Much as cosmologists have debated whether the universe will expand forever or reach steady state at some maximum size, derpetologists have debated the existence of Peak Derp. That is, is there a limit to stupidity? Einstein said the only two infinite things are the universe and stupidity, and he wasn’t sure about the universe.
I believe Peak Derp is best understood via an analogy to Planck Temperature. Planck Temperature is basically the opposite of Absolute Zero, the lowest possible temperature. At extremely high temperatures (1.4 x 10^32 K) the velocity of the particles approaches light speed and further acceleration becomes impossible. The increase in mass of the particles would also create gravitational forces on the subatomic scale as strong as the other fundamental forces, a situation which cannot be described by the current laws of physics.
So, Peak Derp does exist. There is a level of stupidity so intense that it mocks the very laws of nature. However, much like Planck Temperature, that level is so absurdly high that for practical purposes, there is no limit. No matter how stupid something is, it is certain that something even dumber exists. This is the first law of derpodynamics.
I compiled The Derponomicon a few years ago based on a dialogue I had with a prog who was by far the most infuriatingly stupid person I have ever known. I gave him a quote or a video and asked him what he thought about it. His responses are in italics. I did not correct his typos. Here are a few:
A response to my favorite Bastiat quote:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
I was having that very discussion with my right leaning friend/employee the other day. Yes, humans tend to be selfish dicks that only look out for themselves. When it comes to groups of people, corporations, seeking only to maximize profits, that aspect of humanity is often exacerbated by the facelessness of a big corporation where the people in charge are insulated from the consequences of their decisions, whether it’s laying off 200 people the week before Christmas, or intentionally releasing a product that they KNOW will kill people but they calculate the profits outweighing the settlements and do it anyway. These are facts of life, and large groups of people acting as corporations are willing to take risks like that because they can always pass the blame off on some patsy and get away with their golden parachutes Scott free. So yes, these things need to be regulated, and unfortunately the regulators are also human, and therefor susceptible to the same corruption which is inevitable. Perhaps there needs to be an even higher regulatory power that keeps the regulators in check, like internal affairs in a police department. Or perhaps regulators need to be vetted and tested just like FBI agents and Secret Service hires are. Perhaps these regulatory agencies need to be held to a higher standard and simply hire only those who can be vetted and have a low risk of corruptability. One thing is for sure though, NO oversight or regulation whatsoever never reduced incidents and problems. Even a shifty substitute teacher is better than leaving a roomful of children to their own devices.
So the solution to corrupt government is to have an even more powerful organization oversee it, because what could go wrong then? And adults are like disobedient children who need the supervision of the government in order to behave. And, of course, the possibility of reducing regulation is equated to anarchy. Derptacular.
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I asked him whether taxes were voluntary. He said:
Not obeying a law is a choice and therfore voluntary. ….you might get away with it, you might have to suffer the consequences. Pretty simple logic.
When I asked him whether a mugging is voluntary, he said:
You could also turn and run. Any choice we make is voluntary.
It’s one thing to deny coercion, but this guy acts like it doesn’t even exist.
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A response to this quote from Keynes:
“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez faire to dig the notes up again . . . there need be no more unemployment. . . . It would indeed be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory, p. 129.
SATAN!!11!
So I am supposed to discuss the idea of burying bottles of money under garbage and putting people to work digging them up? Was this a serious idea, or just intentional hyberbole. The idea that the unemployment problem can be solved simply by employing people to do whatever menial busy work and whatever wage is kind of silly. It’s not just that people need jobs, people need good paying jobs that will actually allow them to be independent and be able to eat, pay bills, and rent. Simply removing the minimum wage, or manufacturing low level jobs for people to work isn’t solving the problem. Unemployment could be at zero, and it wouldn’t make a luck of difference is the same amount of people still qualified for food stamps and welfare. Removing food stamps and welfare, would just mean that people starve, or turn to crime and violence to provide for their families. The problem today is that no one is invested in America anymore. During WW2 it was a prosperous time, because everyone worked for the war effort (arguably the last legitimate war the US was ever in) building things, recycling scrap, buying war bonds, whatever it took. Every one was invested, everyone took part, everyone reaped the rewards. Nowadays all of that stuff is outsourced to no bid politically connected multi-national corporations that could give two shits about America, or Americans. Of the trillions pissed away on Afghanistan and Iraq, barely any of that money is ever coming back to the US. The US used to be a community, where everyone tried to help each other prosper…until Reagan changed all that. Now it’s every man for himself, fuck the greater good, and make as much profit as possible at whoever’s expense.
Note the lack of awareness for the rationing of most goods during WW2. And again we see the lie that people would turn to crime if not for food stamps and welfare. Finally, we have an obligatory shout-out to the great Satan Ronald Reagan.
In attempting to punish the wealthy, the Government ended up screwing the middle class instead. This sort of backfire happens fairly frequently.
Lawmakers in Maryland, oblivious to what happened with the yacht tax, decided to put a special tax on millionaires in 2008. It was supposed to bring in an extra $106 million. Instead, the state lost $257 million.
Hey, only a person with the tiniest amount of common sense could have predicted that rich people would leave in order to avoid paying tens of thousands in taxes.
I’m going to write this in all caps because it needs to be:
HIGHER TAX RATES NEVER LEAD TO HIGHER REVENUES!
Never had, never will, never, ever, ever.
One would hope that such examples would illustrate the futile and counterproductive nature of luxury taxes. Alas, every leading progressive politician from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren rails against the rich. Amusingly enough, the last major attempt at soaking the rich, the Foreign Tax Account Compliance Act, was introduced by Democrat Charlie Rangel, who was censured for owing tens of thousands in back taxes for income he received from rent on overseas property.
He is so clueless he sponsored a law criminalizing the very thing he had been doing. That is truly a special kind of stupid.
But even stupider than that is trying to tax people who know the law, have a lot to lose, and are able to easily evade it.
There is a city in the US that has not had a Republican mayor since 1962 and no Republicans on its city council since 1994. Not surprisingly, this city is a beacon of prosperity and a shining example of the triumph of progressive public policy. I am speaking, of course, of Detroit.
Detroit did everything right: they have a high minimum wage, a large and well-paid public sector workforce, strong unions, high education spending, and a tax system that makes sure the rich pay their fair share. Is it any wonder that Detroit has the lowest rates of poverty and unemployment in the nation?
Detroit’s strong gun laws have also made it America’s safest city. It has the lowest homicide and crime rate of any city in the country. Detroit’s high education spending has led to it having the nation’s lowest high school drop-out rate, as well as the lowest rate of illiteracy. For these reasons, people have been flocking to Detroit and its real estate market is booming. This teeming metropolis is also a bastion of racial harmony with its many mixed neighborhoods.
The city’s car factories are thriving as well, thanks to the UAW, which helped make GM America’s top exporter. In 2008, GM did so well that it donated several billion dollars to the government to help pay down the national debt. Detroit itself is debt free thanks to the sound fiscal policies of the Democrats.
Other cities and states have decided to follow Detroit’s example. California has been booming ever since it enacted Detroit’s policies. People continue to flock there away from poorly-governed Republican strongholds like Texas.
Despite Detroit’s obvious success, many are reluctant to try the winning formula. So in the next election, remember to vote only for progressives. A vote for progressives is a vote for a strong middle class, good education, and low crime.
Winston Churchill said that a nation that tries to tax itself into prosperity is like a man trying to fly by standing in a bucket and pulling the handle. These sort of statements show why he never gained a reputation for wit and remained a minor British politician.
Wealth is like a pie and everyone deserves a slice. Right now, a few rich people get most of it and everyone else gets what’s left. Some only get crumbs. The pie needs to be sliced more fairly. There is only so much money out there, so no one can get richer unless someone else gets poorer. This is why our bank accounts get smaller anytime someone wins the lottery. Right-wing nut jobs will tell you that poverty is caused by poor decisions and bad luck, but the truth is it is rich people who push down the poor. Life is better in countries like China and Cuba where the government takes control. That way the common people, not the rich, are in charge. Or just look at Zimbabwe, Africa’s most prosperous country. There, the government went even further. It printed lots of money and gave it to the poor, and everyone became rich because money is the same as wealth.
Taxing the rich is good for everybody. That’s why the most prosperous period in US history was the 1930s when the top tax rate was 77%. This why the period of FDR’s presidency is called The Great Prosperity. If the government needs more money, it should just raise taxes. The rich people will grumble, but they will pay up because rich people never, ever try to avoid paying taxes by earning less or hiding their money overseas. Also, every time the government raises taxes, the extra money is used to pay down the debt, which reduces the amount of money the government needs to create. This is why everything is cheaper now than 100 years ago and why old people always talk about how a dollar used to be worth a lot less.
Anyone who disagrees just doesn’t understand economics.
The first war the US fought in the Middle East was in 1801. This was also the first time the US sent its military overseas. The enemy were pirates based in Tripoli, in what is now Libya. It began when the pirates began attacking US ships and taking the crews hostage. They did this because the US government refused to pay tribute for safe passage. At the time, every other nation, including powerful ones like Britain and France, was paying tribute to these pirates.
US ships sailed to Tripoli and bombarded the city. During this time, one ship ran aground and was captured. It was later burned in a commando raid by US marines to prevent the pirates from using it. This raid is the origin of the words “to the shores of Tripoli” in the US Marine Corps hymn.
William Eaton (1764-1811)
After this incident, the US government began a long series of negotiations with the pirate government, led by a man named Yusuf Karamanli. He was a Pasha, or military governor, of the Islamic Ottoman Empire which controlled the area. At the same time, an American army officer and diplomat named Willam Eaton worked to overthrow Yusuf. Yusuf had gained power by overthrowing his brother Hamet. Eaton’s plan was to help Hamet regain the throne and then Hamet would release the American hostages and sign a treaty with the US.
Eaton and Hamet raised an army and marched on Derna, Yusuf’s capital city. With help from the US navy, they captured the city after a bloody battle and forced Yusuf to flee. A few months later, the US government announced that it had signed a treaty with Yusuf which freed the US hostages in exchange for a large ransom. Eaton was recalled and Hamet was forced into exile again. Eaton drank himself to an early death out of bitterness at the outcome.
But on a positive note, the war made a strong impact on public memory, and the US never again waged a fruitless war in the Middle East.
The benevolent octopus of capitalism reaches out to comfort all.
Poverty is the default state. It requires no explanation for its origin.
Prosperity comes from improvements to the means of production. Those improvements require capital, which accumulates through savings. Savings are the result of under-consumption. To put it another way, if nobody saves, there is nothing to borrow or spend on improvements.
When people are able to save, produce, and trade freely, prosperity tends to come automatically. Unfortunately, the free market has many opponents. There are two main groups. One is groups seeking to stifle competition, such as established businesses, cartels, and labor unions. The other is control freaks upset that people are buying what they want instead of what the control freaks want. The amount of power these groups have set the limit on how prosperous a community can be.
Instead of letting the market create prosperity automatically, these groups stall the process with absurd, self-serving rules and then demand that the government step in to stimulate the economy when stagnation results. A good example of one such rule was a former law which outlawed the sale of margarine colored to look like butter. Dairy farmers complained this was “unfair” competition, and so demanded a law to stifle their competitors. Some states even passed requiring margarine to be dyed pink to make it less appealing. A margarine dye law stayed on the books in Quebec until 2008. Margarine was invented in 1871.
The stagnation that results from the accumulation of stupid laws creates pressure for a central bank and periodic attempts to “jump-start” the economy, usually by expanding credit artificially and/or increasing government spending. These credit expansions create a temporary boom followed by an inevitable bust.
The best way to understand this is to imagine a restaurant owner in a small town. One week, the circus comes and he has many new customers. For some reason, he doesn’t notice they are all clowns and lion tamers. He decides to open another restaurant to handle all the new business. But soon the circus leaves town, and he is forced close the second restaurant. In this example, it is all the fault of the restaurant owner’s poor judgment.
In another case, bad weather can cause farmers to lose money. But if every farmer in a country has a bad harvest for years on end, it is unlikely that the weather is the culprit. The farms of the USSR had been some of the world’s most productive for centuries. Yet as soon as the communists took over they proceeded to have 70 years of bad harvests, which the communists blamed on the weather. A common joke in the USSR was that if communists took over the Sahara, in a year, there would be a shortage of sand.
It is the same in a recession when thousands of businesses of all kinds lose money at the same time. The question becomes: why did all these different businesses make the same mistake at the same time? Why did so many people choose to start or expand businesses doomed to fail? The answer is that credit was expanded artificially by a central bank.
Poverty and economic crises are man-made. When the Roman emperors wanted more money without raising taxes or cutting spending, they issued coins with less silver. But since the new coins were worth less, prices rose. The Emperor Diocletian tried to stop inflation by fixing prices. A Roman historian at the time observed he might as well have commanded the wind not to blow.
Just as inflation has been blamed on everything except an increase in the amount of money, economic crises have blamed on everything except credit expansions by central banks. The worst economic crisis in history happened a mere 13 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank.
The idea that printing money, expanding credit by fiat, or increasing government spending will somehow magically lead to prosperity is no different than trying to drink yourself sober or put out a fire with gasoline.
It is high time for the proponents of flat earth economics to relent and repent.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This robot killed thousands of humans in the Emoji Wars and was paid a non-living wage. Now he is penniless and works as a night guard in a toy store for room and board. His name is Gilbert.
America’s robot unemployment rate is a national disgrace. All across the country, robot engineers sit idle and schematics languish on drawing boards. And why? Because robots are priced out of the market by cut-rate human labor. All this in spite of the presence of millions of dull, repetitive, low-skill jobs which are perfect for robots.
Yes, robophobia runs rampant–it’s the last acceptable form of discrimination. It’s time to move forward and strike a blow for machine rights. By raising the minimum wage, we can ensure that robots and humans will compete on an even playing field.
Moreover, more robots mean jobs for engineers & technicians. Moving to a robot-based economy will revitalize America’s manufacturing base. Imagine going through a drive-thru and being served a perfectly cooked hamburger from a gleaming robot with “MADE IN THE USA” proudly stamped on its metal chest. Picture factories in cities like Cleveland and Detroit bustling once more as they churn out robots. Think of all the happy teenagers and college students liberated from the drudgery of summer jobs.
Other nations like Japan have embraced robots. And Japan’s economy has been in a non-stop boom ever since. All thanks to the magic of high labor costs and robots.
In the US, robots have largely replaced humans on customer service hotlines, much to everyone’s delight. I know I get a thrill up my spine whenever I hear the robot voice say “for English, press 1”. And I never have to repeat myself to a robot the way I do with people. They get it right the first time, every time. Honestly, who prefers talking to a person over a machine?
Raise the minimum wage–it’s good for robots, good for business, and good for America.
The US constitution is 4,440 words long. It is the shortest constitution in the world and the oldest still in use.
Unfortunately, the Constitution was not quite enough, so over the years, we added a few more laws. By 1925, all of the country’s laws fit in a book 7 inches thick–much more impressive than that flimsy old Constitution. Later came the IRS tax code. It is around 4 million words, but no one really knows for sure because it gets longer every year. It is now longer than the Bible (788,000 words), War and Peace (587,000 words), and the complete works of Shakespeare (884,000 words)–combined.
Not bad, but still not quite enough. Obamacare added another 387 thousand words and its regulations another 11 million words. It is important to remember that laws include both statutes and regulations. The regulations are often much longer than the law (statute) itself. I tried and failed to find a word count for all US laws, including federal, state, and local. I failed because it turns out there are so many of them, no one knows how many there really are. A rough guess is that there are probably around 100 million words total in all the country’s laws.
Now we’re getting somewhere. A Roman orator named Cicero famously said “more laws, less justice.” But those were ancient times. Things are completely different today. The record of history clearly shows that as laws grow more numerous and complex, corruption and crime decrease. This is especially true for vice laws which have successfully eradicated prostitution and drugs. And with no unintended consequences whatsoever.
You see, with every law we pass, we inch ever closer to utopia. That’s why we should be passing as many laws as possible and never, ever repealing them. To repeal even one law is to risk plunging the nation into anarchy. So the next time you hear someone complain about laws, just remember that laws are the only things stopping people from killing and eating each other. Even the laws like the one which banned pinball machines in New York City from 1940 to 1976. Those are the most important of all.
The US constitution is 4,440 words long. It is the shortest constitution in the world and the oldest still in use.