Month: January 2018

Unpopular Opinion: I hate people who have the ‘poor’ mindset. 

I not only oppose government welfare, I oppose private welfare.  You’d be better off burning your money than giving it to a person who lacks the drive to provide themselves opportunities.  At least burning it would provide you some heat.

For the last 9 years, I’ve been living with poor people.  Why?  I rent out the spare room in my home, because I’m extroverted and like having some extra spending cash.  Every single one of them has been lazy and stupid.

I recall one had tickets to Lollapalooza. She paid $50 each for them.  They were selling for $300 each on StubHub. Her boss wouldn’t give her the day off. What’d she do? Well, not the smart thing, which is go to work and sell the tickets. Nope, she calls in sick! Yeah, I’m sure that won’t be remembered come raise or layoff time.

Another had to borrow money from me every year for his girlfriend’s birthday.  Same girlfriend.  Three years in a row. 

 Sure, he always paid it back promptly, but seriously….  It happens on the same day every year!

My current tenant is two months behind on rent.  I offered to knock off $150 if he raked the leaves and cleaned the gutters (a $60 value).  Guess what hasn’t happened a month later?  Guess who won’t be making any more generous offers of work in lieu of rent?  (Seriously, if you’re looking to hire anyone in the Lake Worth area, check with me first to make sure you don’t hire the guy.)

He’s a tow truck driver, who gets paid on commission (using his bosses equipment).  He was complaining about not getting paid to be on call.  I suggested he should go to his boss and ask how he could be of greater use to his boss. 

Explain to his boss he wants to make more money, but he understands he needs to provide value to his boss, so he is respectfully asking his boss for help in becoming a more useful employee.  He looked at me like I had grown two heads. Then he went into a screed about how it isn’t fair he doesn’t get paid by the hour (even though his boss only gets paid a flat rate per tow).

No matter how much you help these people, they will always be poor.  They squander every opportunity you give them, ignore any advice you give them, and only ever think of their own short term pleasure.  We should do away with all forms of charity, with the possible exception of work internships.  Work opportunities will separate the wheat from the chafe.  Let the rest die face down in the gutter.  At least then we’d get soap and glue when we rendered down their bodies.  (There’s a touch of sarcasm in this paragraph…  you know, for effect)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stand on my porch and yell at children to get off my lawn.

What is the purpose of Government?

Imagine a time before kings, presidents, or prime ministers, before the formation of society
and civilization.

This is what philosophers call a “state of nature”. In this thought experiment, people lived freely, without rules or formal laws.

But what exactly does this state look like?

For 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes the state of nature is a war of all against all. Mankind’s basic nature is fear, insecurity, death, and turmoil.  And from this constant terror, People decided to surrender some basic rights to a sovereign entity, or what he called The Leviathan.

If one was, say, fed up with the theft of his potions, the state could pass laws to protect his goods or help him receive some sort of reparation. This protection is important for a number of reasons, but the most significant is that laws, and their enforcement, keep constant anxiety at bay.

For 18th century Swiss-born french philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the state of nature is rather different than that conceived by Hobbes.

Rousseau sees natural man as independent, solitary, and peaceful. Rousseau thought people were much better off without government. With the creation of agriculture, private property, and the division of labor, however, came inequalities. Unequal access to resources created tension, enmity, and envy.

People started to become aware of their limited material situation and lack of upward mobility.  They became aware of their ‘unfreedom’. This led Rousseau to claim that “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains.”

While both philosophers describe the state of nature as a sort of beastly existence absent any morality, they disagree on some fundamentals. Rousseau sees the Hobbesian model as leading to despotism, in which people have no choice but to turn to a third party to secure basic needs. Consequently, they do not freely choose their leaders.

Rousseau argues that rather than choosing leaders out of fear, people choose to give up some power and rights, at least so that citizens can be equal.  Rousseau dictated that decisions ought to be made for the sake of everyone, instead of a few.  This would require that people follow a rule of law that they would follow on their own anyway.  For Rousseau, people are better without government because society means unfreedom and oppression.

Whether out of fear or for the sake of equality, the consent to be ruled is called the social contract.

So listeners I ask, “Who has it right?”
​
Do people need to be kept in line or should they remain free to do as they wish?

I’ve always said Jeffrey Tucker is my favorite living communicator of libertarian thought. 

I’ve read Bourbon for Breakfast and Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World, but not yet read his new book Right-WingCollectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty.

Recently (ever since the blood and soil speech, oddly), Jeff Deist has also been hitting me in the exact same way Tucker does.  Dr. Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,  also strikes me as someone who needs to be listened to and read frequently.

I’ve been trying to figure out why these three have that effect on me, and I think I finally understand with all the discussion and drama of Hans-Hermann Hoppe  this past week.

These gentlemen provide context and they humanize what are otherwise merely concepts and theory to my overly-rational brain.  They catch me right in the feels.  

For instance, when someone sidewalk chalked pro-Trump slogans overnight all over campus at Emory University during the election season, I had the same reaction that any hyper-rational person would have.  (SPOILER ALERT: I did not feel ‘threatened’ and less safe) 

It took an article from Jeffrey Tucker, who happened to be at that campus on that day and experienced the culture there first-hand, to soften my stance, and he’s helped me see social justice sympathizers through his lens and understand them better. Neither he nor I is a social justice warrior by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure helps to know how they think.

Likewise, Jeff Deist helps humanize the right.  Nationalism has always repulsed me.  The idea that there’s some moral mandate to be loyal to blood or soil is completely foreign.  I’m an active duty military member and bleed Red, White and Blue.  But I also hate getting ‘Thanked’ for my service and find our foreign policy abroad to be quite despicable.  I think most people don’t fit into the basic Left and Right categories, there’s much more nuance in the world.

I think back to my sixth grade teacher, who told us on the first day of school that he would lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the US flag but that he’d pick a student to lead the pledge to the Texas flag because he refused to say it.  I just can’t fathom how someone can come to that sort of conclusion. I mean I’m no cuck for Texas either, but at least that hunk of soil is close to home!

But Deist helps me understand it. Like Tucker with the SJWs, Jeff Deist explains the mode of thought and feeling that collectivists on the right experience in a way I’ve never heard before and in a way that really resonates with me. (Incidentally during the recent Hoppe/Rachels drama that only libertarians are following, Jeff Deist mentioned in correspondence to Chase Rachels, author of A Spontaneous Order,  that Hoppe’s wife is Muslim, which started this train of thought and also happened to soften my view of Hoppe.  Also, the drama is dumb, don’t waste your time looking it up.)

I think liberty lovers should drop the divisive internet drama, that’s the “Team Mentality” that Democrats and Republicans compartmentalize people into. 

Keep reading and growing.  Read Tucker, Read Deist, and listen to Dr Jordan Peterson lectures. 

​Get educated and keep pushing others to do the same.