Legend has it, that when the Persians were conquering Asia Minor, the great king Cyrus was warned that the Greeks were dangerous adversaries. He supposedly laughed this off as the Greeks, in his mind, were a people who lied to one another. A people who could not tell truth from fiction could not possibly stand up to the Persians. What he was referring to was the Greek market place, where commerce was conducted between buyers and sellers haggling over price. This was an alien concept to the Persians.
Like most anecdotes handed down to us, especially those from the long ago past, this is probably apocryphal. Herodotus, the main source of information about the Persians, was as much a story teller as a historian. Even so, we know the Persians considered lying and owing a debt to be the worst sins. Lying could get a person executed, if the person being told the lie was of high status. It was not that lying to a person of high status was particularly wrong. It was that the high status person had the power to punish the liar.
Naturally, the Persians would have looked at the Greek culture as deeply immoral, as it was based on dishonesty. After all, persuasion is a form of lying and democracy is about persuading people, not arriving at the truth. The marketplace is where buyers and sellers seek advantage over one another. The seller exaggerates the quality of his goods and the buyer tries to play sellers off one another to get a bargain. Not only is there no advantage to truth telling, there can be great rewards for skillful dishonesty.
Whether or not Cyrus said what is claimed is unimportant. It is an important insight into a fundamental flaw of both democracy and the marketplace. Public debate is not a search for truth, but a search for a way to convince a majority of the public. Similarly, the market is not a search for the true value of a good or service. It is the search for the bigger share of a financial transaction. Inevitably such systems reward the people who are good at gaining the trust of their fellow citizens in order to deceive them.
This truth about the marketplace, be it the political market or the market for goods and services, is not an argument against it. Any form of human organization is going to involve trade-offs. Further, men are not angels, so all social systems will be susceptible to corruption. Knowing this about democracy, for example, is why the Founders tried to construct a system that would restrain democracy. Similarly, the economic reforms a century ago were intended to put limits on the marketplace.
In the present age, this institutional dishonesty is most obvious in politics, where the parties are now completely dominated by sociopaths. A system that is supposedly built on respect for the public will is now run by people who hold the people in contempt. They take pleasure in lying to their most important voters. It’s not just the Right, the Left does the same thing, only with more skill. Elizabeth Warren will run as an opponent of big business, but in office she will be entirely beholden to global corporate interests.
What compounds this problem in democracy is the people are conditioned to think it is normal and healthy to be ruled by sociopaths. Politics becomes the inverse of what people expect in their daily lives. Among your friends and acquaintances, you expect a high degree of trust and honestly. In politics, you have been trained to demand the most extreme forms of lying. If a politician makes the mistake of uttering the truth, he is hooted off the stage. Democracy makes the people an enemy of themselves.
Something similar happens in the marketplace. It used to be that the cost and profit of an item was reflected in the price. When costs went up, the price went up. If the seller was a bit greedy, the price would reflect it. Today, when costs go up, the seller quietly shrinks the product. The greed of the seller results in larger packages that disguise the shrinking product inside. It used to be a pint was a pound the world around, but now it is closer to thirteen ounces, but it depends up the seller and time of day.
As with democracy, the real crime with these deceptive practices in the marketplace is it normalizes dishonestly. Whenever the topic of “shrinkflation” comes up, people have been trained to laugh at the person questioning it. “That’s just clever marketing” we are told, as if it is naive and childlike to question systemic fraud. The result is the virtues of the marketplace get turned on their head. Instead of competition producing the best product, competition produces the most accomplished liars.
None of this is an argument against self-government or commerce. It’s that free markets and self-government are not ends in themselves, but a means to an end. The point of human organization is the spiritual and material prosperity of the people. The form of government and the economic arrangements are about the welfare of the people, not some theoretical ideal. If defending democracy means defending rule by sociopath, maybe democracy, at least the extreme form, is not a great idea.
Similarly, if free markets result in the people being terrorized by global technology giants, maybe a little less economic freedom, in order to reign in these companies, is a good trade-off. After all, the point of economic order is not to achieve private tyranny in defense of a theory. The point of economic order is to benefit the people, collectively and individually. If it requires government regulation to have prices on goods and services that indicate the real value of the items, that’s not a terrible trade-off.
For just five dollars a month you can help feed a starving dissident in Lagos. That’s less than the price of a craft beer or a coffee at Starbucks. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask to feed a dissident. Unlike those mega-corporations, I will not use your money to destroy your family and community. Or, you can send money to me at: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. I now have a PayPal setup for those who prefer that method to donate. Thank you for your support!
About the “curiosity” discussion, here’s a relevant passage from Pope Leo XIII:
“What naturalists or rationalists aim at in philosophy, that the supporters of liberalism, carrying out the principles laid down by naturalism, are attempting in the domain of morality and politics,” Leo XIII wrote in Libertas: “The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license. The end of all this it is not difficult to foresee.”
I can see why there is a need for sacred knowledge but not why it should necessarily be forbidden, or why Catholics deserve to be the sole regulators of it.
Pope Leo seems to be saying that rationalism leads to materialism and spiritual death. I think that is true for most people today but not for everyone. My curiosities have led me to believe in that which is not tangible. When asked about religion I can say earnestly say I believe in Gods. Which is what most humans believed for most of human history before “Science” and Zoroastrianism.
E Michael Jones has been making a splash in the dissident community lately. He insists that Christianity is simply Logos and Catholicism is the only form with a built-in Jew vaccine. I see the logic and historical precedents, but how is Logos simultaneously reason and a disparagement of curiosity?
See if this helps. Aquinas argues that studiousness is not inherently sinful, but that it’s virtue depends on the following:
1) it must pursue knowledge of truth
2) it must not have prideful or other sinful aims
3) more important obligations must not be neglected in pursuit of knowledge
4) knowledge must must be pursued through lawful teachers and not through
superstitious curiosity, e.g., the occult
5) its proper end is knowledge of God
6) the student must know his limitations and not fall into error
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3167.htm
“Curiosity”, for Augustine and Aquinas, also connotes a kind of busybodiness, or undue, excessive interest in things that are not properly our concern, and custody (against “concuspience”) of the eyes, so as not to fall into temptation or sin.
https://catholicmoraltheology.com/casey-anthony-and-the-vice-of-curiosity/
“Curiositas is best understood in the context of medieval monasticism…The parallel between the monastery with the vast library and a globalized world with Internet access should now be clear. Aquinas thought of curiositas as largely caused by acedia—i.e. spiritual laziness or aimlessness. Who among us has not wasted hours on Wikipedia rather than completing the task at hand? Who is not acquainted with the blowhard who looked up a few things online so that he could impress others at a party? And who has failed to be frustrated when lectured by someone who clearly thought he understood more than he did from what he read online?”
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/a-monastic-vice-for-the-internet-age
See? I’m guilty of that right now. 😯
“For just five dollars a month you can help feed a starving dissident in Lagos. That’s less than the price of a craft beer or a coffee at Starbucks.”
Haha! Touche’, well done.
Take that, rascallions and rumpswabs!
“……can help feed a starving dissident in Lagos….”
You have a fantastic sense of humor, Mr. Z.
(Coming from someone who used to work from one of those global do-golden organizations…. )
The error is in assuming Government regulation can fix anything. If you have a high trust society, you need extreme penalties for violation. You won’t try to gain at the expense of a fellow church member. But you can’t do the same with complete strangers, and FICO scores aren’t a substitute for honor.
The cost of having low-trust people or culture is the destruction of liberty and the micromanagement and it is not very efficient. With regulation the tax is explicit, but even without, things like shoplifting add to the pricee charged.
The choice is ultimately to adopt the lowest trust model, or purge the low-trust people.
Low trust. It fits. The low-T society.
You’re mixing up price controls and price transparency.
Price transparency (good) says consumers need to understand the real cost, not have it obfuscated by insurance and other government “incentives”. Price controls (bad) is when some lunatic decides that goods and services have an objectively-quantifiable “value” that is independent of market forces.
Those despicable clowns who would allow Armed Government Workers to vote should read this.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/22/mom-protest-drag-queen-story-hour-sniper/
Know ye not that the market was made for Man, not Man for the market?
Ever since America entered its phase of pagan-Jewish dominance, the societal critiques of Jesus have a renewed vividness.
Interesting interview concerning this topic and genetics with Edward Dutton.
Dunno, found it interesting but then again I am easily fooled into thinking things are more interesting than they are when presented in an English accent.
https://redice.tv/red-ice-radio/race-differences-in-ethnocentrism
The Z Man thinks as a child thinks:
“After all, persuasion is a form of lying and democracy is about persuading people, not arriving at the truth.”
Persuasion is not a “form of lying.” Persuasion is the art of appeal to someone’s emotions to get them to act.
The faggot Z Man does a poor job of persuasion at the end of every blog post of his: “For just five dollars a month you can help feed a starving dissident … less than the price of a craft beer or a coffee at Starbucks.”
The always dopey Z Man goes on with this bit of stupidity in public: “The marketplace is where buyers and sellers seek advantage over one another. The seller exaggerates the quality of his goods and the buyer tries to play sellers off one another to get a bargain….Similarly, the market is not a search for the true value of a good or service. It is the search for the bigger share of a financial transaction.”
The marketplace is where people seek to discover enough information to know the worth of one’s property (right of ownership) in products and credit (wrongly called money by morons).
As always, the political naive Z Man conflates democracy — majority rule — with the USA’s decaying republic — rule by allied factions striking a less than optimal compromise bargain.
About the only thing the Z Man gets right is his seeing dishonesty in politics.
10 to 1, the Z Man is a lifer government worker inside or near the Belt Way. Clearly, he has never run a business for profit in his life. This gem of stupidity of his proves it:
“Something similar happens in the marketplace. It used to be that the cost and profit of an item was reflected in the price. When costs went up, the price went up.”
Costs have nothing to do with prices. Prices are set by the winning bidders of purchase and sale in the face of what is on offer. If costs set prices, then no firm ever would go out of business. Firm execs simply would raise prices if they incurred higher costs, if costs set prices.
The Z Man ought to stop blogging. Though likely he has read volumes, his likely 118 to 122 IQ inhibits him from seeing the connections of all that he reads and blocks him from seeing the bigger picture of reality.
The Z Man always is in the ballpark, but never can he find the ball.
What he gets right intuitively is that globalization is bunk and that multi-racial populations under a free-person legal system can not last, though never has Z Man put that in those words.
Totalitarianism comes for all under multi-racialism open borders followed by making citizenship meaningless through making everyone a citizen. The ancient Romans show the way.
Your frivolous name-calling of our host drains the persuasiveness of your arguments. Not well played.
I dunno, ad-hom is just so irresistibly convincing… 😉
Dear John Gritt. Here’s something from Wikipedia I think you should read and contemplate.Perhaps it will help you to modify your attitude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
“But I had not the strength nor the inclination to bandy words with a drunkard.”
True Grit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrFV5r8cs0
It is a good thing you know yours, Matrix.
“appeal to someone’s emotions to get them to act”
I’m persuaded! Let me make the introductions: face, meet fist.
I fell for it! Please delete my above, I apologize for the extra work.
Modifying or repealing section 230 of the 1996 telecoms act would be sufficient to deal with the problems of censorship on the part of the tech giants.
I’m not sure. I think the solution is treat these big platforms as “provider of last resort.” That is, if you’re operating a public platform protected under section 230, you cannot deny anyone service, other than a refusal to pay or criminal activity. If Google wants to offer free e-mail, they cannot deny anyone access to it. If Facebook wants to be an open platform, they cannot deny anyone service.
A century ago this was the solution to getting every home hooked to electric and phone service.
Modifying section 230 would do exactly what you describe, which is why it has to be done. Specifically, section 230 allows the tech giants to act as publishers without them being sued by content providers for denial of service.
That’s not correct. Section 230 allows them to avoid liability for libelous, slanderous or criminal content posted to their site. You can’t sue Facebook for slander, because someone posted false and defamatory things about you on the Facebook page. Section 230 does not address their ability to deny you service.
“After all, persuasion is a form of lying”
I don’t necessarily see it this way. In the context of trade, persuasion is a form of marketing, and marketing is a form of lying, but outside of trade not all persuasion requires one to lie.
If I persuade my drunk friend to not drive home drunk by citing the potential negative consequences of doing so, I haven’t lied, have I?
Huh. How fascinating. I was just this past Friday thinking about how steady-state pricing and the absence of price haggling might be a product of a high-trust society.
This post ties in with yesterday’s theme as well. Haidt’s work eg “Righteous Mind” posits that reasoning evolved as a means of persuasion, not truth-finding. Unlike math which is a uniquely closed wholly abstract system, the application of logic to human affairs via syllogisms, analogy & argumentation is first an exercise in rhetorical persuasion, with objective precision merely being a possible by-product. Despite the superficial logic of free market and liberal democratic arguments, guys like Pat Buchanan & Tucker Carlson changed sides because the real world results of those theories were net negative to outright miserable. “Because we live here” is enough of a moral base. Trying to follow Kant & Rand down the rationalist rabbit hole in search of “objective” morality only leaves you prey for the sophists & shysters who lurk in those tunnels of rationalization. Beyond a certain point, it’s turtles all the way down. Start from a practical basis of biology, psychology & social stability & focus on what lies above, not beneath. Trust your lying eyes & your instincts.
Our political system evolved into a liars den because that is what our current cultural environment selected for. The ancient evolutionary drivers that produced our high intelligence, skill of innovation, and robustness were the end result of our ancestors running a daily gauntlet of hardship and existential threat. In the current environment of high affluence and the extinction of real hardship, these drivers now select for skillful parasitism, of which, lying becomes a very useful trait.
One of the framers of our constitution remarked that the kind of government we were setting up would require the support and participation of a moral people. If not, he said, no laws known would be able to keep the nation safe.
Iniquity is a feature, not a glitch. Timothy B. Tyson said: “In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.” Neil Gaiman said: “You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof of an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion.” Then again Graham Greene said: “It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.” So how do you fine happieness in a cesspit? It’s the age old problem. Of what does the good life consist?
Yes OBT agree but that time between their rise and downfall contains a lot of death and if we aren’t doing something to protect ourselves from that then us and our prodigy will be wiped out…
Official,
Maybe this thing is just cyclical and by happenstance of timing we find ourselves in the downward phase of the great turning.
Maybe we should worry less about making repairs to the declining machinery of our part of this cycle.
I sense we happy few who gather here to discuss the world we’ve inherited are beginning to absorb the answer to the tidal wave of degeneracy, isolation and decline we face.
Outside of a few extreme ideologies it doesn’t really matter the nuances what we choose to build. All of these constructs eventually degrade to kibble (to borrow from Phillip K. Dick).
What is true and immutable is we are a People. We do things for our people. We improve our people. We separate our people from others as much as possible and from within our people those that betray us. Our ancestors don’t change with the winds. Our history and cultural inheritence are fixed whatever the lies and dispersions cast upon them.
That’s not to say we must hate to begin to love ourselves. I can be compassionate to my fellow Christians in Africa and seek to help them there. I can see adopting some small number of compatible peoples from other groups to add spice to whatever we build.
I think the frustration most of is feel is that we are small cogs in a vast dilapidated machine. We lament the lost promise of our past. We dont even have to feel we are superior to other people, we just have realize we are The People.
I’ve decided in order to fend off the frustration and sense of helplessness I will do what little I can to help my people. My thoughts and actions will be for the good of my folk. I will vote, volunteer, act and pray always with the underlying question, “What is best for my people?”
I see the cajoling calls for someone to go over the trench wall and start the long awaited Reckoning. I hear the frustration of being under siege in our own lands and I share it. But I think I’ll not worry so much about it. I won’t ponder so much about what we must construct when things reset. I will be the productive little cog for my Race. Where I can mentor our young, I will. Where I can sew seeds of chaos against our foes, I will. Where I can keep something of our people’s traditions alive, then I’ll do that. I’ll continue to find friends and allies.
If the Reckoning happens while I am alive and able, I will do what I can for our people with a fearless, shriven and just heart. I’m simply done swearing the little stuff now. Its fruitless for this little cog to worry so much about the titanic machine.
Agree 100%. The same with business. There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of profit so long as it is restrained by MORALITY and a PUTTING OF ONE’S OWN COUNTRY FIRST.
Do you remember that video of the Carrier executive announcing the closing of a plant? All the warmth of an alligator after a chilly night. It was all about profits, and shareholders, and NOTHING about the lives of the people working there.
Brilliant piece, Z. And honestly, it had never occurred to me that democracy is about persuasion rather than truth. Now that you mention it, it seems pretty obvious. Thank you for pointing it out.
Edward Bernays smiles.
I’ve noted this before, but I still believe that it encapsulates very succinctly what Z is talking about and how to think of capitalism.
Calvin Coolidge: The business of America is business.
Japanese leader (can’t remember who): The business of Japan is the Japanese.
Capitalism and free markets are a wonderful tool, but that’s all that they are: a tool. They should serve the purpose of advancing the welfare of a people. Political and business leader should always have that as their ultimate goal. Once you make profits the ultimate goal, the people become an impediment.
So the question is do we at this point just have to let it crash and burn or is there another option…
Both. Getting to know people at a local level – joining groups, etc. – and starting to form those connections works regardless of what comes.
We still have a remarkable economy and a lot of talented white (and, to a degree, NE Asian) guys. We’re not going to see collapse any time soon. But the system will degrade for a variety of reasons.
Our enemies will simultaneously get stronger – by gaining more control of the political levers of power – and weaker/less legitimate – by screwing up the system and openly attacking whites.
How that plays out and for how long, I have no idea, but making connections at a local level and then trying to turn those groups into places whites can feel at home and start to fight back will be something that we’ll use eventually.
Do “we” have any choice in the matter? Can a critical mass of “we” be put together in time? Does openly working to build our critical mass, and articulating it in public, call attention to ourselves in such a way that the powers that be then squish us like a bug? Does running under the radar mean that there is little possibility of getting from here to there in time with a meaningful number of people? I wrestle with these questions every day.
Dutch,
Yeah, I have the same questions. But you can only do what you can do. Maybe we’re just gnats flapping our wings against a hurricane. Don’t know. But I look at what Jews accomplished over the past 100 years and say, yeah, it can get done, or, at least, there’s a shot.
Citizen, agreed. I have my plans underway. All of this is a process, and I will get where I get, over time. The only thing I know is that I won’t be around forever, in any case. So I am making sure I am finding enjoyment in the trip along the way. My sense is that there is a broad quiet consensus, among much of the white male community, about where we need to get to. The difficulty is in getting a consensus on the path to take to get there. Subversive, confrontational, leaving town, fighting the battle or laying low, MGTOW or staying engaged in the broader culture? All of the above?
My sense is that there is a broad quiet consensus, among much of the white male community, about where we need to get to. The difficulty is in getting a consensus on the path to take to get there…
Yes I agree but it’s because we all have our own plans instead of a group plan that we can’t come to a consensus…JMHO
Rather sure we won’t get to a group plan until the tit is fully in the wringer, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. That’s human nature. When the wild fire is obviously and visually in line of sight boring down on your ranch, then you move. Y’all keep thrashing around postulating what the trigger will be to get us to krall up and move into action. Damn, have some faith in yourselves. You’ll know when it happens and as obvious as an elephant in the living room. It will happen. And you’ll recognize it. You will cross the Rubicon. Until then, Prep, Plan and get your brain ready.
Funny you should use the “fire bearing down” example. Back in 2003, the Cedar Fire was bearing down on our neighborhood. I pointed out to the neighbors that there was an angry plume of chocolate brown smoke going right over our neighborhood, driven by sustained high wind. I told them the fire goes where the smoke goes, and to pack up and get ready to leave. They looked at me like I was crazy. I had to go around turning off the electricity, the gas, and the water for everyone, because they hadn’t thought of it, didn’t know how to do it, and didn’t have the tools. Common sense ain’t common.
Humbling perfect example. Common sense ain’t common. Too many deer in the headlights. Not enough Apex Predators chasing us on the savanna. Where are you Apex! With the growing number of reintroduced wolf packs, some of us will learn to run or get eaten.
Dutch,
That was kind of you to do that for your neighbors. I hope you told them that they would be responsible for doing it themselves the next time.
Self-interest, partly. Keeping their houses OK made mine more likely to survive too. Keeping the water pressure up for the hydrants, as much as possible, was important as well. Only took 15 minutes or so to do the street, both sides. The weird thing was that even though our house was mostly OK, I went through a form of PTSD for some months afterward, quick to anger and not thinking straight. Living in a burnt out neighborhood might have had something to do with it. I am thinking that if things go down, Venezuela style or similar, we all will have our hands full trying to think and act straight. Stress is sneaky that way.
Dutch,
Nevertheless, a kindness… accept the praise.
We were effected in the Cedar fire too, my sister nearly lost her house and her neighbor did.
I had to relocate all of my people into our small then-house in the college area because of the evac orders.
I understand the PTSD part of it. In the 07 Harris fire I was tasked to help with evac and security. It was heartbreaking to have to keep people out of then-burning areas and moreso to see their reactions after going to what was left of their homes. They looked so shocked and lost.
Yes… the stress anticipating the coming collapse–civil war–tyranny is here and gathering steam. We’ll all be partial zombies as The Troubles make themselves known. Condolences you had to go through the fire.
Z: you mention the telos as being the *spiritual and material* prosperity; I highly recommend City of God by St Augustine. The thesis is that these two can never coexist long term: the City of Man (material desires) will always dominate.
It takes a new spiritual and moral cycle for a new city of God to emerge from the ashes. Even then, there is no guarantee that the moral lesson, which amounts simply to understanding a cause and effect relationship, will be learned.
Augie was a smart guy and I won’t argue with him. But Augie would look with favor on putting up a fight to re-balance the cities. That’s what we intend to do, friend.
dad29: My point can be summarized thusly: in lieu of fighting a pyrrhic battle for control of a dying civilization (dying as reflected in the current moral state), a more successful alternative is to forge a new path where hopefully lessons learned may be applied.
Please don’t interpret my statement as being nihilistic; of course we should still do what we can while this current civilization exists as it does.
Augustine was born into a wealthy but spiritual dead late empire. But the empires that built Rome, that built the ancient civilizations of the Near East and Far East, that built the great cathedrals of Europe and the great civilizations of the High Middle Age were anything but spiritually dead.
What Augustine noticed was that, as in our own age, the 7 deadly sins had become the 7 noble sins…and the 7 noble virtues had become the 7 deadly virtues. Men had become beasts driven by vice who lived as parasites off the works of the better men who had come before them. The old order was already dead. Thus he became a Christian. He put his faith in a new form of moral order – an order that had a lot in common with the peoples who had long ago built Rome.
One of Augustine’s great contributions was his demand for piety in all things, especially things public, as a form of social cohesion. Regular, ritualized, public group exercises in piety: mass, shrines, pilgrimages, altruistic acts within the community as penance for sins against the community, etc.
A great and pious people will build a great and prosperous civilization. But the virtues that built it are just as necessary in maintaining it and in its continued blossoming.
It was the loss of these public virtues that turned public ritual into individual closeted acts of piety that rots away a great civilization. Dante, 1000 years later at the height of that civilization men like Augustine had founded, describes piety as having 3 basic forms: 1- piety to god/nature; 2- piety to the social order we inherited from out ancestors; piety to family and community. In other words, piety is a full-time occupation in all ones dealings.
Your suggestion to read Augustine is an excellent one for all dissidents. He saw the rot and collapse of the old order and he helped to lay the foundations for a new order. Old books like Augustine’s and Dante’s give us insights into what Z and others describe as Archeo, the essence of our civilizational roots.
@YV
Very well said👍
My brother…well written….have copied to refer….thanks!
Yves:
Great post. Coincidentally, Dante’s La Divina Commedia was one of the first works I read on my “path” towards understanding these things (Novum Organum Scientarium and other Baconiana being my initiation).
This ‘Archeo’ is also understood as the great stream of tradition from which we may all draw when we choose to be human (as opposed to mechanized consuming bug men). It shows itself in the Christian tradition, several of the more notable Mystery rites of Europe and the near East, Buddhism, Confucian society, traditional Japanese society, the Vedas.
The ‘catch’, as best as I can tell, is that one has to be of a sufficient moral character, derived from action, in order to actualize this knowledge and turn it into living wisdom. This is very much in line with the writings of both Augustine and St Paul, as well as Buddhism. Sin as a conscious act (generally selfish in nature) blinds one to the sins of others. You lose your ability to distinguish right from wrong when you cease to choose that which is right.
The parable of Samson and Delilah is this too, as are the karmic cycles of Buddhism. Everytime you set something into motion through negative intention, that forms either a debt or a lesson which the individual will either have to learn and outgrow, or pay in the form of the action returning to the originator. This ties in beautifully with the entire point of Inferno, which is that in order to overcome sin, as well as the desires that cause it, one must observe, learn, and understand the root cause, see it reflected in himself, and work through right action to overcome after climbing down Satan’s back.
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.”
– Saint Augustine
I have come to appreciate the Christian power of not caring. But I could never subscribe to an ideology that counsels ignorance.
Yeah, Christians never invented anything.
Ivan – I used to think the same, prior to becoming a Christian. Rather than ignorance, try to view it as the acceptance of mysteries that are beyond human understanding. While I feel empathy for those struggling with infertility, for example, I believe our entire edifice of reproductive science – artificial insemination, donor eggs, sperm banks, rent-a-womb, in vitro fertilization, etc. – has been disastrous, like children playing with power tools. Beyond the basic science, which is far more complex than most realize, there is the moral sphere, and there we are totally adrift and unfit.
Curiosity has had a bad name since way back. Think Eve, Pandora, and The Golden Ass. St. Augustine is not alone, but he does not have the last word. Aquinas distinguishes between curiositas (curiosity) and studiositas (studiousness) and “in fact defends properly attained knowledge — both intellective (i.e., of the intellect) and sensitive (i.e., of the senses) — from the accusation of being attained through practicing the vice of curiosity.” So maybe we should define terms. What do Augustine and Aquinas mean by “curiosity”?
https://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/12/christianity-and-reason-vice-of.html
Bernard of Clairveaux also takes a dim view of idle curiosity.
“Then you have some people who wish to know for the sake of knowing, and that is scandalous curiosity.”
However, intention is paramount. Gotta remember Bernard was a mystic, too, and would be most oriented towards direct apprehension of God, as far as knowledge and its proper ends are concerned.
“There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is Curiosity.
There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is Vanity.
There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love.”
Some things to think about…
“Many possibilities may pique my curiosity — I may wonder how my neighbor’s wife performs in bed; how human beings respond to experiments harmful to their bodies, or even to suffering; how the development of a fertilized egg could be stimulated to produce a monster rather than a normal human being; how to preserve a human being alive forever. I may wonder, but it would be wrong to seek to know . . . because I cannot possess such knowledge while willing what is good . . . . To love the good and to possess what we love are, in this life, not always compatible.”(Gilbert C. Meilaender, The Theory and Practice of Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 140)
https://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/04/curiosity-as-vice-three-aspects.html
“Curiosity, then, is a mental habit, a disposition to attend to the world in a particular way, that way consisting of a heightened sensitivity to and awareness of information and cognitive experiences that are mentally stimulating and thrilling. It is the habit of intellectual thrill-seeking, a fixed disposition to abandon understanding for the sake of the interesting, the novel, the superficially stimulating.” (Thomas D. Kennedy, “Curiosity and the Integrated Self: A Postmodern Vice,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 4.4 (2001), pages 46-47)
“Yet, I understand what Kennedy — and Augustine — mean about idle curiosity being superficial, for the internet stands as an ever-present temptation threatening to distract me from my more serious studies. There’s a moral struggle involved in not allowing myself to be idly distracted by You Tube and suddenly realize that an hour has slipped away.” Don’t I know it.
https://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/01/thomas-d-kennedy-on-idle-curiosity.html
See also:
“…not everybody stands convinced that curiosity is a thoroughly good thing. Indeed, some continue to think of it as an intellectual vice. I’ve just read a critical article by the philosopher Thomas D. Kennedy (Valparaiso University), who argues that curiosity is an intellectual vice particularly characteristic of our Postmodern Age, an age so taken with overstimulation of the eyes and ears and sensations generally that it literally drives us to distraction, to inattention to a proper integration of our experiences into an integrated self.”
https://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/search?q=Curiosity
There was an excellent book written on this subject some years ago by Roger Shattuck.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312146027/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0312146027
*This* is why I love this comment section. Always another great book to find and read.
This is why, we need to at the same time engage and disengage. Build your own families, your own communities, etc. These cuckservatives tell you that the evil evil socialists believe in a “free lunch” and that’s crazy, and yet at the same time try to give you the fantasy of a “free market” and the Rothschild’s pet David Ricardo, a special person, and his lie of comparative advantage.
Here’s a hint, anyone who denounces the weapon of economic boycott and does not advocate and adhere to it is either: 1) an ignorant fool; or 2) a filthy liar. This is how a select international clique took control of most media in this country. How they got the theatres, how they got quite a bit in fact.
The main problem I see is that we really have no sugar daddy to help us. Entire lives, careers, families, livelihoods, can be destroyed in an instant for being a dissident. FFS, I’m trying to figure out how to help good people anon b/c I am a professional in this fucked up world. WE MUST BUILD SUPPORT SYSTEMS. It has to start somewhere. We all hang together or we all hang separately…
Preach it Brother…I agree with you which is why I advocate for what I do…The problem I’ve run into though is people don’t want to build something new when they are still comfortable with the old…They have no foresight to see what is coming at them like a freight train…It sucks Brother I’m in the same boat as you…
All very spot on.
And yes economic boycotts work. Some decades ago a Lefty magazine called “AdBusters” advocated a “buy nothing day” for black friday. Well Limbaugh got wind of it and basically flipped out for about 20 minutes on his show about the evils of it. Even if 20% of whites sat out Black friday and other shopping days a lot transnational concerns would start going belly up. They can barely afford a 2-3% loss of consumers, a 20% would be catastrophic.
Want to get rid of the TSA and shitty conditions while flying? Just have whites stop flying for a couple weeks and watch the airlines implode.
“It used to be a pint was a pound the world around”
Ah, the lies never stop, do they?
It never was,
A pint always was (well since the 1820’s) , and still is 20 ounces in the UK.
The one pound pint was a early example of sizing dishonesty perpetrated solely in America I believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units
And, for the history buff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
Good article, Zman. The rights enumerated in our Declaration of Independence are inalienable, whether infringed upon by one group of people (representatives of the government) or another group of people (board of directors of a multi-national corporation).
The term inalienable does not mean our rights cannot be infringed, else there would have been no reason for the declaration to have been written in the first place. Rather, the term inalienable means that these rights are inherent and do not go away – we have them, even if they are being trodden underfoot, as they constantly will be. But those who do so are unjust in doing so.
This also means that we are justified when we finally rise up and put a stop to it, even if it means we destroy a few abusive corporations and their enablers (progs, libertarians, cucks) when we have had enough. The longer the abuse, the more terrible will be the retribution when it comes. I prefer a legislative/political solution while such is still possible. Those who attempt to prevent that (Google, etc.) need to realize they are voting for a more direct and tactile solution.
The biggest problem we face is not from those enemies you mentioned but in putting a coalition of “We” together to take care of the problem…The problems would be easily solved if we could accomplish the building of the “We”…
This is exactly why TPTB spend so much effort on making sure we don’t put together a coalition. And even by chance we get someone in, they are isolated in D.C., surrounded by apparatchiks, swamp creatures who like things the way they are.
The only coalitions we can organize are local ones based on family, friends, values etc. Basically groups that are so low profile no one notices them.
“We are being replaced with third worlders!”
at the same time as
“if free markets result in the people being terrorized by global technology giants, maybe a little less economic freedom, in order to reign in these companies, is a good trade-off.”
It’s hard to not get black pilled when the people philosophically MOST ON YOUR SIDE are screaming “Make new government powers so the new third-world dominated government forgives my student loans, protects me from censorship, gibs me free healthcare, and keeps muh economy good.”
Can’t help but wonder if this all just the soviet plan coming to full fruition.
High trust helped build Western civilization. Encouraging a low trust culture is part of the process of destroying it. Why our “betters” think a low trust culture is advantageous to them is hard to understand. I think it is the idea that their priority of capturing the economic “skim” in the short run is more valuable to them, than building something for the long run. They plan to buy their way out of the coming meltdown, in some way or another. The Clintons set an example for all of this, and it has worked for them, so far.
If you want to understand why our “betters” want a low trust society look to any dictator of a third world country…
Well, so is calling for government intervention high trust or low trust? It’s high trust in government– and extremely low trust in your neighbor to call for the Great White Washington Kindergarten Playground Monitor to make sure that the guy down the street has the right permits before he trades his car.
A high trust society – would also be based on honest money. The debased money that we are currently stuck with – which is constantly “inflated” so as to keep the Federal government alive and keep the globohomo project funded – is what is responsible for the inflationary pricing – and is therefore responsible for your ice cream being smaller and your pizza slices shrinking.
Go look at the value of the dollar from it’s inception all the way thru to the late 1800’s. That’s what a high trust society with honest money looks like. Then look at the value since 1913. That’s why your freaking beer mug now only gets filled with 13 ounces instead of a full quart.
Yet I still see constant whining in the comments section here about how we need big government to keep things honest. It’s got to be some sort of joke how ignorant people are to the reality of things. It’s why I think so many here are just leftists who are peeved off that the darkies have crashed their free shit party.
Yea but Calsdad think of the example you just used…Who controls our money since 1913 (private company) and who controlled it before that (government)…I get where your coming from Brother but you have to see the irony in your comment…😉
The (((private company))) which controls “our” money to their benefit and our detriment cannot do so without government enforcement. The fed is what it is – a colossal heist – precisely because our government enables it, indeed created it, backed with armed force or threat thereof. How can any entity with a monopoly on physical violence be entrusted with ownership and management of a society’s money? Always and everywhere throughout history such power has eventually corrupted the highest of civilizations.
Exactly. There is no such thing as an honest carpenter in a world where all rulers are made of Silly Putty. Paper money corrupts all who touch it.
The Soviet system is already here. You’re late to notice. A circle of patronage from the state to plutocrats to middle managers and back to the state is the picture of the modern Soviet system. People cry about socialism and political violence. We’ve had both to varying degrees since the ’60s and ’70s in the West. What do you call intractable non-white violence that has relatively easy institutional solutions, but which nonetheless has not been solved in all this time? (This is not counting various people who’ve been ‘suicided’ and had ‘tragic accidents’ or ‘unfortunate robberies gone wrong.’)
Most people live in denial of things around them and have a picture of the world crystallized from their youth. The world is not your youth, and the world of your youth was substantially shittier than you realized from your little bubble. Libertarians believe that we can work gradually toward the minarchist or anarchist ideal. The reality is that we don’t have the luxury of time, and in either case libertarians would require sympathetic elites to affect their plans – which they don’t have. Cast aside your dreams and come to reality. Per Oswald Spengler, “Optimism is cowardice.”
You are here because you realized something was wrong when taking your own interests – and that of your folk – makes you an enemy of the wider system, and that the system wants you dead and dispossessed. Something is clearly wrong. Take Martin Luther’s words as your own. “Here I stand. I can do no other.”
“If a politician makes the mistake of uttering the truth, he is hooted off the stage.”
Good primer for the Dems primary debate clown shows about to start.
A pound of coffee which isn’t a pound, a roll of toilet paper or paper towels which you can obviously see being short changed and even a few diners are cutting back from 4 strips of bacon to three. This means war sir!
Yes, we are wholesale liars and swindlers now.
The inspiration for this post was noticing the pizza slices at lunch had shrunk. I used to get two slices and a coke for six bucks plus tax. The price has not changed, but the pizza shrunk my two inches.
Hence the clever “feed a dissident in Lagos” retool. I picture Sally Fields: for less than a quarter a day, you can ensure that Z gets two slices and a coke. If we all work together, he’ll quicky replace the calories lost to a rapacious and dishonest marketing scheme. Won’t you act today to end this tragedy?
While I much prefer to picture Sally Field, riding either a longboard or a Trans Am (black, ’77), I think you mean Sally Struthers.
In a just society, the spiritual wellbeing of the people would require you to spend a season in the salt mines for this sort of transgression…
I was laughing when I read shrunk my two inches…I hope your using our contributions for more than just feeding yourself 😉
George Costanza can tell you all about shrinkage. 😮
Ahhhh…..Visual!
Too bad Chrissy Moltisanti isn’t around. He’d know how to deal with this.
Would you have been willing to pay more – if everything stayed the same size?
Be honest.
Because most people aren’t. And the reality is that people whine and complain and bitch to the heavens when prices go up. I know a number of women who will spend hours clipping coupons and drive all over town trying to “get the best deal”. They’ll also stand in lines a Christmastime for entire days to get some cheap toy for an extra $5 off.
In the face of this behavior – which is the smarter strategy, make things smaller and keep the price the same and avoid the incessant bitching – or raise the prices and keep things the same size?
The fact that so much of our production has moved to China has already proved who is going to win that argument. So has the size of Amazon, the welfare state, incessant wars to keep gas prices down – bought and paid for by Fed printed money , etc.
I’ve worked in numerous businesses that depended on selling stuff to the public for their survival. The fact of the matter is that people will go for lower price almost every single damn time.
This is a consumer issue as much as it is a seller issue.
Yeah, the woman deserved to be raped. She should not have been walking alone at night.
Good point. Off topic: I bet you a quarter of your audience unironically agrees with that statement.
It really depends on where she is walking. If it is somewhere frequented by prostitutes or a place she already knows several other rapes have taken place, she is tempting fate, and testing God. In a Leave It To Beaver neighborhood that is another story entirely. So fuck you, Bob.
Insightful reply, teapartydoc. Thanks for adding to the thread.
If you walk among wolves unarmed whose fault is it when you get ate?
The absolute refusal to even consider any hint of personal responsibility for the situation that one finds oneself in – is one of the hallmarks of pretty much every leftie that I’ve ever run across.
They’ve turned it into a political movement – and remade the country in that image. Now they import people incompatible with western societies – and use that same mindset of “there is no such thing as personal responsibility” – to claim that they were just disadvantaged – probably by white colonialism or something like that.
The fact that so many of the “white nationalism” crowd falls directly in line with the same worldview as the lefties – AND openly admits to being enraptured by the National Review crowd and the neocons – is why I see so much of this as just another failbus looking for it’s own cliff to crash into.
“refusal to even consider any hint of personal responsibility for the situation”
That is a foundation of Leftism. The slate is blank, we are perfectly malleable, our environment is the only determinant. Add to that the sanctity of women (or any minority group perceptibly less well off (or was it any group that wasn’t white Christian males?)) and you have an unquestionable dogma. No matter that it kills or maims its adherents.
If an even semi-attractive woman walks into a biker bar wearing a mini skirt and no panties – with a tube top – and hops up onto the pool table and starts dancing around drunkenly , it’s a fair bet that she’s probably going to get “raped”.
Did she “deserve” it?
Probably not.
Was she stupid for putting herself into that position? Yes – she was. Was rape an entirely predictable outcome? You’re goddam right it was.
That whole attitude of : ” I should be able to do all sorts of stupid shit and just get away with it – and if things go bad the government will be there to bail me out” – is exactly the mindset of every leftie I’ve ever run across – including all the ones who are for open borders and mass migration into white countries.
Oh look – the black people are suffering in Africa because of all their own stupid decisions – let’s bring them all here to the white countries so we can make it all better!
The above comment is yet another indicator of why I keep saying you guys are just a bunch of pissed off lefties who are upset that the darkies have crashed the free shit party you’ve been throwing for the last 75 years or so.
I don’t even need to poke very hard to make the bear reveal who he really is.
” The point of human organization is the spiritual and material prosperity of the people.” An issue that has been batted about in past posts is creating a moral project for the political right. May I humbly suggest that z-man’s above aphorism would be a very good place to start.
LOL.
Dude – there is no marketplace.
Cal, I thought you were our “leave me alone” libertarian guy. Have you had some big re-orientations recently? I’m curious about your journey.
Zman made a point maybe a couple of weeks back that there is no marketplace. I just need some clarity – which is it? Market – or no market?
Until then maybe I need to remember to put in the sarcasm tag.
That’s bullshit. I never said any such thing.
LOL
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=17241#comments
thezman:
No. This is wrong. You’re talking about something that does not exist. The magical market where the shovel maker meets the potato grower only exists in theory. In reality, the potato farmer put rocks in the middle of the sack and the shovel maker is lying about his shovels.
That’s always been the problem of libertarianism. they conflate theory with reality.
—————————-
You’re only proving my point and in the process revealing you may have a reading disability.
Funny. I was having a conversation with a coworker this morning. She was complaining that you can’t trust anybody to do good work anymore. Her A/C went out and 3/4 the guys that have looked at it have told her different reasons its broken, but the one thing they had in common was that she needed to buy a new furnace and A/C unit. Do we have to accept Belloc’s The Mercy of Allah in every area of our life now?
Reminds me of giving up on calling tech support. Many times after a little discussion will send you to the sales department.
Learn a/c repair. Youtubes. At least learn how to diagnose, so the repair guys don’t run you around the block. So far I have competently repaired (working properly for years now) an a/c unit and a swamp cooler, with no specialized knowledge.
And if she is not up to it, that is what her husband is for 😉
Yes!! The “throw-away” society is a problem. We are filling landfills with all sorts of materials which are no longer available for others to use or re-use.
She’s a woman.
That’s the root of the issue she’s having.
I worked in a car dealership for a few years in my early 20’s. Women hate going into dealerships – because everybody treats them like they’re stupid – and tries to sell them a new engine when what they really need is just an oil change.
I built a loyal base – of female customers – by being as gender blind as I could possibly be, and by explaining to them in layman’s terms WHY they needed the repairs on their cars that we were trying to sell them. Most of the time – even among my male co-workers – they just got treated like they were stoopid. I also tried to explain to them that if they wanted that being knowledgeable about how mechanical things work is a somewhat gender blind issue. Which was my way of telling them if they wanted equality – they were going to have to earn it.
In any case – I’ve seen the same behavior for decades. It especially pisses off the women I know who ARE somewhat educated about how shit works.
All that being said: it’s only a matter of few degrees worse for women in these situations – than it is for men. I’ve lost track of the amount of times somebody I tried to pay to do something for me tried to “upsell” me on shit I didn’t want or need , or just plain didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. It’s an education thing.
Which is why I have absolutely no tolerance for the “government please come save me” crowd.
Stop being such a dope and you will stop having these problems.
What do you do with the 50% of the pop below 100 IQ who can’t stop being dopes?
Calsdad: “I built a loyal base – of female customers – by being as gender blind as I could possibly be, and by explaining to them in layman’s terms WHY they needed the repairs…” I’ve no reason to doubt that you built a loyal female base. But aside from that, any good salesman or bullshitter can convincingly explain “in layman’s terms WHY [customer] needs the repairs.” That’s what salesman DO. Your average customer may believe you, but they can’t know the truth or falsity or accuracy of it. All they know is “hmm, that makes sense” and “he seems like a good guy.” Meanwhile, it doesn’t make sense and you’re rotten.
(Not you, Cal).
Cal: “Which is why I have absolutely no tolerance for the “government please come save me” crowd. Stop being such a dope and you will stop having these problems.”
Most people have little time to educate themselves on all of life’s specialties. Plumbing, finance, cars, computers, etc. And some people have trouble grasping things mechanical or numerical. I’ve probably been screwed on 85% of all transactions in my life. I’m pretty much a woman. The only difference is I don’t bitch about it as being a conspiracy. From the moment I open my mouth I’m an easy mark. These women think white guys don’t get taken advantage of? Further, I have supposedly decent, upstanding women take advantage of me ALL THE TIME. It’s generally true that women are more decent. But they’re not exactly angels in the marketplace.
Good post! The drawbacks to both a market economy and democracy, which you so ably lay out, are best ameliiorated at the local level, or at least in small economic or political communities. Even today, if a business gets a bad reputation (slow pay, no pay, or habitually materially misstating the quality of goods) it can be more devastating to it than the sanctions that the law permits, a point that I often made when I taught business law. But when the majority of economic transactions are “one-offs,” the price to be paid for unethical conduct is much lower. It’s sort of the same in politics. When the rise to the top was managed by political parties, a politician who was either completely incompetent or unethical (or at least, once having been bought, stayed bought) was prevented from climbing. Politicians today are increasingly able to bypass that process. Limited suffrage also reduced the ability to deceive–people who had property,could pay a poll tax, and/or could pass literacy tests were more likely to be better informed and make more rational choices than the voters of mass participatory, universal suffrage democracy.
Off topic, but what’s that eagle in your profile pic?
Not who you asked, but I think it’s the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire.
It’s an image that I picked up on the Internet several years ago. It resembles the two-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire and the present two-headed eagle of Russia, but I don’t think it’s a copy of either. I just like it!
Ramzpaul made a great clip recently about driving through a Midwestern city to demonstrate the proliferation of national chains and the destruction of “mom and pop” small businesses. It is the Walmartization of America. Everywhere is the same and you can have anything you want as long as it’s crappy fast food or shoddy consumer goods from China. When all of America is Californicated, you’ll eat only tacos, wear only ironic t-shirts and drive only electric cars, and read or watch only what Google or Facebook has chosen for you as muy bueno.
Feast on the coming shit sandwich of black pills or bugout to a shack in the woods. Those are some great choices being served up in today’s democratic marketplace.
Exactly.
Maus, find a middle ground between the two extremes. It is out there if you look for it. Not ideal, but better than both of your options.
The free market, in generating disposable income, allows the lowest common denominator to dictate the culture with its wallet.
I saw the same RamZpaul video and had your reaction. I also was struck with the homogenization (and degradation) of American culture in a recent trip to the western suburbs of Detroit: strip malls, supermarkets, car dealers, fast-food places and tract housing. I could have been anywhere in the U.S.
Conservatives take their stand on procedural issues like constitutionalism and the free market to escape that what most people want is the flourishing of their group, especially non-whites. So let’s just be explicit: Since you can’t survive as an individual in a world of competing groups, who is in your group and how can you promote its flourishing?
If we forced to try to construct a system that attempts to allow irreconcilable groups to coexist then it’s time to separate because it is a zero sum game.
The “Empire of Dust” movie is relevant here. The Chinese want a road built to steal all the resources, and the local Africans want to be paid as much as possible for as little work and material as possible. The underlying problem is that they are two different cultures seeking different things, and they must interact. Chinese vs. other Chinese would be a different kettle of fish, as would be Africans vs. their African peers. Separation, please.
“This is all so tiresome.”
In other words Join or Die
“A system that is supposedly built on respect for the public will is now run by people who hold the people in contempt. ”
Can’t say I blame our rulers. Take a trip to your local Wal Mart and then watch tonight’s Democrat “debate” and draw your own conclusions.
The idea of a government run by “the consent of the people” and something like a “White Ethno-State” coming into being is nothing but fantasy. The “American Experiment” is over, a mere historical aberration. The iceberg has been hit – what follows is inevitable.
BTW, why would one want government bureaucrats, who harbor contempt for the very people they rule, to “regulate” prices on goods and services? Doesn’t appear logical to me. It always boils down to this:
“Who guards the guards?”
Supposedly, we’re to shoot them. Until they regulate our guns away, then we just riot on the weekends for months on end in our sparkly vests.
Mostly, we just wait for the prosperity to end, so a critical mass of people will riot with us. Which is why Keynesian economics is the favorite tool of the government. It lets them plaster over the cracks in the drywall while the foundation pulls away.
This the whole “figuring out what comes next” thing that we keep talking about. It’s hard.
So when they regulate the guns away – you’ll do what ? Just hand them in?
Alex whines above about how the bartender stiffed him on a few ounces of beer at the bar – and instead of punching the bartender in the face to resolve the issue and teach him a lesson so he doesn’t do it again – he says that searching for alternatives is too much work.
Reminds me of Bernie Sanders bitching about how there were too many deodorant choices – and if he got elected he was going to do something about that.
It’s also a perfect example of why things are the way they are. The white men were down at the bar getting stiffed on a few ounces – and doing something about it was “too much work”. They went home and found the wife banging the new black neighbor – and decided to go cuck and live with it because the divorce settlement was going to be a royal screw job. When the teenage son decided he was really a woman – they let that slide because the argument was going to go nowhere and the wife supported the whole thing anyway.
Is this is kind of whining and refusal to act that “white nationalism” is to be made up of?
OOOOh – that’s too much work – somebody please tell me what to do!
There will ALWAYS be questions of “to what degree” should someone/thing be “regulated.” Do you wish to argue that monopoly or oligopoly is a benefit to society as a whole? Then prove your case. How about what “speech” is free? Religion? Expect an argument–and note that they have been settled through elections regularly in this country.
“After all, the point of economic order is not to achieve a private TRANNY in defense of a theory.” LOL! By dropping a letter we get to the heart of the problem!
Our legislators are bought, sold and paid for by Big Donors, among them Big Tech. Look at all the money Big Tech, Koch Bros, Soros and all the other globalist pirates stuff down the pants of the people supposedly representing us. Look how quickly they got to Muh Tea Party Paul Ryan and flipped him. Good grief….my senator is Globalist Pirate squeal on the piano bench Mitt Romney for heavens sakes. Open those boarders and let them in! Love the world….Invite the World!
There will be no regulation of Big Tech. No ability to make consensus. Values and morals and anything else be damned. We’re in the depth of decline of a pride cycle. $/Power Uber Alles. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. We’re locked into this great fetid corruption that is advancing through expanding tyranny, not to mention the White People Great Civil War, until something bigger, an unforeseen something, breaks this phase of the cycle, and throws us against the wall.
Sung to the accordion tune of a polka song…..Roll Out the Black Pills! We’ll Have A Barrel of Fun!
Keynesian economics and a welfare state has kept the economy decently stable for more than a few generations .It works quite well within limits and had we avoided immigration and cultural marxism, we’d be still doing fine
That said there is a lot of ruin in a nation and L.A. now has typhus , clown world might keep going on far longer than can be imagined
Waiting for the other guy in a collapse is lazy and weak and worse as seen in the the 3rd world often there is no rebellion when things get worse, they just get worse
Now if we want to fix this kick the Libertarians and Money Junky/Grifter types out , that’s a start
Once you realize you will have to control social behavior by force so that people can have a family and we can have social continuity and a future and that you are fighting probably so your own descendants can have this future, not you .
Well maybe you can get started
A super simple notion
Unless marriage is stable by law (that is until death , adultery, abuse, neglect, desertion) adultery and sexual deviance is punished ,hard drugs are mostly unavailable and people have steady work and an honest society, you can’t have a good society
Would you given power be willing for example to force old school marriage, jail adulterers and very possible execute drug peddlers and than after control weights and measures, trade, work weeks, holidays, and a host of other things ?
if you aren’t, it will be increasingly difficult to have a future that is worthwhile
The Right clearly isn’t and to a high degree is mostly a coffee klatch and kvetching session for White guys whose public leaders and moderate Leftist Grifters and nothing more
Given the choice between this government regulating the tech companies or the tech companies ruling us, I’ll roll the dice with the government. That’s one of the many defects of libertarianism. It either makes the perfect the enemy of the good enough or assumes choices not on offer.
The dice already got rolled – the government let the tech companies do exactly what they’re doing – and they in fact ENCOURAGED them – because they’re in bed with them.
You’re not paying attention.
And you still want to whine about reigning in the tech companies – when the reality is people SIGN UP VOLUNTARILY to put Alexa into their homes.
I don’t see too many people VOLUNTARILY paying their taxes. MA has a box at the end of the yearly income tax form that says ” do you want to pay us more money?”
Even the loudmouth lefties who say we should all pay more taxes never check off the damn box and send in the check.
Section 230. It allows FB and GOOG to both block sites and to avoid prosecution for the abuses of their “curation”. Government and industry in bed together. These companies are either the phone company (everyone gets to use the phone and the phone company does not get sued for crank calls) or they aren’t, and they must take responsibility.
I agree, break them up, put up firewalls, make them liable for content that incites violence and prevent them from favoring political content. This will take changing laws now in place which means electing people who will vote in Congress to do these things. I understand the gut instinct of those who say “we can’t vote our way out of this,” but for now I am behind breaking Facebook, Amazon, Google, et al into pieces so small that will have a hard time surveilling us and trying to incessantly indoctrinate us.I’m not including myself in “us” nor anyone on this site. We’re on the right side of the river. It’s the same with public education and academia. They can be stopped. Stands have to be taken. This is why I respect the courage of those state legislators who are passing “screw you” anti-abortion laws that will likely be invalidated by the courts. They are standing up and fighting. BTW the courts are something else that can be changed by voting.
Why don’t we first start with a concept that defines rights of the consumer of services from these monopolies. Privacy rights and speech rights would go a long way toward addressing such abuses as we come to understand them. Breaking up may be helpful, but is only addressing symptoms, not disease. Which as Z-man pointed out is a misguided absolutism wrt private business control of product.
Anyone calling himself a libertarian, and also claiming that the non-aggression principle (NAP) will lead to heaven on earth is either ignorant or a liar. If any individual follows the NAP that just means there is one less person aggressing against others. In my humble opinion, that makes the world a slightly better place.
Once you grant some group a monopoly on the use of force, you make that group very attractive to thugs like Hilary Clinton, Abe Lincoln and FDR. And we’ve seen how well that has worked out.
The thing I find comical is all the talk about “high trust society” coming out of the alt-right and white nationalist crowd – and the parallel talk about how we need big government and a welfare state.
Which is it guys? Do you want a high trust society – or a big government and a welfare state – because these things are mutually exclusive of each other – and advocating you want an all powerful federal government and a welfare state – is admitting that you DO NOT BELIEVE in such a thing as a high trust society.
A high trust society takes care of those who are down on their luck by private charity – which then in turn depends on the Christian charity of those who actually supply the money. A high trust society does not need a massive government bureaucracy to enforce rules – the society itself does that.
The excuses I hear revolve around things like: ” we need dictatorship so we can set things right!”. Ya ok. That’s just BS. You’ll NEVER return to a high trust society thru a dictatorship. All you’ll do is cement even more power up to the top – which will then be abused by whatever new elite comes forth to take that power.
The thing with a high trust society that it does not need a big government to enforce it. It does however need pain. By that I mean every now and then some kid who whistled at a white woman is going to hang from a tree. When you break into somebody’s house – you can expect to get shot. And the sheriff is only going to show up to cart away the body. The family is not going to be able to sue just because Tyrone was turning his life around.
There will absolutely be consequences for bad behavior and breaking the rules – it’s just that nobody will much like in today’s age exactly how that will be enforced. Including – based on what I’ve seen – the vast majority of the alt-right and white nationalist crowd, who still rest their ideas of justice on the same tired massive government paradigm that has gotten us into this mess in the first place.
The Democrat debate last night was a clown show. So is the majority of the white nationalist crowd and their understanding of how to fix the issues of the day.
I’d pick the tech companies to rule. They don’t have armies. (yet)
“I’d pick the tech companies to rule. They don’t have armies. (yet).”
The peaceful protestors swarmed by antifa in Charlottesville beg to differ.
“It either makes the perfect the enemy of the good enough or assumes choices not on offer.”
That’s a perfect description of libertarianism. The founders built a perfect libertarian system that lasted a hundred years or so. It assumed a very homogeneous, smart, industrious population, which no longer exists. We are running on it’s vapors.
As the Titanic sinks after striking the iceberg, the likelihood of a white ethnostate increases.
People suck, welcome to the real world with of us. The only defense I can think of is religion and nationalism. Neither is perfect because people are flawed. Still gotta try anyway. No surrender. Not even in the face of Armageddon.
I’m glad someone brought this up. This is the problem. The same corrupt sociopaths are in charge in the business world and in democratic politics. The same theatrical model holds sway. I watch a lot of science and technology videos on YT. Since most of the people doing these are pozzed little shits they almost work in some global warming virtue signalling. It’s almost rote, like when politicians used to end speeches with “God bless America”. Usually there’s something about how this or that new gadget or process will “help us address global warming”.
It’s all a sham though. For one thing there no “us” or “we” in this. The notion of a global “we” is incoherent. “We” can regulate our economies to death to reduce carbon emissions but as long as you’ve got a nation of 2 billion con artists (China of course) willing to come along and provide all the cheap carbon-intensive production the markets demand there is no point. Well, except that there is. The point is theater and money. I make a video about nuclear fusion or tidal energy or something and include a little throwaway prayer to the Carbon Gods at the end. I get clicks and dollars. Western corporations support political campaigns by crooks who sell their policies to the masses because “we need to do something about climate change”. They get dollars because smaller competitors are crushed in advance by the burden of regulation. Then they get more dollars by sourcing things from corrupt countries like China that circumvent the rules anyway.
Democratic politics and markets don’t really stand in opposition. They both work together to favor “insiders” of all types who have privileged information. This is the classic problem of asymmetric information that plays havoc with all the nice mathematical models the Austrian economists and their libertarian fans love so much. This also accounts for what seems curious on the surface, which is the way big corporations almost unanimously support poz when it seems superficially against their interests. Why support new laws that mean every office needs a guy-in-a-dress? Doesn’t this disrupt the office environment and contribute to a circus atmosphere? Of course it does. All their competitors will need to shoot themselves in the foot the same way though. Besides they know a guy in Shanghai who they can outsource the real work to. There are no guys in dresses in *that* factory.
“The point of human organization is the spiritual and material prosperity of the people”
Agreed. Unfortunately, the dominant spirit over us is moloch. Say your prayers. There’s only one defense against the devil
One of the things that drove me from the Libertarians was the slavish (and wrong) adherence to the Free Market concept. They imagine that choosing alternatives when faced with an unsatisfactory good or service is costless and frictionless, which to anyone with a brain knows is not true.
To extend your pint example, if I’m at a bar and order a pint, and can even tell that its not a full pint but 13 oz, am I going to stand up and walk out? Probably not. I’ll endure this little slight to my wallet and move on with my life, because the social cost and friction of doing so is too great. The result is a diminishment of life, constantly wearing you down bit by bit.
The power of marketing never ceases to amaze me. If you ask, most bartenders and servers will tell you that it’s an “American pint”, like ‘it has always been thus’. The sad thing is, they actually believe it and see it as honest and true. I have no doubt that our descendants (if there are any) will study Marketing in the 20th and 21st Centuries as a primary cause of our decline.
When I was in the restaurant/bar business several owners who are friends told me that they “switched” from pint beer glasses to 14oz. tumblers. They said all you need to do is never call them “pints” because that would be “false representation”, but in their minds asking a customer if he wanted another “tumbler” was a-okay. I cringed. A pint is a pint and why on earth would I quibble over 2 oz and cheat my guests? Some of the guys thought I was nuts (which I am) but some came around and dumped the “tumbler” ruse.
>>>…Marketing in the 20th and 21st Centuries as a primary cause of our decline.
Kenneth Clark (the Brit who wrote the 1960s television series “Civilisation”) was asked what he believed to be the single most important factor in the decline of West; his one-word answer was “advertising”.
Alex, as you said, you move on with your life. So in my world, that means “moving on” to a different bar—one that sells 16 oz pints, or one that has prices that reflect 13 oz “pints”.
This is where I believe Z-man’s analogies need qualification or they fall short. When one is “cheated” or defrauded without his knowledge or possibility of knowledge, then yes, society—possibly through government—has a roll in establishing rules/regulations. Not sure I’ve ever heard a Lib support fraud—indeed, I usually discuss Lib principles in term of abstention of force or fraud. But this is not a discussion of Libertarianism, but really of *free* markets and just how free they should be.
Getting back to the bar example above, I remember working with a bartender and discussing the trade. In those days the trade was indeed regulated such that every bartender worth his salt could tell you the State regulations on how many shots one poured from a fifth or a quart, a heavy pour being good for business, but bad for customers if they drank to much.
If you read Poorly Made in China and/or What’s Wrong with China, that is part of their culture – nibbling. They can’t do a buffet because too many will gorge themselves. Not even a one trip since they will build a salad tower. You order 1000 pallets, 25 will be rotten or brokeen and often conveniently separated from the good ones. Your dog food might contain melamine to fool the test for protein. They will sell QC rejects or fakes.