1. They assume that A leads to B. For example- Low ‘IQ’ = more ‘criminal’ behavior or longer prison sentences = fewer ‘felons’ on the street.

2. More importantly, they assume that ‘crime’ is not a manifestation of something far more deep-seated.

Let us start by trying to define what ‘crime’ is, and is not. What make something a crime, anyway? Is it the net negative effect of an action or behavior or is it something else. I have partially answered that particular question in one of my older posts- How Laws and Legalism Destroy Societies, but let me summarize it thus:

All ‘crimes’ are defined by laws, rules and regulations rather than by their actual impact on society.

Here are a few examples. Consider prostitution, which at its core is an exchange of sex for money. Why is it illegal in some countries such as the USA? Is the exchange of sex for money in prostitution fundamentally different from a similar exchange occurring in the course of a marriage, cohabitational relationship or during the creation of a pornographic film? Or take drugs like marijuana or opiates.. isn’t all the criminality associated with them due to the fact that they are illegal in the first place rather than their effect on human behavior? What about the onerous rules and regulations associated with living in gated communities? Do they serve any purpose other than mollifying the egos of a few prissy bitches with control issues? What about laws and rules used by monopolies to extract rent or hinder competition? You get the general idea..

Which brings me to another point I made in that post

Laws are made by those with power for maintaining and extending their parasitic behaviors.

All ‘crimes’ should therefore be seen as attempts by the less-powerful to do what the more-powerful are already doing. Don’t believe me? Here are some examples: The system labels you as a ‘murderer’ if you kill another human being, but it is OK if you are a cop- even if you killed the ‘wrong’ person. Similarly, a death caused by a negligent or greedy doctor will almost never result in prosecution, but try doing that if you don’t have an ‘official’ medical license. Or consider how easy it is for a business to declare bankruptcy and stiff its creditors as compared to doing the same via personal bankruptcy.

Which brings us to one of the more peculiar question about the motivations behind committing ‘crimes: What combination of factors, circumstances and conditions makes the risk of getting caught worth the potential payoff?

A few of you might say that people who commit ‘crimes’ do so because they cannot accurately assess the risks because of their supposedly low ‘IQ’, poor future time-orientation or some other assorted bullshit reason. I think otherwise because the very fact that laws, rules, regulations, penalties and prisons have been unable to stop ‘crime’ suggest that there is something else driving the need to do what they do.

I believe that all ‘crime’ is driven by the HOPE for a better future.

People sell sex and drugs because they want to have more money and a better life tomorrow. Organised crime exists because its members can reasonably expect more income and a better lifestyle in the future. Also note that ‘criminals’ always try to maximize their life-expectancy and profit rather than go all out nihilistic and watch the world burn. Even revolutions require a significant degree of belief in a better future, and this is why people revolt on the streets in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt but not the USA, Germany or Canada.

I therefore see ‘crime’ as an expression of hope in the future of that society.

‘Crime’ rates in the USA were high during the 1960s-1980s because those who committed ‘crimes’ had high hopes of a better future. Similarly the high rates of ‘crimes’ in South- and Central- American countries should be seen as an expression of faith in the future viability of those societies. It is also no accident that low-crime societies like Japan, South Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden etc are also full of people who have no hope for a better future. If you don’t believe me, just look at their fertility rates. How else do you explain the decision of so many people who live comfortable and relatively safe lives in paternalistic societies to not have kids?

They have already figured out (at some level) that their rigid and formulaic societies do not offer a realistic chance for a better future. However they are also not opting for suicide without a pretty good reason. So they just go through the motions of being alive in a somewhat detached manner, if only to keep up the appearance of systemic vitality and purpose.

We also cannot forget the role of modern-medical technology, especially contraception, in enabling this to occur on a scale unthinkable in any previous era. In those eras, surplus fertility would have quickly provided new suckers to replace the disenchanted and world-weary. However, that is not the case today and not just in the more affluent countries. Even the less affluent ones such as India, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Brazil have fertility rates that are near, at or below replacement levels. We just don’t have that seemingly infinite supply of new suckers anymore.

What do you think? Comments?

The responses of large human systems to small injuries almost always amplifies the damage caused by said injuries, and frequently results in the development of hitherto non-existent pathologies.

So how is this observation playing out in the aftermath of the Snowden saga? Let us begin by going through what has occurred to date and what will almost certainly occur in the near future.

Yesterday, we learned that the NSA, and probably all the private contractors employed by it, have begun implementing a ‘two person rule‘. They are trying to convince the rest of the world that such a rule would stop the ‘next’ Snowden.

The rule required that anyone copying data from a secure network onto portable storage media does so with a second person who ensures he or she isn’t also collecting unauthorized data.

Now, this rule might sound comforting to retards and other people without any background in IT or computing. They might believe that such a rule could prevent something like what Snowden did from happening again. But it won’t- as any person with a reasonably devious mind, a couple of years in the organisation and ‘sys admin’ level access could do exactly what Snowden did without breaking any rules or policies. But also ask yourself.. why was such a “common sense” sounding rule not implemented in the first place?

The answer is two-fold. The first and most obvious reason is that it is inconvenient, costly and not particularly effective against a determined insider like Snowden. The second and less obvious, but more important, reason is that organisations lacking a certain level of internal trust among its members are unable to function properly. To be extra clear- I am not saying that such trust-less organisations cannot function well enough to exist or appear somewhat competent. My implication is that they are cannot operate at anywhere near the level that they advertise or is expected of them.

To put it another way, the NSA and its contractors are now going to be spending a lot of their abilities, time, energy on hunting moles in a manner that will cause considerable inconveniences, cost overruns and lowered internal morale.

Which brings us to the next major long-term effect of the Snowden saga. How can they identify others like Snowden who are already employed by the NSA or its many contractors? How can they stop hiring people who are like Snowden or could become the ‘next’ Snowden? Can they profile people who are like Snowden and, more importantly, at what cost?

I believe they will do all of the above and it is these actions, rather than anything that Snowden leaked, which will ultimately cause the most damage to the long-term functionality of the NSA. Here is how..

Ask yourself a simple question: Is there anything about Snowden that makes him odd, unusual or otherwise profile-able? The simple answer is- NO! There is really nothing atypical, unusual or particularly odd about Snowden. He successfully passed multiple intensive security checks, had no criminal record of significance, exhibited no evidence of especially radical beliefs and had no evidence of financial problems. Sure, he could be a bit of a snarky elitist with some libertarian-type beliefs- but that is the pretty much the standard personality profile of competent people in IT and computer programming.

The scariest part of the Snowden saga is that he was pretty mainstream, as far as people in his area of work are concerned.

But that is not going to stop the administration-type people who run NSA or its numerous subcontractors from trying to identify the ‘next’ Snowden. However, in doing so they will also end up harassing and driving out the most competent people, in addition to not recruiting any more of them. They will end retaining and hiring more docile ‘yes-men’, office-smart bullshitters, cunning courtiers and all the other types who look good on paper and talk the talk. Unfortunately almost none of these ‘team-players’ will be capable, competent or innovative enough to get things done properly. Consequently the operational ability of the organisation and overall system will suffer and the end result will be not unlike the iconic scene from the Wizard of Oz is exposed as an old circus carnie manipulating a few levers and dials.

What do you think? Comments?

Since when did large nation states and huge organisations with annual budgets in the hundreds of billions start fearing solitary dissidents within their ranks?

Did the Catholic Church really fear heretics till Giordano Bruno? Did the feudal lords, vassals, kings and emperors of previous eras fear truth-tellers like Assange, Manning or Snowden? Did the British ruling class fear those who exposed the real reasons behind the Irish Genocide.. I mean ‘Famine’? Did Stalin fear those who told the truth about what was happening in Ukraine in the early 1930s to the rest of the world ?

So what happened? What changed? When did the “elites” start fearing ideologically driven people like Karl Marx, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck. When did we reach the point when a single whistleblower like Daniel Ellsberg,Frank Serpico or Jeffrey Wigand could exert such massive influence on the subsequent course of events.

How can one individual who presents a contrary (and often heretic) account of events cause so much damage to institutions vastly larger and more powerful than that individual?

The answer to this question lies in a combination of factors. The easily discerned ones include almost universal literacy and the continuously increasing speed and penetration of information. The ease of distributing information to large numbers of people is yet another factor. But there is one that is overlooked largely because it is rarely seen as a factor in the first place.

Pre-industrial and early industrial societies were different from modern societies in many respects, but none so ignored as the level of systemic complexity necessary to keep them afloat. Agriculture based societies (basically every human civilization till the mid-1800s) and early industrial societies (early 1800s to the early 1900s) were simple enough to operate via forced or coerced labor. Even the USSR in the 1930s and China in the 1960s were simple enough to be successfully operated by a few people terrorizing many others with guns, starvation and prisons. Of course, such societies have very low productivity but can survive with high birth rates (pre-contraceptive era) and some dumb luck.

The industrial revolution has been able to change that five thousand-year old status quo in a most peculiar manner. While complex technological societies can run circles around older societies, they require something that older societies never had to worry about. Technological societies, you see, are far too complex to be successfully maintained by slaves or openly coerced people. The ‘elites’, their ‘overseers’ and ‘enforcers’ simply do not have the numbers, capability or ability to stop or recognize every act of overt sabotage or purposeful neglect. They require the willing cooperation and enthusiastic participation of their “inferiors” aka the people who do the real work.

It is therefore no surprise that technologically advanced societies put a lot of effort in creating and maintaining institutions that are widely seen as reasonably honest, fair, reliable and useful.

The reason we have things like property rights, a reasonably competent judiciary, unemployment insurance, social security, reasonable freedom of speech etc has a lot to with maintaining the image of a society that cares or works in your best interest. The same is true of institutions from schools, universities, hospitals and land registry offices. It all comes down to maintaining the right image and therefore it is all about what people believe or are willing to believe.

Whistle-blowers are so dangerous precisely because they can destroy the carefully crafted image of modern institutions very quickly and with little effort.

Men like Assange, Manning and Snowden are feared and reviled because their revelations have the power to vaporize decades of propaganda, lies and cognitive dissonance within a few minutes. Their actions tear the fake masks of large institutions, public and private, to expose their true and repulsive forms. It is kinda like seeing an aging woman without her makeup. You just cannot unsee the old hag nor can you ever again fantasize about her like you used to. Long story short, she simply loses all significant power over you. Whistle-blowing has the same effect on trust, belief and attachment of “inferiors” to all of those so-called traditional, morally upright, cherished and trusted institutions.

Now some of you might think.. Can’t we just go back to the pre-industrial era? The rhetorical answer to that question goes something like this.. Who won the american civil war? The North or the South? Why? What about the Opium war or the Boxer Rebellion? Who won and who lost? Why? What about the Japanese civil war in the late 1860? Who won.. the traditional samurai warriors or the conscripted army of commoners with guns? Why? The simple fact is that pre-industrial societies are no match for technological societies and therefore it is unlikely that anyone is going to give up technology and bring back feudalism or similar archaic systems.

Technology has thus put human beings on a trajectory they are not really prepared or willing to handle. The old institutions will either reform (extremely unlikely), be replaced (more likely) or most people will just start dropping out of society or acting in bad faith (most likely).

What do you think? Comments?

Many other writers and bloggers have written about the nature, implications, mindset of the NSA or the motivations of Snowden etc. But few realize that what happened in the last three weeks was made possible by a combination of fairly new circumstances and resultant possibilities. The old system and old men in power simply could not have factored it in their calculations.

This rest of this post is about an overlooked aspect of the story- specifically, why something like what happened in the last three weeks would have inconceivable even a decade ago.

The first major but often understated change is that the world we live in today is functionally multipolar. It was not so 10 years ago when it was functionally unipolar, or indeed any time since the end of WW2 when it was mostly bipolar. The USA simply does not have the ability to project unbridled power as it used to in the late 1990s and early 2000s after the collapse of the former USSR. Any remaining illusions about the actual capabilities of the USA has been irreversibly compromised by the events in Afghanistan, Iraq and the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis.

There is a pretty good reason why Snowden initially went to Hongkong rather than a city in Western or Eastern Europe. The guy has a pretty good understanding of the real boundaries and constraints of american power. His decision to go to a Chinese city that is not quite part of Mainland China is therefore far shrewder than most people realize. He is actively using his public notoriety and the ambiguous status of Hongkong to make him far harder to target than if he was went to a city in a pushover country like Sweden, UK or Poland.The Chinese establishment for all their greed and inscrutability do not want to be seen as the butt-boy for ‘extra-white’ WASPy yanks. It certainly helps that Hongkong is one plane flight from Hawaii. Zones that function like Hongkong does today simply did not exist 10 years ago.

Then there is the state of the internet today or rather its ubiquity. A decade ago, the internet was much smaller and far less ubiquitous. Moreover, many of the companies on the PRISM co-operation list did not even exist in 2003. But there is another side to this story, namely how Snowden used its reach and ubiquity to get his side and version of the story to hundreds of millions and potentially billions BEFORE the establishment could respond. Ten years ago, this sort of thing was just starting to become a possibility in a few countries. Today, a person like Snowden can use the reach and ubiquity of the internet to pull of a preemptive multi-national information strike of a magnitude previously associated with large nation states. It also helps that the establishment cannot filter news or discussion about these things by controlling the mainstream media, because the remaining reader- and viewer-ship of dying mainstream media is geriatric.

We also cannot forget the role of social atomization in making this possible. In previous generations, lots of decent men went along with very questionable orders from rich old white men without pulling a Snowden. Have you ever wondered why? The answer lies in the changing nature of society. The 1940s-1990s version of him was much likely to pull off what Snowden did for a number of reasons. There are the standard reasons such as higher levels of social cohesion, patriotic brainwashing, less access to diverse sources of information etc. But there is a deeper reason..

In previous eras- men of his intelligence, ability and income used to be married (or married and divorced) with multiple kids and many other FAKE obligations that tied them to the dysfunctional society they lived in. They stood to lose a few real and many FAKE things. The growing atomization of society and accompanying social changes (feminism, low fertility) have broken the old cycle for good.

A guy like Snowden, or for that matter any other reasonably intelligent guy of his age group, no longer believes in things that pretty much all his ancestors (even his parents) believed. Nor does he have the few real or mostly FAKE things that kept people like him in line. People who realize that have nothing real to lose behave very differently from people who maintain faith in the “old ways” even if doing so harms them. I think that, at some level, Snowden realized that he had nothing real left to lose.

What do you think? Comments?

“We are just trying to protect some people from harming themselves”

But is that “rationalization” based in anything even remotely approaching reality. Who exactly are the ‘We’ in that statement? Why are ‘some people’ deliberately ‘harming’ themselves in the first place? And why are ‘We’ interested in ‘protecting’ those people from themselves? My interest in examining this “rationalization” is part of a much larger issue that will be explored in more detail in an upcoming series of posts.

Let us start by looking at the cherished belief that a group has an altruistic and humanitarian interest in stopping some of its members from harming themselves. Is that really the case? Do you see evidence of it around you? Many of you might point out to the plethora of laws and regulations concerning everything from food safety, building and zoning codes to occupational health and safety regulations as evidence that ‘society’ cares for the safety and well-being its members. But is it really about altruistic or humanistic concern? If so, why did we not have such laws and regulations for most of human history? Why did they suddenly start appearing in the last hundred years and then became far more pervasive and widespread in the last 60 years? What changed?

There are those of you who will say that increased standards of living created by capitalism allowed people to become more comfortable and therefore more humane. While that is a partially true and heartwarming story, it does not explain the most important feature of the ‘need’ to legislate and regulate in the name of social good.

Why have the number of laws and regulations meant to keep ‘us’ safe from ‘bad things’ increased at an exponential pace in the last 40 years? Why are they getting ever more complex?

While almost nobody will oppose laws or regulations that should make food safer, how many of the ones passed since the mid-1980s have actually done that? How many had the opposite effect? What about laws concerning building codes and regulations? How many of the ones passed in the last 30 years have made things better? How many have made them worse? How many of the zoning codes passed in the last 30 years have made the world a better and safer place? How many were about ego, racism and rent-seeking? In my opinion, legislation and regulations to make ‘us’ safer are NOW mostly about extracting more money from the rest of society. It is about creating new or bigger revenue streams for businesses with the right connections. It is also about employing more people to create bigger corporate and public sector fiefdoms.

In short, laws and regulations to ‘maintain and improve public safety’ are now about everything but their originally intended and still advertised purpose.

But that is not an aberration. People in positions of power inside any system of governance have never been interested in improving the lives of their subjects. All types of leaders, wannabe leaders, priests (“experts”), bureaucrats and institutions throughout human history have always focused on facilitating maximal rent extraction for the benefit of a few via systemic impoverishment, abuse and exploitation of everybody else. Indeed, this aspect of governance is remarkably consistent across systems as diverse as state communism, state capitalism, “free market” capitalism, monarchies, dictatorships AND corporations.

Therefore, all those people who push for more ‘public safety’ are doing it to accumulate more power and money. They have no interest in ‘public safety’ beyond what is necessary to maintain an image of action and competence. It is not unlike all those “cure cancer” charities who are in it for the money, power and status rather than any desire to facilitate the discovery of better treatments for cancers. Now that we have established the true motivations of the ‘do good’ crowd, let us turn to the other part of the problem.

Why are ‘some people’ so heavily into ‘harming’ themselves?

Let us begin this part by acknowledging that people without severe brain damage or disease are simply not into harming themselves. While people might flirt with dangerous situations to make themselves feel more alive, they have no real interest in getting seriously hurt or dead. We like our vampires in books, films, TV shows and Halloween parties- not real life. Zombie apocalypse themed movies and TV shows are far more popular than the real deal. Similarly, women are into spankings, bondage and role-play to a point where they can enjoy it without feeling genuinely scared.

To make a long story short, people with options do not willingly put themselves in a situation where they are at a serious risk of bodily harm or death. That is also why people prefer to drink wine or beer vs say toilet cleaner or gasoline. Now you might say- Wouldn’t a 2-year kid drink toilet cleaner, given the chance? And my answer is.. Yes, but only because they cannot comprehend the concept that toilet cleaner is poisonous. How many 6- or 10-year old kids accidentally or deliberately drink toilet cleaner? Similarly, while a 6- year old might burn himself while playing with fire, it is almost always never intentional.

But is that the case when adults do drugs? What percentage of adults who do drugs (“legal” or “illegal”) are unaware of what they are doing or the risk associated with doing them? Short of mislabeling or adulteration- drug users are very aware of what drugs they are doing, how often they are doing them and why want to get high. It is therefore no accident that the vast majority of people who have used drugs (“legal” or “illegal”) are sporadic, occasional or habitual users with an otherwise ‘normal’ lifestyle. Those who go on to become dependent or addicted to any given drug are always a small percentage of those who have ever done that drug.

While there are many risk factors for becoming dependent or addicted to drugs, they all converge back to one issue. People who use a lot of drugs, all the time, are very unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives when they are not high. Now you can try to ascertain whether said lack of happiness and satisfaction is ‘real’ or ‘not real’, but isn’t pretty much all of what we consider “reality” in our heads.

Drug use to the point of physical dependence or addiction should therefore be seen as an attempt at self-medication, rather than some “moral” flaw or desire to be “anti-social”.

The war on drugs has never been about ‘protecting’ all those ‘irresponsible’ and ‘self-destructive’ people from themselves. Indeed, it does not even require the existence of such mythical characters. The war on drugs has always been about killing and persecuting people ‘they’ did not like, typically non-whites and poorer whites. It has also been about intimidating, dominating and abusing the rest AND making them foot the bill for it.

What do you think? Comments?

Enjoy! Comments?

The current crop of laws surrounding drunk-driving started coming into existence around the 1980s and were largely driven by activist single-issue groups such as MADD and SADD. Coincidentally, some “objective” scientists who were able to create and present revised data to support such laws subsequently benefited from increased funding resulting from more public interest in that area- but that is the topic of another post. This one is my take on what really drives all the laws, rules and regulations surrounding drunk driving.

In my opinion- most legislation, regulation and activism surrounding the prosecution of drunk driving has little or nothing to do with ensuring public safety or preventing automobile accidents.

Let us face it, there are many other equally or more important factors that increase the risk of both impaired driving and accidents. What about fatigue, lack of sufficient sleep, medications and using your smartphone? What about hyperactive children or morons in the backseat? Does anybody really believe that moderate drinking (BAC between 0.08-0.10) and driving causes more accidents than being overworked and sleep deprived? What about people who are checking their smartphone or driving around with morons in the backseat?

Is a lost life or limb more tragic if the driver was moderately drunk than sleep deprived or borderline stupid?

So why is the ‘system’ so interested in prosecuting moderate drinking and driving? How many people die in automobile accidents nowadays? How many get injured? In what percentage of accidents is the more guilty part moderately drunk? What about all of the other causes? Do the agencies even release honest statistics about these things? Don’t more people kill themselves than die in car accidents? Could we not reduce deaths from suicide by making it illegal? What about medical mistakes- still the 2nd or 3rd most cause of death?

It is therefore clear that the system has no intrinsic interest in reducing the number of preventable deaths.

So what drives the desire to go after drunk driving? Why go after a small but visible factor for automobile accidents while ignoring larger but not so obvious ones. In my opinion, it really comes down to a show on control and relevance. Let me explain that idea with an example.

We, as a society, argue over whether gay marriage should be legalized and whether it is ‘natural’. But how many of us display the same energy or zeal and try to fix the dismal state of heterosexual marriage? Would you not agree that fixing heterosexual marriages (which are the majority anyway) is more important than worrying about the legality and ‘naturalness’ of gay marriage? So.. why is if far easier to find people opposed to gay marriage than fixing heterosexual marriage?

The answer to that question is both unpleasant and revealing. People have little interest in fixing big problems because that is often hard and complicated. Solutions to such problems often expose stupidity dressed up as tradition and wisdom. Fixing them also disrupts established parasitic institutions and hierarchies. In short, fixing real problems is hard, messy and humiliating.

Fixing non-problems or token ‘problems’ is relatively easy and allows most people to feel self-righteous, competent, smart and generally good about themselves. Fixing them also does not upset established parasitic institutions and hierarchies- indeed, it often gives them relevance and legitimacy. It is also far easier to maintain the delusion that societies and civilizations are functional, “right” and “natural” when the opposite is true.

Non-problems and token ‘problems’ provide focal points for developing religions, ideologies and other ponzi schemes to fleece the gullible. They provide decent self-employment opportunities for those who can preach and proselytize against them. It is also possible to make lots of money and employ many people to police and prosecute ‘violations’ of pseudo-solutions. Furthermore, some people seem to get a rush out of pissing on other people in the name of defending society from these ‘problems’. Did I mention that crusades and wars against ‘non-’ or marginal problems are an excellent way for an established hierarchy and system to maintain public legitimacy. In the end , it is about continuing a shitty scam which ‘benefits’ a few at the cost of everybody else.

What do you think? Comments?

attention

Amateur POV BJs: May 12, 2013 – Chicks blowing their photographer..

More Amateur POV BJs: May 12, 2013 – More chicks blowing their photographer..

Even More Amateur POV BJs: May 12, 2013 – Some more chicks blowing their photographer..

Enjoy! Comments?

‘New’ media is overrun with unprofessional amateurs, get-rich-quick types and corporation friendly scam artists who do not have the “expertise”, financial resources or willingness to perform “real” investigative journalism and speak truth to power. They also claim that ‘old media’ acted as an independent check on the power of government and corporations by trotting out a few famous examples of investigative journalism.

But is that really the case? Was ‘old media’ anything more than a butt-boy for the rich and powerful? Does an objective look at the success and failings of ‘old media’ support their claim to being defenders of truth and justice. Did they expose anything more than the bare minimum necessary to maintain a figment of credibility in the pre-internet era?

Let us first look at the infrastructure and business model of ‘old’ media. Traditional media, such as printing and broadcasting has always had a very high cost of entry due to technological and “regulatory” constraints. Then there was the issue of ensuring timely distribution of content via government supported physical networks or licensed bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Therefore, only an extremely small percentage of the population ever had the means, inclinations and connections to start a newspaper, magazine, radio station or TV network. The ones who were able to do so were usually very affluent and connected to large corporations or existing political parties.

To put it another way, all significant players in the ‘old’ media scene were (and are) pimps, shills and sophists for whoever owned and supported them.

I am not denying that some journalists who worked for ‘old’ media might have possessed something approaching a conscience. However most of them quickly gave up on that in return for a regular paycheck, regular promotions and a corner office. Infact, some were even able to use their past notoriety to make themselves appear especially trustworthy to the public.

It is therefore no wonder that the “scandals” exposed by ‘old media’ have almost always been stale, past-due or a cover for even bigger ongoing scams and abuses.

How many papers actually made the case that treating blacks as second- or third- rate human beings was wrong? I am talking about the situation in both northern and southern states after the American Civil War. How many newspapers actually contradicted the official story surrounding the entry of USA into the Spanish-American war? Did they question any of the evidence used to justify the decision to join WW1 in 1917? Weren’t many of them cheerleaders for Eugenics prior to 1945? Did they ever try to think through the ethical implications of what they were supporting? How many were interested in the fate of people in concentration camps prior to 1945? Was the mass murder of millions based on religion, ethnicity and political affiliation not newsworthy?

Didn’t they keep on towing the official line on major post-WW2 policies and actions? Didn’t it take them decades to tell the partial truth about what caused the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962? Didn’t many of them oppose civil rights for non-whites before they supported them? What changed? What about the american involvement in Vietnam and Laos? How many questioned the official line that killing millions of poor people was necessary for spreading liberty and democracy? Why did they abruptly change their tune after 1967? How many questioned the rationale behind Nixon’s drug war? What about economic policies under the Reagan administration? What about Saddam Hussein and the first gulf war? Wasn’t the USA behind him before it was against him? What about justifying the second gulf war?

Does anyone not remember how the media was telling us about the immense WMD program of Iraq? Or how the USA would be able to leave Iraq within a few months? And what about that Osama? Wasn’t he helping build roads in Sudan before he became the bad guy who masterminded 9/11? What about the housing bubble? Why did the media see it only after it had burst? What about the financial crisis of 2008? Wasn’t the mainstream media trying to tell everybody that financial institutions were under the capable leadership of geniuses’ educated in Ivy League universities and Oxbridge? How did that work out? How is ‘austerity’ working out today?

What do you think? Comments?

Genocidal tyrants or rulers such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao are the most well-known, interesting and studied forms of secular “evil”. They have reached that hallowed spot because of the sheer scale and number of deaths due to their actions and decisions. They are the secular equivalent of ‘The Devil’ or ‘Satan’. It also helps that we have a lot of archival film footage and photographs which document (often in great detail) their lives, speeches, public appearances and the effect of their decisions and actions. Compare that to the very inadequate and fragmentary description of ‘Satan’ in Judeo-Christian literature. It also does not help that religious literature documents that ‘God’ killed many more people than ‘Satan’.

As many of you know, I do not believe in any explanation of “evil” based on it being somehow beyond the range of normal human behavior. In my opinion, labeling anything as “good” or “evil” says more about your viewpoint than the action, event or behavior. For example: Would the Jewish holocaust have been seen as evil, or even criminal, if the Nazis had won WW2? And was it really more evil than the genocide of a million something Armenians by Turks prior to WW1, or the slightly earlier genocide of tens of millions of black people in Belgian Congo? Or what about the tens of millions of Chinese who died in Japanese-occupied parts of China in the 1930s and 1940s? Then there is the issue about what happened to millions of indigenous people in the Americas after 1492, or the fate of slaves imported from Africa.

It appears that popular definitions of “good” and “evil” are based on subjective criteria such as race, money, skin color of the victims and presence or lack of photographic evidence of the events.

While a certain percentage of the population can handle the idea that “good” and “evil” are subjective, almost nobody wants to talk, let alone think, about the next logical question. If “evil” is subjective, is it also possible to label “good” or “neutral” as “evil”? What if people who are widely seen as “evil” not really that “evil”? This question has a peculiar connection to the issue of whether genocidal tyrants are “evil” because you can classify them into two groups based on their motivations.

The first groups contains those who did it to make themselves richer, more powerful, improving the lives of their kids, relatives, clans etc. The vast majority of tyrants fall into this category and pretty much every Arab Dictator, Mongol Warlord, Spanish Ruler of some new world colony, South and Central American Despot and many of the “beloved” presidents in American history fall into that category- as do people like Winston Churchill. The common thread that runs through all these leaders is they used their position almost exclusively for personal profit.

In contrast to the first group, the second contains far fewer individuals. However these people had a far greater impact on history (both in absolute terms and number of people killed) than almost anyone from the first group. Let us start with Hitler.. Can you really say that his actions or decisions were predominantly driven by the personal profit motive? Did any members of his family make out like bandits under his leadership? Was the guy living in 5 different palaces and constructing 10 more like some Arab Despot? Was all the money and gold seized from the conquered people going towards his clothes, residences or lavish party budget? I am not saying that he did not live well, but it is very clear that he did not spend on himself at anywhere near the level he could have.

Or take Stalin.. Given the absolute degree of his power, isn’t it a little odd that he did not live like the Tsars before him? Pretty much every Russian sovereign before him had lived in an extremely ostentatious fashion and it is unlikely that people would have noticed or spoken up even if he done so. Also note that he grew up in poverty and had every reason to go bling-crazy after he consolidated his power. But he did not.. I am not implying that he did not live well, but they guy was clearly not after money, ‘bling’ or comfort. Even his kids did not get any plum posts nor did they become super rich- and the same goes for his relatives. The guy was far more interested in seeing which factory did not meet its production quota than an endless supply of hot hookers and booze? Why?

My explanation for the somewhat odd behavior of a few but important such as Hitler and Stalin goes something like this- They were in it for the power and fulfillment of their vision. Personal profit was probably an afterthought- at best. The genocides they perpetrated were driven by ideology rather than any personal profit motive. While that does not immediately make their actions acceptable- it puts them in a very different category from those perpetrated by typical Arab, Mongol, White Hispanic, Black or WASP despot.

It also explains why their genocides ended up with such high body counts. People who kill for personal profit typically kill the bare minimum necessary for obtaining whatever they want- respect, money, women etc. But those who do it for implementing their personal ideology or vision will not be content until they have removed every single person who stands in the way of their ideological utopia. You might have noticed that both Hitler and Stalin were into heavily invested in destroying the previous order because they hated it with a passion. They wanted to get rid of anyone who represented the old power structures and institutions. This is very different from your typical despot, populist or not, who merely seeks to install himself and his family/friends at the top of the old structures and institutions.

What I am trying to say is that ideologically driven tyrants are not doing it for financial gain or personal comfort. They are therefore not “evil” in the same way as the far more common type of tyrant. Infact it could be argued that their actions, whether they ultimately failed or not, did result in a better world. Let us face it, the 20th century was so productive largely because of the direct and indirect actions of people like Hitler and Stalin.

What do you think? Comments?

Amateur BJs: May 7, 2013

More Amateur BJs: May 7, 2013

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For example- It is now common knowledge that both sides in the American Civil War were almost equally racist and believers in some kind of mythical white racial supremacy. Likewise, many now know that those who founded the American Republic did so to enrich themselves, rather than start some noble experiment in democracy. Another example is the now widespread understanding that the ‘New Deal’ and other populist sops from the FDR era were driven by political, rather than humanitarian, considerations. However these now common, if somewhat alternative views, are still rarely depicted in mass media which tries to unsuccessfully reinforce the old myths.

One of the widely promoted dissonance in popular culture and media concerns the large gap between the image of various institutions and measurable reality. TV shows are full of noble cops, smart detectives, thoughtful judges, competent and selfless physicians, teachers who care about their students when even a cursory observation of real life suggests that the converse is true. TV and Films (henceforth referred to as ‘Hollywood’) even promote the idea that intelligence agencies are full of competent, motivated and enthusiastic people possessing tons of ‘super-secret’ and useful technologies with an almost omnipotent control over events when events in real life have repeatedly shown that to be wishful thinking.

Let us now explore the dissonance between the media-driven image of large corporations and compare that to observable reality.

The story-lines of many popular films from the last 30-odd years such as Blade Runner, Alien and its sequels, Prometheus, Gattaca, Terminator and its sequels, Robocop and its sequels, Resident Evil and its sequels, Total Recall, Watchmen, The Island, V for Vendetta and many more revolve around or involve large corporations. These large corporations are depicted as being greedy, amoral, omnipotent, led by competent people and based on long-term plans and strategies. But how much of that is reflective of reality?

While there is no argument about corporations being supremely greedy and amoral; the remaining attributes are some combination of mythology, paid propaganda and wishful thinking.

Ask yourself.. Do you see much evidence that corporations led by competent, disciplined, creative and intelligent people? Do they act as if they are led by people with any of those qualities? Do their changing fortunes reflect that? Why do most large corporations cease to exist for a decade or two? Why is the downfall of large corporations usually due to obvious mistakes? Why are these deadly and obvious mistakes rarely fixed in a competent manner? Why do plans to fix obvious mistakes frequently cause larger mistakes? Does the observed behavior and life cycle of large corporations resemble an intelligent entity or a pretty stupid but greedy parasite?

Then there is the issue of large corporate projecting an image of omnipotence and efficiency. Is that really so? Are large corporations capable of anything approaching omnipotence? Are corporations capable of stable governance on the size- and time- scale associated with governments? Can they exist without a friendly government that will help them socialize losses and privatize profits? Do large corporations actually have realistic long-term plans or strategies? Do they have realistic ability to implement them on their own?

Large corporations talk a lot about meritocracy, but does the preponderance of evidence suggest that to be the case? Do you see evidence of corporations promoting competent or intelligent people? Why is promotion inside corporations so dependent on your social network and milieu than any demonstrated ability? Why are the upper ranks of corporations always made up of bullshitters, scammers, sociopaths and other assorted conmen who are good at networking, playing the system or just being lucky? Why are the top executives and decision-makers in corporations almost always clueless about the business models of the enterprises they run? Why do those in top corporate management positions jump ship so frequently, usually after collecting massive bonuses not linked to the long-term fate or outlook of the corporations they head? And why does paying these people tens to hundreds of millions in bonuses for their expertise in making corporations run better in the long-term always achieve the opposite?

Talking about innovation and incentives to innovate.. Why are large corporations so bad at innovating even though they spend so much money, manpower, time and powerpoint shows to make themselves more ‘innovative’? Corporations claim to have ‘superior’ leadership, corporate structure and in-house ‘geniuses’- yet they require so a lot of publicly funded assistance from governments. Why do large corporations require so many tax breaks, direct payouts, protectionist laws and tariffs and sweet-heart deals to even approach profitability? Why do the long-term plans and visions concocted by the best and brightest almost always fail? Can corporations actually put together, let alone implement, any long-term strategy? And yet after all this publicly funded assistance they still fail, implode, run aground, require government bailouts or help with remarkable frequency and regularity. How come?

Why do those who talk about rugged individualism, free enterprise, capitalism, personal responsibility and ‘going galt’ expect to be nursed, coddled and treated like severely sick, retarded or spastic kids? Why do the proud ‘producers’ behave like pathetic ‘moochers’ they claim to detest?

Which brings us back to the main question posed in this post- Why is the Hollywood image of large corporations so incongruous with reality? And why has the degree of dissonance increased over time? In my opinion, the mass media image of large corporations is based in a myth that those in power desperately want others to believe. The media image of corporations is best understood as propaganda and disinformation. It is an attempt to make the masses believe that the current system is “natural”, meritocratic, omnipotent and capable of defending itself. In a way, the media image of corporations is similar to the propaganda pumped out in totalitarian regimes which extols the virtues and greatly exaggerates the power of ruling party, coalition or oligarchic families.

The reality is rather different and rapidly becoming apparent. It is now obvious to a growing number of people that large corporations are pretty much the opposite of what they claim to be. Their apparent successes in the past are increasingly seen as some combination of scam, luck and parasitism. I however do not expect the Hollywood image of corporations to reflect this rapidly growing awareness. It is likely that they will, if anything, double down and amp up the propaganda- because dying parasites have no other option.

What do you think? Comments?

To put it succinctly, definitions of sanity and insanity other than those associated with easily measurable physical or biochemical brain damage are almost entirely subjective.

But it gets worse.. Throughout human history, most so-called “normal” people have actually followed, revered and worshiped people who likely had measurable brain damage. Don’t believe me? OK, let us take a cynical and critical look at the founders, prophets and saints of almost all traditional religions. Have you ever noticed that a lot of their so-called revelations, visitations by non-human deities, mystical or cosmic experiences and voices in their heads have a lot more in common with the symptoms of serious brain disorders such as schizophrenia, temporal lobe seizure, assorted brain tumors, episodes of hypomania and even the effects of hallucinogenic drugs than anything remotely paranormal.

I would go so far as to say that all traditional religions are largely based on creative interpretations of the rantings and ravings of a few people, who were lucky to have the right amount and type of brain damage at the right time. A person who seriously believes in any religion, especially of the traditional ‘revealed’ variety, is therefore basing his or her life and worldview on the selectively edited experiences of a few brain-damaged people. Given the role and importance of traditional religions in shaping human history, customs and behavior- it is fair to say that the world we live in today was largely shaped by the minds of brain-damaged people. Maybe that is why all civilizations, past and present, are so bizarre, irrational, dystopic and generally fucked up.

But it does not end there.. In the last 200 years, we started replacing traditional religions with secular ones such as capitalism, communism, randism, consumerism, neo-liberalism etc. While these newer religions might appear to be different from each other, they do have a few peculiar common characteristics. One of them is their obsession with money.

All secular religions are really about the “right” way to create, distribute and circulate money.

While they all try to cloak the true nature of their obsession through the use of rhetoric, philosophy, logic and reason- it is easy to see through their smokescreen by posing one simple question.

Does the ideology in question mean anything in a world without money?

The idea of a world without money might seem odd, most transactions in human history and prehistory did not involve the exchange of money. Even after the concept of money was invented, most people did not use it as they had little or no money to exchange for goods or services. Yet for some peculiar reason, the world did not stop nor did humans go extinct. Money as we know and use it today came into being in the post-renaissance world, especially the last 200 years.

Now, some of can grasp the idea that all forms of money are notional and therefore not real. The ability to create, lend, spend and transfer money is therefore based on the ability of institutions to enforce rules and regulations which favor a few people over everyone else. Money appears to be real only because almost everybody is a willing participant in the mass delusion.

But what does all of this have to do with worshiping and revering brain-damaged people?

The answer lies in how we perceive, rate and treat other people. In most parts of the world, the behavior and attitudes of people towards others are largely based upon how much money one participant in the interaction estimates the other one has or can demonstrate possession of via some proxy display.

Therefore almost everyone wants to have as much money as they get their hands on, preferably by depriving everyone else of it.

This zero-sum behavior might sound irrational to some since the utility of money is directly proportional to the level of function (or dysfunction) in that society. That is why even a dollar millionaire in India has to put up with inconveniences which somebody with a decent job in a developed country would never have to. Similarly, rich people in many western countries can go about their lives without worrying about kidnappings and the level of violence routinely seen in South and Central American countries. But why is that so? Why are most developed countries reasonably safe, functional and relatively nice places to live in? and were they always like that?

The answers to these questions lie in numerous large changes to the social, economic and legal structures of these societies within the last 100-odd years. Prior to that, the quality of life in these countries was pretty low and comparable to what is seen in many parts of the ‘third world’. Most rivers and lakes in developed countries were once toxic open sewers, epidemics of infectious diseases were common, malnutrition was rife, high level of day-to-day violence and brutality were seen as normal and the rich also suffered the consequences of living in such dysfunctional societies. Then a lot of events (various labor movements, communist revolutions, WW1, WW2) happened and forced the rich in developed countries to accept a more equal distribution of wealth. This trend went on until the late 1970s when an extended period of peace let the old ways and ideas creep back into societies. Popularly called neo-liberalism or neo-conservatism, it is really a form of neo-feudalism.. one with far fewer downsides and many more upsides to an increasingly international class of moneyed people.

But what does any of this have to do with people still worshiping and revering brain-damaged morons?

The answer to that question requires us to understand an important but often ignored shift in the nature of religiosity in developed countries. Most of the populace no longer believes in traditional religions, especially the ones who claim to be pious. However the desire to believe in scams.. I mean religions has not changed and most people now believe in one or more of the many secular religions such as free-market capitalism, libertarianism, feminism etc. But as I said a few paragraphs ago, all secular religions are really about to who gets to control creation, distribution and circulation of money. It is therefore fair to say that most people are actually worshiping various socio-economic models, none of which have much to do with reality. And all this to get some sort of secular salvation.

Which finally brings us to what the past 1,100 words were leading up to..

Are the founders of secular religions any less brain-damaged than those who founded the older ones? Is somebody who claims to perceive the ‘invisible hand of free market’ any less delusional or sophistic than the guy who heard an ‘angel speaking from within a burning bush’? Is the concept of ‘homo economicus’ any more real than ‘original sin’? Is somebody who believes in making money at all costs that different from some guy who wants to save the souls of heathens or convert infidels at any cost? Is a priest who justified the rants of a greedy sociopath that different from an academic who shills for some ideology.. any ideology that will pay him enough to afford a comfortable life? Are people who are willing to destroy the lives of thousands and millions so that they can have a couple of billion dollar really alright in the head?

And what about all those morons who worship, revere, follow and obey banksters, managers, businessmen and other rich people who just got lucky? and why do these morons listen to the priests.. I mean academics who are slavish turd polishers? Believing in models of the world that clearly diverge from observable reality is always a bad idea and it never ends well, yet most people don’t seem to care. But why?

What do you think? Comments?

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A lot of people are wondering if the Boston marathon bombers were driven by religious beliefs. While there is no doubt that their actions were influenced by a certain set and interpretation of religious beliefs, that angle does not explain how they became radicalized and extra-religious in the first place.

As we all know, both were Chechens who were born and partly grew up (especially the older brother) in an era when the outside world was especially unstable and hostile from their viewpoint. Having said that, they did not come from a family that was especially poor or religious nor had they lost any close relatives in the conflict. Their father and uncle appear to be reasonably well-educated and secular, if somewhat shady, people. If you look at older pictures of that family, they just don’t give off the ‘we are so religious’ aura.

So what happened? How does a guy who was into sports, clothes, cars, babes and making lots of money become a religious radical? Why does a guy who was looking forward to getting american citizenship and perhaps a spot on the american olympic boxing team as late as 2009 decide that bombing the Boston Marathon was his purpose in life? and what about his younger brother? How does a reasonably popular stoner who made extra cash by selling pot and involvement in car theft rackets decide that joining his older brother in waging “holy war” against the country he grew up in was a good idea?

The conventional explanations for this turn of events range from something about hot-blooded Chechens, some mysterious radicalizing preacher, the internet, a conspiracy to advance public acceptance for militarization of american police forces and a host of other explanations that you can find on the intertubes. But what if we are missing a far more obvious and straightforward explanation for their religious radicalization?

Is religious radicalization, especially of the Islamic variety, a consequence of systemic socio-economic dysfunction?

It is hard to ignore that the increasing religiosity and radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers, and their mother, has a pretty strong correlation with their declining fortunes and hope for a better future in the USA. Tamerlan, the older of the two brothers, was not an especially religious Muslim or even a traditional Chechen in his late teens and early 20s. He moved out of his parents house, was chasing chicks in nightclubs, living with pretty attractive women, was perhaps involved in pot-grow operations and trained for MMA competitions. He did not exhibit any strong interest in spreading the word of Islam beyond trying to convert his pretty fit girlfriends.

The younger brother, Dzhokhar, was even less of a religious guy. The interviews of people who used to hang out with him suggest that he was pretty much your basic stoner who sold extra weed on the side. There is very little in his background or known tastes in lifestyle, music, media or women to suggest that he was a religiously observant person. If anything, he comes across as the small-time drug dealer/ entrepreneur type rather somebody who believed in 72 virgins.

I believe that the roots of their radicalization lie in the changing nature of american society. For many decades, but especially between the 1950s to mid-1990s, USA was the best place to immigrate- legally or “illegally”. There used to be lots of real opportunities for immigrants to make it big, or failing that- at least lead a pretty comfy and prosperous middle-class lifestyle. Even poor and ‘less-educated’ immigrants had a pretty decent chance of making it into the middle-class. However things started to change for the worse in the late 1990s. It became harder and harder for both “native-born” and immigrant americans to remain in the middle-class, let alone climb into it.

We can come up all sorts of explanations for what drove this change, but the net effect has been that a rapidly increasing number of americans (especially among younger age groups) do not believe that the system will treat them fairly. They routinely see connected ivy-league educated sociopaths make mistakes and still collect their millions and billions, while competent and loyal people like them get screwed over. While this double standard has always been a feature of american society, the system had kept it from becoming the dominating feature of american society for many decades. I believe that the collapse of the soviet union in the late 1980s-early 1990s unleashed the full greed of the ‘elites’ resulting in the openly and highly dysfunctional society we live in today.

While CONservative morons might not see anything wrong with this change, almost everyone with more than half a brain understands (at some level) that the current socio-economic system is highly dysfunctional. All stable and functional societies remain so only as long as most people living in them believe that the system is largely fair, reasonable and worth their while. People will either withdraw from or stop co-operating with systems that are seen as dishonest, abusive or non worth their while.

It is very likely that the Tsarnaev family immigrated to the USA in the early 2000s under the impression that they would be afforded the same opportunities as people like them used to as late as the early 1990s. But a lot changed between the early-1990s and the early-2000s. Many of the paths and opportunities that would have allowed them to move into the middle-class or beyond simply did not exist. The father was reduced from a stable legal job in a ministry to fixing cars as an unlicensed mechanic. The mother went from a homemaker to somebody hustling for small jobs. While these trials and tribulations might initially have been dismissed as temporary, they soon realized that was not the case.

It certainly did not help that Tamerlan’s promising boxing/MMA career started to unravel for reasons that were unfair and beyond his control. The younger brother, Dzhokhar, while clearly not stupid was just not an academic. He, like his older brother, preferred a life with booze, drugs and babes- and who can blame them. Which rational person would prefer to live like an under-sexed dweeb for the ‘chance’ of higher future earnings in a society with an obviously broken contract.

To make a long story short- the rather shitty experience of the Tsarnaev family in the USA, as individuals and as a group, was very likely what drove Tamerlan and Dzhokhar on a path of self-directed religious radicalization. In a way, they are far more like James Holmes (Aurora Theater Massacre)and Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook Shooter) than somebody who was indoctrinated from birth to fight some religious war. Also note that Holmes and Lanza came from highly secular backgrounds and therefore found secular justifications for their actions (mental illness, autism/nihilism). The Tsarnaev brothers justified their actions through religious beliefs mainly because they were more familiar with religion than fashionable psychiatric mumbo-jumbo.

What do you think? Comments?