09-25 Jack Arcalon

the universal conspiracy

political observations

This article is about every bad thing in the world. A great conspiracy has thrived for millennia, and is doing fine.
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. Worst part is they actually believe they're right.
There's never been a real democracy anywhere, just 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 raises some ethical questions. Whether the guiding principle should be passive (do no harm), active (contribute to your group only), radical (donate to charity without expecting anything back) or just try to accelerate progress as much as possible no matter what.

1/3/09-1/12

against the culture of life

life prolongation and the politics of mandatory charity

Abortion was super illegal in highly overpopulated Rwanda in 1994 while the machete slaughter was peaking. According to pro-life activists, that was the only good thing about the situation. They think abortion should be outlawed everywhere and always (except to save the life and possibly the health of the mother).
Banning abortion would indeed make sense if pregnancies passed unnoticed and a baby suddenly materialized at the end. Real-life pregnancies and births are agonizing, but the pain is considered less important than Life.
The hard core of the controversy isn't whether abortion is right or wrong (all sides agree to disagree), but whether it should be prevented by force. It's a police attack problem that can never be settled by persuasion alone.

The world is suffused with slow killing. Abortion is painless and harmless if performed early enough, so of course it has to be controlled, unlike ritual slaughter. Authoritarian politicians from Clinton to Boehner agree that God disapproves of the former more than the latter.
For those who believe in choice, the only permanent solution is to develop clandestine abortion methods, so that it can never be banned completely. It's already possible to induce miscarriages with drugs, but these are only available by prescription. Pharmacists can refuse to fill them, and confiscate the prescriptions for faith-based reasons. President Bush's final religious directive, enforced by the Department of Health and Human Services, gives any healthcare provider a personal veto over any abortion or birth control procedure, provided they can demonstrate their church, mosque, temple, or Scientology Org is opposed. It even works if they only have vague moral scruples.
In the future, an illegal abortion industry may thrive once again. Most pro-choice liberals are deeply troubled by the thought of defying the government in any way, and doubt they could ever do it.
Religious authorities have also banned stem cell research for theological reasons. Few people dare to point out that stem cells don't have any feelings, while millions of animals are slaughtered daily without the slightest moral discomfort.

At the other end of life, euthanasia has been banned for as long as humans have suffered death agonies. Like abortion, it's considered murder, and causes more outrage than ethnic cleansing, genital mutilation, and serial killers who are also dictators.
The worst controversies involve the right to pleasure and the right to avoid pain. Can the latter override the right to life itself, making it OK to kill sometimes?

Life is unreasonably valuable (our standards are probably too high). That implies that life can also have an extreme negative value.
The way things work out, that is very often the case. For many people if not most, life may be pointless. In fact reality is more horrible than anyone can imagine. Most possible minds should not exist. Of course, if they insist on existing anyway, that's strictly their decision.

If they don't want to exist, death is the ultimate right.
Prisoners should have the option to have their sentences commuted to immediate execution if they can't stand being incarcerated. Instead, prisons will actually resuscitate Death Row inmates scheduled to be executed the same day (though that might be a fitting punishment for their crimes).
Terminal patients have it even worse. They too are forced to suffer until the bitter end. Euthanasia opponents expect the victim's pain circuits will wear out from overuse, and they will get used to it.
All forms of suicide remain forbidden, except in a few formal and bureaucratic jurisdictions like Oregon and Switzerland, where even freedom creates more regulations.

The world is both stranger and more evil than it appears: why has no dominant group legalized suicide for a despised minority? They could have provided attractive methods, like recreational drug overdoses.
That would have been too easy. Humans want others to suffer. It can be a sign of love or hate.

Meanwhile, they remain terrified of non-existence: by definition an unannoying state.
Personally, I hope to die by euthanasia in about forty years time, under the influence of yet to be discovered drugs. At the current rate of social progress it won't be legal by then. The world's confessional and scriptural authorities just refuse to loosen their grips. They even outlaw painkillers like marijuana, and are trying to increase the penalties still further.
Bush never pardoned a single non-violent drug user.

While the future will be different, it won't necessarily be better.
It will take ages for medical science to figure out how to repair something as inherently defective as the human body. There isn't even a reliable treatment for mental illness. The number of useful antibiotics is actually declining.
Long before then, cheaper and more effective ways to kill people in vast quantities will be discovered, and patients will be better informed about all the painful diseases and chronic conditions that lie in store for them. Human life will inevitable become less valuable as technology improves.

While we may never solve our current problems, there will be many strange new ones.
Groups will become more aware of collective threats. As society becomes more complex, more things will go wrong. A single failure point can cut everyone's quality of life in half: for example mayor Giuliani expelling Arafat from a UN concert to please Jewish-American campaign donors, outraging certain Middle-Eastern students, thereby indirectly causing the largest terrorism attack on American soil.
The future will only get more terrifying, unless mankind gives up the ability to feel pain.

Eventually, the most extreme individuals may even consider other versions of themselves in parallel universes. Only the happiest versions need to survive. Someone who believes in quantum immortality can never fear death. No matter what goes wrong, in some possible future they will always survive. However, they would not necessarily be in a condition to enjoy their continued existence.

Of course, old-fashioned evolution will work against suicide in all its forms. The battle between reasoned self-determination and mindless reproduction will never end. Quality can never defeat raw quantity.
In that case, there will never be an ultimate utopia. Pain will only increase forever, even though it may occupy a shrinking percentage of future awareness.
There are no universal rules. The conflicts of the future would appear absurd to the extent you could understand them.
Someday, there may even be laws making it legal to break the law when it's reasonable to do so.

Until then, those who suffer from intolerable pain will continue to try and fail to take the ultimate shortcut, with or without help.

v1 1/3/09-1/12

against forced charity

Tax extraction is about to get a lot more painful. Competing groups are coming together to legislate long-term increases in their benefits, using the economic decline as an excuse to strengthen their favorite mandatory charities.
The AARP's 'Divided We Fail' propaganda campaign has state and federal representatives on notice that they're expected to show their obedience by immediately increasing funding for senior medical programs. As part of the political balancing act, they're also calling for increased spending on government education.

Many experts still think it's possible to prevent the inevitable default of Social Security and all the other types of social welfare, if taxes are raised high enough. They may even be right about that, but they ignore the fact that Social Security is fundamentally unfair.
Widows can demand a century of taxpayer income without having to work for one second: anyone can seize money from the taxpayer simply by marrying the right spouse (well, not anyone). Meanwhile, those who know they won't live long enough to enjoy any benefits are forced to subsidize the retirement of others. Someone can pay taxes for fifty years and not get one cent back if they die the day they retire.
S.S. is just one of many taxes designed to benefit politically powerful groups, i.e. large groups.

Right or wrong, I wouldn't surrender this money voluntarily but would prefer to spend it on myself, often stupidly. Others would invest it wisely.
Others know for a fact the liberal solution is wrong. They can prove they are worse off under this system.
It goes without saying that more people thrive and prosper under a big government.

Both sides of the political spectrum have united in a web of coercion for the benefit of favored interest groups. Voters happen to be expensive. Every electable politician must work around the clock to tighten the noose of central control. There's also a strong religio-cultural component. Soon, another gaggle of candidates will be spouting platitudinal pieties more suited to the middle ages.
Trillions of dollars will be extorted at virtual gunpoint and 'invested' in social spending programs. Most medical spending is at the very end of life, keeping decayed bodies going for a few weeks longer, at a cumulative cost of several teradollars per decade. A particularly expensive form of mandatory charity involves maintaining bodies in a persistent vegetative state for years. Many victims are still aware, but unable to move in any way.

The Obama administration had to consider many competing interests. Politically, the best compromise is to give all donor groups most of what they want. In Obama's case, the first priority has been to limit the inevitable budget cuts, and to reverse them where possible.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the bar has been set very high. While culturally conservative, the preceding Republican administration has been the most free-spending entity in human history. Meanwhile, the police actions in Asia only sharpened the appetites of the defense contractors.

All this points to vast tax increases ahead. Economists agree that the new spending can't all come from inflation and future debt. We'll have to reduce consumption levels too.
The challenge will be to raise tax revenues to the promised high levels, a problem that has barely been discussed as of 2012.

This brings us to the subject of control. Governments are ambivalent about the instruments of power. In fact they often come to control those who wield them, as Mao found out during the Cultural Revolution, which he couldn't limit once it had started.
However, the first principle of power seems to be: use it or lose it. It takes a crisis to get the power in the first place.

The accumulated obligations, from pensions to school subsidies to prescription drugs, are so immense it will be necessary to intimidate and even frighten the taxpayers into working harder. There's just no other way to make the numbers add up. Things won't be as bad as the random terror used by authoritarian organizations like the Cheka, the NKVD, the Sea Org, the Securitate, the Stasi or others; but random people will still be made to suffer to 'inspire' the others to submit.

Those with the power will do bad things to you. The methods of social control are varied.
The first level involves restrictions, bureaucratic rituals and monopolies. Society is designed to prevent over 99% of activity, including most improvements.
At some point, everyone has had to produce their government-issued birth certificate just to be allowed to drive, to work for money, get a government approved bank account, a library card, an apartment, or even to listen to satellite radio.
Those people who manage to lose their government documents, or never had them in the first place, are methodically destroyed in a death by a thousand cuts.
Poor individuals are screwed to begin with (of course the poor invariably vote for their oppressors anyway).
Uncertainty is the strongest control tool. Work hard for your money, and it can all be seized in a frivolous lawsuit, or some other legal extortion such as alimony theft. Laws targeting marginal citizens are almost universally supported. The police will shoot you dead if you resist arrest for using drugs without a prescription. Once you're in jail, they own you.

Government is a permanent culture war. Religion and tradition are pitted against social drift. All sides try to redefine the truth, for example by mandating religious creationism in science classes. Perhaps mainstream scientists are indeed deluded. More likely the previous sentence describes creationists. They don't want creationism to be taught as part of religion class. Aided by sympathetic politicians, their goal is to make science subordinate to their faith.
Even if they somehow succeed in placing creationism at the core of mainstream biology (it would take a major social decline), school taxes still won't be voluntary. Scientists won't be allowed to come to church on Sunday and tell the congregation there's no proof that God exists.

How will it all end?
Long term trends point toward more federalism, but the number of governing authorities will also increase. Each will seek to tax and regulate its subjects.
At the local level, businesses may demand tax relief before moving to a new area, but complex exemptions will only increase the total amount of regulation and bureaucracy.

There will be unpredictable shocks to the system, and inevitable failures.
New communities and economic networks will suddenly arise and demand their share of the power pie. Someday there may even be purely online constituencies.

The most disruptive trend is the increasing power of software. It will make it easier to track everyone's contributions and consumption patterns, and to impose more accurate (though not necessarily fairer) user fees.

It seems unlikely the ideals of freedom or quality of life will ever replace the more practical power balances between selfish interests that have dominated history. Big Government will only fade away if it ever becomes obsolete.
That may only happen when it's replaced by something even more powerful, perhaps the ultimate totalitarian society, an integrated overmind without individual identities, much like the Borg collective. This seems rather more likely than Ron Paul winning the presidency in 2012.

The alternative would be a remote future of ever diverging minds, spreading out through the universe, exploring many possibilities at once. Without central control, there would be no way to prevent countless atrocities.

Until then, the only option for the small minority that wants freedom is to seize it by any means possible, perhaps by opting out of the mainstream economy.
That may become easier with technology, but for now it's still extremely difficult.

1/3/09-1/12

the simplicity solution

As a saying goes, "I'd rather have too much time on my hands than too many hands on my time."
In many ways, society would be better off with less: less rules, less bureaucracy, less restrictions; but also less stuff; or at least smaller and less energy-intensive stuff.

The world has become too complicated. There are too many hidden expectations, and there is too much precedent.
Too much potential freedom has been stolen or preempted by comfortable power hierarchies, established monopolies, and the Baby Boomers.
An army of bureaucrats has to be notified in triplicate just so that someone can legally be hired for a crappy job. Complying with the bureaucracy is a full-time job in itself.

Speaking of which, we've got a lot of work to do, starting in the mid-2010s. In fact, it's the biggest job in human history, possibly exceeding all wars combined. In the coming decades, the Western world will be required to support a vast welfare state the likes of which the planet has never seen. The wealth of many nations will change hands.
Pensions, drug payments, new life-extension treatments, assisted living services, agricultural subsidies, equal opportunity mandates, pensions, rehabilitation therapies, elder housing, income support, new diagnostic methods, mandatory staffing levels, increased reporting and disclosure requirements, pensions, nursing home and hospital care, survivor benefits, new accessibility requirements, pensions, artificial monopolies, and much, much more, will strain the remaining sectors of the economy like never before.
The cultivation of these eternal entitlements, corporate welfare recipients, union cartels, and other beneficiaries by big bosses like Ted Kennedy has been the fun part. The hard part will be paying for all their promises.
This process was never meant to be reversed. Politicians and bureaucrats love elaborate programs. The more complex, the better.
Almost no one dares to suggest that things should be different.

The simplest and most obvious solutions are rarely mentioned.
For example, debates about illegal immigration never mention the parity principle. Why should migration only flow in one direction? The Ivory Coast has a much nicer climate than Sweden.
Of course anyone should be able to move to the United States or any western nation, provided an equivalent local citizen moves to the immigrant's homeland.
A transfer ratio could even be established. Two or three legal immigrants could be admitted for every native citizen willing to leave.

Other simple solutions are equally unspeakable:
For example, along with a minimum wage there could be a maximum wage. Alternatively: no one would be allowed to earn more than they 'deserve', as defined by law or a grand jury. It would be illegal to pay them more than that amount.

The government has decided to bar drug users from voting for life. That doesn't go far enough. Let's bar everyone!

If only more people would refuse to hire a lawyer, and insist on representing themselves in court as a matter of principle. For some strange reason, few have the guts. Almost everyone prefers to go bankrupt anyway, or assume lifelong debts to defend themselves against a frivolous lawsuit. That's just what's expected.

Even in our primitive times, the technology exists to end poverty.
There's no reason to have a housing shortage. A small apartment could be constructed for less than $10,000, but it wouldn't be very profitable. As I first warned just before the debt crisis, people should be afraid of elaborate mortgages and other entanglements.
In earlier columns I called for extremely low cost housing for the homeless, with small fenced-off lots. The fact that this doesn't happen is deliberate. Scarcity is a social control tool.
These solutions are unpopular because they wouldn't benefit the great majority of normal persons.
The absence of privacy and the presence of two-legged predators in the streets, homeless shelters, and prisons is the major motivator for others to work harder.

The biggest and most profitable sector of the economy is the ever-expanding field of medicine. The most cost-effective healthcare is usually the cheapest, but the current power structure prefers to keep comatose patients alive for years, instead of subsidizing - or even allowing - cheap tests and checkups for younger citizens, behavior modification and preventative maintenance, and immunization programs.
They're especially opposed to allowing free competition. The number of doctors and nurses is deliberately kept too low.
This won't change anytime soon. Better plan on staying healthy.

The simplest solution is also the most unspeakable one: DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. The earth is already annoyingly overpopulated for our current social development level. Perhaps only 70% of the population should start a family instead of 97%.

If governments were run according to the profit principle (with a longer time horizon than any current business), the world would look very different indeed.
The authorities would pay many people to stay childless, instead of requiring health insurance to cover fertility treatments for everyone. Birth control would be cheap, easily available, and widely advertised. For that matter, abortions would be free.
The pro-lifers would be infuriated (there would be a lot of terrorism), but it would be surprisingly effective.

In fact, people could be paid to give up their religion, if this became profitable.
There are too many desperate individuals, trapped in unchangeable circumstances. They would seize whatever slight opportunity gives them the illusion of control. Usually, the only things they can do are destructive, from overeating to joining a cult to self-mutilation.

More people need to learn not to give a damn.
Freedom comes from saying no, or at least daring to think it. Instead, they allow society to set their expectations and obligations for them, as if they were born in debt.

There are things no one should put up with. Sometimes, it's best just to give up.
This applies to many areas in life, and also to how it ends.
The simplest solution can also be the hardest: euthanasia. For religious reasons, billions of people have had to suffer unspeakable agonies before passing away. The authorities even prevent them from using effective painkillers.
In a world filled with legal killing, suicide is the greater crime.
A compromise would be to allow people at the end of their lifespans to use any mind-altering drug they want. But this too would be a felony.

As with homelessness, the point is that the authorities want people to suffer.
This happens at every level, from the tax code, to marijuana laws, to abstinence-only education, to militarism, to forced collectivization, to geopolitics, to ethnic cleansing, to boarding schools.
In fact, those in authority do not have their subjects' individual interests at heart, only society's collective interest, if that.
This explains why such seemingly counter-adaptive traits as laziness, depression, and cowardice have not only survived but have become near universal: often the simplest and best option for an individual is to do nothing.
If only society as a whole could do more of it.

2/09-1/12

freedom: the impossible solution

Politics is war, a type of institutionalized hate.
No one can even stay calm enough to explain their position clearly, let alone persuade the opposing side. That would require them to step back and analyze the disagreement from the other's perspective. What would be the point of that?
Instead, anyone who practices politics prefers to defeat their opponent, to render them powerless. They don't even care about being right, as long as the other guy is wrong.
Often, it's about feeling superior.

The fact that people are self-centered is probably a good thing, provided they don't have too much power. If they're also evil, it explains much of history.
There was no need for the extreme poverty that has defined human existence. It was simply the easiest choice.
Wielding political power requires political leaders to make a minority of their subjects worse off. The victims can be turned into examples, if they're different enough to be isolated from the mainstream, and the majority approves. Typically, the victims have been the poorest and most marginal individuals. Instead of being put on birth control, they're confined in other ways (prison, slavery) in a subconscious effort to limit the spread of their genes.

This continues today in slightly less blatant forms.
Perhaps the cops should stop shooting people for political reasons, like when someone attempts to opt out of a government program by renouncing all future benefits and current taxes; or when someone wants to alter their brain with chemicals but refuses to be arrested.
It's a rather controversial idea. Those with influence think the police violence should continue. How dare anyone defy the social contract?
You want to buy a small patch of land? It goes without saying you need government permission.

Not everyone agrees, though it seems that way. The system is designed to benefit the majority. Tax exemptions, subsidies, and regulations favor insiders, but most people feel they benefit indirectly. Unpopular minority groups pay taxes to be suppressed. Even jury duty is usually slavery to a deliberately wasteful 'justice' system. Jury nullification is surprisingly rare. When push comes to shove, it turns out few jury members have the strength to resist mainstream pressure.

The only solution is the Opt-Out Principle.
The world actually does need more regulations - but with the right to opt out of any undesirable program, either to choose another program or not to participate at all.
If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.

Usually, it would be misguided to opt out. Single-payer health insurance has immense advantages over private insurance. Opting out would require informed consent.
Simple self-interest could solve the charity problem, in the form of 'charity insurance'. Before pooling their resources, the group members can establish rules and benefits. Wealthier members can be required to contribute more according to income, or receive less benefits when they need them.
But no one should be forced to join. They should only be encouraged.

Some types of personal freedom could be reduced without too much hassle, like laws limiting the maximum amount of property anyone could own, or a maximum wage. This could of course hurt economic growth in unexpected ways.
Individual freedom is more important than corporate freedom. Unrestrained free enterprise might convert the middle third of the US into a giant coal mine and feed farm.
Many possible solutions have never been tried. All it takes is creativity, and enough competing jurisdictions.
Businesses could be taxed according to the natural resources they consume, not the extra wealth they create, which would otherwise not have existed.

At the core of politics is the safety net problem, which will never be solved.
Some people would need so much charity to survive that the only way to get it would be for the government to seize it by force. Otherwise the charity recipients would die.
For this reason alone, government in all its forms may continue to expand without end.
The populace will not allow a braindead individual to die (provided this braindead individual would have wanted to be kept alive at all cost), even if the combined taxes of dozens of other individuals are needed to keep the braindead individual alive. Cost/benefit analysis has nothing to do with it.
It's an emotional decision. One can't argue with raw emotion. No amount of protest or resistance will defeat it. If the opposition becomes too large and too noisy, it will simply be suppressed.
And then things will get worse.

The final outcome of this long-term trend, extrapolated a few centuries: after the last taxpaying slave has finally died or committed suicide, the world will end up as a giant automated nursing home filled with humanoid vegetables.

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5/3/09-1/12

the political paradox

No matter how clever humanity may become, politics will never be about solutions, only about compromises.
Usually, there are no solutions. In society as in nature, groups thrive by taking wealth from other groups. This process vastly reduces the total available wealth, but it does lead to innovation.
The core problem of history is poverty: there's not nearly enough wealth to go around. Shortages accelerate technological evolution, but they also cause retrenchment, hoarding, suspicion, extreme conservatism, and occasional mass violence. There's less investment when only poor people take big risks.

It took hundreds of centuries to come up with a better plan. The idea that it's possible to create more wealth by reducing central power remains unacceptable to the Third World and other unproductive areas.
Some central control is necessary, embedded in a culture of law. The question is how to limit it. Most pro-growth programs combine coercion and incentives: a mix of taxes and tempting opportunities.
Rules, restrictions, and subsidies should be both predictable and adaptable to maximize growth. Corporations can be pressured and stimulated in many ways.

Any solution will be unstable, however. After a while, human intuition, prejudice, and maybe even morals can't keep up. For example, guns and violence can be self-limiting, or they can be controlled by restrictive regulations. There are 'solutions' where almost everyone has a gun, or no one.

Sometimes, even lying may be a good thing.
Politicians can promise future benefits and receive electoral gratitude in return. This pleases the future recipients and motivates them to work harder today. When the promised benefits don't materialize, it won't matter as much since the hard work has already been done. This partially explains social security and religion.

Ultimately, the highest reward is status, one of the most misunderstood political facts.
It's why so many people want to be in showbiz. Most screenwriters and actors would work just for expenses (and movies would be more entertaining). In fact, most are working for less than that right now, even if they won't admit it.
Despite the massive competition, a career as an artist still seems more attractive than any perceived alternative. It's easier to visualize, and there are few barriers to entry.

The ultimate political compromise would create a world in which everyone could be an entrepreneur, the owner of their own unique brand, assuming that's what they wanted. It would be more like a game than the dread-filled wage slavery of today. Since most people are followers, they will compete to develop fashionable skills and services.
In such a world, whoever decides what's fashionable would have as much influence as any dictator, but at least they wouldn't keep it for as long.

6/1/09-1/12

geopolitical limits

You can't have a dictatorship without a dick.
There are many monsters in the world. Their names might be Mugabe, Honecker, Nguema, Bashir, or Miscavige, but underneath they're all the same.
Without external restrictions on a strongman's power, there's no limit to how subverted he can get, as shown in Saddam's Iraq, the badlands of Sudan and Nigeria, and the dungeons of the Khmer Rouge, Vlad Dracul and the Flag Land Base.
In the old USSR between 1929 and that happy day in 1953, there was only one free man.
Some dictator may yet decide that when he dies, it would be properly respectful if everyone else were to stop what they were doing too - permanently.
Not even Kim Jong Il was quite that fanatical.

The deeper truth is that every tyrant requires massive consent from within and without. At its heart, every country is an emergent democracy.
The first rule of society is that there is no rule of society. There are only many competing individuals with similar likes and dislikes. They mostly care about social status.
The family of man can be very evil, and religion too.

The greatest and most basic puzzles are not even discussed (for example, the Complexity and Simplicity Paradoxes have been mentioned many times on this blog community but nowhere else, even though the questions they ask should be blatantly obvious). While humans are improbably simple, our physical universe is almost impossibly complex.
The Ignorance Paradox may be even bigger: it seems that intelligence by itself doesn't necessarily enhance survival.
Populations in nature seek to reach a survival equilibrium, not a state of stable progress. More important, given enough time, quantity will always defeat quality.
Most societies are seemingly dysfunctional (though pointing out this fact can be hazardous), but then they don't have to be perfect, just good enough to prevent mass starvation while waiting for their rivals to succumb.

Western civilization is much less bad than average, but even more bizarre. Muslims are actually more understandable than a typical liberal, as far as that goes.
Even in the West, the main passion remains the desire for conformity.
Immense effort is wasted in trying to avoid change and painful choices. The clearest example is the US economy.
Given the vast sums borrowed and public debts incurred, the USA should be almost stress-free for now; at least until the time comes to pay back the multi-trillion dollar loans and future entitlements. On a per-capita basis, most countries could live very well off the borrowed fortunes (or even the interest on the borrowed fortunes) alone.
Instead, at the time of writing, true unemployment is stubbornly stuck above 15%, while unfunded future obligations are skyrocketing faster than a Gorgon ABM.
Except for the basics, the US doesn't manufacture much of anything anymore. It's all about services, often wasteful ones.

For the price of one Iraq War, mankind could have begun to colonize the solar system.
Instead, the problem the war set out to solve is about as bad as it had been before.
One day, the conflict participants will get too old to keep fighting, but that point remains many years away - and that's the best case scenario. Though the possibility is remote, Mecca and other parts of the Middle East could still end up as radioactive wastelands.
Muslims should be treated with exactly the same amount of respect they show atheists.
Eventually, there will be some type of negotiations, and the warring sides in Afghanistan will sign some sort of mutual non-bombing treaty. This at least should be doable. The USA is already not bombing most countries.

By then, there will be new things to worry about. For the West, the main trend is demographics.
There's now so much government bureaucracy, oversight, and mindless regulation that life in many Western countries has become somewhat less than valuable. The native population is actually starting to decline.
The problem is social friction, the difficulty in figuring out and overcoming all the overcomplicated rules. The clearest case is Japan, where part of an entire generation can't seem to start their careers and move out of their parents' apartments.

This highly defective system can't keep expanding as fast as it needs to, to pay for all the promises made by all the politicians since it was set up. It will have to be replaced with something simpler, as has happened before throughout history.
Unfortunately, this usually involves other tribes moving in, a process that has already begun in Europe starting in the 1960s.
Mass migration is a slow invasion, an improvised attempt to replace a host culture step by step.
That may be a good thing if you're a liberal multiculturalist with a COEXIST sticker on their car, where the letters are made up of religious symbols.

In fact, it doesn't go nearly far enough. Why should migration flow in only one direction? The 'one in, one out' anti-immigration movement loathed by all liberals points out that there's ample open space in the Third World, a very nice climate, and potentially cheap real estate. The problem is that the locals can be a tad troublesome at times.

In the seemingly unlikely event that the mystery of social friction can ever be solved (perhaps through life management software or some other type of unimagined artificial intelligence), any person could be taught to live anywhere on earth without too much effort.
This wondrous shift would lead to a slow but steady worldwide merging of populations.

Of course new groups would form at the same time, embracing self-segregation based on shared cultures and aptitudes, rather than a common language.

Either way, the problems of human civilization can apparently not be solved by humanity itself, at least not in full. History moves in widening circles, repeating the same mistakes on larger scales.
Escaping this trap would require something bigger, the application of every known science on a global scale, guided by immense surveys and datasets, overseen by computer simulations and eventually trans-human AI. In other words, something very scifi-like. But it will really happen.
To survive, mankind will have to create its own gods.

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