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| More!? More!? |
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| Stench lingers | |
Libertarians are fond of denouncing the power of the mob, but it is easy to
lose sight of the fact that they are actually denouncing coercion by the
mob. Voluntary actions of the mob (in the form of consumers of a product for
example) are a core part of the power of the free market. Sometimes,
however, actions of the mob are downright controversial. Intellectual elites (ie those of us with televisions) might be aware of recent
unpleasantness
on London's train system, but may have missed the South Korean transitory
tale
of the Dog Poop Girl.
For The Great Unwashed, here is a summary:
- Girl's dog does its business on a train.
- Fellow travelers suggest to the girl that it might be appropriate
for her to clean it up.
- Girl gets belligerent, and tells them to f- off (as you do when you are obviously
and inarguably in the wrong).
- Techno-junkie fellow traveler takes pictures of the incident with a mobile phone camera
and posts them on a popular web-site.
- There are calls for the people to try to identify the 'Dog Poop Girl'.
- People not only identify her but (in the resultant web-media feeding frenzy) try to dig
up other dirt on her. Old enemies start posting every sordid detail of her
present, her past, that of her parents and her extended family.
- Publicly humiliated and indelibly stained with the publicity stench, 'Dog Poop Girl' quits her university.
- Bleeding heart bloggers explore whether the behavior of the mob was
'fair'.
George Washington University law professor and privacy specialist, Daniel
J. Solove writes:
Most people would seemingly agree to clean[ing] up after your dog, but having a
permanent record of one's norm violations is upping the sanction to a whole new
level . . . allowing bloggers to act as a cyber-posse, tracking down norm
violators and branding them with digital scarlet letters.
Ah, so the intellectual elite are concerned about the masses having a
permanent record of one's violations. Where does this stop?
Here is a little character test for the reader.
Your score is the highest number you answer 'yes' to.
- Do you have the right to have an opinion about someone?
- Do you have the right to record that opinion in a diary?
- Do you have the right to let someone else read your diary?
- Do you have the right to make a photocopy of that diary, and give the copy to someone else to read?
- Do you have the right to make many photocopies, and give those copies to others to read?
- Do you have the right to use a printing press instead of a photocopy machine?
- Do you have the right to use the internet instead of a photocopy machine?
- Do other people apart from you also have that right?
- Do voluntary groups of people also have that right?
- Do those voluntary groups include those who call themselves 'firms'?
On what moral basis do you prevent someone from letting others know about
someone's past actions? [we are of course talking about opinions or matters of
fact - defamatory lies are a topic for another time] It is not surprising that society's intellectual elites feel uncomfortable
about commoners having the power to record the past. Like common criminals,
power blocs always like the ability to 'reshape' history to suit their own
purposes - it reduces accountability. But surely if a ten year-old misdemeanor is truly of
no consequence after someone has 'paid their debt to society', then no-one
should care if it is recorded. Apparently power for the mob is good when used in a coercive way, but very
dangerous when everyone's actions are purely voluntarily. As for Dog Poop Girl, she probably wishes that someone had just rubbed her
nose in it and moved on.
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| London Underground: not a political movement | |
Everyone is famous for 10 minutes, but the corrupt, poverty stricken continent
of Africa got a whole three days attention as aging rockers and
anti-globalization protesters tried to get the first world governments to give
away ever increasing amounts of other people's money to corrupt African
governments in the name of 'justice'. That cause just died, as six 'security incidents' paralyzed the city of London. Blasting the anti-globalization thugs off the front page might be a good
feeling, but some of us were hoping to revel a bit longer in the joy of seeing
collective French noses rubbed in the proverbial after Paris' failure to win
the 2012 Olympics. Just the day before, Londoners were either rejoicing in the streets or shaking
their heads in dismay about London winning the 2012 Olympics. Even those people
who were intelligent enough to realize that winning the Olympics was a curse
must have secretly taken comfort in seeing hundreds of Parisians in tears when
their city failed to win in the corrupt bidding war of the International
Olympic Committee. The London committee was simply better at paying bribes to
the OIC officials than the French, and the best team won. Britannia Rules, UK! But now London has bigger problems. It's a little too early to start finger pointing at terrorist groups, but
if the nature of the arrests in London over the past few years is any any
guide, Middle-Eastern concerns would have to be high on the list of suspects. England has more surveillance cameras per head of population than any other
country, so there are likely to be some incriminating shots of people with
suspicious packages. And as for 2012, this may be shape of things to come, and it may be an
interesting Olympics. With terrorism promising to be the most high-profile
event, it's a pity the French didn't win.
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| Nothing new - just more of the shame | |
It is sometimes hard to tell whether people are telling the truth, but it's
usually nigh impossible to work out whether people think they are
telling the truth. For instance, it's hard to tell whether a bunch of
economically illiterate aging rock stars really believe they can drag people
out of poverty by propping up their thieving and oppressive governments. They certainly sounded sincere enough as they cranked out memorable, if
rather tired, classic after classic in what has been hailed as the world's
largest rock-n-roll event - Live-8 - but rock-star are notoriously fickle, and
maybe they just started believing their own publicity material. When there was trouble in the colonies, Queen Victoria would command 'send a
gun boat!' We don't do that any more, but the lefties seem to believe that
sending money off to darkest Africa will solve the problem. The possibility that
maybe the African nations are not capable of working out the best thing to do
with the money never occurs. The fact that the problems of the Africans are
primarily caused by the oppression by their fellow Africans is unthinkable. Any suggestion that guilt money given by bleeding heart collectivists in
hard-working first-world countries could possibly be used for anything other
than promoting the common good when it made the taxing trip to darkest Africa
is ignored. Just like the left refuse to accept that the many of the black
slaves sent to the USA were herded up and sold by black slave traders. [Yes,
gentle reader, 'black slave trader' refers to the color of the trader here, not
just to the color of the slave.] Oppression seems to be a proud tradition which
continues to this day in the world's poorest continent. So 20 years after the fabled and failed Live Aid concert (African poverty
is said to have increased since then), the rock stars are at it again. A
poverty-stricken continent has been transformed into a poverty stricken
continent of beggars (now with rich politicians), but this time Bob Geldof says
'We don't want charity, we want justice!' Sir Bob didn't
actually say what justice was, but speaker Nelson Mandela gave a clue:
'Where there is poverty there is no justice'. Ah - so justice is the
new word for welfare? The wrinkly rockers were a pretty sad bunch, but maybe, to their credit, they
are actually total cynical about the exercise, and merely see it as a chance to
relive the glory days, get their sagging mugs on international TV, and get a
new generation of fans to go out and buy their forgotten records. There's one born
every minute (and in Africa one dies every three seconds). Capitalism comes in
many forms - sometimes it's just disguised as collectivism.
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| Skin deep | |
"It's my body", is a favored cry from libertarians, confused Leftists and rebellious
teenagers alike. The right to one's body is considered an inalienable right -
anything else would be tantamount to condoning slavery. But sometimes separating the men from the boys is a good thing to do
(especially on Sydney's Oxford Street), and a case in the US might prove more
decisive than a crowbar in sorting out the real freedom lovers from the
lip-service lefties on this occasion. Everyone's ABC reports:
A US mother had the name of a casino permanently tattooed on her forehead after
auctioning off advertising space on her head to pay for her son's school fees,
she said. Karolyne Smith, 30, turned her head into a permanent billboard after an online
casino offered her $US10,000 to indelibly emblazon its name on her face.
The article goes on to say that they actually paid her another $5,000 for her
trouble. Most Australians like to
think of themselves as having an anti-authoritarian streak which goes back to
their convict roots, but the truth is quite different. They willingly accept a
petty government
bureaucrat telling them whether they can cut down a tree on their property, and
don't even grumble at at being forbidden from putting advertising on their
house. Most would be outraged at someone putting an indelible advertisement on
their forehead. Surely the gummint should do something! Isn't what we elect them for? Stopping
people from making decisions we don't agree with? Well, no. Actually it's her
choice, and if you accept that someone's body is truly theirs, then the
conclusion is pretty well inescapable: it's their right to sell advertising
space on it. And if you think she will regret it? Bad luck. True freedom
includes the freedom to make mistakes. But at least it disproves the rhetoric and sloganeering of the advertising
apologists: "Advertising - you'd probably notice it more if it wasn't
there". In this case I don't think so.
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| Not showered with praise | |
Politicians come in many shapes, sizes and persuasion. That's why we have so
many major parties in this country. And why they are so varied in their
policies. One claims to want lower taxes, and the other Labours under .. well,
never mind. Some things, though, seem common across the political spectrum. In the rough
and tumble of factional backstabbing, some noses are going to be put out of
joint between the rolling heads. No surprise there. What is surprising though
is that the people who are so willing to dish it out, harbor such deep grudges
when it is handed back to them.
Mark (Maddog) Latham has reemerged from the political graveyard
to take some swipes at his disloyal ALP colleagues in a book launched
today Loner: Inside a Labour Tragedy. And the arm-breaking former leader doesn't pull any punches. Kim
(Fatboy)
Beasley is described as a 'stand-for-nothing type of leader'. A bit
rough - the oversized Prince of Prolix stands for 'Big Hearted' policies -
which seems to mean giving away more of other people's money than anyone else. Of course it's not really clear what Maddog stood for - he was into the
motherhood statements more than the policies, but he certainly gave the
conga line full of suckholes on the government benches a piece of his mind. Now it's a conga line full of arseholes on the ALP side of politics - Carr,
Beattie and Gallop are described as A-grade arseholes. Well maybe they can take
heart that at least they're A-grade. Perhaps the most interesting thing to emerge from the biography is that
Mark knew quite early on that he was going to resign as leader - he just kept
quiet about it so that the Julia Gizzard team could lobby for support. A
manipulative move of a true (if unskilled) politician. But it was all to no
avail - ALP had taken a risk appointing Maddog as leader, and they weren't
about to take another risk with a woman. Which is why the ALP are now led by the man of jelly. A man with no real
substance, and fixated on the concept of Rollback. He wanted to
Rollback the GST, then he wanted to Rollback his party's own
mandatory detention policy, now he wants to Rollback to the industrial
relations reforms. It's called 'being progressive'. But in spite of Maddog's political manipulations of his party, those around
him who also played politics are 'arseholes'. And Maddog describes the ALP as
"Beyond repair. Beyond reform." Low praise indeed. But coming from Maddog, it sounds like business as usual in
ranks of the ALP.
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| Good ol' fashioned lynchin' | |
Much rejoicing tonight in the US as 80 year old preacher and KKK member Edgar
Ray Killen was finally convicted for the 1964 manslaughter of three civil
rights activists in America's Deep South. And the alleged Klan member ain't showing no remorse - taking swipes at cameramen
and reporters from his wheel chair as he gulped in oxygen. While only one of
the three murdered workers was actually black, it would be a pretty safe bet that
the preachin' man doesn't care much for his melanin-enriched fellow citizens,
and believes that thinking globally doesn't compare with acting locally to
achieve results. It's enough to give self respecting rednecks a bad name. 'We built this country is a popular cry of both white supremacists and
slave descendants alike. But who is the 'we'? People who are left handed?
People born on the 1st day of the month? People who's names begin with a vowel?
People who drink beer? People who like the color red? No? Oh, that's right -
people with a certain skin color. Why does someone have the right to share another's wealth, another's glory, or
another's credit simply because they share the same skin color, or the same
genetic makeup? Why are people are so willing to take credit for their
ancestor's achievements. And for that matter why are they so unwilling to take
responsibility for (or even admit to) their ancestor's crimes? The answer lies in insecurity and inadequacy. People who truly believe they are better that others don't feel the need to
use third parties to demonstrate their superiority - they just demonstrate by
achieving more. They invent a better mouse trap, develop new methodology which
can change people's lives or (more likely) just grow quietly wealthy and
disregard the sea of ignorance and bigotry around them. The surest sign of someone who is insecure is their need for the approval of
others. And the surest sign of inadequacy is someone using the achievements of
others to inflate their own self worth. Whether they claim credit for the
achievements of work colleagues, of their ancestors, or of others who happen to
have the same color skin is largely irrelevant. They are attempting to claim
credit for what someone else has done. And of course part of the trick in claiming credit for the achievements of others
is the refusal to accept responsibility for their wrongs. Everyone wants
rights, no-one wants responsibility. Denying the wrong-doings avoids any
responsibility which might come with the acquired rights. The white supremacists who claims the achievements of white ancestors as his own
is no better than the activist who claims to be owed compensation because of
sins committed against his ancestors by people who are long dead. Or the
feminist who claims a right to compensation because of supposed past injustices
committed by men against women. No-one is responsible for the actions of other people, nor are they owed
anything because of other's achievements. They have the right to what they have
acquired though consensual trade, gifts, or their own endeavors. Nothing more,
nothing less. And Killen? Whether he will serve time remains to be seen, but the ailing 80
year old is unlikely to spend much time behind bars. Some say that the only
real justice is that evil men eventually grow old and die.
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| Mandatory Detention shown in bad light | |
Little Johnny had to take a step backwards to make way for some revolting
backbenchers led by maverick Petro Georgiou, who wanted to see an end to
mandatory detention. Displaying a lack of insight worthy of an ALP True Believer, the
mavericks insisted that there should be a maximum 'detention' time for
detainees, and a compromise was reached to avoid an embarrassing parliamentary
showdown in front of the opposition parties. Howard has been pretty successful
at avoiding showing off his party's dirty laundry, and he wasn't about to hang up
his long-johns now. With skilled politicians working both sides of the debate it was easy to lose
the true argument in hand-wringing 'but what about the little
children?' and hysterical cries of young innocents, it does come down a
single philosophical issue: Should there be a maximum time that someone spends in a 'detention' center? Those who argue yes, are effectively saying that if someone is willing to spend
X amount of time in a detention center, they automatically gain the right to
indefinite Australian residency. All that you need to do is to turn up, and
refuse to cooperate with officials who try to determine your identity. The whole philosophy behind the government's mandatory detention
policy is that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. If you refuse to
cooperate with Australian authorities, they will just out-wait you, and you can
spend the rest of your life in a detention center. No land of milk and
honey. No future. No Australian welfare payments. Bad
detainee. No banana. If there is a time limit on detention, then the entire philosophy changes. It
doesn't matter if the time limit is 10 hours of 10 years - when there is
light at the end of the tunnel, and the decision to come to Australia illegally
once again becomes a decision on investment. As for the maverick backbenchers - the next party pre-selection may see them
enjoying releases of their own.
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| Falling red star wish not granted | |
It's hard not to sympathize with someone in a difficult position. But, at least
for some of us, it becomes easier when the difficulties are self-inflicted. The injured hoon who drives his car at three times the speed limit tends to get
a cooler reception from most facets of society than the 4 year old girl he runs
over. Except perhaps The
Left, who seize on any disadvantage as a greater justification to create a
socialist utopia based on 'need'. And socialism is
certainly good at creating 'need', none less so than than mainland China's corrupt power hungry
regime, which has arguably killed more people than any other in its confused
conflict of pursuit of individual power disguised as compassionate
ideology. Whether Mao's mad regime killed 30 million or 60 million people is of
course a triviality which will long be debated by intellectual elites between
sips of latte and tut-tuts of disappointment that he failed to introduce 'real'
socialism. But it outstrips Stalin's 12 million, and makes Hitler's 6 million
exterminated Jews look a mere training run for the cause of National Socialism. China is, of course, a dictatorship, and it's
difficult to blame the Chinese people for the mess that they are in. But maybe
those who choose to work for the Chinese regime should take some
blame. Particularly when they deliberately put themselves at risk for personal
gain. Former Chinese diplomatic
staffer Chen Younglin has applied for asylum in Australia after
deserting his post and going into hiding. The rising red star in the diplomatic
movement admits to doing unsavory things like keeping tabs of Falun Gong supporters, but
claimed he was 'forced' to do
it. He couldn't stand it any more and had to defect. Apparently asking for a
transfer to a less morally-bankrupt government sector (like tax enforcement) never occurred to
him. But it didn't stop there. Recognizing that his case for asylum was a little
weak, he then went and exacerbated any risk he was in by publicly snitching
on his former employer - accusing them of kidnap and running a network of 1000
spies on Australian soil. Some revelation. As if ASIO didn't already know that most of the 'Bob Hawke
Specials' were not Chinese nationalists, who
cooperate with their former masters at every opportunity. So Chen has asked for political asylum, on the grounds that he went and put
himself and his family at risk after he applied for political asylum.
This is a bit like suing MacDonalds for making you fat and then eating
your way to obesity. Or like taking out life insurance, before practicing
your swan-diving technique off the Sydney tower. Nice try - but no banana. Some people could even have forgiven him for this, but he was found out to be
lying on his main kidnap allegation - and then proclaimed 'I said that out
of fear, and I don't want to talk about it any more'. Yup, this guy's was
trained by the Chinese diplomatic corps alright. Chen has now alienated himself from everyone except The Greens. And climbing into bed
with Bob Brown might prove to be an act even too distasteful for the lying,
scheming and manipulating former diplomat. A liar who deliberately puts himself in danger in order to be granted
asylum. Hmm. When has this happened before? Australia has places for those
people, and if there were any justice he would be joining them as soon as his
current visa expired. But sadly, justice must
take a back-seat to pragmatics. We have to let him stay. Anything to annoy the
Chinese.
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| Ideas are cheap | |
Greenies and carefully
budgeting battlers might be pleased to hear of a new more 'rational' pricing
option for electricity in NSW. Some new user-pays technology is about to introduced for electricity
charging. Consumers will have the option of installing a smart new electricity
meter which records how much electricity is being consumed at different times
of the day, and three charging rates will apply: Peak: 2pm - 8pm
Off-peak: 10pm - 7am
Shoulder: other times
Good in theory, but the idiocy of this new scheme is the pricing structure:
Consumers will be charged 20% less for shoulder times, 60% less for off-peak,
but (wait for it) 70% more for peak times. Fair enough you say? Wait a
minute .. between 2pm and 8pm, I'll be paying 70% more for electricity than
my neighbor? Not for very long! It'll take 10 minutes to run an extension cord over the back
fence, and share electricity with my neighbor. At peak time it'll run one way,
other times it will run the other, and I'll settle up with the neighbor at the
end of the billing period. Not since the scratchy tickets on public transport has a system been so naively
thought out. Usually government incompetence
brings only misery, but sometimes it brings opportunity. Sometimes it really is hard to disagree with naive leftie slogans: Power to the
people!
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| Homo Erectus - evolutionary dead end? | |
It is generally agreed that we have evolved to maximize our
contribution to the gene pool. Ignoring creationism for the moment, this truth
is self evident, if you consider that animals (or strictly the genes which they
carry) that were not good at contributing to the gene pool would obviously die
out in favor of those which were. In 1492AD, each species on the planet, and each race of humans was uniquely and
tremendously adapted to their environment. Then the Americas were colonised.
Since then, mass migration and technology have changed our environment faster
than our genetic ability to adapt to that environment. The fact that 'we ourselves' caused the change is irrelevant. Yeast fungi
'chooses' to produce the alcohol which eventually poisons it in the
fermentation process. Not all changes are in the genetic interests of the
entity that changed them. Nor is this to say that the population has not exploded due to these new
conditions - yeast has not evolved to grow in sterile laboratory test tubes,
but its population grows very quickly in that environment. So the human species has been thrust into the modern world, but is actually
evolved to something closer to the African savannah, primitive Europe, or
East Asia.
Mankind is an extraordinary creature - weaker than the similar sized animals
around him, much slower than those animals, with very poor defences, no claws for
defence or tree-climbing, teeth which are so far set back in his head as no be
almost useless for fighting, a lack of fur which would see him freeze to
death in a single night in conditions which other animals would thrive, and an
incredibly fragile, and critical, organ on top of his head. Mankind has been equipped with two things which help him survive (and
therefore reproduce) in a primitive world: dextrous hands, and a logical mind.
These, and these alone set this pathetic, naked and shivering biped apart from
all other animals. Minds are much like computers, and run programs to tell them what to do. But
man's mind was not programmed to maximize his reproductive potential - it was
merely a enhancement to the brains of the animals it evolved from. And it was
programmed to fill the basic animal needs - water, food, security, shelter,
sex, and social status. And on the savannah this worked very well. And it adapted well to the cold
of Europe, and into Asia. A
human who had water, food, shelter, sex and social status did genetically
better than humans who didn't have these things. But man's new cognitive abilities were so powerful that it enabled man not
just to adapt to his environment but to change that very environment. Formal education, television, motor
cars, nine-to-five jobs and international trade weren't on the 1492 agenda.
An animal's mind stuck inside the body of a man might be a plot for a B-rate
sci-fi film, but in a sense all of us have the mind of a primitive in the
lifestyle of a modern man. Our desires have become somewhat divorced from
genetic advantage, and our choices are frequently not those which genetic
success would suggest. A full belly is a desirable goal for a human on the savannah, but in the modern
world can lead to obesity, and premature death. A preference for sweet food is
a good thing if the sweetest available thing is ripe fruit, but in an age of
boiled lollies it will rot your teeth, and may make you mal-nourished. And many of the primitive desires can be satisfied by effectively
'cheating' the system. Two technologies in particular have satisfied sexual
drives - the electric motor and the color photograph (or more recently the
video internet download). Even when sex is with a partner,
contraceptive technologies (and the ability to abort) mean that sexual desires
can be met without increasing genetic success. Frequent sexual activity in the
pre-industrialized time would almost invariably result in having children, but
in the modern age we often observe just the opposite. The swinging bachelor
recognizes that his sexual desires would actually be hindered by the presence
of children, and chooses not to have them.
So man has become equipped with a huge reasoning capacity, which has
evolved because it gave him a genetic advantage in primitive times. But man is
still using that reasoning capacity to meet the the goals which his ancestors
needed to meet in order to survive - goals which may not equate to genetic
success in the modern world. The mind is designed to maximize the
number of descendents, but programmed to find food, shelter, sex and
social status. Just as the yeast changes its environment and poisons itself, so too some
groups seem to be dying out. The population in
poorer parts of the world is still growing exponentially, but the birth rates
in rich western
countries is well below replacement level. This is not because of any lack of
freedom to fulfill their
genetic function, but precisely because they do have the freedom to make their
own decisions, and to control their fertility. Should we care? To answer that would involve a moral judgement about what
people's goals should
be. Libertarians generally avoid making moral judgements (beyond the obligation
to not steal). Some racists and white puritans seem to be very alarmed
about this. Others don't really care. And what is the future? It depends on the world migration patterns, but the
future does not look white or red - it looks to be a mixture of yellow, black,
and brown, and the poorer the group, the faster they are breeding. Perhaps we should just bless the poor - for they shall inherit the earth.
Or maybe the common element is not poverty but ignorance, and George Orwell will
be proven correct: Ignorance is strength. Anyway, it's something for Homo Superior to ponder as you exercise your free will to prune yourself
off the evolutionary tree.
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>> Please Sir, I want some more
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- ANON -- Anonymous Coward 2011-12-02
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