This is a response to "Thank god for taxes" by Andrew Leonard http://www.salon.com/2012/07/13/thank_god_for_taxes/

Wow, someone on $150,000 a year does five extra minutes work and he wants to pin a medal on their chests. For that amount of cash I want a lapdance, not just a photo album. You criticise yourself for "bad parenting" for letting an album burn, but you're enabling the crippling debt that will rob your children of years of their life. What is wrong with you? Everything you claim you want, better education, lower taxes on the poor, better infrastructure services, all these are being sacrificed to overpay a politically connected group of high income earners. And you call yourself a leftist.

Let's start with your economic fallacies, first of all it's not the fault of globalisation or Walmart that you won't spend the money on a grill that won't burn your house down. That's your fault.

Secondly you dishonestly try to link the health insurance mandate to your mortgate provider requiring home insurance. The worst your mortgage provider could have done is refused you a mortgage, he couldn't have demanded money at gunpoint like the government. These are not the same things. Not that health insurance as currently practiced in the USA is anything like actual insurance in the first place.

Then we go on to your

own private stimulus package. Wow, it's only been 160 years since Bastiat explained the broken window fallacy, way to keep current. Does Salon pick it's economic commentators for ignorance? No your disaster did not create lots of benefits, it just diverted labor and capital from providing other benefits.

The most startling claim in your article is that you "got your money's worth" out of high taxes. It is startling because nothing you say shows this to be true and everything you say shows it to be irrelevant. Suppose it were true that you, and everyone else whose house caught fire, got their money's worth. What about the other 90% of the people that didn't?

But even this claim is dubious. The cost of firefighting services should be about $75/year* or $1875 for the 25 years you've been there. Are you saying that you haven't paid much more than this in excess taxes?

Of course my $75/year figure is based on the fees a city firefighting service charges for fire protection outside city borders. Private firefighting firms might well be cheaper as they don't have to pay the absurd costs of firefighters salaries and pensions. That you what someone does doesn't mean that they deserve more money. Would private firefighters take the same care with your scrapbook? Why wouldn't they if it meant positive publicity and word of mouth?

When women have to defend themselves against lying feminists.

So the professional misser of the point Erin KLG has defended her article “When Women Don’t Want Daughters. This seems to be at least in part in reply to girlwriteswhat completely disembowling said article. Erin claims that "the world was harder for women. ". Let's take a look at her justifications and see if they hold water or more hot air.

Number one men have almost all the positions of power. Therefore there lives are all easier. Here Erin fails to make the basic logic distinction between "All of X are Y" and "All of Y are X". The fact that I share a type of chromosome with almost all world and national leaders doesn't actually help me. It's not like I can say "Hey I'd like special treatment from you Mr. Powerful on account of how we both have dicks.". Well I could but unless he's really into dicks that's not likely to help. Having a vagina, which most powerful men are into (not all but a large majority) generally helps a lot more. Maybe that's why, as GWW pointed out, more money is spent, anything from 8 to 100 times more on female than male problems.

For the second point Kan't Learn Gentleness (I'm going to try and give her as many deserved acronyms as I can) complained "We" haven't had a female president. By this she means just the USA, presumably. But a female US president would be a massive advantage to the men's right's movement because she would not have to prove her feminist credentials and could look at men's disadvantage without being massacred in the press. I don't think it WOULD happen but it could. In any case I haven't lead a country either and I don't whine about it.

For sheer assininity (real men don't just use words they CREATE them) the third point can't be beat. Women get portrayed badly in the media. She gives a number of examples of the horrible, horrible ways they get portrayed. Of these some didn't mention women at all, some didn't imply any judgements on women and NONE showed unambiguous violence against women. There was one ad that showed a woman in a sexual situation with several men, but whether it was consensual or not wasn't clear. Another showed a woman dead, but it she didn't appear to have died by violence.

Being the distractable guy I am I then clicked some links from these pages and got to one allegedly showing the 10 funniest TV ads. One of these showed a man who looked like a Pinata with a broken arm and bandage on his head, the joke being that he had been beaten with a stick to get skittles. Not on the violence against men specifically mentioned, and the results clearly visible but it was played for laughs. So possible violence against women, (admittedly sexual which is touchier) ad gets banned. Definite violence against a men, ad gets laughed at. Note that I didn't look for an ad like this. I didn't need to. A few minutes clicking links about advertising and I get to one. Count the number of ads where the woman is stupid, insensitive, insane or evil, then count the number of ads the man is, it's not a contest.

Nor is the actual entertainment any better in this regard. Aside from the occasional show like "Modern Family" or "Married with Children" (both with the brilliant Ed O'Neill) which treat the male and female characters about equally, most TV shows show men to be incompetent, inconsiderate, insensitive fools. Sometimes like in Tim Allen's "Home Improvement" that's most of the joke of the series.

Her fourth point is that 85-90% of the people in the USA with eating disorders are women. My fourth point is that 80% of the people who suicide are men. Her point is "Not unrelated" to media portrayals, at a guess I'd say mine is too. But if you had to choose, gun to your head so to speak, would you rather be the person who splattered chunder all over the floor or brains all over the wall?

Then she brings up the most horrible thing in the world. The wage gap still exists. So does the huge amount of differences between male and female labor that create it, including but not limited to, the willingness of males to work stupid hours*, to work outside often in terrible weather, to do dangerous work, to remain in a job without taking time off for a child etc. anyone who doesn't know that the work men and women do is very different is startlingly ignorant.

Erin Knowledge-Less Girl tries to claim that justifying the wages gap on the grounds of, "lifestyle choices" (which are also choices about work) is condemning women because they can give birth. This is poppycock and if she actually watched to GWW's video she's know this. I suspect she does unless she's totally ignorant of how men and women run their lives. It's not giving birth reduces a woman's value to the employer. No doubt taking time off to deal with the physical aspects of pregnancy and childbirth is a factor but it's a minor one. If it were not then women would be back in the workforce 2 months after giving birth. Instead many women drop paid employment for years, even decades, after becoming a mother, and/or radically reduce their hours of paid work. They could choose not to do this and have their husband do the stay at home thing (this is not unknown, in fact Stefan Molyneux the biggest philosopher on the web did exactly that). The choice is a lifestyle choice and it's one that negatively impacts their value to their employer.

Then she's gets on to men graduating with the degrees that pay the most. Yeah I'm guessing that women's studies and social work degrees don't pay that well. How is this a case the world being harder on women? The women made the choice, presumably they had their reasons to believe that it would make them happy. Men also had their reasons to believe that the higher paying degrees would make them happy. I don't see why the fact that one choice leads to more money neccesarily implies it leads to more happiness. What Erin Knotted Logic, Gordian is saying here is that women unfortunately are too stupid to make the right, money-making course choices and so end up miserable because they lack the power money brings.

But do they lack the power money brings? Money is not powerful in the earning but the spending. As David Thomas pointed out in "Not guilty the case in defence of men" women make or influence much even most of the major spending decisions. In fact he lists 10 areas of financials services and all but 2 or 3 the woman clearly wears the pants regarding them. So how does the fact that women don't even have to earn the money they spend men it's tougher for them?

Then she talks about how 2/3s of the world's illiterates are female. This is a bit of a switcheroo because up until this point she was talking about the experience of women and men in the USA. All the facts related to the USA and similar western cultures, there was no indication that the world she considered stretched to Kabul or Karachi or indeed beyond Rio Grande. Her original article also didn't seem to address anything but the Western experience. In the 3rd world certainly it's rough beting a chick. In fact it's so rough that some feminists have said women were the primary victims of, for instance, the war in Afghanistan. Why? Because it often left them without husbands or sons. But none of this has anything to do with the original article, unless Erin is totally ignorant of why people in other cultures prefer sons. The original article was all about her own culture, nothing about others. Don't worry she'll turn back to being totally US-centric when she compares rates of violent victimisation, because she certainly won't be making the case on that with figures from down south of the border.

Now we come to a bad word "slut". Well some people use it as a bad word, others use it as a fun word, even a compliment, but she's got a point, calling people slut is not nice. Neither is calling someone "coward". The difference is that nobody ever fought a useless war to stop someone calling them a slut. If the worst you have to worry about is being called a slut you've got a pretty good life.

From slut we transition straight to honour killings and "purity balls" as though giving a girl a celebration for a choice you approve of and killing her for one you do not are the same class of phenomena. Some people think that "saving yourself for marriage" is a good idea. Plenty of those people think the males should do it too. How this makes the world tougher for females (other than that some people Erin doesn't like anyway won't like them) is beyond me. Honour killings are of course horrific, but is there a country in the world where they outnumber infanticides? Let alone killing of men for absurd reasons? Note that her case was that the world is tougher for women than men, not that it is tough for women.

She then goes on to the discrepancy between male and female criminal vicitimisation rates. Well she pretends to. She presents a graph that appears to show the discrepancy is being radically reduced. The thing is that violent crime is often underreported, particularly if the victim feels they are unlikely to get justice or may suffer retaliation. Male vicitims of domestic violence, who are just as common as female victims, are one such group. Females have been reporting domestic violence more often, males, not so much. Male victims of prison rape* are another. Assaults on females are taken much more seriously and everyone knows this (and most would be upset if it weren't so) so naturally males are less likely to believe it's worth making a complaint. One way to eliminate reporting errors is to look at homicide, which is not greatly underreported for obvious reasons. Luckily the page she sent us to is part of a site that has such information. Find a year where men weren't murdered at twice the rate women were. Go ahead, find it. Now look at that realise this is actually pretty good for men. In the Mexican border areas (where feminists worried that there was an epidemic of woman murder) the ratio is more like 10-1. If anyone knows of a country that has more females murdered than males please tell me. Well maybe India with the infanticides, which are of course almost never carried out by males.

Speaking of perpetrators she then mentions that 90% of perpetrators are male. Of course this depends on official statistics which almost certainly underreport assaults by females, particularly domestic abuse. But let's a ssume she's right. How does that show that women have it tougher? Does she assume that the life of a violent offender is a happy one? A stress-free one? Sure these guys have to take resonsibility for their actions, but somewhere there is a woman who's job it was to raise them to be healthy and happy, he is pretty clearly not.

The question isn't, why is a woman not afraid or raising a female victimiser, but why isn't she more afraid of raising a male vicitim than a female one, given that they probably outnumber them 3-2 at least? The answer is because like Erin they don't really love any male. They think it's fine to ignore their pain, denigrate and insult them openly, clearly state, to their faces that they are by nature stupid, uncultured, insensitive, cruel and violent and arrange everything in society to someone else's benefit with their money. Then the cruelest trick in the female arsenal, telling them that this is love. Telling them that the warped twisted relationship where the male can be barely tolerated in return for being useful is the wonder, joyous, mutual, respectful, kind and enlightening thing we call love. Then they wonder why we like hookers and porn.

She claims that men being called "girls" or "pussies" proves that women are considered the lesser sex. Hmm.. let's see, what would you rather have, your gender being used as an insult or spending on the health of your gender being several times lower? Having your genitals being a term of abuse or losing your children in custody battles pretty much every time? Dying on the job or being whistled at in public? Where is this woman's self-respect? What happened to her that she can advance such baloney without drinking herself into a stupor to cope with what she does for a living? I don't know and I don't care, I'm just glad I'm not her.

How to turn a leftist into a fascist, just add China.

In an article in "The Guardian" Will Hutton has supported the theivery of the Argentine government, based on zenophobia, boundless faith in government and argument from personal belief. Here is my disection of this particular piece of the rotting corpse of government worship. "Suppose the British government knew that a key shareholder in Centrica, our last great British energy company and owner of British Gas, was to sell its stake to Gazprom, so making Russian state ownership inevitable. I hope that, in this scenario, the government would expand the provision of the Enterprise Act that allows Britain to block takeovers that are against the national interest to include gas and nuclear power. (The act is currently confined to defence, financial services and the media.)" The fact that you hope for something doesn't mean it's good.

"No country can be indifferent to the ownership of strategic assets and thus the use to which they might be put. Its first obligation is to the well-being of its citizens." Which you haven't shown is at all served by not being indifferent to the ownership of "strategic assets". In fact government control of such assets has crippled investment in them in more than one country.

 "The Argentinian government was faced with just this dilemma last week. YPF is its national oil and gas company, which it sold to the Spanish oil company Repsol for $15bn in 1999 as part of its privatisation drive. It has not been a great deal for either party. Argentinian oil and gas production has slumped, exploration for new reserves has been run down and this oil-rich country is now an oil importer, with Repsol accused of looting the company and betraying its obligations. Repsol's excuse is that Argentinian price controls are absurdly tough." When there is a lack of investment leading to a shortage of supply and price controls any economists worth his salt points out the obvious connection. But instead the author calls this an "excuse". If he's so certain that the price controls didn't lead to the lower production let him and likeminded people buy the company and see if they can lift production without going broke. "It has wanted to sell its holding for some time and last July finally found a potential buyer: the Chinese state oil company Sinopec. On Monday, fearing that the deal was about to be done, the Argentinian government seized the lion's share of Repsol's stake to get majority control. Better that YPF is owned by the Argentinian government than the Chinese Communist party is their reasoning. Many governments would have done the same. Ownership matters. Yet Argentina has been roundly condemned – the EU, Spain, Mexico and even Britain have all weighed in. The Economist thunders that President Cristina Fernández's antics must not go unpunished; nationalisation is a sin beyond redemption. The inference is that Repsol should have been allowed freely to dispose of its shares to whichever buyer and at the best price it could achieve. Argentina and its citizens have no right to intervene." When Repsol bought the shares the government clearly didn't set any limits on who it could sell to, if it had they wouldn't have to confiscate shares. So the government clearly did what nobody has a right to do, make a deal, get the money and then change the terms. Argentina has no right to intervene because to do so is simple fraud, and it's citizens have no right to "intervene" in property that isn't their's. "But to portray Repsol as an injured innocent whose natural rights have been unfairly suborned is to traduce economic and political reality." Actually it's entirely accurate at least as far as the author knows. If Repsol wasn't innocent then where is the proof? Where is the legal decision, hell even the legal proceeding, against it? In the absence of such the companies shareholders have the right to have the company presumed innocent, and yes that is a natural right. The idea that someone should have their property taken from them because of unproven and untested allegations is obviously unjust. "For too long, companies and the rich worldwide, egged on by American Republicans and British Tories, have shamelessly exploited the proposition that there is only one proper relationship between them and society: they do what they want on their own terms." Who says this? Nobody. In fact free market thinkiing is that people have to deal in mutually acceptable terms, and this is what the author has a problem with. He believes the government should be able to deal with people on it's own terms, regardless of rights, facts, justice, due process or any other limit on immoral behaviour. "And society must accept this because it is the sole route to "wealth generation". Capital exists above state and society." Note that the shareholders were quite willing to accept the State being above their capital (a moral and practical mistake in my opinion) and the author makes direct reference to this (price controls). The capitalists were quite willing to accept the rules, it is the government, that made the rules that objects to following them and instead makes new rules as it goes along. "Fernández's actions, however clumsy and unfair in their execution, are part of a growing worldwide reaction to the excesses that this proposition has brought. Repsol does not, and did not, have a God-given right to sell control in YPF to whomever it pleases while Argentina's interests can go hang." Quite right, it's rights come from the objective nature of reality not a mythical god. " It exists in a symbiotic relationship with the society in which it trades. The right to trade and to own are privileges that come with reciprocal obligations as the Ownership Commission, which I chaired, argued earlier this year. " Yes there are reciprocal obligations, the obligation not to violate the similar rights of others, i.e. the oblations not to steal. This obligation the author apparently finds too hard to live up to. "They cannot exist in a vacuum because companies' actions have profound effects." So what? Ghandi's right to speak had "profound effects" that doesn't mean the government had the right to control it, nor did it make it a privilege. "Moreover, companies, especially energy companies, need public agencies to help mitigate the risk of undertaking huge investments in a world where the future is unknowable." Actually it's blatantly obvious that public agencies create not mitigate risk. What do you think the GFC and the Euro debt crisis were? That alternet is pushing this fascist, corporatist codswallop that government should mitigate risks of businesses, is nothing short of astounding. Why not just take a job as a shilll for Goldman, Sachs if that's what you're going to vomit out into the public discourse? " Across the globe, business and the rich insist on denying these elementary truths. " Well aside from the fact that nothing you said appears to be an elementary truth business and the rich have in fact been pushing what you just pushed, that "public agencies" should mitigage the risk for companies. "The reaction [against supposedly free market capitalism ] is long overdue and is producing some long-needed corrections. For example, in the last fortnight alone, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, Barclays' Bob Diamond and Citibank's Vikram Pandit have all faced angry shareholders, responding to the new mood, protesting about the extravagance of their bonuses compared to their institutions' paltry performance. They are being forced to accept less." God that's a moronic conclusion. Shareholders insisting that failing executives get paid less is not a reaction against the free market, it's a reacion within the free market. It's not the 1% being forced to get less, it's the 1% paying someone (who happens to be in the 1%) less. "But the mood needs to be channelled. Argentina may have done everyone a service by forcibly reminding global business that there are unpleasant consequences for neglecting economic and social responsibilities," Well no, Argentina, or rather Fernández has shown their are unpleasant consequences for doing something that a politician doesn't want. Whether they neglected their "economic and social responsibilities" which conveniently enough, weren't defined either in the article or the law is unknown. What is known is that a politician reacted to something they didn't like by stealing. "but summary nationalisation without compensation is hardly a solid template for the future. It is a harbinger of Chinese-style arbitrary government; a move from crony capitalism to crony statism." The author clearly doesn't know what crony capitalism or statism is. " It is time to reassert that while capitalism may be a proven route to prosperity, it only works in a complex interdependence with the state and society. There have to be rules at home and abroad to make a desirable world of open borders, free trade and free business work. " If there have to be rules then why is the author cheering on those who violated the rules at the expense of those who followed them? What he really wants is for their to be the illusion of rules, lots of little laws that change whenever it takes the whim of "the people" or their "representatives". " The mood is changing. It needs to be channelled: the creation of a new and different compact with business, finance and the rich. It is what electorates across the world want to see. President Fernández, in her gauche way, has tapped into a global mood." Yes the mood is changing, people are in the mood to steal. This is understandable but naive, for the governments that steal for them will steal from them.

What Ben Manski doesn't understand.

Or how to distinguish a political protest from a childish tantrum.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2011/manski-occupy.php
"What some can't accept, they pretend not to understand . And the political class can't accept that the common demand of the current protest wave is for democratic revolution. We want them gone. We want power." This is Ben Manski's justification for the lack of expressed goals from the Occupy movement. It's far less revealing than I would have liked, and for that reason, far more revealing.

Let's start with the claim that the "common demand of the current protest wave is for democratic revolution. This is simply false. I haven't heard any demands for democracy as he later describes it from the Occupy movement let alone "constant" demands. Sure protestors have claimed "This is what democracy looks like" (while making absolutely no effort to vote or otherwise determine what the majority wants) but nobody has been calling for violent revolution.

Of course he might have meant nonviolent revolution, but this begs the question, what would that mean? What would constitute the "We" having power and the "them" being gone? If they mean the current government system why are they protesting Wall Street and not Washington? If they mean the financial system what exactly do they want gone? Do they want the Wall Street banks just to shut up shop because they said so? Even ignoring the absurdity of the idea that they would what's the alternative? How do they suggest business gets financed without banks? I don't believe I've heard the word "credit union" or "building society" out of the mouths of any of them. If this is a demand it's something that's far from constant and certainly not exactly universal amoung OWS. If they did want big banks replaced by cooperatives then here's an idea, START A COOPERATIVE. Or at least switch your money over to it. The Occupy movement isn't talking about this, although Manski is. The question is what is his evidence that the Occupy movement which keeps it's money in a big, bad bank is really interested in such things? Nothing.

He goes on to claim that "Democracy is a simple idea. The people rule.". These two sentences in succession mean that he does not understand the concepts democracy, "The people" or "rule". For a start which people rule? All the people? Great then he should ring up the guys in Africa and see what they think about wealth redistribution. Considering the USA has 300 million people and Africa has over a billion they should mostly be the ones deciding on this whole revolution thing. What? He meant the people in an arbitrary area should rule? Well which one? The entire nation, NY state, NY city? Maybe the borough, why not? There are so many arbitrary lines you can draw with one side meaning power over these people and the other side meaning power over others.

Let's make no mistake here, "Democracy" means having power over others. It means ruling which is to say maintaining your wishes by force over them. It means jails, fines, beating and executions. It is not freedom it is not justice, it is force pure and simple, with it's justification based on mathematics not morality. It is the limitation of such arbitrary power, that many of the founders knew was no more trustworthy in common than in royal hands, that led to the creation of a republic, not a democracy, a country of laws not men with the majority able to make some changes but no subvert the freedom of the minority (in theory at least). That a majority of people want something is no more morally convincing than that white people want it, or rich people, or lutherans or any other arbitrary group. So if this guy wants a system where a group uses force to control another group why would he be upset at cops getting rough with demostrators?

He believes "it our birthright to directly participate in power. ", note DIRECTLY participate, as in without elections. So he wants over 250 million people to vote on whether to increase or reduce fish catch numbers off the Florida coast. Of these less than 1% are either marine biologists, economists or work in fisheries. This will end well. Even assuming that electronic voting (which never gets rigged mind you) could remove the need to physically go to a polling booth the US government passes several laws each week at least, many of them longer than Atlas Shrugged but without the kinky sex. It's been estimated that most Congressmen don't read the the laws and they're paid to. This guy thinks 250 million people will read each law, understand the historical, legal, social and economic consequences, compare these consequences to what happens if the law doesn't pass, including evaluating alternative legislation and vote in a way that's isn't totally corrupt and self-serving? I haven't heard anyone be this optiministic since they disbanded the Office of Special Plans. Of course if nation-states were a lot smaller this would be easier, but I don't see too many OWS types calling for secession.

Then there is the claim that this form of government is a "birthright". Inherited from who? Who gained this right to rule over me and how did he bequeath it to all and sundry?
"The rights to housing, to an education, to health care, to child care, to a livable income, are all democratic rights." No they're not. Even granting that you have a right to beat people up if they don't give you a "liveable income", free health care, and an education these "rights" have nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is a method of choosing how force is to be used, not a theory of what force ought to be used to provide. There can be no such thing as "democratic rights" other than rights to participate in a democracy, because all other rights would be subject to a vote and therefore not a right. But feel free to pick these things off the tree where you think it grows to paraphrase Ayn Rand.

"Students of social change learn that mass movements are most likely to emerge at times when economic conditions become intolerable. " Said students might want to get a better teacher. In fact mass movements like the civil rights struggle came when conditions were improving as did pro-democracy movements in China, the American Revolution. Violent revolts might take place when conditions are intolerable but mass peaceful protests rarely. The reason is obvious, mass protests and mass movements rely on large numbers of people with spare time, spare energy and who aren't afraid they'll starve to death if they get fired.
His entire screed is simply a series of false claims about what OWS wants and whether this is likely to result in anything. Find me one OWS protestor who advocated the abolition of elections, and I'll call Manski something other than a complete liar.

An open letter to anti-war.com

Dear Anti-war.com,
I write because your website is informative, honest and useful and therefore one of the best places to seek explanations for the US basing more 2500 troops in Australia. Your current explanation however is somewhat lacking, for reasons that I will detail below. To help you I have complied a list of things that are NOT the reason for these troops being there.

First they are not there because Australia is a weak country desperately needing defence against enemies with the ability to invade it. Whilst Australia isn't the greatest military power in the world it's army is not only more competent man-for-man than any in the region, but more competent than the US army and "battle hardened" thanks to the Iraq and Afghanistan stupidities. It is also big enough to handle any realistically transportable invasion force in the region. This is hardly relevant however since any invaders would have to overcome the Royal Australian Air Force and Royal Australian Navy before the first digger even puts his boots on. I do not say that the Malaysians, Indonesians, or Singaporese cannot come, I only say they cannot come by sea. Which is where they'd have to get their supply from, given the place is a desert. So they'd have to get and keep air superiority against the best air force in the region for at least months. This would be even harder once we get our fancy new massively over-priced planes. If the F-35 isn't sufficient to defend destroy vulnerable troop transports we should ask for our money back. Even if a couple of thousand troops were necessary to forestall invasion Australia, (unlike some countries) has total government debt about 1/5 of it's GDP by IMF accounting and can thus easily afford to hire more.

The second possible reason is that they are there to counter China in it's attempts to control the South China Sea, a vital trade route. There are several reasons why this is not the case not, not the least of which is that armies don't float. You can't control a sealane with troops, unless it's the Strait of Hormuz and they have missles. Australia's over-budget, underperforming submarine fleet is far more capable of influencing events on the SCS than these troops will ever be. A far bigger problem is that why the hell would we care? By "we" I mean Australia. The main Chinese strategic interest in the South China Sea is to keep it open to trade, much of said trade being us digging up half of Western Australia and the Northern Territory then selling it to China. The only way US troops could help Australia's interests in this context is by refeuling Chinese ships when the Aussie troops take a sickie.

Another strategic interest is the control of energy resources around the Spratley Islands which are contested. However considering the estimated peak oil in the Spratley Islans about on par with Vietnam and the Natural gas fields are about rich as Thailand's. I hardly see this as worth getting into a shooting war over. If it was worth getting into a shooting war over it would be between China, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysian, Taiwan, and/or Brunei. Neither America nor Australia have a dog in this fight. Even if it was worth committing US troops to such a conflict it would make far more sense to station them in Taiwan or the Phillipines. Not that you'd even need troops to win such a fight since it would be an air/sea battle. Given that neither country appears to want US troops why should the US bother to defend their claims for them?

A third non-reason is that they're required to allow the US to invade nearby countries. While 2500 troops would probably be sufficient to occupy Papuan New Guinea who the hell would want to? The forces are nowhere near sufficient to take and keep Malaysia or Indonesia, even assuming neither went to the aid of the other. They might be able to conquer Singapore but selling Singapore as a threat to world peace would be beyond the capabilities of the most deluded neocon. None of this matters in any case because any invasion from Australia would have to get at least tacit Australian approval, and a shooting war along one of our biggest trade routes is to say the least, not in our interest.

Of course it's possible that Obama wanted the troops to have somewhere nice to stay. The cournterargument is they'll be staying in Darwin.

If anyone can come up with a semi-rational reason why it's in the strategic interest of America, Australia, or indeed any country to post these troo

Lies about Ron Paul Part 1.

The first thing Gary Weiss claims in his article ("Ron Paul's wacky but influential Fed policy") is that the Republican party is falling "deeper into the clutches of Ron Paul's radical ideology,". Yeah right, that's why there's so many Republicans who want to end the Fed, FDIC, bailouts, etc. etc. That this lie can be told in a mainstream publication with the assumption that nobody will check (good luck on that one pal, the Pauline Church don't tend to miss much).

This is immediately followed by another lie, that "Castrating" the fed is part of an "anti-popularist agenda". Since when has supporting the Fed in any manner been "popularist"? If memory serves the Fed was created by closed-door discussions (oh no, a conspiracy theory! But we'll get to the conspiracies later) on Jeckyll Island by elites intent on foisting the abomination on the populace without it's understanding. Whether it qualifies as "popularist" or not it certainly doesn't count as "falling deeper into the clutches of Ron Paul's ideology". Anyone who read an article which mentions RP's actual Fed policy would know this. The weird thing is THIS IS ONE SUCH ARTICLE. It specifically says in paragraph 7 that Ron Paul doesn't support "castrating" the Fed. Perhaps like the grazier talking to the dingo population control officer with the dart gun that makes them impotent he understands that the problem is they're EATING the sheep. So this guy can't even keep a deception up for 8 paragraphs and thinks he's going to go up against Republican politicians? Again, good luck feller.

He keeps up with this lie by claiming that "Bray’s legislation amounts to 'Ron Paul Lite.' The proposed law wouldn’t toss the Fed in the ashcan, as Paul wants, but it would go to the very heart of the Fed’s mission.". But the good doctor isn't arguing with it's mission but with it's powers, unaccountability, inherent potential for corruption, misuse, political influence, incompetence and disaster and it's unconstitutionality. Limiting it the use of it's power supposedly to reducing inflation (which is more efficiently done by simply adopting a commodity currency) is like telling a coal power plant to only send it's electricity to the West not the East, the posions it spews don't get better Not that it would even do that because "some of those regional bank presidents might want to keep the Fed focused on job creation, even if it’s ostensibly stripped of its ability to do so.". Again this guy doesn't even bother to keep the evidence of his deception out of his own article. If its ability to "keep... focused on job creation" is only "ostensibly stripped" then what's the big worry? In fact this only proves that RP is absolutely on the worth-7-cents-on-the-dollar money when he says it's grandstanding.

Then he brings the claim that the good Doctor is a "faux popularist". This is somewhat puzzling as AFAIK RP never claimed to be a popularist, nor have any of his followers claimed this as far as I know. The term "popularist" is of course one with a long and complex history, but the Popularist Party was best known for it's radical anti-strong money position.

At least Weiss acknowledges good things that have come from RP's focus on the Fed, that is to say he acknowledges that some of these things happened, not that they came from RP's actions. How did Bloomberg "break the story" of $13T in loans to the banks? Because Dr. Paul pushed for, and got, some sort of accounting from the Fed (which was far short of a legal audit).. Note that Weiss calls auditing the Fed (and he puts the "auditing" in scare quotes) "throw[ing] a bone to the right". Why the right? Since when has the Fed been a friend to the poor, the disabled, racial mionrities and all the other people the Left is supposed to care about? The Fed has historically been bosom buddies with crony capitalists, arms dealers, Coca-Cola, and everyone else the Left sees as conspiring to rob the 99%. To call examining it's activities a "bone to the right" is an open admission that the left no longer cares about the link between big government and big business, it only cares about... it only cares about... I'm sorry I though I could finish that sentence but I have no idea what the Left cares about any more. It's not like they even care about taking power from the "Right" anymore or they'd be volunteering to audit the Fed's behaviour in the Bush years and shouting the results from the rooftops.

Weiss then claims the statement "The Federal Reserve is the chief culprit behind the economic crisis" "ideologically driven rhetoric". The problem is that it's incontestable. Whatever you think of the behaviour of the banks (and Dr. Paul and I are no fans) what caused the crisis was the inflation and subsequent collapse of housing prices. Without that there might have been defaults but they would have had minor effects on the banking sector because the houses would just have been sold to pay off the loans. No Fed money spout means nobody gambling their future on housing price increases, no sudden collapse of that housing price, and no banker left high and dry by the fallout. In the history of America there has not been an asset price bubble that didn't come from government interference in the money supply. Dr. Paul isn't ignoring the pre-Fed history of booms and busts, he's quite aware of them and the role government interference in the money supply in causing them. It is Weiss who ignores the historical evidence.

Then he accuses Dr. Paul of "retailing the conspiracist humbug" of an accusation that he doesn't bother to refute. All he does is helpfully link to a post that has Bernanke calling Ron Paul's accusations "absolutely biazrre" which we are supposed to take as proof positive that they are. There is no actual refuting of Paul's accusation, not even an indication that Bernanke would know if they were true or not before slinging mud. In fact the comments section includes this link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=33004 which seems to indicate that the accusations are the opposite of "humbug". That Weiss didn't do the most basic checking and was outresearched by the comments on his own link is disgraceful. How can you hold your head up in polite society Mr. Weiss?

"Ryan was quoted as pushing the Ron Paul nostrum that what the Bureau of Engraving and Printing churns out is really 'fiat money,' since it’s not backed by gold. ". Again this is a falsehood, although I hesitate to call it a lie since it's unlikely someone would tell a lie that demonstrates they don't know what "nostrum" and "fiat money" mean. A nostrum (and I admit I had to look it up ) is "a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but usually without scientific proof of its effectiveness " or "a usually questionable remedy or scheme". Calling something fiat moneyis not a scheme or remedy. In this case it's the simple truth, which if Weiss really had enough economic knowledge to criticise Dr. Paul's belief's about economic history he'd know. Oh and it's not fiat money because it's not backed by gold. It's fiat money because its not backed by anything but the word of Wesley Mooch.

He also claims, with his VAST knowledge of monetary policy that didn't unfortunately include the definition of "fiat money" or indeed any apparent research into who called the current economic downturn (I'll give you some hints, 12 term congressman, loved by the guys on lewrockwell.com, reads actual books before making claims about what caused 9/11, was therefore able to pwn Rudolf Guiliani), that a gold standard would cause another Great Depression. Never mind that the Fed has openly admitted that IT caused the Great Depression, never mind that there has NEVER been a boom and bust sufficient to cause such under a strict gold standard. No never mind that because he's got a link to Paul "I get pwned by Austrian economists so often they don't even take the tag off when they buy me back." Krugman. Seriously. Krugman. That's your best shot?

Well I'll give him one thing, when he claims that a GOP controlled Fed wouldn't stop the next depression, he's on the worth-less-than-an-Aussie-buck-even-though-it-was-over-40%-more-only-3-years-ago money. After all it didn't stop the current one. Congratulations Gary, you got one important thing right. Given how you started I didn't even expect that. You know, because you're an idiot.

The truth that truthout leaves out.

This post is an analysis of a single paragraph in this article:
http://www.truth-out.org/77-trillion-wall-street-anything-keep-banksters-happy/1322841741


It was inspired by the criticism of the article by Stefan Molyneux in his video,
Banksters Own You! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPjxGmh9i8&feature=g-u

"Only when the Federal Reserve becomes an instrument of the people to calm the mood swings of the market - and not a piggy bank for transnational banking corporations - can we really protect ourselves from a technocratic takeover in the future. And the way to do it is pretty straightforward - it was Alexander Hamilton's idea back in the George Washington administration. Have the central bank owned by the US government and run by the Treasury Department, so all the profits from banking go directly into the Treasury and you and I pay less in taxes while the banksters on Wall Street can find a job at Wal-Mart."


And this is why the 1% is powerful, because people like this guy do their propaganda for free. Let's start off with the idea that the Federal Reserve can become an "instrument of the people". What does that mean? Which people should it become an instrument of? Obviously "the people" is not the shareholders of transnational banking corporations since that's what he's arguing against. How about the shareholders of construction and concrete companies? Are they more "the people" than the shareholders of the companies that compete with them for resources? How about those who get their income from debt, including most pensioners? Are they more "the people" than those who get their income from owning businesses? Or working for those businesses? Under his system the group that is "the people" gets to control the money supply to their benefit and the opposing groups detriment. If anyone would like to write about how this causes and endless, destructive, embittering, cynical, deceptive, manipulative war of all against all, please do so, but read "Atlas Shrugged" first because to be useful you have to improve on that and that's pretty hard.

But suppose for a moment we could agree on which random assortment of interest groups constitutes "the people" (and I bet a moment is all we could agree on it on). How would said collection of interest groups make the Fed it's "instrument"? Would it just say "We want interest rates to be 4%" without worrying about the means? Because that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Sort of like telling a ship's captain "Go in a direct straight line from Seoul to San Francisco". Inevitably the criminal gang interest group collective would have to transmit it's orders through several layers of technocrats, who could interpret their orders selectively and subtly push the advantages of people they're not supposed to push. They could then say that what the interest group collective asks is impossible given current conditions. Not being technocrats how would the IGC know the difference?
That the Fed couldn't be directly controlled by "the people" in the form of an electorate should be pretty obvious. Asking someone to make votes month-to-month on controls on M3, when they neither understand what it is nor the relationship to either other M-indicators, the interest rate, exchange rates, the real economy or anything else is bizarre and obviously not going to happen.

The alternative is that the Fed is controlled by people who are elected. The problem is that the job of any banker is to refuse to loan people money. This seems counterintutive, bankers surely get their money from _making_ loans right? But if depositors wanted their money loaned to whoever asked for it they could simply do that themselves, no need for fancy buildings, weekend golf trips deducted as business trips and all the other bank executives privileges. Banks must select amoung applicants, rejecting some or even most of them, if they want to add value to the loan process*. Politicians don't get elected, let alone reelected, by telling people they can't have stuff. It just doesn't happen. Popularly elected Fed Board members are a recipe for massive inflation, followed by popular complaints about the consequences of popular policies insistence on more power to the government, more policies that are popular and disasterous etc.

So what about the Fed being controlled by people appointed by elected politicians? Well for a start that's what we have now, which should be a sufficient argument against it. In case it's not, such appointments are doubly deficient in terms of "the people" controlling the Fed. For a start "the people" would have to closely monitor the appointment process and hold the politicians accountable for the results. They are unlikely to do this because each individuals opinion of the process is unlikely to change whether he votes for a particular politician. There are many issues that may change a person's vote, and Fed appointments are not likely to be the tipping point. If they're not the tipping point for a particular voter they're not relevant to how he votes. Even if they were each individual voter is unlikely to be the difference between a politician getting elected or not. So any effort the voter puts into examining the issue has two big hurdles to jump before it effectively contributes to change. This effectively puts control over what politicians do in this process in the hands of those who are most interested in the outcome and have most ability to affect politicians, which is to say lobbyists for the most interested parties, the banksters.

Then comes the suggestion that we have a central bank "owned by the US government", which is what we have now in reality, "so that all the profits" (as opposed to 95% of them) "go to the government". Of course by "all the profits" he means all the profits of the central bank itself not al the profits that the actions of the central bank create. When Alexander Hamilton did create a central bank somewhat like this the profits generated by it's actions went mostly to exactly the sort of people the author thinks of as looting bastards. They were thought of that way at the time, which is why that bank was shut, ending an inflationary period that looted the 99% for the 1% very effectively. Needless to say in the end the 99% did not pay less in Taxes and the banksters certainly didn't shop at, let alone work at, the 18th century equivalent of Walmart.

So given that the causes the author supports are directly opposed by the effects of his proposed actions, what gives? Is it that he simply has never been exposed to the arguments that allowing government more power benefits the rich and powerful? No, because they were available to anyone interested, and indeed pushed on those not interested, for decades. It's one thing to not know Milton Friedman's arguments when they're published in "Abstracts of Working Papers in Economics" and another when they're on the Phil Donahue show. You can be politically engaged and disagree with the arguments of libertarians, but you can't do so and not know those arguments. What you can do is pretend they don't exist so as to pretend that your diagnoses and cures are the only ones available. This is what the author is doing. Why pretend? Put simply he wants to advance intersts other than the ones he claims to advance. Therefore he must present his solution as the only one that advances the claimed interests. Otherwise solutions that do advance the claimed interests but don't advance the hidden ones might be adopted. Try to figure out what the hidden interests are. I have some theories but I want some confirmation.

* Some might observe that US banks stopped doing this and started approving home loans to any idiot that was not provably brain-dead at the signing. This is not a flaw in my theory because I said "If" they want to add value.

A critique of "Occupy Demands: Let’s Radicalize Our Analysis of Empire, Economics, Ecology" by Robert Jensen

"There’s one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands?
I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands."

Wow, when you start out like this you know it's not going to get better. The Occupy movement is supposedly about two things, one, pointing out that the system is broken and two getting people to change it. Kudos on achieving the first. On the second this guy wants someone to change things without knowing what changes they want. I suppose they're just going to have to keep occupying until you guess right. It's like a bad wife telling you "If you don't know what you've done I'm not going to tell you" and expecting you to make her happy somehow. Oh god, I'm critiquing Lillian Reardon.

"The demand for demands is an attempt to shoehorn the Occupy gatherings into conventional politics, to force the energy of these gatherings into a form that people in power recognize, so that they can roll out strategies to divert, co-opt, buy off, or -- if those tactics fail -- squash any challenge to business as usual."

No the demand for demands is an attempt to subject the Occupy movement to rational critique. Now of course some of the people who are demanding that hope to portray the movement as a bunch of know-nothing hippies and losers. Some however genuinely want to determine what they want and consider if it actually has any sense, morality or practically. I am one of those. I gotta be honest with you, so far, not so much.

The strategy of not presenting demands is essentially the strategy of saying "There is nothing you can do to satisfy us.". How much effort will people go to giving you the things you want if this is your strategy? Why help those who will deny that whatever you do is help?

"Rather than listing demands, we critics of concentrated wealth and power in the United States can dig in and deepen our analysis of the systems that produce that unjust distribution of wealth and power. This is a time for action, but there also is a need for analysisun."

Great, analyse, I'm all for it. But considering that these people are in a protest movement not a university coffee shop the analysis better include a plan of action. Otherwise it's just a thesis that you won't get a grade for.

"Rallying around a common concern about economic injustice is a beginning; understanding the structures and institutions of illegitimate authority is the next step. "

If you don't understand these things how do you know there is economic injustice? Analyse first THEN tell people you're upset and why. Otherwise you're just a crying baby.

"We need to recognize that the crises we face are not the result simply of greedy corporate executives or corrupt politicians, but rather of failed systems. The problem is not the specific people who control most of the wealth of the country, or those in government who serve them, but the systems that create those roles. If we could get rid of the current gang of thieves and thugs but left the systems in place, we will find that the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss."

Absolutely right. The idea that replacing some personnel in a flawed system will solve the problem is very, very wrong. A new captain of a sinking ship is not a change either he or I can believe in.

"My contribution to this process of sharpening analysis comes in lists of three, with lots of alliteration. Whether you find my analysis of the key questions compelling, at least it will be easy to remember: empire, economics, ecology.
Empire: Immoral, Illegal, Ineffective"

I'm not going to comment much on the empire section as it's a fairly standard and fairly accurate account of US imperialism. If you're read one critique of US imperialism you've read them all. The only quibble I have is with the idea that the goal of US policy was to prevent independent development. Independent development that lead to greater production in the developing nation would have been a massive boon to the 1% who supposedly control things. And China is developing pretty independently, with the western capitalist class not influencing the Chinese government at all, if anything the reverse is true. A better explanation is standard public choice theory, government departments, including the military, do things because that's how you get a budget.

"Economics: Inhuman, Anti-Democratic, Unsustainable
The economic system underlying empire-building today has a name: capitalism. Or, more precisely, a predatory corporate capitalism that is inconsistent with basic human values."

And here he goes off the rails. Capitalism is a word used to describe a lot of different systems, from laissez-faire to mercantilism and even massively regulated fascism. He doesn't really distinguish between these forms.

"This description sounds odd in the United States, where so many assume that capitalism is not simply the best among competing economic systems but the only sane and rational way to organize an economy in the contemporary world. Although the financial crisis that began in 2008 has scared many people, it has not always led to questioning the nature of the system."

I'm not sure what he means but "has not always lead to questioning the nature of the system". Reading capitalist websites I've noticed a lot of questioning of the system, and on socialist websites too. Everyone from George Soros to the town drunk has been questioning the system.

"That means the first task is to define capitalism: that economic system in which (1) property, including capital assets, is owned and controlled by private persons; (2) most people must rent their labor power for money wages to survive, and (3) the prices of most goods and services are allocated by markets."

There is just so many questions begged here. How do you define if a capital asset is "controlled by private persons"? If there are literally thousands of rules about the asset you have to follow do you still "control" it? Even if one of those rules is "You must rent it to this person at this rate until we say you can rent it to someone else."? Because that's not much control, and arguably it isn't really ownership.

The idea that "most people must rent their labour power" is an untestable theory. Most people do but to what extent "must" they? If they decided instead to invest their savings in capital goods and start their own business would they survive? What does he mean by "most people must"? Is he saying that the majority of people are in the situation where they must rent their labour, or that even though each person who does so need not there must be at least a majority who do? Does he mean even if each one of the majority could individually quit and become an entrepreneur that less than 49% could do it at one time? What's his evidence for this? He has no experience in the entrepreneurial world so I can't see how he'd know.
As for the prices of most goods and services being allocated by the market, I don't believe that's true. With at least 40% of the money spent by government and regulations, tariffs, quota, subsidies and other forms of interference covering almost all the rest it's reasonable to believe that most prices are set at least in part by government action not the market. The most important price, the interest rate certainly is and that affects every other price out there. To really answer this question of what proportion of prices are allocated by the market would require a) a good definition of what we mean by "allocate prices" and "the market" and a probably a book length essay. Needless to say he has done nowhere near enough research to give us any of these.

" “Industrial capitalism,” made possible by sweeping technological changes and imperial concentrations of capital, was marked by the development of the factory system and greater labor specialization. The term “finance capitalism” is often used to mark a shift to a system in which the accumulation of profits in a financial system becomes dominant over the production processes."

Not exactly sure what he means by "accumulation of profits... dominant over the production process", without the "production process" the banks don't have anybody to lend to or get deposits from. The insurance and finance sector is about 8% of GDP, arguably too large but not exactly "dominant" over the manufacturing sector which is 11% of GDP. I don't think there has ever been a large modern economy with a finance sector bigger than the manufacturing sector, so when has "finance capitalism" happened? Of course there are small countries that were banking hubs for larger collections of countries, but since the whole reason they are is because the economies of said countries were interconnected and arguably one economy that isn't finance capitalism either. The finance sector in the USA is less about 1/5th the size of the government sector so what is "dominant"?

This is symptomatic of the problem of many intellectuals when talking about economics. They don't know basic facts about the economy, but they know what their fellow intellectuals have said, and believe them, without checking if they knew their facts.

"Today in the United States, most people understand capitalism in the context of mass consumption -- access to unprecedented levels of goods and services. In such a world, everything and everyone is a commodity in the market."

Everything is a commodity in the market? How much bride price did this guy pay? Where did he hire his friends? And the Social Security payments he's hoping to get, were they provided in the market or by government? Why is it people on the left can say things that everyday experience shows are false and be praised for it?

"In the dominant ideology of market fundamentalism,"

Ok, I know it's generally not cool to cut someone in the middle of a sentence but I gotta pull this guy up here. I happen to be a market fundamentalist and lemme tell ya, we're not exactly "dominant" (he keeps using that word). Let's run down a few of the things that "market fundamentalists" believe would be good and compare them to both what actually happens and what most people of influence like. Bear in mind this is in the USA where "market fundamentalism" is said to be at it's strongest. I think we can all agree in Europe it's much weaker. I've had some formatting problems so just scroll down.

What market fundamentalist like	What actually happens	What influential people say is good.
No central bank.	Central bank.	Central bank with even more power.
Spectrum allocated by "homesteading", no government involvement except to confirm homesteading rights in court.	Spectrum allocated by government agency, with rules on what can be broadcast, in what format at what time.	Spectrum allocated by government agency, with rules on what can be broadcast, in what format at what time.
Ron Paul for President.	Barack Obama	Rick Perry, seriously.
Farming not subsidised or regulated beyond "no force or fraud".	Farming heavily subsidised, with amazingly intrusive regulations where you have to pour bleach on your food if it's not up to code (even if it's perfectly safe)./td>	What actually happens but more so.
Education all private and paid for by parents. Government does not set or influence teaching methods, teacher selection, curriculum or other major elements.	Pretty much everything in education set or influenced by government. Few parents pay for primary or secondary education, considerable government finances at tertiary level.	What actually happens but more so.
Healthcare and health insurance not regulated beyond "no force or fraud", no government payment of health costs other than of it's employees as part of a compensation package. People can buy or not buy health insurance if they like.	Massive amounts of regulation of both healthcare and health insurance, with 1/3 of the money spent by government and mandatory purchase of health insurance for many people.	Some resistance to Obamacare but other than that the ruling class are happy with the status quo.
If banks go broke they go broke, don't come crying to us about it.	If banks go broke the government pays them hundreds of billions of dollars to keep working.	If anything they'd like to hand over even more of our money.
Anyone can be hired or fired for any reason, after all it's his money and if he doens't want want to spend it on you, tough.	Thousands of words of regulations on why and how you can hire or fire someone.	Maybe some influential people want the government to have less say in this but not much less.
Few regulations.	Thousands of regulations and a considerable increase in their number during both the Bush and Obama presidencies.	Again some might argue for a few less regulations, but by and large they're all in favour of having thousands, some just don't want to crack 5 figures, yet.
No subsidies for "alterantive energy" whether solar, nuclear or whatever.	Billions of dollars of subsidies for almost every form of energy known to man, including ethanol, the biggest agricultural boondoggle since "price stability".	If anything even more of this rubbish than we presently have.
Roads 90%+ privately owned.	Roads 90%+ publicly owned.	Roads 90%+ publicly owned.

So much for our "dominance".

"it’s assumed that the most extensive use of markets possible, along with privatization of many publicly owned assets and the shrinking of public services, will unleash maximal competition and result in the greatest good -- and all this is inherently just, no matter what the results. If such a system creates a world in which most people live in poverty, that is taken not as evidence of a problem with market fundamentalism but evidence that fundamentalist principles have not been imposed with sufficient vigor; it is an article of faith that the “invisible hand” of the market always provides the preferred result, no matter how awful the consequences may be for real people."

The fact that "market fundamentalists" can point to specific harms to the poor and others because our "principles have not been imposed with sufficient vigor" doesn't rate a mention.

"How to critique capitalism in such a society? We can start by pointing out that capitalism is fundamentally inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable."

Well you could start by pointing out it's mostly absent.

"Inhuman: The theory behind contemporary capitalism explains that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, a viable economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior."

Well no, because we are "self-interested animals" we must reward behavior that's actually good for other people. Self-interested behaviour will naturally reward itself because hey, that's the point. Of course much behaviour that is described in this paradigm as "self-interested" doesn't appear to be at first glance. For instance feeding one's children is "self-interested" because you want them to live. So is contributing to a club you want to continue operating, even if you don't have to. The trick is to arrange things so that by serving one's own interest one's serves the interest of others. It's hard to believe anyone is so ignorant of what capitalist proponents propose that they haven't heard this.

"That’s certainly part of human nature, but we also just as obviously are capable of compassion and selflessness. We can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have the capacity to act out of solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging. In situations where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior."

Nobody ever denied that people can be compassionate, or "selfless" whatever that means. What is suggested is that relying on compassion to get your bread baked isn't a good idea for most people. what are these situations where "compassion and solidarity are the norm"? How is it possible to make them more common? He doesn't say, he just assumes that capitalism reduces them. However since capitalism has flourished so has the desire to help the poor. Slavery was ended in large part due to the efforts of people in capitalist countries who had not a single friend or relative enslaved. The modern period has seen more non-kin altruistic behaviour than any other period in history both absolutely and as a percentage of production. Is this due to capitalism or in spite of it? He gives no indication he even knows the question could be asked.

He doesn't tell us how "competitiveness and agression" are rewarded and he doesn't seem to want to distinguish between these two very different types of behaviour. Aggresion isn't necessarily competitive and competitiveness isn't necessarily aggressive. Every day this guy uses products that are as cheap and as good as they are because the producers are competing for his business. Yet he presents "competitiveness" as a bad thing.

"Why is it that we must accept an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the cruelest?"

As pointed out he hasn't shown that we do. In fact arguably we accept a system that does the opposite.

"Because, we’re told, that’s just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around, we’re told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-interest."

Well considering the massive amount of philantropy in the US I guess that depends on where you look.

"So the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way."

Again the claim that capitalism rewards greed and self-interested behaviour is made, with no evidence whatsover. It rewards them compared to what? Would reward gree and self-interested behaviour more or less? How about totalitarianism?

"Anti-democratic: In the real world -- not in the textbooks or fantasies of economics professors -- capitalism has always been, and will always be, a wealth-concentrating system."

In the real world he cites not a single study, statistic, theory or even anecdote to support this view. The fact that textbooks of a subject say something would, for most people, suggest that there is at least some evidence that suggests it's true. This would tend to indicate to a real intellectual that he must present some evidence that it's not. Mr Jensen doesn't bother.

"If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power. I know of no historical example to the contrary.

For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that for the most part, the wealthy dictate the basic outlines of the public policies that are put into practice by elected officials. This is cogently explained by political scientist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of political parties,” which identifies powerful investors rather than unorganized voters as the dominant force in campaigns and elections. Ferguson describes political parties in the United States as “blocs of major investors who coalesce to advance candidates representing their interests” and that “political parties dominated by large investors try to assemble the votes they need by making very limited appeals to particular segments of the potential electorate.” There can be competition between these blocs, but “on all issues affecting the vital interests that major investors have in common, no party competition will take place.” Whatever we might call such a system, it’s not democracy in any meaningful sense of the term."
Great so under what system would the major investors have the most power? Well under free market capitalism they would have virtually none, because by definition the governemnt doesn't do a lot so it can't do a lot to benefit major investors. Mr Jensen is so utterly ignorant of economics and politics that he has no idea that this is true.

"People can and do resist the system’s attempt to sideline them, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist sometimes win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to dominate."

Ok, but WHAT does it dominate and to what end? Primarily it dominates (he really likes that word) governemnt interference in the market, the opposite of "market fundamentalism". So the best solution is to remove the government interference so that the motive for interference by concentrated wealth is removed.

"If we define democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it’s clear that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive."

Ok let's assume that's true, what would you rather have a "meaningful way to participate" in controlling someone else's life or control of your own? Because you can't have both. Either you get to help boss someone else around or you get to not be bossed around. Democracy is simply people thinking that because there is a lot of them they're right, the argumentum ad populem fallacy as policy.

"Unsustainable: Capitalism is a system based on an assumption of continuing, unlimited growth -- on a finite planet."

Actually it's not. There is no need for continuing, unlimited, positive or even non-negative growth to justify capitalism. If one was in a situation where for some reason economic growth was inevitably going to be less than zero e.g. on a spaceship with resources that depleted over time and with too few people to make technical advances big enough to compensate for that, capitalism would still be the most efficient and the best system. Capitalism has often been sold as though it's main advantage was economic growth, but the sales pitch isn't necessarily an indication of the best qualities of something, only it's most marketable ones.

"There are only two ways out of this problem. We can hold out hope that we might hop to a new planet soon, or we can embrace technological fundamentalism and believe that evermore complex technologies will allow us to transcend those physical limits here."

He likes this word "fundmentalism" too. Evermore complex technologies have already allowed us to transcend the physical limits here. That's why the US has as much forest now as it did 100 years ago, despite having an economy that with 1911 technologies would need several times more wood. That's why whale oil isn't in short supply any more, even though whales are.

"Both those positions are equally delusional."

Now what do you think is the most arrogant thing you can do when commenting on a political, scientific or economic issue? I would say that calling people delusional without presenting a single shred of evidence that they're wrong is pretty high up there.

"Critics now compare capitalism to cancer."

Which critics? Are they experts in either cancer or capitalism? Have they made useful predictions that would indicate their theories of capitalism are empirical?

"The inhuman and antidemocratic features of capitalism mean that, like a cancer, the death system will eventually destroy the living host."

The "inhuman" features of capitalism if you'll recall consisted of it allegedly being based on theories of human behaviour he didn't like. Nothing else, just a contradiciton between what he would like to be true and what capitalism allegedly holds to be true. This doesn't exactly prove that ie will destroy anything let alone everything. As for the anti-democratic features, non-democratic societies persisted for thousands of years so clearly being anti-democratic isn't a death sentence.

"Both the human communities and non-human living world that play host to capitalism eventually will be destroyed by capitalism."

Again this is based soley on the belief that it's based on certain theories of human behaviour, is allegedly anti-democratic, and allegedly assume continaully growth none of which he shows is true and capable of destroying the earth.

"Capitalism is not, of course, the only unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the most obviously unsustainable system,"

Again he presented no evidence that it was unsustainable, only his belief that it
assumes continual growth (it doesn't), that such growth is impossible (it doesn't appear to be)

"and it’s the one in which we are stuck. It’s the one that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air we breathe. But the air that we are breathing is choking the most vulnerable in the world, choking us, choking the planet."

The most vulnerable in the world appear to mostly live in very uncapitalist places.

"Ecology: Out of Gas, Derailed, Over the Waterfall
In addition to inequality within the human family, we face even greater threats in the human assault on the living world that come with industrial society. High-energy/high-technology societies pose a serious threat to the ability of the ecosphere to sustain human life as we know it. Grasping that reality is a challenge, and coping with the implications is an even greater challenge."

But the greatest challenge is finding a single fact that backs up this theory in his essay.

"We likely have a chance to stave off the most catastrophic consequences if we act dramatically and quickly. If we continue to drag our feet, it’s “game over.”
While public awareness of the depth of the ecological crisis is growing, our knowledge of the basics of the problem is hardly new. Here is a “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” issued by 1,700 of the planet’s leading scientists: "
And how many of these scientists have studied the relationship between population and poverty? Because they made a big thing about how there's so many poor people and how we need to stabilise population, even though the greatest reductions in poverty happened during the industrial revolution when populations were exploding in the places were poverty was imploded.

“Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.”

http://deoxy.org/sciwarn.htm

That statement was issued in 1992, and since then we have fallen further behind in the struggle for sustainability. Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live -- groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity -- and the news is bad. "

So even the argument from authority he used is 19 years old. He claims that every measure shows us worse off, but he doesn't quote one. Nor does he compare the deterioration in capitalist and non-capitalist countries. So basically he's claiming there's a problem, that capitalism caused it and that less capitalism would solve it, without even a scintilla of evidence that this is true.

"Remember also that we live in an oil-based world that is fast running out of easily accessible oil,"

Yeah, remember that, because he's not about to remind you by posting any actual evidence to that effect.

"which means we face a huge reconfiguration of the infrastructure that undergirds our lives. And, of course, there is the undeniable trajectory of climate disruption."

Let's agree to disagree on whether it's undeniable or even undesirable.

"Add all that up, and ask a simple question: Where we are heading? Pick a metaphor. Are we a car running out of gas? A train about to derail? A raft going over the waterfall? Whatever the choice, it’s not a pretty picture. It’s crucial we realize that there are no technological fixes that will rescue us."

And by "realise" he means "assume" because again, he presents no evidence of this.

"We have to acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed."

Yeah I'm betting this guy is vaccinated, so clearly he believes some attempts to dominate (again that word) the non-human world worked out pretty well.

"Facing a Harsh Future with a Stubborn Hope
The people who run this world are eager to contain the Occupy energy not because they believe the critics of concentrated wealth and power are wrong, but because somewhere deep down in their souls (or what is left of a soul), the powerful know we are right."

About what? Criticism of concentrated wealth and power or criticism of capitalism? These are not the same thing. Or does he mean criticism of the current system which is not capitalism as understood by "market fundamentalists".

"People in power are insulated by wealth and privilege, but they can see the systems falling apart. The United States’ military power can no longer guarantee world domination. The financial corporations can no longer pretend to provide order in the economy."

Actually the regulators pretended to do that. They were quite convincing, as long as you didn't enquiry too much.

"The industrial system is incompatible with life."

And the unsupported assertions just keep on coming.

"We face new threats today, but we are not the first humans to live in dangerous times. In 1957 the Nobel writer Albert Camus described the world in ways that resonate:

“Tomorrow the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.”

The question of how to get rid of hierarchies is a vexed and important one. What does he suggest?Well nothing really, except the implication that democracy is good, which in any large society will lead to hierarchy. Note that the fear Camus had was of nuclear weapons, a problem entirely created by government.

"A stubborn hope is more necessary than ever. As political, economic, and ecological systems spiral down, it’s likely we will see levels of human suffering that dwarf even the horrors of the 20th century."

Again, no evidence for this likelihood is presented.

"Even more challenging is the harsh realization that we don’t have at hand simple solutions -- and maybe no solutions at all -- to some of the most vexing problems. We may be past the point of no return in ecological damage, and the question is not how to prevent crises but how to mitigate the worst effects. No one can predict the rate of collapse if we stay on this trajectory, and we don’t know if we can change the trajectory in time.

There is much we don’t know, but everything I see suggests that the world in which we will pursue political goals will change dramatically in the next decade or two, almost certainly for the worse. Organizing has to adapt not only to changes in societies but to these fundamental changes in the ecosphere. In short: We are organizing in a period of contraction, not expansion."

Of course there is no actual guidance for how that affects organiation or even if it does.

"We have to acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed. We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves. Here, just as in human relationships, we either abandon the dominance/subordination dynamic or we don’t survive.

In 1948, Camus urged people to “give up empty quarrels” and “pay attention to what unites rather that to what separates us” in the struggle to recover from the horrors of Europe’s barbarism. I take from Camus a sense of how to live the tension between facing honestly the horror and yet remaining engaged. In that same talk, he spoke of “the forces of terror” (forces which exist on “our” side as much as on “theirs”) and the “forces of dialogue” (which also exist everywhere in the world). Where do we place our hopes?

“Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun,” he wrote. “I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought.”

The Occupy gatherings do not yet constitute a coherent movement with demands, but they are wellsprings of reasonable illusions."

Well if they're illusions how are they reasonable?

" Rejecting the political babble around us in election campaigns and on mass media, these gatherings are an experiment in a different kind of public dialogue about our common life, one that can reject the forces of terror deployed by concentrated wealth and power."

Ignoring something is not the same as rejecting it. If you seriously think that the answer is to protest without even the pretence of being mollifiable then you're just ignoring the forces of terror and indeed reality. Of course one has to ask, is Jensen even prepared to reject the forces of terror? Well his solution appears to depend on men with guns making other people do what he wants (or what "we" want since he's so democratic.

"With that understanding, the central task is to keep the experiment going, to remember the latent power in people who do not accept the legitimacy of a system."

Right, so the idea is not to actually achieve political goals but to continue trying to achieve them. That's the "central task", not oh I don't know, helping the poor, educating the people, giving the people revenge justice for the crimes of banksters. No it's just keeping the momentum, without reason or motive. You might think I'm misinterpreting him here and maybe I am, but I suspect not. I suspect he and a large number of intellectuals benefit both materially and non-materially from this sort of thing continuing. Materially this sort of protest sparks more interest in political events and perspectives lifting book sales (he has written several). Non-materially as long as OWS continues the dream of intellectuals challenging and changing the status quo continues and they can think themselves movers and shakers and not discredited time-serving wretches who long ago gave up their idealism for tenure and a book deal. Fundamentally this article wasn't an intellectual piece it was a religious one. A prayer to secular gods which no more required evidence than Sunday mass does.

First Truths: Osgood on "Scientific Anarchism"

First Truths: Osgood on "Scientific Anarchism": From Volume IV., Number I. of Political Science Quarterly  (March, 1889): In anarchism we have the extreme antithesis of socialism and comm...

Failed attempt at Lot5R odds calculator.

function: limitedex DICENUM with SIDES for NUMEX{
STORE: 0
loop COUNT over {1..DICENUM}{
STORE : STORE + ( NUMEXdSIDES = NUMEX * SIDES)
}
result: STORE
}
function: A lotfrdice B{
TE: [limitedex A with 10 for 3]
DICELEFT: A - TE
DE: [limitedex DICELEFT with 10 for 2]
DICELEFT: DICELEFT - DE
SE: [limitedex DICELEFT with 10 for 1]
DICELEFT: DICELEFT - SE
TECOUNTED: [lower of TE and B]
DECOUNTED: [lower of DE and B-TE]
SECOUNTED: [lower of SE with B-TE-DE]
RES: 30 * TECOUNTED + [highest TECOUNTED of TEd10]
RES: RES + 20 * DECOUNTED + [highest DECOUNTED of DEd10]
RES: RES + 10 * SECOUNTED + [highest SECOUNTED of SEd10]
RES: RES + [highest [B-TE-DE-SE] of [A-TE-DE-SE]d10]
result: RES
}
output [3 lotfrdice 2]

So the liar known as agapeiron said he will resond.

Specifically to this:

www.jim/cat/terror.htm
Let's see if he does.

The reason the State is desperate.

Stefan Molyneux claimed that the US state has become more tyrannical and violent because it's running out of money to bribe their constituents. While this certainly adds a level of desperation the primary cause is an accelerating cycle of propaganda and failure. The State is fundamentally trapped by the expectations it creates and every time it expands it's power and expense to escape this trap it makes this worse. One of the problems is that the State's agents are highly propagandised themselves and therefore cannot adjust policies even to benefit the state.

The drug war is a great example of the propaganda/failure cycle. It started with a flawed idea of removing drugs from America. Naturally this failed. In response to any failure the person or group who fails has four options. Firstly they could state that the original concept was fundamentally flawed and unachievable. Secondly they could state that while the concept is sound, they are not competent to execute it. Thirdly they could claim that they could achieve it but were not allowed to do the things neccesary to do so. Fourthly they could claim that the policy suceeded, possibly by redefining "success". A propaganda/failure cycle occurs when the first two options are extremely undesirable in career and pyscological tersm for those participating and the fourth is not credible. The drug war is a prime, but by no means only, example of this in government.

As failed results for a policy accumulate the part of the state held responsible for it has a problem. This includes not just cops and civil servants, but senior policy makers and politicians. They must maintain the belief that the policy is worthwhile and best achieved by keeping the current personel largely intact. Of course the occasional sacrifice, even a high ranking one, can be made. One or two can retire to spend more time with their families, the interests of the families of course being irrelevant. However if the participants are to retain their careers, their prestige and most importantly their self-belief then the main body of them must continue doing the jobs they're doing. Therefore they insist that they must be less restricted if they are to achieve their goals. The two main forms of this are requests for more resources and for greater ability to violate traditional liberties.

If this approach results in something that can credibly be called a "success", at least at a minimal level, then further attacks on liberty, fraternity and prosperity are unnecessary. That doesn't mean they won't happen, but they will certainly be less rapid and may be abandoned in the face of determined opposition. If the project, like the drug war, is fundamentally flawed and incapable of any but small and transitory sucesses then each expansion of resources and powers must be followed by another. Not to do so is impossible because the people making the decisions have a combination of interest and propagand-created belief in the program that makes it impossible to abandon it. There are occasional exceptions to this for instance Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, but the vast majority of the people in the apparatus will be effectively rock solid on continuing.

To understand why this is so consider that they are the prime recipients of State propaganda for the project. Obviously those who believe most in the project will be more likely to be recruited for it. After recruitment their leaders will have an interest in continuing the propaganda so as to get the best motivation and results. This is true even if adequate results are impossible to achieve since the leader of each section wants to have his team shine compared to other teams. Those who are not effectively propagandised will tend to leave the project as it's failure becomes more and more evident. Those that remain have invested more and more time, knowledge and esteem (including self-esteem) in the project and lose it if failure is ever acknowledged. Therefore they have an interest in never admitting defeat and that interest is abetted by their bosses.

Each time the participants attempt to increase the money and power available to them they must propagandise the people who determine whether or not they are allowed to do so. This is to some extent the general public, to some extent business leaders, special interests, politicians, foreign governments and anyone else whose support or at least non-opposition could prevent the increase. A certain power balance must be achieved to actually advance, and since the policy is fundamentally flawed it cannot deliver net benefits. Therefore some must be deceptively convinced they gain by the policy and those who lose must be propagandised to ignore their costs. The resultant propaganda is a trap. The relevant parts of the State cannot be "depropagandise" these people, or even attempt to do so, without a backlash of anger and resentment. They effectively become part of people held responsible for the policy, since they supported it. To see it end would implicate them in the abuses inflicted for it which were justified "pragmatically". This would make the supporters even since once the ends that justified the means are gone, there is just the evil means. Therefore they form part of the reason that going back on the policy is "politically impossible". That is to say no sufficiently powerful combination of political forces exists opposed to the policy. Too many people have too much to lose from it's ending.

Not only that but the project must continually seek to expand it's size, power and abusiveness. Since the excuse for failure is insufficient size, power and abusiveness in the inevitable absence of sucess a vote not to expand these is effectively a vote to end the project. If the statement is made "We must allow (warrantless searches/confiscation without trial/abusive detention/etc) if we want to end (insert problem)." then a refusal is effectively saying it's not a gaol worth pursuing. If the goal is not worth pursuing then the conclusion will be reached that obviously the current costs in liberties and money aren't worth it either. Since the entire aim is to avoid that conclusion this is unacceptable and the people held responsible for the project will do anything to avoid it. Thus the cycle ends only when the expense and abuses are so egregous a fundamental political realignment, possibly a revolution occurs. This stage is fast approaching in the USA.

Lastly the reason I don't believe that bankruptcy and subsequent ending of goodies for the people are the reason for the most recent new tyrannies. The powers that be are fully aware that they don't have the strength to suppress the parasite classes. There are simply too many people who get goodies from the current system to jail them all or even a large enough part of them to intimidate the others. Naturally both wings of the Demopublican party will be bribed but there comes a point at which even the most extravagent campaign donations and ludicrously biased coverage won't make up for the votes lost from no longer divvying up the loot. Therefore it's politically impossible to pursue this as well. Indeed attempting to use these tactics against the parasite class will destroy their support for it's use against others massively eroding the power of the State.