Media Note: I will be on the Killstream this Wednesday to celebrate the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. The show starts somewhere around 9:00 PM eastern and runs for a couple of hours. Are you into midgets? Westerns? Maybe midget westerns? Well, I watched Terror of Tiny Town and posted a review to my SubscribeStar page.
A defining feature of the managerial state is that it creates problems that require it to then fashion complex solutions to solve. A group of experts from the managerial class made some reform, which then created unintended problems. The solution is to draft a new set of experts from the managerial class to solve this new problem. Inevitably, this creates new problems and the process continues into forever. A good current example of this is what to do with the tech monopolies.
The reason we have tech monopolies is Congress drafted laws that allowed the firms to turn into behemoths. In gratitude, these firms then showered their favorite politicians with cash, in order to avoid getting the Microsoft treatment. This allowed the firms to get bigger and turn the thank you cash into threats. It is not unrealistic to think these firms are now able and willing to blackmail politicians with information gleaned from their social media, e-mail and mobile devices.
The starting point for this problem is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996. Section 230 says that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This means that on-line intermediaries cannot be held accountable for what passes through their network or platform. Specifically, the intent was to protect them from libel claims.
At the time, this made sense for two reasons. One was the government did not want the internet service providers walling off the internet as a collection of private domains that they policed as a private space. They wanted the internet to be open. Second, they were told that it was practically impossible to monitor what was posted on-line in real-time, so it would cripple this new industry to treat them as publishers. To let the industry grow, it had to be the wild west on-line.
So far, so good, but like everything else done by the technocrats, they created new problems they could solve at some future date. This immunity from libel claims, for example, has made it possible for the big social media companies to operate as regulators of the public square. It has allowed domain registrars to violate individual rights under the cloak of immunity. Even banks are getting into the act, claiming their web portals are covered under section 230.
This brings up another feature of managerial state. It is a strange version of Chesterton’s gate that is baked into their thinking. Once their creation is set loose, no one ever looks back to understand why they created it and what it was intended to do. It just becomes this thing that sprang from nothingness, like the organic institutions for which they have so little respect. We see this with Section 230. It’s just this thing that is either treated as a force of nature or a thing that must be destroyed.
The thing is, much of what ails us could be solved by simply going back to the original intent of the law. The tech companies argued that they should not be treated as publishers because they could not regulate what was on their platform and most important, they did not want to regulate the content. They just wanted to act as facilitators that allowed people to come together in the public square. It was not their job or intention to tell anyone what they could say on-line.
Right there is a solution to much of what is happening. If Twitter, for example, is regulating speech on its platform, then it is no longer covered by Section 230, because it is clearly able and willing to act as a publisher. We call a dog a dog because it has all the characteristics of a dog. Twitter is a publisher because it now has the vital characteristics of a publisher. Applying the original logic of the law to Twitter means it either stops censuring people or it transforms into something else.
Another simple remedy that exists in the law is property ownership. It is well established that when ownership of something is in doubt, the law starts at the creator and then establishes a chain of custody. Stolen goods for example, are returned to the last person who can establish ownership, either through a purchase agreement or proof there are the originator of the item. If you made it, it is yours until you agree to sell or gift it to another person, who then becomes the legal owner.
If we treated your information the same way we treat all other property in the western world, the tech companies would no longer be allowed to harvest this information without your permission. They would have to get your permission every time they sold your information. Most people, of course, would refuse and the business models of these firms would more from rentier to retail. They would have to charge you for the service they provide, like every other business.
Way back in the 2016 election, the liberal pundit Mickey Kaus observed that the Republican party could have cut Trump off early if they just adopted some of his ideas, especially on immigration. If they more gracefully advocated for some limits on immigration and maybe a new attitude on trade, Trump would have lost. They did not, so we will never know, but the implication was that they refused to go down that road because nefarious forces behind the scenes were preventing it.
We get similar argument about the tech monopolies. Congress is now conveniently split on how to address the problem. Bill Bar has initiated what will no doubt be a glacial process to file anti-trust claims against the tech giants. We’ll all be dead long before any of these turn into results. The assumption is that it is all just a show, while behind the scenes the pols bath in cash from the tech giants. It is certainly a useful and satisfying conspiracy theory, but it is mostly wrong.
The truth is, the managerial state turns the ruling class into children, always living in the moment and searching for a present distraction. Instead of taking the prudent and mature view of the problem, tracing it back to its origin and then simply applying the law as intended, they turn it into story time. In this story, they are once again cast as the strong female lead, taking on the sinister bad guys. You go girl. In order to defeat the bad guys, they must create a super complicated solution.
In many areas, this is not much of a concern. The issue of tech censorship is one that can largely solve itself. In order for Twitter to exist, they need the state to keep their competitor out of business, but those same children playing make believe in response to the problem are unable to maintain their end of the bargain. People will find a way to meet on-line and exchange ideas. The result will not be ideal or even very good, but it will allow people to communicate on-line.
This is not happening with important stuff like building roads and keeping the hospitals open. All over the country, technocrats agree that we need more new housing, so builder need more power to build developments. That results in the need for more road and more schools, but building roads is boring, so the children of the managerial state use their time dreaming up smart communities and smart transportation plans. They get to pretend they are smart and popular while the rest of us sit in traffic jams.
The observation about bureaucracy is it becomes sclerotic over time. The people inside the system stop caring about the purpose of the system. Something similar happens with the managerial state. The people inside become hyper-educated toddlers, unable to grasp the concept of time. They spend their days trying to impress each other with their highly complex public policy solutions. Governance becomes a giant parlor game where the more ridiculous the idea, the more the children cheer.
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For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte.
They’re competent at their core competencies; Power, Money, ruining us.
“If Twitter, for example, is regulating speech on its platform, then it is no longer covered by Section 230, because it is clearly able and willing to act as a publisher.”
Sorry, this is wrong. You are conflating the intention behind the law with the content of the law. This is the operating part of Section 230 that you don’t quote:
“(c)Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material(1)Treatment of publisher or speaker
[I’m omitting here the part that you -do- quote]
(2)Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected…”
The import of (2)(A) is that the publisher/platform doesn’t have to prove in court that it is not a publisher/is merely a platform in order to be immune from civil liability. Thus Twitter, EVEN WHEN OPERATING AS A PUBLISHER, is immune from civil liability when “in good faith” it blocks access to “offensive material”. And it is, so far as I can see, free to define “offensive material” any way it wishes. E,g., it could say that anything that is not conducive to Biden’s election is “offensive” and it is perfectly free to censor it, according to Section 230.
The only possibly interesting legal obstacle to Twitter’s freedom to do this is the “good faith” requirement. Thus if Twitter said it was blocking links to the NY Post Hunter Biden article in order to not help Trump it would, I think, be golden. That its excuse is that the Post article contains illegally obtained material, when it didn’t raise that objection to the NY Times article on Trump’s taxes based on illegally obtained tax returns, calls its “good faith” in making that excuse into question. But, good luck pursuing that.
Sorry, but literalism is a conservative fantasy. Intent is the starting place of our jurisprudence.
The FCC could treat this like an administrative policy, that could be interpreted as:
Those opposing this have to take them to court; the regulation interpretation stands in the interim.
Over a decade ago (2004, to be precise) I had an epiphany with regards to the nature of bureaucracy. I shared that insight with a well renowned sociologist who agreed with my insight completely. My insight was that, in simple terms, bureaucracy is the exchange of ends for means. Put differently, what once were mere means to an end evolve to become ends in themselves and the ends for which the means were originally conceived are ultimately lost.
An organization becomes bureaucratic like this. An organization comes into being with a certain raison d’etre. The members conceive of various goals/strategies as means to achieve the goal of fulfilling said raison d’etre. Over time, those goals/strategies – which once were merely means to an end – become ends to themselves and new goals/strategies are devised to achieve the now ends. Rinse, repeat and over time the raison d’etre for which the organization was originally brought into being are pushed out past the horizon such that hardly anybody in the organization has much of a clue why the organization exists at all. Ultimately everybody is performing well and every section is meeting – or even exceeding – all performance goals and yet, in the final analysis, nothing of substance is getting done and the organization is not fulfilling its raison d’etre.
Here is an example. As is always the case with such organizations, the local public transportation company sought to increase ridership. Management called a meeting with representatives of every section of the company to brainstorm ways to accomplish the goal (end) of increasing ridership. Somebody came up with the idea of handing out fliers extoling the benefits of taking the bus instead of driving or calling a taxi. The group thought this a splendid idea and some section of the company was tasked with creating and handing out the fliers. All well and good. Unfortunately, then the natural tendency towards bureaucracy activated and before long the fliers themselves became a performance measure. The section tasked with creating and disseminating the fliers – as a means to increase ridership – instead of trying to objectively measure ridership instead used the numbers of fliers handed out as the measure of how well the section was performing. Thus disseminating fliers, originally conceived as a means to achieve the end of increasing ridership, became an end in itself. Nobody ever bothered to test the hypothesis that disseminating fliers increased ridership. So far as I know, that section of Via Metro Transit Company is still creating and handing out fliers.
Another example that hit closer to home for me. Back in the early 90s we were going through a rough patch financially and needed my wife to work. She had basically no marketable skills.Enter a local public/private partnership called Project QuEST (Quality Employment through Skills Training) which would pay tuition cost at the local junior college system, long with a small stipend for living expenses, to allow unemployed people to acquire the skills to secure good paying employment. The idea was to turn people receiving public assistance (tax liabilities) into tax payers. We qualified and my wife enrolled. Part of the process included weekly “Rah-Rah” meetings to encourage the people in the program to stay in school and complete the program. All well and good and my wife dutifully attended each week while she was in school (qualifying for the National Honor Society, I might add). After finishing her degree she got a very good job. She was celebrated as one of their success stories. The problem came after she got her Associate’s degree and went to work. Project Quest insisted she CONTINUE to attend the weekly Ran-Rah meetings – something her new employer did not appreciate! Project Quest attempted to protest but ultimately my wife blew them off. The people at Project Quest had become a bureaucracy. The weekly meetings – created as a means to encourage people to stick with the program – became an end in themselves and were required despite possibly being detrimental to my wife’s continued employment.
The bottom line? Any organization can become bureaucratic.
Meanwhile, back in the Z-Man’s neck of the woods, diversity has management problems of its own.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/irs-slaps-baltimore-citys-top-prosecutor-lien-years-unpaid-taxes
The creed of the covid religion
We believe in one Virus, the SARS-COV-2, the Almighty, destroyer of heaven and earth, that is all there is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Malady, Covid-19, the only son of SARS-COV-2, eternally begotten of the Virus, God from God, Darkness from Darkness, true God from true God, begotten, not made (probably) of one Being with the Virus.
For diseases are they none but the One True Virus and Death comes not without Its presence. Thou shalt have no diseases before the One True Virus. They that die outside the Virus shall not have their passing told unto the people on a quotidian basis in hushed tones, but shall be quietly recorded in obscure tables when the time comes.
Through the Virus all things were unmade.
For us men (and women and all points in between) and for our damnation
It came down from heaven (or maybe from China or Maryland):
By the power of the Holy WHO
It became incarnate from the swirling microbes (or maybe bat soup through immaculate Zoonosis), and was made Pandemic.
For Its sake we were crucified under ongoing Lockdown;
It suffered not death, like unto most it afflicteth, and is never buried in the news.
Though by the evidence that appeareth on those who do pass away or wax sick, it hath waned to almost nought.
On the second wave It rose again
And though few did perish many were tested and lo! Many were deemed infected (probably) and ‘cases’ were they named, though sickness showed they none,
in accordance with the Great Plan;
It ascended into the collective consciousness
and is seated on the right and left hand of all (lest with sanitiser they do anoint themselves five score times hourly)
It will come again in glory, as many times as necessary to convince the living and the dead,
and his mask’d kingdom will have no end, it seemeth.
We believe in the Unholy pathogen, the Lord Rona, the taker of life (for they that are vulnerable), though he passeth the children by,
who proceeds from the laboratory and the test.
With the quest for a Vaccine, the donning of the Holy Mask and with sequestration of the faithful he is worshipped and glorified and Its name kept alive in the minds of all.
It hath spoken through ‘The Science’ and thereafter through the Media, through Potentates and Rulers and through the scriptures of the WEF and of the foundations and think-tanks that do proclaim Its Gospel.
Woe to they who do speak out against the words of the Powers of Covid or their servants, for they shall be anathema and their names removed from the Book of Face and platform shall they have none. One shall they be made with they that aver the Earth to be flat and Conspiracy Theorists shall they be named.
We believe in one unholy Catastrophic and Technocratic Global Church.
We acknowledge one Great Reset for the salvation of all.
We look in vain for the resurrection of Reason, Proportionality and Democracy,
and towards the life of the New World to come.
Amen
Modest proposal to solve the Twitter problem: Federated social media. E.g., Mastodon.
Why be stuck on a silo like Twitter, Parler, or Gab?
Federated social media allows users on the various servers to talk to one another.
You (Zman) could set up an instance.
VDare could set up an instance.
Unz could set up an instance.
Ann Coulter (or her IT guy) could set up an instance.
Mark Dice could set up an instance.
The New York Post could set up an instance.
If users can sign up at any of these – or 10,000 other instances – then the Twitter censorship problem could be solved.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/
https://youtu.be/IPSbNdBmWKE
Mastodon website says: “We only list communities that are committed to active moderation against racism, sexism and transphobia.”
How is this not censorship based on arbitrary “community standards”, just like the others?
I’m not a Twitter user and see no need for Mastodon, either, but that very woke declaration is not the same as Twitter refusing to post a tweet because it contains a forbidden link or word. As I understand it (and this is the first I’ve heard of Mastodon, and I’ve only looked into it de minimis), if the NY Post set up a Mastodon “community” (=”instance”) the Mastodon site might refuse to list the NY Post “instance”, but the “instance” (server) would continue to exist and you could follow it from a different “instance” without Mastodon interfering with that functionality. And someone else could provide a listing of “communities” that Mastodon is omitting on its site.
Now, maybe Mastodon could modify the source code to include a list of blocked instances, but a code fork could solve that, since M. is open-source. And, AFAIK, that hasn’t been done.
I might be a bit worried that uploaded content could suffer from disappearing-instance-rot, but that’s solvable, too. All my Yahoo emails (a quarter century worth?) might disappear at any time if Yahoo goes belly up, though there is likely to be an export option in the case of Yahoo (I hope).
The main problem with Mastodon seems to be that it doesn’t talk to Twitter, so you can’t just substitute it.
Use another mail client to download your Yahoo msgs via IMAP or POP3, then save:
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/new-mail-for-desktop/download-email-yahoo-mail-third-party-sln28681.html
Transportation plans like Elon Musk’s Mars colonization plan for example. California can’t stop burning itself up or jeep the lights on, but Elon’s going to Mars.
I suspect the Administrative State’s refusal to force the tech giants to live up to their original intent is because the Administrative State considers the tech giants to be administrators and enforcers. The tech giants and the Administrative State share the same agenda, which is the subjugation of whites and the promotion of blacks. Why then would the Administrative State prevent the tech giants from creating a digital environment that furthers that agenda?
Everyone with any sense, knows this shitbox is going down. For 50 fuckin years they’ve been fucking the white working class in the ass, fuck them, good luck getting anything usefull done without us.
Redacted
It’s a tough issue. During my literature studies, I had a mandatory class on copyrights and such. This training makes me at least as qualified to speak on communcations law as my readings of the pandemic made me qualified to speak as an epidemiologist 😀
Z’s reading of the enabling law reminds me of what another author said of the 1964 civil rights act and its prohibition of quotas. A later Court actually found some clever way to pull quotas of of their judicial rectum, just like a magician pulls a rabbit from his supposedly empty top hat, by a tortured reading of the Act. Why would we expect any different if and when the government interprets the communications laws? As is usually the case, “follow the money” will often be a good guide to what did happen, or what is highly likely to transpire.
Let’s apply that to the social media giants. What best suits their business model? I’ll admit I know little of their business, but guesses are pretty easy: they got very large and powerful with the status quo, so they’ve got no reason to want it to change unless new competitors arise. Using the law to stifle competition is a time-(dis)honored tradition. They love having it both ways: on the one hand, they insulate themselves from quality of content claims, on the other, they exercise a censorship that would make most authoritarian regimes envious.
Solutions? No easy ones. Well, yeah there is for some cases. For example, restriction on domain name issuance, credit card or banking services, should be regulated as public utilities. Visa or Mastercard have no business denying service to an entity just because they don’t like the customer’s poltical views. Absent a clear violation of law, a court order or similar, they shouldn’t be allowed to deny or cancel anyone for any arbitrary reason. These examples are fairly cut and dried, since they deal with basic services.
Apply this to dynamic content by millions of “authors”? This gets much more complex. Look at the polar opposites: unfettered freedom to publish leads to a Babel of talk, all of dubious quality. At the other extreme, to carefully proof and approve every communication would be impossible, even with automation. Is there a middle ground allowable, with disclaimers, warnings, etc. Do they have the right, or even a legal responsibility, to prohibit certain types of speech? Again, “Yes,” if it falls under one of the already prohibited forms of speech.
No easy answers. But yes, I’d side with making the social media common carriers or whatever. They shouldn’t be in the business of choosing which viewpoints get published.
I was put in charge of teaching a finance class, which is actually pretty funny. Strangest thing is that half of my students said it was their favorite subject. Said because “We’re actually learning things.”
They got rid of it, of course. “Why didn’t you at least consult us?” one of my smarter students asked. Why indeed. I ran their feelings by an admin and not even a reaction. Just goes to show the priorities.
Every law should be sun-setted after a decade.
Every renewal should be voted upon by a quorum of the House and Senate.
Only those physically present throughout a complete reading of the Bill and all consequent regulations shall constitute a quorum and be able to vote.
We should keep the bastards busy trying to keep a few of the Ten Commandments current .
Nice. Some of those bills would take weeks to read out loud. Add in the consequent regulations and a whole session of Congress could be used up just trying to get through one bill. I approve.
It’s been suggested that every Bill be available online in its final form for 30 days before a vote. But of course that would only benefit the voters and work against the power brokers. Too bad.
This is another example of what Charles Hugh Smith has called the crisis of competence, nothing works like it should anymore.
My take on things is that since 2000 or so the Anglo-Saxon world has lost the Mandate of Heaven. For some 200 years before that first the British Empire, then more recently the United States could seemingly do no wrong. We defeated anybody we chose to fight, conquered anywhere we chose to conquer. Our institutions, customs and beliefs were seen as better in every way. In time we came to see this situation as the inevitable outworking of progress. Eventually everybody would come to be just like us, just think of the first series of Star Trek where the Federation of Planets is just one big fat USA in space, the same in every way except that the diversity had pointy ears.
How very different the last twenty years have been. From rarely putting a foot wrong to utter bungling incompetence in just a single generation.
One good thing about meteoric rise of China is that our leaders can no longer kid themselves that our Western civilization is universal. As China grows ever more self confident it will like become more and more Chinese. The Covid19 lockdown fiasco demonstrates this, it was a very Chinese response, great for them, a disaster for us.
SubscribeStar page.
“A defining feature of the managerial state is that it creates problems that require it to then fashion complex solutions to solve.”
The self licking ice cream cone.
Suddenly RINOs and GOPers have found some nads? WTF?
“This Is Straight Up Election Interference”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smoking-gun-emails-show-hunter-biden-introduced-vp-dad-burisma-executive
Rep. Doug Collins Introduces Resolution To Remove Nancy Pelosi For Lack Of Mental Fitness
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rep-doug-collins-introduces-resolution-remove-nancy-pelosi-lack-mental-fitness
Bullshit. You’d need Christ to give nads to The Nadless.
The 230 “carveout” was known to be a bandaid fix at the time it was adopted — back when the interweb was basically a static bulletin board at the laundrymat. But then Web 2.0 came along, with enhanced search and display technology, giving birth to new web creatures, and news aggregators mushroomed overnight. And here we are at today.
It took Trump months (years) to arrive at the correct solution. He has yet to act, but the fix is not terribly difficult – revoking 230 and allowing people to self-curate the content they do/do not wish to see. Tech could easily cook up some tools to help users curate their experience at their own sites – many tools are already in place. No one reading this feels they can’t protect themselves from harmful ideas, but maybe they could use some help with keeping their kids of of harm’s way. It’s just not that hard. But the WILL is another matter ….
Because the “Conservatives” have all but lost the culture war for so long, we’re an entire generation in to wanting the government to do it for us. Big Momma will avert your eyes and cover your ears for you. “Please, please, please just create another agency to take care of us!”
What we’re really up against now is growing collectivist sensibility in all matters. It’s gone on for so long that Jack and Zuck themselves (approaching middle age) lean toward the idea that the First Amendment is not only unappealing and “hurtful to the feelz”, but downright dangerous. Bezos the senior citizen too. They didn’t start out as such, but have caved along the way, along with the feminized culture. All of Silicon Valley is in lockstep (and Kamala’s their guy). She’ll “fix it” alright.
Some bozo “conservatives”, in their too-clever on paper ploy to out-left the left, called for civil rights for conservative speech – as if we had 30 years to bring the plight of a declining minority to the fore (not to mention that conservatives won’t riot or march). It says a lot that 30+yr old “Conservatives” prefer to diddle with Leftie’s game than fight for free speech and free association. That, truly, takes the cake for “Conservatism” proving it has no principles at all. The paleos were right on this.
> It’s gone on for so long that Jack and Zuck themselves (approaching middle age) lean toward the idea that the First Amendment is not only unappealing and “hurtful to the feelz”, but downright dangerous. Bezos the senior citizen too. They didn’t start out as such, but have caved along the way, along with the feminized culture.
They were libertarian at the time because it served their interests. They are full SJWs now because it serves their interests.
What you are describing fits the libertarian party to a “t”.- going along to get along. Especially after massive cash infusions. Maybe the more likely explanation is they held no principles at all, it turns out.
They were libertarian at the time because it served their interests. They are full SJWs now because it serves their interests.
https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/i/Vizzini63/calvin_and_hobbes_according_to_my_principles.png
Re: Bezos. Have you ever seen a photo of him from the early days of Amazon compared to the present?
Yup.
Regardless of being a weird sperg with women, the man became a ruthless force of nature in the office and embraced power.
OT:
At least one progtard outlet has realized Green/Clean Energy is a complete hoax, much like Beer Flu:
There’s no such thing as clean energy
https://medium.com/@ronan_51814/surprising-science-theres-no-such-thing-as-clean-energy-9f6f02081c0
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by malice.
If they were just children, their mistakes would favor us at least some of the time. While they are not exactly evil geniuses, they are evil.
At the root, this issue (like most others discussed here) is about how quickly we descend to the bottom. Yes, if Congress somehow comes to it’s senses and does something useful for a change, things might get marginally better for some people for a while. But that just slowes the rate of descent temporarily. Eventually, the bill comes due and kicking the can is no longer a viable option. So the choice is . . . live well and hope to die before the reckoning . . . or power down to the bottom quickly and rebuild while you’ve still got some moxie.
Corporate Memory. As if that’s necessarily a good thing. Usually it’s the same bad ideas being promulgated by the same awful people unto perpetuity. There is something to be said about letting the new kids run free, even if they do re-invent the wheel a bit. Often times in that process they come up with some pretty clever solutions.
About every 20 years you have to burn the place to the ground and let the new people develop their own solutions. Sure, you have to maintain some kind of basic framework but the rest, have at it. This is invariably why bureaucracies go bad. An idea is bad because it’s new.
The founding fathers learned a lot from the lessons of European despotism and reading their ancient histories in Latin and Greek. What a new group of founders would hopefully learn from our age of bureaucratic tyranny and intra-governmental intrigues would be to never let a managerial government class arise at all. In as much as bureaucracies must exist at all perhaps they should be set up as a kind of national service that everyone rotates through somewhat like the army in many countries.
The technocrats oversee the surveillance tool monitoring our thoughts, then use the data to create ai that reprograms our thoughts. It was always intended to be a behavior modification device. Good luck ripping the brakes out of this vehicle.
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are government meat puppets. Their purpose is to put a human face on something that is not human at all. Imagine how monstrous this artificial entity would look with the human mask stripped away.
Zuckerberg? Human?
Speaking of road building – PA recently spent millions ‘resurfacing’ I-279 north out of Pittsburgh. No money was spent to actually *widen* the highway where necessary, remove the ridiculous ‘HOV’ lane that is vastly underused, or correct serious traffic issues due to a poorly thought out onramp at Camp Horne Road/Bellevue/Westview. The corrupt highway contractors did their work, and nothing has improved traffic wise (though with the insane lockdowns, it doesn’t really matter right now…)
Same here. One major highway to connect the two major population centers 100 miles apart. After Katrina, there was discussion on how essential it was to be able to evacuate one population center to the other.
The major highway is now three lanes either way—except for a number of miles through Indian reservations where traffic slows and backs up because of two lane constriction. Indians are said to refuse expansion. The rumor is they are holding such permission hostage to more gaming concessions. Government is just a bunch of gangs competing against each other for a bigger share of the loot.
Around most population hubs roadworks are the ultimate “don’t kill the job” Hack-a-rama boondoggle. See: The Big Dig, which turned an unpleasant, but localized traffic jam, into one that stretches halfway to New Hampshire and Rhode Island. And has actually killed people.
“Most people, of course, would refuse and the business models of these firms would more from rentier to retail.”
I think you have a far too generous view of human nature. People sign leonine contracts all the time without reading them, *especially* when it comes to online terms of service, which gives rights to them for ‘all your content, all the time’ bascially…
We would have to ban these kinds of contracts, and write into law a consent requirement every time.
It’s true, and I’m just as guilty as anyone at just clicking on the agreement without reading. For all I know, Blizzard could have a lien on one of my children.
I helped a client with a specialized debt collection scheme a few years back. It was in a ‘vital’ industry with almost guaranteed revenue, secured by real property, usually involving a few thousand dollars in debt. No one had defaulted on a payment since the 1950s. The group had only 4 people in it at the time, and the program ran itself.
A while ago one of these managerial class types tried to force my client to adopt a few million dollar, three tiered program, to protect the ‘vulnerable’ payers who might be impacted during 3rd party bankruptcy proceedings. They would need to hire an additional half dozen employees to administer it. Also, they would need to provide $600,000 annually to an NGO which would advocate on behalf of the ‘vulnerable persons’.
My client said ‘no’ stating that the scheme had been in existence since the early 1930s, and not once had the circumstances she wanted to protect against ever occurred. If such circumstances ever did arise, my client had the authority to forgive the amount owed with no strings attached. Instead of costing millions, it would cost a few thousand. So, no danger, no ‘vulnerable people’, and no megabucks program.
The managerial class and their problems is now a full-blown protection racket for NGOs and other ‘grassroots’ organizations looking to extort money under the guise of protecting “muh vulnerable peoples”.
an NGO or A Non-Profit is just a tax shelter and con where all the players pay themselves 600k a year.
“… racket for NGOs and other ‘grassroots’ organizations looking to extort money under the guise …”
That is also true for affirmative action in academia. I’ve spent many years in it and met many, many people. I’ve met one genuine African-American and he didn’t need affirmative action to get ahead. The rest are all foreigners (Africa and Brazil) brought in to fill diversity billets.
African-American (Africans with some European admixture) mean IQ is 85 and there are about 44 million of them. Baseline Africans with zero admixture have mean IQ 71, but there are more than a billion of them. So while the mean is lower there are still more of them capable of doing cognitive work. White leftists do not care a whit about improving the lot of African-Americans (or anyone else). They care about getting their feel-good buzz. Any African will do. The white left is nothing but hatred and hypocrisy.
And what is the force driving the constant need for new housing developments and roads leading out of the city to service them? Equal housing opportunity and a ban on redlining.
Problem, reaction, solution.
Don’t forget mass immigration. The apartment complexes in ‘weathier’ suburbs are filled with Indians and Chinese, who then get the max mortgage loan for the big house.
Take back the cities and demolish the burbs. Town and country was a great idea.
I know, but one can hope.
Ted Cruz tried to get to Trump’s right on immigration after the first debate in 2015. It helped his campaign and let him get to the point where he was the last challenger to Trump standing. Much of the Republican establishment hates him on a personal level more than they hate Trump. I still think one of the major was factors in Trump’s win was the establishment’s decision to back Jeb. They thought they could pull off the same lies they had told in the past, like John McCain’s, “build the damn wall” commercial he ran when JD Hayworth ran in a primary against him. No one was buying Jeb “act of love” Bush would be anything but an open border fanatic. This caused a stampede of support to Trump. Based on what the Never Trumpers write, they still think they can reinstall the old system. Their salaries aren’t wholly dependent on not understanding this issue, they could adapt and survive, I think they truly hate the average Republican voter.
The hatred of Cruz was always because he was a magnet for evangelicals. With the same photos of him in prayer circles. I don’t know which Cruz I hate more, the pre-bearded one with the pompous facial expressions and high handed over the top Reagan worshiping rhetoric, or the post near-loss bearded one where all the small government talk is out the window, sitting there in silence as each stimulus bill is more grotesque than the next.
Whenever a politician runs on immigration reform, ignore them. They’re lying.
Makes sense.
“The people inside become hyper-educated toddlers, unable to grasp the concept of time.”
What may that concept of time be? Is it the idea that it’s important to race from one red light to another in urban traffic? The excruciating wait for a Big Whopper in the drive-through lane? Once acquiring patience was a sign of adulthood. “Timmy, you can’t open your Christmas presents until tomorrow, on Christmas Day.”
Adulthood is now obsolete, in part because time compression has become a selling point for business. “We can get it for you faster”. The nation has become a playground of adolescents that want their stuff, their burger, their pizza, their new shoes, their car wash, right now.
This is why I laugh at anyone who still talks about buying and holding an equity for 30 years.
Stocks maybe; bonds no.
Which bonds though?
There are a ton of states and municipalities in dire financial straits that are only getting worse.
The Wild Geese Howard: Why do you laugh at buying and holding? I have made substantial gains and built wealth through buying and holding. The trick, of course, is buyng and holding the right companies.
I do pretty well with swing trading options at conservative entry points.
I would not have wanted to hold anything through 2001, 2008, or this March.
The only things of real, lasting value are ground you can stand on and wealth you can hold in your hands.
Add weapons and manpower to that and you’ve got a nation.
I want free, unlimited, perfect medical care now!
Adulthood IS obsolete.
Napoleon Bonaparte was sent away from Corsica to a French military academy when he was only 9. He spoke broken French and didn’t see his family again for years.
He was master of Europe by age 35.
I’ve had numerous discussions about the obsolescence of the liberal arts college model today with my co workers; they’re response is almost always:
“The kids need four years of socialization that college brings”.
Insanity.
Nelson was 12 when he joined the British Navy. (It was his uncle’s ship and as the 6th of 11 children of a clergyman he probably didn’t have much choice in the matter.)
It’s a post-hoc rationalization. The university system exploded initially to produce engineers and scientists after WWII. Then its growth was driven by the easy availability of government backed loans that eventually became available to just about anyone to “study” just about anything. Today, the economy relies on it to keep millions of mediocre minds off the job market for 4-8 years while they live on what amounts to welfare.
It’s a good example of something that evolved for one purpose ending up doing something totally different with time. The bacterial flagellum supposedly evolved as a molecular motor to pump waste products out of a cell and turned out to be more useful to drive a little propeller. As it turned into a propulsion system a lot of the proteins that made it a pump became useless and got deleted from the genome.
This year we experimented with the idea of just dispensing with the pretend education part of college entirely but without having ready made prisons, labor camps, or coal mines available to absorb the bored and useless children. This didn’t turn out so well.
Sorry for the double reply but I think I missed a key point in my rambling.
There is an actual decent paying job shortage for all kinds of reasons.
In the past we used d work sharing (aka forced lower work week) which we still have , protectionism forced retirement or just plain dying off .
The thing is less jobs, higher cost of living from taxes and urbanization along with longer lifespans don’t play well with short term business thinking and globalism .
Also an assumption that smart disciplined people would keep having babies especially after you weakened religion to control it and promoted low fertility for ecological reasons is proof how dumb the elite are at times.
The system was set to auto destruct mode more than two generations ago, maybe longer and very little, probably nothing can be done to reverse it other than maybe autocratic, authoritarian , Dissident Right state . Maybe.
College used to be for creating a new elite and making connections. Its now a signal that you are “polished” and I’ve seen that word used and not a deplorable or something. Its also damned hard for youngster to get a job outide the trades without a degree and tradesmen often have to compete with immigrant cartels as well.
The thing is though there wasn’t much automation in 1778 and everyone was expected to work as there was a lot to do.
In the 2000’s and even earlier automation is everywhere and all kinds of jobs are on the block. Some of this is the global labor surplus and the ease of travel, some the ease out outsourcing, some of it is software replacing whole categorizes of jobs and some of it is actual robots.
No societies can adapt to a system of pay enough wages to sustain a family on 24 hours-32 of work and in categories that are labor intensive but low wage, they can’t as no model can support the pay required.
This has had a crippling effect on family formation and combined with other cultural peculiarities, for example sleep deprivation among Japanese worker’s has resulted in record low fertility.
Functionally every developed society is eating its own seed corn.
Another interesting if minor trend are the minimalists and retire early types. Choosing not to participate in a consumer society to a high degree as a kind of quiet rebellion as is working to leave it behind.
The elite of course want an economic reset and were hoping to leverage C19 for it but I think they greatly underestimated the fragility and costliness of modern society and the latest efforts combined with natures wrath such as the ongoing global food shortages and internel issues with diversity may well end it all.
We might be watching a Dark Age start and slowly over decades swallow everything. To borrow a line from ICP
I live in yesterday, so I feel pretty out of touch with the world of today. It still takes 10 months for a cow to produce a calf. The grass starts to grow in the spring and dies out in the fall. Wishing you had grass growing in your field in January doesn’t absolve you from failing to put up hay in June. A horse lives her quite long life then ages and dies in front of you, whether you like it or not.
The gods of the copybook headings will have their due.
Gab founder Torba seems to be ambivalent towards any changes to Section 230, a person I thought would be gung-ho about it. There is a possibility that a change will be a poison pill that will further consolidate power tech power or crush blogs, but I have a hard time seeing how you can get much worse than Google, as even my normie friends are starting using other search engines because of the blatant algorithm manipulation.
It seems they could easily modify it to use the ‘public accommodation’ principle to say you have a right to the public square as long as what you are doing is not illegal.
I think he worries that the proposed changes would result in regulatory capture. A new federal agency would regulate tech forms, but become the slave of the big firms, in the same way the SEC is owned by big finance. Alternatively, repealing 230, which some “conservatives” advocate, would empower big tech to censure everything, even bit players like Gab.
For Gab the “tell” was when Apple and Android pulled the app from their app store.
I think it’s safe to assume that any change made will benefit big tech. After all, aren’t they the ones paying all the bills and bribes right now?
And the Banksters. But, yeah.
We can’t even get rid of something as archaic as the Tennessee Valley Authority, so I seriously doubt anything will be done until a dictator simply closes entire cabinet level bureaucracies.
If your final paragraph is indeed true, I think that this bodes well for the future in the sense that any physical oppression of YT en-masse just becomes to much work. The practical skills required to organize and execute such an operation will be far from plentiful. It may well be the case the whilst Sergeant Diaz and Health Commissar Shaqwanda are out in the field getting next-to-nil results, the children of the managerial state are indeed not listening, just planning the next grand scheme whose implementation will be that bit further from reality.
The children of the upper middle class do not work; they travel the world and find themselves, because they don’t want to waste their life working at a soul crushing corporation, and they aren’t like other people.
I’d assume a similar mindset is occurring in the 20-something children of the current wealthy class too.
I am tenuously connected to a slice of Instagram where the cool trust fund kids hang out through a former roommate.
That bunch spent the entire summer in Mykonos doing yoga, tanning, eating, and partying with 24 hour live DJs, no masks or social distancing at all.
Nice life, if you can get it.
Yeah meanwhile Brahmins and Chinese kids are graduating every year and taking over more and more well paying jobs.
These white kids can live like this forever, on their parent’s money, sure, but they are not generating any new money and it will be used up in 1 or 2 generations.
It’s kind of an illusion, inter-generational wealth requires inter-generational work to maintain it.
From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. Prescott Bush and his son George were genuinely distinguished men. Would anyone say the same about Dubya and Jeb? Is Chelsea Clinton as competent as Bill and Hill?
Whatever you want to say about the old aristocratic ruling class, they worked. Kings and noblemen commanded armies, administered provinces and provided justice. Women managed estates. They pulled their weight in society.
Until the King’s idiot grandson inherited the throne.
GHWB did more damage to this country than almost any other president in living memory with Iran-Contra, Gulf War I, and the doubling of legal immigration w/ the Immigration Act of 1990. (Oh, and the Rent Boys Midnight Tours of the WH.)
Those who would be in our native white aristocracy might still have the money commensurate with their status, but they do not have the power. We have been driven from every single control node of our own civilization (coinage, courts, media, etc).
It would require them to act cooperatively in their own collective self-interest, exactly like every other tribe they are failing to compete against. However, they have, like so many of us, been conditioned like dogs from birth into thinking that white nationalism and white tribalism is wrong.
In other words, the technocrat class lives inside its own phart-clouded bubble getting high off its own. The overlords find these communities useful for zeitgeist purposes as tools of distraction and suppression. A sclerosis of self-interest against all others inevitably destroys the vitality of the host corpus.
That’s the key line right there. Most everything these people have to do is to alleviate their boredom. Perhaps that can spare a few hours on a boring chore if they get to look good in front of peers. Once again, this harks back to the feminization of society – work must be a social club and ‘fun’. People seem to be forgetting that work was never something the vast bulk of people enjoyed – they just had to do it.
Very good essay today. Particularly liked the take on the Communications act and it’s ramifications – a great example of tinkering with a complex system and then seeing secondary and tertiary consequences spring up like crazy. Their seems to be, in the tech world, a growing confidence that we can master these complex systems… fully understand them. But I think this is largely false. As long as the managerial state keeps adding to the complexity we’ll see far less actually achieved and it will be even easier to dilute responsibility and shift blame – the real achievement of democracy.
The more complex the system, the more difficult it is to master, or even understand. Obviously. However, we have spent the last couple decades listening to the masses and mass media explain Earth’s climate, which has to be one of the most complex systems we will ever face. If they think they can understand global climate, how hard can communications and the internet be?
It’s just been one long con all along.
At the very least, we have some idea of how the fundamental building blocks of a telecommunication channel work. We have equations describing with great accuracy how certain circuits behave and Shannon’s Theory of Communication gives us valuable insights into what we can expect from such systems.
In the physical world, again, at the very least the fluid movement of the atmosphere can be understood to a large degree by the forces of shear, viscosity, pressure and gravity… But the whole thing? As you say, one big con. But academia is full of bods touting the next big theory, each one more unwieldy than the last.
Finally, when you see such theories applied to biological systems, the models just seem absurd. Or, for that matter, when you see them applied to the economy. These areas just don’t have the well understood fundamental units that physics and information flow have.
This is why probability has seen such a boon in these models, it is the great ass coverer:
Me: “Hey! Professor, you said that we’d get Covid in my area? What gives?”
Prof:”Well, my model only said there was a 21% chance of Covid in your area.”
Also me: “Hey! Professor, you said we wouldn’t get Covid in my area? What gives?”
Also prof: “Well, my model only said there was a 79% chance of no Covid in your area.”
It is a fascinating mathematical tool, but seems to be over-applied everywhere. For the interested layman I would recommend William Allen Whitworth’s Choice and Chance; but beware – the author is a white male.
I had a professor a long time ago who wrote a very good little book, Making Theories to Explain the Weather. In it, he started with very simple dynamics like smooth sphere, no oceans, mountains or rotation. Then piece by piece he’d add things like rotation, variable terrain, tilt, seas, mountains, etc. With each level of complexity, it became increasingly more difficult to “explain”, much less predict.
Fun class, but difficult. As a proper physics-based (yes, with the math) meteorology class should be.
This reminds me of the old joke in my physics classes — “We will start by modelling the elephant as a 5 ton sphere with a density similar to water…”
Old time farmers used to smell the air and look up to the sky, they were more reliable forecasters than the coiffed haired homo on jewtube.
That book sounds very interesting. I’ll have a look.
I still remember early on that the major models predicting global warming did *not* take sun intensity into account, it was considered a constant. Took a few Russians beating at the doors to get them to take solar variation and sunspot cycles seriously—which was not a new discovery, but long known and measured.
Of course, once they did accept this into their modeling, they now use our sun intensity decrease to explain why their predictions of doom and gloom were so off time wise. The talking point now is that the sun has given us brief respite to get our act together before the regular intensity arrives and we turn into Venus.
Their career is not to excel at the responsibilities of their current position, it’s to continue moving up the ladder. The latter in no way requires success at the former.
What do you think of the WHO backing off of the lockdowns? I don’t know if they’ve decided they made a giant error in one of their calculations or perhaps the spokesman just isn’t getting the cheese he wants any more because the lockdown bankrupted his favorite dairy. I can’t figure out if these people are stupid or smart or if they have visible goals or are just reacting wildly.
I’m guessing the WHO backing off of the lockdowns is going to have as much effect as the video of Dr. Fauci from March 8 saying “masks don’t work.”
It’s not the same. No one said that recently and we’ve been ramping up masks for months and months now.
Its getting worse. I don’t wear a mask. Ive been denied dental care, medical care, car maintenance, library visits. I wonder if I will be able to get a job. I can only pray that someone turn off the mask propaganda.
It is getting worse. I wear them. It makes me so angry but I do it. I’m really thankful I don’t have to wear them very often but I have come to really hate these rich Karens saying everyone has to wear a mask because basically it’s rich people torturing poor people. And I know these rich witches. They don’t leave their houses, they get everything delivered to them and sally out a couple hours a week with their designer mask and that’s it. Having to wear a mask like that 8 hours a day is torture, it’s not just the acne and the skin issues and humiliation, its pulmonary lung disease.
I can vouch for what you say Whitney. Here before masks became necessary “by law”, the local hardware store had any number of their employees without them. Signs all over asking the customers’ indulgence and understanding that some of their weaker employees could not wear such for 8 hour shifts.
I spoke to one of the clerks, she was happy I was not wearing a mask either. She had all sorts of problems with the masks and breathing. Unfortunately, the city adopted mandatory masks and both the city and county will suspend business licenses for violators under their emergency powers edict. Courts have supported unlimited use of these powers. In short, Caesar has been made dictator for life.
More than one business has been closed due to this enhanced enforcement. I can’t tell you what happened to the particular store clerk I spoke about, I no longer visit any stores. Last year, I remember perhaps ordering once on Amazon. Now it’s a weekly event—and I despise Amazon.
There’s widespread civil disobedience to Ohio’s mask mandates in rural areas, but Columbus is all in (I expect that’s true of other cities, but I haven’t been to them to check).
“Courts have supported unlimited use of these powers.”
Most significantly, Trump’s most recent SCOTUS nominee in an opinion OKing tyrannical measures in Illinois. His SCOTUS picks continue to disappoint.
Just wait until the forced vax for travel and employment.
I suspect it will initially be coercive. Get vax and you can live like a (almost) normal individual. No vax, no admittance to most public conveniences. This will most likely kill the exclusions for students and other anti-vax’ ers.
Don’t overly fret. Big Brother’s vaccine isn’t quite ready yet. MInor problems with lots of side effects, some of them rather serious…
Add increasing evidence that having had COVID once will give you immunity for a few months, if that, to future re-infections. If natural immunity is so fleeting, to me it seems very unlikely that any vaccine would produce a longer-term immunity.
In related news, I wimped out and got the annual flu shot. Based on my own history, never had an adverse reaction to previous shots, but it was the $10 gift card dangled in front of me that collapsed my resistance 🙂
Each person should make their own medical decisions. What you cannot do is impose your medical decision-making on me. I’ve never taken a flu shot, however, I have been vaccinated against rabies and other travel-related diseases because until The Covid I was a global wanderer, sometimes for months at a go. (planning is about as much enjoyment as the trip) I won’t insist we eliminate rabies by vaccinating you, take your cue and don’t impose on me please.
And I’d heard there wasn’t much flu related illness in the Southern Hemisphere this year, so the strain guesses for us are a bigger crapshoot than usual, so most likely worth even less than usual. I rarely get one and this year is no different.
There’s still scant evidence that reinfections are anything but rare. Perhaps that will change, but it’s even more likely that the virus will mutate into a seasonal nuisance, just as the Spanish flu is still out there a century later.
Locking down until there’s a vaccine is like refusing to save money for retirement because you plan on hitting the lottery. There has never been a human vaccine for any Corona virus (almost 20 years after SARS-Cov-1, and still nothing) and until the medical miracle happens, there’s no point in banking on a legitimate vaccine.
Bingo. Coming to every airline employee, taxicab driver, bus driver, etc. near you.
Condition of employment, and the neat trick is that employers will be shielded from lawsuits if the vax goes south.
Chicago here. A few minutes ago I was banned from a local Foxtrot, which is a higher-end chain 7-11.
I have a novelty mask made from netting. When asked to don a mask I did so with the novelty mask. This led to a confrontation regarding efficacy, porosity, guidance and notice for the consumer, etc. in my customary annoyingly calm voice a la Ben Stein’s teacher character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
So I am seriously contemplating setting them up for a law suit and then filing suit with intention to prosecute through jury trial with some sympathetic friends and their small law firm supporting me.
I already wrote various complaints and briefs back in May. Since I’ve been banned from several businesses recently for persistent mask failure, including by managers who wear their masks beneath their noses or tucked under the chin, I am seriously considering taking legal action. Like most lawyers, I know what a PITA this will be, however, my local options are shrinking fast.
There is most definitely a pre-election “you’re with us and our mask and BLM religion or it’s going to be starvation and eventually the guillotine” push here in a nice neighborhood of Chicago. Imbeciles.
Local businesses in Ohio try to play loose, but then the mask-stasi show up and fine the place, so I mostly wear my paintball mask, mostly out of respect for local establishments that I’d rather not see punished.
There isn’t enforcement in my neighborhood. The city leaves our businesses alone unless they fail to quietly donate to the local aldercreature.
Regardless, unless business pushes back against the unratified edicts these unconstitutional policies will continue ad infinitum.
You have to say no, I will not wear a face diaper. Recall when Fauci told the world masks have no efficacy? Today we have strong evidence his statement was correct.
Wow, you can’t even pop in to the corner store for a Slurpee and a Slim Jim without getting a lecture and guilt trip from a convenience store clerk.
Pre-prepared fruit and cheese bowl plus a large coffee to go. Late breakfast/early lunch to be bicycled and consumed at home.
We’re now actually supposed to replace our mask between bites until the next food or beverage item can be shoved into our gullets when we eat or drink publicly.
Bloody effing ridiculous. Imbeciles.
No one is going to enforce here in Cali where its thought to be the best policy as well.
If they try, don’t come back.
Most business excepting food stores are optional
Ultimately the mask nonsense will end either when the costs get too high , the scum are voted out iun numbers or it goes hot and everyone is too busy not getting killed to bother with it.
My guess is that this “change of ideas” is partially based on good science and partially based on “oh shit we meant to wound the economy so we could be rid of Trump and have a big reset not kill it and end all our control institutions.” Does no good to have Hollywood or TV or any of that if no one is watching and they make deliberate effort to avoid you.
The best thing you can do is to avoid those places anyway.
You can’t avoid shopping for basic stuff so you have to put up with it but convenience stores are optional and expensive.
The less you spend the weaker the system gets.
This is why I adore the F.I.R.E. Financial Independence Retire Early crowd. Sure they joke about cutting out the avocado toast and Starbucks and talk about being intentional in their spending and all that but its a great movement.
These millennial folks are acting like citizens not consumers and realizing work for most sucks with a nice side effect of pushing the economy into overproduction crisis which will kill the consumer debt based economy thus pushing social issues to the forefront and very possibly helping to finish off the system faster.
All in an economy with no yield!
Your statement illustrates a common, and usually overlooked point. We all too often forget that if we have freedom, the other party does too (or should, at least). In a free world, you are free to wear or not wear a mask. But other entities are free to refuse you service if you don’t wear a mask. (This analysis leaves out the issue of a mask being required by law — we only consider voluntary transactions right now.) This is just a trivial example of freedom of association, something we claim to want.
Yeah, now it’ll be no shirt, no shoes, NO MASK no service.
Facts and logic will never stop the mask hysteria. Mocking and ridicule will.
Way back in the summer when NYS “allowed” restaurants to reopen, we all laughed about how silly it was to wear a mask while walking to your table or the rest room but not while you’re seated. And now, just a few short weeks later, no one bats an eye at it. Many spend their time looking around the restaurant, hoping to give the stink eye to someone who doesn’t follow the rules just so. It gets worse and worse, the more we realize that we could let it all go if we wanted.
And for many, they’ll be wearing a mask for the rest of their tortured, pathetic lives. The good thing is they won’t be able to whine and posture at the rest of us that have moved on with ours.
I look around for maskless people and give them a smile of encouragement.
The CDC said masks don’t work very recently. They whispered it under their breath of course, and said the opposite very loudly:
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=240416
market ticker guy has been right on about this stuff from the start.
“Krazy Karl” is insane and fluttering as a rabid bat but his analyses of covid and other health-related issues are spot on. When writing about health laws or legislation, Karl is superior to any health lawyer I know. It pains me to read his “goat effing”, “sodomize” etc. hyberbole but the dude is most excellent a his limited repertoire. Otherwise his authorshipe makes me wish to inject novocaine directly into the brain, his or mine.
Too right. It does not matter what is said by these officials now, people have chosen their sides and will proceed accordingly. Besides, if you’ve just bought that lovely personalized mask for $14.99 you still want to show it off…
No kidding. Who gives a s*** about the WHO – band or organization – altho I’d give more credibility to the former. Nothing they now say is going to affect the petty (or pycho) little tyrants who screw up our lives. They’ve gotten a real taste of power and it’ll probably have to be forcefully removed.
The petty tyrants have been unleashed on us.
The black Karen is way worse than her white twin sister.
Only the most autistic care about science and the results of the scientific process.
For everyone else science is a bludgeon to beat others into line. The WHO had authority as long as it agreed with the screeching amygdalas of the Left. When it doesn’t, it will be ignored.
China does not want more lockdowns, so they told WHO to say no more lockdowns.
of course. So simple
China realizes it needs to sell cheap shit to the rest of the world, and so much the better if the rest of the world drowns itself in debt.
China realizes that it doesn’t need to sell cheap shit to the rest of the world, which, is now a problem for us.
Africa and South America will pick up the slack. China doesn’t need parity, just velocity and flow.
It all is a giant vendor financing scheme to them anyway, but still they need to lend in dollars and those locations just can’t absorb that much more debt without the whole cam falling apart.
the foolish leaders in south america and Africa were strongarmed by the world bank and the US to wreck their economies with lockdowns too. between that and the loss of all tourist revenue, they will be lucky to not starve. they will now be holding their own much less picking up slack
Similar to the NBA.
The weakness of our ruling class is apparent when you see them against any foe (not just a behemoth like China) with their own community and support systems.
TPTB rely on you relying on their system and community, a system and community that, ironically, they didn’t build nor do they maintain. If you have your own community, their threats of social excommunication become laughable. If you have your own businesses, banks and communications, their threats to cut you off from the grid are pointless.
TPTB are, in many ways, a paper tiger or, more precisely, a Trojan Horse. They rely on propaganda and infiltrating the commanding heights of your society. But those powers are useless if you don’t listen to them and/or don’t let them inside your gates.
TPTB are a con man, not a builder or soldier. Granted, they’re a con man who has wormed his way into running the country, but they’re still a con man. As you say, they’re a fox. And even the smallest lion can kill a fox.
The more atomized you are, the more power tptb has over you.
Unless they start “deplatforming” entire families because of one dissident, family is a great way to be safer.
The easiest way to beat tptb is to just say NO. When they see you won’t change, they leave. Even works for some Christian denominations, not cucked churches obviously.
I wouldn’t rule that out in the foreseeable future, the entire families.
This is why they’re pushing digital currency and a cashless society so hard. It’s the perfect control mechanism for TPTB.
Chinese make crap. Americans buy crap, but can’t buy crap locked up.
China doesn’t have a lockdown anymore, they quietly dropped it, just as they quietly dropped using ventilators while still exporting as many as they could to us chimps.
On Tucker Carlson the Navarro guy was saying we may see a doubling of world poverty over the next year due to lockdown. Given that “eradicating poverty” is supposedly a major goal, this would be a major setback.
Plus, closed borders mean less immigration. Shutdown economies mean western ponzis are collapsing that much faster. Lockdowns are causing tinder, sex and the city lifestyle, and clubs, and other degenerate things to be more closed off.
Who knows why, but there are many results anti-thetical to the neoliberal agenda resulting from the lockdowns.
I’m coming around to the China hypothesis, i.e., China is taking over and remaking the world in its image.
Nah, China has always been “China first…and foremost”. It really is that simple. They’ve got the clout to push the global system around to get what they want, so they do.
This brings to fore the thinking of our globalists when they brought China into OUR international trade system, sending to them 50% of our manufacturing capacity. The Judeopuritan empire expands like the Roman Empire did, by co-opting local national and tribal elites into its imperial aristocracy. Unfortunately for our stupid globalists, Chinese national elites look at them with contempt.
China is the oldest surviving non-pastoral civilization on this planet. Just because a thug is stronger than you doesn’t make him BETTER. So the Chinese pretended to accept the bargain so they could get strong enough to get the whip hand. There was never any chance Chinese elites were going to play second fiddle to the pack of human cockroaches from NYC. Arrogance has always been the besetting sin of the Judeopuritans and arrogance beyond a certain point becomes indistinguishable from stupidity.
It is ironic that England, which once ruled China, India and large swaths of the Middle East, is now being ruled by Chinese, Indians and Middle Easterners.
Ironic is one way of putting it. Moronic, as in moronic leadership would be my diagnosis.
The aristocracy was purchased. They’ll allow the parasites to feed off the common people until the latter are drained translucent.
US post WW2 order requires all Western countries to be reimagined.
The US is the source of all this ideology which is why it’s the most diverse.
Physician, heal thyself.
If England is “”ruled” by those groups then so is every Western country.
I wouldn’t say the UK is more submissive than France,Canada or the US.German television explained in a very agressive manner that brown Germans were the future of Doucheland.
Not ironic, just the nature of power. Whites have been told that the expansion of European power across the globe is evil when it’s just normal.Peoples strive for more power/influence and will deliberately or inadvertantly shape foreign societies.
England was better at it than the other European peoples which is why other Europeans whine about them so much. The Swedes ,Spanish, Germans would loved to have the empire of the British but were just not up to it.Same with non-European tribes.
US power replaced England and now is very much on the wane, openly controlled by people who despise the country and its people.
LOL- it ain’t England that is run by people from the Middle East , Merkin.
It ain’t England with 3 months of continuous rioting, human-excrement covered sidewalks, corporate racial struggle sessions.
Home of the Frankfurt school is in exceptionally exceptional Ewe Ess of Aye.
US pols are neck deep in Chinese money, even employing Chinese spies as personal drivers.
As for Indians: you are not familiar with the US tech industry management.
Your opinion is 100% psychological projection.
Who is the mayor of london again?
china owns Australia, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEEeNYXUTvY
china controls our riots https://freepressers.com/articles/socialist-organizers-of-u-s-riots-linked-to-communist-china
and clearly they own both of our political parties.
“The Great Reset” is a plan to destroy the world economy in order to recreate a zero carbon emissions society. The excuse is combating climate change. The Chinese Virus is an excuse to lockdown the world under the guise of saving lives.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/product/the-great-reset/
Green energy is a complete hoax, see my other post about it.
In some ways, green energy is even worse than fossil fuel based energy, requiring a 10x increase in mineral extraction and causing new, terrible environmental effects.
Of course, that in an “unintended consequence” of such a monumental change. But as with all these consequences, they are encountered somewhere down the road—preferably when their instigators are dead. Therefore they don’t matter and for those in power, really of *no* consequence.
It isn’t the environment, silly man. Sure green programs create more pollution problems than they solve. Thats the whole point! As stated above by Zman, applied here: green energy is a 50-year, 5 trillion dollar jobs and corporate profit subsidy program for the managerial class. The environmental effects are completely coincidental, positive or negative.
A zero emissions economy? Are they nuts? There are trillions and trillions of dollars in equipment that need fossil fuel.
The world economy needs fossil fuel more now than any other time. The entire system is predicated on cheap fossil fuels to transport manufactured goods all around the world. FFS, we put fresh vegetables on airplanes now!
If they cared about “climate change” they wouldn’t be doing any of the things they are doing. They most certainly wouldn’t be supporting open borders and they wouldn’t be supporting “free trade.”
One way to reduce emissions is to use nuclear power enriched with thorium. Renders the plutonium safe to use. No risk of another Chernobyl.
Yep, but last I read there is no program funded to perfect such a reactor (liquid salt). Which tells me it’s a pretty good idea.
I would like to see a move to nuclear for electricity generation.
The problem is that the high-quality human resources available to build and run the reactors are getting scarce.
Zero emissions is the catch phrase, but really is not what is expected to happen. Carbon credits are what will happen. As the Catholics did with indulgences, they do with these credits. Need to drive a gas car, pay for 500 tons of yearly carbon emissions—say $20 to $50 per ton. Sweet deal.
The money goes to some government entity to spread around to whomever. The mafia selling protection to Local businesses in the “neighborhood” never had it this good.
And this is why the attempts to tear out all the existing infrastructure and replace it are insane.
The investment of time and resources that would take are a clear net negative, so that transition makes no sense.
Any time I see the words “fossil Fuels” to refer to petrochemicals, I ask the dipshit who it was that shipped all the dinosaurs to Titan so they can have their Methane seas.
I just thought of a great scifi story about intergalactic dinosaurs….
The best way to reduce emissions is actually to just end all immigration to first world countries. Our population is slowly declining without mass immigration.
I tell all the greenie morons this; usually they just stand there blinking because they are morons and useful idiots for the globalist agenda.
Every Ugandan shipped in increases his CO2 emissions by a factor of 20.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita
Smells like factor 200. Ugandan males don’t wash their nether regions, I’m a global backpacker and I don’t even smell that terrible after ten days unwashed in the field. Not even when they’re driving a ferkin taxicab in Chicago.
I’m fairly certain that the borders never “closed” closed (unless FlightTracker is a hoax.)
This what happens when you invent a new religion for cynical and short term purposes. The Church of The Eternal Mask of Virtue was supposed to destroy the economy just enough to rid the land of Orange Man. Accidentally it tapped into the withered souls of millions of Karens and Cucks and gave them a demonic new energy that craft brewed beer, ultra-potent legal weed, tattooing banal slogans and bad art on your ass, and random weird sex with other human atoms could not.
The media then decided to throw one of their periodic campaigns to Beatify one of the gorillion swarthy felons caught on shaky video dying of his own stupidity while in police custody. It was probably all just intended as a weekend ratings boost for media organs that have grown increasingly desperate with declining viewership. It worked surprisingly well and so they did it again, and again, and again…
Triggered by this, the nation’s vast army of unemployed and idle students, professional weed smokers and video gamers, and slutty white xrrls craving the black dick they weren’t getting at the clubs decided to throw weeks-long arson and murder parties in the empty cities. It was supposedly about
Rodney KingGeorge Floyd but really it was an excuse to get high, drunk, and violent. So what if it led to a de-urbanization that would actually break up the Left’s urban strongholds and shift jobs and opportunity to Red States and exurbs.A lot of people here seem puzzled by what’s going on and how it fits with The Plan. I’m increasingly convinced that there’s no Plan and what we’ve seen is just what happens when various actors destabilize a system that turned out to be more fragile than anyone knew. Each actor is trying to pull off one of their usual capers to get the usual results. Instead the whole thing spirals more out of control with each little push.
Interesting theory.
Humans do like to assign order to random things. That’s why we created religions, for instance.
Isn’t that what Tolstoy said in War and Peace? That Moscow just kind of *burned*, and events just happen the way the happen, and people have no idea of the future chain reactions
I hope that you are right.
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