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Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts

20170725

Freedom of Expression Under Attack (Again)

Before I start this ramble, let me state I am prochoice. This comes from a place of freedom and liberty, from that place comes my outrage at the following. I've been smacked in the face by prolife placards while the Gardaí (Irish police) do nothing but I'll still defend their right to carry those placards.

At the weekend we saw triumphantalism from progressives over prolife campaigners having their posters confiscated by the Gardaí. These were the usual fare of images of a healthy child, blastocysts, fetuses and the after results of an abortion. This was done on the basis of obscenity laws, in the name of protecting children, ironic, no? This was supported by a few political parties. Whilst they were allowed to continue canvassing they couldn't display images of a medical procedure. When I confronted people on this I got a fairly harsh "learn the law" reply. Another irony people campaigning against an injust law, encouraging people to break the law by going abroad to have an abortion insisting laws should be followed without question. Further irony that the prochoice campaign needed the right to free expression in its early days. Other arguments included "they did it first", "wait until you have kids then you'll see my point of view" and "free expression doesn't extend to imagery".
Now I'll break those down a bit.

They did it first:
Two wrongs don't make a right. If you have a valid point you don't need to lower yourself to your opponents dirty tactics to defend yourself. Perpetuating those tactics damages society as a whole, you can't progress doing the same things over and over again. Gaining one advancement to lose another gains nothing, in this case gaining bodily integrity to lose free expression is not worth it because bodily integrity will be the last thing that will be won.

Logical fallacy:
If you ever need to resort to "when you have kids", "your to young to know", "if you had my experience" and similar to end a debate, you've failed to win a debate. When you make a statement the burden of proof is on you, if someone needs a qualifier to see your point of view you haven't explained it properly. Avoiding logical fallacies will help you debate better or help you change your mind, if your argument requires prerequisites that are limited to a subset of people then it's invalid and needs to be redeveloped until you're capable of expressing it.

The law:
"The law is an ass" Charles Dickens. As I said there's a laughable irony in people campaigning against a law, complaining when they perceive a breach of the law. Obscenity laws should only prevent perverts flashing people on the street. Not campaigners using medical imagery or pictures of children crawling around fully clothed. When obscenity laws extend to the removal of medical imagery things are going wrong. Other than the implication of the happy baby crawling is the result of every birth the imagery removed was fact based or the idea that all abortions can lead to infertility, what they use is reasonably science based. Let's play this out, in this brave new world of identity politics we're expected to be sensitive of everyone's God damn foibles all fact based reasoning could be offencive to someone. We've seen this starting in the states with things like "prove gender without using science". If Trump politics will lead the world to Idiocracy, progressivism will lead somewhere much worse.

Offence: (this will be short)
Offence, the inability to control emotional response to a situation. The simple version of offence, "fuck you" can be responded to two ways, "whaa I offended" or "welp that guys a jerk". The more complicated version of offence isn't offence, it's cognitive dissonance, the uneasy feeling someone gets when presented with evidence challenging their views.

Won't somebody please think of the children!:
Don't expect the world to look after your children they're your responsibility. You can't expect the world to stifle itself to make your life easier. Yes raising children is difficult but you can't do it by lying to them pretending the world is wonderful, otherwise your child will grow up to be emotionally stunted and incapable of dealing with the world as an adult. There's nasty things out there and you need to teach them how to deal with them.

Free expression is only speech:
No, then it would be free speech. Our thoughts do not only take place as only words therefore the way we convey information from one to another cannot either. If we allow progressivism to flail wildly down this path we'll end up pre-renaissance, in other words the dark ages. Not just called that due to a lack of adequate lighting but due to the lack of enlightened thought. Quite the dichotomy if progressive thinking leads to a lack of enlightenment. Imagery is an essential part of communication, can you explain a complex hydrocarbon without imagery? Can you express the loneliness of Picassos blue nude in words alone? Can you play a video game without pictures? How many people even use MUDs anymore? All these expressions need more than mere words but if progressivism runs rampant nothing will be safe.

Party support:
Given politicians and aspiring politicians seemed ok using an obscenity law to stop their opponents what will they use in a position of power? How can they represent all people when they find the views of some of them obscene? These lead me to the point that the less power a government has the safer people are.

Ultimately freedom of expression is key to a free society. The ability to freely debate produces new ideas. When subjects become taboo we block an avenue of learning. In this case not knowing the potential dangers of abortion could lead people to believe it is completely safe rather than having inherent risks that come with any medical procedure, unlike what  prolife campaigners claim that it's always dangerous, between the 2 sides lies the truth. It reaches further than that the more taboo subjects, the more approved speech, the less we can watch and the less we can read, the less we can think, it doesn't matter if we're thinking progressive or conservative as long as we are all thinking the same, the easier we are to manipulate and control. How can you know you're thinking for yourself if you're not allowed to view all sides of a debate? Question everything, believe nothing without investigating it yourself and don't back down until you are satisfied.

20170719

Decriminalising Personal

In the wake of the collapse of the medical cannabis bill Catherine Byrne TD (Irish politician) has announced a proposed change to drug policy to change to a health based approach for possession of personal amounts of most drugs like cannabis, heroin and cocaine. I don't want to disrespect Catherine Byrne as she's one of the few politicians to respond to my email on the medical cannabis bill unlike anyone else in Fianna Gael, Labour, Sinn Fein or Fianna Fail. As my local TD this certainly carries favour with me come the next election and has made some great changes in the national drug strategy already, being able to approach it with more evidence based reasoning than most who deem themselves capable of ruling.

I'll briefly touch on the proposed change in policy but it's not the main point of this rant. I think Bill Hicks summed it up best with "sick people do not get better in jail". That is why we need a change in the way people in possession are handled. There's plenty out there about the societal benefits Portugal has experienced due to its change in policy and I recommend you research them yourself. Despite the gross misunderstanding of the benefits of rehabilitation over imprisonment by some at the Irish Times. This seems to be the 140 character attention span millenials are to be cursed with.

On to my main point, given the Oireachtas Health Committees 'it's too difficult' approach to the medical cannabis bill, what chance does a change to drug policy have? Logically no chance. If providing cannabis under a doctors directions under strict guidelines is too difficult how will our government committees cope with the complexities of figuring out personal use, adequate rehabilitation services and the risk of normalising drug use? Remember if you use drugs your of no use to society, regardless of your community work, income/employability or not causing harm to others, your presence is detestable and to quote a judge recently 'you should just leave the country'. Let us not forget the sacrosanct UN convention internationally banning drugs like cannabis, another blocker to the medical cannabis bill. According to our government this is adhered to by all countries, with the incredible blinkered approach ignoring the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, Finland, Spain, Uruguay and the USA. All of which are not adhering to the aforementioned convention. Nah, those countries don't exist in the eyes of our government.

So there's two ways the changes will go, with the logic above it won't pass or by some amazing corkscrew politics it does pass, so what does that mean? I'm not foolish enough to believe that decriminalising personal amounts is better for people than not allowing medical cannabis and I hope you're not either, but I am paranoid enough to think there's a lot more politicing going on than we're allowed see. I think we will see a change in the drug policy but not for the right reasons. This policy is coming from an established member of Fianna Gael, one of the oldest parties in the country not from an upstart independent who doesn't know his place. Gino Kelly is just a nobody whinging about what people need, he's not their to tow the line and let the big boys play their game. He's even foolish enough to try represent the people who elected him. If we see this policy pass its a clear sign that the supporting bodies to our government are partisan against anyone who is not part of the political establishment. Reinforcing the strength of the established parties further adding to the idea that voting independent is a waste of time because they can't get anything done. The upside if it passes is the health committee will have less argument against any future attempt to implement a medical cannabis bill, as the ground work will already be laid out for people being in possession and going against the almighty UN convention. Maybe they'll even trust doctors to do a job they spent up to 7 years studying to do. Unlike politicians who seem to spend less than 7 minutes studying how to run a country.

I don't know about the rest of you but these sorts of antics seem another step closer to good aule rope day but given those supporting the TDs we'll need a lot more than 158 nooses. Free helicopter rides for communists afterwards too.

20170710

No Reform

Today we got the news that the medical cannabis bill may not pass. One phrase that has been bugging me all day 'Fine Gael TD Kate O’Connell warned: “Convicted drug dealers could secure a licence to supply cannabis.”'. I'll be honest here I'm in that category so maybe I'm more emotional about it, but let's break it down a bit.

People with experience shouldn't use their experience to work a legitimate job. That goes against any concept of freedom of employment and also the common sense of someone working in a field they're good at. Looking at how the government in the states has grown some of the worst weed known to man as reported by Vox governments have no idea what they're doing. How would you like your medicine made by someone who has no idea what they're doing? "Hello pharmacist give me 24 of your finest 'maybe paracetamol' and a pack of 'pin holes passion condoms', please". No I don't think so.

Let's also look at our TDs (Irish politicians) approach to people previously found guilty of crimes. There appears to be an attitude that criminals shouldn't have legitimate business or be a benefit to their society. Our representatives pick and choose who they represent. Should our representatives cause an 'us vs them' attitude in our society? This may seem acceptable to you right now but what if things changed, are you a smoker, enjoy occasional game of poker, like pornography or maybe have a vehicle with after market parts? Because all those things will come into the line of fire in the near future and then you're on the other side, the side that is reprehensible, morally corrupt and do not deserve representation from the people who take a percentage of your wages by force (don't forget, taxation is theft). That's why you need to be outraged by a politicians exclusion of a member of society no matter who they are.

Lastly I'll raise this, this concept that someone with criminal record shouldn't be allowed the same opportunities as someone who doesn't have a criminal record? Does this politician not believe that our criminal justice system is capable of reforming criminals? It's reasonable for them to believe so, what's unreasonable is that they have gotten in to a role that allows them to instigate changes in that area but they don't. Did they end up in a role they didn't understand?

What conclusion can we draw from that? A few things I can speculate, sheer ignorance developed by a sense of superiority. The concept they're better than others, with the nativity that's there's good & evil, that they're the good and only they can defeat the evil. Ignoble glory, to be a leader is to be a great person, surely they wouldn't have won the great democratic popularity contest if they weren't a great person, right? Finally, divide and conquer, politicians like this have something to gain while we're suspicious of each other. So what does Kate O'Connell need to hide or who is she hiding it for?

20170608

What careers go into politics?

Listening to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast with Michael Malice an interesting point was raised that I think deserves being expanded on. What kind of person goes into politics? This will be Irish focused so some professions might be unique to Ireland. It's a given that those in power have some level of sociopathy and idealism that they know what's best for others. An idealism that is comparable to an OCD need to control.

Lawyers and barristers.
A lot of politicians globally move from law to politics. Let's break that down, lawyers are professional liars whose main job is to either prove or disprove a piece of paper says or doesn't say what it says. To quote the Simpsons they profit from the most miserable points in a persons life. They have the skills and the lack of morals to convince people they have the publics best interests at heart when they are purely self serving.
For sociopathy I have to give them an 8 out of 10.
For control freak a solid 8 out 10.
Inflated sense of self worth, 7 out of 10.
In short a strong addition to the nanny state and in it for their own gain but with no denials of there self interest.

Judges.
This is another global standard. These individuals started as lawyers and barristers. Then move up to being judges which takes a certain level of superiority complex. It's rarely the judge who sees themselves as a proctor of justice who moves to politics but the protector of society, molding society into their ideal, usually unwilling to accept that society changes and is made up of all the people who live within that society. This leaves them not just out of touch but unwilling to change there minds on what society needs. That is not healthy for a leader.
For sociopathy I'll give them a 6 out of 10.
For control freak it has to be solid 10 out of 10.
Inflated sense of self worth, 8 out of 10.
In short the same as lawyers but with a delusion that it's all for the common good oblivious to their self serving nature.

Teachers and Principals
So it's not teachers who are interested in spreading knowledge and facilitating the ability to learn. No, it's the breed of teacher that needs to tell people how it is. Unable to change there mind, clinging to the information they learnt over 20 years ago and unwilling to update based on new evidence. When they're done closing young minds it's time to move to a national scale.
For sociopathy 5 out of 10.
For control freak 8 out of 10.
Inflated sense of self worth, 9 out of 10.
In short, egotistical, controlling and ignorant.

Publicans (bar owner for my international readers)
This is an individual with little qualms against selling an addictive poison to the general public and profiting from people's self inflicted misery. Now that's their right to do and people's right to do to themselves but clearly not someone who should govern. Self serving is an understatement and they're well practiced at convincing people they care, it's the years of consoling drunks.
For sociopathy, 8 out of 10.
For control freak, 9 out of 10.
Inflated sense of self worth, 5 out of 10.
In short, self serving and uncaring to the needs of others.

Liberal Graduates
We're talking about someone who wasted at least 3 years in a social science course thinking they'll be the one to change the world where others failed. They're easily swayed by the needs of perceived of minorities forgetting the individual is the smallest minority. Their education is in a self perpetuating circle, spouting nonsense and absent of joined up thinking. Making judgements not in the demands of there constituents but on cultural Marxist conditioning, a mess of virtue signaling. What sums up these people is H.L Menckens quote "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.".
For sociopathy, 9 out of 10.
For control freak, 10 out of 10.
Inflated sense of self worth, 10 out of 10.
In short, naive, egotistical and ignorant.

The Average Person
More recently we've seen more and more average communitycentric people getting into politics. Often established community leaders with strong local backing behind them. They come in well meaning with good ideas and genuine interest to being improvements for their constituents. Then the reality hits in, with the above they hit a stone wall of established politics with a group of people stuck with their own ideals. After 6 to 12 months there delusion falls and they give up riding out the end of their term depressed in the corner of a government building.
For sociopathy, 3 out of 10.
For control freak, 7 out of 10.
Inflated sense of self worth, 8 out of 10.
In short, naive, well informed and ultimately broken.

20170529

Government Incentives

"The government should..." is generally the opening of a bad idea. This post I'm going to take apart government incentives.

Lets start with the first time buyers grant 5% rebate on a home up to €500,000 that's €25,000. Sounds great right? Well no, the market reacts to the available funds of the buyer, lenders were happy to give 5% extra and sellers rose the price to the available funds of the buyers. Which is why we've seen an increase on first time buyers homes by 5%, that brings first time buyers back to square 1 and not able to afford houses.

Lets look at the limitations on rent, landlords cannot raise rents by more than 4% from January of this year. Which saw a drastic increase in rent before January. Furthermore it petty much guarantees rents will increase by 4% per annum, in 12 years rents will have doubled. Given wages increase by 2% per annum and people are already paying over half there wages we could reach a critical mass for wages to rent within 20 years. I'm theory the market should stabilise before that critical mass hits, in theory landlords won't let it get to that point as they'll end up in a position with no one to rent to. Unless another government incentive kicks in.

Essentially what we see with any state incentive to relieve the market only works for a short period until the market increases to take advantage of the extra available funds of the consumer. The rules of supply and demand lead to the funds of the consumer dictating the price a product will be sold for, essentially no vendor will price themselves to a point of no sale. This has to be taken in balance with how essential the product is.

Now lets throw on the conspiracy hat. A number of politicians are property owners. If they're in a position to regulate their market upward then they likely will. Even worse they're doing it with tax payers money. This is even further reason government has no place in the marketplace.

20170514

Take Responsibility for Yourself Dammit

I've always been labelled as having a problem with authority, which I don't in the right circumstances I respect authority like in a work circumstance I'll talk to people who know things better than I do as they're a subject matter authority or when work is assigned to me fairly by an authority, I'll accept those. What I have a problem with its nonconcentual authority. We're born into a social contract that we never agreed too, expected to take direction from leaders we likely didn't and don't support while expected to be grateful of poor services in education or health care. All while a large percentage of our income gets stolen to enforce a laws and projects we don't support. When a junkie robs your money for their heroin addiction that's wrong, when a government steals your money for a power addiction that's taxes.

Why do this to ourselves? Because some people lack responsibility. If someone else is running things and it goes wrong it's not there fault they have a gummerment to blame for things going wrong. This is about as emotionally immature as thinking all things are part of God's plan. At least Moses put the effort of putting his stupid ideas on stone, says someone ranting with permanence of one's and zeros but bear with my hypocrisy as I'm trying to tell you to live your life your way without interference. Live with 1 rule, do nothing to interfere with the freedom and liberty of another individual and help support the liberty of others when they make it clear they need it. Let the natural laws take care of the rest. Want to fight gravity? Enjoy falling on your face, want to use an addictive substance without self control? Enjoy your show painful death. Want my property or product of my labor without my consent? Enjoy a bullet to the face.

Won't somebody please think of the outlaws?!
In the early days of the new world countries, primarily the Americas in this example people were allowed to be outlaws. Outlaws aren't necessarily criminals they lived outside the law. This was a double edged sword, a person wasn't expected to follow the law but didn't live with its protection. The universe may make us different but Samuel Colt made us equal. If an outlaw was to commit crime in an area under the law, they would be brought back to that area to face that areas perception of justice. Now we have nowhere to go, we're forced to live someone else's life. This is something our society has lost. Now people who disagree with the law are labelled degenerates, criminals and scum. With the state justifying violence and property damaged against non-violent offenders of laws they don't consent to in the name of a society they don't want to be members of. In a democracy a win of 1% means 49% of people are forced in to something they don't want. Making those peoples wants and needs irrelevant, therefore making those people irrelevant.

What's the answer?
Most of us can't afford a private island and if we could it probably doesn't have the resources we need, if it did the nations we could trade with, would impose a hefty import duty for demonstrating the pointlessness of statism. The other option is sudden revolution but revolutions tend to do just that revolve. That leaves us with progressive change, 1 mind at a time. Educate yourself, your friends and family in libertarianism and anarchism, the former is merely a stepping stone to the latter and is not a place we can let ourselves to get stuck. I warn you now it's an up hill struggle, in talking politics to a socialist and telling them I'm between anarchism and libertarianism they threatened to punch my face in for being a fascist who wants to see the world burn. Clearly they were low on the IQ scale but anarchism does pose a serious threat to socialists, as it is a political system the limits the rights of people in the name of the people, through committee and other government mechanism. Given my above observations socialists can be seen to be people who want a gummerment to blame and deem themselves to have the right to seize property and the fruits of people's labour.
In conclusion if you truly want to be free pick up some Ludwig Von Mises, Hans Hermann Hoppe and Howard Zimm. Think for yourself and question everything.

20170507

Why Corporatism isn't Capitalism

Corporatism
The control of a state or organization by large interest groups.

Capitalism
An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

The above are the Googled definitions, I feel capitalism is missing that it should be a deregulated market. That is essential, regulations are made by the government. If you take the power to control the markets from the governments then you remove the drive to have business based lobby groups, only social matters lobby groups need exist.

This stems from a comments socialists tried to make, first about banks being the epitome of free market yet when they deregulated they failed, therefore free markets will fail. Which isn't quite right, they failed when they got greedy and try invent value where there was none by loaning to themselves. Whereas credit unions don't take those risks, when one credit union does take that risk the league of credit unions is able to manage the problem and it teaches a lesson to the other credit unions, keeping them all in check. A capitalist market would have let those banks fail and taught the public to be careful who they trust with their money.

What about intellectual property? What about it? How's that working out for the human race with pharmaceuticals? Personally I suffer from chronic pain and I'm financially restrained this leaves me unable to afford the latest medications because there's no competition in creating them, the IP holder is allowed a have a monopoly. As we see with Martin Shkreli and some secondary level science students without that regulation there could be a competitive market see here for an example. But that will stop people wanting to develop. Not true, there will be a significant period of time between release and another body recreating the product, this should allow for reasonable profits to be made to fund the next round of R&D for the next product, with a reasonable percentage going to the business or business lenders (see here for why shareholders are a bad idea).

Markets operate under natural laws, before you think you've got me, a natural law is not a regulation, it's an observable effect. For example the law of gravity, we don't need taxes going to gravity police for gravity to be enforced, you try break the laws of gravity you fall on your face. Want more examples? Evolution is probably the best place you can observe markets in action, an animal develops a trait that is successful, it eats more or survives better and therefore gets to pass on its genes to the next generation who then have those traits. As they're natural laws they can be observed and people can learn what limitations to operate within.

When deregulation happens development can prosper, a company can release a product to the market if it works out, it does well and others will try do the same either cheaper or better. This causes a cycle of development, constantly driving down costs for the consumer. If it fails, then back to the drawing board. If you don't think that's the case then look at the evolution example above (and stop skipping paragraphs).

What about dangerous products? Let's start environmentally, individuals and organisations will still be expected not to intentionally cause harm to others, as per the NAP If your pollution damages property that isn't yours then you need to pay for the repair. Make companies culpable for the damage they cause.
Health similar to the above if it causes harm to someone other than the user then it could be regulated, that's not to say addictive substances should be banned because people steal to get them, people shoplift clothes for the sake of it and no one calls for the ban of clothes. Essentially it's the right of any adult to choose there conscious state. To dictate someones conscious state is to tell someone how to think. This act of deregulation brings drugs out of the hands of criminals into a openly competitive market where clean cheap drugs will win out. A company selling quantities likely to cause overdose should face prosecution.

To surmise, Corporatism is a system that allows those on top to stay on top when they don't belong there, whereas Capitalism is a system of greater flux that has more room for people to prosper as individuals.

20170505

A Brief Breakdown of Fascism

Constantly explaining fascism has driven to write this post and boarder line repetition based psychosis. Which is why this post is dedicated to Ranto... You know who you are!This also means from the SJW misuse of the term fascist.

A fascist is originally a word to describe a bundle of sticks tied around an axe handle (so fascists are similar to faggots), it was then used as a symbol of nationalist socialist movements in Europe to appeal to the working class especially wood cutters, the biggest of those was the Nationalistischer Sozialist der Deutschland Republik (Nationalist Socialist of the German Republic) which outside of Germany was abbreviated as Nazi.

The strange thing is a lot of what led up to fascist politics is right wing ideals roughly starting with Hegel's 'Elements of the Philosophy of Right' which first postulated or near outright stated “the state is the march of God through the world.”. Followed by Carlye's 'On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History' which espouses a "great man" ideal. Which is immediately flawed as we must remember all people are created equal so anyone who deems themselves great enough to lead is just as flawed and prone to error as you or I. This method of leadership is akin to monarchy. Friedrich List 'The National System of Political Economy' which goes into protectionism, infrastructure spending, and government control and support of industry, essentially a strong link between business and government. This is where it starts going socialist, state control of the means of production etc. the difference being the state is a body over the people not of the people. Next author to look is Charles Darwin, he might be good at natural science but not politics. In 'The Descent of Man' long story short he suggests eugenics because it works so well in farming. Let's move on to 'Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro' by Frederick Hoffman, this isn't a statistics based piece like 'The Bell Curve' by Charles A. Murray and Richard Herrnstein. Race traits is pure "the criminal negro mind" bullshit which inspired Jim Crow. Moving on to Madison Grant's 'The Passing of the Great Race' which suggests sterilisation as “practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem”, I'll leave that there. This leads nicely to Oswald Spengler's 'The Decline of the West' simply it suggests liberalism is dead (well that was a 100 years too early), and suggests a the only option was a monolithic cultural based government. Essentially starting the battle between communism and fascism. Next look at the friend/enemy politics of Carl Schmidt in 'The Concept of the Political' something we see continue in modern politics like America vs Russia or America vs ISIS or America vs... Jeebus guys get out together! I can't do this without mentioning Adolf Hitler's seminal piece 'Mein Kampf' which draws together a lot of the above work into one piece promoting 1 nation/people/culture united under God to be prosperous and strong. It's a strong piece of writing that appeals to a person's ego, making themselves feel better about themselves and think that Hitler had them and there nations interests at heart, fooling them into a cult of the state.

You maybe thinking I've left out Friedrich Nietzsche, I haven't. Nietzsche despised socialism in all forms, he was a writer who pushes his reader to question everything and think for themselves, he considered the Germans to be beer swilling louts do could not subscribe to the Nazi agenda of a superior race. A large chunk of his ideals were to transcend the idea of statehood and for people to be strong on there own terms, supporting themselves. His works got co-opted after his death by his sister who owned the rights to his books, her husband being a senior member of the Nazi party.

Hopefully this explains a little about what fascism actually is and helps you realise that there's little difference in the modus operandi of Fascism and Socialism, both being authoritarian statists, demanding detriment of individual rights in favour of the community with no consideration that the community is a group of individuals.

20170503

Methods of Control: Co-opted movements

So what do I mean by a co-opted movement? A group that claims to have an end goal but it's means are achieving something else. Why care? People are wasting their energy on being detrimental to there own society and community.

Violence:
The biggest sign of a co-opted movement is one that resorts to violence as its first step, there is nothing that can't be achieved without some rational thought out debate and real open mindedness, beliefs aren't open minded, being able to change you beliefs based on new evidence is.

Self destruction:
As we see with social justice warriors they'll quickly turn on themselves for pointless things and innocent mistakes. Similarly like we've seen with modern feminism attacking Germaine Greer or Christina Sommers. By attacking the established and intellectual proponents of a movement the whole movement is weakened. This way the movement can't organise efficiently.

Private funding:
Never trust altruistic business people, they exist for profit the only time they give money is when they get something in return. Any movement should only accept funding from its own members or small donations from the public, not large grants from investment bankers.

Contradiction in the name of the cause:
A co-opted group will often flip-flop its position to suit its ulterior purpose, arguing against a tactic of its enemy to later adopt that tactic for its own means.

Inability to debate:
A co-opted movement will have limited debating ability and will often veer away from talking about their subject, often falling back to baseless insults, accusations and claims "you shouldn't have to ask" against the person who questions then. When they have to talk about it they'll revert to a person who is trained with a script.

What can be done?
What an opposition should do with a co-opted is:
  • Remain calm
  • Stay on topic
  • Don't resort to violence whilst being prepared to defend themselves and challenge all bullshit
For someone in a co-opted movement is a lot more difficult they're in a cult:
  • It is essential to question everything
  • Encourage debate
  • Discourage violence
  • Try to keep cohesion in the group
  • One reason to co-opt a movement is to break it up but there will come a point where someone will have to leave and start there own group.

20170422

Ibrahim Halawa, freedom or speedy trial

This maybe unpopular but I'm writing it anyway. Ibrahim Halawa travelled to Egypt in August in 2013 to join protests against the dispersal of sit in protests against the removal of the then president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim brotherhood by the military, in a "day of rage". It's hard to pin down what he's being charged with as it's a group trial with charges from murder, attempted murder and banned protest, not all but the core charges.

Lets break this down a little, the Muslim brotherhood are a more fundamental Sunni group, who belive Sharia law should be in all aspects of life for all peoples. That in itself is fundamentally wrong and impinges on an individuals freedom and liberty, Google Sharia law and make up your own mind but I think you'll find it's not for you. They're also responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, so really seem to be another group misusing the Muslim faith for the system of manipulation (I don't believe all Muslims are dangerous but any religion can be abused for controlling people into dangerous things, more on that later). This is who Ibrahim chose to support.

Now onto my main point here, Ibrahim has been imprisoned for the worst part of 4 years without trial, a speedy trial is a fundamental human right and this is what people should be campaigning for. Instead people are demanding the immediate release of someone who went out of their way to go a country erupting in violence to support a violent group. Is that what people want? For the perpetrators and supporters of the suppression of freedoms who use violence to get there way to be allowed to free.

People need to step back from there feelings and take a look at the cold facts of what's happened here, be reasonable and campaign for what's right, a speedy trial. His youthful foolishness needs to be taken into consideration but that's no reason for a person to not face trial and every country has a right and duty to enforce its laws fairly.

20170416

Berkley and the suppression of free expression

With more Berkley riots I felt compelled to change focus from what I was writing. Whilst I don't agree with alt-right ideology I firmly believe people have the right to congregate, form political ideals and express themselves. Einstein said "In any successful debate you have 2 parties entering with a thesis and antithesis, if successful they come out with a synthesis". Only in good debate can you develop new ideas and that's what the political landscape needs. New ideas not violent clashes between 2 old and useless politics. Both of which have a history of failure at the cost of peoples lives, be it the fascist regimes of the 30s and 40s to the many failed socialist experiments in Russia, China, North Korea or Cuba.

Further irony is groups often needing the right to free expression like communists and anarchists fighting free expression, burning posters reminiscent of free expression protests from the 60s and inciting violence against those who oppose them. I will have no sympathy for those injured inciting violence in an attempt to suppress free expression.

In the 30s the brown shirts arose because Nazi meetings and rallies were regularly attacked like we've seen at Berkley. This gave the Nazis a sense that they had to defend themselves, this is what we're seeing at pro-Trump rallies with alt-right and 'the proud boys' arming up ready to fight. These things will only escalate to proactive attacks on opposition, if people don't learn to discuss we will see extreme violence like shootings and bombings.

This can be resolved peacefully, through debate and discussion. The opposing sides have common ground they can start at, working out from there they can educate each other on what the opposite is wrong about and come out with the synthesis Einstein talked about. That is what free expression is needed for, the ability to say what you think and for it to be explained why you're wrong. Without it we develop a climate of ignorance and fear, but maybe that's what people want, a fearful and ignorant populace, easier to control, manipulate and trigger.

20170414

Universal Basic Income

Update another interesting UBI post in favour here.
Preamble:
The 2 most convincing arguments around UBI I've seen so far
Dangers Of Universal Basic Income
Libertarian Case for Basic Income

I'm still opposed to it, essentially it comes down to these points.
People need encouragement to develop, it's often said that the greatest developments come from war, it's not necessarily war but the act of competition, some of the greatest innovations in road safety come from races, the space race was a dick measuring contest between the US and Russia, whilst part of the cold war it wasn't a conflict, so on that a competitive wage market or even a lack of money are major contributing factors to people to do something. Personally I would never have gotten interested in process development and analytics if I hadn't ended up in role that paid more. Some will end up working in science or medicine to make things better but most end up disillusioned through the college process and crippling debts.


Not pushing people into a state where they need to work could be unhealthy, leaving them complacent, watching drivel, reading some rambling ranty blog or playing video games. Taking away there routine and allowing people to slip into an unnatural sleep cycle and poor diet will cause depression.

Where does the money come from before you say "gummerment", back to my usual point, where do they get there money from? Taxes, what's the largest source tax? Income tax. As you reduce the number of people employed or having to be employed you reduce the number of people who can be taxed, so that leads to higher VAT (sales taxes) and/or higher income tax on the few left working. You might think it can come from corporate tax, some sort of automation tax but like how Ireland gets companies into the country, we risk losing them to countries with lower automation tax and looser environmental laws.

In favour there's a simple argument for UBI it should be a single payment unlike our multi-payment system we have now, a fairly simple payment to all citizens cutting back on the bureaucracy needed to issue social welfare.

Further to that it should leave people free to develop as they want, study what they want and work a lot less if not at all. As I said above I don't see it working like that for the vast majority.

Water charges

One of my biggest political annoyances has to be the anti water charge protests. I can't argue that people don't have a right to clean water but it's ludicrous to think it won't cost. With treatment and distribution there is an expense, an expense our government need to account for from a consistent source.

That rules out things like the Apple tax payment or other corporate taxes the EU deemed unjust, no company tax is an assured income as low tax rates are given to encourage employment remove that and jobs will be lost. By encouraging employment not only is there income to tax but it reduces the number on social welfare freeing up funds that are needed elsewhere from education to healthcare or even just those with serious reasons not to be able to work.

Back to the cost, the fairest way to do it like any commodity is by usage, when you buy petrol it's based on what you take not an average of what everyone uses, otherwise someone with a small efficient vehicle will pay for more than that use. From an environmental perspective by charging people for what they use will mean people will be likely to be conservative a precious resource, fixing leaks and not wasting it hosing down there lawns.

As we've seen meters are not an option which leads to flat rates, which has already failed but not for the reasons it should, to go back to the petrol analogy it forces people who are being economical to pay for more than they use which goes against any sense of fairness. It also encourages a blasé approach from those wasting water, "I paid for it I'll do what I want with it".

This leads me to where we seem to be going with it, a false idea of not paying for it. The attitude of the protesters seems to be "the gummerment will pay" without an understanding of where the "gummerment" get their money taxes, the majority of which is income tax. So we still pay for it but don't know it, either in an increase to basic PAYE, sneaking it under PRSI or just not reducing USC. Now I know 0.5% of VAT is meant to be for water services but that's not working otherwise we'd have a working water system free of leaks etc. Other than that the only option is to benefit from the rewards of other people's labour without reward or recompense, in other words slavery.

That leaves this writer to continue to insist metered water charges are the only way forward. To placate people who will use the what about the elderly or "won't somebody please think of the children" this can be addressed through similar to the heating allowance, whilst I disagree with government subsidies as they cause unneeded inflation (more on that later) it does aid those who need it whilst ensuring those who don't still pay.