He’s doing more than just blogging – he’s actively laying out coursework for your own edification, from several books (down on the left-hand side-bar).  I might go through The Divine Comedy next – or not; I hate poetry.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say on the subject – if you want to understand Rothbard, go read Rothbard.  He says it much better than I could.  So for the Good of Humanity, go check it out.

However, I would like to riff on Rothbard & Entrepreneurship, if you don’t mind.

***

In the second chapter, Rothbard discusses the causes of less-than-full employment (employment meaning the people who want to work – obviously you’ll have a certain number of people switching careers at any given time, and they’re not included in this since they’re not immediately desiring employment).  The most obvious cause of unemployment is government price controls – i.e. the minimum wage.  Business owners can only budget so much for labour, before it eats into their bottom line.  They might want hire 10 people at $6/hour, but only hire 6 people at $10/hour – leaving for with no income.

Remembering that money has no inherent value – $1 is only worth what you can buy with it.  Having full employment at lower wages is the more desirous outcome.  Retailers and landlords will adjust to the reality of the situation; possibly by selling more bread and less cake.

Why has no one photoshopped Marie Antoinette into this meme yet?

However, there’s a second, more insidious cause of unemployment…

Workers, for example, become persuaded of the great importance of preserving the mystique of the union: of union solidarity in “not crossing a picket line,” or not undercutting union wage rates. Unions almost always reinforce this mystique with violence, but there is no gainsaying the breadth of its influence. To the extent that workers, both in and out of the union, feel bound by this mystique, to that extent will they refuse to bid wages downward even when they are unemployed. If they do that, then we must conclude that they are unemployed voluntarily, and that the way to end their unemployment is to convince them that the mystique of the union is morally absurd.[9] However, while these workers are unemployed voluntarily, as a consequence of their devotion to the union, it is highly likely that the workers do not fully realize the consequences of their ideas and actions. The mass of men are generally ignorant of economic truths. [Emphasis mine.]

This is where Entrepreneurship comes in.

I’ve long been of the suspicion that we have Far Too Many large companies in our modern world.  While there are certainly some industries that can benefit from economies of scale (cars, computers, and Noisy Shiny Crap) but the majority – I suspect – are top-heavy and unwieldly, unable to improvise or break from procedure.  The small business owner, on the other hand, is Versatile; for instance, I know a man who makes Trampolines for a living, who recently built some custom netting for a sky-scraper.

Good luck finding that at Walmart.

And yet – large megacorps abound.  And the reason is obvious.  It’s the regulations, stoopid!

I can’t fathom how small business owners do it – personally, I have trouble filling out my income taxes each year; the columns make me break out in hives.  These guys, meanwhile, take care of pay-roll taxes, somehow know the regulations for having 10 vs 15 employees, deal with property assesors and environmental inspectors, manage, lead, and train their employees, and yet still somehow find time to actually Git Er Dun.

Sounds like a nightmare to me.

So here we see the real economy of scale: it’s not just producing 1000 widgets instead of 10 – it’s because hiring an HR manager, a Lawyer, and an Accountant full-time is cheaper than a la carte.  The useless bureaucrats who clog this society (both in and out of government) are the real drag – that’s why small business is almost exclusively high-end boutique, or else immigrant run nepotism (that way they don’t have to deal with HR).

Even “government loans for small business” skew the reality; a lemonade stand should be making lemonade, not filling out forms for free money, so that they can afford to fill out all those other forms.

***

The economic inefficiency of megacorps (who manage to survive through punitive regulations) is just part of the problem, however; Rothbard’s point about the stupidity ignorance of the masses brings up the other important aspect.

Working as a salary man offers deceptive security.  Just as someone who’s never been in a fist fight thinks that the Cops Will Protect Them, the salary man assumes that his 401k plan will be worth something when he retires; he assumes that the Value of the things he owns comes from their price tag, rather than what they’re innately worth.

Entrepreneurs seldom fall for this illusion.

As Rothbard says, the Entrepreneur is an expert at predicting the future.  They instinctively analyze the market, predicting what will be profitable and what won’t.  Uncertainty is at the heart of what they do – nothing is guaranteed, as they apply their wits and skill to build a future for themselves, their company, and their employees.

The Entrepreneur lives in the Real World; even their employees, to some extent, rub up against this Real World when they cash out the till each night.  The Entrepreneur doesn’t mistake the dollar for having an innate value – he recognizes that it’s just a fungible (and less fun) version of gasoline.  He is a Real Man, and a pleasure to speak to.

Compare to the office worker, where go-along-to-get-along matters as much, if not more, than real productivity.  Whose goal is to tread water for the next 20 years until he can retire.  Who buys a new car because the service is guaranteed on it.  Who follows the recommended diet plan and runs marathons.  Who votes for smoking bans.  Who votes for alcohol taxes.

Who votes for more bailouts for his corporate masters.

Singularity2050 wrote about the Misandry Bubble; I present you with the Employer Bubble.  What we need is more Entrepreneurs, and less megacorps.  We need more human beings, and less sheeple, as the term goes.  Bloody cavemen managed to survive without free healthcare or social security – yet somehow we – with all our cars, computers, and sports memorabilia – we need protection from the Indifference of Nature?

The dissolution of Reliable Employment has only just begun.

That old, grey mare; she ain’t what she used to be.

I’ve been working on a project.

A little background, first – as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I’d written a novel, found an agent, and things seemed to be moving forward in All The Right Ways, up until a month ago.  My agent had it submitted to a local sci-fi label, whose owner was a good old-fashioned Heinleinian Ubermensch – the sort of dude who can debate philosophy, or fix a car – and quite frankly, it was probably the best book they would have published in 2012.

They were showing interest, requesting additional chapters, it looked like it was a shoe-in, despite the odds…

And then, after sitting on it for 11 months, they replied to one of his emails saying “Thanks, it’s well written, but we’re not interested at this time.” Not a form letter, mind you – a quickly written email, from somebody important in the company.  Would have been nice if they could have explained why they didn’t want it, particularly after 11 months, eh?

This may sound disheartening, but both he and I have been in the game long enough to take it in stride.  We sat down with a bottle of whiskey the next night, and Strategized; obviously, a cold-call was in order – pulling out all the stops and using Deep Manipulation (“So you say no – let me ask you, is it because of A?  Or because of B?  You see, I’m going to frame this conversation.”).

We had it all planned out, my agent was going to nail down a time and date, but then… my mother insisted that I look into self publishing.

And Good God, she was right for once.

Even going back five years, self-publishing was little more than ‘vanity press’ – that is, authors who couldn’t hack it in the real world, and decided to delude themselves by paying cash to have their poorly-written, unoriginal, narcissistic screeds printed in hardcover; following which, the boxes of books would sit mouldering in their garage, while their wives slowly lost respect for them.

In your case, Adam, I don’t think that many people will be laughing.

Needless to say, I wanted no part of that – but I was being an idiot.  The world is changing and I know it – didn’t I just write a post where I pissed all over traditional media?  Why did I still want the ‘pride’ of having an official label licence my book?

Traditionally, publishers have provided three things for a young author: Quality Control, to assure the public that the book is worth buying; printing and distribution management (books are heavy, bulky, and typesetting is a pain); and, finally, marketing.

Do they still do any of those?

Right off the bat, we know that Quality Control is a joke – if Fred isn’t enough to convince you, then the shelves full of John Ringo, paint-by-numbers, military sci-fi should.  The people reading the slush-pile are English Majors, after all – and you show me an English Major who knows what good writing looks like, and I’ll show you a Man who openly despises his degree.  They wouldn’t know a good writer if he bit them on the ass.  So – pride in the name of the company on the spine?  No thanks.  Readers stopped giving a damn about that ages ago.

Second, the printing and distribution – up until recently, printing a book was a lot of work.  Publishing mills would churn out books at no less than 1000 per batch, because of the sheer sunk cost of prepping the machines per-book.  Once again, those days are over with.  We’ve got these things call computers, now – Print On Demand is the Big New Thing, let alone digital e-books.  Self-publishing companies will take care of that for you, for a nominal fee.

Third, we’ve got marketing – and given that this is what I do for a living I think I’m qualified to speak on it.

Your traditional publisher – if you’re anyone other than Stephen King – is going to spend, tops, $2000 marketing your book; that’s nothing but a crapshoot.  Your typical small-business spends more than that each year.  With $2000 you’re rolling the dice – maybe some literary critic will fall in love with you, for god knows what reason, and you’ll Make It Big… but the odds aren’t with you.

So – because of all of that – the cold call never happened.  If by any chance the Anonymous Publishing Company is reading this – I bear no ill will towards you guys.  I wish you the best, but I’m simply not interested in doing business with you.  There’s more money in it for me if I fly solo.

***

So that’s the background – but it’s not the eponymous Secret Project of this post.

You see, upon reflection, As I Walk These Broken Roads is not what I want my First Novel to be.  Now don’t get me wrong, it’s great – on the old Tucker Max Message Board it was described as “The post-apocalyptic, feel-good story of the year!” It contains themes of brotherhood, ontology, the nature of violence, tribalism, and anarchy – and as one commentator described “I din’t think it was possible to write a car chase, and have it be exciting,” – in other words, it is good, hard science fiction, well written, and the characters are solid: overall, it is a damn good book.

But it has been put on the back burner for now, because it is not a good first book.

Nowadays I’m known as an alt-right blogger – not as a writer, per se.  So I asked myself: what sort of book would you guys be interested in?  Then I went a step further – in keeping with my recent post over on In Mala Fide, I asked: what sort of book would be socially responsible?  Broken Roads is – if you’ll allow it – too timeless.  Right now I want to write something that directly addresses the challenges we face in the world today.

And thus the unnamed Secret Project was born.

Some time ago, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a post on the Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence:

Any professional negotiator knows that to control the terms of a debate is very nearly to control the outcome of the debate.  If you start out by thinking of The Matrix, it brings to mind marching robot armies defeating humans after a long struggle – not a superintelligence snapping nanotechnological fingers.  It focuses on an “Us vs. Them” struggle, directing attention to questions like “Who will win?” and “Who should win?” and “Will AIs really be like that?”  It creates a general atmosphere of entertainment, of “What is your amazing vision of the future?”

He’s brilliant as usual, but there is an inversion to the fallacy he describes – while a science fiction author might accidentally mislead, he also has the ability to illustrate concepts which, to our modern mind, seem counter-intuitive.  A perfect example is Robert A Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon.

Ostensibly a sci-fi adventure & romance romp, he wrote it primarily as a PR vehicle to defend eugenics – showing how the science (rather than the Nazi pseudo-science) could be used to benefit mankind.

So I asked myself: what sort of sane, ‘free’, society could we have in eighty years that is post-democratic, post-feminist (while acknowledging birth-control), with advanced automation (pre-singularity), advanced geriatrics, but without Utopian rose-coloured lenses?  What if we were allowed to flourish without this slave-state imposed upon us?  Conflict would still be there – of course it would! – but it wouldn’t be quite so soul crushing as it is now.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple weeks; sitting and thinking and working out the details.  Economic systems in a post-scarcity world, the evolution of religion, attitudes towards immigration and ethnic groups, plausible technological advances, and – most importantly of all – characters!

As Ferdinand said:

Sci-fi, the other nerd genre, suffers from the same problems, which is why the number of worthwhile science fiction writers in the past hundred years can be counted on one finger (Philip K. Dick).

And he’s largely correct.  Heinlein in particular is bad for this.  Not only is he anvilicious, but he really only has three characters which he uses in every story – himself, his wife Ginny, and a younger version of himself.

His characters have philisophical disagreements; my characters have arcs.

So that’s the Secret Project: a damn-good story in its own right, and a sort-of rallying point for all of us in the alt-right – you’re all going to disagree with some aspect of it (it’s not a Utopia, after all [literally the impractical, idealisitc city]) – but that’s not the point.  The point is to pull together all these separate strands of social, economic, and philosophical thought, and show how they might work in the 2090’s – because we sure as hell ain’t going back to the 1950s.  The tech alone won’t allow that.

So with that said, I’m breaking ground on page one tonight: wish me luck.

Go read it here.

That said, I find it sad to see one more nail put into the coffin of the American Experiment.  When Obama signs-off on Section 1021 (was 1031) of the NDAA, indefinite military detention of citizens will be enshrined in law.  The experiment has failed; but I have no schadenfreude for it.  No, in fact I’m angry – not simply because the sight of a once beautiful slut hitting the wall is a pointless and tragic waste – I’m angry because this Shredding of the Fifth Ammendmant is Stupidly Reckless and Evil.

Which may sound strange coming from someone who has openly stated his disbelief in the sacredness of Human Rights… and that’s exactly why I’m going to talk about it.  Because my stance is a bit more subtle than “Benjamin Franklin is spinning in his grave.”

When it comes to Human Rights (the Classical Liberal ones, not our modern UN claptrap), I just don’t buy into the belief that there’s anything special about them.  They are not written down on stone tablets; they are not a fundamental particle of nature; and for that matter, they’re not black and white.  It’s possible to have some freedom of speech, without having perfect freedom of speech.

Hell, human rights were never absolute, despite the poetic paens – as soon as that 200-year-old Bill was drafted, every single article was immediately whittled down to a reasonable level.  Fire in the Movie Theatre and all that.

But just because I don’t think they’re sancrosanct, doesn’t mean I’m against them – I love living in a Free Country.  When you’re part of the Alt-Tight, you’re not allowed to hate freedom of speech – it’s the only thing keeping us out of prison.  Freedom against sodomy laws?  Sign me up!  No, I loves-me some freedom of conscience, speech, association, and property.  In fact, in most of these cases I don’t think we have enough.

However, as a Civilized Man I must look beyond my own benefits; my pleasure is not an argument for legislation – Welfare Bums vote Liberal, because the left keeps them on the pogey, and they don’t care about anybody else.  We are better than that.  My support of the Fifth Ammendment – as well as the others – comes from a place of Reason.

Namely: you cannot have a stable society if you cannot predict the rules.

Any system of justice which is Consistent and Explicit is a good one – Don’t Do What Johnny Don’t Does – it’s easy to figure out, ergo I can live my life while avoiding The Fuzz.  If the system also has an accurate understanding of human nature, then that’s just a Bonus.

I mentioned freedom of speech and the Alt-Right earlier; I was half joking.  From what I can gather, this blog is arguably illegal in My Homeland – the key word being arguably.  As things stand in our Western Democracies, any spoken word beyond weather-related inanities is arguably illegal.  The right person just has to be offended.  And then it’s legality remains in question until an argument occurs.

Sex – there’s another one.  Where is the line between Consent and Rape?  Once upon a time we knew.  Now it’s a question of feeeelings.  Divorce?  Property?  Environmental – Trades & Tariffs?  Each one has been getting progressively more obscure.  It’s hard to tell if one is Obeying the Law anymore.

But this Fifth Ammendment shredding?  Now we’re truly in cuckoo land.

It is now possible to wind up in prison – indefinitely – merely because of an accusation (only available in the United States, coming to a Democracy near you soon!).  There is no way to prevent a false accusation – keeping your nose clean won’t do a damned thing.  We’re all of us, driving down the highway with a B.A.C of 0.11, one set of blinking cherries away from jail.

How can we possibly have a prosperous society under these conditions?  Already, entrepreneurs are afraid to invest in their businesses because of the jerking-about which the politicians are doing to the economy.  Now it’s not even safe to walk to work.

“We’ll only use it against terrorists.”

Ich bin ein Criminal – and don’t you forget it.

***

There’s one other aspect to this whole thing which is quite interesting; I heard it from commenter on another blog, (forget where) but I don’t think he realized the potential salvation in it.

Namely: the US government may have just given their stamp of approval to a military coup.  Some people are already petitioning for the Generals to do exactly this – pointing out that their Oath is to the Constitution (just as mine was to the Queen), and not the dog fuckers who are shredding it.

Whether this is a good thing or not really depends on what you think of the American military.

I can tell you that the Canadian Forces are full of good people; the only problem with Our Army is the elected representatives running it.  As I recall, Gen Rick Hillier (a Great Canadian if there ever was one) quit shortly after I did, silently, without explanation or fanfare.  I suspect his reasons mirrored my own – he got fed up with the political bullshit.

But when it comes to the Americans, I wonder… there’s too many damned generals in that country, and they seem downright eager to develop Terminator Technology for use against farmers (and not just in Iraq).  There’s a lot of money at the top, and some very close ties to the Military-Industrial Complex.  I wonder…

But then again, it would be hard to screw up worse than Obama; and Starship Troopers is recommended reading on Marine bases…

I’m sure it will turn out for the best.

EDIT: Just ran into this video courtesy of Captain Capitalism linking to Complementarian Loners.  Tell me that this guy won’t be down with the military taking over.

The other night I found myself in the ignomious position of driving to my mother’s house to do laundry, like some sort of Univsersity student.  Not because I’m broke, mind you – though I am – I’d simply lost the damn card required in this era of Electronic Money and the Number of the Beast.  Coin-op washing machines are a faint and precious memory…

So while I was crusing along one of Calgary’s main-drags, tailgaiting an $80 000 minivan which refused to exceeded the speed limit, I Swear to Odin that the following stories came on the hourly news:

A Jewish/Muslim Alliance is protesting anti-bullying legislation which informs School Children that there are, in fact, six genders. Good Lord, I thought – wasn’t this the premise of a Heinleinian Dystopian Novel?

Next on, it seems that Helmets will now be necessary for skiing in Nova Scotia – a Province utterly free of Mountainous Regions.

Thirdly – if you drive through a CheckStop here in Calgary, and blow a 0.05 – which is below the legal limit of 0.08 – your car can be impounded for up to a month, without recourse, though you will not be arrested.

Fourthly – an MP was arrested that night for refusing a breathalyzer after having a glass of wine with dinner.

Every single time I turn on the news, without fail, it gets More and More Bizarre.  And it’s getting Bizarre at a Faster Rate.

It’s getting to the point where I’m not even angry over it anymore; nowadays I Laugh in Despair.  Truly, I am a Mad Man living in a Mad World!

And yet, in my current line of work, I’m constantly in touch with The Common Man – or at least, the common man who is also a small-business entrepreneur.  A nowhere do I see this constant insanity which seems to pervade, according to The Media.

A fellow Canadian Blogger pointed out some time back that 49% of the Canadian Population believes that we have too much immigration; a proposition which is so incredibly obvious that I once convinced a Mexican Immigrant of the Truth! of this statement, after only minutes of conversation (for the record, she was a Medical Doctor, not a Landscaper; Mexicans only landscape in places without winter) – but every political party wants to increase immigration, and your average Joe is ashamed of his Racism for being against it.

Your average blue-collar, white-collar, politically-bored and hard-working man I meet on a day-to-day basis is just as Sane as this Mexican Elite – no crazy at all!  Not a single one is as Pathologic as the nonsense reported by the Merchants of Mendacity.  What is it then, a trick?  A myth?  Normal People are Everywhere!

…at least, they are for 8 weeks.  That’s roughly the gestation cycle of The Worm.

It seems that folks will only talk sensible about what’s going on at any particular Time and Date.  Give it a few weeks, and they’ll say what the Talking Heads said; a few weeks and they’re buying it hook, line, and Stinker.

Let’s go back – waaaay back – and think about the smoking bylaws for a moment (a constant thorn in my side).  Back in the day, there were a lot of people against these things – even if they didn’t understand Private Property or other such Civilized Principles that our High School Teachers ‘forgot’ to mention…  Even years after those laws got passed, I could still talk to folks about the Insanity Of It All; and roughly 70% of the time the Signal Went Through.

Nowadays?  Bars have Always been non-smoking.  We’ve Always been At War with Islam.  That’s Just The Way Things Are.  You don’t want to go back to Monarchy, do you?  Democracy is the Wave of the Future.

Way back then, back when I was a civilian, back when the world was at peace, back when the sixties weren’t being re-enacted (this time Dirtier and More Destructive!), I used to have some Hope that the smoking bylaw would change; that me, the owner, and the other two dudes wouldn’t all have to step outside together to spark a dart, leaving his bar empty….  Surely this madness cannot last? I would say with a half-cocked grin.

It’s been 8 years.  And it’s getting worse.

Surely, we are living in the Cyberpunk Dystopia.  William Gibson is spinning atop his grave.

It’s lesser form, “I’m just doing my job,” brings to mind the incompetent half-ass; the man at the printing store who delivers $500 worth of stationary to you, with an obvious typo in the title – a typo you missed as you wrote the order in haste – which he didn’t think worthy of a telephone call to verify.*

For any Man of Red Blood, no explanation of the Nuremburg Defense is necessary: Right is Right, and Wrong is Wrong.  The very pathways of our souls are ordered along these lines.  Debates, perhaps, when the situation is particularly nuanced – but there exists a common sense as to what Justice means, as well as an acknowledgement that it is a social construct, existing objectively, outside of us; that it is not something subjective, ammenable to our whims and fancy.  There’s no need to write down what everybody knows.

But because we are Men, we have codified it explicitly.  The Canadian Forces Code of Conduct says:

…every member of the CF [Canadian Forces] has an obligation to disobey a manifestly unlawful order regardless of rank or position.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, if your CO commands you to execute a disabled enemy soldier, it is your duty to turn around and train your rifle on him.

Yet another document emphasizes just how serious Ethics are to a True Military Man:

QTC: You are an ambulance driver. Your military ambulance is clearly marked with the Red Cross. You are about to return to the front to pick up more wounded. A senior NCO approaches you and orders you to open up the ambulance so that he can load ammunition into it. You tell him that such action is illegal. The act of transporting the ammunition in the ambulance is illegal under the Law of Armed Conflict. True or false?

A: True. The use of a vehicle marked with a Red Cross for a military purpose is perfidy. Therefore, it is illegal to transport ammunition in an ambulance.

Now, I can’t say I’m a fan of the Law of Armed Conflict – it reeks of Univesalism, and the rampant Leftism of the UN.  There’s a callow vegetarianism to the whole thing, with an authorship coming out of the well-fed classes.  It lacks an understanding of aggression, violence, or the implications of total war, and yet…

And yet the soul of the document is bold statement, shouted out at the great unwashed masses of the world: “We are Civilized Men; we are Men of our Word.  We shall grant quarter to a defeated enemy, and respect the courage with which he fought.  We disdain the use of torture, indignity, and the savagery of chemical/biological weapons.  Violence is instrumental – not a principle.  We reject your Big Man State.  We shall fight you, and grind you into the earth… but we shall fight with Honour.”

This has been a principle I’ve lived my life by, in spite of Doctor Milgram; I always figured that the 65% who failed at morality were the cattle living in the suburbs, the doughy soy-bean people, the group which cops and criminals alike refer to as ‘citizens’ (not to be mistaken for Heinlein’s gun toting, meat eating, spaceship building, family raising Citizen).  I understood the world to be a place where the majority of Armed Men carried the Authority of the Karateka in their heart.

At least, that’s what I believed until a year ago; as I made my way through the distended bowels of that gluttinous beast known as the ‘Justice System’ I saw first hand the divergence of values between the militar,y and the government as a whole.

“Listen-” said the Probation Officer, after I pointed out, not just the cruelties and indignities, but the outright material harm she was subjecting an Innocent Man to; “I’m just doing my job.  We’ve all got a job to do.  I could have you put back in prison, right now, to await trial.  Is that what you want?”

Reading this article on The Spearhead got me thinking, again, on all of this; on just how Low and Contemptuous is the character of the modern Cop, Prison Guard, Prosecutor, Probation Officer, and Bureuacrat.

Events such as this – all too common nowadays – bring up discussions about the “militirization of the police force” – and in one sense, that discussion is bang on.  SWAT Teams have become paramilitary death squads, using weapons and tactics similar to what you’d find in Afghanistan.**  But there’s one important difference.

Before a Civilized Army attacks you, they declare war.  They are clear about their intentions; they are clear about their behaviour; they are clear about what led to the conflict.  And when they lock you in a POW camp, make no mistake – you are still resisting. You may have acquiesced for the time being, but you are still their enemy.  They know this; you know this.  And yet, chances are, you will be better treated than any two-bit crook locked up by the government which claims to represent him.

The acutal military at least has the civility to Declare War before grinding you under the heel of their boot; our Modern Police State bellows “We are your Friend!” whilst tasering you for no reason at all.

The concept of Right and Wrong as Abstract Ideals has flown out the window long ago; we’re back to the scoiety of the Big Man.  The legal system has grown capricious, schizophrenic; Right has become a question of Might – be it from the barrel of the gun, or from back-room politics.  Might makes Right, and Lies rule the day.  You show me a corrupt cop getting fired, and I’ll show you a bigger, stronger, better connected Media Conglomerate who took issue because the Innocent Victim had a sympathetic nature – a Media Conglomerate who turned a blind eye to the past hundred victims; members of the Unfavoured Class who wound up “bleeding from the forehead” as the cops like to say.

The book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (review) is a compendium of Legal Insanity.  Its eponomy based on the fact that – yes – thanks to excess legalislating, we all commit three indictable offenses per day, but it gets worse: most of these crimes lack the element of mens rea.  In other words, you don’t have to have evil intent, and your ignorance is no excuse (a premise which only makes sense when the laws are sensible).  Just piss off the wrong cop and you will find out, first-hand, what a Horror prison is to the Free Man.

So if I could offer one piece of advice to any of you Good Folk out there, it would be this: never leave your house without some cash in hand, your phone in your pocket, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

You never know who’s going to be taken next.

* The inverse of the lesser form is LFCA TC Meaford motto: “Never pass a fault.” If you see something that’s all fucked up – you stop and fix it.

** I lie, there are two important differences: the second being that SWAT Teams are utterly incapable of dealing with a trained, alert, and determined Man of Violence.  Their tactics – the cowards! – assume docility in the target.  Anything more dangerous than a gangbanger with his blat-blat is utterly beyond them.

By their standards, dear reader – by virtue of the unhealthy society in which we live – we are, both of us, Quite Mad.

But madness goes in all dircetions; just because The Teacher is wrong doesn’t mean that Any Answer is right.  So when I find that I’ve struck a chord – that others find my thoughts to be accurate and timely – it is comforting.  It increases the probability that I am Mad in precisely the Right Way.

In fact, thanks to some excellent comments, I feel the need to follow up.  Specifically, regarding one implicit premise from last time: why do I assume that education and career are things that ought to be primarily male?

We could start at the beginning – but that’s been done before.  Always more fun to go In through the Out Door, I always say.  So, let us ask: what is the point of all this chattering?

Beauty, art, friendship, accomplishment, family, a home, love! Are these not the things that matter in life?  Forget for one moment about money – elsewise you turn into one of those damned fools who buys brand-new leather sofas every two years.  Forget about being cool, about being empowered, fame, fortune, and all those other windmills.

Building a home, raising a family, and having honest friends is what it’s all about.

So – say it with me now!  Females in the Workforce: what’s in it for Us?

Fifty years ago, women weren’t allowed to work.

Horseshit.  Forget about history’s Madame Curies for a moment – I don’t need them.  Just think of your grandmothers.  Fifty years back, women used to tend to the home, raise the children, and take part in the community; if their husband was an entrepreneur (as most were, at the time) they had His Back.  Women sacrificed all of this to work in munitions plants during the war, they have been candy stripers and they have been nurses.  They made their husband lunches before he headed off to the factory.  They were the mortar which held the bricks of society together.

But women’s work wasn’t paid.

So what?  Seriously, so-fucking-what?  Did everything your grandmother did somehow ‘lack value’ because there wasn’t a piece of currency attached to it?  Nowadays the work hasn’t changed – it’s still primarily women in the social work/childcare/food service industries – only now, instead of having a loving wife taking care of Her Own Family, we have outsourced all of this labour to soulless bureaucracies.

I’ll bet that old lady at Tim Hortons is just ecstatic to make my bagel for me.

Work is empowering.

Are you kidding me?  Work sucks.  I hate having a job.  It’s a Dog’s Life.  Maybe if you’re some hack like Margaret Wente, earning an inflated income for low-quality work thanks to a ~125 IQ and feminist politics, work can feel pretty empowering – but what about Sheila who works at Bick’s pickle factory?

Let’s recall Roissy for a second here:

Female economic equality = male dating inequality; male dating equality = female economic inequality.

When Steve works at the pickle factory, he might hate his job, but it allows him to find a wife and a family.  Chicks dig guys with money.  When Sheila works at the pickling factory, it actively prevents her from finding a husband.

Let me explain.

When it comes to sex and evolution, men have two strategies: the Alpha strategy of multiple children, with low investment, versus the Beta strategy of fewer children, with higher investment.  Women, on the other hand, have a singular, two-part strategy.

Step 1: Achieve financial investment.

Step 2: If possible, have Alpha males sire children (thus producing sexy sons).

By working at the pickle factory, Sheila has inadvertantly achieved Step 1.  Because of this, she will not find Steve attractive; he cannot ’show off’ his wealth, because she earns as much as he.  Fifty years ago, she would have admired his Toyota Corrola (what with her not having a job); today, she drives the same, and is unimpressed.  As a consequence, Sheila only feels True Tingles for men who are either out of her league (higher class, richer) or Badboy Alphas (such as yours truly).

The best Steve can hope for is a 6-month-to-6-year hypergamous fling.

But wait – so far we’re only looking at how Sheila is miscallibrating her own genitalia.  What’s she doing to Steve’s?

Well, as a member of the Half Formed Chromosome group, Steve has three objectives in finding a mate. First, and most importantly, she must be fertile (young, and without disfigurement).  Secondly, she must be of good stock (intelligent, personable).  Thirdly, if he is to invest in her, she should be chaste (no bastard spawn for him).

So right off the bat, Sheila (who I’ve now decided has spent five years at University instead of the pickle factory – it’s my example, goddamnit!) – has blown away his most important objective: she is 30, getting older by the minute, with a quarter the eggs she once had.  As for the second point – this baseline for their compatibility no longer applies.  And finally, the third point – if he can’t offer her resources, in exchange for long term commitment, then what’s he supposed to offer her?  Love?  Only men feel that for the long term; for women it quickly sours into contempt.

Ergo, thanks to her working at the Post-Secondary Pickle Plant, this match made in Mediocre Heaven is now dead in the water.  Goodbye marriage, I knew thee well…

***

So who says marriage is the only option?  I sure as hell don’t.  But maybe I’ll save that for next time…

For the moment let’s consider another social order: that exemplified by lions.  How about if us dudes just chilled out 24/7, while we sent the bitches off to the coal mine to work?

Have you ever worked in an office full of women?

This, I think, is the final nail in the coffin when it comes to females in the workplace.

Premise: Men and women have different intellectual, physical, and emotional makeups.

This is so blindingly obvious that few will refute it, when boldly stated like this, and yet few will factor it in to their calculations.  Women are far better at Empathizing (an incredibly complex brain module which requires accurate simulation of The Other).  The price of empathy is excess emotion; the same circuits which allow it, tie-in directly to their hearts.  This improves their ability to nurture and network, while imparing their sense of justice and aggression (a fundamental attribute of teamwork).

Men are better abstract thinkers; this is what makes justice, competition, and technology come as second nature to them.  Time and time again I have seen men use violence in a reasonable, judicious manner; even street thugs engage in violence ‘reasonably’, according to their goals.  If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to see a violent woman, than you know how nihilistic and extremist it is.  A violent woman knows no limits – she will accept any level of self-injury for the sake of harming you.

And these are just our emotional differences; the differences in our physical and intellectual makeups are just as profound, but even if they weren’t, it still wouldn’t matter.  Our innate drives – the lifestyles we choose – are different enough.  A lower-skilled, average male worker will be willing to work 45 hours a week, grunting away without complaining, accepting his status in a competetive environment.  When a man starts working he just wants to get the job done.  A higher-skilled female in the same job will be more concerened with the pecking order, take offense at slights, and will be more likely to take time off for friends and family.  Women are intrinsically concerened about their status – they want attention.

In other words, a half-competent dude makes a better employee than a competent woman.

So, in conclusion:

1. Women – as a whole (demographics, not individuals) – are not particularly good at working in productive industries; they complement men, they do not replace them.

2. Women damage their value as wives and mothers when they have a full-time job

3. Working sucks sweaty goat balls, but men (and only men) achieve a net benefit from it.

4. “Women’s work” is neither devalued nor degrading – except according to Feminists.

5. Women are still doing “women’s work” only now with a paycheque, and poisonous bureaucracies governing it.

6. This is an idiotic way to run our society.

Good lord, fifteen-hundred words – and I’ve only laid the ground work for where I’m heading.

“Aurini is a misogynist who’s afraid of strong women,” in 5… 4… 3… 2…

The Democratic Experiment has devolved into genocidal Special Interest Groups, where your vote means nothing.  The whole banking, credit, and finance industry is showing its true colours as a ponzi scheme, and we’re the ones who will pay.  Law Enforcement has devolved to brutal thuggery, the courts are a full of hypocrites, and the military is spit on, out of a marxist view of opressed and opressors.

The party ended in 1969; the High Water Mark hit, and rolled back; the party is over, and now the hippies are living in McMansions, buying a new set of leather furniture every four years, while their children and grand children make do with the leftovers.  They’ve become the marketing executives who turn our pop-culture into crap, because the embers of a dying empire no longer burn hot enough to fuel the Wild and Wooly music of the Sixties and Seventies.

Even the Eighties are nostalgic nowadays, and that’s bloody pathetic.

Throughout it all, though, there’s no Great Criminal to point a finger at – not for anyone with a brain, at least.  Our parents may have had their individual fuck-ups, but what do you expect from a single person?  Perfection?  That dissapeared in 1870.  No, despite all their failings, our parents are – ultimately – just people.  There’s no one to take the blame.  There’s no one we can properly finger as the culprit.

There’s only us, the Gen Xers and the Millenials, left behind to clean up after the party while we pay for their social security.

Except for one thing.  There’s a singular narrative I keep hearing from everyone over the age of 45; the same message, the same story, the same prescription – and I have one thing to say to all of you Old Men and Women:

Shut the fuck up about our sex lives.

You turned gender into two armed camps, full of traitors, with every incentive in place to betray one another at the drop of a hat.  Sex used to be an itterated Prisoners Dilemma, where cooperation was the Nash Equilibrium; now it’s a single shot, every Sex Organ for itself, and the defector always wins… if you can call [Divorced Mother]/[Lonely PUA] winning.

You started off by poisoning the wells.

A quote from Deti, commenting on the blog of the esteemed Dalrock:

…most men who came of age in the 1980s and 90s were not learning these things to be attractive to women. We were not taught any of these things.

I was taught there are absolutely no differences whatsoever between women and men wrt thought patterns, perceptions, the way they experience events, the way they process information, or their feelings. I was taught that any man who pursues women aggressively or goes after what he wants is a pig, a chauvinist, a possible rapist, and probably a criminal. I was taught that women find soft, caring, good-hearted, kind, and nice men attractive. I was taught never, never, NEVER to escalate sexually without express permission, and that doing otherwise would subject me to possible criminal prosecution.

Your Humble Scribe grew up as a typical divorce-baby, with an angry beta father who projected his own self-loathing onto me (Italians make poor betas), raised by women who taught me to Be A Nice Guy ™ while inevitably pursuing the bad boys themselves.  I remember feeling guilty for not crying as often as I ‘ought’ to.  I am intimately familiar with this story; we all are.

Let it not be said that I am a misogynist; both genders have it rough.

You girls got lied to just as badly.  While us boys were taught to be simpering feys, you got fed that hogwash of Grrrrl POWER!  You were taught to be ashamed of your beauty, to distrust all men, to act abrasively, contrary to your own sweet nature.  To compete in rough-and-tumble (Title IX) sports, to pursue academic careers, and the corporate office.  That you should be ashamed of your nurturing side, your soft-hearted caring side, your ability to see the best in others, and to be supportive of those you loved.

I will be the first to say that women are entirely In the Right when they demand some Alpha out of their lovers – I cannot fault you for drying up in the presence of Nerds and Geeks and Betas.  It is entirely fitting that a Woman love a strong Man.  Just as it is Fitting that a Man love a Woman who dresses beautifully, wears makeup, and acts sweetly.

At this point, Ladies, I am reverting to my own First Person Perspective; please try not to take offence.  I know it sucks just as bad on your half of the divide, but I’m over here, and this is what I see.

They turned us into gross parodies of our genders, the perfect anaphrodisiacs.  And what do they say when we tell them of our woes?

A man I much admire, Paul Elam (a stand-in all of those who are not public figures):

O.K., so you want to get laid? Here’s how you do it. Smell clean, get in the proximity of women, and then ignore them. When they come to fuck you, and they will, shut up and let it happen.

No, Mr. Elam, no.  I have heard the exact same thing from parents, family, and older friends when I try and explain to them the minefield of modern dating.  Your generation built this world, even if you fought against it, but you never had to experience it.  The Generals who organized the Great War had been Cavalry officers in their youth, and figured machine guns belonged in the rear rather than on the flanks.  Time for you to shut the fuck up, and listen to a Corporal on the front line.

Modern dating is hell.

50% of marriages end in divorce.  Another 25% are miserable, the woman an unhappy shrew, the man a shrivelled, ballless thing.  Another 20% are the blissfully unaware who settle, and 5% – maybe – actually know what’s going on and are happy, despite it all.

Women have become some of the most sadistically capricious creatures on the planet.  The sheer number of shit tests I deal with before going on a first date is astounding.  Confidence doesn’t broach it, anymore than intelligence will win you a chess game; rote memorization and practice is what you need.  You need Game.  Anything less, and you’re throwing the dice for divorce.

Maybe you should look at the women you’re dating.  Maybe you should look to your own issues.

Blame the victim much?  The irony of this astounds me; when a woman’s been through an abusive relationship, she’s held to a lesser standard – her man is expected to be gentle until she heals.  When a man goes through an abusive relationship, he’s suspect of being a Misogynist forevermore, and his comments on the tactical landscape can be ignored.

You Old Men are surrounded by women who are halfway ladies; we young men are surrounded by Feral Women who are violent whores.  Calling us bitter for pointing this out is nothing more than closing your eyes to the truth.

Let me tell you about my ex.

This girl was a twenty-four year old virgin when I met her.  Her parents were together.  She was a professional biologist, recently graduated.  We had amazing sex.  She bitched about the volume and the speed while I was driving.  I told her I loved her.  She told me she Loved Me.

She broke up with me one week before leaving for the Burning Man festival; two weeks after I went into a mild depression; nearly six months to the day from when we first met.

If you have Game, you’re already connecting the dots.  If you’re over forty-five, then you’re shaking your head in pity at my Psychological Issues.  You kicked out our legs from under us, and then snorted as we fell.

Old Man, take a look at my life; I’m nothing like You Were.

In the words of the Great Charles Bukowski, “Doctors, Lawyers, Plumbers – they make all the money in this world! Writers? Writers starve. Writers suicide. Writers… go mad.”

No truer words have ever been spoken. One doesn’t become a writer – or a standup comedian – or an artist – or a musician – because of a bit of native talent, and an eye on opportunity. Only actors do that, and only because their parents make them. For the True Artist, it is a calling; at our hearts we are all misfits, incapable of working a straight job, who harbour a deep loathing for all we see (I hold it that love is simply another form of loathing).

We do it because we ain’t no good for anything else.

But it’s more than just an urge to spew our bile on the world; if that were all that drove us, we’d become a lobbyist, or join Green Peace, or Al Qaeda. There’s also the demands of the craft. No Artist worth their salt expects to do things for free. We might not make that much, but we Will find a market, and provide a product which satisfies their demand. The True Artist makes Art that others want.

So imagine my disgust earlier today when the Captain linked to this Overpaid Buffoon.

Generally speaking, dear readers, it’s considered crass to outright state that you are a Better Writer than others who practice the craft.  Generally these statements are for the likes of Margaret Atwood (who cannot write a denoument), Cormac McCarthy (who cannot figure out punctuation), or Stephenie Meyer (a Christian who writes Satanist tracts without knowing it, and has too many vowels in her name).  In all but the most odious of cases, it’s considered the Height of Hubris to say “I am a better writer than that!”

Margaret Wente is one of those most odious of cases.  I am a better writer than her.

In fact, I am a better columnist than her.

Wente is an utter hack; a woman who can barely string a sentence together, and whose politics have all the depth and subtlety of the organization named Campus Crusade for Christ.  On the 5th, she blamed the Occupussies unemployment on their worthless degrees.  Two days later on the 10th, she blamed unemployed men for not purchasing the same worthless degrees.  Nowhere in her writing do you find any penetration or depth.  She simply points outs the most obvious surface features, and calls it a day.

Univesity education is 5x what it was twenty years ago, with no similar increases in average wages.  The industries hit by the global recession are almost exclusively the productive ones, while the tax-supported, female worked industries continue to leach off the system like a fattened tick.  The Occupussies – cofunsed though they may be – were sold a bogus bill of goods, convinced to go into debt at the age of 18 to only now find out they purchased worthless degrees…

As for Wente?  She got an English degree in University.  Lucky for her that back then any hack with a slit between her legs and a triple-digit IQ could get a job as a jern-a-list.

Writers like her are one reason among many that the newspaper industry is collapsing.  She pulls all the tricks – quotes some random dude named Ben, to imply reseach which never happened – tries (incompetently) to tie her article to broader, irrelevant social patterns – and ultimately reaffirms the Standard Narrative of the audience she’s writing for.

Only problem is, that audience ain’t going to be here much longer.

Her writing is nothing but platitudes and prozac for the Baby Boom generation; assurances that they had no part in creating this Broken and Breaking world for their children.  Assurances that the status quo can maintain, just one more bailout and things will be set right.  That they’re not a bunch of vampires leaching away the wealth that the Greatest Generation left behind.

And I think she just might be stupid enough to believe all of that.

This is what happens when nepotism and ideology guides an industry instead of Truth; the publishing industry is *almost* entirely run by incompetent feminists who wouldn’t know a well written word if it accosted them in the stairwell of a parking garage; presumably, they’d abort the resultant book before it gestated.  The media hires pundits and morons who can’t see the writing on the wall, and simply provide an echo chamber for the fat, stupid, fatty-fat fat people who watch network news.  They actively provide a smoke screen of propaganda because the Truth is to logical and sharp and clear for twisted up sods like them to understand.

There is hope, however: go and read the comments section on her Man Up Article.  It looks like our generations – the X’ers and the Millenials – are starting to get it.

If this is what it takes to be a jern-a-list, I’ll stick to Science Fiction and Blogging, thank you very much.  I prefer the company down here.  We may be unwashed, but at least our souls don’t stink of shit and formaldehyde.

Right, that’s the one thing I forgot to mention about the True Artist.  We right for our audience, sure – but we’re not for sale.

Two big stories bouncing around the Interwebs; the first, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is the Occupation of Wallstreet.  The streets are swarming in New York, police are beating down White Women (and the police state is finally noticed), there are allegedly similar events happening in other cities, and…

…the Press isn’t reporting on it.

Or so I hear at least; my television serves the roll of Ceremonial Fireplace, and I still haven’t bought one of those digital-whatzit-boxes which I apparently now need, so I’m going by word of mouth on this one.  If word of mouth can be believed, then it is a far more trustworthy source than actual journalists; that Other Wiki would certainly seem to bear this concept out.

The Event is certainly not the protests themselves – they’re interesting, in a way, like the Tea Partiers who are nearly as willing to dump on Bush as on the Golden Child – they suggest a sort-of nascent awareness by the masses that they’ve been sold out (though undoubtedly they think the sale happened sometime this century).  But ultimately they’re a waste of time, they’ll change nothing, and the people reporting on them are already aware of what’s going on.

Sad to say, but it’s not big events that change the course of history – it’s a combination of latent, uncontrollable forces, and the stupid, insignificant spats which trigger the shift.  If you have any sense you’ll stay away from these crowds, and study the forces at play.  We don’t know where it’ll happen, or when – I suppose it *might* happen when a squad of Noble Policemen open up on the protesters with live rounds – but it’s going to happen, we aren’t going to trigger it, and you might as well keep your head down, well before the bullets start flying.

The world’s shit; wear a hat.

No, the protests themselves aren’t the event – the lack of reporting on it is.  Now it’s hard to say how unique this is – as a student of History, I am constantly running into the quandary of trying interpret a story which was written by the victors – but Kent State would seem to suggest that there used to be some level of integrity in our Bardic Caste.

I think it’s safe to say that the those days are gone.

The second story is the one from Mexico.  You know the one.  All those dead bodies you keep hearing about?  Laid out like a Christmas Turducken?

Yeah, well, that’s because of this bullshit war on drugs…

No

But they’re all Colombian Cartel murders, aren’t they?  That’s what I saw on Breaking Bad.

Yes, the murderers are from the drug cartels – but the real question is who the victims are.  The first ping on my radar happened when I heard half of them were female.  Then it all fell into place:

They aren’t drug runners – they’re social media bloggers.

You see, the journalistic class in Mexico is so terrified of the Cartels, that they refuse to report on it (and who can blame them?  At least their motives are Human, unlike our own University-fed Bastards).  The Common People of Mexico, then, in need of some sort of forewarning when there’s an hour-long gun fight at the local mall, have turned to Facebook and Twitter for their news – and it is the Citizen Blogger, posting of these dangers, who is being beheaded, be-armed, and be-gutted by the Cartels, left dangling atop overpasses as a warning to others.

I salute all of you Honest Souls with the cojones to pull this off; male and female alike.

The era of Internet blogging is here, with all of its inherent pitfalls – Egypt was just a test-case, little more than your typical revolutionary cell-structure powered by the Interenet.  Iran could have been either, I’m not certain that Revolution made so much of a difference.

Besides, both were Autocratic regimes – you don’t expect Free Press there.

What we have now is the utter Failure of our Free Press to report; not just twisting due to ideological biases, but outright saying that black is white.

Enter the Blogger – and this is going to cause lots of problems.  I know this; I am a Writer, after all, and Writers are deeply dishonest people.  You’ll notice I didn’t cite any facts in this post? (“Facts, what facts?  If the media, the arbiter of facts, is demonstrably shown to not report facts, than do we really have such ideological Strong Points, or are all our houses built on sand?”) If you pay close attention to my writing, you’ll see that I write nothing but the Truth – but only in the most Dishonest way possible (must maintain my Integrity, after all).

Rumours are going to start spreading like wildfire – they already are, particularly in the Economic arena – and we will no longer have that institutional guarantee of authenticity we once relied upon.  Those who still read newspapers, and expect your sources to be cited are naive at best, and fools at worst.

Shit, it’s almost like going back to the Paleolithic.  Interesting times, isn’t it?