I’m often surprised by the responses I get here and elsewhere on topics such as Uber or Apple. I don’t think my opinions on these subjects are particularly outlandish. I’m not an Apple fan-boy so I accept that my general indifference to the MacCult is off-putting to those people, but Uber? How can anyone say anything outrageous about a car service?

You live and you learn so I’ll address some of the objections.

Objection #1:

competition (Uber) against a staid industry (taxi cab cartel) is ultimately beneficial, even if there are some kinks that need to be resolved. About passing on the costs, why do these costs need to be so high? Regulation is the problem, not Uber.

Me: I’m all for competition, as long as the rules are applied equally. Put one boxer in a ring with an anvil tied to his leg and another without the anvil and you don’t have competition. These new services are clever ways of evading the rules, which puts their anvil laden competitors at a disadvantage. Maybe there’s an argument for unfettering the traditional cab companies, but let’s not pretend that Uber is out-competing anyone.

Object #2:

“Now, the reason for those rules may no longer be operative. [True] Those rules may be corrupted or have become corrupted. [True] We can’t know that Until we think about why the rules exist. [Inoperative]” We didn’t much think about it until Uber poked that bag and dollars and customer satisfaction began falling out. And it’s not Uber vs, the establishment.

Me: Regulation of taxi services goes back a long time. One reason was to crackdown on robbery. Another was to relieve pressure on public roads. In modern times, cab companies welcomed regulation for selfish reasons, but so did the public. In fact, the public demanded it. Having a clear way to distinguish legitimate services from less scrupulous operators was best done through licensing. Maybe that’s no longer necessary and I am open to that argument.

Objection #3:

I agree with you 99% of the time, but…..

“I’m fine with that just as long as all of the services pay their share of taxes and abide by the same rules. ”

very Disappointing Zman…….is that the cityboy in you coming out?

Me: I don’t get this at all. You cannot have a human society without taxes. Taxes pay for government, a necessary bit of civilization. How much government we have is debatable, but taxes are not. Tax revenues must be enough to pay for the desired amount of government. Otherwise, you get vastly worse corruption than anything you see with taxes.

Roads are a public good. We build them and maintain them with government. Ideally, each of us pays for what we use of public resources. You pay for water based on your usage and you should pay for your road based on usage. Big scary trucks pay more than bicycles. Taxis pay their share of road use through licensing fees. Figure out how to bill Uber drivers for their road use as we do taxis and everyone is on the same level.

How can you object to that?

Objection #4:

The Zman hates UBER.
I frankly don’t get this.
UBER is just a car service that you contact thru an app on your phone,
rather than thru a phone call.
To me, pretty much a distinction without a difference.
It’s just easier for the riders and more efficient for the drivers
This is no different than hating on Amazon because it destroyed the brick and mortar book store model. (Just as blogs destroyed the letters-to-editor model.)

Me: I have no opinion on Uber as a service. I’ve never had a reason to use it. I’ll also note that I never heard anyone ever state an opinion about taxi regulation until the last year. For a century people were fine with traditional cab service. Then a tax dodging hipster alternative comes along and everyone is fishing around for a reason to hate taxis.

As to the comparison to Amazon, that’s not complete nonsense. Amazon avoided paying sales taxes. That was certainly part of their appeal. They also had access to zero interest money. Oligarchs hate small business so they cheered as Amazon gutted traditional retail. Now that retail is dead, Amazon is back collecting sales taxes. There’s a lesson there.

Objection #5:

UBER lets ambitious drivers get out from under the thumb of the medallion cartel.
That sounds good to me.

Before UBER, the yellow cabs had a monopoly and provided monopoly quality
service – just like dealing a certain well known cable company.

How can the Zman not like the break-up of this monopoly?

Me: I have never once defended the current arrangements. Frankly, I don’t care. If the people of NYC want to have a North Korean style taxi department, that’s their business. I don’t like most of what Obama does in his job, but if someone created Uber for assassins, I’d be against that too. Civilized people have civilized, orderly ways of solving problems.

My observation about Uber is they are simply a sophisticated attempt to circumvent local self-governance. That I will always oppose as it is the road to fascism and tyranny. Taxi regulation in NYC may be a mess in need of reform. Tearing up the rule of law to reform taxi service sounds like bad trade to me.

Objection #5:

The idea that cities everywhere do the same thing–proof that government must be serving their citizens–has not been supportable since NYC did everything it could to keep Thomas Edison’s electric light safe from the gaslight monopoly. What governments of all shapes and sizes can be relied upon to do everywhere–except Sandy Springs, Georgia–is obey some irresistible urge to reach out and touch everything. If it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, and if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Uber, Lyft, Curb, Sidecar. They may all become MySpace because we cannot know the future. Who cares? Now that Uber has cracked that calcified wall of inertia things will work themselves out because markets do that, and not because of but in spite of the cab companies and regulators.

Me: Not always. The lack of regulation is no walk in the park either. By now you should know I’m no utopian. I think human populations evolve their problem solving mechanisms over time and often they dead end or worse. Maybe taxi regulation has reached such a dead end. I don’t know and frankly I don’t care all that much.

My only objection to Uber is in pretending they are some sort of innovative job creator. That, I think, is nonsense. They are privateers cannibalizing an existing business that thought it had paid sufficient protection money to the men with guns to keep privateers under control. Calling Uber “disruptive” is like calling Bonnie and Clyde disruptive to banking.

As I’ve said, if NYC decides to crush Uber or stop providing protection to their clients, that’s none of my concern. My preference would be for the city to open it up to all comers and see what happens. Cell service does change a big part of the service so it is worth letting that run its course before killing or celebrating it.

Now, get off my back about Uber ya bastards!

I’ve been saying for a very long time that “social justice” just a nice way of saying “revenge.” People used to know this. When the old ruler was over thrown, the new ruler delivered swift justice to the former ruler’s people. If the mob got angry enough, they would deliver “rough justice” to the object of their anger. In the affairs of man, justice is the winners punishing the losers.

Toni Morrison, the clownishly inept poet, at least has the honesty to state what everyone knows, with regards to racism.

The Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison has delivered a frank assessment of race relations in America, declaring that until racial disparities in the criminal justice system are resolved, the conversation about racism will never be over.

Morrison, who won the Pulitzer prize in 1988 for her novel Beloved, which told a story of racism and slavery in 19th-century Kentucky and Ohio, drew on a recent spate of high-profile killings of unarmed African Americans by law enforcement officials to illustrate the ongoing struggle.

“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race’,” Morrison told the Daily Telegraph.

“This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back.”

She added: “And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”

Well, she could have seen a four white men convicted of raping a black women. It was in 1959 in Florida, of all places, when four white men were sent away for life in the rape of Betty Jean Owens. After all, if she just wanted one white man convicted, having four convicted must have her waddling around in ecstasy.

As far as a cop shooting  a white kid, we have lots of examples. Gilbert Collar was shot by a black cop in Alabama and not charged. Alabama! Just last year Dillon Taylor was shot by a black cop. Dillon was not only named “Dillon” he was unarmed. No charges in that one either.

Now, maybe Toni Morrison is just a stupid person. But, she has been smart enough to play the skins game well enough to get rich as a colossally bad poet. No, I suspect she knows the truth of things. She just hates white people and would enjoy seeing more white people suffer and die. The cops could shoot a thousand white teenagers in the back tonight and Morrison will want more.

I don’t blame her, really. She’s old and no one really cares what she has to say about anything. She may as well let loose with what’s on her mind. She also must think the tide of history is on the side of non-whites. Look around and ask yourself if she is wrong. She does not have much time so just in case she is dead when American is majority NAM, she has got her two cents in on what should be done.

I came across this posted on Maggie’s Farm the other day.

The probability of entering and remaining in an intellectually elite profession such as Physician, Judge, Professor, Scientist, Corporate Executive, etc. increases with IQ to about 133.  It then falls about 1/3 by 140.  By 150 IQ the probability has fallen by 97%!  In other words, a significant percentage of people with IQs over 140 are being systematically and, most likely inappropriately, excluded from the population that addresses the biggest problems of our time or who are responsible for assuring the efficient operation of social, scientific, political and economic institutions.  This benefits neither the excluded group nor society in general. For society, it is a horrendous waste of a very valuable resource.  For the high IQ person it is a personal tragedy commonly resulting in unrealized social, educational and productive potential.

I think the facts presented in the article are open to debate, but they do correspond with my own observations. The most obvious example is Rick Rosner, who has some of the highest test scores ever recorded. He’s also a bit of a wacko. I’ve known a few 1% IQ’s who struggled to make good use of their IQ. Even those who did “mainstream” often did poorly compared to their less savvy coevals.

The two best examples of the latter are John Sununu and Chuck Schumer. Sununu tested into Mega Society and Schumer hit a perfect score on his SAT back in the 60’s when it was still a real test. Sununu had some success in politics, but his prickly personality was a problem. Schumer, of course, is known as the most unpleasant human on earth.

I suppose, in the case of Schumer and Sununu, it can be argued that their unpleasant demeanor was overcome by their high IQ’s. Chuck Schumer’s position is entirely dependent on his ability to push through sophisticated legislation allowing the financial sector to loot the economy. You have to be a smart guy to do that well so being a raging dickhead probably counts for little.

Still, at the extreme right side of the curve, we see a lot of eccentrics who prefer to be outside the conventional career paths. This is probably why we say there is a fine line between genius and insanity. These folksy observations persist for a reason and that reason is they have a kernel of truth. High IQ people tend to be weirdos.

What applies to productive environments also applies to social environments and even personal relationships.  Theoretically, after Hollingworth, a person’s social relationships should be limited to people with R16IQs within 30 points of their own.  For the 100 IQ person, this will include about 94% of the population and consequently it is not an issue.  However, for the 150 R16IQ (140 D15IQ), social relationships are limited to 120-180 R16IQ people which represents just a little over 10% of the population.  The 165 R16IQ (150D15IQ) person will be limited to people with 135+ R16IQs (130 D15IQ).  This comprises just 2% of the population.   By 182 R16IQ (160 D15IQ) the problem becomes critical with social relationships limited to those with R16IQs over 152 (142 D15IQ) which comprises just 0.25% of the population.

For the readers on the left side of the curve, not you of course, those other guys, let me explain what this means. Humans tend to associate with people like themselves. This does not just apply to IQ, by the way. This does not mean we associate with people identical to us. It means the more alike, the more we hold in common, which is the basis for relationships.

Take, for example, a typical working class Irish guy from a Boston neighborhood. He will easily socialize with people in his neighborhood and other working class guys from other Boston neighborhoods. The further you get from his natural environment, however, the less he will have in common with people from other states, countries, etc. There comes a point where socializing becomes impossible. It’s why dropping Bantu warriors into Lewiston Maine is a very stupid idea.

In IQ, a similar relationship between distance and commonality exists. If you have a 100 IQ, you will be roughly as smart as 90% of the people you will encounter on a daily basis. That means you will be able to understand most of the same things and not understand most of the same things. That last bit is vital. Ignorance is bliss, especially when shared with friends.

The further you move to the right on the curve, the smaller the population pool of people in your intelligence range. That means most of the people you meet will not know what you know and will probably never know it. Worse yet, the vast majority don’t think like you think. That’s not always appreciated.

Members of high IQ societies, especially those that require D15IQs above 145, often comment that around this IQ, qualitatively different thinking emerges.  By this they mean that the 145+ D15IQ person doesn’t just do the same things, intellectually, as a lower IQ person, just faster and more accurately, but actually engages in fundamentally different intellectual processes.  David Wechsler, D. K. Simonton, et alia, have observed the same thing.

Since intimate social relationships are predicated upon mutual understanding, this draws a kind of ‘line in the sand’ at 140-150 D15IQ that appears to separate humans into two distinct groups.  This may truncate the 30 point limit for those between 150 and 160 D15IQ people.  Even when 150+ D15IQ people learn to function in the mainstream society, they will always be considered, and will feel, in some way ‘different’.  Grady Towers explored this in depth in his article, ‘The Outsiders’.  This is of mild interest to the group within which the 150+ D15IQ person is embedded but it is moderately to profoundly important to the high IQ individual who will feel an often profound sense of isolation.

It has often been observed that 150+ D15IQ people are loners.  Also, Loius Termann found that children at this IQ level were emotionally maladjusted in about 40% of the cases.  However from the above one cannot help but wonder if this results from the children being constantly thrust into ‘no-win’ social situations and never given the opportunity to hone their social skills among their intellectual peers.

I think the loner aspect is due as much to boredom with other people as anything else. Human interaction is an exchange of value. If one side is simply too stupid to value the other side, they will get bored. The super-genius will also get bored or simply prefer to interact with a machine or book.

In some respects, a 1% IQ is like being seven feet tall. There’s some value at the fringes, but otherwise it has no value and can be a burden. There’s a low demand for seven footers and to most people it is a little weird being around a freakish giant. A 1% IQ is not in much demand and most people don’t like being around Wile E. Coyote for long, unless the genius is also blessed with a high agreeableness and extroversion.

The other day Kevin Williamson posted this over at NRO and I took the opportunity to troll him a bit, as the cool kids would say. What I did was bait him into responding to my comment about Uber and its fan boys in the libertarian cult. In fact, I was deliberately provoking him and his fan base into thinking about something more than their normal red team/blue team myopia.

Uber is all the rage with liberals and libertarian types these days. It seems as if they can’t stop yapping about it. Managerial class types and their attendants, particularly the attendants, have an obsession with cabs. The foot soldiers of the people in charge spend a lot of time in cabs and they consider it one of their worst indignities so maybe that’s why  they obsess of Uber.

This newfangled car service is not better or cheaper. By “better” I mean that in the purely utilitarian sense. Carrying someone from one spot to another via motorized transport is not all that involved. You either get there or not, within an acceptable time window. Uber adds nothing to this. My bet is Uber is slower, on average. From what I gather, it is not cheaper.

What Uber offers is an aesthetic. Instead of climbing into a grimy cab like the other servants, Uber offers a normal car. That way, the customer can pretend they are the one with the attendants. If you are working in a NYC office, you’re either in charge or working for someone in charge. Obviously, most are just servants and that reality is manifest every single day. In the egalitarian paradise, this is tough to take.

There’s also the prospect of shooing away the riff-raff. In a prior age, the house servants were highly intolerant of the field workers, gardeners, tradesman, etc. They considered themselves better than the servants who toiled outside. There’s a fair bit of that here too. The office drone with his state college diploma looks down on the horny-handed sons of toil working the cabs. They would just as soon not see them at all. Too much of a reminder.

A big part of gentrification, after all, is removing from sight the unpleasant aspects of reality. Crime is certainly a big part of the mix, but there’s a reason why the affluent work so hard to keep the servants quarters as far from them as possible. Replacing those proletarian cabs with the nondescript sedans of Uber drivers just looks so much nicer.

That was the bait. Somewhere in the comment’s Kevin responded and confirmed all of this.

Uber drivers do not necessarily earn less money. Consider the NYC situation, in which 1 in 5 taxis (at least) is driven by an unlicensed illegal immigrant, mostly making chump change while the medallion-holding cartel members do well. Uber isn’t any less expensive when going from downtown to JFK, but even if it were more expensive, I’d use it, because it is convenient, because NYC taxi drivers are mostly horrible, and because I do not like doing business with politician-enabled cartels.

I don’t have an issue with taste or even snobbery being the reason behind liking Uber. I wear nothing but Polo dress shirts because it signals good taste. The fact that they fit well is important, but if some off-brand fit just as well, I’d probably still buy the Polo brand. This is a normal part of human relations and is another example of why libertarianism is nonsense. Economic man does not exist.

Uber’s popularity with libertarians is two-fold. One is they hate taxis cartels. This is a safe target for them because liberals are no fans of taxi cartels either (See above). This allows libertarians to indulge in all of their favorite rants, without incurring the wrath of the Cult. With the legalization of weed, libertarians need a new windmill.

They also hold it up as an example of how free markets work to improve the quality of life. They are generally right about this of course. Markets allows society to set preferences based on price thus satisfying as many people along the demand curve as possible. While this is not the natural order, it is the preferred order if you wish to have prosperity.

But, that’s not what’s going on with Uber. They are operating like privateers. The Crown has licensed people to engage in a particular type of commerce. That always attracts privateers who see to profit from the cartel, by undercutting it at the fringes. This was true when trade was conducted on foot and true in the age of sail.

This is where Uber comes in. They help privateers avoid the rules set forth by the state for cab drivers. Those rules have a cost so the Uber driver can therefore provide a better service at the same price or even lower. They can also pay Uber a cut. That sounds great if you are convinced those regulations on taxis have no utility. Uber is just finding a way around the highwaymen of the taxi service.

Fair enough, but we don’t know if those regulations are worthless. They did not spring from nothing. Laws and regulations are intended to solve a problem. You may not think the problem is worth solving. You may think it is best served privately. You may hate the solution with the intensity of a thousand sons suns. I get that so there’s no need to hassle me over it. None of it matters. Laws and regulations are not passed by chance.

Now, the reason for those rules may no longer be operative. Those rules may be corrupted or have become corrupted. We can’t know that Until we think about why the rules exist. This is where liberals and libertarians  hit the rocks. They get their panties in a wad and reach for the sledgehammer. Kevin thinks Uber will bust up the taxi cartel so that’s enough for him. What comes after does not enter his thoughts.

This is the crux of conservatism. I’m perfectly happy to replace taxi cartels with something or even nothing, as long as I know what the something or nothing means. That starts by understanding why every city of earth has sought to regulate livery service. What are these issues the cartel system is supposed to address? What is the cost of not addressing it? What are the proposed replacement? Will it address the old problems and will it create new problems?

Much of what plagues us today is due to Progressives swinging the wrecking ball on the assumption a perfect replacement will spring magically from the rubble. Libertarians have this same defect. They never stop and wonder why the thousand generation that have come before them chose something other than their preferred option. There’s a reason for it. The conservative seeks to know that answer first. Everyone else just wants to swing the wrecking ball.

A friend sent this to me wondering why anyone would want to open carry. He lives in New Hampshire where open carry is permitted. You need a permit to conceal carry, but any legal gun owner can open carry. Go up above the notches in the fall and it looks like a scene from a Western. Everyone is carrying.

For most Americans, Texas conjures images of gun-toting vaqueros, cowboys wielding six-shooters and epic battles over independence and secession. Gun manufacturers Colt, Mossberg and Magpul call the Lone Star State home, and a concealed carry license grants you a fast-pass into the state Capitol.

All the more surprising, then, that Texas was the first state to ban its citizens from carrying handguns, a restriction that remained on the books for 125 years. Now, 20 years after the Texas Legislature OK’d the carrying of concealed handguns with a license, some lawmakers want to make it legal to carry holstered weapons in plain sight.

The rest of the piece is weeping about how people were mean to blacks in the old days, but no one cares about that. The people interested in this issue wonder why it is anyone would want to carry in the open. I’m a Second Amendment absolutist. If you are allowed to own a gun, you have the right to carry it around with you. I’m against any and all permitting of firearms.

That said, I can’t think of a reason why I would want to open carry. I get why cops do it. It is part of their uniform and we want them to have ready access to their firearm in order to shoot those unarmed, fleeing black people. A a private citizen, I think I’d prefer it if my fellow citizens don’t know who is and who is not armed.

The more I think of it, the more it strikes me that open carry is problematic for a number of reasons. In every state the cops have a right to inspect your firearm. If you are carrying and a cop asks for your gun and permit, you are required by law to produce them. But, cops are not randomly stopping people asking for their permit.

In Virginia I was pulled over for speeding and had my pistol bag on the front seat. The cop came up to the window and I had my permit out, along with my license. That let him know I was a good guy and following the law. That’s all he needed and we went about the business of a traffic stop.

Open carry complicates this. Every cop is going to be on the lookout for a dodgy looking character carrying a pistol. Maybe that’s a good thing, as criminals are stupid. They will end up self-reporting, so to speak, by carrying their illegal gun openly. Still, I’m puzzled as to why anyone would want to open carry, other than small dick syndrome.

Way back in the olden thymes, I became acquainted with the phrase “pseudo-intellectual poseur.” The person using it was a very liberal person aiming at some other liberal person. I no longer remember why I was privy to this bum fight, but the phrase stuck with me. The Brits have an old word that conveys a similar sentiment. George Galloway once called Chris Hitchens “a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.”

As in all of these progressive bum fights, the person hurling the accusation is most likely projecting what they hate about themselves onto the object of their anger. Progressives are full of self-loathing, amongst other things. George Galloway is a windbag and grifter, the very definition of a popinjay. In the bum fight I witnessed, the two combatants were both mediocre minds pretending they were something better.

Anyway, the phrase “pseudo-intellectual poseur” always comes to mind when I think of Vox.There’s a humorless scold quality salted with a genteel prissiness one used to associate with upper class homosexuals. Mostly, it is mediocre minds prancing around as intellectuals when they would be better off teaching English at a public middle-school. They are simply in way over their heads.

This is a great example. Matt “Don’t Call Me Julio” Yglesias posted this nonsense the other day, obviously not understanding any of it.

Studies done in the United States show that immigration raises average incomes of native-born Americans, including native-born Americans with low skill levels. Immigration is, of course, even better for the incomes of the immigrants themselves, which makes reduced barriers to migration one of the biggest possible game changers for overall global growth. What’s more, as the Economist’s Ryan Avent has recently shown, more immigration could be a highly effective fix to the currently hot topic of secular stagnation.

Now, put aside the fact that we could fill out those same posters with pictures of Pakistani pimps and their teenage victims. Yglesias is claiming that the laws of supply and demand do not apply to labor markets. After all, if increasing the amount of low-skilled labor increases the wages of low-skilled labor, we have stumbled upon a truth that invalidates the foundations of economics.

Of course, that’s not the case and Yglesias is a stupid person for saying it. His frequent use of the phrase “game changer” is one of those easy to spot signs that the person using it is not very bright. Stupid people love talking about game changers. At the root of it is the magical belief that utopia is just around the next bend. But, they think it sounds clever so they decorate their costumes with it.

I’m sure you’re wondering who is Jake Flanagin and why would anyone care if he is a racist. Up until five minutes ago, I would have wondered that myself. Here’s the answer. Mr. Flanagin is a writer who works the Progressive side of the street producing de rigueur filler material for a small fever swamp publication called Quartz. Looking at his twitter page, I’m going to further assume he is a homosexual.

Quartz is a site owned and developed by Atlantic Media, the people who own The Atlantic. It’s supposed to be a business site aimed at the global elite. As is the case with all agit-prop organs of the Cult of Modern Liberalism, it is mostly sermons extolling the faithful to be true to the gods of Progressivism.

What got my attention was this piece I saw on twitter. I followed the link only because it must be a joke of some sort and I like jokes. South Africa is 82% black and 9% white. The number of whites continues to decline in the face of the outlandish levels of violence by blacks on non-blacks. Rape is so common, housing and communities are now organized around preventing it.

To give you a sense of the rape culture that is South Africa, it is the only country that has a special Wikipedia site just for its rape culture. This is from that entry:

According to the report by the United Nations Office on Crimes and Drugs for the period 1998–2000, South Africa was ranked first for rapes per capita.^[3] In 1998, one in three of the 4,000 women questioned in Johannesburg was raped, according to Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET) Africa.^[4] While women’s groups in South Africa estimate that a woman is raped every 26 seconds, the South African police estimates that a woman is raped every 36 seconds.^[5]

More than 25% of a sample of 1,738 South African men from the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces admitted to raping someone when anonymously questioned; of these, nearly half said they had raped more than one person, according to a non-peer reviewed policy brief issued by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

The idea of whites being responsible for a crime wave against foreigners is so ludicrous I just assumed it was satire. I like satire, but apparently Mr. Flanagin does not. He is serious when he claims:

High unemployment and other economic woes appear to be the driving force behind anti-immigrant violence and nativist rhetoric. Zulu nationalism—a longtime presence in South African politics—has likely also played a significant hand. But the muscular ethnocentrism behind Goodwill Zwelithini’s statements did not develop in a vacuum. Competition between Zulus and other native South Africans against non-native, non-white laborers has deep roots in colonial history, dating back to the very foundation of the South African state.

He then goes onto describe how white settlers were mean to the natives for 100 years. The Zulus enjoy special victim status because they have a cool name and the writer is a fan of Michael Caine movies. He fails to mention that the native population exploded after the PPP arrived, due to better agriculture, sanitation, medicine and social organization.

What I find stunning about these narcissistic lefties who write this nonsense is they are blissfully unaware of their own staggering racism and bigotry. Obviously, he casually paints all whites as sinners in the hands of the anti-racists gods. That can be written off has juvenile self-loathing. The writer hates himself and everyone like himself.

It is the object of his affection, the Zulu warrior, that comes in for the crudest of bigotry. The underlying assumption on the part of the writer is these people are savage morons lacking agency of their own. They are unable to think for themselves. Instead, they are tossed about like corks on the sea, completely lacking free will. The Zulu Mr. Flanagin imagines is an unthinking wild animal.

Even the most hardcore of genetic determinist would not go this far. Men are not just moist robots. Only a sociopath thinks of people in the same way they think of furniture. Most of what we are is in our genes, but it is not all of what we are and that’s why we hold men responsible for their actions.

Mediocrities like Mr. Flanigan can never understand these things so he falls back on simple stereotypes taught to him by his coreligionists. He repeats them and waits for the pat on the head.

In my post on Greece yesterday, I came in for withering fire over my statement about elections. OK, that’s an exaggeration. I’m often surprised at what gets the attention of readers in my posts, but also in stuff I read on various sites. The comments sections have become the place where you can take the temperature of that portion of the reading public with similar interest to your own.

Anyway, the objection is that elections are not about problem solving and I can see the point. Often elections are nothing more than beauty contests. When writing that post I was looking at elections as an ongoing process. Individually they may be meaningless, but string a few together and you have a meaningful series that reflects the attempts by a society to solve a problem.

Still, that leaves the other objection, which is that current elections are not addressing the important problems. The country is being overrun by foreigners and the pols debate trivial changes to the tax code or how they look better in a blue suit than the other guys. In America, the 2016 election will have little to say about immigration, even though the public is concerned about it. In the UK, the only guy talking immigration is dismissed as a racist.

That last bit really did not resonate with me until I looked up some polling on immigration in the UK. In the US, the numbers have been creeping up, but immigration is still low on the list of issue important to voters. Americans are still far more concerned with the economy and the general chaos in Washington, than immigration issues.In the UK, immigration is the top issue. It’s not just the top worry, it is the top worry of most people.

The people in charge of Britain, however, are doing everything they can to keep the topic out of the election. So much so that the BBC stacked the audience during the last debate in an attempt to discredit Nigel Farage.

He will take audience questions in a 30-minute programme called Election 2015: Ask Nigel Farage.

The discussion, held in Birmingham, will air after the News at 10 and will be chaired by journalist Jo Coburn.

It will be held at the same time as a Question Time special featuring the Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders who will take turns answering questions from the same audience in Leeds.

A Ukip insider raised questions over the timing of the announcement from the BBC amid a growing bias storm engulfing the broadcaster.

It earlier emerged that Thursday’s debate featuring the leaders of “challenger” parties had an audience where just ONE THIRD leaned towards the political right.

The Ukip leader was booed on the programme when he suggested the make-up of the BBC election debate audience was left wing “even by the left-wing standards of the BBC”.

Host David Dimbleby even insisted the audience had been “carefully chosen” by independent polling organisation ICM to represent the balance between all parties.

But when the make-up of audience members was finally revealed it showed that nearly 70 per cent were left wing.

Think about the people who would risk a scandal in order to get a few more jeers at the UKIP candidate. There’s a level of fanaticism here that goes beyond the normal partisanship. UKIP is not going to win the election. They are taking a bigger bite out of the Tories than the even more leftist parties. Strategically, UKIP is serving the interests of the BBC types. Yet, they cannot stop themselves from attacking UKIP.

The question, of course, is why? Immigration should be no more emotionally fraught than zoning ordinances or garbage collection budgets. It is just another policy that free people must administer. But it isn’t to the people in the charge. Flooding their nations with foreigners has become a holy mission and those who oppose them deserving of the worst they can throw at them.

Immigration, of course, is tied to citizenship. Limits on immigration mean there are benefits to citizenship, which means there is such a thing called a citizen and that’s become the greatest taboo in Western societies. The idea that people are citizens and their government is obligated to protect their interests is a heresy amongst the ruling classes. They no longer see themselves bound to their host countries and the people of those countries.

That’s why immigration may be our greatest taboo now. In the UK, the people in charge desperately want to fold the country into the amorphous blob of Europe. The far less sophisticated rulers of America imagine themselves ruling over it all. The fact that the people may not be willing to go along with it makes the need to sacralize the immigrant and demonize the nativist.

Way back in the mists of time, Obama was running for president and the lunatics were fainting in the aisles at the mere mention of his name. I recall being in a party store prior to the election and people were buying all sorts of Obama gear for their Obama election party. I was wondering what sort of nut decides to have a party for Obama’s election and then I thought about my liberal friends. The reason this was all news to me was due to not being invited to the parties.

Such is the life of the outsider.

Back then, a big part of the attraction was the otherness. Obama was an exotic weirdo from a distant land with a Muslim name. He was the antithesis of the great evil plaguing the land, the great evil of the Pale Penis People.  I’m pretty sure that Obama is the perfect opposite of the typical white American male and that’s why the cult fell in love. He was their chocolate savior.

It is a strange form of cuckoldry that has gripped the nation. The lunatics went first, but that’s always the case. Conservative Inc followed on, which is also the norm. Just recall how they gushed over JC Watts from Oklahoma. Nice guy, but he did nothing important other than be a black guy in the GOP. Colin Powell played the race card to a spectacular career in the GOP, finally stabbing everyone in the back on the way to retirement.

After eight years of Obama, the GOP is convinced they must have a non-white at the top of their ticket. So much so Jeb Bush is ready to change his name to Juan Eduardo Arbusto. Since that’s not likely to fly, the GOP has Marco Rubio warming in the bullpen, ready to step in as their man for the nomination. Rubio has the added benefit of the immigrant’s back story. He’s a meat head, but charming with a good narrative to sell.

That’s the thing with Rubio. He’s basically a Cuban Sarah Palin. He’s not stupid, but he is not sitting around working physics problems in his free time either. He’s also a man of pedestrian tastes and sensibilities. Unlike Palin, he has the brown force field around him so no one dare call him stupid or even hint at it, for fear of being called a racist.

While Rubio has a blank resume, at least he has won an election. That says he has some idea how the game is played. That cannot be said of Dr. Ben Carson who is famous in political circles for reasons that elude me. I think he gave a speech somewhere that sounded good. That and he is black and not just black, but a black surgeon! As far as I can tell, that is his only reason to be running for president – he’s black.

Now, I have nothing against any of these people. I don’t think they should be president, but we’re a country that has had a vulgar degenerate, a blockhead and a dimwit in the White House. The last 25 years seem to prove that we could just do away with the office entirely. After all, if the last three idiots could not bring down the nation, the office must hold no power at all, relative to the rest of the country.

What I don’t get is the weird obsession with the foreign, exotic and unconventional. What’s the attraction? Sure, its good to see minorities succeed. The hope is they will be an example for their people to follow. Whether or not that has any impact on their people is open to debate, but the sentiment is at least understandable. If it does work, a successful black guy will drag his people up.

That’s not what we’re seeing. There’s a sacramental quality to the worship of non-whites and foreigners. I hear this from otherwise sensible people regarding Hispanics in California. They believe the state will turn around when a suitably conservative Hispanic wins the governorship. To my ears, this sounds a lot like  ancients believing the right sacrifices could result in a good harvest. It’s magical thinking.

In the case of Americans, my sense is many white people think that their sins can only be scrubbed from their soul if they fully and complete submit to those who their ancestors harmed. Racism has taken up the place of original sin. Christians believe you must completely submit to God. The anti-racists think they can only be cleansed by submitting completely to non-whites.

This madness has a Dorothy Martin vibe to it. Electing Obama was supposed to usher in the perfect era of race relations. Instead, things are worse. Sensible people would look at this experiment and suspect the prophesies may not have been right. To the true believers, the response is to become even more fanatical.

It’s tempting to think that the futile search for the chocolate savior will eventually be overwhelmed by reality. Charles Murray has argued that this impulse will turn 180 degrees and in a generation Progressives will be embracing tribalism. I have no way of knowing if that is true and I will not be around to see it. I do know that this spiritual impulse to right the wrongs of racism has only grown stronger in my life. Failure to please the gods of race is the fuel that drives the quest to please those gods

Watching the Greeks cast about for a way to make math go away has been fascinating to me. Everyone knows the Greeks can never repay their debts. Everyone knows they will never make the reforms required to keep receiving aid from the rest of Europe. Yet, everyone keeps pretending otherwise and not just for appearances. It seems they really believe that mathematics will yield to wishful thinking.

Anthropologists assume that in modern times, complex societies cannot collapse. They can weaken and go through a process of reform, but they cannot collapse. The reason is every society is adjacent to another complex society. Collapse would lead to being taken over by a neighbor. Even a screwed up society like Greece will suck it up and do what is necessary to fix their walls and rebuild their core rather than become a province of Turkey or Bulgaria.

But, we don’t know that. It is just assumed to be true because it has always been true.  Things are true until they are not. Not so long ago, it was inconceivable that a member state would face financial collapse and now the Greeks are now preparing for bankruptcy.

Greece is preparing to take the dramatic step of declaring a debt default unless it can reach a deal with its international creditors by the end of April, according to people briefed on the radical leftist government’s thinking.

The government, which is rapidly running out of funds to pay public sector salaries and state pensions, has decided to withhold €2.5bn of payments due to the International Monetary Fund in May and June if no agreement is struck, they said.

“We have come to the end of the road . . . If the Europeans won’t release bailout cash, there is no alternative [to a default],” one government official said.

A Greek default would represent an unprecedented shock to Europe’s 16-year-old monetary union only five years after Greece received the first of two EU-IMF bailouts that amounted to a combined €245bn.

The warning of an imminent default could be a negotiating tactic, reflecting the government’s aim of extracting the easiest possible conditions from Greece’s creditors, but it nevertheless underlined the reality of fast-emptying state coffers.

Default is a prospect for which other European governments, irritated at what they see as the unprofessional negotiating tactics and confrontational rhetoric of the Greek government, have also begun to make contingency plans.

In the short term, a default would almost certainly lead to the suspension of emergency European Central Bank liquidity assistance for the Greek financial sector, the closure of Greek banks, capital controls and wider economic instability.

Although it would not automatically force Greece to drop out of the eurozone, a default would make it much harder for Alexis Tsipras, prime minister, to keep his country in the 19-nation area, a goal that was part of the platform on which he and his leftist Syriza party won election in January.

No one really knows what will happen if the Greeks default. There will be lots of hooting and hollering. Capital will rush out of the country as Greeks try to stash their savings abroad, but that’s most happened anyway. The banks will fail and close down. The economy, for a short period will seize up. Civil unrest will be inevitable. A military coup is not out of the question, as in times of turmoil, the guys with the guns tend to have an edge.

To the average Greek, this could feel like the end to the world, but it does not qualify as a collapse by the standards of anthropology. Greece is in no risk of dissolving. A coup would just mean new leaders in charge of the same society. Similarly, Tsipras crowning himself king would simply be a modification of the organizational chart and small one at that. Reform would simply be handed to an authoritarian.

It’s tempting to pin the reason for all of this on democracy. Critics of democracy have always pointed to the quote allegedly from Alexander Fraser Tyler, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” In short, democracy becomes organized looting that accelerates into chaos.

That’s pithy and useful, I suppose, but not accurate. It’s easy to pin the blame on the freeloaders and loafers. Democracy may increase their influence, but it also strengthens more responsible elements in society too. Modern elections are always over some problem that needs solving and the winner is almost always the one promising a solution.

Even in Greece, the main parties representing the ruling elite tried to force through changes in the face of their fiscal crisis. When all of your options on the ballot are calling for the same things, democracy has been suspended. It was only when the main parties failed to come up with a way to address the crisis that the lunatic parties moved to the fore, offering nothing of substance, just a catharsis.

It seems to me that what is happening in Greece is a part of a longer process that is happening in the West. The Greeks joined the Euro for a reason. The Euro, of course, was not created to give bureaucrats something to do during the day. The whole project, including the addition of Greece, was an attempt to solve a problem.

Publicly, the problem they claim to be addressing is the long history of conflict in Europe. Economic cooperation, then a single currency and eventually, political unity. That’s the part above the waves. The part below the waves is the diminishing returns of the organizational model developed over the last two centuries. They are grasping about for some way to make work the mathematics of social democracy.

The math of social democracy is all about diminishing marginal returns. The first big programs like public education and aid to the poor had big returns, far more than the costs. Subsequent investments in complex social management netted smaller returns, but still more than the costs. Over time, the inertia of progress forced greater investment in complexity, aimed at mitigated or ameliorating the human condition, well past the point of diminishing returns.

In this regard, the Greeks are an example of what lies ahead for all of Europe and the West. They joined the Euro because it looked like a solution to their problem, but it only delayed the inevitable. Now they desperately try to kick the can further down the road, but there’s not much road left. What comes next is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it will simply be a disorganized dismantling of decades of social complexity, a national version of a reorganization through bankruptcy.