FLASH POST: Are Results of the Economy Under Trump Pretty Much Happening by the Book?

Trump talks like he's some amazing economic savior for the country, but everything that has happened to stimulate the economy seems completely predictable. . .while also sounding like some running on a caffeine high every day. . .in that the economy will eventually grown tolerant to the caffeine and eventually lose the high.

Conservatives had their own book of assumptions, though, that doesn't seem to go according to reality (even though the By The Book of predictable economics could see it coming a mile away). The conservatives made the assumption that employers would make capital investments and increase wages. But lo, employers engaged in stock buybacks and mostly just gave bonuses, not as many wage increases as expected (and even where they did, the results ended up screwing workers).

And what bonuses and wage increase occured, it doesn't amount to much because inflation largely tracked with the wage increases in 2018. Apparently CPI has stayed low so far in 2019, but that's mostly from gas and energy, mostly from outside of the country that I don't think conservatives have as much control of. . .unless maybe through some crony deals with Saudi Arabia to keep down gas prices. . .and is that worth the moral cost and the lives lost to support the Saudi Arabian war in Yemen?

But here are the couple of articles that I found that support my argument that most of the economic gains since 2016 in the US have pretty much been by the book and not necessarily anything expected to be sustainable:

How Trump’s tax cuts are boosting GDP, and why that might not last - PBS

Opinion: Everybody predicted the surge in GDP that Trump says nobody predicted - MarketWatch

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Exploratory, "Playful" Essay into Social Bonding & Fighting, Authoritarianism, and Wondering About the Rise of Minority Influence

I want to write more of a philosophical, maybe spiritual and psychological essay tonight. I write this in a form of exploration and play, not authoritatively. Through the process, I have discovered some questions, a hook or two, and yet another direction to do some research for my projects. It's endless, I tell you. But I invite you to come along on this journey with me, and to contribute if you have anything to add.

A typical question I ask myself on a regular basis: Why do people come together to form societies and cultures? What keeps them together?

For my bachelors project, I've given myself a high bar to evaluate an all encompassing universal hypothesis to tack on it: Would this theory for good behavior convince a Hitler, a Stalin, or any other horrible dictator to act better (even a [45], who sometimes feels like a wannabe dictator)? I don't justify what they've done, but the the end of their reign, any chance of a good reputation, or their ideas not spreading mostly occurred because of circumstance.

I'll admit, I'm not too familiar with Stalin, and his oppressive tactics continue to be used by dictators. Nonetheless, there are enough people on "both sides" that his legacy has become a norm, and even ostensibly has become accepted as a horrible reputation among many, to be avoided at all costs.

Many would argue that Hitler's downfall came about because Nazi Germany turned on Stalin's Soviet Union. Germany basically turned World War II to war on one front to a war on two fronts.
But then add the United States entering the war, with a fresh army compared to the armies of other countries that had been beat down by Germany and Italy. Without this combination of events, Fascism likely had a good chance of taking over Europe, Asia, and possibly, in a little more time, America.

And frankly, with the anti-semitism in the whole world at the time, the biggest outlying characteristic of Germany and Nazism versus the rest of the privileged populations of the world at that time was more about their organization and success at war for a time. The rest of the world seemed to have more a problem with Nazi Germany having success at winning the fight for their bigotted interest than with Germany being bigoted in the first place. Some may argue that the reaction to Nazi Germany's success created a turning point in at least liberal demoracies, creating a momentum of norms against anti-semitism. Philip K Dick may not have had to use too much original imagination when he wrote Man in the High Castle.

Another crazy circumsantial turn of events and norms: the turn against chattel slavery in the United States. I've spent a fair amount of time trying to trace the growth of people feeling that chattel slavery is unjust in the United States and how it brought the country to the Civil War. I still haven't had the luck or research skill to find how this momentum of history grew and came to fruition.

At least a minority of white colonists or even just inidividual outliers existed that spouted against slavery or tried convincing people that it's an evil practice, but no one took them too serious until a few years or decades before the Revolutionary War. Then up in New England, at least, some of the Founding Fathers before the country's founding wrote against slavery and sometimes took legal and rhetorical action against it.

As tensions grew against the British, New Englanders felt that Parliament levied too many taxes on them, everyday townspeople wrote town-wide Declarations of Independence arguing that they felt England was treating them as slaves, and they wouldn't take such indignities. The momentum to outlaw chattel slavery became adopted by "regular" white people through a rhetorical flourish that justified fomenting revolution, which then entered the nation's zeitgeist. I still haven't isolated where all that came from, though I have the feeling that it came from the rising tensions of Absolute Dictatorships in Europe disrespecting national/ethnic cultures, instead trying to build strong states without nation.

No matter the occasion, though, I feel like only historical circumstance has prevented authoritarianism from spreading all around the world. It reminds me of the trope of a child thinking "As long as I don't get caught, I can get away with it." Do dictators just not totally succeed and create an everlasting legacy because of their personalities, because they can't trust anyone else enough to hand off their nation that can possibly become an everlasting monument to their family or something like that?

In some way, North Korea feels like a success when it comes to dictatorship and leaving a legacy of an authoritarian system in place. We're in the third generation of the Kim's since World War II. Many in the world might think the Kim family has a strain of crazy megalomania, and that country might grow more and more isolated in world that simultaneously grows larger and smaller at the same time.

Seventy years after installation, though, North Korea remains with the same authoritarian structure. I'm not very familar with the history of North Korea, but it could very well have gotten stronger if China and the Soviet Union/Russia had given it even more support than they had throughout the years or if China and Russia hadn't spread themselves thin during the Cold War. At the same time, would those larger, stronger country really wanted to have dealt with the Kim family?

With the inreased reent development of nuclear weapons in North Korea, though, the country could grow and sustain the Kim family structure of authoritarian government, possibly the longest authoritarian and maligned country in at least the United States consciousness. Will they "get away with it" if they become a nuclear power and other nations fear them? Even now, if they could release utter destruction on the Korean peninsula with conventional weapons, would they be "getting away with it"? Has the Kim family bucked the trend of circumstance of history that seems to turn against authoritarianism (even China, which has successfully kept something of a stable, steady regime through the decades has been making "compromises" to grow and fluorish, at least economically).

[At this point in an edit run through, I tried finding some analagous phenomena regarding novelty and evolution for the sudden appearance of novelty when too much order occurs. I got that idea from a magazine article I read something like 15 years ago. Couldn't find anything useful, but I found some interesting research hooks that are pointing me toward minority influence, Serge Moscovici, cryptomnesia, and other threads looking at norms changing via phenomena similar to how I'm describing in this essay. For now, I'm just going to have to accept randomness occurs through novel circumstances. . .and plan to fill the conceptual space missing to me at a later date.]

I don't have the knowledge and expertise to get into all the details and come up with historical or even psychological arguments for all these situations. Nonetheless, from the standpoint of minds very different than mine that disgust me, but based on historical, philosophical, psyhological, and other trends I can't identify, being an authoritarian jerk with a plan to create a legacy of a nation state that can continue a legacy of acting badly, violently, horribly, domineering, and so forth seems like a rational direction to go if someone can get away with it.

Just because it hasn't succeeded before doesn't mean that the person deciding to do it can't get it done. The people before just weren't smart enough, they didn't think of all the contingencies, they didn't plan well enough, they weren't charismatic enough. People full of pride, narcissists, can make plenty of arguments for why they're so special that they'll succeed where so many others have failed before. Note that this paragraph is me putting myself in someone else's shoes.

After all, the route of sharing, working with other people, democracy, republics, etc. etc., these are systems and practices in which you need to work with others, people need to depend on each other. They need to trust each other. That requires people to let their guards down and make themselves vulnerable. Even for people who believe in democracy and rule of the people, doing such things has its difficulties. Not just because people might turn on you, but because other people might make mistakes or not have the capability to complete what they're supposed to do.

Successful authoritarianism just requires being the first one to get IT right and be able to handle all the contingencies. Plenty of people have enough of pride to think that they're the chosen one to make it happen, and they can also get a base to support them. [45] got into office after all. Then throw on top of that uncontrolled emotions, the ease of manipulating the emotions of crowds, etc. etc. As much as I would hate to see sustainable authoritarianism happen, a sustainable democratic utopia of happiness would probably be harder and slower to make, though more rewarding.

The latest Doctor Who Christmas Special, "Twice Upon a Time", has a great line that I think summarizes my feelings about all the above. I have complicated feelings about Steven Moffatt's writing on Doctor Who, but I had the feels when I heard this long line because it felt like it described me:

DOCTOR 1: There is good and there is evil. I left Gallifrey to answer a question of my own. By any analysis, evil should always win. Good is not a practical survival strategy. It requires loyalty, self-sacrifice and er, love. So, why does good prevail? What keeps the balance between good and evil in this appalling universe? Is there some kind of logic? Some mysterious force?
-Copied and pasted from transcript of the episode found at http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/36-13.html

I don't have answers to that big question. Maybe I will some day, more likely that I won't. Lately, though, I've run into some thoughts and theories that provides some insight into societies, democracy, civic republicanism, and "rational" arguments for people coming together. I don't know how original any of the following is, but I feel the need to put some random thoughts out there, play with them, and possibly get some insight from my audience.

Last night, I listened to Episode 49 of APM's podcast, Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly, titled "Gerrymandering, hard-wired brains and the baby under the desk". Kai and Molly revisited episode "12: This is your brain on Trump" where they had on George Lakoff, professor emeritus of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Lakoff discussed our instinctual brains, [45]'s sophisticated use of rhetoric and Twitter to manipulate the minds of his base by appealing to their need for a "strict father". Lakoff mentioned three other strains of appeal that connect with the instinctual mind, I believe. One of those three stuck out as the opposite of strict: the language of the nurturer. The following quote from Lakoff's essay, "Why Trump", I think gets to the brass tacks about the strict father:

[. . .] The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate.

[. . .]

Family-based moral worldviews run deep. Since people want to see themselves as doing right not wrong, moral worldviews tend to be part of self-definition — who you most deeply are. And thus your moral worldview defines for you what the world should be like. When it isn’t that way, one can become frustrated and angry. [. . .]

Read the rest of the essay, Professor Lakoff has some good insights into the minds of traditional conservatives. I hate how much truth this reflects and want to fight the mentality that many traditional conservatives and reactionaries embody. On Make Me Smarter, Lakoff discusses the difficulty of changing the minds of people who take this kind of mindset, and even people who take the nurturing mindset won't have their minds changed if they're approached in a way that goes against their way of framing the world.

As someone trying to get as close as I can to writing a novel or some piece that might convince even a Hitler or a Stalin that they're framing things wrong, I guess I need to understand this type of thinking more. Seeing that I might have to take such an approach brings me to the end of my next random thoughts that I've mulled over the last couple days, but we'll need to start at the beginning.

Back in the spring of 1998, I wrote a set of two college papers during my sophmore year that compared and contrasted Jesus of Nazareth's Kingdom of Heaven and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, a social contract theory of giving up natural liberties to a monarch for security in society (because fully free people in nature would be in constant war with each).

I finished the book Citizenship & Community: Civic Republicanism & The Modern World by Adrian Oldfield a couple weeks ago (don't worry when you see the price on Amazon, I borrowed it from the library). It defined civic republicanism, did a quick survey of some "classic" thinkers on the topic, then made some final conclusions about requirements to make it work. The book has some useful information and a bit of useful insight, but I don't accept it hook, line, and sinker.

Oldfield's discussion about Alexis de Touqueville's view of republicanism and praising of early 19th-century United States brings up social contract theory, but discusses it in a novel way to me. Instead of talking about Social Contract theory as GIVING UP liberties, Oldfield talks about joining together with other people in a community, society, nation, etc. as a way to FREE ourselves from the dangers and destruction of the natural world. The peace and collaboration of civilization allows us the ability to do so much more than we could in a State of Nature where we have ultimate freedom. In civilization, we're not totally obsessed with survival and putting all our energies into surviving (I'm not saying that our nations and states are civilized enough to help us reach this freedom).

The sacredness that Christians put into Jesus of Nazareth sacrificing himself on the cross always confuses me. It still does. Please bear with me because this will relate to social contract theory.

On a secular level, Jesus of Nazareth provides an interesting allegory. Jesus of Nazareth sacrifices himself on the cross to provide us the potential to gain freedom from Original Sin. In a way, through this sacrifice, Jesus provides an example that by giving of ourselves to the rest of us, we can find freedom from the suffering of nature. Jesus was selfless on the cross for us, we can be selfless in civilization for each other.

Another Jesus of Nazareth story always fascinates me: Pilate asks the crowd whether they want to free Barabbas, the violent political revolutionary, or Jesus, the peaceful revolutionary of the mind and soul, and they choose to free Barabbas. The Bibles of today hide the fact about Barabbas being a political revolutionary, pretty much just saying that he's a violent murderer.

When the part about him being political revolutionary gets brought up, the power of Jesus of Nazareth as a historical figure and the desires and consciousness of the masses becomes more poignant: Jesus brought true but long and difficult change to the people so they might possibly establish a long lasting peace because they have peace and collaboration in their hearts. Barabbas offered change, too, but just a surface change, a change in the position of a group of people in a society, something that they might accomplish faster but also more likely to lose.

As I addressed in the first few paragraphs of this essay, Barabbas offered a change of circumstance while Jesus offered the chance for more lasting, sustainable change, though a harder change that requires more effort because it required changing your identity and soul. The crowd chose to free Barabbas. Barabbas allowed themselves to stay the same for the possibility of changing outside circumstances. Jesus, however, requires the crowd to lose themselves to establish themselves, to establish a Kingdom of God.

Adrian Oldfield and many civic republicans talk a lot about the importance people's obligations and duties to society, in opposition to liberals arguing for rights and liberties of individuals, especially to grab hold of the rights of the oppressed and marginalized. Until I took a more serious look into civic republicanism that argued against liberalism, I didn't see these two positions as opposite sides to a dichotomy.

Reading academic, nonpartisan essays about political philosophy, I had understood rights as "fundamental to civilization". After all, the first sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Rights, as academic political philosphers understand them, require the obligation or duty of other people to respect them. I can't agree with rights being self-evident or unalienable, since if other people exert enough force, physical or social, on someone, they can take those rights away. We see it happen it authoritarian countries. It happened in the United States with chattel slavery after the Declaration of Independence that argues for these unalienable rights.

I advocate a lot for equal rights and liberties that civilization can provide to all humans, but for them to exist, the other people in communities, societies, nations, states, and civilization have to accept the obligations and duties required to grant those equal rights and liberties, rather than seeing society as fighting for the interests of your self and your chosen and unchosen groups. This type of situation can break out into a State of Nature at any time and causes a ton of stress, which defeats the purpose of coming together into a civilization.

At the same time, however, Christianity and other social arrangements have a history of one internal group or person sacrificing or giving up their rights, just engaging in obligations and duties to support the rights of others who have a higher social status. At the same time, that dominating other gets to exercise all the rights they want without feeling any obligation or duty toward the people sacrificing their rights.

That's pretty much what authoritarian leaders like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Hussein, and plenty of aggressive and/or privileged interest groups do out there: take, take, take all the rights and benefits that they can while the other side sacrifices, sacrifices, sacrifices to meet obligations and duties to the other person, party, or group interest that lords over them.

We have norms that justify enabling domestic violence to create this social arrangement. Privileged people in our societies believe norms that create this kind of social structure. When interests are equal enough that one side can't win but they can't see eye to eye, they fight to become the dominator, to get all the rights while the other side has all the obligations and duties, and they have ideologies and norms that tell them that this OK, people tell themselves that it's normal and good to create these tensions, so they can try to be on top, so they can create the circumstance where they come out on top and "get away with it".

To the depths of my soul, I can't accept this. I can't believe any side can have true happiness or contentment where there is all this tension and vying for power and property, even though the fighting and take can get exhilirating, filling people with adrenaline. But we have studies and anecdotes that show that praying for peace creates contentment in us, meditating on compassion for the world brings monks contentment, making connections with other people gives us rushes and exhiliration, and doing good acts for others can provide us euphorias and highs that can rival psychoactive drugs for intensity, length, and even for our inability to build resistance against the joy of giving selflessly. Humans were made for emotional attunement and protecting that attunement from loss.

And yet we can also debase our integrity by giving too much and other people taking, taking, taking, feeding their neverending desire for more and more illusionary connection, debasing themselves of having actual emotional attunement. I understand that we can't just focus on duties and obligations because in giving too much, we start losing; but at the same time, if we focus too much on rights and liberties, when we take too much, we become overfilled with stuff, losing the ability to sense happiness and contentment, but thinking if we just get more and more, we'll eventually get our fill, except we won't. It's like in a society of affluence: eating too much junk food is ingesting fake, artificial sentiment and connection that our souls don't know how to get any nutrition from it, so it just keeps taking, taking, taking in empty emotional energy, but it keeps getting starved of nutritious emotional energy.

The other day, imagining a world where everyone focused so much on giving to each other that it became effortless and the rights and liberties came out of nowhere, I had that feeling of world-embracing love. I also had some righteous anger at [45], his base, and others who focus so much more on all the taking and not seeing how they're hurting others with all their taking. . .an anger that wanted to figure out how to get them out of power, so we can go on learning how to teach giving and getting to real emotional attunement.

Other than polticking here in the United States, connecting to people, learning, and sharing with people, I don't have any good answers. I want to keep going, though, and hopefully I'll find a way to contribute to other peoples' consciousness and also to civilization so future generations can do a better job than what we're doing, if we don't destroy ourselves in the process.

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Essay on Taxes and Seeing the Privilege in Paying Them

I believe I posted the following Tweet in the last Lexdate, but I think it's worth posting again as intro to today's entry where I philosophize about taxes.

increase taxes on creative payment to executives, capital gains, & non-wage income & cut down on tax breaks for depreciation.

— The_Lex (@screwjaw) August 24, 2017

People can get emotional about taxes. Some people really hate them. A few people even feel real good about paying them. I probably fall in the middle with some leanings to feeling good about them. Let’s explore some of the reasons for these feelings and see if anything interesting comes.

A dichotomy comes to mind while reading The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and. Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others by Allan Luks with Peggy Payne: Choice vs Obligation. When it comes down to it, taxes are an obligation put onto us by the State under which we live. We have no real choice in the matter, unless we have no problem going to jail, some other penalty, or willingly leave the country. In general, people would rather choose something rather than feel obligated to do something, though exceptions may exist. Nonetheless, many likely dislike taxes because they're an obligation and have no direct choice or control in the matter.

An argument against taxes that follows from the lack of control and obligation aspect of the matter: the tax payor may not get something in return for their taxes. This case probably holds most true for adults without children or never had children, rich people who have money that won't need to go onto welfare and can pay their way through life, and other services that person doesn't see, but they have to pay taxes, anyway. Don't worry, after listing off reasons for people not liking paying taxes, I will try to argue against such reluctance.

People who receive benefits on the taxpayer dole don't deserve it, local charity should take on the responsibility for these people not the State, and/or it's too impersonal. The first one: People who don't take are of themselves are immoral, which blames the victim who had bad luck of the draw or faces prejudice, many who have no fault in their character. Maybe certain local charities can handle their local unfortunates, but many cannot or everyone in a local area might fit under the need for charitable help, so no one has the fortunes to contribute.

Some argue that charity exists to bring people closer together and strengthen the fabric of society, which science, on some level has proven that helping can help the volunteer (see The Healing Power of Doing Good) and the person in need, if provided for respectfully, might feel gratitude for the help that they've received and feel the desire to give back to society, which is great. This one might actually beg a question: How much risk is there of this one becoming an obligation for both sides, compulsory even, losing its spirit? Taking the importance of this one for granted might transition it into a state where people refuse to do it because they feel required to do it, not out of their own desire to act with altruism.

This exploration will focus mostly on American attitudes toward taxes. The American Revolutionary saying "No taxes without representation", I believe, has stayed with us and emboldens us after about 267 years. We really take it to heart, and it makes sense. It makes sense. Why should we have to pay taxes if we have no say in how they're used or if we have no say in how they affect us, if they're just redistributed from us to someone else? I am a pacficist with an exception for self defense, why should I feel comfortable with the government taking part of my paycheck to wage war? I'm against eating meat or ingesting dairy, but my tax dollars come out of my pocket then get used to subsidize ranchers. My work becomes government assets to fund activities that I despise.

To flip the coin, however, look at Shay's Rebellion, probably the most cited insurrection that inspired the end of the Articles of Confederation to be replaced with the original draft of the United States Constitution. In full disclosure, I have a soft spot for Shay's Rebellion because part of it occurred in my hometown, a middle school I attended for about 3 or 4 months was named after a militia man who marched against the rebels (I believe), the name of a road was named after one of the rebels, and the part that really clenches me, I didn't learn about it until I had moved halfway across the country, at about age 32, and needed the Internet to research it.

To sum up Shay's Rebellion: The original states of our early country had taken on A LOT of debt to fight the Revolutionary War. Each state had the responsibility to pay their own war debt. The states raised income to pay that debt through taxes, especially land tax. One characteristic of landowners is that they don't always have liquid assets to pay their taxes, especially if they inherit their land, the economy isn't moving that much, or they have a bad month, season, or year and their land doesn't produce much. The state doesn't care. It needs money. Landowners have land. The state taxes them. And arguably, the landowners have representation because owning enough property, especially property, grants them the vote. Nonetheless, they couldn't get the state off their back from taxing them because the state had to pay their debts to pay for winning their freedom from the supposed tyranny of King George III and the Parliament at the time.

These landowners said screw it and rose up in rebellion. After all, didn't the American Revolution happen for the same exact reason (at least a lot of Massachusetts towns voted for Revolution because of what they saw as unjust taxes. . .other areas of the country had their own reasons, not necessarily as just)? The rebellion was quashed.

The Federalists, however, realized that this way of doing things wouldn't keep the Union together, though. Some states had the wealth and income to pay off their debt, others don't. They had already seen and foresaw many similar insurrections would happen in the future. So after much debate, they scrapped the Articles of Confederation, wrote the Consitution, and decided that, for the war debt at least, they would pool it together on the federal level and charge taxes more equitably among the states. I can see how some might have grumbled about it, since their states paid off their debt well enough, why should they subsidize other people?

One frank argument is that if other states suffer economic ruin, the more successful states will suffer at some point (if anything, imagine an overflow of economic refugees moving between states just looking for better opportunities, definitely advantages and disadvantages, but it doesn't help for economic diversity and states could end up suffering pretty badly in the need for charity for many of these economic refugees).

I want to come back to the present by discussing an issue that Shay's Rebellion brings up: owning land. To me, amassing property and multiple properties feels like a lot of responsibility and risk. I can see that it comes with the chance of reaping a lot of reward, but it comes with a lot of work, back then and now. In my opinion, if you want to own land and reap those rewards, you better know what you're doing, plan well, adapt well, and have backup plans (whether insurance or savings) ready in case shit hits the fan. Just look at what happened to our economy after the Housing Crash and Great Recession. It was more than housing and mortgages, but A LOT of people got screwed by it. They bought into the prosperity that came with land ownership and homeownership. It was a myth that we all ate up and that the home values would just go up and up and up without any top end. As we now know, that's not possible.

I have some compassion for people who inherit a home or land and have a strong connection to it because they grew up in it, their parents owned it, and a it carried a lot of memories. Nonetheless, if they don't bring in the income to pay the taxes and maintain it, their pretty damn screwed because the state can take a chunk out of them. There's also Estate taxes. . .why should someone have to pay to inherit property that's always been in the family and they've lost that family? Can't the damn government see that it doesn't even make up for their loss? I get it. I may not have that strong of emotional connections with property, but I can get it. Feelings are strong, and they are real. We feel emotional pain and joy the same as injuries and physical pleasure. Love is real.

I've come to appreciate the fact that villages, towns, states, etc. governments tax us for material attachments to this world to deliver services for the social good (and also to pay back debt taken on to pay for those services when the government body didn't have the assets to use). Much of the time that we get taxed, it occurs because of liquid assets growing, getting liquid assets from selling property, from income because of our labor, or using liquid assets to purchase property through sale. In many ways, as long as we don't overspend and take into account taxes, we won't go into negative territory because of taxes. A portion of the liquid assets that we take in or put out are taxed, not usually more.
Yes, we "lose" value and deal with opportunity costs via gaining and using buying power, but a prudent person who puts thought into it will not go into the negative from income tax, sales tax, tariffs, etc.

Property taxes for land or homeownership enters into strange territory, I'll admit. The land can do nothing, generate no income, but you still get taxed for it. Like I said before, I can understand how owning land and a home can suck like that. It's like paying rent on top of rent. Maybe if a town just collected enough money to maintain the department that handles deeds and other things that directly secure ownership of the property to a particular person or entity, people wouldn't get so worked up about the situation. Sure, they might grumble, but they're paying to keep the records there for their ownership. If they want to start their own town do the work to maintain the validity of their ownership, which could include arming themselves and other things to secure their property in that State of Nature, that would be interesting. . .kinda like The Walking Dead without zombies, if everyone followed that lead.

Some take pride in paying taxes, especially from the good that it can do on their behalf for others. I'll aim that pride in a different angle. I agree that taxes can do a lot for the social good, which I'm in support of, including the maintenance of our currency. The value of our dollar bills come from the fact that our Federal government accepts it as payment for taxes. So arguably the presence of that dollar bill in your hand or the 1's and 0's that get passed around from our bank accounts and taken on as loans comes from us paying our taxes (and our government paying back their debt). We could go back to the gold or silver standard, but that limits the growth and malleability of society and our economy. We could also go back to bartering goods and labor and trading IOUs, which might lead to a more stable economy most of the time (but still has the risk of bubbles popping). But if no use for our goods, labor, and IOU at a particular time, it's practically like having no money. Working that way also requires a big paradigm shift. A single currency has the benefit of fungibility and that, for most people, they will more often than not have a demand for money unless their spiritually enlightened and seeking to let go of their material attachments (which isn't necessarily a bad goal).

But I think being taxed and having the ability to pay them while keeping our heads above water and even successful provides us a reason to feel good and even proud (not in a shameful full of ourselves way, but in a good, healthy way). Getting taxed represents our receiving a benefit of privilege. We are gaining power and means, or maintaining power and means. As you can see from the Tweet at the top of this entry, I don't believe tax should be exacted on someone who would go destitute, can't survive, or maintain a certain minimum quality of life if they had to pay a tax, even if they were to practice prudence and reason (because frankly practicing prudene and reason during times of poverty may actually seems like immoral, unruly, or horrible behavior. . .is stealing sustenance to actually continue living an immoral act or is it someone stuck in a State of Nature who would suffer and/or die if they did not steal).

Paying taxes and continuing to succeed feels like a point of pride to me. You're gaining privilege through a system that is maintained by the currency. The more taxes you pay without actually suffering, the better you're doing and the more you get to enjoy life. Rich, wealthy people might think it's unfair that they have to give up more a share of their property, but do you know what, the bigger numerical share means less to the rich person. It's not a toss up between survival and paying taxes, it's a toss up between more property and paying taxes. Your large amounts of property, income, and STUFF that is maintained by your taxes and, arguably staving off a State of Nature, buys you status, prestige, and other things that maintain the good things in your life. It's an accomplishment of our ancestors, today's society, your family, and you that you get to live this life.

Your taxes go to maintaining the social fabric. If you didn't pay taxes, your dollar bills and 1's and 0's would have no value. Sure, we would likely find other things to value, which could include the slavery of other people, but do you know what, that's a whole lot harder to maintain. You would have to put a lot more energy into maintaining your status and property in a State of Nature where someone bigger and badder than you (maybe with an army or even amongst your followers) could just come up to you then kill and/or take all your stuff away. So yeah, you and all your money and all your taxes are what helps keep the world sane, as long as the government and society maintain their sanity, too. And frankly, redistributing your wealth toward services, other people, children, etc. etc. does A LOT to maintaining sanity and even developing the world into a state in which more people can enjoy the benefits of economic privilege and feel secure in a world in which people aren't jealously backstabbing each other to get more and more wealth so they can have more than everyone else and lord it over them.

But hey, if you feel that invested in material attachments as the prime importance of the world and don't want to contribute to the good of other people, you can have the responsibility for contributing to the downfall of society and enjoy the hyper vigilance that you will need to exercise every moment of your life to keep it. In the end, we can all follow through on us all dieing alone or maybe building a world where we all have some sort of authentic, loving company when we pass away.

It's all our choice, we make the world we live in.

Is There Such a Thing as a Stability Economy?

It's scary how unrest like in Egypt can make the stock market prices go up. Makes you think about how our economy can benefit by unrest in the world since that creates a scarcity and drives up profit margin.

Makes sense, though, since our economy is based on Growth and Manifest Destiny. Last time I was thinking about how we need to figure out a new economy that gets rewarded by stability and peace.

At this point, the human race has access to pretty much all habitable land, which gets more & more concentrated into the less & less hands, along with bunches of other capital since there's too much labor in the world. The only way for the human race to continue on this Growth Destiny economy is to break out into space & get real space exploration going.

Otherwise we're just going to turn inward, destroy the earth and destroy civilization as we know. The human race may continue after a vast population decimation then continue on with its Growth Destiny, but it's not a fun process.

This situation always kind of makes me think of Robotech and other alien invasion stories. When aliens invade, humans shelve their hostilities to fight the greater enemy. Once aliens leave, humans fight amongst themselves again. But while the aliens attack, humans work together and the possibility of good occurs.

Stuff like that often makes me wonder if an aspect of our racial evolution is to learn how to get along. In alien invasions, we could possibly get new tech to move out into the universe, but at what cost?

As it stands now, though, we can't depend on aliens to save us. We have no signs of technology that will take us out into space to continue our Growth Destiny. Maybe the only way we can move on is to learn how to get along & figure out how to have a stability economy that we can use to focus collective human effort onto a greater mission.

Just sayin'. . ..

Something to Consider about Competitive Capitalism

It's economic common sense in the United States that competition is supposed to bring the cost of products down.

At the same time, though, companies spend millions to try convincing us to buy their stuff. Marketing costs get passed onto the consumer by raising the cost at the store.

Competition also leads to more choice, which is supposed to be a good thing.

Too much choice, however, overwhelms people and at some point makes making a choice more difficult. And when there's more choice, it takes time to research and figure which brand of the product, which model of the product, which design of the product, etc. etc. will fit your needs.

Time is money. Time spent choosing a product to buy costs value, either leisure value or productive value.

So. . .do we really gain or lose freedom when there's more competition in the world to win our attention and loyalty? If there were less companies in the world trying to win us to their side, would they have to spend as much money on marketing, would we have to spend as much time researching a product?

Do we live under a tyranny of competition and choice?

My Reasoned Rumbling Rant Against Fan Fiction

Miffed at both the argument and the rhetoric made not by the blogger at Dead Things ON Sticks: Top Gun: The Musical, And The Photocopy, and the Parody, and the High Horse, I made a reasoned out rant against fanfic.

I'm pretty proud of it. It starts:

My initial reaction to Alison: You're making a philosophical argument whereas the situation that inspired the recent dialogue and why writers don't read a spec or fan fic about their show is legal argument.

Essentially, the legal side addresses issues of who owns the rights to the characters and the execution of those ideas. . .

Enjoy!