They are Coming for the Electoral College

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, when the system worked exactly as it should, liberals are calling the Electoral College into question. And who better to front the campaign than outgoing President Obama:

The Electoral College is a vestige, it’s a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states[.]

Oh really, Mr. President. You mean that the Electoral College is a vestigial organ, like the appendix?

You can see what comes next. A liberal 5-4 Supreme Court majority declares the Electoral College unconstitutional and orders some liberal-friendly remedy in the name of democracy or social justice.

Although I prophesy that whatever that remedy is, it will turn around and bite liberals in the butt.

Right now there is a liberal proposal in which states promise that their Electoral College electors will vote for the popular vote winner: National Popular Vote.  The idea is that when a certain number of states, with a majority of the Electoral College, have enacted laws to pledge their Electors to the popular vote winner then those states will activate their popular vote mandates and vote for the national popular vote winner rather than their own state's popular winner.

Right now the following states have enacted laws to implement the national popular vote; they are : CA, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA. You can see that they are all liberal states, and some of them are also big liberal states. So that makes sense. And hey, according to National Popular Vote, even President-elect Trump thinks it is a good idea.

I'd say that this idea is in your dreams because of the original point of the Electoral College, which still holds. The Electoral College was put into the constitution to get the small states to sign on and vote to adopt the constitution. And the whole point of the Electoral College is to prevent a couple of big states from dominating the election. Back in 1787 the biggest state was Virginia with 10 members in the House of Representatives followed by Pennsylvania and Massachusetts with 8 each. The four small states were Delaware and Rhode Island with one member each, and New Hampshire and Georgia with three members each. So even then the small states wanted special protection. Today we have a lot more small states, and they are not going to let their Electoral College power get drowned in the tsunami of popular votes available in California and New York.

The fact that liberals are coming up with a creaky idea like National Popular Vote indicates to me that they probably don't have the will to just overturn the Electoral College in the Supreme Court. Not yet. And that, to me, is a relief.

But still, here we have President Obama calling the Electoral College a "vestige." Another 20 years of that sort of talk from the great and the good, amplified by the Democratic operatives with bylines in the media, and a future liberal Supreme Court will reckon it has the authority to excise the vestige from the Constitution, which is, after all, supposed to be a living thing.

The other thing is this. If it weren't for the Electoral College we wouldn't have heard the cry of the white working class, dying of despair out in the Rust Belt.

Tell you what, liberals. Think of the Electoral College as a form of "peaceful protest." That should make you feel better.

Hey, how about the idea of voting as peaceful protest? What a concept!

Because, improbable as it may seem, there are people out there suffering from oppression and exploitation that liberals have never heard of, and don't want to hear from.

And it is a good idea for the electoral system to make their voices heard, even if the ruling class doesn't want to listen.

The Left's Catalog of Errors

Let us set forth, as a public service, the catalog of errors that our lefty friends have compiled over the years. But let us not just dismiss with a snarl but understand the ground of their errors and give their follies the benefit of the doubt.

Wage Labor is Alienation. No it isn't. Wage labor is a boon to the worker because he assigns a lot of the risk of producing and selling away to his employer. Source of error: Marx believed in the classical economists theory of value, with competing "use value" and "exchange value." He proposed that the natural task of labor was producing for "use" rather than producing for sale. But the marginal revolution of 1870 solved the value problem by realizing that all prices are determined "at the margin." Benefit of the doubt: Wage labor was dehumanizing, especially at the start of the industrial revolution before inventors had figured out how to automate all dehumanizing work.

Capitalism will "Immiserate" the Workers. No it won't. The capitalism of the last two hundred years has been a Great Enrichment with successive innovations building prosperity from $1-3 per capita per day to $100 per capita per day in real dollars. There has been nothing like it, ever. Source of error: Marx understood that market competition tends to squeeze profit out of any undertaking as new market entrants compete for the consumer's business. So, if nothing changes, competition is likely to squeeze all costs, human and material, to the bone. But Marx forgot one thing. It is true that in each individual industry increasing competition squeezes profit away from the producers and "immiserates" them. But actual history is that every decade or so, a new revolution of innovation produces new opportunities for profit, and most of the immiserated workers get jobs in the new industry. Benefit of the doubt: At the time that Marx was writing nobody could have foreseen the oil revolution, the internal combustion engine, the electrical revolution, the physics revolution, the electronics revolution, the computer revolution, the internet revolution.

Socialism will end the exploitation of man by man. No, it didn't. Socialism has been a disaster wherever it has been tried, whether as a simple rural commune or as an administrative socialist state. Source of the error: In its rural commune version socialism fails because "to each according to his needs" discourages people from working. That is why all rural communes like New Harmony, Indiana, fail. In socialism's administrative version the political bosses decide what work is to be done. But political bosses don't know what work needs to be done. In fact, we now know, socialism can't work because it cannot compute prices, and administrative bureaucrats cannot outperform the price signalling of the market, and regulation cannot work because it ends up captured by the regulated. In reality, of course, capitalism is the closest we are ever going to get to socialism, because capitalism, through the price system, encourages everyone to altruistically find work that is useful to other people; it demands that they do socially useful things with their lives. Benefit of the doubt: The world is a cruel place, and mankind has ever dreamed of a perfect land of peace and justice.

Government can Deliver Social Services. No it can't. OK, it can for a while. But over time government fails to adjust its service delivery program to new conditions and needs. Source of the error: Government is an armed minority that occupies territory and taxes the inhabitants so it can reward its supporters. Thus all new government programs and "reforms" end up merely rewarding the government supporters and only incidentally providing social services. It becomes almost impossible to reform an existing government program because the clients of the program object vociferously if anyone proposes to reduce their benefits. This is why education is failing to teach, Social Security will go broke, Health care is brutally expensive, government welfare doesn't raise the poor out of poverty. All this reduces to the truism that it is almost impossible for a government to reduce spending. Instead, government resorts to subterfuges, including hyperinflation, as in Germany and Austria after World War I, Zimbabwe in the 2000s, Venezuela in the 2010s. The root of all these disasters is a government that dared not reduce its spending to balance against its reduced revenue. Benefit of the doubt: Humans ask for things from their leaders that they shouldn't ask for, and politicians try to deliver. Until they can't.

It's all the Fault of Racists, Sexist, Homophobes. Yeah. The problem with all oppression theories under capitalism is the question: why don't the evil capitalists hire the oppressed and marginalized and underpaid and exploit the hell out of their marginalized status? Why don't businesses flood into the inner city and hire blacks? Why don't they prefer the underpaid women that apparently work for 80 cents on the dollar? Or, under the current diversity regime where the capitalist all advertise their eagerness to diversity their workforces, why aren't the traditionally marginalized zooming up to the top of the charts? In fact, as the Jim Crow era in the South showed, you need to pass and enforce racist laws in order to force business to hew the racist line. Source of the error: People don't appreciate the depth of the social revolution we call the industrial revolution. It requires people to abandon their pre-industrial culture of the kindred, the tribe, and the village, where you only trust your kin, your race, or your fellow villagers. The modern world demands that everyone enter into the trust culture of capitalism where you trust and work with anyone that can be trusted, and submit yourself to the judgement of the market rather than the judgement of your in-group. This is hard, very hard, and it creates a demand for political activists that conjure up scapegoats. See René Girard. In modern democracy we scapegoat the "in" party and hope to end our troubles by throwing the rascals out and voting for "change." Benefit of the doubt: It is very easy to see the mote in another's eye, but very hard to see the beam in one's own eye.

To be continued.

How to Help an In-denial Liberal

I had dinner last night with a retired Pentagon colonel, and we had a delicious tour d'horizon. But then the colonel went on to tell the liberal woman next to me exactly what we had discussed for the previous hour. And, you can imagine, she didn't like it.

I was impressed that he was willing to spend his time watering such a water-resistant plant. Basically, I don't try to persuade liberals; I always assume that they are beyond an intersubjective discussion of the issues. Rather like the woman whose husband had voted for Trump. She still insisted that "Democrats want to help people." Yes, but what if the "help" doesn't help? "I don't want to talk about that."

So that's why I don't tend to talk politics to people that I profile as liberals. What's the point?

Anyway, everything I write and think is calculated to cause a little tremor to a liberal's NPR/NYT bubble. My reductive Three Peoples theory is intended to show liberals that they need to think about people who are not cut out to be world-historical creative people. My little darlings concept is designed to show liberals that their Patron/Client politics damages the people they pretend to help, and then devastates the little darlings when liberals dump the old little darlings for fresh new faces.

But I think I need a new concept to round out my world view. How about Five Lefty Fallacies?

1. The Marxian fallacy: capitalism will immiserate the workers.
2. The socialist fallacy: socialism can't work because it can't compute prices.
3. The administrative fallacy: big government can't work because bureaucrats can't outthink millions of consumers.
4. The regulatory fallacy: regulation can't work because the regulated always "capture" the regulators.
5. The reform fallacy: government can't reform its programs because it cannot cut spending.

I think this needs a little expansion; I've been writing about it for a while and now I need to formalize it and add in the arguments.

But the Big Idea of the modern era, I think, is to "hurl" the proletariat off the plantation, and its feudal relations, and teach ordinary people how to live as responsible persons rather than subordinates. The whole narrative of the left has been to keep the people in their subordinate peasanthood and workerdom, rather than encourage them to enter the world of responsibility and self-ownership.

In my discussions with the Pentagon colonel he stated that the failure of the ruling class was that it had failed to protect great groups of people, who now felt "unprotected."

It is, of course, the one-and-only job of government to provide a regime of peace and protect its people from enemies foreign and domestic. But because every government is an armed minority that occupies territory and taxes the inhabitants thereof to be able to reward its supporters, every ruling class tends to forget what it is really there for. It thinks about nothing but rewarding its supporters and so licenses its supporters to prey on the other inhabitants, because one of the rewards of supporting a ruling class is to be able to wield power in your own little world. Then the ruling class is shocked that the other inhabitants start to think that the government does nothing for them except prey upon them.

But I don't think that the average liberal is within a country mile of understanding this. Anyway, our liberal friends are not really out of the first and second stages of grief after the Trump election. Not yet.

The Liberal Post-election Meltdown

Back when Al Gore lost the 2000 election, liberals couldn't let go. So we had the Florida recount (which was only necessary because the media called the state before the polls in the Florida panhandle had closed). And Democrats chased the result all the way through the Supreme Court.

So Democrats decided that George W. Bush was "selected, not elected." And they never really conceded defeat. All the Priuses and Subaru Outbacks in rich-bitch north Seattle had anti-Bush bumper stickers for four years.

After the 2004 election, which was another surprise since the polls had Kerry winning, Democrats were so traumatized that their obliging therapists invented a new mental health category for them: PEST, or post-election selection trauma.

Now, after the 2016 election we have Democrats crying all over the place. We had a CNN personality talking about popping Xanax; we had college girls crying together; we had college presidents sending out sympathetic letters. Not to mention the usual stuff about racism, sexism, -phobias, and digging up conspiracy theories like "fake news" and Reds under the bed.

Somehow, when Republicans lose there is no need to invent new mental health categories. Why is that?

Of course we know what this is all about. It is not quite what Rush Limbaugh would call the "chickification" of America. It is certainly the mainstreaming of the left's victim culture.

It goes without saying that a victim is incapable of action. A victim needs a wise and powerful patron to do all the thinking and acting for her. And it is a profound act of betrayal if the victim ever feels unsafe or afraid.

And the classic behavior of the victims is this delicious story about a college instructor ranting in class about the Trump win being an "act of terrorism," and then heading for the hills when one of her students videoed her rant and put it up on social media. Because she got death threats.

Our liberal friends are always quick to publicize death threats to liberals. But not so much when conservative women are threatened.

Look, I get it. Good little liberal girls go to college and get taught that politics means a protest march to City Hall.

What they are not taught is that politics is civil war by other means. They do not get taught that "peaceful protest" is nothing of the kind, but a deliberate attempt at intimidation, the first escalation from a genuine discussion of the issues to outright street violence. So these good little girls get the shock of their sheltered lives when their liberal virtue-signalling runs into opposition. Nobody ever told them about that! No fair!

I think there is a big issue here, arising out of the entry of women into the public square in the last century. And my go-to guy on that is German sociologist Georg Simmel. He wrote that in time women would transform the public sphere to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

Yes, but. It stands to reason that some aspects of the public square do not lend themselves very well to a more feminine sensibility. For instance, in high-stakes politics and business. If you ask me, the number one requirement for a successful politician or business leader is to have a warrior personality. He must be a courageous person ready, willing and able to boldly outdare the dangers of the time. And that includes physical danger.

I well remember my days as a glider pilot. One of the things we learned is that when women pilots experienced a dangerous situation, they would almost always quit flying. When you think of it, it makes sense. Who would continue to do something that is dangerous? But that is exactly what men do, they instinctively know they must outdare the dangers of the moment, and then come back and do it again tomorrow.

The woman college teacher that got caught in her rant fled to another state. OK. That's what liberal SJWs do. But a real man would have stayed his ground and confronted the student that recorded an undercover video. Maybe he would have staged a teach-in so that all sides in this contentious post-election season would get their chance to be heard. Yeah, maybe, if he were a conservative.

It is nice that women are out in the public square. It is nice that they have altered it to suit a more feminine sensibility.

But not everything in the world can be altered to suit a more feminine sensibility. There will still be a big area in the public square suitable only for people willing to boldly outdare the dangers of the time. Truth is, there aren't many men capable of that: certainly I am not that kind of man. There are fewer women: Margaret Thatcher, for example.

But one thing about Trump. He doesn't give a damn about caterwauling liberal women.

There is a Word for "Address Class and Race:" Racism

Here are a couple of lefties analyzing the 2016 election at The Nation.

How can the Democratic Party best respond to Donald Trump’s election? The current debate rages around whether to unify around class or instead to build a coalition of identity groups, key among them racial minorities. We reject as fundamentally flawed the implicit assumption that class and race are incompatible bases for moving forward. Race is not a distraction from but a key driver of widening inequality and stagnant or declining wages for the majority. To meaningfully help working people, the Democratic Party must simultaneously engage class and race.

So let us get this straight. Lefties are divided about whether to build a race-based political coalition or a class-based coalition. There is a word for a race-based politics. The word is "racism." There is a word for a class-based politics. The word is "classism." Hey, I didn't invent the words; you lefties did that.

And by the way, would not a class-based appeal to working-class whites be a policy of "white supremacy?"

Only, of course, as George Orwell so brilliantly demonstrated, words used in political combat have a way of becoming their opposites. Nothing to see here, of course. It was Hegel that pointed out that thesis and antithesis were very often the same thing. It makes complete sense that the people that think they are fighting racism are actually the worst racists.

Then you have the racist reverie of Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic, "My President was Black." You wonder about chaps like that. Do they really not understand how they present themselves, as out-and-out racists?

Then there is President Obama. His latest line is blathering on Comedy Central that

we have, by no means overcome the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow and colonialism and racism, but that the progress we’ve made has been real and extraordinary — if I’m communicating my genuine belief that those who are not subject to racism can sometimes have blind spots or lack of appreciation of what it feels to be on the receiving end of that...

And on and on.

As President Eisenhower said, if you have a problem you can't solve the answer is to make it bigger.

Yes, it is humiliating to be on the receiving end of racism, being marginalized as unintelligent or second class. Just like it must be to be a conservative student on today's liberal university or converged corporation where you better mind your manners or the overseer with the moral equivalent of the cowskin whip will tell you the reason why.

Slavery, racism, fear of the foreigner, are universals. In the old world, you enslaved the conquered as a matter of course. You hated the different-looking people as a matter of course. You feared foreigners as a matter of course. Just like liberals want to enslave conservatives into their hegemonic structures, cannot help hating on Christians and fossil-fuel executives, and cannot imagine a political policy that does not discriminate by race.

It is only in the city of the industrial revolution that people need to learn to get on with, and treat as equals people that are different than themselves, and very often not as far up the capitalist learning curve.

And it is only in capitalism that slavery and racism and xenophobia don't make any sense. Slaves are a nuisance because you want other people to be independent and responsible, not dependent and sitting around waiting for orders. Racism is a problem because you want everyone to be your customer and you want the best talent working for you, regardless of skin color.

It is people like the lefties at The Nation, and professional racists like Ta-Nehisi Coates, and conventional-wisdom liberals like President Obama that are the problem. They have hived off the people lower down the capitalist learning curve into silos and poisoned their minds with resentment and dependency.

They say: Oh, you poor victims. Here, vote for us and we will give you handouts as the rank-and-file in our political army. They do not say: We understand how hard it can be knocking at the door of capitalist competence and prosperity, but we are here to help you learn the entry code. We will show you what to learn, how to present yourself to the labor market, how to navigate the complexities of the capitalist life so that you can take your deserved place in the great American middle class.

And they are still peddling patent nostrums that have been shown to be nonsense. By science.

There is no conflict between use value and exchange value; there is only marginal value. There is no way for a government-run economy to work, because it cannot compute prices, and prices are needed as a signal to people to tell them what to do. There is no way for an administrative state to work because the bureaucrats just don't have enough bandwidth to tell them what to do. There is no way for a regulatory state to work because the regulated corporations always "capture" the regulators.

If this goes on much longer, it will become not just the crime of the century, but the crime of the millennium. Liberals, the left, the racists, the genderists, the intersectionalists, the climate cronies. These are people not just drunk with the empty promises of political power, but they are people that don't want to know about well-established science about people and markets and government.

And as long as it continues -- this racism, this sexism, this religion of politics -- people will continue to suffer.

What if Trump Knows What He is Doing?

Donald Trump has started out his presidency with a bit of crony capitalism, saving jobs at United Technologies Carrier division before he is even inaugurated. Oh no, cry conservatives.

Donald Trump has proposed to nominate three generals to the cabinet. Oh no, cry peacenik liberals.

Donald Trump has nominated a fast-food executive to be Secretary of Labor. Oh no, cry the unions.

Donald Trump has nominated an oil-state attorney general to head up the Environmental Protection Agency. Oh no, cry environmentalists.

Donald Trump is said to be nominating the CEO of Exxon-Mobil as Secretary of State. Oh no, say the striped-pants set.

Is Donald Trump crazy, or crazy like a fox? Let's take a look.

First of all Carrier. The question is, which is the real Trump? Is he the Trump that is proposing to lower corporate income tax rates and encourage corporations to repatriate their profits to the US? Or is he the candidate throwing protectionist red meat to the white working class? I'd say that the Carrier stuff is there to encourage his new supporters, whereas the tax and regulation cuts are the real red meat that will put muscle on the bones of the US economy.

Then the generals. The problem here is that liberals have, as with many things, a cartoon view of military brass. They have in mind the flat-faced, ribbon-bedecked thugs of the political cartoon. In fact, of course, generals are highly educated, not just in the arts of war but the whole question of politics, strategy, the use of force. As with many things, this all started with the Germans and their General Staff. To me, the money quote from a general is the dictum of Gen. Hans von Seeckt. His idea, after World War I, was

[To make] of each individual member of the army a soldier who, in character, capability, and knowledge, is self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility [verantwortungsfreudig] as a man and a soldier.

Why was this? Because in the lethal battlefield where soldiers are hiding in holes, armies needed to push responsibility down as far as possible. Armies needed People of the Responsible Self just like nation states needed responsible workers.

Then the fast-food executive. Really, what better choice could Trump make? Fast-food restaurants are the front and center of the labor market, and I am sure that their managers and executives know workers far better than the foolish activists that think the way to solve stagnant wages is with increases in the minimum wage.

How about an oil-state attorney to the EPA! The EPA is really the center of the foolish liberal effort to turn the economy upside down in their cruel effort to stop economic growth and fossil fuel use and save the planet -- for people like them. It is high time that the regulatory administrative state get a blow to the solar plexus, and that environmental policy become subordinate to the will of the people, not the religious dogma of the bishops of climate.

How about the CEO of Exxon-Mobil as Secretary of State? It is, of course, a shocking idea. That's because of decades of demonization by liberals of executives and of oil companies. And, it turns out, that Rex Tillerson is a pal of Vladimir Putin. Oh no! But of course! The oil biz is everywhere, and everywhere has to get cozy with government. So Tillerson doubtless knows everybody that is anybody, all over the world. And, whatever liberals may think, I'm sure that non-US politicians have a lot of respect for the big marquee US energy corporations.

It looks like Donald Trump represents a new departure for a Republican president. In my lifetime Republicans have always felt they needed to accommodate liberal views when setting up an administration and devising policy. But you can argue that this strategy tends to backfire, because liberals take what Republicans give and then demand more. Trump of The Art of the Deal believes that you start with an offer that knocks the other guys off their feet, and only later compromise to close the deal. It is pretty clear that the Trump administration is starting with a pedal-to-the-metal attitude that is going to send liberals round the bend. Until they decide that compromise is the better part of valor.

Lunch with a Liberal

I am going to be seeing liberal friends over the next few days, and my mind is thrilling with ways to DESTROY them, as they say on the Comedy Central fake news shows.

But really, I shall be very gentle. I think I shall approach the whole question by unpacking the latest liberal groupthink that Trump won because of "fake news" and an appeal to white supremacists.

Well, of course "fake news" is a problem. The whole point of any campaign is to launch memes and catchphrases into the public mind that have very little to do with the truth. No doubt there are tons of right-wing websites deliberately launching false narratives. But what about David Brock's Media Matters? What about Dan Rather's fake but accurate memo about George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard? What about Brian Williams fabulism? What about Rolling Stone's fake story about campus rape?

But when President Obama talks about the need to "curate" news on the Internet, what planet are you on? Curation means nothing other than the ruling class molding the news to fit its agenda.

And as for "white supremacists," just what exactly are you talking about? That Trump appealed to the white working class that, according to the Washington Post is dying of despair? Actually, I'd say, people with a need to feel supreme are people that are existentially afraid of going down for the count.

Are we not allowed to advocate for the white working class? Are their concerns not to be counted in the national dialog?

And then there is the bigger question, behind the usual liberal pejorative of "raaacisss." Liberal politics for the last 50 years has been identity politics. Anyone who is not a cisgendered white male is encouraged to identify by race or gender and demand to be privileged by the government on account of previous discrimination and marginalization. Do liberals not understand that, at some point, cisgendered white males would want to get in on this racket?

What would it take for liberals to see that?

Liberals like to think of themselves as open-minded, evolved, and educated. Maybe they are. But I wonder.

• Is it really a good idea to respond to an election loss by contesting its legitimacy, as liberals did in 2000 and now 2016? Do you liberals not understand where that leads?
• Was it really a good idea to cram a root-and-branch reform of the health care system with a partisan cram-down, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that you should never pass a big program like Medicare with less than a bipartisan 70-30 vote in the US Senate?
• Was it really a good idea to dump the filibuster in the Senate when it benefited Democrats? Did nobody think what would happen when the Republicans regained the majority?
• Was it really a good idea to do the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement without taking them to the US Senate as treaties?
• Was it really a good idea to put the pedal to the metal on climate policy using executive action rather than legislation? 

All this stuff makes me wonder: have liberals never studied politics and history? Do they know anything beyond today's catchphrases?

And is it really good politics to say that anyone that disagrees with liberals on race is a racist, anyone that disagrees with liberals on women's issues is a sexist, anyone that disagrees with liberals on LGBT is a hater, anyone that disagrees with liberals on immigration is a xenophobe, anyone that disagrees with liberals on Muslims is an Islamophobe, anyone that disagrees with liberals on climate is a denier?

The problem with that kind of politics is that the only response to it is either submission or that of Casca: "Speak, hands for me," as he was the first conspirator to plunge a dagger into Julius Caesar.

Have you not thought of that, dear liberal friends?