Libertarian Progressives

Although there are a few who would no doubt like the term, in the main I suspect many libertarians would want to, upon introspection, rid themselves of error.
There is a strand of libertarianism that would, for instance, be happy to do away with marriage. And I remember enjoying many treatises of the future, with various forms of corporations providing services that governments monopolize now.

But we can see marriage pre-dates all insitutitions. Should we actually have freedom of association and private property, many would arrange their lives in a manner that they have been not free to do so since the rise of the modern state. Religions would likely matter more, not less. The state would be less political and more personal- as the power of the vote of the non-owner wanes in favor of allowing the successful property owner- i.e. the people who have personally demonstrated some real world capacity- to administrate.

This would not be a continuation of the ancient regime, but it would look similar. Such a world must be grown, because it requires not only removing bureaucrats from power, but removing the bureaucratic mindset from those who would be part of the noble class.

What often happens is that there is an assumption that people engaged in marriage, church, or other institution are always and everywhere under duress and that therefore they don't really know what they want, and that when we magically arrive at full libertarianism we will suddenly all be free from all this stuff...

And how is this different from the revolutionaries? Foment insurrection and promise the glorious future. The only difference is the libertarians promise not to be in charge at the end of the day, which means they won't be in charge ever. Most libertarians aren't helping, but harming any chance of moving in the right direction.

We live with the illusion of freedoms of religion, speech, thinking, etc... This is because the bureaucrats don't immediately ban much of anything. First they fashion their version of the thing- and then often they even redefine it. Marriage, hate, love, assault weapons- the list is practically endless. The tactic is simple: to make you err so that you cannot free yourself from them. If you reach back for tradition, looking for some bedrock upon which to stand, you'll find even that has been meddled with.

But of course, the progressive libertarian is not reaching back for tradition, so perhaps he is unaware of the conflict- that his imagination, or lack thereof, violates his principles. Liberty is not a virus; it does not auto-generate. All memes must travel through minds, minds come attached to people (at least the ones we are concerned with here), and people are attached to each other.

So family will matter. Private property will matter. Agency will matter and it shall be determined mostly by how succesfull you are with the other two. Who shall rule? If we are as free as can be, the property owner will rule over his property, and any larger sort of governance will arise through contract and free association of the owners. The children of owners tend to marry each other...

Individual certainly may choose to break their contracts, but the consequences will be unpleasant enough to make sure most don't. Because a violation of contract is harm to others. A wife determined to break up her marriage harms her husband, children, and frankly much of the community, assuming the community is healthy.

Some of this harm could be expressed directly in property terms. Certainly our modern divorce industry is much concerned with getting its hands on family assets, so much so that it has abandoned any concept of enforcing contract. Additionally, the community would prefer what ever it built up together not to be ripped apart.

The people don't want to build just to find out everything is going to be consumed like Detroit.

None of this negates anything- it just puts in it context, whereas much of these conversations are context free. But freedom itself is not context free.

Guess Who Is At The Mall?

A common theme on various blogs is this recurring tendency of advertisers to advertise using mixed race couples- basically they are over-represented in advertisements. There are various conclusions drawn, but perhaps we are missing a most basic one- consumerism.

Let us assume for a moment some corporation did research and figured out people of mixed ethnicities enjoyed shopping more. Now, it is doubtful they did any research on homosexuals because it is obvious that they not only like to shop, but they'll also take the money everybody else uses to raise children and spend it on consumerism. And folks have been marketing to women since the beginning of marketing...

So the malls become diversity central.

It would be interesting to find out how this would effect companies like Google and Amazon. They seem to follow the same SJW faith, but I find it plausible that they may be shooting themselves in the foot. They need people who want to stay home and order on-line, not people who go to malls. It must be remembered that promotion of mixed race couples began pre-internet. It is obvious that most internet companies are wholly on-board with the diversity message, but it is possible that they are actually shooting themselves in the foot.

Of course, SJWs are always happy to destroy the insitutions they infiltrate...

But anyway, I suspect a least some part of the corporate collaboration with the left is due to the realization that some of this social engineering does not create the new socialist man, but rather, a compliant consumer. Thus the corporate and political class rejoices in and promotes it.

You May Be Crazy But Your DNA Ain't

On The No Agenda Show, Adam Curry has been exploring the trend of people using dogs as a substitute for babies.
And some folks have actually told him they are basically taking themselves out of the gene pool because of this or that diagnosis.

IF you are crazy, chances are high it has nothing to do with your DNA and everything to do with the perverse incentives the American medical system has been infected with since the 90s.

Additionally, a lot of research has suggested a poor and novel environment of bad food, artificial light, not enough exercise, etc...- might have been what made you think you had some sort of chemical imbalance in the first place.

There were and still are people bad enough off to be locked up, but if you think about this, the current situation is worse because the medication is not likely to stop them from having kids like being locked up in an asylum would- whereas now you've got a bunch of people who've had exposure to drugs and 'therapy' who probably would have been perfectly fine.

I once found out someone had been put on an anti-depressant after one of her family members died. Look, you are supposed to feel, ok? Sometimes you are supposed to feel bad and you have to struggle with it. Otherwise you can't feel, you get detached from the world, and perhaps you end up doing bad things. School shootings are way up since these things started getting prescribed. Meanwhile, gun ownership is way down. Correlations are what they are...

But maybe you should stop it with the fur baby stuff, and think about the real thing.

Some Economist Ought To Do the Math on Procreative Versus Non-procreative sex

People are fundamental to the economy. Now there is a very shallow deception in economics, where capital is equated to money, and people pretend that there isn't a huge difference between specific infrastructure and specific factories versus a huge pile of cash. The financial people encourage this thinking. I've even noticed people will insist you can't invest in a country if you don't have access to its currency, which doesn't make any sense. Obviously, it is convenient to have access to local currency, but you can put actual capital goods on ships and bring them to a foreign country if necessary. Otherwise America (and it's currency) wouldn't exist.

A similar deception is happening with people. There is no economy without people. Steve Keen points out the current system has, as a large component, entrepreneurs replacing labor with capital- again, with the help of financiers. So they'll borrow money to pay for automation and get rid of laborers, but the laborers are also consumers, so this eventually cause a drop consumers being able to buy anything.

But people, it's worth remembering, play all the roles, not just labor. A robot worker, robot boss, and robot banker do not make an economy.

So, even when couples want to have children, there will be a certain level of non-procreative sex, just by accident if nothing else. You just can't manage a 100% procreative environment, and, even if you could, I quite suspect the relationship would dry up and blow a way.

Thus we can see why, especially during good times, people will generally be more tolerant of non-procreative sex, and perhaps not make distinctions. But at a certain point, distinctions will be made, and people will notice the vast amount of assets being aimed toward non-procreative sex as essentially wasteful.

And they will be right.

A while ago I was in a major grocery chain's liquor store, and unusually, a young white male was the checkout person.

He asks me if I am Christain. Actually it was more personal than that- I'm pretty sure it was that whole, "have you accepted Jesus..." type line of questioning.

I looked at him and said, "well, yes, a long time ago."

He was quite happy, but I was not, because here I saw a young person full of zeal, who had no doubt had his head filled with nonsense.

If we had real elders, his employment would be important to them, as would finding him a wife, and generally having him settle down, and have good little christian children in what would hopefully be a protected and productive community.

Instead, his elders had no employment for him, so he had to work in a secular environment, but they filled his head with nonsense. I am pretty sure he has lost his job, because I never saw him again. Talking to people buying liquor about Jesus is likely to result in some angry drunk insisting on you being fired.

Most of these leadership structures are operating as revolutionaries, not as Christians. I was reminded of this here: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2018/04/modern-christians-should-not-as-rule.html

The post is good, but Charlton also responded to a comment I made:

Indeed. Good intentions are fine - but not enough; having tried a strategy we must then learn from experience (taking into account the very common phenomenon of unintended bad consequences). Otherwise we would be no better than the Leftist revolutionaries.

Now, I think my comment was good too, but Charlton unintentionally reminded me that the people I tried to collaborate with were actually modelling themselves off of leftist revolutionaries. I had fruitless conversations about this and, of course, I have mentioned the error of revolution many times on this blog.

There is also something else I have mentioned.

God is the God of the Living & If you don't have a garden, life will still spring up in the cracks.

The gardeners no longer tend the garden, and, at least to the extent that they still pretend to the authority they most manifestly and sinful shirk, they should be punished.

The Sense of Guilt and Authority

The modern world, I think, has successfully gone well beyond sane Christian sense of guilt. Guilt is useful if you actually did something wrong and it helps you change your ways.
But men these days are often taught to think they are guilty. So, I end up having to read dreck on the internet, because some dude wants sex with his wife, can't get it, and subsequently- due to a false sense of guilt surrenders to a complete crap line of thinking.

Let me just say that by the very same line of reasoning no child of his should ever have to eat vegetables or do chores, because unhappiness may happen.

But just enough- perhaps too much is written- and you can see they know the truth, but they don't want to deal with it.

A husband also has the responsibility of authority, a responsibility that can weight quite heavily, especially to one out of practice. And, of course, male authority doesn't fit well within the cult of nice.

So, the trend is to abdicate authority too.

Thus, the trend is for many wives to exist in a state of sin, mortal to the pre-Vatican apocalypse era. The guys are in a state of sin, but not the one they are blaming themselves for- no, they are guilty mostly for allowing their wives to exist in this state. And, collectively, they are at least partially guilty for the death of Western Civilization.

Now, there is a certain reality I believe I have referred to before. The rightful King of France does not attempt to actually be the king of France. The best his majesty might expect is laughter; and of course, there is much worse that Macron could unleash upon him, should the little man feel threatened.

But there is a rightful king of France, or we could rustle up a contender or two, make a decision in time for a June coronation.

And there are husbands, even though assuredly they probably should work a little harder to look like husbands and not like overgrown, potbellied children.

I don't think they get a 'get out of jail' free card just because they feel bad about wanting to have sex. God is the God of the living. There are certain biological realities necessary for there to be more living. It is supposed to be an examination of conscience, not a wallowing in self-pity, or emotional self-flagellation.

Those of us who are not delusional know we aren't winning. It isn't just 'us', either. The name of our God is drug through the mud due in no small part to people who claim to love and believe in Him.

Dear Q, Part II

I think you don't realize the vital importance of arresting boring people. By which, of course, I mean the bulk of the ne-er do wells in D.C. are doing boring, bureaucrat evil. I remember some snippet of testimony somewhere, a congressman was pointing out some agency appears to have violated the law. The agency official says the actions were cleared by their legal counsel, but the very same official could not explain how they did not break the law, because they did, basically. Legal counsel undoubtedly had some arcane reasoning by which breaking the law was in fact, not breaking the law at all.

The scourge of America are a bunch of boring criminals. They don't even know who they are necessarily. The Constitution is always violated, and statutes are routinely, by bureaucrats who think they do good work- even folks who go to church on Sunday and do all sorts of good little things and have good little families.

Because people grow up in D.C., and each year the understanding degrades a little bit more. They go from knowing their agency can't do X, and a few decades later, they think the are morally obligated to do X.

You want to do real good in this country, go for boring.

Another thing you could do- get the CIA out of the media. Let me outline this for you- Wikileaks has published classified documents. Through Manning, Snowden, etc...- we know a lot of stuff, and yet, the media appears to not know any of it. Well, they don't know, because they are legally not allowed to know it. In other words, if they get paid by the CIA, they have to treat this stuff like it is still classified, even though it is out there for everybody else to see. It is not just hate alone that keeps them to their narrative, but also the inability to interact with this information without potentially getting into trouble. This is only going to get worse.

But again, it's kind of boring. The U.S. media is shot through with agents, so they don't touch the wikileaks stuff. Instead of our media doing the research, you get foreign media doing it, and the Democrats take that as evidence of collusion. But it is evidence that their media is now freer than ours. And it's ultimately boring because it is a bunch of American journalists not doing the research they should be doing. Instead all they have to talk about is gossip.