Wednesday, October 31, 2012

From our Indian, Eskimo, Finlander Agent in the Field

Actually, his heritage is even more complicated than that.  I'm currently working on a flow chart to diagram it, but we'll just say our "Indian Finlander Agent in the Field" to simplify things.  Regardless, he introduces an ingredient I was unaware of about the American (and well as Canadian) Indians.  Namely the refusal and bigotry against "things white" even though such things would help.  What's interesting about our Finlander/Indian Agent however, is that he is a capitalist, independent thinker amongst a people that are typically not (think being the one conservative at the scores of college parties).  Which begets some interesting questions and observations, one in particular I've had.

From our Agent:

I am Kindjal.  Let me describe a phenomena called Schrodingers Business Plan.  Whenever a white man has an idea which will help an indigenous people, it is simultaneously alive and dead.  It's alive because it would promote life, but it's dead because a white man thought of it.  Everyone knows that the Schrodinger paradox ultimately describes something that's dead.
Cappy's posting was followed by a bunch of reader comments explaining why it can't be done.  If Apollo 13 can survive a catastrophic hull breach 200 thousand miles from Earth, then indigenous people can find a way to implement Cappy's idea.  Sure there's differences in laws and business structure from region to region, but the basic idea can be modified for each individual case.  Indian tribes hire lawyers to do sort out these kinds of details.
Some years ago a very similar idea was presented at a meeting of my tribe here in Alaska, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. The idea died because the idea was presented by a white man who is a friend of mine  He is a white man who wanted prosperity for his half-breed daughter.  Do you know what she did instead of getting a nice job working for a wealthy indian tribe?  She overdosed on white man drugs and died.  But at least the tribe stopped an uppity white man from living out his evil colonial fantasy.  He has a dead idea and a dead daughter.  Red Power!
When I was a little boy, an elder of mine boasted that white school teachers who go to the village to work off their student loans had to learn village culture or they wouldn't be accepted.  I looked into her eyes and I knew right then that white teachers won't be accepted no matter what they do.  I saw the gloating in her eyes and it was evil.
  
White men habitually quote Socrates when discussing important things, "I know that I know nothing."  To me, this means for everything that anyone knows, white people know one more thing, and I admire them for knowing this thing.
What irks me more than anything is that the Indians (both Canadian and American) have it within their power to become richer than the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.  They could become veritable Hong Kongs overnight.  But because they've never buried the hatchet from over 200 years ago for transgressions of people who are long dead they let that irrational hold-over hatred prevent themselves from advancing, and (in my humble opinion) surpassing their socialism-obsessed white peers.  I don't say this to score "diversity" points or favoritism amongst the Indian community, I say it because  it's economic and true.  Indians, if they decided to use their sovereignty, could easily poach US and foreign businesses and in doing so become richer.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just remind them that whites were the first Americans, and "Native Americans" are actually privileged.

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-evidence-supports-solutrean.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/radical-theory-of-first-americans-places-stone-age-europeans-in-delmarva-20000-years-ago/2012/02/28/gIQA4mriiR_story.html

Anonymous said...

Hands up, mister or I'll shoot you where you stand! And what have you done with Captain Capitalism, you foul imposter?

Cap - artificially tilting the market in favour of the indians isn't capitalism nor is it the answer for them. No sir, I disagree! If we are all supposedly created equal, then those damned slackers can get off their asses and compete like anyone else. To grant them special favour through 'sovereignity' is just so much racist claptrap.

The long term answer for them is the same as it is for us: stop drinking, doing drugs and being lazy. Get off your ass and work. If you fail then man up and take responsibility for it and try again. Spare me the native guilt trips, I have seen all the advantages they get now and they have blown all of them.

I will not respect first nation freeloaders, they are the same as any other welfare parasite as far as I am concerned.

Ecclesiastes said...

@Kindjal

I have two things for you.

First, if you could - as a red man - explain your point to the black men, please?

Second, white Americans already knew this. We've taken martial arts from the yellow man, guerrilla warfare from the red, music from the black.

Cappy is all about the decline. I'm all about being American. Being American isn't about an American invented whatever, or an American has whatever, or an American was born whatever.

America was always and really only about what was best.

This hyphenated American thing came later. It's killing us.

Prepare your people for poverty, poverty as does not exist on the planet anymore, disease pestilence famine and war as not seen in 300 years, unless we can be rid of it.

Captain Capitalism said...

Anon 305,

While I agree no person/people should have an unfair advantage, how is sovereignty "unfair." Every country is sovereign through whatever historical events occurred (occupation, treaties signed at the end of wars, etc. etc) For whatever historical reason, the Indians do have sovereignty over their lands. That's not affirmative action, that's just is what it is.

Now, that aside, let's say for the sake of argument they've somehow "unjustly" gotten their sovereignty. Still, what business venture would you recommend the Indians pursue to improve their lot? More socialist, self-destructive, woe-is-me-ism? Or the most grandiose coup de tat of capitalism where they score the entire corporate sector from the US.

It's a micro-cosmic example of what I'm talking about (and not perfectly analogous because in some states it was veritable affirmative action), but the casinos are an example of a capitalist solution that has worked a HELL of a lot better at improving the lots of INdians than more welfare, more government money and more socialism.

heresolong said...

Cap, Here's the problem. Using their sovereignty to go into business to improve their lot at our expense requires one thing that is totally under our control. We have to let them. They have no access to sea lanes, no roads between their various individual sovereign territories "except what we give them or negotiate with them". I agree that they should step up. The Lumbee tribe in North Carolina makes for fascinating study. They never received federal money or control and are a rousing success story. They did it within the American system, however, not outside as suggested here.

If these tribes are going to use this "sovereignty" of theirs, they will need to then negotiate trade and business agreements with the United States. We should not negotiate those agreements such that it allows them to "poach" business. They should have to compete in the free market, just like American businesses do. Provide a better product at a better price while living under the same set of rules as Americans.

Kindjal said...

To Ecclesiastes

1.I don't have a point for the black man. Black men and women have always been kind to me. Where others are easily intimidated, I'm invigourated by the black stalwart.

2.I'd like to change emphasis from whites having taken things, to the idea that we've all given each other the best of what we have.

A white man once taught me how to roll a kayak. In art class, I recently showed a white woman how to analyze the parabola so she could paint flowers better.

To Anonymous

In 2009 I threatened to kill some white men who were slinging oxy in my town. The pigs put my red ass in jail for that one. I was later convicted of 4th degree assault. Oh, poor wittle drug dealers. They know who I am. They know that I will kill them. Look what happened next:

http://www.adn.com/2010/11/05/1539276/19-alaskans-charged-in-drug-trafficking.html

Scooby-Doo mystery episode 2:

http://peninsulaclarion.com/stories/051210/new_637898767.shtml

To celebrate the decline doesn't mean we'll not also strive to quench the fire in which our world is burning.

Captain Capitalism said...

Heresolong,

Then we're not that much in disagreement. But my goal is to force competition and reality on the rest of America, not just enrich the Indians. Of course I'm cheering for the decline to lay waste the country so everybody learns their lesson about the sustainability of socialism, and then MAYBE in my lifetime see a resurgence in America.

sth_txs said...

"The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.


"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,'' long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html