Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Author: trshmnstr the terrible

  • Selflessness, Financial Freedom, Faith and the State

    I feel like I’m apologizing for some aspect of every article I write as of late. I’m an engineer and lawyer by training but have never been good at condensing complicated subject matter into digestible chunks. This article is no different. I have a feeling it’s going to become a meandering mess. Also, this article is gonna get a bit religious, so I’m sorry if you don’t like your libertarianism with a side of Jesus.

    Faith and Tithing

    It’s common knowledge that American Christians suck at even the basics of the faith, especially when it comes to parting with “their” money. Tithing (true tithing, as in 10% of your income) is hardly ever practiced. Tithing isn’t a God thing. God doesn’t need money (or a starship). Tithing isn’t primarily a church thing, either. Churches have varied forms of income, and unless they’re being run poorly, they’re not relying on the tithe to pay for the lights bill. Tithing is a personal thing, a growth opportunity, much like prayer and worship. It establishes the proper role of a person in relation to God and to material wealth.

    “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” – 2 Cor 9:6-7

    Tithing is a discipline, not a purchase or a membership fee. It’s an acknowledgment to God that we’re just asset managers. God owns everything since God created everything. God even owns us and our labor, we are slaves to him.

    “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” – Mat 25:23

    I can already feel the cringes from the atheist libertarians who believe they are bound by no authority. Discussion of rightful authority is another topic for another day.

    The Bible talks a ton about money and people’s relationship to money. The most famous and relevant example is Matthew 6:24.

    “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

    One of the basic themes running through the Bible is the predisposition people have toward worshipping (or serving) idols, whether those be sticks with faces carved in them, golden animals, kings and other earthly rulers, celebrities, ideologies, themselves, or money. This is the recurring conflict in the Old Testament, with the Israelites constantly serving masters that promised more immediate results. This conflict still exists today and has an immensely negative impact on the charitable natures expected of Christians.

    For example, roughly one in four regular church attending Christians actually give money on a regular basis. However, less than 5% actually give a tithe (10% of their income). A few questions come to mind when thinking about this pitiful statistic. First, why don’t people tithe? Second, what effect does this miserly Christian community have on society? Third, how do we get rid of the welfare state when people show no interest in picking up the slack?

    Debt and Tithing

    The statistics of tithing are quite interesting, and lead to an inescapable conclusion: people in the wealthiest country in the world are so ill equipped to handle personal finances that they are uncharitable because they’re broke. 8 out of 10 tithers have no consumer debt (I assume this excludes a mortgage). Of course, the Bible isn’t so hot on debt.

    “The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.” – Prov. 22:7

    “Pay everyone what you owe him: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Be indebted to no one, except to one another in love, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the Law.” – Romans 13:7-8

    28% of tithers are completely debt free (apparently including mortgage). The leftist whinging against bankers and corporations is puerile, but there is a nugget of truth there. Debt is marketed even better than diamonds. It’s a product to satiate the most impatient impulses of the instant gratification culture that has developed in the US (and the West, in general). We could talk about whether debt has good uses, but that’s irrelevant in this context. What is relevant is how most modern Americans abuse debt, using it to live an uninspected life of trinkets and trivialities. Meanwhile, American household debt is hovering around $12.7 Trillion.

    The most disappointing statistic about tithing is that folks with an income under $20k are 8x more likely to give than somebody making $75k. While a first blush reaction to this may involve Marxian epithets against the bourgeoisie, I think it illuminates another issue. Debt is most heavily marketed to middle and upper-middle class people, and they flock to it like moths to a flame. Income doesn’t measure financial health, net worth does. For example, I make enough to be in the top 10% income bracket (as an individual, household income is lower because my wife is stay-at-home), but my net worth is 6-figures negative because of massive debt. I don’t think that my situation is particularly out of the ordinary. The numbers may change from person to person, but most of the middle class has a glut of debt-financed luxuries and a massively negative net worth. When they’re in debt to their eyeballs, average Americans aren’t a giving people. (As an aside, when you compare American giving to other countries, Americans tend to be relatively quite charitable, which shows the systemic issues encountered across the rest of the world.)

    Generosity and Selflessness

    In libertarian circles, we tend to talk in rational terms, but people are motivated by things other than pure logic. Emotion controls people and cultures. It also controls our generosity. When people feel like they’re being wrung out, they don’t give. Also, when they feel that others’ needs are being taken care of, they don’t give. Even more, when they’re taught to hate or look down on the downtrodden, they lack the generosity required to give. All of these are issues in modern Western Civilization. Although charity was once a national ethic in the US, it has been beaten out of the people. The ever dragging boat anchor of an out of control government combined with a culture that “helps” through hashtag campaigns combines into a rather uncharitable cocktail. Toss on a heaping helping of scorn for the poor and struggling (brought on by the fact that Daddy Gubmint holds a gun to our collective heads and forces us to pay into programs that keep the poor impoverished), and true charity becomes passe.

    “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” – James 2:15-16

    When a culture degenerates into a selfish and segmented “community,” there isn’t enough of a connection between people of different classes and groups to develop that natural empathy that leads to selfless giving. Selflessness is a discipline, and like any other discipline, it must be developed into a habit. Without the habitual discipline of charity, not only does the definition of charity tend to migrate (toward the lazy and the self-serving), but a certain virtue becomes associated with being the target of charity. The noble poor people are systematically oppressed and are victimized by society. We (meaning government) have to stick up for these noble people! Of course, the fact that this entire line of BS ignores the incestuous relationship between government and the virtuous poor narrative.

    Lizard People attack Earth with directed energy weapon while Asian dude rides Hypnotoad.

    Charity v. The State

    In the end, this perversion of the concept of “charity” is directly correlated to the growth of government forced income redistribution and vote buying. Libertarians tend to focus on the government apparatus and how to dismantle it, but this is only a part of the equation. We, as a culture, have been trained away from charity, from caring community, from cheerful giving. We are insulated from one another, carrying on a cultural dance where we spend ourselves into oblivion to pretend that we’re wealthy. The poorest of the poor are driving nice cars, looking down on the slightly less poor who can’t qualify for the massive debt instruments that have driven the middle-class into a ditch. As a result, there would be a massive vacuum if the government were to pull out of the charity business. There are good philanthropic groups, including religious ones, but many work within the government’s framework. In order to be able to permanently throw off the shackles of government theft and redistribution, we need to reinsert private individuals and groups as the primary driver of charity.

    Whether you’re religious or not, a half-tithe is a good start. Devote 5% of your income to changing the definition of charity. You probably pay more than that for lattes in a month. Find a group that does something you support, and give them a recurring monthly payment. Even if just us Glibs banded together and focused on true charity, we could accomplish a ton. If we just stand on the sidelines and bitch about government confiscation and redistribution, we’re never going to make headway. Unlike Obamacare, we need a replacement option in place before we repeal the government welfare programs.

  • Musings from the Trash Can #3: I got gum stuck in my fur

    Welcome to my latest musings! This is where I write about random crap and let y’all sort it out.

    • Pat PlayjacksI love Wheel of Fortune. It may make me seem like an old geezer or something, but I love that show. I’m also unnaturally good at solving the puzzles. It irritates people when they watch it with me.
    • I’ve been thinking about writing a short story about a transport spaceship in the near future that transports pure water from Europa to bases located in the asteroid belt. The spaceship is a converted multi-generational colony ship originally destined for an exoplanet, but didn’t make it out of the solar system and is now run by the second generation as a transport. The big plot arc would be uncovering a conspiracy having to do with the original mission of the ship and some of the Earth governments. We’ll see if I ever get the free time to start on it.
    • Is anything going to actually come of the Seth Rich stuff, or was Kim Dotcom just bullshitting us?
    • Occasionally I’m struck by how most environmentalists are motivated by guilt. Many have the most environmentally destructive lifestyles. In comparison, many non-acolytes (including so-called conservationists) live in harmony with nature. For example, I have more trees in my yard than your average city park. Wildlife is constantly milling about in my backyard. The hipster urbanite can’t even fathom such a lifestyle, but instead stays insulated in their urban jungle, so they have to assuage their guilt by nagging everybody else.
    • Being a desk jockey sucks. I’ve worked for 10 years in one desk job or another, and I’ve never liked it. I come from farming stock, and my body just isn’t happy unless I’m doing something active. It’s too bad that I’m really good at this desk jockey stuff.
    • How many of the crises du jour in today’s media climate are curated attention seeking? When you strip the political manipulation out of it, most of the national news cycle is centered on boring questions like “man calls opponent a loser, is he Hitler?” and “little girl scrapes knee, should busybodies mandate kneepads?”

    2269 v

  • Civil War II: A Trump Impeachment?

    Image result for russiaIt’s really amusing watching the MSM twist their panties in a wad trying to connect Trump to Russia. They’ve gotten the smallest amount of traction and the chants for Trump’s head have started. Besides the fact that the original Trump to Russia connection is based on innuendo and suggestion, the witch hunt has broadened out into a general search for any connection between Trump and the entire nation of Russia. Like a brain damaged chihuahua, the media chants “Russia! Russia! Russia!” hoping beyond hope that they will scare the GOP and Trump into submission. “We can finally control the renegade!” they think, as they piss away the last of their credibility.

    Although people joke about “alternative facts,” it’s not a joke. There are two prevailing agendas across the country: 1) Trump is LITERALLY HITLER and A RUSSIAN MOLE AT THE SAME TIME!!! 2) Trump is DADDY and GOD-KING OF KEKISTAN, VANQUISHER OF THE SJWs and CUCKS!!! The left has their educational and media empire churning out outrage by the gallon. The right has their independent media matching the outrage of the left.

    Antifa is smashing windows and folks like Based Stickman (who the fuck is Based Stickman and why is he called that??) are bashing Antifa heads in. People are primed to believe that the violence will do nothing but escalate.

    I tend to be quite skeptical of claims that the next civil war is about to start. Like the Rapture, many people have predicted a civil war, only to be laughably wrong.

    However, let’s travel through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of derp. A journey into a scandalous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Derplight Zone!

    TrumpalumpitydumpatrumpThis is Donald. Donald is a normal man, somewhat spoiled, somewhat outspoken. Donald has been a real estate mogul for the last few decades, accumulating a vast amount of wealth and notoriety. Recently, Donald was chosen to be the sacrificial lamb of the GOP to allow Hillary Clinton to ascend to her rightful place as Grand Master of the Lizard People The First Female President of the United States. However, something went wrong. Horribly wrong. Donald had an energy that transfixed the public, and nobody could explain it. Donald became President.

    Okay, I can’t keep the Twilight Zone schtick up, but let’s continue to investigate why this latest push to impeach could lead to a civil war. There is one big reason why: Trump’s election was an unexpected boon to a class of people that have felt trod over by the political elites for decades. People most fiercely defend unexpected gains, especially when it is threatened by their enemy. The Alt-Right has ascended and has labeled Trump as their knight in shining armor, here to wipe out the scourge of establishment politics and social justice. The Fascist Left has also ascended, using Hitlerian tactics while decrying Trump as literally Hitler. While an escalation of rhetoric isn’t a sure sign of war, it is a prerequisite.

    The desperation seen on both sides is significantly more concerning. Antifa Nazis have normalized mob violence and intimidation as protest tactics, and Alt-Righters have responded in kind. This powder keg is gonna blow at some point, and we’re gonna get another Kent State. The question then becomes what happens in response to the deaths of 5 or 10 rioters (of either side). Everything in my mind and heart tells me that a crisis like that would boil up for a few weeks and slowly subside. However, what if it didn’t? What if it boiled up into a tempest?

    I think it’s unlikely but possible that this could happen. Either Antifa is gonna beat some people to death, or the Alt-Righters are going to start shooting when Antifa gets violent in the wrong town. This could escalate to people seeking out the melee to contribute, which could escalate to large-scale violence between groups of people. . . also known as a battle. From there, things could snowball into nationwide insurrection.

    Obviously, I find this quite improbable, but the increasing violence and radical rhetoric inspire some unlikely thoughts.

  • Socialized Sports: A Microcosm of a Diseased Ideology

    There are a thousand examples that could be used to show the rot caused by the invidious tenets of socialism in our sports these days. The most illustrative, in my opinion, is that of IndyCar. For the first 75 years of the Indianapolis 500, the race and the supporting series were based on a free-market-style “run what you brung” model, resulting in a rich and storied tradition. Stories of turbine cars, diesels, close finishes, and 1000 HP rocketships on wheels echo through from the past. Before NASCAR, the various iterations of Indycar (CART, USAC, AAA, etc.) were king in the United States. Until the late 90s, IndyCar was a half-step behind Formula 1 for international popularity.

    Today, IndyCar is circling the drain. They had a race in Phoenix last weekend with 7,000 attendees and a few hundred thousand, at most, watching on TV. Why such a precipitous drop from rivaling F1 to now being on the brink of failure? Beyond the basic ineptitude and competitive failures that doom any venture, the problem can be summed up in one word: socialism.

    In the early 90s, CART (as IndyCar was called at the time) was king. Names like Unser, Andretti, and Foyt were touring North America, racing custom built race cars in front of packed stands. The Indy 500 would have 350k+ on hand for the annual culmination of a monthslong celebration of speed. Most years, certain qualifying days would have well over 100k people on hand. In 1994, the fastest qualifying speed was a hair over 228 MPH. Today, almost 25 years later, the cars do the same speed, the crowds are down and the hallowed Month of May has become a week and a half.

    Then, in response to escalating costs and a perceived shift away from the small-town American dirt track racers to foreign racers in the F1 minor leagues, the owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway started the IRL, which based its operating model on a top-down financing of the racing efforts of smaller teams. There are a bunch of other factors in the decadal decline of IndyCar, including a split into two series, series-wide emphasis on safety over speed, and the rise of NASCAR, but the biggest factor was the susceptibility to the allure of socialism.

    In the attempt to contain costs and attract smaller teams, the IRL and, later, IndyCar continued with two core principles that will sound familiar to all of you who are versed in the language of the socialist. First, IndyCar established a phonebook’s worth of technical regulations meant to curtail engineering costs. This resulted in the last 10+ years being run with a single allowable chassis each year. They have allowed limited competition in the engine, suspension, and aerodynamics, but the days of building your own mousetrap are over. Second, IndyCar established what’s called the “Leader’s Circle,” which is an alternative to the traditional purse system. Instead of the winner getting a zillion dollars and last place going home with a pittance, anybody who runs a certain percentage of the annual schedule is paid a salary for each full-time race car run, and winners are given a nominal sum as a prize.

    As can be easily predicted by those of us familiar with the stories of Soviet Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, IndyCar has been suffering from poor racing, fewer teams, fewer race cars, and an utter collapse of the fanbase. Besides a single day per year burning off 75 years of tradition, American Open-Wheel Racing is on life support. Of course, these are “bad economic times” and “motorsports is on a decline” and “we can’t afford competition.” The excuses have been flying since 1996 when they first headed down this path. Every half-hearted, feeble attempt to introduce a market influence is quickly undone. The toe in the water is withdrawn as soon as they realize it’s wet.

    The path to success is simple and quite obvious. Undoing 25 years of stupid will hurt, but, as Venezuela is figuring out right now, the pain is inevitable. IndyCar will wither into nothing unless it reintroduces the competitive spirit of the free market into the sport. The excuses of the boot-lickers in the sport are all based on some nugget of truth, but IndyCar isn’t failing because motorsports are unpopular or because the economy is bad. IndyCar is failing because socialism is more than just painful to live under, it’s also painful to watch.

    It’s sad to see such a great tradition go down in flame, but these days even our sports act as a cautionary tale against socialism and all its variants.

     

  • Anarchy is the Communism of the Right

    Time to piss off a bunch of anarchists! Hopefully, you’ll take it in stride and disembowel me in the comments.

    Anarchy is quite the opposite of Communism when it comes to political structure and social order. However, when it comes to the relation of these ideas to their respective political segments, Anarchy is the Communism of the Right (or if that’s too harsh for your sensibilities, it’s the Communism of the Libertarian movement). How so? There are three major similarities: 1) The likelihood of long-term, stable implementation, 2) the resultant social order, and 3) the big lie that must be believed in order to accept the philosophy.

    Stable Implementation

    We’re very quick to trot out the old cliche that Communism has failed every time it was tried. When the accusation is turned back to us, we quickly disavow Somalia and begin thinking through history for a good example. However, the search through history ends very differently when looking for a successful minarchy versus a successful voluntaryist society. There are certainly successful examples of both, but the difference is in scale. History is rife with examples of empires controlling a city or region with a small military presence and a minimal government. Sure, the occupiers tended to plunder the occupied lands, but in comparison to today, such plunder would be considered libertopian. Anarchic societies are comparatively rare and quite fleeting. Usually, they are either quite small and isolated (nomadic tribes), or extremely volatile (territorial California). In essence, an anarchy does not have what is required for a stable society: protection from conquerors, safety from bad actors, and normalization of trade.

    As much as we all wish the world worked more like theory, it usually doesn’t. This is because we ignore or misestimate some of the factors that significantly affect the result. Such is how it is in a voluntaryist society. These societies are unstable for many reasons, especially because they are bad at protecting their citizens from conquerors and from bad actors. With limited recourse available, regulating and normalizing trade is outside the reach of an anarchic society of any real size. As such, any anarchic society would necessarily subdivide into small tribes with an extreme distrust of outsiders. It’s hard to imagine the amount of devastation that would be required to create these small anarchic tribes in the modern world. The sheer population density of modern cities would render it impossible sans cataclysm.

    Resultant social order

    Communism requires the deaths of millions in order to be properly implemented. In essence, instinctual self-preservation needs to be beaten and bred out of a populace before they are able to accept communism. The New Soviet Man was always a generation away because the commies could never kill off that self-preservation instinct that is endemic to all nature. The resultant social order was extremely distorted and self-focused. When staying alive meant selling out the next guy, the next guy ended up in the gulag and you slept soundly that night.

    Similarly, anarchy requires massive upheaval to be implemented, and the resultant social order has invariably been harsh, unjust, and lacking in technological growth. Despite the immense gold reserves in mid-19th century California, it was a horrible place for many of the adventurers looking for a boon. Although there was a nominal military government in place, it was wholly unable to police the vast expanse of California territory. In cities like Los Angeles, Monterey, and San Francisco, murders in the streets were common. Theft, fraud and violence were daily hazards. There was such a vacuum of power that vigilance committees were formed on a regular basis, enacting their form of justice, usually politically based and manipulated such that the leaders were enriched at the expense of the citizenry. Rather than the idyllic picture of small virtuous tribes scattered across the countryside or the progressive image of a futuristic city filled with happy prostitutes, heroin vending machines, and no taxes, the history of California shows a dystopian mix of these two images. There were small islands of virtuous, justice-seeking families floating in an ocean of rights-violating horror.

    Much like the communists’ aggression borne out of survival, the bad actors aggressed against citizens. However, unlike the communists, the bad actors were aggressive because they could get away with it.

    The Big Lie

    Acceptance of communism requires belief in a faulty premise. Namely, the premise that individuals do not have agency. Government is greater than the individual and thus can appropriate the property and labor of its citizens. Much of the horrific nature of communism derives from this faulty premise.

    Likewise, acceptance of anarchy also requires belief in a faulty premise that there is no valid authority over an individual.  In reality, people are quite unstable when completely given over to their own devices. Both outside conquerors and the less savory elements of society show the results of solely individual authority: the complete inability of society to protect citizens from outside conquerors,  make citizens safe from bad actors, and normalize trade.

    We can always have discussions of what level authority we rightfully have over one another, and, in extension, what authority society and its civil government legitimately have over us. However, the idea that the individual is not subject to any authority (whether legitimate or not, virtuous or not), results in similar absurdities like when the government is fully authoritative. Might makes right. Exploitation over altruism. Vulnerability in the face of outside threats.

  • Focus on the Family – A Cultural Rumination

    I’ve gone back and forth on how to format this article. It’s hard to stay on one single topic when talking about the cultural erosion of the importance of family. As such, I’ve written and deleted this article a couple times, simply because it turns into a rant against elements of our culture. It wouldn’t be a good read. This is my final attempt, and I’m keeping it short and focused.

    TW: I’m probably gonna piss a lot of people off. SLDs apply here as they do anywhere else. I support your right to raise your children as you wish, no matter the cumulative cultural damage I think may result.

    The most disheartening and soon-to-be-fatal flaw of modern Western culture is the disdain for the family. (I’m completely ignoring homosexual and other “alternative” families for this analysis; they’re statistical noise when it comes to culture as a whole). This “disdain” can be seen in many contexts, including: 1) Replacing traditional family roles with outside intervention, 2) Subsidizing family failures, 3) Transforming old stigmas into laudatory praise, and 4) Portraying family negatively. I’ll quickly expose my biases and then treat each of these quickly. Any more than a quick treatment starts to turn into a rant.

    My biases are simple. I’m a complementarian, meaning that I believe women are generally better at/more inclined to certain things and men are generally better at/more inclined to certain other things. This generalization is, by no means, a straitjacket but more of a descriptive observation of people as a whole. I’m also a believer in the ideal family being a supportive, lasting, tightknit family, one that passes morals, traditions, and beliefs from generation to generation. Much of the “disdain” I see is in opposition to the generational information transfer in this ideal family.

    Replacing Traditional Family Roles

    This primarily falls into two categories: government as Santa, and “it takes a village.”  To see the biggest indicator of how much government and other outsiders have taken over traditional family roles, simply do a time audit of a child in a typical American household. Out of the 15 or so hours little Johnny is awake, how many do his parents actually have any sort of influence? Maybe an hour? He spends 7 or 8 in school, 1 or 2 in extracurriculars and on the bus, 1 or 2 doing homework, and 2 or 3 watching TV/playing video games. Besides the odd homework check or multiplayer CoD game (ha! who am I kidding??), Mommy and Daddy hardly even talk to Johnny. Then Mommy and Daddy wonder why Johnny doesn’t carry on their morals, traditions, and values when he becomes an adult. Johnny’s primary influences are leftist-feminist teachers, Lord of the Flies peer influence, and the Internet. Two income households put kids into this cycle at a few months old, and there’s never a break.

    Subsidizing failure

    This could be an article in-and-of itself. Suffice it to say that economic incentives matter, and, according to Thomas Sowell, the average black family was better off 100 years after slavery than after 30 years of welfare. Paying people because their family is broken incentivizes other struggling families to break as well. You get more of what you incentivize, and you get less of what you penalize. We’ve spent 50 years subsidizing broken families out of some naive sense of compassion. Of course, government shouldn’t pile on when families come apart at the seams, but the safety net should be a net (SLDs apply), not a pillowtop mattress.

    Stigma to “Strong”

    The cultural mantra that “different is good” completely ignores the thousands of years of trial and error that has built the traditions that the postmodern left is now tearing down. Again, this isn’t a straitjacket, but there’s a difference between approaching single parent households as parents making the best of a bad situation versus approaching them as no worse than two parent households. There’s a difference between a first marriage, a second marriage, and a fifth marriage. In attempting to build up people (primarily women) in bad situations, culture has made the traditional family passe. Being a single mom is “strong” and “brave.” Being a housewife is “backward” and “sad.”

    Portraying the Family Negatively

    This goes hand-in-hand with the “strong,” “brave,” broken family trope. Feminists have undercut the family as an oppressive structure since the 30s. Culture has followed along, making men into uninterested, idiotic fathers. Mothers (and children) have supernatural wisdom, but fathers are morons. Not surprisingly, people follow the cultural model, resulting in disinterested fathers having children only because their wife begged for it to “save the marriage.” The end result has been the MGTOW movement, which, despite the nugget of truth regarding the gender-based cultural unbalance, exacerbates the problem by tossing the entire family out with the feminist bathwater.

    I’m a little bit proud that I’ve finally gotten this article finished. This is a difficult article to write up in spare time because it could be a 10 part, 50 page monstrosity. However, I think I conveyed the pamphlet version of the argument. I agree with the Distributists in that family is the core unit of society, and I think it makes this cultural erosion of the traditional family hugely self defeating. When culture erodes its own foundation, it doesn’t last.

  • Musings from the Trash Can #2: The Muppet Mumbles

    Like the first installment, I talk about a bunch of different things in one or two sentence snippets. First off, some music to set the mood.

    • I’m continuing to listen to my biography of William Tecumseh Sherman. I feel like I have a new revelation every day about how fucked up our cultural memory of the Civil War is. For example, the guy had absolutely no love for slaves. He seemed to think it embarrassing that the abolitionists pushed “the negro issue” to the point of war. For him, slavery wasn’t the slap in the face, secession was. There seemed to be a general consensus in the mid-1850s that slavery would eventually go away if they didn’t politicize the issue.
    • Yuengling is better than I remember it. It’s a good “cheap beer.”
    • Baby Trshmnstr is hours or days away, and she’s already expensive. A questionable result on a sonogram resulted in 2 specialist appointments before the specialist came to the conclusion that this was all kicked off by a shoddy original sonogram. Sometimes things just work out, and you don’t need tech to monitor every little thing. We were teetering on the edge of inducing at 36 weeks because a sono tech was having a bad day.
    • Just like in most other parts of life, negotiating is all about preparation. Without preparation, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be taken advantage of.
    • Paying college athletes is the dumbest idea ever. I’d be cool with a small stipend increase or something, but paying them a salary will torpedo non-revenue sports, put the final nail in the coffin of the “student-athlete,” and intractably separate the blue-bloods from everybody else.
      • You know what’s dumber than paying college athletes? The solution some moron on a sports board had to the issue: socializing all aspects of college so that the athletes didn’t have to pay for a night out at the movies.
    • Something has changed recently in the way that California is viewed by the rest of the country. It’s one thing for people in Texas and Nebraska to see California as a completely different country. It’s another thing when the Mid-Atlantic and New England have a complete disconnect from California.  I don’t think it’s quite there yet, but I’m a little surprised how much the DCers I’ve met since moving here are just as down on California as Texans are.
    • I’ve tried concealed carrying my S&W M&P9 Shield, but my holster is uncomfortable. Some of it is that I need to lose some of the muffintop so it stops rubbing on the butt of the gun. Some of it is that it’s a single clip holster, so it’s constantly rotating on my belt into uncomfortable positions. Here’s the holster I got. Any suggestions?

  • Deja Vu

    A President elected based on a grassroots sentiment completely misunderstood by New England elites. A faction agitating for war with a hereditary rival. Another faction egging on increased hostilities with a weak and belligerent country, the conflict stemming from a disputed piece of land lost in a revolution. A mass of troops stationed at the southern border. A long-lasting war against a wide-spanning network of stone-age terrorists. Domestic strife based around the treatment of persons of color.

    It could be a description of President Trump’s first few months in office, but it also applies to James K. Polk’s presidency. Back then, phrases like “Manifest Destiny” were bandied about, representing the conquering spirit of the American people in the mid-19th century. Agitators were pushing aggressive postures against Great Britain (over the Oregon Territory) and Mexico (over Texas and California) so that the US could claim a great swath of the Western Frontier. Polk was also engaged in a generations’ long battle that he inherited from his predecessors, a smoldering fight against the Indians. Some Indians, like the Seminoles, had resorted to indiscriminate violence against all infidels Americans. People traveling between towns would be snatched off the highway, tortured, and have their brains bashed in. Further, the tinderbox of slavery was awaiting a spark before igniting the Civil War. Interestingly, Polk’s acquisition of California was one of the biggest destabilizing events in the mid-19th Century that made the Civil War inevitable.

    I’ve been listening (audiobook) to a biography of General Sherman, and his connection to the politics of this time is fascinating. As a Lieutenant looking to get a taste of the glory of war and a promotion, Sherman’s near-exile to Monterrey, California during the Mexican War was excruciating. However, he was right in the middle of history, being one of the first people to know of gold in California. It’s interesting to see the reaction of Americans to border disputes in territories far away from the states themselves. People seemed to have the same”go get ’em” attitude when it came to 19th century imperialism as when it comes to 21st century nation building.

  • Musings from the Trash Can: Random Thoughts from A Muppet

    My brain is going in a thousand different directions today, so I’m gonna roll with it. I’m just gonna write a few sentences for each thought in stream of consciousness form and see whether it gets me booed off the stage.

    • It’s amazing how much money touches every sore spot in a relationship. My wife and I are going through Dave Ramsey’s FPU to “tune up” our finances now that I’m making a paycheck again, and it’s painfully obvious how different our respective priorities are. I’m very risk averse and want to be completely out of debt within 5 years. She’d rather have nice things and not think about money. There was definitely some sleeping on the couch happening this week.
    • Am I the only one who couldn’t care less about this Russian bullshit? It didn’t pass the smell test in November. It didn’t pass the smell test in January. Now it smells like an Obama fart as we are starting to get wiretapping information.
    • I’m not at all surprised that the Whatever 7 from Wikileaks was another big nothing. We learned more about how utterly out of control our intelligence agencies are, but none of it was a “shocking revelation.” Wikileaks needs somebody to better market their info dumps because they’re all hat and no cattle at this point.
    • I think the NFL is suffering from the same problems as the NBA, and their ratings will continue to decline in the next few years. The players are less and less interesting to the majority of the population, prices for tickets and apparel are out of the reach of many, and the media spends more time on who beat up their girlfriend than on actual football anymore.
    • Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell is a great read! I think I’d recommend Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt first, simply because it’s shorter and less repetitive. Either book is a great primer on why everything politicians say about economics is crap.
    • Complete detox from the MSM has been nice. I’ll watch the occasional local news segment or click the random link to a MSM outlet, but generally I just avoid it. It gives a level of perspective to the daily Olympic pants shitting that happens in our culture. Also, nothing pisses a prog off more than when they’re hyperventilating with “Did you see that Trump did that????!?!?!?”, replying with “nope, must’ve missed it. Doesn’t sound very important.”
    • After watching a few Dateline episodes with Mrs. trshmnstr (what is with women’s obsession with that show??), I’ve come to the conclusion that if the random guy you met at a party texts you 2 hours later, he’s already in your garage getting ready to rape you, strangle you, and dump your body three counties over.
    • Final thought: I had always thought of the Civil War as being fought mostly in open fields. My visits to the Manassas Battlefield have disavowed me of that notion. I’m sure the artillery were set up in large fields, but it looks like much of the battle must have taken place in densely forested areas.

  • Completely Unwarranted Attack on the Single Land Tax (Land Value Tax) #2

    We’ve had some really good back and forth in the prior articles about the SLT/LVT, so I’m gonna poke the hornet’s next one more time.

    Rent, so much rent!!!

    This time I’m taking aim at the claim from SLTers (and other economists) that a single land tax/land value tax is the “least bad” because it incurs no “deadweight loss.”

    MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: I’m not an economist. My only formal exposure to economics was a AP micro in high school and 2 weeks of macro in college before I dropped the class. I’m prepared for somebody with knowledge in this subject matter to refute any and every premise/assertion/conclusion I make.

    First, let’s define deadweight loss. In a broad sense, deadweight loss is a measure of certain inefficiencies caused by government intervention in a market. Focusing specifically on taxes, deadweight loss represents the benefit that would’ve been had by consumers in the perfect market that is foregone in the distorted market.

    As a simple example, let’s say the perfect market would sell monocles for $1, and the government imposes a $3 luxury tax on monocles, raising their total cost to $4/monocle. There are a lot of people who would buy a monocle at $1, and a few glibertarians who would buy a monocle even at $4. Deadweight loss represents the economic benefit that the glibertarians who bought $4 monocles would have otherwise had with the $3 they ended up paying in tax.

    Using a static model, it looks like this, pictographically:

    I made a graph!!!1!1!!

    Using this model, SLTers say that the SLT has no deadweight loss because there is a fixed supply of land (a vertical supply curve). You usually see a graph like this from them:

    I've seen this one before

    However, let’s think about what this means for a moment. It means that no matter the tax on the value of the land, the consumer does not lose economic benefit. This strikes me as incorrect. In fact, upon examining the above graph, it seems a bit… off. After looking at it for a bit, it appears that the demand curve has been moved in the no deadweight loss graph. It’s showing the equilibrium for a distorted market, not for a theoretical perfect market like in the top graph. Taking that into account here’s what the graph should look like (IMO):

    What am I missing here???

    Somebody please explain to me what I’m doing wrong here. When I, a lay person, am coming to a different conclusion than the likes of Milton Friedman, I’m worried that I’m missing something very simple.

    However, just to hedge my argument a little bit, I think we need to re-examine this asymptotic economic model. Land is a somewhat unique object in that it cannot be produced. When looking at a supply curve, we’re more focused on production. Thinking about it for a moment, it seems really odd to say that, should the demand for land drop precipitously, land could go to at-or-near zero price. See, what I intuit is that some land isn’t marketable at a certain price. I think the vertical line is too simplistic and results in “technically right” answers that don’t reflect reality. The “not for sale” aspect isn’t being taken into account. Therefore, in adjusting the supply curve to reflect the marketable supply of land rather than the total supply, we get a graph that looks a bit more like the first one in this article:

    Land for a penny!