Defending the Wicked Part 7: The Insurance Company

Insurance companies are often very much hated, especially health insurance companies. They are accused of taking advantage of sick people for their own profits and that this is the reason why healthcare is so expensive. I am not going to defend the insurance company as it is, because there is no much that I see in them that I can defend. Insurance companies favor closing interstate competition to secure their profits, imposing regulations on themselves to make it more difficult for competing companies to enter the market, and other tricks that they use for their own gain. Because of this I cannot defend insurance companies for how they operate. But I will defend insurance companies from the accusation that they are the problem of what is wrong with the United States healthcare system.

Let us first understand something very important. Insurance companies cannot dictate prices. An insurance company cannot say, "I will make prices extraordinarily large to gain large profits for myself". The reason why insurance companies cannot do that is precisely why you cannot make your pizza shop really expensive if you were to open it up, say 10$ a slice. Because if you were to do that people will simply go to other pizza shops and you will go out of business. Competition is what prevents you from increasing prices. The same concept is also true with insurance companies. They cannot raise their prices because their competitors will economically hurt them. One should remember that there are few insurance companies with regulations that protect them from more competition. Thus, one can ask that perhaps these insurance companies agree unanimously to raise their prices, in other words, collusion. They would probably be able to get away with such a practice because they are protected from heavy competition. But this is also false about insurance companies because anti-trust regulators will go after them for such practices. Therefore, we have a situation of insurance companies competing against themselves (though limited competition) and not being able to collude. All this means is that no one insurance company or a group of insurance companies can decide to raise their prices simply because they want even more profits.

The above point is very important. Insurance companies are sometimes blamed for keeping prices too high, however, this cannot be true as explained. Insurance companies are not in a position to dictate either by itself or among themselves what the price of insurance has to be. The insurance companies, therefore, are entirely not responsible for high prices. So if the insurance companies are not responsible for high prices, then what is? It is the cost of healthcare itself that drives the insurance costs even higher. Think about it. The nature of insurance companies is to provide money for people who need them and are unable to pay for it themselves (well actually the nature of insurance companies is to scam people and make as much money for themselves, so I guess it would have been more accurate to write "the function of insurance companies" instead). Thus, if the price insurance companies have to pay goes up then the prices they charge their members must go up also. Otherwise insurance companies would be running at a loss. This means high healthcare costs cause high health insurance prices. To confuse this issue and to say that high health insurance prices cause high healthcare costs is to confuse the cause for the effect.

Once an insurance company knows what the prices are for health and the probabilities of people getting sick it now calculates the necessary prices it needs to charge its members. That number is determined by the laws of probability and health costs. If the price is very high it means one of two things. Either the probability of a person being sick are too high or that health costs are very high. Blaming an insurance company for charging their prices based on these mathematical calculations is like blaming a plane crash on gravity.

Another important issue that insurance companies got blasted for is denying people with pre-existing conditions. But I do not understand why an insurance company can be blamed for doing this. Remember an insurance company uses the numbers it has in front of it to calculate the prices that they charge, it cannot dictate their own prices. Therefore, if a person is unfavorable then an insurance company will not allow him to join the plan. Insurance is a risk against yourself, and like all risks it is a gamble. Insurance companies gamble with people, but they do not lose money in the long run because they create their plans around probabilistic calculations. If, however, insurance companies started to accept people with large risks, against their probabilistic calculations, then they will in the long run begin to lose a lot of money and possibly go bankrupt. The decision insurance companies do is the economically responsible decision. One cannot blame them if they are simply following the numbers here. Insurance companies should be able to extend their plans to high risk people but charge them more money for their pre-existing conditions. However, I think, though I am not sure about this so correct me if I am wrong, that charging higher prices for people with pre-existing conditions would be a form of price discrimination and is illegal, so the insurance company can either deny the person or allow him to join the pool but charge all other members higher prices. As a result the health insurance prices must go up.

The actions of an insurance company are therefore understandable. We would do the same if we were in their situation. No house/fire insurance company would be successful if it did not discriminate against burning buildings. If my building was on fire and I called a house insurance company to be insured as my house was burning down and they accepted then such a insurance company would be out of the market very quickly. Discrimination and price discrimination is necessary for insurance companies to be in the market. Furthermore, insurance companies cannot be blamed for doing so, they did not actually harm the person, they are just following the probabilistic calculations.

I have been saying this in my posts already before but I will say so again - stop looking for scapegoats. It is very common for people to find scapegoats. All over history people blamed some scapegoats. Insurance companies are just another example of a scapegoat in present times. The problem with scapegoating is that it is usually wrong. As in our case with insurance companies. And the problem with wrong answers is that they prevent us from searching for real answers. Once we turn an insurance company into a scapegoat we no longer have the same drive to understand why health costs are so high. In fact, from what I can tell, there is no scapegoat at all. It is not the Republicans, it is not the Democrats, and it is not the president. None of these people can turned into scapegoats and blamed for the problems. The problem is the system as a whole and how it operates. No person, no one, but the operation of bad economics and inefficient programs that when they come together create problems. So instead of trying to blame scapegoats how about we try to understand the reasons to why problems occur?

Defending the Wicked Part 6: The Steroid Athlete

Something is wrong in a game only if we make up a rule in our game that it is wrong. It is considered to be wrong to use a computer to play chess with another player, that is cheating, because it is against the rules. However, if it is a match between a human and a machine then it is no longer considered to be wrong because this new game has its own set of rules. So all we have to do to stop making something wrong in a certain game is to change a rule so that it is acceptable. And this is exactly where the athlete on steroids lies in. The steroid athlete does something wrong only by the commonly established rules for sports. It is considered cheating to use steroids to improve your performance. However, if we were to get rid of that rule and say that athletes can use whatever means they desired to improve their performance then steroid athletes will no longer be doing anything wrong.

We need to remember that the technology that we use today was not available a hundred years ago. It is amazing to see the Olympic time for the marathon in 1894, which was about 3 hours reduced to about 2 hours at present. The people are still the same, so what changed? What changed was that better technique was developed, technology was developed to allow players to monitor their performance, and better sport clothing was made to improve the efficiency of the athletes. Every Olympic record that was set a hundred years ago can easily be smashed today by almost any average Olympic athlete in that sport. Just consider the world record for the mile. The fastest athletes ran the mile in about 4 minutes and 30 seconds. This was back in the 1850's. The record was set by Westhall in 1852 to 4 minutes and 28 seconds. Over the years this was all reduced to around 4 minutes and a few seconds by many athletes. It was believed to be impossible for a human to run a mile in under 4 minutes. This was finally shattered in 1952 by Bannister who did the mile in 3 minutes and 59 seconds. The myth was finally broken. The record for a mile run was still being lowered, to the point of the modern day where it is now at the totally surprising 3 minutes and 43 seconds. What happened? Was there a new superior race of runners? No, the people are still the same. The technology and equipment that athletes used improved and thereby their speed times got lower.

Why is it cheating to use steroids to improve your game but not cheating when you use your own specially designed running shoes that were unavailable a hundred years ago? I would be excited to see how far people can go if we did allow steroids and other substances for athletes to improve their game. Maybe on steroids the mile can be broken in 3 minutes and 30 seconds? Athletes have always been looking for the best possible methods to improve their performance, so why not let them use steroids or whatever other substances so that they can perform even better?

One might object and say that steroids are a health issue to the athletes. But whose life is it? Is it our life to decide what kind of activities athletes can engage in or their life to decide that for themselves? Besides the Olympic is one huge health issue itself. Olympic athletes do not live very long lives, especially marathon runners (the most gruesome of all sport events). Olympic athletes all push their bodies to their maximum point. This is true for runners, weightlifters, swimmers, gymnasts and so forth (with the exception of curlers). All of them push their bodies far. It is a health issue for athletes to push themselves so hard, but it is their own choice, and we respect their choice by not banning the Olympics because it is a health issue. So it is a little hypocritical to object to the usage of steroids on the grounds that it is a health issue.

Furthermore, perhaps steroids are only dangerous because it is illegal to be used in sports in the first place? If drug companies were able to produce performance improving substances then perhaps they would be a lot safer in order to motivate more athletes to use them to improve their game. It is just like drugs and prostitution. Both drugs and prostitution are considered to be unsafe, but that is only because it was made it illegal. There is no reason to assume why steroids and other substances would continue to be as dangerous as they are now if it were not for the competitive market of performance substances.

There also could be other side benefits for a market of steroids. What steroids and other substances really are, is a form of transhumanism. We improve the human body by inserting in it forgein bodies. I know there a lot of transhumanist lovers out there in the world. Well, we can make that dream into a reality by beginning with sports. These athletes would be stronger, faster, have more concentration, and have a lot more endurance. When it comes to physical strength these people would be the ubermensch.

Do not worry, if you are not a fan of steroids or other substances because you think it is unfair for people to modify their bodies in sports then you can have your own sports. There can be steroid baseball and steroid-free baseball (which I guess does not really exist). In steroid baseball the athletes can hit the ball out of the stadium while in steroid-free baseball the athletes stick to their original human bodies with no modifications. It is all up to how we make the rules. Some sports will stay steroid-free by keeping those rules, like the Olympics (because it would be really hard to have such an agreement from all countries of the world on allowing steroids). And some sports might start to have super-players which can do things that normal people cannot. Why settle on a single standard for sports? It is a lot more exciting to have different kind of sports with their own standards that we can watch and experiment on.

Defending the Wicked Part 5: The Rich Capitalist Pig

The rich capitalist pig is the member of society who is extraordinary wealthy. He has so much money that even if he uses it non-stop for his own consumption he will never run out of it. These rich capitalist pigs are often vilified by others, "no one needs to have that much money", they say. The capitalist pigs are also seen as the ultimate symbol of human greed. But the most serious of all accusations against the capitalist pigs is that they got their money at the expense of everyone else in society.

The first argument against the capitalist pig that he does not need this much money is an argument in favor of tyranny. The moment you propose that people are not allowed to own so much money you are implying that there will be an entity, in this case the state, that will rob these people at gunpoint of their money. The state will say, "it is wrong for people to own this much money therefore you must hand over it to us because we are allowed to own this much money". Not only is this proposal self-defeating it is tyrannical. The idea of stealing rich people's money by the argument "they have too much", is also entirely unAmerican. The Declaration says, "the right to pursue happiness". Perhaps these rich capitalist pigs are happy with this amount of wealth, if so, they are pursuing their own happiness. Suggesting a system which robs the rich under the excuse "they have too much money" is to violate the central ideas for what America is supposed to stand for.

The accusation that rich capitalist pigs are greedy is just ridiculous. Capitalist pigs are ordinary people, and ordinary people are either greedy or not. Some capitalist pigs are greedy but not all of them are. You cannot accuse capitalist pigs of greed if greed is not inherent in the nature of being a rich capitalist pig. Not all rich people are greedy, in fact many of them are very charitable. The most famous rich people would definitely include: John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. All of whom were philanthropists. In fact, here is a larger list of billionaires who have have agreed to give away at least 1/2 of all their money to charitable causes either now or until their death, this list definitely includes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who together gave about 45 billion dollars to charitable causes as of yet - probably more in the future. And as we are on the topic of greed I want to bust a myth about America. America has been accused by other countries, usually from Europe, of being greedy. I find that statement just laughable. If America is greedy then all the countries in the world must be misers compared to America. The amount of charity that leaves America far exceeds than all countries in the world. How dare one call America greedy? This figure is still true even if one looks at charity as a percentage of national wealth. In 2009 America has raised about 300 billion dollars in charitable causes not just for itself but also for around the world (see here). Whenever there is a natural disaster anywhere in the world America, accused for its greed because it has so much money, has always been the very first country to help. If you want to call America fat, go ahead, that is true, if you want to call America stupid, okay, maybe you are right their too, but the one thing you cannot accuse America of being is greedy, not when you compare it to all other countries. So this accusation about greedy capitalist pigs is not only an irrelevant argument non-inherent to the nature of capitalist pigs it is also factually incorrect.

What is more surprising, at first, is that even if the rich capitalist pigs are the most greedy people in the world they are the most productive members of society! There are two means to acquire wealth, the political and the economic means. The political way is theft, you take away money from one group of people to yourself. The economic means is selling a product or a service that people want. The rich capitalist pigs that many people hate acquire their wealth not through political means but through economic means. The way you become a billionaire, through economic means, is by coming up with something that people very much want. That means to acquire billions of dollars it must be the case that you brought billions of dollars of prosperity to the world. It is true that the greedy rich capitalist pig does not think of others but only thinks of himself but what is so counter-intuitive is that his own greed can promote so much prosperity for the rest of the world. Even if Bill Gates was not a charitable capitalist but was greedier than the greediest Jew he would still be more productive than almost anyone else in the world. Because to acquire all that wealth he must get that money from people. The only reason why people would give Bill their money is because he is able to satisfy their desires efficiently.

The last point mentioned above is the fundamental fallacy of economics. And that is that free trade is a zero-sum game. If Bill Gates is extraordinary rich then it must be that the people around him are poorer. No, that is not true. He made a product that people brought, he exchanged something for that wealth. It was his product that benefited the entire world in the billions. In this manner free trade is a positive-sum game, we benefit and Bill Gates benefits. The fact that Bill Gates is a rich capitalist pig does not imply that we are poorer as a result. We are richer too, our standard of living goes up because of his hard work. So yes, it is true, the rich get richer, but the poor get richer too because for the rich to continue to earn their money they must exchange something of value to the people for their money. This is however not true for thiefs and politicians who get rich from political means, with them it is true that their wealth implies our lose, because they have not given us anything of value, or less value, in return for it. Thus, even if rich capitalist pigs were greedy, which is not a good criticism for the above reasons, they would still be most productive members of society. And this is not even mentioning all the jobs that they have created through their entrepreneurship. Thus, the argument that rich capitalist pigs get their wealth at the expense of the poor is a terrible argument.

As we can see now the rich capitalist pig is not evil, there is nothing about him that suggests his nature to be evil. In fact, he is nothing but a prosperity and an economic bonus to any society. It is in this manner that the rich capitalist pig is actually a hero and not a villain - as many people make him out to be.

Defending the Wicked Part 4: Illegal Immigrants

This will probably be the most relevant out of all the wicked people that I consider to today's time. Immigration is a very much debated topic here in the United States. The illegal immigrant is accused for being wicked for many reasons. The reasons that I have seen used by people against immigrants were the following: they cause crime, if we do not control our immigration everyone would come into the US and there be a population problem with too many people, they use our welfare system to take away from our benefits, and they steal our jobs.

Let us begin with the first argument, illegal immigrants cause crime. This is the weakest out of all the arguments against immigration. The serious problem with this argument is that it only focuses on the bad illegal immigrants that cause crime while ignoring all the good ones that just want to come here to improve their standard of living. If the number of bad illegal immigrants is 1/1000 people then that is a terrible argument argument against immigration. I can likewise make an argument and say that the United States should kick out all the men because most criminals in jail happen to be men. Do you see how ridiculous of an argument that is? Stop concentrating on the exceptional cases and look at the whole situation.

The second argument is not very common but I heard it used. The argument is that immigration has to be controlled because otherwise so many people would want to move to the United States that we will have an over-population problem. This is also a weak argument. The population of a country or the world self controls itself based on the predator-prey cycle and the dynamics of the market, you can read more about why this is not an issue here.

The welfare argument is actually a good point that anti-immigration people have. The argument says that the problem with immigration is that immigrants take advantage of our welfare system and as a result less benefits become available to the citizens. And this is a good point. However, I do not see this so much as an argument against immigration but really as an argument against welfare. If we had no welfare system to start with then the immigrants will not be taking anything away because there is nothing to be taken away. The other problem with the welfare argument is that legal immigration is a problem, not illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants would not be eligible for welfare benefits and so the whole welfare argument is really directed towards legal immigrants. This is why illegal immigration is better than legal immigration. Milton Friedman explain this point really well here and here. So the welfare argument, even though it has a good point, is still not an argument against illegal immigrantion.

The last argument and this is probably the most popular argument which is that illegal immigrants (in particular Mexicans) "steal our jobs". Let us get something clear. Jobs cannot be stolen. You do not own your job, your employer gives you your job and then he stops giving it to you. That is not stealing. Saying that illegal immigrants steal your jobs is the same as saying that one competitor steals costumers from another competitor. It makes no sense. So instead of saying "they steal our jobs" say that "we lost our jobs because the illegals work for less". And that is true, people have lost their jobs because he illegals are willing to work for less because for them a job is more valuable than for a citizen already living in the United States. Is that a valid argument against immigration? No. Do you know what else made people lose a lot of jobs, millions and millions of people? Computers. Does it make sense to say that we should get rid of computers because they cost people their jobs? You know what else made people lose a lot of jobs? Railroads. Before railroads men would be employed to carry heavy stuff on their back or possibly with animals. Now this is no longer necessary and all those jobs are gone. The entire point about employment is that jobs are constantly being created and constantly being destroyed. There is no fixed amount of jobs available. At one point there can be a lot of jobs and at another point there can be very few jobs. Furthermore, when jobs are being destroyed new jobs are being created. A lot of people who lost their jobs because computers were invented, but a lot of people also got new jobs that are all dependent on computers. The market is a very rapidly changing system. And as a result jobs are destroyed and new ones are created. What we need to remember is that progress is taking place despite a lose in jobs. When computers replaced people that was progress, that was a step forward. When railroads replaced people that was a step forward also. Illegals replacing citizens is a step towards progress too. The illegals are making their own life better of, and at the same time they are making the economy better off because now everything becomes cheaper. Immigrants are therefore a positive economy advantage (if we are not living under a welfare state but rather in a market friendly economy) for the country. It is true, I will not deny it, that people lose jobs because the illegals work for less. However, as it was explained above, progress always makes people lose jobs. That is the nature of progress. I can understand that it has to suck when you lose your job, but look at it from the grand scale economic point of view not from your own point of view. From the grand point of view the illegals working is a good thing. And that is why illegal immigrants are actually heroic people who should not be condemned as wicked people.

America was founded on immigration. Well ... first it was founded on stealing the land from the Indians and killing out millions of red skinned people, but afterwards it was founded on immigration. If freedom is what used to make America great then it were the immigrants, from all over the world, who build this country into a great country. America has beautiful demonstrated how people, of different languages, different countries, different beliefs, can come together under freedom and work in a rather peaceful manner together. It makes me very happy when I see a Russian guy and a Mexican guy try to understand each other by speaking in English, that is the American way. My father had a Muslim friend who told him "have a good Christmas", my father responded to him, "only in America will you ever find a Muslim blessing a Jew in the name of the Christianity". Immigration is the beautiful aspect of America. Every single time in American history we go through this immigration issue. First, we do not like the Irish. Then we do not like the Chinese. Then we do not like the Japanese. Then we do not like the Jews. And so on and so on. We have lived through this episodes enough times already to realize that it is the same stupid argument this time against Mexicans.

Defending the Wicked Part 3: Racist Jokes

I am not going to argue why there is nothing wrong with racist jokes or racist terms, like "nigger". I am going to argue more than that, I will argue that people who say racist jokes and racist terms are actually doing a good service for humanity.

The first thing I want to say is that there is no such thing as a racist joke or a racist term. There are only racist people who say racist things. Blaming racism on words or terms is like blaming murder on guns and not on people who used the guns in murder. You are focusing on the wrong thing when you focus on racist words or racist jokes. All what jokes are is just a string of sounds together, and that is it. A string of sounds together cannot be racist. It is only the meaning that is attached to them that is implied by people that can be termed racist or not. Let us take the word "nigger" for example. There is nothing wrong in and of itself with the word "nigger", it is the racist who says this word that you need to be concerned about. It is possible that there existed civilizations in the past who used the word "nigger" in their vocabulary, they were not racist because of that, because the usage was completely different. There are black people and even sometimes white people who call themselves "nigger", they do not do so to insult one another, but do so because they use it as a friendly greeting. These people are not racist, in fact the way they use the word is completely well intentioned. Therefore, from now own I will say "race based jokes" and "race based expressions" because there are no racist jokes and there are no racist expressions, only people.

So why then are people insulted by the word "nigger" or other race based terms? The answer is very simple, they were taught to be insulted by them. The feeling of insult was learned in these people, not something that was innate in them. Let me explain what I mean to make it clearer. If I punch you in the face or steal your money you will feel insulted and angry. That is not something that you had to learn, that is innate in your personality. There is no way how someone can hear "nigger" and feel insulted. The feeling of insult must have been learned. What probably happened is that the father taught the boy that the word "nigger" is a bad naughty word that can never be used, and if someone ever uses that word you must be angry and stay away from people like that. This is an example of a learned insult. It is just like the word YAHWEH. No Jewish person has it innate in himself to be insulted when people say YAHWEH, rather Jewish people are taught not to say it because God will get angry.

There are two approaches that people use to relieve people from being insulted from race based expressions and race based jokes. One approach is known as sensitivity training. That is when you teach people to refrain from using race based terms. This is exactly what political correctness is about. The paradox of this approach is that it induces racism in people. Think about it. If you are taught to refer to different races of people in different contexts because you are part of a different group then you begin to see the world in terms of groups rather than individuals. If you are a white person and you describe a black person not as "black" but as "African American" then the thought process that goes on in your mind is as follows: "I am a white person, since I am not black, and he is black, I have to refer to him in a politically correct manner, and therefore say African American". This is the kind of thought that divides people into groups. Because you are no longer seeing an individual who you describe through the adjective "black", but now you see groups of people that you are taught to refer to them in a sensitive manner. This is the big irony of sensitivity training and political correctness, it was designed to make people more accepting of one another but what it does is teach people to see the world in terms of groups rather than individuals.

The other problem with sensitivity training is that it has the kindergarten mentality of dirty words. You teach people there are some dirty words that cannot be said. And what you create, in effect, is a word that has a power that it never had before. If you say that "nigger" must be avoided and can never be said you are giving a word power that it never had before. A word that is refrained from speaking has power that it never had before, which is why YAHWEH is such a powerful word in Judaism while Adonai is not as powerful, while Hashem has no power at all. People (*cough* *cough* fascists *cough*) who want to ban the word "nigger" are creating their own paradox. They say that "nigger" is a terrible word and we need to remove from it the negative effect that is has, therefore, they conclude we need to get rid of the word. No! They got the whole thing backwards. If you ban a word then you are giving it power that it never had before, exactly what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

The second approach you usually never hear but it is the direct opposite approach of insensitivity training. Insensitivity training is based on the understanding that insult from race based terms is learned, therefore to relieve people from insult they have to unlearn their feeling of insult. Instead of teaching people to be sensitive of other people's feelings, which fails for the above reasons, you teach people not to give any of magical power to race based terms. Thus, "nigger" is a word that is encouraged to be said in insensitivity training because it teaches all people to stop looking at the word with the same power that it had before. The more you use a word the less powerful it becomes. South Park made a good episode about this when on one of their episodes they used the word "shit" uncensored over 150 times. The point of the entire episode was to show how that words lose their power the more they are said, and it is rather the kindergarten mentality of adults who want to suppress words that give them that kind of power. South Park also made another good point with an episode about the word "fag". They simply redirected the word "fag" from homosexuals to people who ride around in loud Harley's and bother everyone with the noise. The point of the episode is words are simply whatever we choose them to mean, if "fag" is insulting to homosexuals then maybe we should just redirect that word for people who drive around in Harley motorcycles and insult them because those kind of people deserve to be insulted. Insensitivity training is exactly what will make people lose the feeling of insult they have from race based jokes and race based expressions. Insensitivity training develops a shield around you from all these words so that they never bother you once. Penn and Teller had an episode on this topic here if you want to see more.

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are among the my hated people in the US. Their entire career is to create conflict between different groups of people, that is how they earn money. The people who actually contribute to breaking up racial tensions are the racist comedians. The ones who say jokes about race constantly. You might complain and say how insulting their are. But the racist comedian is actually a hero and not a villain. He teaches people to stop being so sensitive and grow a penis. He is the one who removes the negative connotations to words that we magically give to them. And it is the racist comedian who is actually heroic in this instance. So for the sake of ending racism let us all loudly say "nigger".

Here are some of my favorite race based jokes. Tell me your favorites in the comment sections.

1)What is the difference between a kike and a pizza? The pizza does not scream when you put it into an oven.

2)What are niggers good at basketball? Because the game is about running, shooting, and stealing.

3)Why did Hitler kill himself? Because he saw the gas bill.

4)A fag and a spic jump off a bridge, who hit the ground first? Who care?

Defending the Wicked Part 2: The Non-Voter

The non-voter is the guy who sits and masturbates to watching porn on election day when the voters go out to vote. I am an example of a non-voter, I have never voted once for anything in my life. I never had a desire to vote and probably will never vote in my life. Not for the mayor, not for the governor, and not even for the presidential elections. The non-voter is often pressured by the voters to go and vote. The voters, which are the majority of people, look negatively at the non-voter. They see the non-voter as some lazy guy who complains about the current situation of the country and never does anything. The voters also get angry at the non-voters, they tell the non-voter that they has no right to complain because they never vote for anything in the first place.

So what is the non-voter allegedly guilty of? People would say that in the democratic process the people are in control, and it is the people who decide what the country should be doing, the non-voter is an insult to the democratic system by not participating in this process and therefore has no right to complain. The non-voter is also sometimes seen as a lazy person who does not vote because he is lazy. All of these "evils" of the non-voter are not evil, as we will see soon, and the non-voter can actually have a heroic element to him, the arguments of the voters against the non-voters are build upon fallacy after fallacy.

Let us begin with the first fallacy. And this is a fallacy about democracy, not about voting itself. The fallacy is that in the democratic system the people are in control. Well, consider this question that I always ask in regard to democracy. What would happen if you buy and sell LSD and end up getting caught? Does this counter-example show that you are not in control? Or consider this. What if some guy moves into a middle of nowhere, gets a few wives, smokes marijuana and ignores paying taxes because he does not use them for anything? What will happen with such a guy who wants to mind his own business and be left alone? He will end up enslaved in an iron cage known as "prison". My question now is very simple. How does this imply that the people are in control? You are in control over what phone company you want, if you do not like one, you switch to a new one or just stop using the phone company and that would be the end of it. You are in control over what kind of food you can buy. But where are you exactly in control in the situations I described? Here is one last example to consider. Suppose 1/3 of the population likes soda but hates fast food and smoking, 1/3 of the population likes fast food but hates smoking and soda, and 1/3 of the population likes smoking but hates soda and fast food. Under this democratic process, where the people are supposedly in control, no one would be able to smoke, drink soda, and smoke cigarettes. That is your idea of "control"? I would be scared to find out would you meant by "oppression".

Here is a thought experiment to consider. A plantation slaver owner comes up with a new system of slavery. He owns about 200 slaves and he allows them to vote on certain things that he approves of. The slaves can vote and decide what they will start having for breakfast, they can vote for the kind of clothes they can wear, they can vote for what kind of vacations they would like and so forth. The slave master quickly learns that this is a better system of slavery than other ones that masters have been using because in this democratic system of slavery the slaves imagine themselves to have some control. What is most interesting is that the slaves start to fight among themselves rather than being angry at the master. Because one group of slaves want one thing and another group of slaves want another thing, so they fight over with one another about who is right, rather than both being angry at the master for owning them in the first place. Let me ask you a very simple question. Under such a democratic system as the slaves in control? Of course not. They have no control at all. Control, for the slaves, would be to leave the plantation if they so desired. Now imagine that there is a philosophical slave. The philosophical slave does not vote. His slave friends get angry at him and pressure him to vote. Telling him that he must vote for what is right. But the philosophical slave refuses to participate. He says to his brethren that the whole issue is not voting but the system that is the problem itself. And he cannot vote because he does not support the system of slavery whatsoever. Would this philosophical rebellious slave be evil? No, we would all say how brave and intelligent he is for standing up for what is right.

Now compare this scenario at the plantation with the current democratic system. How are they different? Sure the plantation farm example is an over-exaggeration of the current system. But even though it is an over-exaggeration it has a lot of similarities. The slaves cannot keep their labor, they must give a portion of their labor to the master. If the slave was to refuse to give his labor he would suffer punishment. In our current system the state demands a portion of our labor. If we were to refuse to we would also be punished. The slaves are prohibited from certain lifestyles, such as drinking or gambling. The citizens in the democratic system are also prohibited from certain lifestyles, such as drugs, or even gambling. The slaves, if depressed, are not allowed to commit suicide, that would be a lose to the master. The citizens in the democratic system are likewise not allowed to commit suicide. The slaves never agreed to slavery. The citizens in a democratic system never agreed to the rules that were mandated upon them from high above. The slaves cannot leave the plantation farm, if they would try to escape they would be punished. Can the citizens leave the democratic country? Not really. They need permission to leave. They need papers and these papers can only be approved if the state was to give permission to leave. And in some cases even if people do leave the state still demands a portion of your labor back to them outside the country. That is not leaving the country, it may feel like you left it, but upon inspection it is not. Leaving means you say "enough of this I want to leave", not when you need permission to leave in the first place. I ask you yet again, where are the people exactly in control?

Now suppose that there is a philosophical citizen. The citizen is against human ownership in all its forms. The citizen is against using violence to solve social problems (98% of the time when the state does something it does it through the barrel of a gun). This citizen also tells his fellow citizens that it is not them that are the problem but the system as the whole that is the problem. It is not the Republicans or the Democrats, but the whole power structure itself that we must object to. What this voting process does is turns us against one another rather than keeping us unified. Further this philosophical citizen says that for these reasons he does not want anything to do with this system. Can such a citizen really be called wicked? No, he is heroic. And this is exactly where the non-voter is actually a hero than a villain.

Let us address one last fallacy and that is that the non-voter has no right to complain? Why not? If you vote someone into office and he messes everything over then in some way you are responsible for the problems that were caused, thus you have no right to complain. I, however, who is a non-voter, have all the right to complain that I want to.

Defending the Wicked Part 1: Introduction

I am going to steal Walter Block's idea here. Walter Block is an economist who wrote the interesting book "Defending the Undefendable". He picked out many different members of society who are hated and velified by everyone and came to their defense by saying that they are really not such bad people. I am going to do the same thing. I will pick topics that Walter Block does not cover and defend those people. Thus, you will not see me talking about prostitution or drug dealing because these are already covered very well by Block. I will try to be a little bit more creative. And I will also try to list each kind of person from least hated to most hated. So I will start with something that some people would already agree with me on and when I reach the end there will be basically no one who would agree with me.

I do this for a reason that I have been saying already for while. Give up morality. Morality is not necessary to be a good person. Atheists says you can be a good person without believing in God, true, but I say more, you can be a good person without having any morals. Not immoral but rather amoral. The moment you give up morals you start to take positions you normally would never take. You become so much freed up. Nihilism is a step closer to freeing up your mind, and nihilism should be the logical conclusion from any atheist.

Yes I believe in all the things I am going to say. Maybe you would get the impression I am doing this only to insult people but that is not true. I genuinely believe in what I defend. If I really wanted to insult people I can tell that the Holocaust never happened, slavery never existed, and Bambi's mother was a prostitute. But I am not going to say these things because I do not really believe in those statements. Notice that I will not be defending the murderer or the theif because I have no defense to give to these people.

An important idea to keep in mind when you want to call something wrong is to ask, "is it wrong to do this by its nature?". Let me give you an example. Consider prostitution. Some people would say, "prostitution is wrong because there are women who are killed for it". The problem with this argument is that killing is not in the nature of prostitution. All what prostitution is, is an exchange of money for sex. That is it. That alone does not make prostitution wrong. The argument that prostitution is wrong because some women have been killed for it only focuses on a special case of prostitution. Instead anyone who wants to condemn prostitution as something which is wrong should explain why it is wrong by its nature alone without creating a special case in which it would be wrong. Now consider murder and theft. The nature of murder and theft is wrong. Murder is about killing other people and theft is about taking away from other people. These things are wrong by their nature. One can point to specific examples where murder and theft are understandable. For instance, if I kill in self-defense that is not wrong, and if a poor person steals money from a rich person's house not because he is trying to cause any problems but rather because he wants some food to buy then that is also understanble and not wrong (unless you happen to be like Ayn Rand and think the poor person should starve). But these exceptions to murder and theft are just that, exceptions. In general though the nature of the act of murder and theft are both wrong. Therefore, if you want to condemn something for being wrong you should ask yourself whether it is the nature of the action that makes it wrong or a special case of the action that makes it wrong.