How the Government Outsourced Socialism - Part 2 - Social and Societal Socialism

In Part 1 I explained how the government finally came to realize that it was not good at much of anything.  And this especially included owning the means of production.  Instead it was much easier, efficient, and profitable to let the private sector (think) it owned the means of production by outsourcing production to the private sector, but still retaining an (on average) 45% cut of all production, wealth, and labor an economy produces.

In Part 2 I will explain how the government has also outsourced socialism to the non-financial/economic part of society, since in order to maintain a socialist economy (yet not come off as a tyrannical government), it needs to convince society at large to voluntarily, though unconsciously, vote in a socialist government.

A Nation of Manchurian Candidates

Whether it was the conscious epiphany of a smart socialist, or perhaps just a general evolution of socialism, it was a very smart move to relinquish the physical management and ownership of the means of production under hard-core SOCIALISM and let the private sector manage the economy whilst taking a 45% mafioso cut under modern socialism.  But another smart move on the part of the left (again, conscious or not) was to advance its goals and ideology through the bottle neck nearly every citizen must go through.  And not only go through, but go through as a child when you're most susceptible and malleable to indoctrination, propaganda, and brainwashing - education.

This is may not be so much "genius" as much as it is common sense and logical.  You have young minds, still developing, naive enough to believe anything.  Plus you have them captive for more time and more years over a Kindergarten through 12 career than even their parents do.  And whereas it would be hard to infiltrate traditionally conservative, patriotic and classically "American" institutions such as the military, corporate America, industry, etc., if you're patient over time you can flood these institutions with "little Manchurian Candidates" turning them into pro-socialist entities that will use their resources, assets, labor, and pull to further promote a socialist agenda.  Ergo, whereas traditionally "soft" targets (that tended to lean towards socialism anyway - media, journalism, law, academia, etc.) could be reliably relied upon to promote a socialist society, now modern day western countries can rely on nearly every institution to promote a socialist economy and society.

This helps the government/socialists not only maintain their positions of power, 45% cut of the economy, and amply-supplied budgets, but does so by keeping up the illusion of free will and democracy.  People ARE increasingly voting in socialism and willingly so, but only because they've been conditioned by the K-college brainwashing education system to do so.  Worse, the government has been so successful educating people into socialism these past 50 years, nearly every institution in America is reinforcing a pro-socialist agenda (even if politics is not their business).  The cacophony is so thorough and so complete that, today we effectively have a "correct" political party/answer according to our institutions and that party is the democrat party.  And the concept of having a "correct" political party (perhaps epitomized by Hillary Clinton as the "correct" politician) should scare the hell out of you.

The problem is it doesn't.

As I said before in Part 1, while it's abhorrent we let the government take a 45% stake in our lives, the majority of people are ignorantly blissful about this mathematical reality.  They're unaware a parasitic state is enslaving them nearly 50% of their laboring lives. But what an increasing amount of people ARE aware of is the unhideable and undeniable social and psychological consequences of socialism.  The real price we pay when it comes to the social and psychological ramifications of a socialist society - tyranny, dictatorship, oppression, division, political correctness, thought-police, and let's not forget plain ole insanity.  Truly mentally ill things like "safe spaces," "privilege," 8 year old boys being accused of sexual harassment, the ruination of the sexes, and the daily, if not hourly news stories of Western Civilization losing its collective mind.  These things arguably take a larger taxing toll on our lives than the 45% taxes themselves in that it forces sane and normal people to live in an insane world.  But what makes it worse is the whole point and purpose of this series of posts...

If you thought the government was bad at oppressing its people, just wait till you see how horrifically efficient the private sector and its private citizens are at oppressing themselves.

Getting the Private Sector and Private Citizens to Do Your Dirty Work

If socialists were to be honest and tell the American people they want MORE than the current 40% they're taxing now, it is unlikely they would get elected.  This is why most (if not all) SOCIALIST governments are dictatorships, getting to power via violent, non-democratic means, and only allow you to vote for the communist party.  However, if modern day socialist governments did this the entire facade would fall.  People would no longer willingly work for 55% of their labor, the government would have to give up it's 45% stake in people's lives, the government would have to violently oppress people, and not only is that additional work the government would have to do (and badly, BTW), it would be unpopular both domestically and internationally.  It's much better that the government get people to willingly and sheepishly work for the state, rather than adversarially against it.

This is accomplished via means we've mentioned before.  Monopolistically educating/indoctrinating all children in K-College.  Masking the true level of taxation across hundreds of taxes.  And fooling people into thinking they are 100% owners of the means of production, their futures, and themselves.  But there needs to be a "higher moral calling" in addition to these faux economic incentives to get people to passionately vote for socialism.  A psychological, emotional, even religious purpose or agency that plays to people's sense of self-worth, and dare I say, egos and pride.  So that people not only have (in their minds) a logical economic incentive to merely vote for socialism, but a personal, emotional and religiously-fervent attachment to it since they derive their morality and values from it.  This not only gets people to vote for socialism, but gets them rabid about it, defending it at all costs, and promoting it often times over nearly everything else in their lives, including their own.

The tool the socialists use to accomplish this is called "the narrative" and you are all too familiar with it.

The narrative is the "story" or "epic" that is used to breathe life, vigor, emotion, and energy into socialist causes.  Merely arguing about economics, the merits of wealth redistribution, and the Laffer Curve is cold, callous, clinical, and boring (I never got laid wooing a date about the federal budget).  Additionally, it incentives no one to work for socialist causes, merely vote for them.  But if you add a story, especially one of injustice perpetuated by a "bad guy," you ignite the fires of the masses and prompt them to spend thousands of times more energy promoting socialism than you had before.  And while the overall main narrative socialists use is mere "socialism" (i.e.-"free stuff"), there are specially crafted sub-narratives tailored to appeal to different people and thus buy their loyalty to the socialist ideology/religion/party.

The main, ole, standby classic is "class envy."  This is the simplest narrative of socialism where you point out to the poor that they are poor, not because of...

having more kids than they could afford
majoring in stupid degrees they could never pay back
being a lazy good-for-nothing and never working
getting in trouble with the law

but because of the "evil rich."  The "capitalist fat cats" undeservingly having more than you.  And not only do they have more than you, but they are actively conspiring to oppress you (because busy rich people have the time for that).  This is nothing but pure greed, jealousy, and envy, but it works as it plays to human nature. Most people's pride cannot handle the fact they are largely responsible for their own situation, and are willing to become emotionally vested in an ideology that lies to excuses them otherwise.

Another one is feminism.  Women are oppressed.  By who?  Men, of course!  Why?  Because in addition to working in the oil fields, majoring in engineering, learning calculus, doing boring computer programming, fixing plumbing leaks, getting drafted and shot in wars, and roofing in July, we have so much time to oppress women.  Plus we want to.  Why?  Duh, "patriarchy!"  Thank god you have all those women studies professors, female elementary school teachers, and female social workers working in air conditioned rooms near Starbucks coffee stores to "raise awareness" of the struggle of women as they collect government pensions and free health care.

Joking aside, this narrative is highly effective with women because it, again, absolves them of the responsibility of their choices/failures, provides a rationale as to why they're entitled to other people's money, and feeds their ego and pride as if they are the oppressed, virtuous underdogs in today's evil and oppressive male-dominated world.

Global warming/Environmentalism?  Another narrative that confers immediate moral value and worth upon those who simply advocate it.  Better yet, you don't have to expend a calorie of energy being an environmentalist.  You just simply state you're "for the environment,"and now you are a morally superior person to nearly everybody else.  Immediate agency, purpose, value, and worth are immediately conferred upon you, and all without a lick of effort, rigor, work, or toil.

And then there's general "discrimination."  This could be sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, even mental illness discrimination.  The categories in this sub-narrative are in a perpetual arms-race to find new things to be "discriminated" about because once you are, then you are once again "heroic" and have a moral purpose and crusade in life.  And whereas some categories of discrimination have some historical merit to them (race and sex for example), new and completely bogus ones are being fabricated to include people outside the traditional sexual and racial groups of discrimination to bolster the ranks of socialists.  The newest being the 31 flavors of gender and the faking-mental illness crowd where nearly every millennial has "social anxiety disorder" or "ADHD" and demands society bends over backwards to accommodate it.   

There are certainly more sub-narratives under the socialist umbrella, and more will be concocted in the future.  But they can all be readily identifiable in the traits they all have in common.

First, there is a victim group who is discriminated against because of a trait they were born with.  This is an INCREDIBLY important distinction to make because it absolves them of any responsibility of the consequences of their choices.  And almost always they will hide their bad and costly mistakes behind said trait.  Ergo, the black community is not poor because of having more capita on single incomes, crime, replacing fathers with government checks, or poor educational choices.  They're poor because "racism."  Women don't make as much as men NOT because they choose worthless degrees, don't work as many hours and (whether you like it or not) do need to duck out occasionally to give birth.  It's because "sexism."  You're not a whiny, spoiled, SWPL rich kid from the suburbs who doesn't want to work hard.  You have "Aspergers" and therefore need a special college scholarship.  And you're not a coward who can't approach girls.  You have "social anxiety disorder" so you never have to bother hitting the gym.  The single biggest tell of a socialist narrative is when the "victim" immediately blames his or her failures in life on an uncontrollable trait and NEVER says the four precious words, "yeah, I screwed up." 

Second, there is a readily identifiable (though implausible/illogical) oppressor or scapegoat.  In Nazi Germany it was the Jews.  In the Middle East...it's still "the Jews."  Heck in a lot of America today..."the Jews."  But more recently males and whites have taken over simply because they are the largest and most successful two groups of people (even though Asians make more on average than both, but they don't have the numbers, and thus the wealth for socialists to vilify and confiscate). It doesn't matter who the group is, or even if they have money envious socialists wish to steal.  The narrative just needs a readily identifiable bad guy so people can blame their mistakes on him/it and not let their precious ego/pride take the hit it desperately needs.

Third, there is no private sector solution.  Never mind most of these problems don't exist and therefore can't have a solution.  There ARE these problems and the private sector offers no solution to them.  This necessitates the government as the only entity that can solve these "problems," thus begetting calls for a larger state.

And the FINAL tell-tale sign of a socialist narrative...

It's going to cost the private sector more money.  To this day I have yet to hear of a democrat party solution that involves LOWERING taxes or CUTTING government spending.  The solution is ALWAYS to tax more and spend more even when it is painfully obvious socialist policies (say Venezuela, Detroit, or the public schools) simply worsens the lives of the people it claims to help.  Occasionally the socialist solution will be to lower standards or give certain people preferential treatment over others (which IS the definition of discrimination, BTW), but invariably it is the private citizens who will have to pay more in taxes or suffer discrimination and less opportunity because they aren't a protected class.

Now, albeit identifying and explaining the nature of socialist narratives was a bit lengthy, it was necessary.  For if you step back, clear your mind, and think about it, ask yourself two questions.

One, just how common is it you hear narratives like this in the news, your schools, social media, even advertisements from corporations?  I would wager it's a daily, if not hourly event.

And the more important question...

Two, who is pushing these narratives the most?  The government or the private sector/private citizens/institutions?

And what you'll find is that the government may have planted the seeds of these narratives in the minds of little children over the past 40 years, but it ain't the government cheerleading this constant socialist madness on the masses.  It's private people, private companies, and the private sector - be it Facebook feeds, commercials, the movies, Twitter tweets, personal conversations, social media, or meet-up groups - who constantly virtue-signal their leftist, socialist credentials, 24-7, all the time, because that is all most people have in life.

The socialists in the government don't have to lift a finger.  They've successfully gotten all the sheeple of America to do its dirty work for them.  The people are brainwashing themselves into socialism.  It's an achievement on par with nazi Germany in terms of its completeness, obedience, and mindlessness.  It may be disgusting, but it's a brilliant coup d'état. 

Selling the Lies.  Selling the Insanity.

Brilliant a success it is for socialists to get an entire society to promote the government over the individual, and brilliant as it is to divide the nation based on groups of people, thus calling for more government, there is a problem in perpetuating these lies to get the loyalty and support of the people.

They're lies.

They're not based in reality.

And when you perpetuate lies, there is a guarantee there will be friction as people's experiences, logic, and what they see with their own eyes does not match up with the lies you're forcing them to believe.  This friction is called "insanity" and I believe is the true price people pay under socialism.

For example, I love getting called a racist when I tell black men not to have more kids than they can't afford.  I love getting called a sexist when I try to stop women from wasting $200,000 on some worthless masters degree in the liberal arts.  And the reason why is that deep down inside I know I'm trying to help my fellow man/woman by telling them the truth, and am truly independent-mindedly giving the socialist narrative the finger in spite of the risks of being labelled an "ist" or an "ism."  But, I'm also no sheep.  I'm no dummy.  I've always had a healthy distrust of teachers, professors, parents, media, authority figures and anybody over 30.  I have an independent enough mind to know precisely the scam socialists are trying to pull.  The brainwashing didn't work on me in K-College, and it sure as hell isn't going to work on me now.  They can call me whatever "ist" and "isms" they want, it won't affect me.

But what if you're the common, average IQ American sheep, perfectly susceptible to socialist brainwashing?

I can't imagine what it's like being the average male, or white, or both and being told you have the "original sin" of "privilege," owe other people money/preferential treatment, are indirectly guilty of slavery and misogyny AND....

are dumb enough to believe it.

I can't imagine what it's like (since I'm thankfully self-employed) being forced to go to "diversity training," "sexual harassment training," "sensitivity training," or being brought up in front of HR because I asked out a co-worker AND...

believing I'm inherently flawed or deserve such BS in the first place.

And I can't imagine what it's like to be an 6 year old boy who wrote a girl a poem and gets accused of sexual harassment by the Gestapo public schools, let alone what hell awaits him as he grows up into a young man.

And to show my olive branch to the left, don't think these socialist lies only wreak mental havoc on the non-left.  Matter of fact, the socialist lies harm socialists the most because they're most prone to believe, and thus, invest in the lies.

Can you imagine what it's like to be the perfectly programmed and conditioned 20 year old girl today?  You were lied to that you can do anything, and therefore are likely are majoring in a worthless subject.  You're going $100,000 into debt for it.  You will have no employment prospects when you graduate.  You will be financially crippled for your entire life.  And you actually think, you actually believe your career, commuting, and paying taxes is more important than having fun, raising a family, and loving a husband?

Worse, this optimistically presupposes you have a positive regard of men anyway.  How many young women have been brainwashed and conditioned to hate men, or at least fear them because of bogus campus rape statistics?  How many view them as the enemy because feminism has convinced women they're the victims and men are the oppressors?  And where does this lead them?  A loveless life full of working for the state, paying taxes, spinsterdom and cats?  Not only is that a wasted life, it's a tortured one as your socialist programming to be a cold, powerful feminist is constantly battling your genetics to find a man, get your world rocked in bed, make a cake and raise your children. 

If you think democrat women have it bad, may I point out the tragically poor state of the black community?  What is it like voting for the democrat/socialist party for nearly 4-5 generations, and still having no tangible progress in closing the wealth, income, life-expectancy, education, and health gaps between you and your white counterparts?  The fact these stubborn gaps remain is certainly frustrating, but I can only imagine the insufferable insanity most blacks endure when they live their entire lives voting the way they're told, only to have NO progress or promises ever delivered to them.  To have their hopes dashed, daily, weekly, annually, generation after generation, only guarantees a wasted and tortured life.

And perhaps something even the socialist plebs might agree upon - the children.

Telling kids they're automatically racist/sexist and have privilege because they're white or male is easily going to wreak havoc on their psychology.  Telling kids they're victims because they're not white or male IS ALSO going to wreak havoc on their mentality.  But the tell tale sign that the socialists in both government and the population are committed to their ideology over people is when they're telling little kids they could potentially be bi, gay, trans, or whatever... sadly to tragic and horrific consequences. 

It would be one thing if it was mere propaganda, put out by the government and easily identifiable as such.  But when you got the whole population parroting the socialist agenda, nobody can tell what the bloody truth is anymore because there is nobody either telling the truth or merely offering alternative theories.  And soon, without any critical analysis or questioning of the agenda, the agenda becomes all-important and all-consuming, even more important than your own flesh and blood, because that is all there is in life for most of the population.

How Vast is the Infection?

Given the currently-realized and potential-future risks "social socialism" presents to freedom, an important question would be what percent of the population has been infected by this perverse, anti-freedom, brain-dead-zombie, faux-religion?  It would help us determine how far the rot has gone, what the future prospects of the free world look like, and how close we are to an East German STASI like society where neighbors start turning on each other.  It would give many of us an estimate on the probability of the future continuation of the free world, or even tell us if we have to start buying property in Indonesia or Poland as a solid "Plan B."  But it is not so much the simple percentage of the population that votes "right" or "left," or who voted Trump or Hillary.  It's what percentage of the institutions have been co-opted by the left.  What percentage of the positions of power have been infiltrated and occupied by socialists.  These institutions hold a disproportionate, if not, total control over the influence and direction of the American people and ultimately determine how people will vote in the future.  And keep in mind it doesn't matter whether they're the consciously-malicious socialists or the brain-dead Manchurian Candidate socialists, as long as they use the institutions they control and their positions of power to advance socialism, the effect will be the same.  With that in mind, I'm sorry to tell you that nearly every institution in Western Civilization has been infiltrated and co-opted by socialists.

The most obvious is the "soft underbelly" of countries communists usually target;

Journalism
Media/entertainment
Law
Academia/education
Non-profits

These entities not only influence and form opinion, but are also ripe for socialism since they tend to have the traits that predispose them towards socialism.  People who are low IQ, lazy, egomanical, spoiled, entitled, and DEATHLY afraid of labor and toil, perfectly epitomized by the left's most recent darling, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  It is no shock these industries are chock full of socialists as they always have been and always will be.

There's the rank and file sheep - the people.  Admittedly not an institution, but as a group they form an institution and fulfill the very important role of ground troops in promoting and advancing socialism.  Not smart enough to reject the brainwashing they received from the entities listed above, and likely purposeless people who only have the leftist politics in life, they promote and advance democrat talking points and policy. This support manifests itself in any one of a range of actions.  It could be something as innocuous as posting articles on social media about "OMG, did you see what Trump did?" or "Nothing's too good for the children."  It could be something more involved such as being a stooge and volunteering for the democrat party, getting signatures for a petition, or ostracizing friends for not being socialists.  Or it could be radical where they join groups like Antifa, dox people, even assault people, serving more as the enforcement arm of socialism.  Institutions and socialist parties themselves would be nothing without the support and dedication of these people.

And then there's Corporate America and its complete and total advocation of socialism.

This is a bit of a shock as it doesn't make any sense at all.  Corporate America is the embodied antithesis of the government.  They are the owners of the means of production, they want to maximize their profits, and would presumably be against any socialist/democrat that would raise their corporate tax rates, not to mention income tax rates on their executives.  But to any savvy Gen X'er who was paying attention in the 90's, they saw it coming a mile away.

For in the 90's the education industry started pushing things like "diversity," "corporate social responsibility," "HR," "women's empowerment," etc., especially in the business schools.  They were on their face a laughable and naked grab for preferential treatment, if not outright bogus and completely fabricated "fields of study" concocted for students too lazy and too dumb to study Accounting or MIS.  But whereas I took it for granted everybody knew these fake subjects for the bogus they were, it turns out I could not have been more wrong.  For not only did these fabricated fields become established sub-studies within business, they would evolve into the fastest growing fields of business today.  Worse still, most Gen X'ers fell for it.

This has resulted in the Bizarro World of corporate leadership we see today.  Whereas WWII and Baby Boomer bosses of yesteryear had an obvious and logical reason to be against socialism, today's Gen X corporate leaders lead hypocritical, COMPLETELY-contradictory, and UBER-cognitively dissonant careers.  They all vote leftist, but they run their companies as if they're capitalists.  They want to maximize profits, but they vote to tax their companies and themselves more.  And they can't wait to brag about their socialist credentials, while they use offshore tax havens to pay zero corporate taxes.  What's worse is they're seemingly clueless about this contradiction as evidenced in the incredibly bizarre video where Google executives are fretting, even crying, over the election of Donald Trump...the pro-business guy who was likely going to lower their taxes.

It's hard to understand how corporate leaders can be so conflicted, but the answer can be found in two observations.

First, at some level, they actually believed the leftist propaganda they received in college.  They couldn't simply be a "good accountant," or a "good engineer" or a "good computer programmer."  The left in academia wholly convinced students they needed a "Career + Politics."  You can see this in the work of modern day artists where the "art" itself is complete garbage, but there is ALWAYS a political message or interpretation behind it.  Today nearly every professional and college graduate has been brainwashed to believe the same thing - their work is worthless unless they add approved-socialist politics to it.

You can't just be a good analyst, you need to donate to the United Way (under threat of being denied promotion).

You can't just be a good salesmen, you need to recycle to minimize the company's carbon footprint.

And you can't just be a good manager, you need to understand the plight non-males and non-whites taking mandatory sensitivity and inclusion training from parasitic shysters like this.

Again, it could be because of weak minds or a lack of a higher-calling or a combination of both, but many intelligent, accomplished, and talented professionals have at their core a religion of leftism that supersedes in their minds any tangible worth or accomplishments they actually achieve in the real world.

Second, the "Infrastructure of Virtue Signaling."

To understand what I mean by the "Infrastructure of Virtue Signaling" allow me to draw a parallel from the US Interstate system.  This highway system, started by President Eisenhower in the 50's, has been under constant construction and is technically not completed yet.  But in total and over the years this vital transportation system has cost the US $500 billion.  The economic benefits of which have been untold, earning back itself many times and allowing for greater economic advancement had it never been built.  But whereas we've spent $500 billion on the US interstate system over the past 70 years, we spend $600 billion a year on education.  And this spending lays down an infrastructure of sorts that socialism and socialists can capitalize on.  Specifically, an approved leftist national religion of socialism.

I cannot emphasize this enough.  Today's education system is NOT about educating children and preparing them for the real world (if that was the case we would have eliminated colleges decades ago, and replaced it with FREE self-study and certification on the internet).  It is to brainwash students into an approved national socialist religion (with a close-secondary purpose of enriching the teacher/academic/social worker class).  And not only is it to brainwash them into this religion, it is to make sure it is the only thing that gives them purpose, agency, and value in life.  Once you have successfully installed this political religion/cult in two, even three generations, you now have a loyal, fervent, even psychotic "rewards club" of sorts that you can market and sell to.  And corporations market to this group of people via "Virtue Signaling."

Nike didn't endorse Colin Kapernick because they actually believe he's oppressed.  They did so because TRILLIONS of dollars over the years has been spent brainwashing younger people to believe THEY are oppressed.  Thus, if you endorse a spoiled loser who thinks he's oppressed, you get the millions of other spoiled losers to think they're oppressed to buy your shoes. 

Starbucks doesn't "ban straws" because they care about the environment. They ban straws because TRILLIONS have been spent brainwashing their idiot and worthless clientele into thinking they have worth because they "recycle."  Thus, people don't buy Starbucks coffee because it's good (though, admittedly, it is good), they do so so they can feel good about themselves.

And movie studios do not "promote women" because they care about women's rights or closing the wage gap.  They do so because TRILLIONS have been spent hoodwinking women into thinking they're oppressed, but also special.  Thus, women don't go see rah-rah-Round-House-Kicking-Chick-Cop-Shows because the movies or shows are good, they do so so they can "fight the patriarchy."

In other words corporations capitalize on this virtue signaling infrastructure not because they necessarily believe in socialism, but because it is incredibly economically efficient and profitable to do so.  The government and the education system has done all the heavy lifting for them, all corporations have to do is add politics to their marketing and pander to the sheep looking for validation and worth in a cup of coffee, a pair of sneakers, or the latest movie from Hollywood.

The Virtue Signaling Orwellian Arms Race

There is, however, one minor problem.

Corporations like to compete for market share.  And not only do they compete, they compete aggressively.  This is good because the competition for profit and market share ensures corporations constantly improve on both quality and price, thus advancing society and standards of living. But when you throw in:

The "Job+Politics" mentality of professionals
The Virtue Signaling Infrastructure
And a valueless mass market who's only value is an obsession with socialist politics

you have the perfect recipe for tyranny, witch hunts, and Orwellian insanity.

For example, it truly is innocuous as much as it is stupid, but the banning of straws does pain those of us living in the real world.  Not because it inconveniences us, but its Orwellian nature.  It tells us there's a significant percentage of the population that is stupid enough to think banning straws is going to "save the planet."  Worse, if you think through it, most of these people don't believe it deep down inside, thus resulting in an "Emperor Has No Clothes" insanity. Their egos are so tremendous they'll masturbate said egos by living this lie and consciously so.  But what's even worse is that it was the PRIVATE SECTOR, NOT GOVERNMENT that did this on its own volition.  Idiots across America are willingly banning straws to pander to this delusional group of people.  Even the most psychopathic communist in Mao's China couldn't come up with something this inane.

Scale it up a notch and go to Tacoma where they ban plastic bags.  Now we not only have the same insanity as banning plastic straws, but the people now suffer a lower standard of living.  Either by having to pay for bags (directly lowering purchasing power) or (as I did with my bachelor ways) carrying as much groceries as I could with my hands.  People may say it's not that much of an inconvenience (while mindlessly saying "What?  Don't you want to save the planet???"), but if these nazis are going to go after plastic bags, what millions of other petty and micro things won't they go after, micro-managing your lives, resulting in a degraded life by "a thousand cuts?"

And these are the CUSTOMERS of these corporations.  Can you imagine what it's like to be an employee?

I personally had to deal with a client who got upset that I exercised my freedom of speech via my blog, my podcasts, my books, and my consultancy.  They received multiple complaints from clients of theirs that I, frankly, wasn't a leftist and was espousing libertarian, free market, pro-male, and pro-capitalist ideas.  Thankfully I am a minimalist and have multiple sources of income so when my client complained to me I told them to go pound sand.  But the problem is not that my client didn't want to be associated with a non-leftist, it's that there were enough people who were so thoroughly steeped in their socialist religion that they could not respect another person's right to the freedom of speech.  And not only could they not respect that right, they had to file complaints in an effort to punish a non-conformist for having wrong-think.

Again, this is OK because I had the foresight to diversify my income, but what about Brendan Eich?

Not that he's hurting for money, but the story of Brendan Eich shows you just how far the rot has gone.  Brendan, in his own personal time and own personal life, donated money to an anti-gay marriage campaign.  I don't agree with that, but he has every moral right to do so.  However, upon finding out he did, Mozilla decided to fire him. And if you look at the background of Mozilla's board and executive team, you're not going to find a lot of gun-tottin' republicans, but perfectly brainwashed and perfectly trained, virtue-signaling, "open-minded," leftist Manchurian Candidates. 

Another example?  Alex Jones.

A bit loopy, a bit of a dingbat, and a conspiracy theorist, but when four major media companies ban you (Apple, Google, Paypal, and Facebook) all within the same day, you not only actually lend credence to his conspiracy theories you're out to get him, but it is PAINFULLY clear that institutions and powerful individuals are acting in a cartelish nature to oppress free speech.  More importantly, (and may I remind you again) it was not the government that did this, but private citizens and private individuals.

Finally, if this doesn't convince you about the total and complete efficacy of how social and societal socialism has been outsourced by the government, how about banning books?

Roosh V, noted international playboy and author, recently had 9 of his books banned by Amazon. We can stop right here.  I don't have to say anything further.  Books are getting banned.  And whereas one could argue books on terrorism or pedophilia would not have protection under free speech as they're criminal, books on dating OR FREE SPEECH ITSELF  should not be banned and is very telling when they are.

Now, people are quick to point out that the freedom of speech only protects you against government, not private companies or private people.  Google is a private company that does not have to carry Alex Jone's channel.  Amazon is a private company that does not have to sell Roosh's book.  Mozilla is a private institution that can fire and hire who it wants.  But that's the whole point of this post.  The government has successfully and masterfully outsourced censorship to the private sector.  It has successfully outsourced "correct-think" and "political-correctness" to the people at large.  And this outsourcing has been so effective people no longer effectively have the freedom of speech as institutions and the people in charge of those institutions no longer respect people's right to choice, speech, opinion, or difference in thought.  It may not be the government tyrannizing the people as it's the people tyrannize themselves, but that doesn't make it any less of a witch hunt and it doesn't mean it's not tyranny.

A New Chokepoint/Kill Zone

It only gets worse.

For socialist anti-freedom and anti-free speech forces they've been handed a godsend.  And this godsend is in the form of social media/"Big Tech."

Technology does not lend itself well to competition.  Technology is a technique, an idea, a formula, something that only needs to be discovered once and then singularily rolled out, en masse to society.  For example it benefits society to have one computer operating system, maybe two, possibly three if you include the Linux weirdos.  There's no reason to have 276 operating systems because the software that runs on it needs to be reprogrammed 276 times.  Ergo, Windows and Mac are the two dominant players (with a duly noted hat tip to the libertarian Linux lovers).

However, this also applies to social media.  We don't need 40 Twitters, 27 search engines, 50 YouTube's, and 17 Facebooks.  Their selling point is they are a single, centralized location for specific forms of accumulated social media (posts, pictures, blogging, video, etc.) and since they are the single location, nearly everybody goes there, thus giving these platforms (and the people who use them), their value.  It could almost be argued that without a monopoly none of these platforms would be practical, feasible or worth anything.

Unfortunately, this also confers upon them a monopoly status.  And when you consider that nearly all communications, speech, thought, and ideas are transmitted through these platforms, they are in effect a public square (albeit it a digital one) where people are going to (try to) exercise their freedom of speech.

You would hope the executives, board of directors, and managers of these firms would have the maturity to recognize the powerful positions they're in and just what a heavy responsibility they've been given when it comes to free speech, protecting ideas, and the conduct of commerce.  But what's sad is they've DEFINITELY recognized what powerful positions they're in, and because of their programming many (though not all) of them are going to carry about their Little Manchurian mandates they received in school.

Again, Amazon banning Roosh.
All of "Big Media" banning Alex Jones.
Mastercard forcing Patreon to deplatform Robert Spencer.
And do not for a second think it is relegated to just conservative, non-leftist people.

Still, the point remains that because of the nature of internet technology, a handful of monopolies are perched in the perfect sniper position to censor, stop, edit, or simply destroy any ideas, thoughts, opinions, or speech that comes out of this bottleneck.  You would like to think this "Digital Public Square" would be a free-speech zone or a "digital marketplace of ideas," but it is not.  It is more often a killzone.   Facebook employs more censors than the East German STASI could dream, and if you consider all the other Orwellian "committees, departments, and security" staff social media giants employ, it makes you wonder why are they spending so much money on censorship when they could be infinitely more profitable if they just simply let it be a free-for-all.  But the true brilliance of all of this is that socialists now have their dream come true - censors and informants.  And not only censors and informants, but censors and informants  where nearly all conversations, thoughts, ideas, and dissenting opinions lie.  And above all else, the socialists can plead plausible deniability to wrong-doing because it's private companies in this position of monopolistic power, not the state.

Silicon Valley Slaves

The final result I fear is what I term "Silicon Valley Slaves" or "Silicon Valley Socialism" , where I reluctantly admit socialism has "worked" in a spectacular fashion, but only to the detriment of the poor souls who work there today.

Fully indoctrinated into socialism, socialist narratives, and socialist sub-narratives, the majority of Silicon Valley workers were not only convinced they needed to study hard in college, "live in the big time exciting city," and "make their six figures," they were also wholly sold on the "Job+Politics" BS.  This blinded them to the fact that their entire youth, education, and working years were consumed being veritable slaves to the state, Big Education, as well as their "Big Tech" employers.  They may make $100,000 a year, but if you consider state, local and federal taxes, the socialists EASILY take 55% of that.  When you factor in inflated rents (also in part driven higher by socialist city ordinances), you could say they're only working for themselves 35% of the time.  Worse still, traffic.  2 hours of day of their finite lives, a full 12.5% of their waking day, wasted because socialists rather give bums heroin that build roads so the producers can produce for society.  And when it's all said and done these poor souls have dedicated the vast majority of their time to people and entities other than themselves.  They have no fun.  They're stuck in traffic.  They have no spouse.  They have no family.  And if you dare try to point this out, showing them how they've been duped by socialist propaganda, their indoctrination is so thorough and complete they respond by calling you an "ist" or an "ism" or simply dismiss you as being "ignorant."

They could not be any more of the human batteries in The Matrix if they tried.

But do not think this Silicon Valley Socialism is relegated to the poor slaves in Silicon Valley.  It's anybody who drinks the Kool-Aid.

Two full generations of women who threw away their fertility and happiness for a career and student loans..
The Millennials and now Gen Z'ers who crippled their financial futures going into debt for worthless degrees.
"Professional activists" who waste "dedicate" their entire lives to socialist causes.
Couples who enslaved themselves to a McMansion-Sportcar-Combo Mortgage and will forever be working for the banks.
And all of you sheep who lined up at metered ramps during rush hour to plug yourselves into the Matrix all while telling yourselves you're "free."

Perhaps the true brilliance of the socialists was not that they outsourced the means of production to the private sector.
Nor was it they successfully indoctrinated three full generations of sheep.
Nor was it getting the people to enforce tyranny and socialism upon themselves.
Nor was it they got Big Tech to be their defacto censors and informants. 

I think the true brilliance of the socialists of the world was to fool the masses into thinking they were independent-minded and not the complete tools of socialism they are.  You actually have them thinking they're smart, independent-minded, individuals, in control of their own destiny when they truly are the human batteries that power The Socialist Matrix.  And to that I tip my hat to the socialists.  That was incredibly well-played and your victims deserve precisely what you've given them.

Oh well.  Enjoy the decline.
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