When Things Go Wrong: Humanity's Basic Challenge

Yesterday I struck back against Tucker Carlson's attack on Mitt Romney's Bain Capital. When a corporation is in decline, someone has to do something, because most likely the current management ain't up to the job.

So what do you do? Do nothing and let the corporation go broke? Have the government do a bailout, as per "Government Motors" in the aftermath of the Crash of 2008? Have NGO activists take it over? Take a poll of financial journalists?

The bigger question is what do you do when anything goes wrong? Years ago, I learned this at work discussing communications protocols with other engineers. The point is, the other guy said, the only interesting question with data communications is what do you do when there is an error? The case where no error occurs is trivial. The question is: what do you do when something goes wrong? This is a gigantic issue: everyone of us is connected into the internet, and believe me, there are errors going on all the time, and yet you and I are almost unaware of this. As far as we are concerned, the internet "just works."

Believe me, the internet does not "just work." Indeed, the internet was invented by the Defense Department's DARPA precisely to solve the problem of what would happen if a nuclear blast knocked out a section of the nation's communications system so that it didn't work. They had no idea that the protocols they developed would be robust enough to work under conditions of billions of global thermonuclear smartphones, but they were.

Now, the fact about humans is that we don't like it when things don't work. But neither do we like to prepare for disaster. We just prefer to do nothing to prepare for a rainy day and then blame politicians and corporations when something does go wrong.

However, you will note that, when disaster does strike, humans immediately jump in to help. The so-called "Cajun Navy" that helps people in the floods after hurricanes is an example of this. And I am not judging the virtue of the bass-boat guys that man the Cajun Navy. The fact is that, instinctively, many men feel that the coolest thing to do after a hurricane is to launch the bass-boat and get out there to help.

This is the biggest problem with government programs. When advocated and passed, nobody thinks of what to do when things go wrong. And the fact is that it is almost impossible to reform a government program while it is starting to go wrong. Only after it is dead on the floor is it possible to change things, and this is not a bug but a feature. We want the laws to be, ideally, unchanging: an immutable statement of justice and redress. But how do you write a law for something that will change over time, like, for instance, education? The answer is that you can't. What you create, when you create a government program, is a great big expensive monster that cannot respond to change and cannot fix itself when things go wrong. Our government education system was set up over a century ago to educated immigrants to literacy and teach them to be conformable factory employees. But what about the children of people already literate and adapted to the wage economy? What about adapting education to deal with online teaching and knowledge? And so on.

But people, when things go wrong, do something about it. They hate to do it, but they do. And the market economy is infinitely adaptable to change, and is full of emergency protocols, like bankrutpcy, for the time when things go wrong. Probably one of the reasons we all hate the market economy is that we don't like it sounding warning signals way before we are ready to respond.

So why do progressives respond to the mess of health care by proposing a bigger, more expensive, more centralized system, when all the problems are caused by the existing centralized administrative system that creates new special interests for breakfast and is inevitably destined to control costs by rationing?

You can ration the economy with prices, or with rationing. If health care is rationed by price, then it will be constantly trying to deliver more service at less price, as with Wal-Mart and consumer products. But if health care is free at the point of delivery, there will be no price rationing and no attempt to improve and streamline service delivery. Health care will be rationed by rationing. That is all.

Why do progressives refuse to learn the lesson of the market economy? It is because their trade is politics and power. And the way to wield power is to control a resource that people want, and have the power to deal it out to your supporters.

And if you are a Person of the Subordinate Self it never occurs to you that there is any other way to order affairs. If you need something, you go to you lord or your political boss and ask for it. Hey, that's the way the world works -- if you are a serf or a slave.

That is the basic question of our time, and any time. When things go wrong, what do you do? Do you go to your overlord? Do you call in Mitt Romney and Bain Capital? Or do you try to figure it out yourself with your fellow humans?

Our problem is that, in last two centuries, incredible new ways have been invented to solve problems short of waiting for disaster to strike. But most of us still practice the culture of the feudal peasant. We expect our lord to solve the problem for us.

But as I say: when you are an underling, or even a spoiled "little darling" of some political power, there comes a day when your lord leaves you by the side of the road because you are no longer of use to him, and all his promises of protection lie broken in the dust.

And what will the robin do then, poor thing?

No, Mitt Romney's Bain Capital Was Not a Scam

Tucker Carlson takes out after Mitt Romney and Mitt's foolish op-ed in the Washington Post. And there  is plenty to criticize, as I did in my latest American Thinker piece.

But then he starts in on Romney's Bain Capital.

Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt, extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions. Romney became fantastically rich doing this.

Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It’s how they run the country.

I'd say that was the Democratic version of Bain Capital. Here's my version.

There are, in the economy, many corporations that are past their sell-by date. They hobble along, racking up debt to keep going, but get deeper and deeper in debt. Maybe they expanded too much in the good times; maybe they cranked up employee benefits too much. Maybe the management sucks. Maybe the employee union has plundered the company to deliver unaffordable benefits. Think of Sears, once the best of the best, showing the world how to do retail and also catalog. But the world has passed Sears by, and now it is going into bankruptcy or a sale to its CEO.

There is nothing remarkable about this. People do it too. They get into debt, and then don't get the pay-raise they were banking on. So they take on more debt in the hope that things will turn around. Only, usually, they don't. And most people lack the intestinal fortitude to make tough decisions to stop the rot: sell the dream home; dump the luxury car.

Same with CEOs. The CEO that inherits a company from the guy that built it into a colossus is probably a man without the vision and the guts to make tough decisions. So he lets the corporation borrow to keep things going, in the hope that things will not come to a crisis on his watch. But if you let a company like Sears keep going down it will eventually cease to exist, all its assets mortgaged, and its employees turned out on the street.

The business model of an outfit like Bain Capital is to buy a troubled corporation for a song and take it private, paying off the public stockholders. Then the Bain guys develop a turn-around plan and present it to the bondholders and creditors: try this or lose everything. The plan will probably involve shedding a ton of employees, employee benefits, money-losing divisions, and haircuts for the creditors. And probably it involves additional debt and new equity investors to finance the turnaround.

The Bain turn-around plan may work, or it may not. If it fails, then the employees and creditors are probably no worse off than if the corporation just subsided into bankruptcy under the old, tired management.  If it succeeds, then most of the employees keep their jobs, but probably not the above-market benefits they used to enjoy. And Bain and its investors make a ton of money.

That is how capitalism works. If you accept a risk proposition, then you lose everything if the proposition fails, and make a ton of money if it succeeds.

In capitalist societies there is a class of people that says: trust us, and we will protect you no matter what. These people are called politicians and activists, and they are liars. Nobody can protect you, no matter what. Not a nation state. Not a corporation.

But capitalism offers options on the risk proposition. You can be a business owner, and accept a heavy risk proposition: maybe enormous profits, or, more likely, losses that put you out of business. Or you can go to work as an employee for a fixed wage. When you do that you are saying to your employer: profits and losses, that's your affair; I just want my paycheck. But it never ends there. If the employer makes a ton of money, the employees will start grumbling: hey, how come I don't get some of da loot? If the employer suffers losses, the employees will resist cuts to benefits: hey, you promised me health care benefits, and now you want to renege just when my wife needs life-saving drugs?

In the old days, people were serfs and peasants; they relied on their lords to protect them from the Mongols and the army of the lord next  door. The lord offered this protection -- until he didn't.

In these days, the people have options. You can go work for government, with life tenure and pensions, but a soul-destroying work environment. You can go work for a  corporation, and hope that it keeps on the up and up.  But hey, even Apple experiences reverses, as its stock has plunged 40 percent in a few months. Or you can work on the assumption that your value fluctuates in the market like everything else. So you keep your eyes open, and adjust your skills to match the economy. And hope that when you plan to retire the stock market is on the up and up and not in the middle of a generational crash like 1929 or 2008.

But the truth  is that the basic feature of humans is that we want our cake and to eat it too. So we are always ready to blame "them" when things go wrong.

So people run around blaming "finance capital" and "robber barons" for the inevitable reverses in life and work. Of course, it is true that the bushes are full of knaves and scoundrels. And some of those scoundrels run private equity outfits.

Meanwhile,  in the last 200 years, the per-capita income of the American people has gone up by 3,000 percent in real terms. There has never been anything like it, ever.

Most Voters are Tribal

There's a piece in National Review by J.J. McCullough warning the anti-Trumpists that his supporters aren't "transactional," supporting him merely for his positions on "the issues."

A November Quinnipiac University poll found that the vast majority of Republicans have enormous, across-the-board confidence in everything about Trump: 82 percent said he had good leadership skills, 77 percent said he was honest, 92 percent said he was intelligent, and 80 percent agreed he was someone who “shares your values.” Trump was given astronomically high approval on the management of basically every issue as well, including 86 percent approval for his handling of “immigration issues.”

Do you see what this means? It means that Trump's core supporters are not basing their support on "what have you done for me lately" but on an overall view of him as their tribal leader.

I should say "our," because my support for Trump has a lot to do with his courage in going up against the educated ruling class tribe, fearlessly defending our tribe of deplorables after the manner of a mythical hero.

And humans have a real yearning for a hero. I wonder why? Not.

Indeed, for me, Trump has been something of a surprise, particularly on the taxes and regulations front. I had no idea that the populist Trump would risk a tax cut that mostly gives a big tax rate cut to corporations. And I had no idea that he had a plan to send in the Grim Reaper to scythe away at administrative-state regulations.

And, he stood firm with the band of brothers on the firing line when the entire left went nuclear on Brett Kavanaugh in the most disgraceful display of fascist tactics in my lifetime.

Yeah, lefty friends. You wanna know what fascism looks like in real life -- as opposed to your fever dreams of the nightmare of right-wing supremacy that you have been carefully taught to hate and to fear by your hard-left teachers and professors? It's you chaps during the nomination fight. I mean, what's more fascist than convicting a guy on a mere decades-old accusation?

And now, dare I say, it may be that the Notorious RBG may not be long on the Court. How do you like them apples, lefties?

The truth is that although plenty of people say they vote "on the issues" we nearly all vote with our tribe.

It's true that, on the left, young worthies like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez are all down for free Medicare-for-all and the forgiveness of student debt. (Notice that the former arises out of the insanely expensive and government-regulated third-party health care payment system and the latter arises because of college fee inflation triggered by the government's student loan system.)

But these are not really transactional "issues" but tribal battle cries. Every liberal voter knows that ICE is xenophobia, every word of concern about Islamic terrorism is Islamophobia, every conservative speaking on campus should be de-platformed.

The bottom line on politics is not the tribalism, but how long the loyal rank-and-file hangs on after their leaders have betrayed them.

In the case of the white working class it has taken 50 years after the Democrats abandoned them for a politician to figure out how to lead them -- with a brief intermission for the Reagan Democrats.

But now, I'd say, the white working class is solid for Trump for the foreseeable future. The only question is whether he can tempt in some blacks and Latinos.

And the tribiest tribe in America is the progressive tribe whose natural habitat is the college town or the gentrified close-in suburb. Talk about tribal dances and witch burnings and sacrifices of scapegoats!

I wonder if the Democrats have backed themselves into a corner on Trump. They have taught their tribe to hate and to fear Donald Trump and his tribe of deplorables. Can that win them the 2020 election? Only time will tell.

What If Everything We Know About Education is Wrong?

We saw a kid performing handstands on the sidewalk as the bus took us to the Delhi Garden of Five Senses, and one of the women in the party mourned that the kid was not in school.

Yes, I know we are all supposed to believe that kids in government school are the best thing since sliced bread. But is it?

We know, for instance, that throughout the 19th century Europe literacy increased enormously, and it isn't clear to me that government schools were the reason. And female literacy was about a generation behind male literacy.

In addition, I understand, parents stopped sending their kids out to work once they didn't need the wages for food.

But we all believe -- and that means especially that women believe -- that all kids should be in school throughout childhood.

I don't think so. I suspect that we would do much better dumping the responsibility for their children's education on the parents.

What about this idea? We repeal all child labor laws; we close all the government schools. What would happen?

My question is this. If corporations started employing children again, would they revive the apprenticeship system? Would they educate the children in their charge?

The simple answer is: We Don't Know.

But we do know that when a foundation took computer tablets to an Ethiopian village, the kids had the tablets charged while the adults were congratulating each other, were singing the ABC song in two weeks, and had hacked the tablet to re-enable the camera within six months.

We do know that every girl in the world desperately needs to be literate enough to compete in the social media world of smartphones, and the boys need to be literate enough to master video games like Minecraft.

Maybe they can only really do this in school. But maybe not. Maybe if we evil geniuses figure out how to grab their attention, maybe we can get kids literate, numerate, market-aware, etc., without the trillion dollar a year expense of government education.

Of course, I understand the allure of free stuff. Free education: Yay! And maybe we should have a free system, just on principle, to keep the slaves to free-stuff happy

But I think the future requires getting away from the government model, and demands an education that responds to the needs of parents that want the best for their children and corporations that want good productive employees in their future.

What If Liberals Abolished the Middle Class?

In his latest piece bemoaning the state of California, Victor Davis Hanson suggests that the liberal masters of California are quite comfortable with the fact that the middle class is leaving California in the millions.

Would-be Calexit leader Shankar Singam, in a recent television appearance, was unapologetically candid in celebrating the departure of the middle class from California. Indeed, he saw it as a sort of win-win bargain for the state: The tired people are leaving, and the energetic people are replacing them. 

I don't think liberals really understand what they are doing. Their whole shtick is to play ruling class saviors of the helpless victims against the the cruel oppression of the evil white middle class. Do they not realize that if they abolish the evil middle class they will have abolished the enemy by which they rally the helpless victims to their sideq? If there is no middle class left in California then who will be the enemy of lefty politics?

I will tell you, based on Lee Kwan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore.p In a multicultural society, people vote according to their race and religion. And I bet that the old politics that has served our liberal friends so well will convert into a politics in which liberals don't get to direct traffic as in the olden time. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to see a politics of the lower class against the precious -- and rich -- people of San Francisco, Marin County, and Silicon Valley. Of course, I could be wrong about that.

Yep. Liberals may be patting themselves on the back for teaching those racist sexist homophobic middle-class Californians a lesson and sending them packing out of state, and reducing the Republican Party in the state to a shell. But I don't think they will like what comes next.

But then we all know that liberals are clueless about politics. They all know and can recite the latest lefty meme. But they don't have a clue about why we have three branches of government, about why we have the electoral college. And if it comes to that they don't  understand the First Amendment. The whole point, liberals, is to permit unpopular and bigoted speech. So it is right out in the open. But liberals think that the First Amendment is there to allow liberals to advance their progressive religion to bend the arc of history towards justice. And then shut the bigots up.

Assorted Opinions, Maxims, and Aphorisms

Government is force. Politics is violence. Government is injustice. System is domination. Politics is civil war by other means. Government never learns — Christopher Chantrill

Government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters.

Government is force plus loot and plunder.

Government is injustice.

Government is downstream from politics.

More government means less affordability.

All government is unjust, because government leaders reward their supporters before the rest of the people.

The only warrant for government power is an existential peril.

If you give politicians more power in an emergency, they will create more emergencies to get more power. — Douglas McKinnon

Soft power is gifting friends; hard power is fighting enemies.

In Melanesia the Big Man earns the community’s trust on his ability to distribute pigs, shell money, and other resources. In the welfare state the politician gets elected by promising to distribute checks, jobs, and subsidies.

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies — Orson Scott Card

Laffer’s Five Pillars: low-rate broad-based flat tax; spending restraint; sound money; minimal regulations; free trade

Laffer: the more you redistribute, the greater will be the drop in total income.

Taxing and spending make us poorer.

There is nothing more annoying to a politician than the lack of a crisis.

Do politicians know what they are doing, or just do what they know?

Why do politicians lie? Because we the voters insist upon it.

It isn’t a lie if nobody calls you on it.

The last refuge of a political scoundrel is the scapegoat.

What people want from government and political leaders is protection.

Politics is the art of division.

Politics is all, and only, about rallying the men to fight against the foe — external or internal enemy — in the present emergency.

Politics is the royal road to injustice.

Politics is the exercise of collective power against human opposition. — Curtis Yarvin

Politics Never Solves Anything.

Today’s rulers want you to take the knee — to them, not BLM, silly!

The political is the distinction between friend and enemy — Carl Schmitt

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? — Mao Zedong

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy — Mao Zedong

There is no politics without an enemy — Curtis Yarvin

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. — Hermann Göring

The world must be made safe for democracy — Woodrow Wilson

With phrases which on close examination dissolve into thin air, such as the defence of civilization, nothing tangible can be defined — Klemens von Metternich

The world is full of opposing forces... International life, like life in general, is a battle — Charles de Gaulle

Communism is a hammer that we use to destroy the enemy — Mao Zedong

How to unify Germany, by Otto von Bismarck: Ally Prussia with Austria to defeat Denmark; Then ally Prussia and Protestant German states against Austria and Catholic German states to defeat Austria and create North German Confederation; Then ally all German states against France to create the Second Reich.

Markets make friends where politics creates enemies.

The whole point of social animals is to find a way to avoid politics

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law — Óscar R. Benavides, president of Peru 1933-1939

Rules of Engagement: The enemy must be destroyed — William Hall

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles — Sun Tzu

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence — Napoleon Bonaparte

There is no religion without a Satan.

The aesthetic is the distinction between beautiful and ugly — Carl Schmitt

The economic is the distinction between useful and harmful — Carl Schmitt

The moral is the distinction between good and evil — Carl Schmitt

For men, the cultural is the distinction between ok and not-ok.

For women, the cultural is the distinction between nice and not-nice.

Passion is the distinction between love and hate.

There is no religion without an Evil One

The field of reporting is the distinction between truth and lie

The field of perception is the distinction between reality and fantasy

The vastness of reality is too complex to be simulated — Scott Adams

The Cathedral... Either you see it, or you don’t. — Jacob Siegel

The productive classes are always governed by unproductive aristocrats — Curtis Yarvin

There is no expert without an idiot.

Politician: follow me or you will all be killed. Priest: follow me or you will go to Hell.

Politics for men: I will fight for you! Politics for women: I will protect you!

Men: “Lead me!” Women: “Protect me!”

Men: “March toward the sound of the guns.” Women: “Shelter in place.”

In 1900 poor women worked and rich women were supported by Daddy or Hubby. In 2020 rich women work and poor women are supported by gubmint checks.

[Voters are] tired of politicians who won’t let the wounds of the past heal. — Winsome Sears

Four political strategies: Unite the country against a small country for a quick win; unite the country against a big country for a world war; unite half the country against the other half for a civil war; unite most of the country against a small minority for a witch-hunt. (Grok)

Rule 1... is: ‘Do not march on Moscow’…[Rule 2] is: ‘Do not go fighting with your land armies in China.’ — Lord Montgomery

The only thing that politics knows is hate and loot and plunder.

If you are fighting for justice, what you will win is injustice.

There is no such thing as justice, only injustice.

The more politics, the more injustice.

If you want more politics, you are really saying you want more enemies.

The more politics, the more enemies.

The more politics, the more misery.

Social justice is not justice, it is vengeance.

If you bend the arc of history, you do not get justice, but injustice.

People busy bending the arc of history usually fail to learn the lessons of history.

There is no one so unjust as the one that fights for justice.

Justice is the absence of force.

When you have dominated the oppressors, what do you get? Oppression or domination?

The left says there are oppressed peoples, their allies, and white oppressors. I say there are Deceivers, ordinary Americans, and Deceived groups.

America does not have a “white supremacy” problem. It has a “spoiled, unhinged, white liberals” problem. — Kayleigh McEnany

Critical Theory creates cultural gang warfare.

Critical Race Theory creates more racial tensions, not less.

When government bureaucrats deploy Critical Theory it isn’t Critical Theory.

When government teachers teach your kids Critical Race Theory, it isn’t Critical Theory; it is just regime propaganda.

I guess you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggheads — @liptonnick

In a culture war there will be casualties, just like in real war.

You may think you are “woke” but how do you know you are not asleep?

When a political movement achieves its objectives it doesn’t go home.

When a political movement achieves its objectives it doesn’t have to play nice any more.

When a political movement achieves its objectives it is time to crush its enemies.

Every social movement will continue until it reaches absurdity — Ward Clark

Hitler hated Jews; feminists hate men. Explain.

Hitler is the idiot you get when the usual idiots have screwed up.

A punitive peace leads to Literally Hitler.

Capitalism works for men who do. Socialism works for men who don’t. — Daniel J. Flynn

Without capitalists, socialism would be unaffordable. — Larry Elder

Some people work for a living; other people vote for a living.

Fixing roads is for poor people, while fixing the climate is for special people. — Zman

Socialism is the religion that sanctifies loot and plunder as moral obligations.

Socialism promises belonging but delivers isolation.

Socialism promises equality but delivers scarcity.

Socialism promises dignity and compassion but delivers degradation and cruelty.

Socialism is the faith of rich kids that never had a job. Marx, anyone?

In socialism, everybody takes as much as they can. In capitalism, everybody contributes as much as they can.

Five Year Plan equals Great Leap Forward equals Build Back Better.

Reign of Terror equals Great Purge equals Cultural Revolution equals Cancel Culture

Class Analysis: A hundred years ago the rich were thin and the poor were fat; today the rich are thin and the poor are fat. A hundred years ago the rich were idle and the poor worked; today the rich work and the poor are idle.

Nietzsche: “the priests” teach us to hate ourselves. Me: the politicians teach us to hate others.

Nietzsche was “the Nazis’ favorite intellectual:” butcher’s bill 50 million. Marx is the left’s favorite intellectual: butcher’s bill 100 million. Explain.

Kant: We cannot know things-in-themselves, but only appearances. Me. 

Nietzsche: I philosophize with a hammer. Me: No, Fritzi; you philosophize with the one-liner.

Moral reasoning is nothing but the awakening of certain feelings — William Godwin, after Hume.

Politics is the division between “us” and “them;” Religion is the division between “good” and “evil.” Totalitarianism is the division between “us good people” and “them evil people.”

Politics equals “Us” vs. “Them.”

Eric Hoffer: Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. Me: Every political racket disguises itself for a season as a great cause fighting for justice.

Politics equals Hate.

We must teach our children to hate. Hatred is the basis of communism — Lenin

Wrong Turn: the Left began with errors like Marxist economics; it continued with conceits like the administrative welfare state and climate change; it committed great crimes like the government-created famines in Ukraine and China; it compounded its errors with lies like systemic racism.

Anglo culture: Liberty is the right to be left alone by government, to live life as we have always lived it.
Continental culture: Liberté stands opposed to tradition in the emancipatory overthrow of the present way of life.

Anglo culture: Equality means the ancient rights and liberties of Englishmen, and nobody is above the law.
Continental culture: Egalité means substantive equality. No social distinctions except to support the common good.

Great Reaction: Socialism is a return to slavery; the welfare state is a return to feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism a return to revolution, rioting for the ruling class, part medieval knight-errantry, and part activisme, or gentry kids putting on a school play for their parents; helpless victims are a return to sacrifice; totalitarianism is a return to the scapegoat; social justice is good old loot and plunder.

Crimes of the Left: Driving working class off the road to the middle class; misdirecting women in the public square; making war on middle class culture and values; taxing business and ordinary people and enslaving them to ruling-class crusades to save the world.

Ruling Class gotta have a war.

The ruling class used to be a warrior class. Now the ruling class is an educated, intellectual class. Explain.

Understanding Yarvin’s three layers: the Gentry believe in governing the Commoners and advocating for the Clients; the Commoners just want a normal life with a job, a home, and a family; the Clients think “we was robbed!”

Three Tribes: The tribe of the educated Gentry is the educated class of the entire world; the tribe of the Commoners is the nation; the tribe of the Subordinates is the ethnic group, or clan, or village.

Three Religions: The religion of the educated Gentry is creativity; the religion of the responsible Commoners is an Axial Age religion; the religion of the subordinate clients is vengeful gods.

Reynolds’ Laws: 1. Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them. 2. The more a government wants to run its citizens’ lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government. 3. Whatever politicians control, they will use against you to get what they want. 4. Longevity of political service does not make a politician more qualified; it only ensures they are more corrupt 5. Proposed legislation will fail if there is not enough opportunity for graft or control.

In southern Europe the Renaissance made man the measure of all things. In northern Europe the Reformation, in proclaiming the priesthood of all believers and offering rewards for individual effort, put the emphasis on the individual — Henry A. Kissinger

[T]he most fundamental problem of politics... is not the control of wickedness, but the limitation of righteousness. — Henry A. Kissinger

Once you believe your education makes you superior to others, then your education has failed you.

Lefties created the two greatest slave societies in history. In one century.

When the left ran out of real victims to patronize it started inventing “fake” victims.

I am all in favor of LGBT. I just can’t take it seriously.

Trump is the idiot you get when the usual idiots have screwed up.

There’s never been anything like it. — Donald J. Trump.

Fascism is the idiocy you get when the usual idiots have screwed up.

Socialism is the idiocy that intellectual idiots propose to increase the power of ruling-class idiocy.

Politics is about trying to get things you shouldn’t want.

The first rule of politics is: never tell people the truth.

Every society since the dawn of time, and especially ours, is drenched in religion.

Every human alive has a religion, that explains for him, and especially her, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

No society has existed without what we would call religion — Nicholas Wade

All human differences are ultimately religious ones — Cardinal Manning

It is only the things we don’t understand that have any meaning. — Jung

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. — attr. to Einstein

Whenever I run into a problem I can’t solve, I always make it bigger. — Eisenhower

Information is surprise — George Gilder, after Claude Shannon

Action produces information — Brian Armstrong, CEO Coinbase

Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. — Donald Kingsbury

People that deny they have a religion are the most religious of all.

Politics and government are all about force; law is all about private property; religion is all about morality.

Politics is downstream from culture (Breitbart) is downstream from religion (Wright) is downstream from the meaning of “life, the universe, and everything” (Chantrill).

The press is downstream from activism is downstream from the Cathedral is downstream from the political formula.

#PleaseBelieve: Other Lives Matter / Government is War Plus Loot and Plunder / No Dog is Illegal / Love is Blind / Because Science / CO2 is Plant Food / Deplorable Rights are Human Rights / Everything is Everything

Four Laws: Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices (Mises). The administrative state cannot work because the Man in Washington does not have the bandwidth to run the economy (Hayek). Regulation does not work because “regulatory capture” (Stigler). Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them (Chantrill).

Plus, Activism cannot work because shouting slogans cannot solve anything.

Plus, Administrative hierarchy never works because it can’t admit mistakes.

Plus, No administrative plan survives first contact with the market.

Mises on prices: Prices are generated by the market process and are the core of a market economy. There are no prices outside the market.

Hayek's "Knowledge Problem": Hayek argues that efficient economic planning is impossible for a central authority because necessary information -- dispersed, subjective, and local knowledge -- cannot be concentrated in one mind.

Hayek's "Spontaneous Order" is the unintended but orderly result of individuals pursuing their own ends while obeying abstract rules of just conduct. No one plans the overall pattern; it emerges.

Bill of Realities: #1: In the end, you have to mark your price or wage to market. #2: Capitalism is the permanent revolution of “creative destruction.” #3: You may not like capitalism but capitalism likes you. #4: There is no free lunch. #5: There is no such thing as “we are owed.”

Taleb: Never virtue-signal; never rent-seek; you must start a business. Chantrill: We are all virtue-signallers; we are all rent-seekers; we never quite got to start our own business.

Three Theses, a Critical Theory of Abolition: 1. We abolished slavery because slavery Does Not Pay. 2. We abolished racism because racism Does Not Pay. 3. We will abolish liberal race politics because wokism Does Not Pay.

Three Things that politicians love: starting a lovely War, defining reality with Propaganda, and mucking about with Money.

Three Facts of Politics: the political is the distinction between friend and enemy (Schmitt); there is no politics without an enemy (Yarvin); there is no politics without handouts (Chantrill).

The Story of Energy: Nuclear is more concentrated than oil; oil is more concentrated than coal; coal is more concentrated than wood.

We forget that for every success story there are dozens of failures.

When people start to feel the heat, that is when they start to cheat.

Most successes are a consequence of second, third and fourth attempts.

The world is full of good ideas. What it needs are good ideas that work.

A fact is a fact until it isn’t.

Liberals: a bunch of people insisting people who look different need saving — Derek Hunter

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts — Richard Feynman

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts — Lord Salisbury

US Politics in Four Lessons: The American People are the best people in the world. The USA is the best country in the world. When you lose a normal change election you concede with a good grace. Anyone that accuses someone of being a racist is a monster.

If you defund the police you will get vigilantes and gangs.

Anyone that calls another a racist is a hater.

Anyone that calls another a hater is a racist/sexist etc.

Anyone who raises the subject of race is a racist. The one who talks about race the longest is the racist.

A racist is absolutely anyone who’s pissed off a lefty — Glenn Reynolds

After we elected the First Black President we learned that to oppose his policies was racism. Does that mean that any opponent of the First Woman President will be sexist, and any opponent of the First Gay President will be a homophobe?

At their worst, men have a Culture of Insult and women have a Culture of Complaint.
 

At their best, men have a Culture of Courage and women have a Culture of Kindness.

Men have a Culture of Insult, as in “what’s yer problem, pal?”

Men have a Culture of Suck-it-in, as in “never complain, never explain” — Benjamin Disraeli.

Women have a Culture of Complaint, as in “I can’t believe she said that!”

Women have a Culture of Complaint, as in “Much as I hate to say it, she...”

Women have a Culture of Complaint, as in “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but she...”

A woman complains “in the expectation of being soothed.” — George Eliot

Men are creators, fighters, destroyers; Women are learners, carers, teachers.

No society has ever been, or ever will be, without religion, art, music, fashion, ceremonies, feast days, games, etc. — Martin van Creveld

Good men do the right thing; good women say the right thing.

Women expect to be protected; Men know they are expendable.

Men join the colors; Women adopt the latest fashion.

Today’s Activist is a ruling-class stooge.

All Activism comes from a place of privilege.

Activists are fake revolutionaries.

Activists are actors, play-acting revolution.

What’s the difference between an activist and a revolutionary? The activist is building his resume; the revolutionary is burning it.

At the end of the Middle Ages courtiers enjoyed LARPing battles in their tournaments. In our age activists enjoy LARPing revolution in their mostly peaceful protests.

Creating a New Cultural Narrative

A few posts ago I wrote about the need for a new culture, one that would speak to the educated creative classes and five them a new birth of meaning to replace their current evil religion of activism and identity politics.

But then today I read a piece by David Marcus bemoaning that we don't have original movies and TV shows today that everybody gets to see and share that creates a common cultural narrative. We don't get big audience for landmark TV shows like All in the Family and M.A.S.H because the TV audience is fragmented, and the top ten movies are overwhelmingly Marvel-type superhero movies.

To which I say: thank goodness. All in the Family and M.A.S.H were supercilious products that are taught a generation to sneer at the white working class and the Cold War. And they succeeded. Today you can only reach a mass audience with simplistic superhero movies, because the mass audience is not that interested in the usual lefty dreck that is drenched in lefty politics and approved identity-politics role mandates. What a good thing that people just aren't interested in that stuff. Because it means that the stage is empty. All we need to do is invent a new cultural narrative, one that resonates with peoples' lives and help them make sense of the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

(You may think that I am making a joke with this oft-repeated quote from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I assure you that I am not. It is a deadly serious statement that explains why every human society has a religion.)

One email response to my culture post said that the answer was direct spiritual encounter with God

My own experience has been that anyone who tries to use religion as a middleman between themselves and Spirit is going to be deceived.

Agreed, but only a few people have the spiritual chops for a direct encounter with Spirit. That is why most people want gurus and religious leaders to do the heavy lifting.

On Instapundit Sarah Hoyt says not to panic. We'll get indie movies in due course and everything will be all right.

And we will all get to share a new cultural narrative.