This article is about every evil thing in the world. A great conspiracy has thrived for millennia, and is expanding faster than ever.
No, this isn't about 'Skull and Bones' again. It's the conspiracy of the mainstream, and at least 51% of society is a member. The worst part is that they actually believe they're right.
There's never been a real democracy anywhere, just a heavy consensus in places like North Korea and your high school. A sphere of mandatory agreement giving the illusion of general influence, as if you agreed to the rules or were born to obey them.
Very few people are ready to admit the world is actually evil (the concept of malism). Some think there's too little of what others say there's too much of (civil rights, birth control, drug rights, property rights and all other freedoms).
For centuries, political power has flowed from the barrel of a gun, before that swords and spears, before that stone axes and sharpened sticks.
Politics is the inevitable sum of irreconcilable conflicts, a wild and random balance.
When there's a real social emergency, as during wartime, people are willing to sacrifice. When there's a political emergency, like some favored group demands more money, the government has to enforce the sacrifice with threats of violence. This happens in even the most peaceful societies.
Are politicians devils, or just unintentionally evil? Mostly the latter. It takes a lot of effort to be truly evil.
Even the most invasive legislation is usually the result of many deliberations and compromises. The decision-makers inevitably feel they've arrived at the least bad solution for them. They half-think of themselves as misunderstood benefactors.
Still, Smoot Hawley would be a good name for a supervillain.
Politicians have to be ruthless, since agreement is impossible anyway.
To quote Didymus Mutasa, who helped make Zimbabwe what it is: "The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead . . ."
A stream of legislation and directives signals the birth of a new power structure. More than by the taxes and rules themselves, citizens are burdened by the costs of compliance. There's nothing more annoying than bureaucracy except physical pain, and the latter can end.
The pressure serves an important purpose. To force its subjects to obey, a government has to keep track of them. Citizens have to be accurately registered, even if it requires massive duplication of agencies and paperwork. Many methods can achieve this goal. The most important one is fear.
Half of all homeless people in the USA have managed to misplace their ID documents. In order to discourage such carelessness, they're not allowed to get jobs.
Chinese peasants can get industrial jobs in the teeming eastern regions, but they can't get residency permits to rent a home. Migrant workers are crammed together in dormitories, earning a dollar a day. This allows the communist authorities to control a transient population larger than Western Europe.
Back in the old USA, the Digital Transition Content Security Act would require every digital device to obey a coded signal, so that its files can be erased by government authorized agents.
Drug laws are used to prevent disruptive subcultures from taking root.
The government has set up an immense infrastructure to own its subjects. They were defeated before they were born. It's quite impossible to break free.
The most complained about burden is taxes.
Most people have to work extraordinarily hard to make money. It can be very unpleasant. It's often worse than death.
Politics on the other hand is the ultimate luxury. It's all about appearances, the true foundation of society. This is also the second explanation for the War on Drugs.
In order to appear charitable, the US government invests trillions of dollars to extend the lives of the incapacitated elderly by a few weeks or months, and is planning to spend vastly more.
The manned space program spends billions of dollars for every astronaut death averted. The wasted money could vaccinate half of Africa.
In my experience, wealthy liberals simply can't understand the value of labor. One of them tore down OJ Simpson's old house to begin a 'spiritual healing process'.
It's fun to consume wealth created by others without feeling their pain.
The next step is controlling other people. It's easy if you're isolated from the consequences, as every dictator from Mao to Hubbard has discovered; but that's just part of the picture. A fundamental feature of human nature is the tendency to obey.
The most successful federal program may be 'Abstinence Only' education, designed to prevent unmarried persons from having sex, while also discouraging them from having an abortion if they do accidentally have sex (Bush's and Obama's pastors also disapprove of birth control).
Simply ordering unmarried minors to abstain from sex turns out to be successful 99.999% of the time. Teenagers will actually do what they're told. They're the most conservative humans of all.
Unfortunately, they only have to disobey 0.001% of the time to explain the high US teen pregnancy rate. Their guardians can't monitor their behavior all the time.
It's not love that makes the world go round, but submission. Most organizations exist to ratify, extend, and stabilize existing power arrangements.
Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali was roundly condemned by Newsweek magazine for daring to criticize Islam, only the tip of this magazine's evil iceberg. Criticizing religion like other subjects is just not done. It's considered extremely bad form.
Everyone is supposed to submit to the prevailing hierarchy, and to avoid making waves. Everyone is born with obligations disguised as privileges.
This is also the core of patriotism.
Let me be clear: the USA is not MY country.
I don't own it, or any significant portion. As a citizen, I'm merely allowed to live here. There are no good countries, only less bad ones. The USA is probably the least bad one, not really a country but an operating system.
Here many people can at least own their own homes, with a flag outside and a gun inside.
Ultimately, the world will need something better than countries, but that will be difficult. No agency ever gives up authority voluntarily. There's no such thing as idealism in the real world.
The core problem is that people are dangerous. Just visit any slum or executive boardroom. Many are also depressed, unlikable, and unpredictable up close. The poor are just as evil as their leaders.
Many people just want to be left alone, but everyone has to earn the right to be lazy.
Of course the rules of laziness don't apply to the most complicated product: making more people. In this area, productivity is very high.
The main cause of poverty has always been overpopulation, though it can temporarily increase economic growth.
Most people don't realize that most highly complex systems (like the rain forest, Switzerland, or the music industry) are not nearly as wealthy as they appear to be. An abundance of slowly accumulated wealth creates the illusion of permanent growth. Once the liabilities exceed the assets, the collapse can be quite sudden.
After years of worldwide population expansion policies under different US presidents, most notably the theocrat Bush 2, humanity is overdue for a crash. Agriculture around the world has become very energy intensive. No one knows how China or India would respond to new famines. The Third World will generate more mass migrations toward Europe and North America, where the liberal elite will probably let them in.
Such a disaster could only be prevented by many different types of conservation; including simplification, automation, deregulation, and birth control. It may already be too late.
However, chaos can also be a time of opportunity for a few resourceful individuals.
Inflation, depressions, and wars can encourage people to finally get rid of inefficient arrangements. Existing power networks can even be smashed, as happened in Russia in 1917 and 1991.
The details are impossible to plan for or even to anticipate. The best anyone can hope is to be ready when an unexpected opportunity arises.
This is where we start asking ethical questions. Whether the guiding principle should be passive (do no harm), active (contribute to your group only), or radical (donate to charity without expecting anything back) may become a matter of life or death in the coming decades.
The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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