Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Stewardship of the Country

Realize that since you live in a democracy it is you, the individual, who is ultimately responsible for the governance and leadership of the nation.  You are responsible for picking the people in society to lead us and therefore it behooves you to inform and educate yourself about which people and which governmental policies are best for the country and the best for our future.  Unfortunately, this decision is ALWAYS obscured, confounded, and blurred by politics, corruption, and just plain evil.  People who couldn’t care less about the future of the country, look to politics for an easy and lifelong career.  People who are immoral look to government as a means to enrich themselves.  People who are just plain power hungry egomaniacs become politicians instead of selfless, altruistic statesmen.  And the way these amoral scum get into office is very simple – they lie.

They lie about reality.  They lie about the economy.  They lie about their intentions.  They lie about lying.  It is nearly impossible to tell who is telling the truth, let alone what precisely is the truth.  But there is a way to cut through all the propaganda, deceit, and falsehoods – economics.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aaron

You keep complaining about corporations, employers and companies that don't adapt to the 21st century and forces people to commute.

You keep complaining about HR ditzes and the completely idiotic and dysfunctional hiring process based on everything except talent and skills.

Realize that in this case, the same thing could be said about YOU the individual customer who picks the corporate leaders everytime you purchase.

You can decide to vote for the right candidate but you are just one individual. You can decide to boycott the corporations with HR ditzes and only buy from companies with sound hiring practices (if there is such a thing) but you are just one individual.

You can't have it both ways, Aaron Clarey.

You can't design society based solely on private property rights and individual freedom and expect to see the agregate of those individuals act in an organized manner as to steer society in the right direction.

You have what you wanted, we live in an individualistic, self-interested, egotistical, greedy, self-promoting society.

We individuals don't care about the common good. You said it yourself, you're an asshole who hates everybody.

Fine, now go drink your brandy, go smoke some cigars while making finger signs at everybody.

Because you will not change anything and nothing will get changed.

For change to happen, people have to look beyond their narrow self-interest and have to look beyond profitability and actually sacrifice time, wealth, efforts and ressources into accomplishing something greater than themselves, something they will never see any individual and personal return on their investment.

Since you constantly clamp down on such a thing and insist that people should live like completely free individuals with no sense of responsibility nor afinity towards other human beings and only be interested in others for what they can bring to you individually then nothing will change.

People vote their pocketbook. Most liberals who vote handouts do so because they are trying to undo politically what is being done to them in the market.

Private ownership of the means of production breeds unemployment which breeds left votes.

You can't have it both ways Aaron Clarey. Leftism is the price to pay to keep and prop up a system of extreme privatization.

You want to profit off other's hard work, you want others to be forced to work as employees, then those others will fight back and vote an even bigger scumbag in office to strike back at you.

We need to organize society around something else than employment, we need to redistribute the means of production. We need individuals and workers to have the dignity to work for themselves without having to be employees and without having to start their own business either.

We need non-market alternatives like self-production with commonly accessible means of production, etc.

Until you recognize the built-in and self-defeating contradictions of your economic system, nothing will change.

The Truth!!! said...

Creative writing professor Hanif Kureishi says such courses are 'a waste of time'

www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/04/creative-writing-courses-waste-of-time-hanif-kureishi

sth_txs said...

For your amusement. Only (2) Team R members make the list:

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/poorest-list/10-most-indebted-members-of-the-u-s-congress/

Goober said...

"You can't design society based solely on private property rights and individual freedom and expect to see the agregate of those individuals act in an organized manner as to steer society in the right direction"

Bullshit. Statist nonsense crafted to convince people that they need someone in charge to make decisions for them.

A rational society full of rational people will always - ALWAYS - make better decisions than a small group of people in command.

ALWAYS.

If you disagree, please provide examples of centralized, command and control states that haven't resulted in a total soup sandwich.

Yeah, we've got problems. But they are WAY less than what our problems would be if we did what liberals want us to do and just give people like Barack Obama and Joe Biden the ability to make decision for us.

Or maybe it will hit home if I replace Joe Boden and barack Obama in the above with George Bush? You do realize that's what you're asking for, right?

Goober said...

"Since you constantly clamp down on such a thing and insist that people should live like completely free individuals with no sense of responsibility nor afinity towards other human beings and only be interested in others for what they can bring to you individually then nothing will change."

Also bullshit. There is a huge difference between not having any affinity or responsibility for your fellow man, and being forced by threat of law (read: violence and coercion) to do so.

You advocate the latter. I advocate freedom, where every man is able to care for and have affinity for whomever he damn well pleases.

The argument Clarey makes is "don't care about anyone else" and you know it. he is saying "the government shouldnt FORCE us to care about anyone else".

You can see the difference there, I assume?

Goober said...

"we live in an individualistic, self-interested, egotistical, greedy, self-promoting society"

This, to me, is the society that LIBERALS promote, not the other way around.

A society where everyone scrambles to see what they can get the government to force their neighbor to give them.

You say that my distaste for such a thing makes ME the greedy and selfish one?

Huh. Interesting.

Goober said...

"For change to happen, people have to look beyond their narrow self-interest and have to look beyond profitability and actually sacrifice time, wealth, efforts and ressources into accomplishing something greater than themselves, something they will never see any individual and personal return on their investment"

I agree, but only if those efforts are taken on by the individual of his own choice; freely and without coercion or threat. Government is unable to provide that, so government isn't the way to get that done.

Goober said...

"Private ownership of the means of production breeds unemployment which breeds left votes"

Public ownership of production promotes indolence, destroys innovation, and removes incentive.

I have proof of those things. Which is worse? A society where people succeed or fail on their own merits, or a society where everyone fails equally because it's designed that way?

Goober said...

"We need to organize society around something else than employment, we need to redistribute the means of production. We need individuals and workers to have the dignity to work for themselves without having to be employees and without having to start their own business either."

Feel free to start, then. It's awfully easy to say that these things need to be done when it isn't your stuff.

So go ahead, let's get started. You first. Give all your "means of production" away to people who didn't earn it, didn't work for it, and didn't risk anything fo it, and we'll see how it's treated.

"We" don't need to do anything. If you're unhappy with your lot in life, then the person who needs to do something is "you".

I'm perfectly happy, thanks much.

And therein lies the rub. Your society requires me to subordinate myself to the needs of others against my will. If I choose not to do so, what are you going to do with me?

Yup.

it always ends up in the old gulag with your type, doesn't it?

You can call it whatever you like, but that's what your great idea has evolved into every single time its been tried.

If every time your great idea is tried, it evolves into gulags and misery, then THAT is what your great idea is, not the cheery view of it you seem to have convinced yourelf is possible.

Goober said...

"You want to profit off other's hard work, you want others to be forced to work as employees, then those others will fight back and vote an even bigger scumbag in office to strike back at you."

Oh, fuck you. No one is "profiting" off of anyone's "hard work" unless the second man is a fucking idiot who's working for free, or a slave.

I pay my guys a very good wage to work for me. They all work for me at their own discretion, of their own free will. You say I'm profiting off of their hard work?

I say THEY are profiting off of MINE. They have good, high paying jobs because I risk, and work hard, and lose sleep at night to make sure that all 60 families that rely on me for their livelihood have a paycheck next week.

Call me evil all you want, but that's the way of it.

And if you want to take the "means of production" that I've built up over the last 15 years, working dawn to dusk and risking everything I own to make what I've created, then you're going to have to take it from my cold dead fingers.

There we are at the gulags again. Notice how it always ends up there, your wonderful worldview?

Anonymous said...

Goober, you took the words out of my mouth.

I'm self-employed and one thing I've learned in over 30 years in my business is...I've never worked for a poor person, except when I've volunteered my time and expertise for Habitat For Humanity.

Anonymous said...

Aaron, if this was 2008 I would be saying the same thing, but since that time I've realized an important truth: government is a monopoly on the initiation of the use of force. It is fundamentally immoral. Voting doesn't change the direction of which way the gun is pointed at (us), but simply who is holding the gun (Obama now, Bush before, etc)

Goober said...

Correction: "the argument Clarey makes ISN'T ..."

Eric B said...

Goober, you destroyed Anonymous 1:33 PM! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Anonymous said...

Anon 6:23pm, you are dead on the mark! Neither political party is worth a shit these days. Wish a third party meant ONLY to represent the VOTER would come along and gain enough traction to oust the assholes now in power.

*Note I said "VOTER", not PEOPLE.*

Goober said...

It's so easy it is almost not even sporting.

The arguments these people make are so tired and so thoroughly proven to be fatally flawed that I can't even imagine the cognitive block that one must have to still believe that public ownership of anything regarding the means of production is preferrable to almost anything else.

Seriously, if you're going to believe so whole-heartedly in a caring, benevolent government, then you may as well just agitate for a monarchy - it's been pretty well established that the best quality of life ever achieved (adjusted for technology) was when people lived under a benevolent monarchy.

But friendly, benevolent government is like a unicorn - rare as hell, to the point that most thinking people just dismiss it as an aberration of history rather than something that can be expected.

To be quite honest, I'm literally shocked that our government here in America has stayed as friendly as it has for over 200 years now. Not saying it is that friendly, just saying that two hundred years is a long damn time for a government to not go completely feral.

But socialist and communist governments go feral quickly. Look at venezuela. THey do so because it is absolutely necessary.

You need full, non-diverse compliance from the citizenry. Those that do not comply, and any diversity of thought or opinion, must be squashed immediately - you can't have "the rich" boning up over people taking their "means of production" so you have to get rid of them, either via a bullet to the skull or a "relocation" to a place where they cannot agitate against the government's plan. There is no other way to do it.

Efficiency drops, as with any centrally planned, non-organic, no-diffuse command structure (even armies that distribute greater power to lower-ranking officers in the field gain massive efficiencies than armies that are centrally commanded). When efficiencies drop, the money stops flowing in, so the government nationalizes more industry to keep paying the bills, until it's bled everything dry.

Then come the shortages. Right now you can't get simple things like toilet paper or flour in Venezuela.

Then come the protests. People don't like it when everything is mismanaged and their "ownership" of the "means of production" is squandered by an inefficient bureaucracy.

THe government responds in one of two ways:

Run like hell, or start shooting people in the street. Venezuela, and the vat majority of these regimes, choose option two.

That stupid motherf#cker Anonymous wants to do this to America, even though every single time it' been tried this is what it ends up being. Every time. Without exception, in the entire history of this "grand idea" it has resulted in misery, deprivation,a nd bloodshed. Yet dorkus just wants us to believe that it is only because the wrong people were in charge, and i we'd just give it a try with the "right people" it would work out.

GUess what, dorkus? There is no such thing as the "right person". He doesn't exist. He's never existed. The entire history of humanity has proven that absolute power corrupts, absolutely, and even a well-intentioned government with complete control over the economy will tank things. There is no other way.