Review of the Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Documentary

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Several years ago there was a movie-length documentary on the internet which went viral. I sung its praises at the time because it offered a lot of compelling and factual evidence to support its arguments. This latest sequel 'Zeitgeist: Moving Forward' strikes me as a bit of brand name expropriation because it conveys a subtle undercurrent of hatred of capitalism. This was not evident in the first documentary. It may be by the same people; which is all the sadder. The first documentary highlighted the development and institution of religion, money and the Federal Reserve. It was largely correct in its research and findings.

This latest movie is not 'moving forward' at all; its going full circle, back to collectivism. The contributors to this movie make it abundantly clear that:

1. We are radicals, but not all radicals are bad, evil collectivists

2. They are scientists and so their conclusions deserve respect

There are a great many problems with this documentary. In fact, its akin to Michael Moore efforts in its shortcomings. It would be a lengthy review to highlight all of its misconceptions, but let me raise the biggest blunders:

1. The contemporary 'mixed economy' is not capitalism; it combines the market system with socialism. If we understand capitalism we recognise that its a optimistic system that entails people trading value for value for 'mutual' self-interest. This is not compatible with socialism which entails the sacrifice of personal values for the sake of the 'common good'. I would argue that it is the 'altruism' in socialism which is incompatible with capitalism, and which is the corrupting influence of capitalism on so many levels.

2. They depict capitalism as some ruthless system and yet it was the collectivists like Stalin, Marx and Hitler (aka 'You are nothing, your nation is everything') whom they wish to distance themselves from, who caused so much suffering. There is no question that there is suffering and depravation in contemporary society; its origin was the legacy of suffering. The liberalisation of the 17th-18th century exposed the flaws in the collectivist system, just as the low-wage labour liberalisation or 'surplus' of the modern era is exposing the shortcomings in Chinese, Indian, Argentinian and Brazilian collectivism, as these economies discard thei last vestiges of socialism/collectivism....or so we hope. The reality is that this is not going to occur until people recognise the philosophical nature of capitalism. You cannot believe in capitalism (i.e. ethic of self-interest) and be a  collectivist or mystic; as these conceptions entail a repudiation of the self or ego. This raises a great many contradictions in people's minds because they think the hedonist is 'self-interested'. But getting an education is self-interested. Its a question of context. In a 'dog-eat-dog' system of shortages people resort to ruthless measures. In a wealth-creation system like capitalism, you witness 'mutual gain'. The problem is not capitalism; the problem is collectivists who fail to recognise their better nature as humans, and who are enabled by hypocritical feel-good liberals and indulgent parents who undermine the personal values of their 'beneficiaries'.

3. The documentary draws on scientists who posit a false dichotomy between genetic determinism vs free will; only to draw another false dichotomy between environment and free will. The implication of their proposition is that we are passive by-products of our environment. What they fail to realise is that we are neither, and that we have a personal context, where our minds are engaged if mental engagement is rewarded.

4. Convenient truth - They correctly attribute the development of oil to a great to deal of prosperity; but what they fail to see is that capitalism made it possible. Cars were a 'luxury' until capitalism mass produced them. In fact if you look back before the Industrial Revolution, even coffee and sugar were luxuries. How we have prospered thanks to capitalism. These 'scientists' posit that we face crisis because we are running out of oil....that capitalism is lagging in the development of solar cells. In fact, they would have us roll out non-commercial technology whilst there is actually plenty of oil still to be discovered. Consider that Indian, Australian, Argentinean, Africa, Asian offshore basins have yet to be explored to any significant degree. They are still finding oil in Mexico, and yet they have been drilling there for nearly a century. Already, the 'wealthy' people among us are lowering the cost of solar, just as wealthy people are underwriting the development of plasma TVs, coffee and other products which were previously luxuries. The cost of solar panels are falling as we speak. They will be commercially prudent within a decade. We already have enough nuclear fuel to power the world for 7000 years; and you can imagine that we have scarcely looked for it because there is so much of it. Australia has 1/3 of the world's resources, and yet it has a moratorium of mining it, i.e. the 3-mines policy. This is contemporary socialist policy. Three mines is just right. In the last 50 years of these mines operating, there has been no deleterious effects. At the concentration and generation stage, there has been problems like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima; however I would argue that these were 'government' regulatory issues, not private operation per se.

5. Addicted - The scientists talk about 'addiction' and surmise that we are addicted to oil. It goes without saying that people have taken oil for granted. That is understandable since they have only lived in a period of time in which oil was cheap. But energy is just getting cheaper in real terms, and it is scientific research which is driving prices lower. Solar power will essentially be free in future. 

6. Technological development is not due to capitalism - These scientists would have you believe that technology is not rewarded with money; that the inventor Tesla was not motivated by money. Typical of a socialist to only see the 'money' and not understand the egoism inherent in creativity; as well as the egoism. Do you think a socialist would have the mental efficacy to advance an invention despite persecution by the mindless collectivist? No. Just look how the collectivist in wartime Japan, Russia and the Middle East fell into compliance. Their mindless passivity is their issue, not their 'love of money'. A socialist of course does not even consider the origins of money; there soul concern is 'expropriating MONEY'. Marx and Keynes provided a rationalisation to sanction expropriation; they provided it, and the opportunistic politicians took it. The current high oil prices are preparing the world for a non-oil future. They are doing that by helping the development of other biofuels, solar, nuclear, wind, and even less energy-intensive applications, i.e. The miniaturisation of computers which draw less power.

7. Recycling is purported a failure of the current 'capitalist' system. This is a totally hypocritical argument because it is actually the socialist 'rules' which preclude capitalists from designing more efficient cities. How can you argue for more efficient cities and for recycling at the same time. The old is currently used because its making best use of old resources. I might add that placing waste in a landfill is recycling. It remains dormant in the ground until the technology is developed to extract it commercially. There will come a time when harvesting human waste will prove more viable than exploring for virgin metals and energy supplies.

8. The documentary makes the case that 'capitalism' fails society on the basis of a number of empirical measures. They subtly argue that capitalist competition causes stress and thus we need a community which gives greater care to people. This is the classic socialist flaw. Firstly, apprehension or anxiety is due to mental or physical disempowerment, i.e. An inability to cope with the world. It is the capitalist who etches out a place in the world; it is the collectivist who expects the world to take care of them. Why? Because they were made vulnerable very young, and then they experienced Christians and socialists promising them a world of plenty and unconditional love. The capitalist message is that you can have these things, but you have to earn them. The socialist gives them the rationalisation to expropriate these benefits because they are intrinsically good. Unfortunately, it is the socialist system which creates the 'expropriation' that makes the capitalist less intellectual, and less empathetic. When people want to steal your money, you are less inclined to empathise with their plight. When you believe others have a moral responsibility to care for you, you are less inclined to empathise with them. You will never hear a socialist give a though to the anxiety of a capitalist. They make no distinction between money earned and stolen. Why? Because they steal it. Is this the morality of a caring person? It is the socialism in our economy which undermines the prospects for empathy in our society. These socialists argue that social relations depend on empathy and reciprocity; but this is the foundation of capitalism; not socialist. Collectivism compels you to give; you have no discretion. Do you imagine these 'social planners' are going to give you the discretion to opt out of their system. You will be extorted; as they campaign for higher taxes. 

9. It is interesting that these scientists hark back to the days of 'hunter & gatherer', to a time when forest animals posed a threat to human existence. Their point is that these were times of non-violence. This is nonsense. They had no violence because they had no scarcity; and they also had no egoism. This is not a good thing; as its the values that have surely kept them there. There are people still living on these terms, and they rely on the modern world to deal with their issues, whether its climate change, disease, drought, etc. You can argue that 'civilised man caused these problems', and that is true to some extent, but that is not necessarily the case. The world will survive without us. Before humans 95% of all living species were wiped out before the mammals developed. It is advanced capitalists who offer the prospect of averting similar crises; and these collectivists are worried about the 'spotted owl' or the 5% of socialists who don't understand the proper values for humanity. There is a crisis of human values keeping people poor; both in the third world (systematically) and in the Western world (i.e. welfarism of liberals). The shared legacy is the collectivism of religion, socialism and now secular irrationalism. But note how this irrationalism posits as science.

10. Modern rationalism - In the 1960s people campaigned for civil rights and animal rights, etc and their appeal was emotive and demonstrative. We want action. They offered no argument. Their approach was intimidation and obstruction. They were an embarrassment for government. These people became ubiquitous; and people wanted justification. In opposition to science and evidence, these thugs lost credibility. All life is evolving....and so does the collectivist. The modern day collectivist repudiates socialism as a label. This is the name of the game. They disparage people with labels, while inventing their own. They have no notion of the meaning of these labels. They are objects of smear, designed to disparage. Now, watch how the collectivist uses your ambivalence of scientific evidence to say that you know nothing, when all they know is the label; and not the argument which gives it meaning. Climate change is a complex issue. It draws on a great deal of empirical research. Observe how these 'scientists' will repudiate analytical thinking; even though valid empirical science needs to rest upon assumptions. i.e. replicable results, validity of sampling method as well as sample inclusion. They use statistics as if they were causal arguments; in the process failing to consider the context, which would of course repudiate their argument. This is another false dichotomy; empiricism vs rationalism; when in fact science requires both empirical and analytical perspectives.

11. Human nature - This documentary suggests that humans are cooperative rather than competitive by nature. i.e. We are communal rather than antagonistic. The fact is that we are both, and that 'nature' rests on the nature of our knowledge - synergistic and differentiated positions. Reconciling these positions is what advances human understanding. Little surprise that periods of collectivist correlate with Dark Ages and cultural revolutions. Socialism or collectivism does not tolerate 'difference', which is why the Arabs are still living in the Dark Ages, i.e. pre-civilisation, profiting from oil developed by the West. 

12. Money according to this documentary is dehumanising. Money has destroyed human empathy apparently. This is nonsense. Money freed people from poverty, so they today have far greater capacity for empathy. In ancient societies; and whilst communities might have been harmonious in their immediate 'huddle'; that did not preclude them from escaping the folly of their vulnerability to drought and floods by raiding neighbouring communities. This was ancient Europe, China, and even the hunter & gatherer communities. The life expectancy was low despite their 'natural abundance'. Again, this is not to totally embrace the modern form of society; it is not a pure form of capitalism. i.e. I personally think land is not a legitimate form of property rights because its not an improvement. I thus see it as a form of expropriation and tyranny. Look how British property rights entailed alienating the Maori and aborigine. They people had no notion of property; but I don't believe the Western conception was fully legitimate either.

13. It argues that the modern economy does not measure social well-being; and gives greater regard to economic measures. This is nonsense. The people with money focus on money measures; and the people who are focused on the poor look at those measures. The problem is that the values of the modern liberal are antithetical to the intellectual and physical well-being of the poor. Why? Because teaching people to be parasites living off the rich is not a value proposition. It is the values of the indulgent parent who gives their children anything that pleases them, failing to recognise the culture of entitlement that it engenders.

14. Waste - Listening to this movie, you could be forgiven for thinking that waste is bad. Waste is not actually or necessarily bad; its a material that can be used. If it was valued in a capitalist economy, then it would be used; if its not viable, the implication is that its costly, and thus an imposition to use it. These socialists suggest that they can design a city to avoid these 'waste streams' or to use them; but capitalism can do that too if any corporation had the moral sanction of force of government. The problem is - what else can this moral sanction for coercion be used for. This is of course the danger of these people. These liberals will be swept aside as 'well-intentioned' Maynard Keynes was; thanks to whom we ended up with a welfare state. He said after the fact that he only intended the welfare state as a temporary measure. I guess the government had only a selective need for him. They needed a scientific justification for slavery, and like the scientists in this documentary, Keynes provided the rationalisation. So did Marx. 

15. Built in obsolescence is indeed an attribute of the capitalist system. This is because capitalism is a growth system; whereas socialism or collectivism is a stagnant system. You cannot grow when people have no respect for your rights. You can't grow when people are undercutting your basic means of survival. That is after all why the hunter & gatherers lived in groups. Privacy or personal autonomy is a modern conception, and insofar as we live in a 'mixed economy' we have failed to actually fully comprehend the opportunity. We are denied it by the anti-intellectual statist; as well as the ambivalent 'practical' businessman focused on material prosperity; who spurns all ideas in the process; including good ideas. He spurns all ideas; all that which disempowers or raises apprehension. Ask yourself why many business people spurn parenting responsibilities; its because it raises moral dilemmas which are a source of moral ambivalence. Socialists are not winning the debate; businessmen are handing it to them on a plate. If businessmen engaged their minds; socialism would disappear within 10-20 years. 

16. Materialism - This brings us to another argument from this documentary....that capitalism actually rewards vice. They argue that it allows doctors to profit from fixing people rather than curing them. My favourite example is Pro-Active, the zit cream which claims in their advert to overcome low self-esteem...and yet it displays a litany of famous people, as if to imply that self-esteem or success is about looking good. This is such poor science that it borders on child abuse. There is a counter-argument to make. They might argue that its not their argument to make, that they are not psychologists. I would argue that its the role of courts to settle such issues....not for social planners. Any perceived injustice in our contemporary society arises because justice is in the hands of government, not corporations. The government has become the collectivists instrument of systematic abuse. Stalin, Marx and Hitler used government to achieve their power; the sanction of government to 'coerce', and yet these people advance a different 'scientific' rhetoric for more of the same. Is that 'moving forward' or repeating the past? 

17. Brands - The documentary makes the point that people are presented with the false economy which allows people to pay $1000 for a handbag which cost $10 to produce in China. The implied injustice is lost on the fact that pretentious people are not capitalists; they are the children of rich liberals, or the wealthy who have actually earned their wealth. Brands are a symbol; collectivists use symbols as a substitute for reality. The modern representative democracy system subverts facts (i.e. rational debate) with influence (i.e. collectivist majoritivism - using the sanction of the uneducated masses to expropriate wealth from the rich). The lobbyist rather than the lone rational counterpart is the basis of money discourse. The middlemen representing 'money' and 'collectivist (brute mob rule). This is a false dichotomy; we need rational life-affirming political discourse. This is not the argument rendered in this documentary. They do not repudiate the irrationality of the current system. They make no epistemological argument at all. They are materialists wanting your money. Entitled academics; parasites who live off university grants, or custodians of wealth they did not earn. 

18. Debt splurge - They lambust the debt bubble. The problem of the modern and historical debt crises was not debt per se; but the government as a custodian of the 'common good'. When the government has arbitrary power to manipulate interest rates or print money, then you have an instrument for the systematic abuse of those who are forced to acquiesce; which is the taxpayer. There is private debt excesses as well, but witness how that is precipitated by governmemts offering incredibly low interest rates, even first home grants to encourage (premature) home ownership, and zoning restrictions which keep property prices arbitrarily high. This is not capitalism; its statist, collectivist extortion and it requires the sanctioning of force by government, i.e. the initiation of force. 

19. Correlation - I raised above the tendency for 'collectivist' scientists to misuse science insofar as this misappropriation of the scientific method. In no sense do they sink to their anti-intellectual lowest than with statistical databases, such as can be found at Equality Trust. This empirical evidence offers a range of social well-being indices correlating income disparity with 'good news' factors. The problem with this analysis is that is raises a blatant false dichotomy. They are comparing - not capitalism with social redistribution, but some redistribution with more redistribution, and concluding that more is best. Unsurprisingly it does not draw data from the Middle East or other highly collectivist countries; and for good reason it does not draw data from a libertarian economy. Why? Well, its too practical to allow people to have freedom, so we enslave people for others. I would argue that there would be near 'zero' social disharmony in a capitalist country, but no tyrant will grant me or others the freedom to prove otherwise. You'd think there would be room for a society to test that theory....but no, libertarians are destined to be marginalised. The most equal societies in the world are those which are collectivist because they have no egoism at all, i.e. Iraq, Iran, Egypt. Well, no material expression of egoism because its difficult to spurn your own mind. Mixed economies have a bad track record because the issue is not self-interest; the issue is what collectivist values do to how people interpret self interest. In a society that sanctions self interest, in which values are considered subjective, mindless people will do as they please; whether within the law, or in defiance of it, if they think they can get away with in. These empirical studies therefore are subject to misinterpretation because their researchers simply don't understand psychology. 

The documentary is not entirely invalid or useless. It makes several pertinent points - if not original:

1. It argues that humans have been stressed by prenatal stage, though it might be construed as attributing this to capitalism. Poor mothers are driven to drugs and alcohol by capitalist marginalisation. I would argue that the moral ambivalence of our contemporary system is the blame. 

2. It argues that our modern statist economy pursues 'economic activity'. This is true enough; however this measure of economic well-being was forged by government, not the private sector. The private sector, whilst not terribly intellectual, are focused on their compartmentalised goals. I would argue that coercion as practiced by the government and advanced by modern-day liberals actually makes business people more collectivist, i.e. more materialist and compartmentalised. Look how people who disempowered seek tangible, isolated outlets which entail personal autonomy. The businessman is repressing the outside coercion by focusing on business, material well-being, because this is the only field of endeavour that gives them any pleasure. I will argue that unless the business reclaims their mental efficacy and right to live, they will be occupying an even smaller space than the Jews.

3. This documentary does not make a case for the legitimate injustices in the contemporary system. I am not a fan of private 'land' property because I think its a framework for extortion. You could argue the same about all wealth; but wealth is not a basis for extortion in a free market; land is. This is particularly the case with government-sanctioned zoning regimes. A person might argue that you don't need to preclude land ownership; but I would argue that the right to 'improvement' is critical, not the land or subsoil itself. For the same reason, I'd not recognise a farmers right to mineral wealth until his soil. He did not find it; but he ought to be compensated. I'm not an advocate of expropriating land; just not a supporter of people profiting from land speculation; but rather speculation related to the productive value of the land; which they actually created. i.e. Any farm value which rests on rises in commodity prices is reasonable. 

The contributors to this documentary posit as 'non-socialists' and yet they are highly ambivalent about the mechanism for 'redistribution' and their social planning. The problem is of course it is socialism. But don't expect people to learn from history. People, if they are desperate enough, will not stop to ask why they are destitute, they will simply accept anyone who offers a moral sanction for the looting of wealth. 

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Author Andrew Sheldon| Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

A chaos of public administration in NZ

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This article by the NZ Herald highlights in NZ how the government is bringing about the failure of state administration. Apart from the prospects of civil unrest, as we have seen in the Middle East, the public system is broke and needs to be dropped.

Of course this type of chaos is occurring in all of the democracies around the world; and understandably so. The US was the base currency which propelled them all to the same ultimate end....an inability to pay their bills.

The question is - will people blame capitalism; or will they recognise the primary role of government in precipitating this state of affairs. It is hard to blame government when you need a hand-out, and no one thinks to blame anyone when the economy 'looks good'. Well, not everyone. We have been blaming govt since we started blogging in 2005.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Tyranny in Cuba highlights despotism in the West

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From Cuba, the Miami Herald has the story of a uneducated, unskilled mother who is leading the anti-government protesters seeking the overthrow of the Cuban government. In Cuba, the tyranny of government is far more apparent than in the West. We are raised with this misconception in Western countries that we are free. The reality is that we have certain political rights which mean nothing if the government is able to perniciously able to tax you, to be unaccountable for how it spends your taxes, and if it has the unconditional power to do so.

They would argue that you have the right to choose your leaders in triennial elections. This is nonsense. It is not a 'real' choice when there are two entrenched parties, and in any respect, you cannot package support for candidates, and you cannot argue that democracy is legitimate. Even if more than 50% of the people supported the government on any particular issue, that would not necessary make the government right. In fact, given the populist, uncritical thinking of the public, I would think it has more likelihood of being wrong.

Public policy issues are complex. They require the diligent, critical thinking of well-educated people; the greatest minds of the people; not political middlemen sanctioned by often uneducated, passive, disinterested minds only interested in concrete, expedient values; i.e. What is in it for them. Such a system is destined to alienate the mindless and persecute the wealthy. No one benefits from such a system - not the middle class, and not even the politicians themselves for the following reasons:

1. Democracy sabotages the economic potential of the economy, by centralising power and imposing arbitrary, statutory laws which only preserve the pretence of control. Such laws are destined to create loopholes, which require a crippling litany of patch-ups, each more desperate and expedient than the last. The NZ parliament now laments that policy is so complex.

2. It sabotages the minds of all people, whether it cripples the wealthy or intellectual with anxiety, or repression

3. It underpins any prospect of politicians having self-respect. Having been close to aspiring politicians, they display no respect for voters. Their ideas are coercive, so they are incapable of practical solutions.

Your political masters have no self-respect. They are not the best among you; they are the among the more delusioned. They know not what they are doing. They have no moral sanction; only your complicity and your obedience to count upon. They are morally deprave and they know it; the tax office knows it; the police knows it. They are corrupt to varying degrees, and they live on hope. Why live on hope when there is certainty in logic and integrity. We need a meritocracy based on reason.

Free thinkers of the Western world - why do you settle for so little. The use of prescription medicines rise unabated. More people are diagnosed with depression and anxiety each year, more with psychosis. Even the healthiest among you are repressed, compartmentalised and mnidlessly obedient. That is not justice; its tyranny. Reclaim your right to your own life; a life free of the tyranny of your government and your neighbour. Your political rights mean nothing without economic rights. Taxation is not for preserving infrastructure and civil society; it is about preserving political power, which becomes increasingly difficult, as your minds degrade under deprave values. The foundation of your society is a mix of markets and socialism. The socialism within you is destroying you, and it is capitalism which will get the blame. Apparently you were too greedy to preserve the virtue of socialism. It was not capitalism; not if by capitalism you mean a system based on reason and volution. Only socialists would advance a system based on coercion and compliance. A capitalist does not need a revolution if he is free. The revolutionists have always been the collectivists, whether socialists, fascists, environmentalists, animal liberationists, etc.

I hope you can find the courage and conviction of this 68yo uneducated, unskilled mother in Cuba, who is leading a protest. What's your excuse? Not persecuted enough? Life too breezy. Have all the material concessions you could possibly want? Are you happy to have the power to buy another product you don't need? For this mother; I don't think it was about the money; even though she has less than us Westerners. The propaganda in the West is no less than that in Cuba. The West is in a tyranny, but people have been seduced by materialism. When they sold their values for materialism, they renounced their minds. The socialist solution is that you have not done enough; now renounce your materialism. My answer is - Stop Renouncing! You have a right to live. You birth right is that you have no encumbrances. You were not born into slavery; you just have to proclaim your freedom....yes, freedom in the Western world. You no longer need be British 'subjects'. The law is not above you; the law ought to be for you. The law ought to be your protection. It was once under Common Law, but common law has been displaced by statutory law because you sanctioned the politicians who enslave you. Withdraw your sanction for their representatives and their system. March in deviance against a pernicious system which will ultimately lead us to a worse form of tyranny. When all the world's collectivist countries adopt democracy, there will be no standard of comparison. There will be the historical record, your ideas, but what value will they be in a world of moral scepticism. Your scepticism is symptom of your acceptance of ambivalence....your concession that your mind is powerless to solve the problem. So support those minds which preserve their integrity. You will not find them in a despotic political system. Stand up for a meritocracy based on reasons - not 'numbers', where representation is a proxy thrust upon you. Your democracy is merely a legitimatised tyranny.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Is the next Chinese leader Evil?

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What might we come to expect from China's new government? Apparently they have already selected the next appointee - Xi Jinping, China’s current vice president. This leaves us wondering what type of China can we expect.

In this post I want to use some NY Times media article as the basis for my moral criticism of this new appointee. We might also ask why is the media so reluctant to engage in moral judgement...or is the problem that media journalists are just bad at it. I want to comment on some excerpts I have taken from this article:

“Nor was Mr. Xi untainted by corruption scandals. One party investigation into bribe-taking in Ningde and Fuzhou, publicized years after he left Fujian, toppled two former city leaders whom Mr. Xi had promoted”.

We therefore know that there is a strong correlation between this new appointee and corruption. Critics might argue that China has always had a great deal of corruption. The issue remains though that such a 'strong candidate' might be a particularly risky candidate from this perspective. Might it also pose a problem in terms of aiding his capacity to centralising power. We might also expect his style to herald a different approach. I would not be surprised to see a tempering of the political power (welcomed by the West), but also an escalation in the financial expropriation of corrupt government.

“Since joining the inner sanctum in Beijing, Mr. Xi has reinforced his longstanding posture as a team player. As president of the Central Party School, Mr. Xi recently made a priority of teaching political morality based on Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideals, a resurgent trend in the bureaucracy”.

This quote suggests that there is still some sympathy for collectivism...so he is no advocate of capitalism. He has not simply preserved the status quo; he has reinforced the collectivist creed, regardless of whether its communism or fascism, its collectivism at heart. This highlights that China is veering in the wrong direction.

“He once told the American ambassador to China over dinner that he enjoyed Hollywood films about World War II because of the American sense of good and evil, according to diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks. He took a swipe at Zhang Yimou, the renowned Chinese director, saying some Chinese filmmakers neglect values they should promote”.

This is interesting because it invalidates his pragmatism, so he has a manipulative nature. He also expresses a strong coercive desire for power over people's values. This would of course be tempered by his pragmatism, however that is just a question of strategy. The implication is that the Chinese executive is supportive of a leader who is going to centralise power in coming years. He is also recognised as a very charismatic style of leader. Take note that his wife is a popular folk singer in China. So he is the style of leader who, unlike Putin, does not need to be taught charm, he has been faking it for years already.

This particular NY Times journalist suggests:

“His [Xi's] views of the West remain difficult to define”.

I don't think so. His style and values expressed by these comments suggest that he is a very dangerous and undesirable style of collectivist who is destined to centralise and affirm collectivist power in the Chinese executive. He displays signs of nationalism with racist overtones. There is not much evidence, but it is all consistently EVIL! Compare him to the former Japanese Prime Minister, Juniichi Koizumi, who also liked Hollywood movies. He I think liked the romance and charm of Hollywood movies, but this 'pragmatist' likes the schemes of 'good and evil'. He is a very dangerous man...and he chooses collectivism..That's evil. Anyway, he is probably going to bring civil war to China....but in all probability not for 2 decades yet...watch for a financial crisis ib China. It is some time off yet. The greatest fear though is that he will escalate nationalism and thus racial prejudice. Watch for those schemes. More importantly, the United States could actually play into his hands if it starts attacking China's policy over exchange rate regimes (i.e. calling for its deregulation) or if it engages in a trade war. This would of course allow the Chinese leader to deflect hostilities outwards. It is better to sell benefits behind the scenes.

If the United States escalated tensions with moral condemnation, where would China go? Probably nowhere. In fact, I think China would be worried about offending too many countries. Most particularly it will allow the leader to consolidate power and to simply be more corrupt than it already is. It will be power for the sake of money. I tend to think militarism is just a symbolic gesture these days. The nuclear age has pretty well placed major wars behind us.

The next question is whether he is an ardent nationalist. He made his remark:

“Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us”.

This comment is not a compelling indicator of his nationalist values because it is in response to criticism. Certainly he is a collectivist, so we would expect a high level of national pride. It is a popular myth in China I would suggest that Westerners are indulgent, glutenous and decadent. Oh, who am I kidding...its all true for a great many of us...as the Chinese will be when they make a great deal of money.

He then makes the statement:

“First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?”

We must however remember that he has a pragmatic, collectivist "ideology", so what is true today need not be true tomorrow. That is what defines a pragmatist - 'flexibility of ideals' - not a lack of ideals, which you might consider an 'indulgence' in itself.. hehe. Well, Chinese philosophy was never very good. Just a lot of coercive, pragmatic, Buddhist/Taoist crap. Give it time, Western 'scientific' reasoning will take hold. Hopefully it will be a better version that the crap accepted as scientific reasoning today in the West, with its emphasis on empiricism.

Can we take some comfort in the acknowledgement by Hu that China could improve its human rights record". This statement from NZ Herald:

"Hu delighted Obama with an admission that China's human rights need improvement".

This is as good as empty rhetoric because few Chinese people are going to hear it; anyone on the home turf is going to be oppressed if they act upon it, and ultimately they only need to maintain a gradual trend towards rights to attain some legitimacy from the West. More problematic is that the West does not have a good track record. Everyone celebrates human rights in the West, but what good are political rights if you have no economic rights. i.e. The tax office can seize money from your bank account....for the same reasons China does, i.e. for the 'common good'...for the same reasons that Hitler did.

In conclusion, I would suggest that the West should not push policy on China, however it should continue to maximise the integration of Western and Eastern values. Ultimately if Chinese power is going to be tempered, it is going to be by internal dissent. I would also suggest that the greatest influence upon China is going to be Western values on the future Chinese leadership. It is indeed a positive step then that the future leader's children are studying at Harvard. So long as the West continues to occupy a 'vacuous space of moral scepticism', we weaken the prospect of China choosing the 'right path', that being an objective path consonant with human nature, i.e. The facts of reality. i.e. Based on a correspondence and coherence test of truth. More concerning to me is that we are becoming more collectivist (i.e. moving towards China) by allowing the trumping of common law by arbitrary statutory law.

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Author
Andrew Sheldon
Resource Rent Tax
Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Socialism a winner in most civil uprisings

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Western governments around the world are in for a surprise. They think that the events in Tunisia are confined, if not to Tunisia, then to the Arab world. This is the democracy that the Arab world right? The problem is two issues:

1. Democracy has not been so appealing in the Western world

2. Democracy would merely be a form of moral or political relativism for Tunisia since we ought not be happy with it.

Western governments will not reflect on these events so critically. They will conclude that the events in Tunisia are compartmentalised; that there is no prospect of political instability in the West. There are reasons to think again:

1. Democracy is a fragile beast because it represses personal aspirations

2. Repression, incompetent government, farcical process, widespread injustice, extortion are all reasons to hold the current system and political parties in disdain

3. People who are repressed eventually break out of it - that is the oppression which makes their repression necessary. People repress for different reasons; but political coercion is the big one because it is systematised, and it also has the 'legitimacy' of being sanction by the majority...whatever that means.

4. People are inclined to get very angry when they realise that

5. In times like these politicians start to feel a little more vulnerable. In the USA, we had one near assassination of a US Senator, and more will likely come around the world. There is no need to assassinate people. Repudiates of contemporary politics need only stop paying taxes. Extortionists can only operate if they are funded and if they retain legitimacy. They can only place so many people in prisons. And to what effect if they are extorting wealth. What judge would enable government to do what is illegal under common law for all citizens. Someone merely has to render a good logical argument.

6. Western politicians will compromise of course. They will do a deal with the powers which emerge. The question is who will emerge.

This is the sad reality about revolutions and political upheaval. It tends to lead to socialist revolution. i.e. The socialist thugs in the unions who are supported by pseudo-intellectuals in academia, government and the 'all-to-common' bureaucracy' are the people who you have to fear most. Well, as in all revolutions, their modus operandi is to blame capitalism for all the irksome issues in the world. If you listen to their slogans, you would conclude that capitalists are selfish, self-serving pigs only interested in themselves, only interested in extorting wealth from the 'battler', 'hard working folk like you or I'. Most people are already morally and economically morally ambivalent. The problem is in times of crisis, people flock to the concrete-bound, men-of-action like the socialist brutes because they instill fear, they promise everything and account for nothing, and their rhetoric (which for years you considered delusional ideolism) suddenly looks compatible with the state of the world. In any respect, any group which proposes to extort wealth from the wealthy is going to have the majority's vote right (aka Western-style nationalism). We thought those things only happened in Venezuela, or Germany? Or what about America. In the 1990s there were the Rodney King riots in LA. This is a case of blacks breaking out of their repression.

The longer that people stay in a state of repression - the greater the release when they finally break out. The Rodney King riots were a very isolated or compartmentalised issue. In the era of the internet, those frustrations can spread globally very quickly. They might even be a compelling reason for 'emergency' legal provisions to shut down Julian Assange's WikiLeaks.

At this point I simply want to warm people that socialists are going to use any political stability to grab power. They will appeal to fear, they will appeal to your base vulnerabilities in order to win power. Sadly business offers a very weak intellectual argument. They have always relied on money to achieve what they want. Socialists are master manipulators. They are very good at associating themselves with every 'moral cause' and denouncing capitalism for everything that goes wrong. For instance, the Pike Creek disaster in NZ. They are the first to get in there to protest the greedy capitalists, etc. They are the first to raise money. It is all a public relations exercise. Most of what they say is utter smear; and a great deal is mere rhetoric. But they are more committed than most people. They are in there for the long term.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

US Congress evades justification for assassination

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The US Congress is engaging in political game-play by engaging in empty symbolism and painting the notion that Loughner was mentally ill. I have not seen any evidence to suggest that he was mentally ill. On the contrary, he strikes me as a person who was 'morally ambivalent' and 'disempowered' by a political system which gave him no real or effective participation, and more importantly, a system which does not offer a say to people who have more to contribute that these 'symbolic idiots' in parliament. This is what happens when you push people in a corner; they get violent. Just look at Tunisia. Their lack of rights is no less real than ours. We have a government which totally disregards the interests of its citizens, and so do they. The only difference is that they have nothing to lose, and many of them have a more deeply collectivist value system which makes suicidal gestures noble. That is not crazy, its just poor decision-making. But you can expect that in a country where a great many people are utter collectivists.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York:

“We believe in discourse in America. We believe in strenuous discourse. We don’t sweep differences under the rug".

I would not be surprised if this is the next target of some 'crazy man'. The guy is in utter denial. Does he imagine that his politics are having no impact on real people? It is blatant evasion and probably dishonesty to suggest that such actions - as the assassination attempt by Loughner - was nothing more than the actions of a madman....easily resolved by revision to some mental health act. Reading on, you realise that they just don't get it. They are akin to other public servants like academics who do not realise how detached from reality they are:

“Tom and I have real differences. But we can do it civilly. I will say, to Tom’s credit, we have disagreed on a whole lot of stuff, but he’s always been civil, he’s always been a gentleman. And that’s an example that people should follow — politicians and the media.”

It is not that you disagree. It is the fact that your policies and parliamentary antics have no depth, no philosophy. You deal in 'numbers' not 'ideas'. You deal in extortion, and not the principles or rights which protect people. Who wants servility? Politics is about conflict, but it is the nature of your conflict. It does not make a difference. It is like negotiating a home rental contract which takes a year because the lawyers are concerned by incidental details, knowing that whatever happens they will be supported as 'middlemen' by the process. You are destined to find that contempt for lawyers and politicians is likely to fester. That is what happens if people are so deluded and indifferent to the suffering of others. There attempts to minimise their responsibility is only evasion which is only going to result in political instability. Anyway instability is good...it brings about change...and the loss of lives is probably necessary. We go to war for freedom...why not civil uprising? There is an important distinction to be made between rights which impose on others and those which are a protection. The distinction is not clear for most people because we live in a highly coercive society where there is no clear boundaries between your entitlement and your neighbour's obligation...so let me make the distinction...your rights end when you initiate the use of force against others. Taxation is a good example. That does not however justify killing people. Why? Killing a person will not achieve your ends. There is no education, there is no prospect of change. You have to serve your legitimate objectives, and not engage in mindless 'venting of anger'.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

At least murder counts for something - Part 1

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When I read the following excerpt from a NY Times editorial I thought I was going to get some insightful commentary...

“Of the many truths in President Obama’s powerful Tucson speech, none was more indisputable than his statement that no one can know what is in a killer’s mind. So why have we spent so much time debating exactly that?

The answer is classic American denial. It was easier to endlessly parse Jared Lee Loughner’s lunatic library — did he favor “The Communist Manifesto” or Ayn Rand? — than confront the larger and harsher snapshot of our current landscape that emerged after his massacre. A week on, that denial is becoming even more entrenched. As soon as the president left the podium Wednesday night, we started shifting into our familiar spin-dry post-tragedy cycle of the modern era — speedy “closure,” followed by a return to business as usual, followed by national amnesia”.

But instead I got a pile of drivel to suggest that he had no insights either. This is despite making the following statement:

"If we learn nothing from this tragedy, we are back where we started".

We might ask why do we have to get to a place where people are being killed before we start questioning social discourse. It's gratifying that its just 9 people killed. Well done society! Well done. This is actually an improvement because in the last decade it took the takeover of Poland by the Nazis before people started thinking. The problem then, as now, is that the social discourse is destined to be uncritical and a 'democratic takeover' of legitimacy, so its destined not to be different. So what did we learn from WWI? Absolutely nothing. Far from repudiating fascism....we went into overdrive and greatly expanded the powers of the state. We had a post-war reconstruction like Hitler's emergency provisions. The state rolled out a series of 'national imperatives. Roosevelt abolished the Gold Standard, commencing an era of 'ultra-easy' monetary policy and evaporating accountability, and this of course financed 'The New Deal', a free lunch...at least we thought.

Here is more evidence. The graves in the local cemetery in my town have words to sum up the values which those World War II veterans were fighting for....it says:

"Service before self"

Let me place that in the context of Hitler's propaganda:

"You are nothing, your nation is everything"

Before you tell me that they are different; that there is at least 'self' in the 'collective good', I impel you to identify it and differentiate your good from his. If you do, you will realise that you will be left in a place of conflict. This is why you repress because you don't want to acknowledge that the cake is actually shrinking because some people are not making cake, but rather tanning on the beach; whilst others seem to have lost their enthusiasm for work because their rights meant more than your 'collective good', but they could not find the intellectual ammunition to debate you. And given that the democratic political system scarcely recognises their thoughts, and gives them only a small and meaningless vote in political charade called an 'election', they have effectively and cynically resigned themselves to psychological repression.

In actual fact we did not need these murders to have a debate. We could have had a debate before guns were even sold. I am sure there was a debate; I am sure the implications of that debate would not have been fully understood. I am also sure that we do not now know the implications of our current political system. I am sure I know more than most people. This is only because I am more honest, because I recognise the mental efficacy that arises from constant debate and learning, critical thinking and a respect for facts. A preparedness to never place a pretense about the facts. It takes a mind that goes looking for problems; as opposed to a mind that shrieks and dives for cover when they find one.

There is nothing hard about finding truth. There is a very small percentage of the population who in fact know the truth of the matter. The problem is that they are encased in fear of the senseless majority who make the decisions; who have the power to extort; who have the 'power to be stupid or not', and who renounce their minds, and disregard all manner of objective standards of responsibility, and instead offers a relativist standard in the form of the justice system and our statutory law making. Today, we have shifting goal posts, and we wonder why the world is not fair. We wonder why those 'arbitrary' goal posts are not the same width. Why that team gets to play 10minutes longer than your team. Don't know what I mean? That is alright. You don't even need to know the rules; you just need to 'comply'. Hitler would have used the word 'obey', but it does not matter. Ignorance is as good as fear for all concerned. You were never supposed to know the rules....because it was never about you. There was always a bigger collectivist goal in mind. i.e. Its kind of like being forced to attend the football. You think they built that stadium for your enjoyment, but after each week of attendance, you realise it was never about your enjoyment because you are forced to go. It is simply about the money they make. You stopped being important when:

1. You became indifferent to the quality of your life experience, i.e. You stopped thinking and dropped your expectations or standards

2. You stopped being free, i.e. Life became a social obligation with consequences of some punitive action.

That is not to say that there should not be standards, or that you should not be responsible for your actions. The issue is that those standards (i.e. laws) should not be arbitrary, and they ought to be open to your reproach. i.e. Those laws should not be enacted on the basis of collective extortion, nor free of any form of objective accountability. There is a reason why Loughner killed Gabrielle Giffords in the United States. It is certain that he killed because he was not just young, but he was frustrated. Not just by the nature of society, but that by the fact that he could not identify the nature of society's problem, and he was clearly sure that no one else had the answers either; because if they did we would all seek it reverently.

So what do I mean when I say "At least murder counts for something". I mean that its better to die fighting for something than being one of the living dead. Our democratic system was designed to silence debate, to achieve stability, rather than to resolve the problem. Look at democracy....it is about backyard deals and extortion on the basis of representation that does not even mean anything. It is an utter pretense in order to achieve legitimacy rather than anything real. Until we start debating again, and ideas start to matter, we will have no freedom, and no escape from cynicism.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Capitalism vs mixed economy

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Liberals and socialists alike convey a great deal of ignorance about economics, psychology and philosophy, and by implication they fall into some substantial rationalisations. I will analyse the following video to highlight their follies....everyone of them. If I miss something...be sure to email me. I never leave them an inch.

The author argues that difficult economic times leads people to consider "more extreme" philosophers. Actually, problems tends to prompt people to look for solutions, so it in unsurprising that they would consider the two polar extremes - living for others (i.e. Because humanity can not given enough of itself) or living for oneself (i.e. Because who you were doing before was not really in your interests). It is noteworthy that it would actually be great if in future it was a question of Rand vs socialism. The reality is that it will in more probability be one form of collectivism vs another form of collectivism, say socialism vs fascism, because in times of emergency, people tend to use their brutal means rather than their minds. If they were not going to use their minds effectively in easy times, rest assured they will do worse when they are desperate.

The fact that Rand is getting more attention today is indeed positive news, and it does show that she is perceived as 'relevant'. It needs to be remembered however that she is not the end of the story. For those who don't dismiss her out of hand, she has some important things to say. I think her most important contribution is her theory of values. However people have moved on, and I am not going to blow her trumpet because there as aspects of her philosophy that I don't agree with. But in a sense I am a student of Rand, but moved on from her books.

The problem is always that people are shooting at 'straw men' when it comes to Rand, and I am sure it will be the case for me. Consider a quote from Stephen Colbert to highlight how little he understood about Rand. Such people are compelled to run off on some tangent to disprove her. It is a mark of dishonest.

Stephen Colbert: "The enlightened, modern person usually measures the progress of civilization by discerning how well its members look after their comrades".

The problem is the mixed economy and socialism do not actually treat people very well. This is a myth; it merely purports to. There are several reasons why it fails to:

1. It undermines people's capacity to care for others by destroying people's capacity to create an economic surplus, i.e. Less wealth, less to distribute.

2. It undermines people's motivation to give, i.e. What possible reason to you have for giving or doing anything if values are not rational or personal. Socialism renounces personal values, and a mixed economy just splits a person's mind and body, leaving them confused, and morally sceptic. Little surprise you can find few philosophers around who actually believe in themselves; never mind others who believe in them. They just go through the rationalisation of thinking to collect an income. It is the rare academic philosopher who contributes anything meaningful; its mostly regurgitation.

3. Mixed economies and socialism regard values as subjective, so coercion is practical. By implication it disregards others interests, so it can only "help others" by disregarding others. I say "help others" because you can never really help people by extending them 'unconditional values'. In such cases, they sustain life, not because of you, but because your help was incidental, i.e. They must have been worthy of it in the first place. You just pre-empted it with your altruistic self-righteousness. Wealthy, efficacious, selfish people are generous gives, but watch how quickly they withdrawal when you criticise them. They do not believe in sacrifice, and most would believe that their 'self-interest' does serve others, but it was never their primary aim, as utilitarians would have us accept.

The implication is - by all means measure the extent to which society gives and observe which society has the greatest culture. It is the United States, and you would see that more blatantly if welfare was removed from all nations. The EU, Russia, Middle East and Japan have one of the worst records for altruism, and yet these countries are among the most collectivist. Ask yourself why. The success of Japan was not because of its collectivism but because of its 'Western-style' conceptual organisation or structure. The value of its downfall was its 'theory of values'.

Well I got to the 4th line of Stephen's paper to find a gross error....but lets move on and make it three strikes. He argues:

"Altruism can fairly be described as an invention of human beings"

I will argue that altruism is merely a concept or 'facade' that humans engage in for unstated reasons, whether they are deferred practical/economic reasons (i.e. The hope of reciprocality) or deeper psychological reasons (i.e. The avoidance of guilt or a sense of moral righteousness....sadly by an unhealthy standard which can only diminish their self-esteem). It is self-interest by an objective standard, or it is any other action which is a repudiation of self-interest, i.e. An undermining of your capacity to live. That is the way to look at it....strike two! Incidentally, I disagree with Rand on this issue....but she is dead, so there is no counterargument from her.

And here is strike three! I didn't even get beyond Colbert's 1st paragraph:

"Christian axiom to "love thy neighbor as thyself" or the socialist dictum requiring "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," altruism is widely considered the progressive, humane stance".

Actually to love thy neighbour as oneself would offer no moral guidance at all...in fact it would lead you in moral confusion...lest for the rest of the bible which makes altruism a moral ideal....not consistently so though. The 2nd part is utilitarianism, which creates a mind-body dichotomy, since your ability diverges from your need. It gives one no moral or practical validation for your efforts. You might expect the 'appreciation' of others, but instead you get their resignation because you denied them the opportunity for validation. You have no interest in their disdain, so where does this lead. Like Rand said, its 'like exchanging unwanted Xmas presents', an ideal people would quickly tire of if they had to do it every day. The reason is that it is divorced from your values, and from a practical sense it encourages abuse since your support is morally 'unconditional'. This results in the burden growing, and so does your resignation to an ideal that you really can't accept, but neither can you come to repudiate it because you would have revise your whole value system. And this is what middle-roaders do. They see some value in Rand but them turn back when they see the conflict or the work they have to do to achieve integrity. You just have to ask yourself...if Rand's philosophy is so wrong....why is society not being overrun by Randian murderers. If selfishness was immoral, would you not expect a good many murderers to be objectivists (i.e. Rand hard core supporters). There must be 250,000 hardcore supporters of her around the world, plus another 10million odd sympathisers, and maybe another 50,000 like myself who are variants on her scheme. I searched Google and could find no murderers who were believers in her. I was even surprised by that. I'd have expected some 'wannabes' like the guy I knew when I was young. He was the owner of a construction company with 50 workers who was blacklisted by the unions for not accepting their extortion demands. He shot himself in the head after a time flirting with Randian philosophy. He never got it though. Very charismatic guy, but he just lacked a depth of intellectual thought or even interest. He was a 'man of action', like many business people and socialists. This is why Rand conflicted with business. They were not pro-mind...but rather pro-action. Goal-orientated repressors who place money before ideas, and often before their kids. Its not a question of altruism; its a question of respect for ideas. Parenting is an intellectual activity, but just look at who many parents turn off when they get to the 'hard part', i.e. When kids get to about 10 years old and start talking back. The parent starts turning off. Parents would rather be right than problem-solve, which means in the old days more discipline, but today you get arrested for that, so parents just disengage. They pour scorn on society, the education system, the child, and they just say 'its not worth it'. They simply define their jobs in simpler terms, and the result is a lot of kids on auto-pilot in a society of moral ambivalence because all the other kids are on auto-pilot as well.

Going back to the video, Stephen Colbert thinks most Americans would prefer to have a system of 'mixed economy' (i.e. a combination of society in which there are markets and government) in order to, as he states it 'curb the excesses' and 'help the poor'. This is actually a distortion of the facts for several reasons:

1. The excesses are caused by government distortion, whether its government-sponsored Fed intervention in the economy to keep the economy growing at unsustainable levels; the liberalisation of China (freedom from oppression) which caused a structural shift in wage levels across political boundaries, and thus some level of job losses for Americans. No system can stop a structural shift, but only capitalism can reverse or ameliorate it quicker. The problem is that we don't have 'pure capitalism', and it would be a generation of 'coherent philosophy' before people would probably function in what we might consider to be a 'capitalist way', or an objectivist way. Values are never transformed overnight, but it is amazing how quickly it occurs when society is structured with integrity, as opposed to the ambivalent values and conflicts that permeate 'modern society'. Whether it is religious vs markets, pornography vs selfless love. People are really being fed a succession of 'false alternatives' in the field of values. In this vein, Rand is not a serious contender...sadly. Most people are looking not towards (a philosophy of) capitalism to solve problems, they are looking towards government to solve problems, when they in fact caused them. i.e. The solution is being blamed as the problem. Not convinced? Read more of my blogs about education, the justice system and democracy.

They interview an economist who suggests (as a false dichotomy between Conservatives and Democrats) that we can regulate the supply and demand, and he argues 'give up a little bit of GDP growth'. The problem with these people is that they just don't see how much growth we are giving up. I would suggest that if we lived in a pure capitalist society, we would see economic growth of 10% per annum (much like China) than the 3% per annum we are accustomed to in the West. Government is not just the 30-50% of GDP it spends, it is the obstacles to effective justice, it is the bottlenecks it takes creating laws (highly centralised), it is the distortions to the economy, it is the welfare waste which rewards people for being ineffectual, it is the moral reinforcement of values which repudiate objectivity. Basically government is driving us to some variant of the 'Dark Ages' theme. How is that so? Well, basically human prosperity depends on an increasingly smaller number of people, a more specialised and less thinking groups of people. These people are compartmentalised thinkers, repressors acting for the good of government...contrary to the rhetoric of the government and its deluded supporters. Hitler once said "You are nothing, you nation of anything". When you accept that self-renunciation is moral, its not a stretch to end up serving government; helping it to preserve its lies. Just look at the hunt for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Lost graves a reminder of WWII holocaust

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Workers who were digging up soil at an Austrian hospital have discovered a mass grave of 220 psychiatric patients interned at the hospital, but who were otherwise murdered by the Nazis in WWII. The discovery serves as a reminder to everyone of the immorality of collectivists, and not simply fascists. The same type of crimes were perpetrated by socialists and religious/mystic leaders. It matters little whether these acts are done in the name of God, the good or society, it ought to serve as recognition that self-interest, individualism, capitalism, is the only philosophical system which protects, respects and advances life. All forms of collectivism are immoral, anti-life, and destructive. They are a total lie, and they have to destroy all life in their desperate pretense to remain in control. They will start with deception, but in their desperation to preserve their subjective sense of reality, they will kill....usually in the name of the 'common good'.

So I ask you, have we learn the lesson that we need to learn. The answer is NO! Let me cite two pieces of evidence that I have seen recently - today and last week:

1. A commemorative plague in Queenstown, New Zealand, which celebrates or praises the lives lost during WWI. The plague hanging over the commemorative garden says 'Service Before Self'. This is collectivism, and this is the culmination of religious influence over values. If we politicised these values, we have collectivism. Hitler is quoted as saying 'You are nothing, your nation is everything'. So we can see that our forebears were merely ambivalent collectivists of the same ilk as Hitler. You might argue the we have more rights today. The reality however is that we don't. We have the pretense of rights, and that no 'political rights' are meaningful if we don't have economic rights. We are entitled only to be a slave if we are forced 'unconditionally' to pay tax. You are a slave in the service of some unnamed 'virtue' - the pursuit of the good of society. So let us see how this virtue manifests in contemporary life with my next example from NZ.

2. Bill English, the Minister of Finance in the NZ government was responsible for a gross breach of process. Was there corruption involved? It remains to be seen. More interesting to me is how he purported tried to defend himself. The minister's spokesperson advanced the 'virtue' of the contract, by arguing that it "was an injection of new money for Pacific problems and it should be celebrated". More problematic is the fact that we have a minister who will not account for his role in the issue...who needs to use a spokesperson. This is what happens with money coerced from taxpayers 'unconditionally'....there is no accountability, because there is no counterparty to ensure strict respect of the counterparties interest. This money can disappear, like those graves in Austria, overlooked for over 60 years.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

The Information War - WWIII?

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This might go down as one of the shortest wars in history, or acts of terrorism if you like. The problem of course is that some internet cowboys are going to fail to capture the hearts and minds of the public. The problem is that they possess uncompelling values or principles.

The WikiLeaks website is now hosted by the Swiss Pirate Party. Its vice president Pascal Gloor said:

"There is a whole new generation, digital natives, born with the internet, that understands the freedom of communication....It's not a left-right thing anymore. It's a generational thing between the politicians who don't understand that it's too late for them to regulate the internet and the young who use technology every day".

The problem of course is that it was never a 'left-right thing' because that was never a valid political dichotomy.

Their second problem is that its not about control over the internet either. It is about control of money. Why is that important? It drives decision-making. People don't want to love money, and the governments control the banks and business. Soon the government will be reaching into everyone's homes. No data connected to the internet will be private. In fact, there is every reason to think that any device with a wireless or bluetooth connection will be accessible by the government. Big Brother is close at hand. The ability of government to monitor keywords makes it all too easy to trace and monitor conversations and text.

This will be a short lived war because they idealists have no idea. The reality is that people have no power to determine their own destinies. It is improbable that anyone will be able to make a difference unless they can communicate ideas. How can you do that if the government can seize, trace and destroy any source of offending material. Just as the printing press enabled the Industrial Revolution, the ability of the governments to monitor 'sensitive' information, will allow it to destroy any information or person who sponsors the distribution of information. The new war will be fought through old technology. Political activities might need to write certain things online and other things offline.

The collectivists are going to win this short-lived war. It remains to be seen whether the flow of ideas will avert a 2nd Dark Ages. My expectation is that it will. There are already signs of improvement, however it is too early to say.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Movement towards fascism

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It is apparent that the West is moving towards fascism. It matters little what type it takes, or whether it is some new variety. Socialists like to lump all capitalists together so they can smear them in one fowl swoop. This collectivist thinking is described in the Socialist Manifesto. The reality is that we are moving towards fascism for two reasons:

1. Business leaders are so anti-intellectual, so antagonistic towards ideas, that they regard philosophy as all nonsense. For them its all about the practicalities. This is why in the face of a tax increase, they end up split, rather than united. We saw this with the Resource Rent Tax. The government did a deal with the two majors Rio Tinto and BHP, leaving the smaller industry players in a corner licking their wounds. Andrew Forrest, CEO of Fortescue Metals, was flip flopping from one side to the other. The problem is - they were split on their narrowly defined self-interests, and they ended up selling themselves off to the lowest bidder. Why? Because they did not understand the nature of ideology. They left small and large business divided, and now they have made government look 'reasonable' middlemen. This happened in previous wars as well. Historians will say capitalists sided with the govt. The CEOs of BHP and Rio Tinto are NOT capitalists, they are 'middlemen' or politicians with very little equity in the companies they control. Forrest is a capitalist, but sadly he is not a terribly smart one, and few among capitalists are great thinkers because they are 'practical people'. i.e. Goal motivated rather than with lofty, and most often detached ideas, which is why philosophy gets a bad name.

2. Ambivalent populous moved easily by any ideas. Yep, this is the Western population which had us going to war, the population which thinks rights are 'obligations and entitlements, rather than protections from such impositions. They are a product of religious and state-funded education and academia.

So are we going to war? Well I would suggest it will not be world war but sporadic periods of civil war. The reason I say this is because Western democracy is perfectly compatible with Chinese style government. The Chinese are docile under a hard-line government, but they will be no less collectivist under a more popular leader - the current deputy leader of the Community Military Council. He is married to a folk singer.

The only threat to this trend is really the internet. So how might government deal with that? Well, we can get a clue already. In the name of child protection, websites like mine will be blocked. If I put up any protestations, I will be threatened and then assassinated in the spirit of Philippines politics. This is collectivism.. the greatest good for the greatest number.

Capitalism will be claimed. The problem is the 'famed' market participants or 'pin up boys' of capitalism are not the CEOs...they are few and far between. I am one, the taxi driver who took you to work today might be one. You will not find them in government. They are people with a respect for freedom and ideas. But more importantly, their notion of freedom is not a subjective conception. It is an idea that coheres and corresponds to the rest of their knowledge.

It will be truly interesting to see where the Cameron bros take England in the next few years. I'll read with interest. Closer to home... I will watch with dismay as Australians 'capitalists' allow the Gillard government to expropriate their wealth with the Resource Rent Tax. Unsurprisingly the parasites are circling. State governments are fighting with the federal government for a cut. They are like 7 thieves trying to split with the cash. We can only hope they kill each other in a shoot out. But in the tradition of Western style democracy, I am sure that they will realise the greater practicality of splitting the loot...just as the Liberals and Labor agree to share power.

Are you expecting any protection from the courts. Don't. The courts are interpreting an arbitrary statutory law, which they consider has higher standing than common law. That is apparently because the people support statutory law. Such is the standing of democracy that the empty symbolism seems to carry so much significance. I don't vote, but I can't remember the last time I votes on any legislation. Nor can I remember an occasion when there was a party who represented me. I can't even conceive of a world where there was any prospect of a MP agreeing with me on everything. And I know these people don't have much life experience. They can't even get a job after parliament.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Nuclear weapons and war

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According to the Japan Times, Japan has made its 17th submission to the UN General Assembly calling for a complete nuclear disarmament. Surprisingly the United States is among the 50 nations which agreed to the submission. Really the submission is stupid for the folllowing reasons:

1. A nuclear disarmament agreement can only embolden those countries who have the most to gain from the adoption of nuclear weapons. Its a red flag saying that we will allow you to have an advantage.

2. Nuclear weapons are not the problem, it is the motives of the country developing them which is the problem.

3. Nuclear disarmament as a moral crusade is compatible with dogmatic religion (i.e. mysticism), and places morality outside the real of logic. Little surprise the initiative was taken by Japan, and little surprise that the USA has endorsed it.

4. Nuclear weapons discouraged war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The 'Cold War' resulted in one of the longest periods of global peace in history.

5. Nuclear weapons are an important component of any military force. We need to remember that nuclear weapons are not solely for armed aggressive, but can have peaceful applications. Some of these applications might actually save human lives. Such applications of course need to be researched, however there might be applications for deviating the orbit of a comet so that it does not strike earth. There might be opportunities to modify geological processes to attain some resource development advantage. The mind boggles at the opportunities.

6. Collectivist countries are the ones which seek to initiate the use of any force in order to gain some advantage. The threat is not nuclear weapons any more than the threat is knives and guns. The problem is the collectivist politicians who drive political debate. Countries like Iran, Korea, Japan, Russia have more 'collectivist' leaders, however the moral ambivalence in the West shows that it is a significant factor in our political system. Democracy is a collectivist construction, imposing the will of the majority on the minorities. The arbitrary statutory legal system, which has displaced a relative rational 'common law' system is testimony to that...and the 'collectivist creep' of statutory law is driving the West to universal tyranny.

Let me suggest to you how this tyranny is going to manifest in war in future. We are witnessing an increasing use of immigration in Western countries to stimulate economic development. If you cannot use debt, governments like to rely on immigration. Political correctness rather than logic demands that you allow everyone into your country, irrespective of their values. Collectivism is no barrier. In fact, we have already argued its well-entrenched in the West. The problem is that, immigration adds a cultural element. By allowing fundamentalist mystical creeds into the secular western countries, we are likely to see an escalation in racial/rligious prejudice. This is going to inspire reactionary nationalism, such that collectivists identities will be polarised. Sub-cultural persecution will ignite national tensions as foreign governments around the world are compelled for the sake of political correctness to draw attention to the tyranny in the host 'Western' nations. Politically ambitious collectivists in Western countries will then use these issues as a basis for expanding their political support and for sponsoring more prejudicial arguments. This will be compatible with our arbitrary statutory laws, so opponents will be standing on weak moral foundations. Before you know it, you have wars. Politically correct governments defending their prejudices or racially-based prejudices.

This ought not be new to us. We can already witness in European nations the growing hostility to foreigners, and Muslims in particularly. We have already witnessed a racially-divisive war in the old Yugoslavian states, as well as the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. This is a fertile legacy to be used by 'majorities' to insight racial prejudices. Its going to happen eventually. All it takes will be a breach at the 'weakest link'. There is good reason for thinking the problem will ignite in Europe. It is among the most collectivist regions in the world. Perhaps the poorer areas of Germany or France are the most likely hot spots of resentment. All we need is a deterioration in economic circumstances, and governments resorting to immigration in order to stimulate economic activity. Understand that this economic activity is only needed because these governments maintain such a strangehold over their economy. Government control = bottlenecks on a nation's productive capacity. Justice facilitates commerce and job creation; but most government intervention has nothing to do with justice, and distorts economic activity, causing the boom-bust cycles we are accustomed to. These practices create vulnerabilities in the economy, and the prospect of war in collectivist countries. These wars have the tendency to draw even the most individualistic nations into the fray. The consequence is that even the freest nation's are sabotaged. Look at what the 'freedom loving' USA adopted after WWII. It was Roosevelt's 'New Deal', i.e. Measures to stimulate domestic demand after it was ravaged by a global war and acute destruction in Europe. Expect it again.

A little bit of conceptual foresight can avoid this trend. Just don't expect it.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

What is wrong with think tanks?

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The problem with think tanks is that they are simply lobbyists with a better rationalisation. They are not centres for collaboration of ideas, they are simply organisations with a shared agenda. What is missing from such institutions? A respect for facts, even if they claim to be evidence-based. Such organisations misuse evidence in the same way that statisticians distort numbers, by highlighting certain arguments whilst omitting others.

My target today is the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). I have extracted an excerpt from their website in order to repudiate their views:

"The IPA supports the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, a limited and efficient government, evidence-based public policy, the rule of law, and representative democracy. Throughout human history, these ideas have proven themselves to be the most dynamic, liberating and exciting. Our researchers apply these ideas to the public policy questions which matter today".

There are a number of problems with their political position, so I will deal with each one individually.

The first few items describe the basis for a laissez-faire government, which is good and proper. The intent of course is good, but good intentions will not protect a healthy society. Efficiency is not a standard of value, it is a consequence of good standards. Limited government? Limited by what? I presume by size? But that is hardly a compelling basis upon which to define values.

The rule of law? This is an entirely ridiculous criterion if the state has you in a state of slavery. You are perfectly entitled by a moral standard to repudiate your 'slave masters' in the same way that a person is able to defend himself from armed bandits.

This is more concerning. The IPA is a supporter of representative democracy. The problem with representative democracy is that it is compatible with slavery. Representative democracy imposes upon people the 'tyranny of the majority'. The root philosophy underlying this position is that the majority is right because they outnumber you. This is not freedom. This is extortion.

The IPA would probably qualify that by suggesting that they support a senate to protect the interests of the minority. The problem is - we have a senate now, and it does not work. Why? Because reason is not the standard of value. Representative democracy or 'majoritism' is incompatible with reason. Why does anyone need to reason if they can simply attain a majority. Achieving a consensus is so much harder than a majority, why would anyone both trying?

The implication is that the IPA are exponents of slavery. They are a beacon of light for unthinking people to hope for freedom. Their convictions will never be achieved through their efforts because they don't understand the fundamental principles which need to be defended. The worst time of cancer treatment is the one which does not achieve its purported objective. Those wasted efforts could have been invested in better efforts. The IPA is thus a waste of resources by philanthropists and other supporters of freedom.

You might ask - as a defender of freedom - why do I attack an organisation dedicated to freedom? The reason is that freedom is an principle that needs to be defended by principled people. If its exponents do not possess coherent ideas, they leave themselves exposed to the threat of attack by their collectivist opponents, who will use the same 'logical' standard to repudiate them. This makes both sides look like hypocrites, and reason pays the ultimate price. The implication is that society remains in a state of moral skepticism.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com