too are not philosophers, if they did truly realize that politics is just a game of violence against citizens they would most likely stop being political commentators or at least being pro-peace activist commentators.

It is complete foolishness to suggest "we need to put the guns down" when all of our society and most of the world is organized with guns pointing to people's faces. Of course, I do not mean literally pointing in people's faces, if you smart enough you would realize what I mean by this metaphorical language.

Why is it okay for the state to use violence or the threat of violence against people, but not individuals? I do not understand. It makes no sense to me. Saying that politics should not contain any violence is like saying sex should be practiced by prostitutes, and it is like saying drinking should be removed from bars. How about you also screw for virginity while you are at making politics free from violence.

At least statists, in political philosophy, are smart enough to see the gun of the state. They have some really strange justifications for it, and terrible double standards, but at least they acknowledge it. I do not have to sink so low and explain to them that politics is just a game of violence of one group against another group.

Response to Baruch

2011-01-12T22:36:00.003-05:00

I am going to write a semi-response to Baruch Pelta to what he wrote here.

Most people would call me an anarchist though the label I to put on myself is a "political nihilist". I believe that all systems will end up being failures, because human beings are a failed species when it comes to the issue of governance. I also believe that anyone who believes in improving the world with a political system is mostly being utopian. There is only one way to improve
the world and that is through education in philosophy and virtue. You would probably see Benzion and I as being the same politically but I read some of what he wrote and I seem to be quite distanced from him in methodoloy and argumentation - though our conclusions
are mostly the same.

My question is why do you use the term "hard libertarianism"? Libertarianism by itself is quite extreme and radical. The so- called moderates libertarians are not really libertarians, they
just want to cut back the government, a little, but they are far from this radical and extreme way of thinking.

I do not understand what is the problem with extremism? People say extremism is wrong. But why is it? Science is extremist. Science will not give way to any idea unless it can be supported by the scientific method. Mathematics is extremist. Mathematicians will not support any theorem as proven unless it can be proved no matter how many empirical results support it. Saying that extremism is bad is itself an extremist statement against all forms of extremism. Atheism is extremist also. I do not understand what kind of an argument it is to say that libertarianism is extremist therefore that is a problem with it? It is radical also.
Again, so what? Most ideas in history that have been eventually accepted were at one point radical. Calling a philosophy extreme is a silly criticism.

A better way to see the difference between libertarianism and statism is by examining the positions of both philosophies towards violence. Which one is the more violent philosophy? Libertarians try to move as far away from violence as possible. Statists do not. Statism by its nature is a violent philosophy. A libertarian might say that education should be provided through the market, while a statist would imply that children must be kidnapped from their parents in a violent manner if the parents refuse to send their children to public schools. Statists in the end advocate a legalized form of kidnapping. It is for this simple reason why statists scare me a lot more than libertarians.

In your post you link to Mike Huban's site. Do you by any chance know of David Friedman? He is a famous anarchist within the libertarian movement. He wrote a rebuttal to this site on his
website if you are interested to read it here.

"Unlike Benzion, they do not have emunah that things would work out if society just operated on bitachon the free market system.":

This seems to imply that the public education system now "works" and that is "educates" the children. I disagree, I think the current system is nothing but an embarassment. Furthermore, I am willing to bet a lot of money that if instead of a public education system there was a private education system that was as terrible as the current system of education, the statists would immediately object and call in for government take over education.

"(Hence the tendency to see civil rights legislation as just another unjustified expansion of federal power)":

I wrote a post against why I am against the Civil Rights Act back here. There I dismiss the myths statists say about civil rights.

"All three of these belief systems (libertarinaism, anarchism, Marxism) require their adherents to accept on faith their economic theories, views of human potential, and philosophical constructs. What could be easier than accepting such simple theologies?":

On the contrary, I am an anarchist (not my own label but that is how most people call me) because I do not have a final vision of the world. Because I do not think people have any extraordinary virtues. It is statism that believes in benevolent angels that are in power. That is what is a utopian about mainstream beliefs. Anarchism is rather complex, also. There is nothing simple about it. I am constantly learning more and more. Statism is the easy way out. Basically, "just use a gun whenever you want to get your way". What can be easier than using violence to get your way?

"What happens if Christian conservatives were to take over? Imagine that they somehow managed to evangelize the majority of the population. Now can the government teach that atheism is evil, just as I maintain that the public schools cannot teach Holocaust Denial? The answer to this question is that I here have no choice but to rely on the courts.":

The answer is not relying on courts (which take 10 years to settle one issue). The real answer to your question is: nothing. There is nothing you can do about it. You are fucked. The courts will not be on your side. They will be on the side of the Christians. The Christians have the power and they can control you. It is a big error to believe that the government actually cares about you. It cares about those who are in power and those who control it. If the Christians have control over the government there is nothing you can do and be fucked. This is why a monopoly on education is dangerous, precisely for this reason. You just made a case for decentralized education without even realizing it.

"I cannot help but wonder why he has not moved to a more libertarian state as a matter of conscience.":

Let me answer your question with another question. Let us say I come over to your business and demand protection money. You never agreed, you never consented, you gave me no premission at all. I ask for protection money. If you refuse I will use violence against you. You object and tell me "I do not agree and I want to be left alone". So I will ask you, "if you do not like it, why not just leave?".

Were Nietzsche and Spinoza Virgins?

2011-01-12T01:33:00.002-05:00

I am just wondering about this question. It obviously does not add nor detract anything from their philosophy if they were or were not virgins. But I am just curious. I know that neither Nietzsche nor Spinoza were married. In fact, I know more, Nietzsche condemned marriage as an option to philosophers. So not only Nietzsche was not married he was against marriage altogether for anyone who wishes to practice philosophy.

I hardly know anything about Spinoza's social life. He was a lonely philosopher. You need to consider that he proceeded the Enlightenment, he was essentially all alone when he wrote his works. He was cast out of the Jewish world and never seemed to intermingle with anyone else. Maybe I am wrong here. But I really have a tough time imaging Spinoza being with a girl (or a boy, but I doubt he was gay). It is quite possible that Spinoza was entirely asexual and so did not care about this at all.

Nietzsche definitely was not asexual. He did like women, very much. But I doubt he ever had sex with one. People often say that he died from syphilis that he contracted when he was younger and a bit more normal, but that is just a legend. In 1889 he was sent to an insane asylum where he remained until death in 1900. If you are interested to see Nietzsche on video in an insane asylum go here. His insanity was the result of some brain disease. People blame it on syphilis but from what I read syphilis does not match up with his symptoms. Nietzsche's father died from a brain condition also, so it is more likely to suggest that Nietzsche suffered from a brain disease he got genetically from his father. Nietzsche was a very sick man his entire life. A better explanation for the diseases that he picked up in his life is rather that he got them as working as a medical driver in a wagon, in those days there were not a lot of medical safety standards. But Nietzsche never seemed to have any success with women. Walter Kaufmann, the biographer of Nietzsche, said that women were scared off by Nietzsche's looks. There is no historical evidence of Nietzsche ever being involved with another woman. Nietzsche was also a lonely person in his life and did not interact much. He did have a few "friends" including Freud and Wagner, though Nietzsche became an enemy of Wagner when it became apparent Wagner was a nationalist and an anti-semite. From his insanity, personality, and his hideous looks alone I possibly cannot see him being with a woman.

Jared Loughner and Blame

2011-01-11T15:46:00.004-05:00

I really really do not want to make this post, it bores me to death. But apparently there are lots of people, outside the Jewish world, that are commenting on this story with terrible fallacies that need to be corrected.

Besides for this being such a boring topic for me it repulses me to have to discuss this. I find it entirely repulsive for the news to discuss Jared. He killed six people, or how ever many it was, it does not matter. Big deal. There are people being killed everyday, with more numbers, in the middle east by US soldiers. People who are entirely innocent and who pose no threat to your life. Completely innocent families have been destroyed and ruined by the ungoing war. This has been going on for years. But this is never mentioned. I guess these people are not Americans. And if they are not Americans then their lives are inferior to ours, it does not matter if they get killed. Ever notice some disaster or terrorist attack in the forgein country discussed on the news? Ever notice how they tell you how many people died and then mention how many of those people were Americans? Why is the evil caused by Jared being discussed when there are far greater evils that go on undiscussed every day? This repulses me and I want to mention nothing about this story, but again, I am forced by the stupidity of people to respond.

I am also repulsed by why this person needs to get attention. Why are you giving this person the attention that he seeks? TheAmazingAtheist made one of my favorite videos in response to Virgina Tech. I will not repeat his arguments, he does it more eloquently than I can ever do, here (reuploaded video since original one was taken down). Just ignore it and move it. Ignore him as if it never happened, instead of having him being for a week or two weeks as the primary object of discussion.

The stupidity that I am responding to is the blame game. A guy decides one day to go and kill a few people with a firearm. If I am a reasonable person then who do I blame? I blame the killer. The killer is responsible for the consequences of his actions. That is it. No one else is responsible for his actions. Stop trying to find excuses to whom to blame.

There are people on the left-wing who blame elements of the right-wing movements for what he did. Just read this blog. They give you five reasons why he was part of the tea party. The strange thing is that I am very certain that if I was to confront the author of this post and ask him, "are you blaming the tea party and right-wing movements for the actions of Jared?", the person would respond "of course not". Well, if you do not blame right-wingers then what is even the point of saying he was associated with right-wingers? Notice how they have to single out Ayn Rand and Glenn Beck because he mentioned a novel by Ayn Rand as one of his favorite books.

There are people on the right-wing who blame elements of the left-wing movements for what he did. Just read this blog. He blames left-wingers because Jared's favorite books include the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. He also liked to burn US flags, which is usually a left-wing statement, right-wingers are in general nationalists who think American is #1 so they will never burn a flag.

It gets even dumber. There are people who blame atheism and nihilism for what Jared did, here. Right, because we all known that nihilism is a statement, nihilism is a massive tome of a way to live your life. I can understand the statement that "Jared was inspired by right-wing ideas" because the right-wing does have ideas to follow. I can understand the statement that "Jared was inspired by left-wing ideas" because the left-wing does have ideas to follow. How does it make sense to say, "Jared was inspired by nihilism or atheism"? It makes no sense. Nihilism is an empty statement that does not say anything. While atheism is simply a statement "I do not believe in God", that is it. Atheism does not say a moral system, it does not say how to live your life, it does not say anything. How does the statement, "I do not believe in God", make anyone do anything. A person might be an atheist and do violence. A person might be a nihilist and do violence. But how do you conclude that atheism/nihilism caused the act of violence?

When will people understand that correlation is not the same thing as causation? How many times does this point has to be addressed before people finally understand that you cannot blame the left-wing just because he shared something with them, like you cannot blame the right-wing just because he shared something with them, and just like you cannot blame atheists just because he was an atheist (or whatever he even was). This is the blame game that I get to listen to all the time. Oh right, I forgot guns. Guns are going to be blamed, of course.

Stop it with the blame game. There is only one thing to blame here. It is not liberals, it is not conservatives, it is not atheists, it is not guns, it is not Sarah Palin, it is not Barack, it is him. And only him. He is responsible for his actions.

I did not see any news about this story (as I said how much it bores me) nor did I read a news article on it for the same reason. But I was wondering. Did the news call him a "terrorist"? My guess is that he was not called a "terrorist". Why not? Because he was a white male. You see, if he was a Muslim then he would be immediately called a "terrorist" and his actions would be called "terrorism" as opposed to just a "crime". I hate political language, it is a language of confusion and deception.

Banned From Google

2011-01-11T11:21:00.002-05:00

On January 7th I tried to access my account and Google told me that my account and my blog, everything that I had, was removed. I have no idea to this point why they would do something like this.

It took me about four days of complaining to Google in appeal forms to make them finally overturn their decision. I actually thought these appeal forms are all worthless and never achieve anything, they are just their for the public to make them think that Google actually cares about them, it is just a way to make them feel better on the inside. Just consider how big and powerful Google is, what would be their incentive to listen to some pathetic blogger complain to them? All they have to do is hit "delete" and I am gone, forever, nobody knows, nobody cares, why should they, complete strangers, care?

So when Google told me that they "apologize for any inconvenience" I was shocked. Google can make a mistake? They are the cyber-gods. How can they make a mistake? How can they care for the complaints of mere individuals?

I am not sure if you know this, perhaps you also had this problem, but when you get your entire account banned by Google there is an appeal form to prove that you are the user. Since Google maintains your privacy they do not accept your documentation papers, like photo ID, passport, and so forth. They have no idea who you are, why would they accept documents like those? So to prove to them that they are who you say you are you need to answer some questions about your account that only the real account owner would know about. They ask you for your e-mail contacts. They ask you for your labels in Gmail. They ask you for approximate date of creation of you account and when you started using their services. And a few other questions.

If you fail their appeal form they will reject your appeal and you can re-submit a new one. I had to do this a total of four times. Each time I remembered a bit more detail about my account. The fourth time something finally hit in and Google responded to me differently. They told me that my account was suspended for TOS (terms-of-service) violations.

This time I had to submit a different kind of appeal form. This one was much less automated and you had the freedom to write your statement personally because it was going to be reviewed by people. The first thing I did when I woke up today is obsessively check my e-mail and I was happy to learn that Google had reversed their decision.

When I was told I had TOS violations. I got scared. There were only two possible violations that I could have thought off. First, I had copyright violations on this blog. But this did not worry me because the only videos I link to are either YouTube videos (almost all of them) and a few MegaVideos. Both of which are not considered to be copyright violations. Second, I violated their "hate speech" agreement. Google does not mention this in their TOS but I have been suspended from YouTube for two videos that were called "hate speech" by YouTube and deleted. I made those videos over a year ago. I got two strikes on my account, suspended for two weeks, and YouTube told me that if I got another strike I would be permanently banned, my videos were also taken down. YouTube claimed to be for an open discussion but when they recieved complaints from people about what I posted they were happy to take them down. I was afraid that Google was the same way. If you post stuff which is offensive, especially when it is related to race, sex, or gender, then it can be called "hate speech" and get removed by Google standards. But this violation did not scare me. I figured that the chances that I received this kind of violation was very low because Blogger, by its nature, is made specifically for people to be offensive.

Rather I guess they suspended me for a different reason. Google uses an automated spam detection system and my blog got classified under "spam". So it was automatically removed. I had to prove to Google that I am not spam. This is what I think happened. I cannot think of any other good explanation to why I got shut down. The only two reasons that have a chance to apply to me are weak reasons to consider. Since I cannot think of anything else I am sticking with this as their official reason.

I did have a question however, how do I "unfollow" myself. Somehow the only thing that changed is that I am a self-followerer which seems kind of ridiculous to do. I would like to remove that but I do not see how it is done.

New York Times vs Liberty

2011-01-05T14:50:00.014-05:00

I came across a written piece by the New York Times, here, that I wanted to respond to. I will write this post in a way as if I am responding to the author, even though I doubt he will ever see this response.

First, it would be helpful if I say what I believe in to make it clear where I am coming from. I am a political nihilist, you can read more about this here. I do not believe that any kind of system will ever work. So what I favor is no system. I think that instead people should be able to opt in or out of a system that they support. People can endorse any legal system that they wish to identify with, including crazy ones, even legal systems that legalize murder. Not that I believe that there will ever be such a legal system, but I am just saying that people can decide to live in such a manner such that the law legalizes murder. Hence, what I advocate is a lack of a system, in a way. And I guess you will say that what I support is a system itself, a meta-system if you will, but that is just word games, not really relevant at this point; it is like saying atheists do believe, they believe in no God, it is just a word game. The reason why therefore I identify with libertarianism (or anarchism) is because this is a political philosophy that closest matches nihilism, it is not so much of a system itself but a lack thereof where the people can choose what they want to try.

The other thing that I wanted to mention about libertarianism is that it is a reaction to large government, both from the left and right. There is no philosophical movement towards libertarianism. Rather libertarianism is used as a tool, a means, to fight against large government. Consider the tea parties for example. When they complain about health care reform they use libertarian language and philosophy. But most of the people in the tea party do support Medicare and Social Security, and they are quite evenly divided about the war. Sarah Palin might talk fiscal conservatism and sound like a real libertarian, but when you look at her policies and what she supports she is a standard neo-conservative Republican.

Whenever people are unhappy with how their country is going it is not unlikely for them to turn to radical philosophies to use as a tool to make change. I would not be surprised if there was a lot of communist language going on in 1900. So most of the people that you will come across that call themselves "libertarian" mostly just want to get the government out of social issues and cut back on economic issues, that is it. That is not exactly a libertarian. Most of these people think you are crazy if you suggest getting rid of taxation. They would agree with you if you say to cut taxes or to reform taxes but the moment you suggest to move into a direction of no taxation then they will look at you as a bunch of crazies.

I remember I seen a program from about thirty years ago. It was a conservative program that invited a libertarian guest to speak on. You should have seen the reaction of the audience. It was really funny. A lot of surprises and boos and anger for what the person was suggesting. He was of course called crazy. But today conservatives try to come off as libertarian sounding. Because it is cool now to be libertarian, contrary to the past, so people try to use its rhetoric to gain votes and support. I wrote about this situation several months ago back here - that most so-called libertarians are just more committed Republicans.

So there is no libertarian movement, just libertarian rhetoric, the libertarian movement remains just as small as it was, maybe just a few more members, but overall it is just rhetoric that is used to cut back government. I was just a little baby during Ronald Reagan's presidency so I cannot possibly remember anything that he said. But I have seen some old videos about him. And he also tries to make himself seem libertarian. Reagan was not Mr. Libertarian, he did not cut back the government and he did not expand social freedoms, he rather used libertarian ideas to influence people and cut back taxes for the rich. He does know how to talk well, but like nearly all politicians he was a slimy slithery snake with a serpents tongue.

Therefore, I see this rise in libertarianism simply as a reaction to government growing. People need to turn to radical philosophies to spout this message, so they choose libertarianism. That is why Ayn Rand is very popular to read right now. I seriously doubt that most people agree with her considering that she was a hardcore atheist and most people who read her today are your typical Christians.

I think one of two things will probably happen with the growing movements now. Either the Democrats will remain stronger than the tea party and so the tea party's reaction will slowly die out and nothing will be changed in policy. Or else the tea parties will have enough of an influence to start to win elections. In that case they will elect a "libertarian" president or representatives that will just cut back a few programs. So you would probably see a cut in taxes, and a few other cuts somewhere along the lines. Probably no social progress at all. Just like with Reagan.

Now you mention Rand Paul in your piece. Here is the thing about Rand Paul, I do not know of a single libertarian that I interact with online who actually likes this guy. Ron Paul yes, lots of libertarians that I interact with do like him. But Rand Paul is someone who sticks to mostly libertarian economics and rather typical conservative social policies. And he is someone who is too much of a pussy to say what he believes, because he rather play the crowd than be honest. It is for this reason that I do not like him and most libertarians that I interact with do not like him at all. Ron Paul is committed. And he is willing to say things that will not make people happy. Rand Paul was against the Mosque being build, even Pat Buchanan supported it as a legal right (though he thought it is a bad idea) for Science's sake, because he needs to attract his tea party crowd. Ron Paul has been mostly lonely for 30 years, or however many, as a politician; I have seen a vote in the House were 434 said yes and 1 said no, the no being Ron Paul. He is only slightly popular today because of a reactionary movement against government growth. But he is by far nowhere on the list of popular candidates supported by the tea parties. They like Sarah Palin more.

The last thing that I would like to mention before I respond to you, keep in mind that all I am saying now is just a prelude, is your term "Libertopia". I guess what you mean by that is that libertarians are utopian for the ideas that they support. Well if you read my political nihilism entry that I linked to above you will realize just how far away I am from this criticism. In fact, I argue that you are way more utopian than I am. You are a statist and as a statist you believe you can use the state as a tool for social progress. That is way more utopian than I will ever be. But I will use your term, "Libertopia", simply to refer to a libertarian nation.

Now I will start addressing the points that you bring up.

Point 1: I find the title really funny, "the trouble with liberty". Most people who object to libertarianism never so openly condemn liberty. They say something to the effect of, "I support liberty also, I just have different ideas". It is hard to convince a statist that his ideas are anti-freedom, but it seems that you already acknowledge this with such an opening title.

Point 2: You begin by asking the question, "do we really want to live in their world?". Yes, you do. Because it is not our world, it is the world for everyone, and we do not have a universally mandated system for everybody. You get to choose to decide how to live your life and what values you care about and where to send your money. Remember what I said about having a lack of a system? Well it means that if you support universal healthcare and you think it is a great idea then support it. I will not stop you. If you and many other people care to have this system then you can have it. You can pool your resources together and create a universal healthcare system for the people that joined this system. I myself do not think that universal healthcare is a good idea so I do not support it. But I will not stop you if you wish to support it. We can even have a competition between our systems. The system that I support, a market based medical system, and the system that you support, a collectively operated welfare medical system. If you are really correct in that this is the better system then people will see that it is more efficient and you will finally silence the greedy capitalists like myself who say otherwise. I do not have a vision for how the world needs to be, I am not a central planner. I am open to various interactions that people form between themselves. I am a libertarian not because I see it as a final goal, but rather because I have no final goal.

Point 3: Your sub-title says that "libertarians have never been close to power since 1776". You seem to think that in 1776 you have the American Revolution which was inspired by libertarianism, and whose key founders (Jefferson, Washington, Paine) were libertarians, was the time when libertarianism was practiced, then you have a big long gap of adandoned libertarian principles over 200 years which suddenly appear again in 2010. This is not true. Ron Paul has been the most conservative (as in libertarian) politician in record for over 90 years. But there were politicians before him that were more conservative than he was, and it was a lot more common back then. And there were libertarian presidents also. Not just Jefferson and Washington. How about Grover Cleveland? He was a libertarian president. The Civil War itself can be said to have been a libertarian war. The years following the Civil War still remain very largely libertarian. American policy begins to change with the Progressive age of the 1910's and 1920's or so. But for all the past history from 1776 there was a strong libertarian tradition in America. What you say is completely false. It is true that after 1920's libertarianism slowly begins to die out from politics. But it also had an important tradition in American history considering that the Constitution and the revolution were libertarian responses to tyranny. Why do you think America is a gun culture, why you think Americans get angry when a ban on assault rifles is proposed? Because guns are the ultimate symbol of freedom as a libertarian. So it is untrue about what you say, libertarianism has always been part of America, it has lost its way, but it always been part of American history. The year of 2010 is not some magical year when libertarianism suddenly resurrects from the grave and becomes popular again, rather as I explained above, libertarianism today is mostly a reactionary movement to government growth. David Boaz, from the CATO Institute, had a good video on libertarianism here that argues that libertarianism has always been alive in the soul of every American, both on the right and left. I disagree with you. Libertarianism was not silent from 1776. It always was present, and 2011 is no exception.

Point 4: You write, "For all the talk about casting off government shackles, libertarianism is still considered the crazy uncle of American politics: loud and cocky and occasionally profound but always a bit unhinged." And I agree with you here. As I said libertarian movements that are popular now are just reactionary statements to government growth, not a serious devotion to the philosophy that is represents. The Libertarian Party is just another failed political party. This is why I do not support it, as I do not support parties or vote for anything. I do not play the politics games. I care about ideas and philosophy. I do not think that voting of having political parties will ever do anything towards this philosophy. The only way I see how libertarianism can be achieved is by influencing people with ideas, not by taking seats in congress. So I agree. The Libertarian Party is just as much of a joke as the Democrat and the Republican parties that hardly ever get anything done. All the talk about getting the government off your back is just that, talk, nothing more.

Point 5: You write, "Libertarianism is a long, clunky word for a simple, elegant idea: that government should do as little as possible." This is a rather terrible description of libertarianism. Here is a better one, "Libertarianism is a long word, for a crazy, insane, radical, extremist, political philosophy that people do not own other people and that violence is not a way to solve social problems". As a corollary if you apply this philosophy you will arrive at that the government should be little, in certain instances some people, anarchists, would seek total abolishment of government entirely. My description of libertarianism describes it much better than just "government should be little".

Point 6: Then on page two you mention some statistics on various polls about how many people identify themselves as libertarians. The numbers range from 10% to 59% and anywhere in between. I often say that statistics does not usually persuade me in discussions and this is another good example of this. These polls asked loaded questions. The questions that are determined by the pollers does not necessarily make them libertarians. Indeed, if I made a poll which asked just one question "do you think that violence is a way to solve social problems" then maybe 90% of people would say "no", that does not make them libertarians. Just because someone leans social liberal and fiscal conservative makes him far from being a libertarian. I know plenty of people who fit this scio-economic description of a libertarian but I have way too many disagreements with them. I would say, just from my experience alone, that about 1% of Americans agree with libertarianism, at least the minarchism level. Far fewer on the anarchism level. So the figures show the contrary position, the number of followers of these ideas are extremely small, and libertarianism, as a philosophy, not as an extreme reaction to government, is about just as small as it always been for a while.

Point 7: You say that, "Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been the anti-regulatory Ur-text. Hayek wrote the book in response to the spread of socialism—including National Socialism— which at the time was a genuine existential threat to Western society. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, though, socialism isn’t the menace it used to be. Hitler is long gone. Yet libertarians still cite Hayek and Rand with the same urgency." Freidrich Hayek's argument in the Road to Serfdom was that the path to serfdom takes a while to develop, it does not happen overnight, and it happens because of various policies and ideas (such as central planning) which eventually turn a country into a tyrannical country. There are many things to fear today that I believe might lead the United States towards serfdom, and in Europe as well. Suspension of habeos-corpus, suspension of the fourth amendment, empire building, counterfeiting money and so forth. There is a constant fear of political correctness silencing fear speech, Europe seems to be falling to this problem. There are things to fear. And if people do not fear these issues then there will be serfdom. It takes time to develop. And when serfdom comes it does not always comes the way you expect it. It can come from mothers who want to regulate the internet so that their children do not watch porn - that in a way is also a road to serfdom. This is what George Carlin meant when he said that, "When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts". You may be correct that libertarians often over-exaggerate the danger of potential tyranny, but they do have a point when they say that you need to be fearful of the road to serfdom.

Point 8: You wrote, " The irony is that Hayek believed in a role for the state." Why is this an irony? If Freidrich Hayek was an anarchist and he said that then you can say that is ironic. But he never was an anarchist and he clearly expressed his views. He was a minarchist. A very committed and strong libertarian. He believed that the only role of the government, at all, was to protect people with laws. This is classical libertarianism. The anarchist movements in libertarianism are much more modern. So there is nothing contradictory or ironic in what he said. Is it ironic to say that Ron Paul is a politician? Not really.

Point 9: You wrote, "He (Hayek) favored government intervention in the markets, for example, and supported environmental regulation." Oh my Science, he did?! How dare he! He is no longer a libertarian! Seriously now, the free market is not about people doing whatever they desire to do within the market. This is a misunderstanding of what the free market is about. A free society does not mean a society in which people do to one another as they so desired, but rather a society in which people are free from rule of others. The free market is based on the same idea. The free market is a corollary of a free society. If you have a free society of individuals then these individuals can interact with one another in a manner that they agree, and the state cannot infringe upon their interactions. That is all. Thus, not all "regulations" are opposed to by libertarians. Contract enforcement is a regulation. If I enter into a contract with you and I never do my part of the contract then you would have the right to sue me in a court of law and the court will have the right to enforce the contract on me. If I burn down your house as an arsonist then you can take me to court and I will be liable to recover all the costs of your damages. That is also a "regulation". Libertarians are not opposed to regulations in and of themselves, they are opposed to regulations that inhibit the operation of the free market. Thus, libertarians oppose 99% of regulations that are in place but not all of them. Enviromental regulation is something supported by a lot of libertarians, myself included. There is even a movement in enviromentalism that is known as "free market enviromentalism". The approach to enviromental protection here is to use private property to defend from pollution. In other words, pollution is an intrusion into someone else's property, therefore just as I cannot dump garbage on your property I cannot run a factory that will emit harmful gases to your property. This approach is entirely consistent with libertarianism. Even Murray Rothbard, who was an anarchist, had no problem sticking to this approach.

Point 10: You wrote, "In 1972, Nevada real-estate developer Michael Oliver built an island in the southwest Pacific by dredging sand near an an existing reef, which he called the Republic of Minerva. The nearby Kingdom of Tonga quickly conquered it." I do not know anything about this story but the seemingly irrelevant information that Tonga conquered it suggests a hidden message you are trying to say here. Why would you decide to suddenly say that the project failed because of conquest? I suspect that you intention was to show that freedom cannot be sustainable because it will not be able to protect itself against invasion. But finding a specific example of how a free project was conquered by a state is just as bad as saying that states cannot exist for long because they will eventually be conquered by other states. What if I used the argument and said that "democracy cannot last long because a democratic country was counqured by the Soviet Union?". You would say it is a terrible argument because it just focuses on specific examples, and you would be correct. Thus, I say the same thing about your hidden argument here, just because there are cases of states conquering free socities does not mean the free societies cannot form defense. It just means in that particular case they failed. Just like certain armies fall to other armies.

Point 11: You wrote, "Jillette might choose his words differently today. Everyone knows going through airport security sucks, even without porno- scanners. But few dispute the need for some line of defense. More-efficient, less-intrusive security would be great. But none at all? Jillette’s tract is a good example of how libertarianism ventures down some fascinating paths but usually ends up deep in the wilderness." Where does Penn Jillette (a libertarian) say there should be no safety standard on airplanes? There is no libertarian that I know of who says "no safety". Why would you even have to ask "but none at all?". Can you name anyone who actually says that? Libertarians have different idea about airline safety. Here is one really radical method. How about let the airlines decide themselves how much safety is necessary? Airlines certainly have it in their interests to promote safety. But they also have it in their interest to promote effectiveness. It would make a lot more sense to let the airlines set their own safety standards.

Point 12: You wrote, "Same story on issue after issue. Taxation isn’t just a poor allocation of resources; it’s an act of violence." Well I am waiting, can you explain why taxation is not an act of violence? I know that it is common for liberals and conservatives also to make fun of libertarians by saying that libertarians equate taxation as an act of violence and theft. And to you it probably sounds crazy how they can propose that. But I hardly hear any argument on people on your side to why it is not. You just say, "these libertards are stupid, they actually think taxation is theft". But did you ever consider their well thought out arguments? Did you come up with a rebuttal to that argument? You do not address it in your paper, you just say it as if it is a given that taxation is not theft and that anyone who proposes otherwise is being crazy and stupid.

Point 13: You wrote, "Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble." Of course it is hard for you to understand this. You are a central planner after all. Statism is all about central planning and directing society from the top-down. That is precisely why you cannot wrap your mind around libertarianism. Because libertarianism, as I said, in a way, is a lack of a system, and whatever society is, emerges from the bottom-up. No one is able to calculate it, and no one is able to predict it. For someone like yourself who is a statist this is a hard issue to get around. I have heard a slightly well-known anarchist make a good point. He said, "if we can say exactly how everything needs to be done in the free market, and in a libertarian society, then that would be a pretty good argument for a dictatorship". Try looking at this problem from the bottom-up, it takes some imagination, but try.

Point 14: You wrote, "In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we’d need a central bank—otherwise you’d have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.)" Where does the money come? Well do you even know what money is? I wrote a post explaining the origin and function of money back here. There is nothing crazy or controversial about saying that money originates out of the free market to improve the efficiency of trade. Then you write that there will be thousands of banks with different types of currency, and in paranthesis you mention that some libertarian support this. I support this. You know what else I support? I support having a free exchange between languages also. Money is extremely important in an economy but what is even more important is language and communication. So how about we set up a government agency that will create a single language that everyone will speak? Because otherwise, oh no, people will not be able to communicate with one another! I would not be surprised, actually, that if such an agency did exist and I proposed to cut it I will be viewed as some sort of insane nut-case. There are hundreds of languages in the US. If you go to NYC you will find that there are instances when the Subway trains are entirely covered in ads in Spanish, I have seen this myself. Spanish is a competing language with English. But somehow the people manage to find a way around this problem. There are hundreds of languages but some are more dominant. In a competing currency system, that I strongly support, with no central bank at all, the same phenomenon will take place. Some currencies will be the dominant ones.

Point 15: You wrote, "But there’s another problem: Some people don’t have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn’t enough charity money to help them? Well, we don’t want them to start stealing, so we’d better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities." I admit that for a moment when I was reading this I thought you were going to say "people do not have jobs so the government needs to create them jobs". At least you did not say that. Now to discuss the poor people who cannot survive on their own. I do want to congratulate you for at least admitting that charities will exist to help these people. A lot of statists are so foolish as to think that without a government no charity will ever be given to these people. You at least acknowledge that charities will spring up to help the poor, as they have in past history, but you ask what will happen if it is not enough. Let me answer your question with another question. What if the current society is so poor that it just does not have the funds to sustain a poor class of people? For the non-poor to have the funds to be able to sustain the poor requires that the non-poor to have enough money to make this kind of contribution. It is possible that the society on the whole is not even that rich itself to be able to gather enough funds to contribute to the poor. In such a situation what happens? Nothing. That is the point. Even a welfare system that you so strongly support will entirely fail. You mention that "we do not want to steal", well how do you collect welfare? At a point of a gun. It is theft, it is just not called theft. So the welfare system is ultimately based upon theft that you claimed you do not want to support. One last point about welfare. Welfare is a topic we can discuss for a long time and I do not want to get into it. But I support abolishing welfare because I do believe that charities will do a better job. It is abysmal to compare government efficiency rates in welfare to the efficiency rates in charity to some of the less efficient charities. If there was a charity in the market that functioned as poorly and inefficiently as welfare I assure you a lot of people will call for laws to put an end to it because they will suspect it is taking too much money for itself. The more welfare you have the less charity there is. I think that a charity based system will prove itself to be superior to a welfare system. At this point you will ask the obvious question. You will ask, "if it is true that charity is superior then why did a welfare system get created?". That is a good question to ask. To answer it here is something you need to understand about human action. Humans act in a way that they think makes them better off. This does not mean that it does make them better off, it just means that they do think it makes them better off. Therefore, the existence of welfare is not proof of the necessity of welfare. Welfare was most likely put into place (sorry I do not know the history of welfare) because people assumed it will be better and it will provide more for the poor. This does not mean it is better and it does not mean it provided better for the poor. All it means is that there was this misconception that it will.

Point 16: You wrote, "We’d need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn’t suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all." This is the same story as with welfare. Education in the United States used to be provided entirely through the market. It was affordable to most of the people. The literacy rates in the US were higher than in many places in the developing world with a complete lack of public education. There never was an education crisis in the United States. I know that supporters of public education repeat this myth that public education was introduced because private education was failing, but this is just not historically true. Rather public education was introduced because of the misconception that it will make education even better. Here is an interesting double standard. Suppose we lived in a world where there were only private schools. And these private schools were of the same quality as the public schools today. What do you think the public response would be? I am sure you would agree they will scream, "private schools are failing we need government run schools!". But strangely not that many people are angered over the terrible state of public schools.

Point 17: You wrote, "And so on. There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution." Let me repeat this again. The existence of something does not prove its necessity. There are anti-drug laws. Supporters of these laws argue that they came into place because they are necessary to prevent crime. I am sure you would disagree, at least with marijuana. But these laws are still in place. Does the necessity of these laws prove their necessity? No, of course not. The same with the prohibition movement. Did the existence of the laws of the prohibition movement prove themselves to be necessary? No. What about anti-sodomy laws? Does the existence of anti-sodomy laws imply that they were necessary to prevent impending doom upon civilization? Again, just because there are a lot of government programs today does not alone prove that they were necessary. What is more likely happened is that people assumed that they would be beneficial and make the United States better.

Point 18: You wrote, "The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty." The existence of something does not prove its necessity. Let us say that it was truly put into place with good intentions to improve the economy? Did it do as it was supposed to? No. I would argue that it lead to a lot of economic disasters since its establishment. And it is killing the value of the dollar. Just because the intentions are good does not make the policies good themselves.

Point 19: You wrote, "The Civil Rights Act was necessary because 'states rights' had become a cover for unconstitutional practices." Statists seem to think that the Civil Rights Act was a victory of statism over libertarianism. But the exact opposite is true. The oppression that the blacks faced and the segregation that they had to go through resulted from states persecuting them. It was the state that was anti-black. I have written a lot more about the Civil Rights Act back here if you are willing to read it. Libertarianism had nothing to do with the segregation in the South. Segregation was not the result of too little government but too much of it.

Point 20: You wrote, "Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty." I do not say that the free market will make everyone rich. I say that the free market will make everyone richer. And it certainly has. Look at the standard of living that resulted in the past century. It was enormous. I do not make the argument, let me repeat this again, I do not make the arugment that everyone will be rich in a free market system. I rather say that a free market system will be the most efficient system that will lead to the best rise in the standards of living. But it takes time. It is not magical in that suddently everyone becomes wealthy, it takes time to develop. I think that economic history vindicates my position here.

Point 21: You wrote, "The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there." There is no way to prevent some poor people from recieving charity. And this is still true under statism. You keep on asking "what if's", well I can do the same thing and keep asking you "what if's" and you will realize that statism will also have problems. What if the poor person does not know that there is welfare available? What if the poor person does not know how to apply for welfare? What if the poor person needs a place to live before applying to welfare and he does not have a residence? What if the poor person does not even know how to fill out a welfare application? What if the poor person suffers from a mental disability that limits him from communicating with other people who can sign him up for social security disability but that never happens and he ends up living homeless in the streets? What if? Do you see that there will always be cases of poor people who go sadly unnoticed. There is no way to prevent this happening. Sure in a charity based society it is possible certain people will never recieve any help. But having a welfare system does not prevent this from happening either.

Point 22: You wrote, "Of course, we’ll never get there. And that’s the point. Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they’ll never have to prove it works." This is the question that is always brought up in libertarian discussions. There are three things I would like to say here. First, is that you pose challenges to libertarians in the form of questions that are found through out your paper. You have already asked several of them. And you ask them in such a manner as if to say that they refute libertarianism and makes it unworkable. Let me ask you a question. Do you really think that I have never thought about these questions before? I thought about these questions way more than you have and I have seen every single one of the questions that you have brought up in your paper too many times in my life. These questions do not pose any challenges. Second, is that libertarians have an economic theory to how the country will function without the government interfering with the economy. You can read texts on free market capitalism if you are interested to know more about this. Third, I am guessing you will ask for historical examples that used free market economics. There are not that many countries in the world becaues the world is not very supportive of capitalism, but here are some examples. Let us begin with the US after the Civil War to before progressive period, say before 1920. This was an extremely laissez-faire market based economy. The standard of living in this period rose by a lot. The growth of the nation grew at the highest rates. There was a lot of vast innovation and development being done in this time period. The governments were highly decentralized and the federal government did not have much to do. You can also consider Honk Kong. At one point in time the country of Honk Kong was incredibly poor, there was hardly anything that was going on in there. When Honk Kong adopted a free market system in several decades it has exploded into a powerful economic country. There is an index of economic freedom in the world (Honk Kong was #1 last time I checked). The countries that have been moved to the top of that list have all been developing well. What economic history has shown, hopefully you would agree with me, is that the free market generates a lot of wealth. I do agree that none of these examples are exactly the kind of society libertarians have in mind but they are steps in the right direction. I think that libertarianism is for the future. There have been many important ideas in history that took time to develop and become accepted, including your liberal democracy ideas, I think that libertarianism mostly falls into that category. Just because it is not part a major system (or lack thereof) in the world does not mean it now has to be rejected. The economics of libertarianism has been shown to have enormously successful compared to all other economic approaches that history has taken. So in that aspect the libertarians are correct. But to reach a libertarian society in the way we support it will take a lot of education. So it is vision for the future that I am very confident we will reach.

Point 23: You wrote, "There are all sorts of situations the private market isn’t good at managing, such as asymmetrical information (I know my doctor is qualified to treat me because he has a government license)." Licensing is no issue at all in the free market. I have written a post about non-government licensing to doctors in the free market here. This will only seem radical and crazy to you because it is not a world you are used to.

Point 24: You wrote, "And public goods (it makes sense for the government to cover vaccines, which benefit everyone, not just the consumer)." I am not all hard-on for total private property. I am perfectly fine with public property. But it is possible to have public ownership without having a government. If you pool your resources with other people who wish to have a collectively operated property then I have no problem with that. Remember, I said that libertarianism is pretty much a lack of a system. So if you wish to create public ownership of various products of services that you think will be beneficial for the people in general then you can pool your resources with other people. The free market is not opposed to collectives. Let us pick a specific example. Say roads. How will they be build? Well, first I would like to mention that the roads were being build on the free market in early history, so the statement that some roads will come from the market is not an outrageous statement to make. Secondly, if you are not happy with such an operation of roads you can form agencies which collectively operate the roads for the people. The people who use these roads pay a fee into these agencies and the agencies take it as their responsibility to manage and mantain the roads. I am all fine with collectives if you want them.

Point 25: You wrote, "There’s also a consistency problem: Why should the government be responsible for a public good like national defense but not air-quality protection?" Because in libertarian philosophy the government is an organized force. That is all the government is. If you use the government then you use forceful actions. Thus, minarchists assert that the only role of government is defense, because force is a reasonable action to use as a means of defense. However, government should not be used for anything else. All other problems that people have, be they arguments, conflicts, or whatever, these are not for the government to settle but for the people to manage themselves voluntarily. Because all what the government will end up doing is using force in such instances which is uncalled for. There is no consistency problem here at all if you view the government as an organized system of power and force. Then it makes sense why minarchists only want it to stick to defense and nothing else.

Point 26: You wrote, "Or, say, a stable world financial system?" I find this question very funny. The past many decades of instability of the economy have resulted in heavy government intervention. The government has a terrible tract record of economic stability. I am not an economist but I actually believe that there will always be instability under every system. In a free market capitalist system there will be instability also. Perhaps, there was an economic miscalculation, or a natural disaster, or some major people did decietful actions, whatever it happens to be, the instability can result from this. But at the same time I consider it to be very foolish to propose that the government can manage this problem. Who says the government will not preform a miscalculation problem itself? Who says the government will not undergo a natural disaster that will offset the markets? Who says that there will be no bad people in government that will make the markets go crumbling down? Nothing says that. The instability problem is not solved with a government. If you look at the economics of much of the problems that have resulted in the markets it were backed up by bad government policies. I do not believe for a moment that it is possible to create economic stability. I think there will be time were problems happen. But to think otherwise and to imagine a government that can address this problem is the utopian vision of statism that I do not share in.

Point 27: You wrote, "The financial crisis was not an indictment of their worldview, libertarians argue, but a vindication of it. Letting the banks fail would have been painful. But the pain would have been less than it will be now that the government is propping up the housing, banking, and automobile industries." The financial crisis was not caused by the free market, but an abandoment of it. The boom that was created in the housing market grew because of low-interest rates put in place by the Federal Reserve. This expansion of credit that inevitably led to a bust would not have taken place if the interest rates were able to adjust to market rates. Libertarians cannot be blamed anywhere in here at all. And yes the only solution to this crisis was to do: nothing. I know it sounds hard, but there is nothing you can do. Politically that is a terrible answer because people want to be comforted. But this is another sign of that you are way more utopian than I am. I am able to recognize the impossibility of a solution and say that everything needs to fail, while for you it is hard to accept this view and you insist on doing something about it. A person who keeps borrowing more and more money, and pays of his debts with more borrowed money will eventually hit rock bottom. A heroin addict who keeps on using heroin will also eventually hit rock bottom. Before these people go under they have the illusion that something is being done. The same with this crisis. If you insist on doing something about it all you are doing is prolonging in an illusion that will not last. Sooner or later you will have to face this problem all over again.

Point 28: You wrote, "Letting banks fail would also avoid moral hazard, say libertarians, since investors wouldn’t take such risky bets the next time around." And why is this wrong to say? Nowhere in your paper do you address this view. The argument is a very simple argument. If the banks know they are going to be bailed out and they know that risky investments produce high profits then what is to prevent them from taking such actions? It is a win-win situation for them if they make risky choices.

Point 29: You wrote, "It’s a compelling story. But like many libertarian narratives, it’s oversimplified. If the biggest banks had failed, bankers wouldn’t have been the only ones punished." There are three problems with what you have said. The first problem is that libertarians are not responsible for the bank failures here at all. You treat libertarians as if they are responsible for this problem but they had nothing to do with it. The second problem is that you seem to think there was a lack of regulation. No, do not worry, there was a lot of regulation. The banking system in the US is by far the most regulated system and you still have problems regardless. The third problem is that you think that bail outs were a way to solve the problem. Libertarians do not just object to bail outs because of the moral hazard that you cited but also because they consider it to be a bad economic solution. Let me give an analogy. If you are in debt the way you do not get out of debt is by borrowing more money to pay off your debt. It may create a temporary illusion that you paid off your debt but the debt problem has simply been pushed off to the future. So what you propose is no solution just a temporary feel good moment.

Point 30: You wrote, "We want less government regulation, but not when it means firms can hire cheap child labor." If you get rid of child labor you will either end up killing these children from starvation of make them even more miserably poor. The reason why children worked was because their families were so poor that this was the only option they had. Why would you ever take away from them this only means of making themselves better off? I wrote about child labor back here if you want to read about it more.

Point 31: You wrote, "We want a free market, but not so bankers can deceive investors." Again, as I said above, the free market does not mean do as you wish. Just like a free society does not mean do as you wish. Free society means people are free form rule of others. Free market means people interact with one another in the way they agree. What does banks deceiving investors have anything to do with the free market then? So I guess you will say that if you have unregulated banks then there is a danger that the bankers will decieve the investors. Can this happen? Sure it can. But what do you propose? Having the government decide these actions? Well let me ask you a question. What will prevent the government from doing the exact same problem? What is to prevent the government from being bribed by the banks to create these deceptions? Nothing. Your view does not address this problem. At least in a free market you can sue the banks for fraud, you cannot sue the government for fraud because they decide the law after all.

Point 32: You wrote, "Libertarianism, in promoting freedom above all else, pretends the tension doesn’t exist." I am not sure what you mean by 'tension' here. I will interpret this as 'social conflict'. If libertarians did not believe in problems that arise within the world then why would they support a military? Why would they support police? Why would they support court systems? What you say lacks all consistency with what they view the proper role of government ought to be.

Point 33: You wrote, "A house in Obion County, Tennessee, burned to the ground in September because the owner had not paid the annual $75 fee for opt-in fire protection." Why is this even a problematic case? I fail to see what the problem is? Do you believe that people have the right to commit suicide? If so then it follows, al fortiorti, that you certainly believe that people have the right to burn down their own house if they so desired. And if you believe that people have the right to burn down their own house then it follows, al fortiorti, that you certainly believe that people have the right not to buy fire protection. What is the big deal? I fail to understand. Statists love to use the fire protection scenario as if it is some trouble spot of libertarianism but I cannot for the life of me see what the problem is? I guess you would respond to me by saying that if I fail to buy fire protection and my house gets on fire then I am creating a hazardous enviroment for my neighbors. In such an instance the fire department would respond to my neighbors call to protect them. Since it was my house it was my responsibility. I have inflicted a cost on other people and so I would be required to pay for the bill that was a cost on the fire department. Again, where exactly is the difficulty?

Point 34: You wrote, "It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers." I am willing to bet that most atheists discover atheism as teenagers too. I have read a statistic that said that 1 out of 5 people in the young generation (teenagers and young adults) are atheists. I think this is the highest precentage of atheist in an age demographic. Thus, I reason that it is not an exaggeration to say that atheism is mostly discovered by teenagers also. The implication of the statement that libertarianism often correlates with being a teenager is that teenagers want to be rebellious and ignore authority. This might or might not be true. But in the same manner I can say that the correlation between being a teenager and atheism results for the same reason. That the teenagers want to be rebellious and ignore God's law. Is this a good argument about atheism? No. And even if it was true does this discredit atheism? No. In the same manner comparing libertarianism to a teenager and concluding that it is all about rebellion is a ridiculous argument to make. It does not discredit the philosophy. I happen to think that there is some of the teenager rebellion in both atheism and libertarianism. But I would guess something else is more important that makes this correlation. Simply, teenagers have not had their brains corrupted by the bullshit that you learn from the world. Adults bite into a big giant sandwich of bullshit everyday for 30 years. No wonder they have such ridiculous world views. Teenagers are the freest of thinkers of all people in the world. This is why I love teenagers. Teenagers are awesome, not just to fuck, but for discovering individuality.

Point 35: You wrote, "At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else." Libertarianism is not a moral system and it is not a way to live your life. Do not make this mistake. Libertarianism does not say ignore the poor and think about yourself. There are plenty of extremely charitable and friendly libertarians out there. There are also plenty of extremely greedy and mean libertarians out there. Morality and a system of values have nothing to do with libertarianism. In fact, I am willing to bet a lot of money that conservatives and libertarians in general contribute more money to charity than liberals do. Can somebody find such a statistic? I would be interested to see.

Point 36: You wrote, "The message: Never compromise. If you don’t get your way, blow things up. And there’s the problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility." The libertarian message is to never compromise? And the libertarians believe in blowing things up? What exactly have you been reading about libertarianism that makes you conclude this view of them? The ones blowing things up and killing people in history were the statists. Libertarians and anarchists are by far the less violent political group in the world. Count the number of deaths by governments in the 20th century and compare to the number of people killed by libertarians and anarchists. There is no comparison. So from these figures it would be more reasonable to conclude that statists blow things up and never compromise. But I do not make such an argument, because I am smart enough to realize how ridiculous this argument is. Then you talk about how libertarians are anti-cooperation. This is just false. Libertarians support a free market system. Free market capitalism is all about cooperation. I do something for you and you do something for you. I give you a hand job and you give me a blow job. That is cooperation. And it is the free market that leads to world peace because it is a cooperative economic system. There are two ways to get money. By economic means and by political means. The economic means is trade, this is by its nature a cooperative system to human organization. The political means is by plundering other people by taxation and fines. It is coervice manner, it is anti-cooperative. Libertarianism is the most cooperative system that there is.

Point 37: You wrote, "It would be a port town in Somalia." Somalia, again? How many times will statists continue to use this ridiculous argument against libertarianism. You can read my answer to question #11 here.

Point 38: You wrote, "In a world of scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies." What you wrote is nothing but an economic fallacy. The world consists of scare resources. But the way people deal with scarcity is through the market system. There is no market for air because air is pretty much not a scarce resource. Well, 100% oxygen is a scare resource. So there is a market for 100% oxygen tanks. But ordinary air that we both breath has no market because it is not scarce. Everything else that is in the world usually falls under the category of being scarce. The way we deal with scarcity is through the market based economy. The free market will set the appropriate prices that will reflect the supply and the demand correctly. It is the market system that humans learn to deal with scarcity. I might want some meat, but I only have trees with me. So I find another person who has plenty of meat and is willing to use my trees for something. Thus, we meet in the market and interchange with one another. Both of us pursue our self-interests yet we both manage to benefit each other. I think you should read a little bit of Adam Smith to understand the basics of capitalism. The Lord of the Flies that you describe is rather statism. States fight with one another constantly over resources. Not by cooperation but through conquest. Conquest for more resources for yourself is to blame on statism, not libertarianism. Freidrich Bastiat said that, "if trade does not get past through borders then armies will". Well, this is a criticism against states not against the market system.

Point 39: You wrote, "And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, you’d be surrounded by assholes." This point that you said beautifully demonstrates my thesis that statism is what is utopian, not libertarianism. Because I never, ever, ever, make the claim that the world does not consist of assholes. I never for once assert that there will be no assholes in a libertarian world. I am an asshole myself, and proud of it. But you on the other hand actually imply that in a state run society that it is possible to get rid of the assholes? Do you seriously believe that if you have a state managing the lives of people that you can elimiate the assholes? You do not say it. But you seem to imply it. Why else would you make such a criticism about libertarians? What does it have to do with libertarianism? Unless you imply that in your state run world there will be no assholes because under a state somehow the assholes will disappear. Your implied propostion is an unbelievable statement of pure utopian fantasy. There are assholes everywhere, how do they vanish under statism?

Point 40: You wrote, "Yet Rand Paul has already made some concessions." For Science's sake, you are going after Rand Paul again? I told you libertarians hardly like this guy. He mostly interests the tea party who seem to like him and certain Republicans too. Libertarians have very little with him. Using Rand Paul as a main representative for libertarianism is almost as bad as using Adolf Hitler as a representative for socialism. There are thousands of libertarians you can use. Stop using Rand Paul, I do not like him, most other libertarians do not like him. Get over it.

Point 41: You wrote, "And he won. The lesson: If a libertarian wants to get elected, he’s going to have to bend a few principles, deal with reality as it exists." The lesson and the 'reality' (statists sure love talking about how 'realistic' they are) was that when it comes to politics (not political philosophy), and votes are at stake, you cannot be principled and stick to a philosophy. Rather you must say stuff that the people want to hear. That is all what the lesson was about. Ron Paul does not play this game. That is why he will never be voted in for anything. And he is fine with that.

Review: I will give this article a 4 out of 5 stars review. It has a lot of good information about libertarianism. It mentions important philosophers and economists that inspired it. This is a good article written by a non-libertarian. If I had to write an article on liberalism I would mess it up royally. This is a well-researched artcile. It is also pleasant to read. This author has a talent to write well. Not like me who is a semi-slobbering retard who has difficulty getting his point across. Not 5 stars because this is not the best source to learn about libertarianism. There are some problems in how the author explains what libertarianism is about. As far as the questions and criticisms of libertarianism go I do not include them into the ratings. Because the author is honest in his questions and challenges that he poses. He is not delibritately trying to misunderstand the libertarian philsophy. So I cannot use his skeptical thoughts against his review. I would recommend to read this to libertarians.

Political Nihilism

2011-01-04T23:50:00.003-05:00

This will probably be a good (analytic) continuation of my last post on nihilism in general.

I hate politics, I cannot listen to it, and I am just not interested in it at all. When I say "politics" I mean the kind of discussions and news you find on the TV and newspapers. I have no interest in candidates, no interest in voting, and no interest in any kinds of bills that get passed. I like political philosophy. But what I really hate about political philosophy is a proper label to put on myself, I always seem to have a tough time doing that. And I know some people will tell me to forget about labels, but labels are necessary, perhaps a necessary evil, but they are necessary, without them it is hard to communicate your ideas.

I have been all over the map when it comes to political philosophy. This does not mean that one week I am a neo-conservative and the next week I am a social democrat. I continuously change, but my change is always within a certain framework. The ideas of the past that I accepted I most likely continue to accept, and I carry them over with me as I evolve my philosophy. Each time I find it hard to find a proper term to use to describe myself.

When I was in high-school I was a communist. Not for any smart reason. I just hated money, I hated people thinking about money, and I figured this causes as lot of destruction in the world. If instead money is no longer an issue people have to think about and if class is eliminated then that would produce the best system. I still remember my first year of college (immediately after high-school) when my professor asked the class which they think is the best political system, I raised my hand and say "communism". I had no problem being a social authoritarian because I was still religiously Jewish back then. This started to change by my second year of college. After I started to read about religion, atheism, and think about these issues I realized that much of what I believe (with respect to morality) was very wrong and cruel. My initial disgust with religion was not a scientific objection but a moral objection. So I started to change my social views slowly. By the second year of college I would be best described as a liberal. I shared basically the same views that most college liberals had. I remember in my psychology class my second year of college when we had an assignment to see how well we pair with our partners one of the questions asked whether we agree with one another politically. This girls asked me what I am and I said that Democrat probably best describes my views. Shortly after, from watching YouTube debates and discussions I learned about libertarianism. It was a philosophy that made a lot of sense to me. But I still retained my leftish economics views. I thought that capitalism by itself is problematic but at the same time rejected mandatory taxation. I reconciled this dilemma with libertarianism and being on the left by making the government something people can buy into and opt out. I supported the decision of citizens to decide if they want to be citizens of the government, if they did the government would take care of them and help them in times of need, but if people did not wish to join this system they did not have to, and be left alone by themselves. This way it is possible to combine liberty and a nanny government (which I thought was a good idea), what is this called, left-libertarian? However, this did not last very long after I learned about Milton Friedman. I watched lots of his videos online and learned about the economics of capitalism. Milton convinced me why the capitalist free market system is preferable to government systems and so I gradually shifted to a right-libertarian (which is just known as a "libertarian"). But I am not happy with this label. I do not think that libertarian really describes that I believe in anymore.

When I come across most standard libertarians they seem to be very different to me. For one thing they treat the Constitution as if it was some sort of infallible document from the founders. I do not care about the Constitution, it can be burned to ashes for all I care. And they also seem to believe that a libertarian country will be a great wonderful thriving and successful country. This is something else I do not believe in.

I have been often asked, "does (laissez-faire) capitalism work?". To that I always responded "sure", and then proceeded to use examples, usually early America, that demonstrated how a civilization can "work" (whatever this even means) in this system. But I have changed my position. No, I was wrong. It does not work. In American history under capitalism people had pretty miserable lives, none of us want to live back then. Under capitalism how many businesses fail? Nearly all of them, few succeed. How is it fair then to say that (laissez-faire) capitalism is "successful" when the failure far exceeds the success. Capitalism itself, like evolution, succeeds because of failure. To have eventual success in a capitalist economy a whole lot of failure must first pass before the system corrects itself to "work". Where exactly is the success in that? How can such a system be called to "work". Yes, it is possible to live under a capitalist economy and organize society under it, but it hardly can be called to "work" and to be "successful".

This is not some coming out moment for me away from capitalism, I support its ideas as I have. I just had a change in mindset. I do not think that capitalism "works" because I do not believe that any system "works". All systems fail. Because all systems are inventions of men, who are failures themselves. I support capitalism not because it "works", but because it fails less than anything else that I know of. Whatever problems, struggles, challenges that exists under a capitalist system will always exist, perhaps in different forms, under any system that people can conjure.

The early American workers certainly had a terrible life under a capitalist system. But they had a terrible life under all systems that existed in the world at the time. And that is my point of all I am trying to say. That all of these systems, in this case, were failures. They did not achieve a great life as they promised to achieve. It is true that things have became better over time. I agree to that, but that is rather just that the system improves, not that it is a success.

If it was really true that the laissez-faire capitalist system was successful and it "worked" then why would so many people of its time seek to leave it and move to something else? Why were there fights against it for an alternative? Because people were not happy with it, it was a failure. But here is the interesting paradox that is created. What people have wanted to replace for something else itself was a failure. In the end all systems that people devise reveal themselves to crumble to their failures. This is why there are constant riots all over the world and protests. Angry people in whatever country demanding an alternative. What is often funny is the alternative that they demand exists in a forgein country in which that population is demanding an alternative the native people are objecting. The embarrassment of mankind that we euphemistically call "history" is filled with revolutions that end up being failures that were reactions to different failures.

This is where I stand now. I think of myself as a political nihilist. All establishments and systems that will ever be devised by people will fail. Either because people themselves fail, or natural disasters and circumstances will prevent success of a system. But whatever is the system it will fail. I do not have a system. I think that people should be able to decide how they wish to live. If the capitalists wish to have their system then let it be, and if the socialists want to unite and have their system then let it be.

I do not have a centrally universally decided upon structure for civilization. That is for the statists to do, they are the ones who always want to universally decide, I do not. I allow diversity of opinion without stopping those who I disagree with to try what they want to try. Hence a lack of a system. I do not have a system.

Well, it is not true. I do have a system. I still support capitalism, even though I have admitted that it fails. I support capitalism because I see it as the smallest failure out of all failures. The paradox is that a system is necessary, but any system fails. I need to choose one even though I recognize its failure.

I once read a YouTube comment that said, "you cannot trust markets". And I agree. Markets cannot be trusted. Sometimes the greedy people on top will decide to screw people over to gain more profits for themselves. Or perhaps even if everyone had good intentions there is a miscalculation problem that makes the whole market economy comes crumbling down. I agree with all of this. But at the same time it does not challenge me, because you also cannot trust governments. Governments have the exact same failings as ordinary people, they consist of the very same pathetic creatures like ourselves, there is no reason to expect them to be angels. Whatever problems resulted from a market economy can just as well result from a government economy, worse in fact.

I do still support my ideas of libertarian political philosophy, because this is the only philosophy that in a way is a lack of a system, since it is not centrally planned, it does not demand a single universal structure to society. However people wish to assemble themselves is up to the people.
So politically I do not have a system, I am a nihilist in that regard, but economically I do have a system, a failed system like all the rest, but that best from the worst as far as I can tell.

I really hope the statists now stop accusing me of being a "utopian". I do not find anything utopian about anything I said above. It is as anti-utopian of a message that there can be. On the contrary, it is statism that is utopian. It is the statist who promises a greater future, a successful world, from a central planner, who can calculate exactly what needs to be. That is a utopian idea. Politicians, dictators, and leaders promising people a great future have plagued this world for far too long, they are liked by the public precisely for their utopian statement. Their promises of a future world. I make no such promise. I rather say that whatever challenges and difficulties that exist will always exist in whatever system is used, perhaps in different forms. I do not promise a great future. I simply assert that if capitalism fails to produce greater prosperity for mankind then all else will most likely also fail.

Why Nihilism

2011-01-04T00:47:00.002-05:00

I really do not want to make this post. I discussed nihilism and its meaning in some of my earliest posts. I thought that this whole topic is obvious and does not need any further discussion. Indeed, a book on nihilism will only consist of blank pages. There is nothing else to be said on this topic. But it does confuse people, and nihilism makes me seem evil in the eyes of the others. So I have forced myself to write this post even though it bores me to near death.

I will not explain what nihilism is. You can read what I believe here. It is not appropriate to ask an nihilist, "why are you a nihilist?". Because nihilism is simply the default position that we can have. In a similar manner it is inappropriate to ask an atheist, "why are you an atheist?". The atheist will simply tell you that atheism is our starting point, it is the default position from skepticism, and so the question that should be asked is rather "why are you a theist?" rather than "why are you an atheist?". When I get asked "why nihilism?", I consider that question to be highly inappropriate because the question I should ask instead is, "why should I not be a nihilist?".

I am a nihilist because the question of "what is the meaning of life?" is a human constructed concept. There is no meaning whatsoever, there is no meaning to life as far as I can tell. Meaning is a human concept that we attach to various things. In the same way the question "where does value come from" is non-sensical. There is no "value". Value is a human concept attached to various things. Hence, there can be no objective value or meaning because humans attach those notions.

Thus, nihilism is simply the default position of disbelief resulting from seeing any reason for believing in objectivity of values. As a result I do not believe in any kind of objective morality. Because morality is obtained from a system of values. Since I reject objectivity in values I cannot possibly accept any kind of objective moral system.

There are some atheists who do believe in secular objective morality. But how do they come to this position? Well, they choose a certain quantity of measurement and say "what is moral obeys this concept, and we arrive to morality, objectively, from working with this concept". To illustrate an example let us take utilitarianism. There are atheists who subscribe to this view and consider it to be "objective morality". I do not.

I agree with David Hume, there is no way to deduce an "ought" from an "is". There are objective statements. The Pythagorean theorem is an objective statement about (Euclidean) triangles and the universal law of gravitation is an objective statement in physics. There are mathematical and scientific statements of truth. But all these statements are just "is" statements, if you know what I am trying to say. They do not give value to what has to be. They do not say whether this is good or bad, they just say how things are.

All the science and mathematics and philosophy that we known of can at best tell us how things are and what are their properties and the laws that they follow. But from information we cannot possibly deduce what needs to be. Because what "needs" and what "ought" to be is a human value concept.

Utilitarians simply assert that "pain is bad and pleasure is good". But by what standard to they come to this? From whence do they conclude the wickness of pain from application of science? Nowhere. They simply choose a preference, a set goal they would like to attain, and then apply their moral system, which they claim is objective, to realize the conclusions of utilitarianism.

It is for these reasons that I simply do not believe in objective morality. Now I know that the Juden claim to have objective morality from the Torah. They say that God created objective morality. But even if YahWeh existed it still does not convince me. If you read the Torah it is not a book of a moral system but rather a book of obedience and authority. God does not have a moral system, he simply demands your obedience to him and the recognition of his authority. Any action can be moral if God commands it. Hence what is "moral", from a Jewish point-of-view, is equivalent to being "obedient to God". Any actions, therefore, can be moral, if God demands it. If God demands to mutilate your children then that is considered to be moral. If God demands to humiliate the poor then that is considered to be moral. Anything can be moral or immoral depending on what you perceive God to say. Thus, even if YahWeh did exist, I still question objective morality, because I see no moral system in Judaism, just a system of complete obedience.

As I said the book of nihilism is filled with blank pages. Nihilism is the rejection to any moral system, or a concept of value, or justice, from an objective point-of-view. There is nothing that nihilism professes other than that all systems are false. Hence the blank pages.

I see the abyss, and I can see it stare at me. What most people fear is the abyss. Humanity is terrified of the abyss. Humanity's ability to be intelligent has caused it to fear the abyss and develop delusions to live a more comforting life.

Therefore, what people have done is create illusions in front of the abyss so that it does not stare back at them. These illusions can vary from the simplest things to the most complex. Consider family, for example. It is just a means to escape from this abyss. A husband loves his wife, and the parents love the children. The husband believes that his wife and children are the most important things in his life, and so he keeps his family close to himself. But ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, from the standpoint of the celestial clock, all of his family is pointless. It is completely unimportant. It will be no cosmic loss if his children and wife suffered a painful cruel death in a torture chamber which mutilated them.

But those are some of the simplest fights against the abyss, more complex ones include philosophies that people form. Like moral systems, for instance. Be they utilitarianism, hedonism, egoism, Objectivism, whatever they happen to be, they are just curtains pulled over this abyss. People are terrified from the inability to have answers to these questions, and terrified even more when are told that there are no answers at all. They rebel against this by creating these objective systems of values and morals to deal with the world.

Nihilism is therefore the acknowledgement that all systems that people create are simply man-made inventions with no objectivity to them at all. Nihilism is not only the acknowledgement of our inability to have answers to certain questions but the acknowledgement that there are no answers to these questions at all.

The abyss is actually not frightening. As a nihilist I am not worried nor scaried about this at all. I guess it just takes time to get used to it. I am also not afraid of not knowing answers to questions or even suggesting that no answers can exist. I am fine living without knowing, it does not bother me. Richard Feynman nicely summarized what seems to be a nihilist message, here, in under a minute.

A New New Year's Message

2011-01-01T01:31:00.003-05:00

Every year I happen to hear people tell me, "have a happy new year". But it never comes truth. I am just as lonely as I always been. None of their wishes and positive thoughts ever affect my life. How could it? How can simply wishing for something affect the future of the universe? As rational people we understand that there is no such thing as wishing. There is no such thing as making a positive future by simply wanting there to be one. Sure, religious people believe in that, but they are just stupid. Rational people do not believe in such superstitions. So why say it? Only one reason. To make people feel better about the future. To make people unafraid to enter the next year, the undiscovered country.

But I am against this message. It is false. It is a lie. Saying that a religious person is happier than an atheist is not different from saying that a drunk man is happier than a sober one. I refuse to make myself believe in something which I know to be false even if it makes me feel happier.

Every year people sit down to celebrate the passing of the current year and the coming of the new year. Just two days later they find out how truly "awesome" this new year is. Why should I believe this will be different?

Instead I have a different message. Something which is meaningful and true. Rather than pretending to have a happy year accept your misery that will haunt you this year. Accept your misery, suffering, depression, loneliness, horror, fear, tragedy, and challenges. And conquer them. Because that is how people grow. People do not grow by living happy easy lives but by living challenging lives of hardship that they came to overcome. You do not become tall by walking vallies but by walking mountains. He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities. To give birth to a dancing star one must have chaos within oneself. What does not kill you will only make you stronger.

So I do not wish you a happy new year. Fuck that. Instead, overcome your horrors and tragedies of the future by your will to power, so that you can become a super-man.

Defending Rubashkin

2010-12-25T21:38:00.004-05:00

This is an issue that was all over Jewish blogs from a half-year to a year ago. I am way too slow about it. I just figured that perhaps Chirstmas is an appropriate time of the year to discuss this, given that I never discussed this case before.

If in the situation you happen to be more news-retarded than me and do not know what the case is about I will briefly mention its contents. Some time ago, not sure when, a Rabbi (I guess he was a Rabbi) who was the head of a Jewish slaughterhouse (I assume that he is a Rabbi because by Jewish law you have to be a Rabbi to be involved in slaughtering) was busted for illegal practices. What where the illegal practices? He hired illegal immigrants (which from now on I will simply refer to as "Mexicans" because they probably were considering that those are the people who work illegally in the US, maybe I am wrong on the kind of people they were, but that is all irrelevant since it is the principles behind this case that is important not the specifics). And he probably (not sure about this but I figure he must have) has hired them in an illegal manner, that is, by not respecting labor laws. I will assume he paid them below minimum wage and other benefits that he suppressed from them. The story ends that this Rabbi got busted for his practices and now was send into jail.

It is pretty clear from above that I am not very knowledgeable on this topic. But that is because I find it as exciting to read about as tuning into an episode on the View. Though this is all irrelevant because we can still discuss the case even if the specifics are slightly mistaken.

From my impression that I seen on discussion forums and blogs nearly every Jew was against Rubaskin. He said that what he did was wrong and he belongs in jail. It even felt like I was in a middle of a two minute hate. Almost unanimously all the Jews hated this guy and wanted him to be in jail. This is very rare on comments sections because some Jews are religious, some are ex-religious, and they generally disagree with one another.

I am not surprised to see that the common response from ex-religious Jews to Rubaskin was hatred towards him and supporting the punishment that was placed upon him. Because for these ex-Jews this story is an example of what is wrong with Judaism. They do not support the morality of Judaism and so they reject its Rabbis. I am not surprised therefore seeing ex-Jews agreeing with the verdict.

The religious Jews also were anti-Rubaskin. But for different reasons. Some Jews felt that Rubaskin portrayed the Jewish world in a terrible manner (as he did) and for that he must pay. Other Jews also had a reason to bend over backwards. They wanted to show themselves and say in an implicit manner that even though they are Jewish they are not going to defend another Jewish guy.

These are just my psychological evaluations of ex-religious Jews and religious Jews. And these are just my evaluations based on a few comments that I have seen on this topic from Jews. I may end up being totally off here. Maybe there are lots of ex-Jews that do defend him and maybe there are lots of religious Jews that also defend him. But I did not really see this view on sites that I have went to.

Finally, you have the crazy insane nut-case Jews like myself who do end up rising up to this case and saying that not only is it wrong to put Rubaskin in jail, not only was it wrong to bust him for doing what he did, but that there was nothing wrong in his illegal practices whatsoever. Sadly, this is not a view I commonly hear anyone say.

Let us begin with the easiest topic, jail. I will not repeat my arguments again, which can be found here. My position with regard to jail is that jail should only exist for dangerous people (like those who want to blow up a bridge). That is the same argument I used when I defended Bernie Madoff from going to jail here. It follows from this concept that since Rubaskin is not a dangerous person he cannot be send into jail. He poses no threat for the world at all and so if he is found guilty of anything his only punishment would be to pay fees.

And maybe you agree with me. Maybe you do agree that sending him into jail was excessive. But you probably do not agree with what he did. You think what he did was morally wrong and that it is a good thing that he got busted down.

My reasons for defending the illegal practices that he was doing is based on very simple economics. If you have Mexicans that are willing to risk everything they have to cross over the border under the fear of getting caught and getting into trouble to come into the US there is one thing you can be sure of. Living in Mexico, for these Mexicans, sucks. It not only sucks it sucks a lot. It sucks so much that they are willing to take such a big task and risk of getting into the US. The fact that they choose to work in a slaughterhouse for whatever conditions he was offering them means that it was better for them than anything else available. In particular, it means that it was better for them than anything else available in Mexico. Otherwise, they would stay in Mexico and other Mexicans will not come over for such a job. The fact that Mexicans were accepting such a job is only a sign that it was better for them.

The job that these Mexicans had definitely sucked. But it sucked far less than anything they had in Mexico. The problem that a lot of people do is they judge the job these Mexicans had from their own preferences. Since we live richer and better lives we see this as a terrible job to have. But we must be wiser than that, we must judge and try to see this from the preferences of the Mexicans. They have poorer and worse lives than we do so they will see the jobs offered to them at Rubashkin differently from how we would see them. What is bad for us might be not so bad or maybe even good for them.

We conclude that Rubashkin improved the standard of living of these Mexicans. How can he therefore be called evil? How can he be called that he is exploiting the the Mexicans? After all they risked all they had to come and work for him. He must have been doing something correct.

Now some people might say that Rubashkin should have offered a minimum wage job with benefits that all workers in the US are supposed to have by law. There is a problem with proposing this. Why would Rubashkin go through the hassle of hiring illegal immigrants for whom he can be busted for if they give him no incentive over regular workers? If he treated the Mexicans with the same working regulations that would have treated a US citizen then what incentive does he have to hire them? None at all. Hence the Mexicans would have never recieved this job. A job that would have definitely made their lives better off.

Consider what happens now when Rubaskin is shut down. All those Mexicans that had a job to work for him lost their jobs. As a result their lives are much poorer. It is even possible that some of them were deported or unable to find a new job. When Rubashkin got shut down the Mexicans suffered as a result from that.

It is clear to any rational mind which does not think about this case with passions what the proper just course of action would be. That is to not interfere with the operation of the slaughterhouse. Busting down Rubashkin not only ends up throwing a harmless man into a cage for an incredibly long period of time but it also ruins the lives of the poor Mexicans that were working for him. The proper option would have left alone these Mexicans that they can continue to improve their lives and left Rubashkin alone for being able to enable the Mexicans to do that.

I would also like to remind that what Rubashkin did was exactly how American accepted immigrants. When the immigrants came to American in the past generations their lives sucked. But they were better than they were previously. These people worked in (what we would certainly find) bad jobs. But this work enabled their children to live a better life for themselves. What the Mexicans are doing is no different at all considering that what they did was not illegal in 1900. Mexicans just want to make their lives and the lives of their children better off. And the way they do this is by working from the bottom, this is after all the American way. Objecting to what Rubaskin did is to reject in principle what America is all supposed to be about.

Porn Censorship in UK

2010-12-23T01:33:00.003-05:00

I am beginning to lose more and more respect for countries in Europe. I just mentioned a free speech violation in the UK just a little over two weeks ago here. I thought Europe was supposed to be enlightened and progressive? Europe might have a higher average intelligence than US, and it is more secularized, but it is definitely not enlightened nor progressive. Hearing how UK censors speech it does not approve repulses me. Hearing how France bans articles of clothing they do not approve repulses me. Hearing how Sweden goes after Julian, not because of WikiLeaks, no no, it had nothing to do with that, it had to do with rape, of course, it had nothing to do with trying to end WikiLeaks, also repulses me. Well, maybe Canada is better to look up to as a role model.

But this story is a brand new low for the UK. I found out about this when I was writing my previous post on Net Neutrality. The UK is considering to ban porn on ISP's. Anyone who wants access to porn will be required to confirm that to his ISP. You can see the video of this story here.

Basically what this new law wants to do is to ban ISP content that carries people over to porn sites. They say it is "for the children". Supporters of this law also claim it "is not a violation of free speech" and that it "is not censorship" because people can see porn provided they get permission to look at porn from the ISP that is under control by the government.

In my past post I wrote about various questions related to net neutrality here. One of my objections was that this gives government access to control the internet. Once they gain that it is just a matter of time that they will censor various information online. I justified myself why I am not walking on a slippery-slope when I make this statement, but this new report about porn suppression in UK confirms what I said even more. The UK is way way more open to sex than the US; including gay sex. And they are much less religions than we are. So if the UK can consider such a ban than al fortiorti does not not make you worried that the same can happen in the US?

This law did not get passed yet. But the fact that it is considered and the fact that it can get passed is embarrassing enough. It is just like the mosque building near the WTC. If you noticed I never made any comment about it on my blog. Because for me the whole issue was so trivial it did not even deserve a post. This law is falls into the same category. The fact that it is being considered is embarrassing enough.

I do think that most people will find this law completely ridiculous and outrageous. So it will hopefully not get passed. But the embarrassment is still there. That it was proposed. For a brief moment it could have become the law. So embarrassing.

This law demonstrates the danger of government control over the internet. Once they got the control they need to do controlling. There can be no such thing as free internet speech when there is a serpent that at any instant can cut that speech. The UK government already controls certain internet content. For example, they have control over kiddie porn sites. Those have been blocked. Which is, as repulsive as it is to most people, still free speech. There is very good reason to believe that more information will be blocked in the UK. I am guessing that at one point or another the WestBoro Baptist Church website, GodHatesFags, will eventually be blocked in the UK since the WestBoro Baptist Church has been banned from entering the UK.
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I want you to look at the video I send you. The blonde woman (who I want to silence by sticking my penis into her mouth) is clearly tyrannical. She demonstrates a phenomenon I have expounded on this blog before.

Step 1: She uses the "what about the children argument?!". This is a popular argument to be used by any statist. If you want to get a law passed then just remind your opponent that it is for the children. Now I personally do not care the children, they can go fuck themselves, or a priest can go fuck them. Besides, children seeing porn, oh no!, how scary.

Step 2: Propose the tyrannical law after you made the "what about the children?!" argument.

Step 3: Spout an endless amount of statistics. Just keep on saying statistics. Ignore all principles, ignore all reasoning, ignore any derivations that can be drawn from what you say, just throw more and more statistics at your opponent. Because statistics make you sound smart. Who cares what the statistics imply, who cares if they are really true, who cares if what you propose will really address the problem, just keep on throwing statistics to prevent anyone from responding to you.

Step 4: Claim that if this law will not be passed then terrible things will happen. Notice how she talks about child violence. As if that has anything to do with porn. But she just brings it up. Because child violence is an emotional statement to use. So if you say that this law is to prevent violence against children and to prevent molestation against children then you blow a danger way out of proportion. You use this approach as part of the scare tactics to convert people over to your side.

Step 5: Explain how your law is not tyrannical and not a violation of freedom of speech. Say how you are "a strong supporter of freedom and free speech". Just keep on saying how this everything you say is really freedom. This is another point I discussed many times before on this blog, that is, fascists never call themselves fascists.

When I was watching this blonde woman talk, who should rather be staring in a porn movie, in my head I made predictions about what she was going to say. I was dead on in my accuracy. At first I figured she will talk about the children. I was right about that. Then I guessed she will throw an endless amount of statistics. I was right about that. Then I guessed how she will talk about child violence just to gain some scare points if this law is not put into effect. And throughout this discussion I guessed that she would be reminding everybody how this law is not a suppression of free speech. I was right on every of my predictions. Not bad.