When I saw his list of questions that he would supposedly refute, I was very interested in number 3: “Isn’t having to work for a boss in capitalism the same as having to work for a living in nature?” This question was often my initial reaction to people who tried to drag out the wage-slave nonsense. After all, it only seemed obvious to me that in order to consume, you must produce. Thus, if you don’t work for a wage, it’s only necessary that in order to eat, you must farm your own land. In order to have shelter, you must build you own house. In other words, if you’re not a “wage-slave”, then your only alternative is to be a “labor-slave”. However, mr1001nights here simply refutes that Capitalist Myth with his simple answer, transcribed by me:

“No. The unavoidable subjection of man to nature, that is having to work to gain one’s substinance, is not the same as the subjection of man to man. That is, having to work for a boss.”

That’s it. That’s his whole refutation. I’m glad he cleared that up for me so easily.

Maybe he goes into further detail, but I stopped watching shortly after that point. You can make all the bold claims you want, but I prefer a little more thought in my arguments than just statements presented as fact. If anyone else would like to explain why working the land to eat and be sheltered is so different from working for another man, I’m all ears.

I saw the first season of 24 in Kuwait, at the end of my year long tour in Iraq, back in 2004. We were readying for our return home, and with numerous hours to fill as we waited for our turn to board a flight bound for the US, a number of us gathered around a laptop and watched the entire first season of 24 in about two days. I liked the show. Then. Granted, in those days, I was a little more “conservative” (ie: I actually thought the terms “conservative” and “liberal” actually meant something different), so maybe I can use that excuse.

Flash forward to the past year. It had become common practice to watch praised television shows that we had missed on DVD, thanks to the usefullness of Netflix. That way, there was no week long wait between episodes – if you timed it right, you could watch an episode or two a night. On my suggestion, we decided to catch up on 24. I mostly skipped my roommates’ viewing of the first season, since I had seen it already.

I don’t think I made it much into season 3 before I couldn’t take it any more. I saw a constant stream of total disregard for human liberty, for the sake of “the country”. With little or no evidence, some “hero” of the anti-terrorist organisation CTU would break some fundamental right – their favorite method was torture – all under the pretense that if they didn’t now, people might die later. All of these horrific scenes were presented as the correct course of action. It disgusted me.

Maybe I can still hold some credibility, though I originally enjoyed the show. After all, in the first season, his family had been kidnapped, and because of such Bauer was at ends with the government authorities as much as he was with the terrorists. Maybe it’s because I can understand a man going through great lengths to recover and protect his family. But maybe I’m wrong, and the first season is just as bad at shilling out the “your safety [sic] is more important than your liberty” shit.

I will not be watching 24 this season (though that is not saying much. I watch very little TV as is). I don’t care to have torture presented to me as a justifiable ends to a mean.

Of course, I’m not the first person to make this observation. Undoubtedly, many of you are familiar with the Nolan Chart. Instead of assigning your political thoughts to a one-dimensional line, David Nolan decided to extend it out into two dimensions. Upon my first introduction to the Nolan chart, and because of my math background, I immediately noticed its deficiency. You can no more assign people to a two dimensional plane than you can a one dimensional one. Instead, a more accurate description would be a n-dimensional vector, where n is the number of political issues you are concerned with. But of course, we are talking about vectors of possibly several hundred dimensions, and frankly, the human mind doesn’t quite understand anything above the third one.

But even then, I find myself not so concerned with social or economic issues. At the end of the day, the question boils down to one simple one for me: Do I want government, or not?

Thus, I have devised a method of determining you political stance that is far simpler than the Nolan Chart; in fact, it is far simpler than the left-right line we are most accustomed to.

Allow me to introduce the Kel Weaver Political Bit (or the Kel Weaver Political Boolean, or the Kel Weaver Political Binary Choice – whichever is easier for you to remember).

The question you ask yourself is thus: “Do I support government?”

If you answer yes, then you are a 1.

If you answer no, then you are a 0.

I am a 0. Unfortunately, I imagine I am quite outnumbered in the world by 1s. Fortunately, however, I imagine a number of our readers are fellow 0s.

However, sometime last week, as I noticed the news was going from bad to downright catastrophic, I decided that maybe a year was too long to wait. I checked out gold bullion prices. An ounce of gold was in the $730 neighborhood.

After the Citibank nonsense, I checked again today. Gold is about $810 an ounce. I have no doubt about Peter Schiff’s predictions that it will hit $2k an ounce next year. I’m already starting to think I’m too late. The collapse has come, and I’m woefully unprepared.

So my question to you, dear readers: should I just close out my savings account (where I was storing my money for the downpayments) and just start stocking up on bullion? Or is there still time before the entire economy crumbles beneath us?

Assume the free market does fail, as many today would claim. Assume that people, left to their own volition, have lower productivity than if they were coerced by all knowing wizards in ivory towers in Washington DC. Assume that somehow, under threat of violence, it were possible to take money from an individual and be more productive with that money than that individual would have been without your force. Even if the free market led to low productivity, hunger, and misery, and forceful coercion lead to limitless prosperity, I would still prefer – in all of it’s unholy inefficency – the free market.

Liberty is more important than prosperity.

That’s right. Bill O’reilly, the same guy who could find no fault with the past eight years of dictatorship, has suddenly realized the answer is small government. A man who has made his fortune by selling his soul to the fascist regime of the last eight years no longer trusts the large government he has supported, obviously because he doesn’t like who is at the helm of his bloated ship any more.

This makes me angry beyond words. Bill O’reilly – one of the most despicable, worse neocons in the history of this nation – now has the audacity to blatantly lie, and act like he supports small government.

Fuck you, Bill O’reilly.

I will frequent FAIL Blag for laughs. Today, they had this gem:

At first glance, this is very funny. But once you actually consider what has happened, you realize this picture sums up a typical course of action in government.

1. The government decides a certain item is needed for the “public good”.
2. Under the threat of violence, they extort the local citizenry to pay for the public good.
3. A citizen uses that good, in the very way it was intended to be used.
4. The government decides the good has actually been misused.
5. Under the threat of more violence, they extort more money to pay for ways to “solve” the misuse.

Oh silly gov’t. You so crazy!

Obviously, private citizens cannot properly save for retirement themselves. No, instead we need a Social Security system Part II.

But I don’t want to draw attention to this new idea of government intervention. Creating new programs is what Leviathan does best. Instead, I want you to pay attention to the language used by the representitives and experts: the tax breaks to your retirement fund are a “subsidy”. The money not collected by the government from you is an $80 billion “investment”. Your income belongs to them. They’re just gracious enough to let you keep a portion.

Brother: Oh, can I add some political talk here? I encourage you to go vote your convictions and vote early if you can. We just got back from voting. I know you’re not happy (esp with the presidential election) but if you vote for the best candidate in your view in spite of the odds, then you are truly voting for liberty!!

Me: I think, in some weird way, that you’re encouraging me to go vote, even if it’s for Ron Paul. However, I regret to inform you that I don’t vote. Period. I summed up my reasons for succinctly here: http://www.blagnet.net/2008/09/10/why-i-dont-vote/ Ron Paul was the glowing exception in this past presidential primary because he was the only candidate who stood for almost everything I did, and more importantly, he wanted to STOP running peoples lives. Unfortunately, it seems the general American populace doesn’t like that idea. They’re enamored with the notion that someone out there is going to be in charge, even if they do horrible things in our names ($700 billion bailouts, for example).

Brother: Yeah, honestly I had heard about your article but wasn’t sure how to ask you about it. I had not read it until just now.

I think the unfortunate thing about the country is that at each stage the government has grabbed more responsibility and taken away more rights. It’s part of the cycle of history. I’m just choosing to fight it as best I can. I am just one person after all. I voted for the lesser of two evils…both men are more socialist than I’d like.

P.S. – Doesn’t a vote against anything that takes away liberty say more than the lack of a vote? I mean, if you don’t vote “pro-liberty” on the four GA constitutional amendments (at least), then you’re just leaving it in the hands of someone else…the alternative to voting on the issues is to take matters in your own hands and have a revolution with arms (i.e. big guns and bombs).

Me: From whom did you hear about my article? My facebook status?

I can’t find the quote, but I believe Jefferson once said something to the effect that history has shown us that it is the natural course for government to grow at the expense of liberty. It’s not just this government that confiscates your freedom over time, but any such government you would attempt to implement. Hence why I’m an anarchist.

I’m assuming you voted for McCain, but that letter already spelled out why I don’t vote for the lesser of two evils. To make it more specific to the current political climate, even if I did consider McCain the lesser evil of the two (I don’t – they’re both equally as horrible), giving him my vote is a direct endorsement from me to carry out any action he desires in my name. So while he may give the upper class a 3% tax reduction over Obama, what if he decides to bomb Iran? I certainly don’t want that. But if I gave him my vote, that means he can do it with my full backing. No thanks. Choosing between the lesser of two evils is a false choice. It’s like being asked if you would like to be killed by firing squad or by hanging.

I will admit, I didn’t even realize there were amendments to be considered on the ballot. Maybe I’m a bad citizen after all. However, amending the constitution is a worthless exercise anyway. The constitution – US or Georgia – after all is only a worthless sheet of paper. I imagine when I say that, most people freak out, since the Constitution is supposed to be Holy Writ. And I don’t say that because I dislike the Constitution, but rather because I realize that it is unenforceable. But why should it be? If you and I had entered into a contractual agreement, and then decided that all recourse for violations of that contract would be decided and enforced by me, would it surprise you then if I started to violate the original contract whenever it was beneficial to me? You would think that contract is useless. Why is it then that people think that government is bound by our Constitution when it is also the interpreter and enforcer of it? It’s obvious from American history that the government doesn’t care for it’s own restrictive contract, which the occasional glowing exception.

As for those amendments, I must admit they make for interesting internal debate. For instance, should people get tax cuts for using private land for forest conservation? On one hand, I like tax cuts. On the other, the government shouldn’t tell people what to do with their land. Curious.

As for your revolution, there are other methods I think. One is a revolution of minds – not of arms. In other words, if we educate enough people of the evils of the state, then either we force the state to show their true colors by trying to put down that threat – pulling more people to our cause. Or, and this is the path I think is more likely, letting the state continue on it’s destructive ways until it implodes on itself. Then, hopefully, when rebuilding from the ashes we can convince everyone to not put anything in it’s place.

Anyway, yeah. I’ll let you guys know about dinner.

Me: PS: Also, as a follow up, given that the Constitution is ineffective because the government is the controller of the strings, why is it that you think voting in their rigged system is the correct course of action to bring about effective change? It seems to me that would be the LEAST effective route to take.

It should be noted that I blatantly stole the firing squad/hanging comparison from Mike as well.

One such picture is this:

My first thought when I saw this picture, of course, was “Jesus, those are pretty minuscule tax breaks from either candidate.” But the comments below the picture sparked a discussion that lost my interest almost immediately.

One girl, who I imagine aligns with the Republican faction of our single party system, says:

i dont know what is so appealing about his tax plan… those with lower incomes don’t pay a lot in taxes anyway. they dont need a large tax break. those that have high incomes will spend their money, pumping it into the economy, benefitting everyone.
yes, if you don’t know much, obama’s plan sounds amazing (just like raising minimum wage). but if you really analyze the situation, you see that its messed up.

Someone else replies almost instantly:

As someone who is poor as shit, I support Obama’s tax plan because even though I don’t pay “that much in taxes,” what I do pay makes a MUCH larger impact in my quality of life than a wealthy person who pays more than I do.

Think of it this way: If you take a hamburger from a rich person, what will they do? They’ll buy another hamburger. The impact wasn’t so great.

If you take a hamburger from a poor person, what will they do? Starve.

Of course, that’s a hyberpolic example, but you get the idea.

Hey, here’s an interesting idea none of you have apparently considered: How about you fucking stop taking people’s hamburgers!

The link to the thread in question is here, but you can’t comment I imagine without first joining the group. Probably not worth your trouble.