What we can learn from the Yang campaign, and what it takes to move forward

 So, a lot of Yang gangers don't seem to understand why Yang lost. I see a lot of people doing stuff like pulling dishonest idpol arguments claiming it was because people won't vote for asians and blah blah blah. Look, no. Long story short, Yang has the same issue I have as of late. He's politically homeless and has no real coalition. To win elections, you need people to like you. Even more, you need people to like you more than anyone else. But...remember where I was after 2020, stating that I felt too left for the establishment wing of the democratic party, and not left enough for the growing progressive wing of the party, which is bordering on socialism as of late? Yeah, that's why Yang lost. The fact is, he didn't have the numbers. The establishment is never going to be friendly to a UBI guy UNLESS the left really DOES go socialist and they throw something out there just to "save capitalism" (see: what happpened with FDR), and the left is growing to be too far left for someone like Yang to win with them either. 

The establishment has a machine that is hostile to the left. Period. Anyone who isn't coronated or chosen from within the establishment, does not get support, and generally doesn't win. The democratic party is run like an oligarchy, where the party chooses their candidates behind the scenes, and then uses their leverage with the media to push them, and the majority of passive voters vote for them. That's one thing that happened here. Yang discussed this on Yang speaks somewhat too, about how New York Times pushed all of these hit pieces on him, claimed that they had to because they were impartial, but then didn't cover Adams' problems. The race also shifted from a race about economics to one about crime. Yang's message was UBI and housing. But Adams was a police guy who wanted to increase the police budgets. Given NYC has had crime problems in the relatively recent past, running against an explicitly pro police platform is going to cost support. Progressives have that issue too. So Yang neither had the blessing of the establishment, nor campaigned on issues more moderate voters were interested in. That said, Yang never had much of a chance.

This is why, despite my misgivings and issues with progressives on an ideological level, I tend to support them regardless. Because if you are going to fight the establishment, you need as broad of a coalition as you're going to get. Even if you do everything right, you're still likely going to lose, given the party machinery. But at the very least, you can make a good showing and hopefully break through from time to time by winning the progressive vote. But...Yang is unpopular with progressives. Part of this is his ideas. He fails many progressive purity tests. He isn't for a higher min wage, he isn't for medicare for all any more, and this pisses progressives off. Sometimes this even alienates me, I've expressed frustration with Yang's lack of clarity on healthcare in 2020. You cant win a race JUST on UBI dude. And I admit, progressives do go too far with the purity testing. Some of them retreat into literal fantasy solutions and calls for socialism in tearing his UBI apart. It comes off as very hacky and dishonest. You just can't please these people. But you do have to try. There's a reason I end up trying to build bridges with progressives come election time. Because at the end of the day, we're both against the establishment. We have different visions, but we do have a lot of common ground. I believe yang gang and social libertarians need to work with the progressive movement, if we wanna get anywhere. We need to engage with socialists and the like and explain why our ideas are better. We need to show we want similar things. And while some are just too far gone, the least we can do is to try, and not alienate them. 

Yang ended up listening to political consultants too much, causing him to go off in weird directions on issues like Israel, where he just flat out pissed off and alienated progressives. I ringed when Yang did that, and while it doesn't affect my support for him, it does affect much of the left. Again, I'm not sure the left can be satisfied, some of them are just too far gone down the far left rabbit hole. But again, you need authenticity, and you need to not cross the left on issues. Yang just screwed up.

Because he failed to secure the support of either coalition, he got pincered between them and got crushed. Eric Adams is winning and Garcia and Wiley are #2 and 3 respectively. It stings, but this does matter. Because it shows how well a UBI candidate is polling among democrats at this point in time. If were gonna get anywhere, we need to expand our coalition and make inroads with other groups. And because I just dont see the establishment supporting UBI, that means we need to establish a truce with progressives, trading support for their key items in exchange for their suport for UBI. We cant win alone. We just can't. And this is why I try to work with progressives. We have a common enemy in the democratic establishment, and we need to work with each other to get stuff done. This is why im hyper purity testy on top issues but not so much on anything else. I only care to get democrats and progressives to support those top priorities, with other stuff im flexible. Because you have to be in politics. Get your list of top concerns you really care about, and let the rest go. And ideally we should take progressive stances on those other issues to bring progressives in. I'm willing to go a lot more left than I really am just to appease these guys and get UBI in the process. I'll work with SJWs, borderline socialists, whatever, just get on board with UBI and M4A. That's what you gotta do. It's either that or sell out your principles to become an establishment sell out, which Yang flirted with doing with his Israel comments, which just alienated and angered these guys instead. 

Is socialism/anarchism a "terrorist ideology"?

So, apparently new biden administration type documents are surfacing calling socialism and anarchism "terrorist ideologies", causing the left to freak out about being targetted on the same level as neo nazis in terms of anti terrorism strategies. Once again, being a "free speech absolutist", let me just say, "see I told you so". I warned people this would happen. If you go after fascists, there's nothing stopping the government from going after the left. Better not open that can of worms. And now it's open. 

But, I do have to ask, is it really a terrorist ideology? Well, first of all, given my criminology expertise, I'm still not convinced that Biden is going after every single person with leftist leanings, merely violent ones. But, the question is, does socialism and anarchism predispose people to violence? And I guess my TLDR answer is "kind of". 

I don't believe all socialists or even anarchist leaning people are violent. Especially socialists. Bernie calls himself a socialist. Democratic socialists exists and they tend to use reformist means to act within the system. They are not a national security threat and should not be targetted. I really don't believe anyone who acts peacefully should be targetted by the government. I merely think the government is going to investigate people to see if they are terrorists, which is reason to be concerned if you care about civil liberties, but I doubt that they will just like, arrest people for being a socialist. 

But, and here's the but, here's why I kind of see where the administration is coming from. While there are peaceful forms of mild and moderate socialism out there, some of which I'm not necessarily opposed to, and which I believe are compatible with the existing "capitalist"/market system (think worker coops and codetermination), many many socialists are Marxists. And marxist ideology does have some violent tendencies. After all, the solution to capitalism is to overthrow the system and establish their own system. And that's what makes it a "terrorist ideology", how are you going to accomplish THAT if you're not openly advocating for terrorism? Hence my uneasiness with socialism as an ideology, and why I tend to shy away from all but the most mild and peaceful forms of socialism out there. Those guys, are nuts in my opinion. I do see why the Biden admin would see them as a national security risk, and yeah, that's justified. If your goal is to overthrow the United States government via force, is it any surprise that people deem you a terrorist? Same with anarchists. 

I don't necessarily believe the Biden admin is trying to crack down on the left for craps and giggles, I'm not convinced this is another red scare or mccarthyism. The concerns about that are somewhat valid. But I do think if you're trying to keep on your toes against violent people and ideologies looking to overthrow the system, that targetting leftists who are predisposed to violence makes sense. I do think that the training manual in question lacks nuance, as clearly not all forms of socialism are violent, but many are, and we should be talking about the violence problem the far left has.

I mean, to clarify, my actual stance is no action should be taken against anyone for speech alone, rather criminal acts such as actually committing violence should be taken into consideration before acting, but honestly, if you go around posting guillotine memes and going on about the blood of the bourgeoisie in the streets, can you really be surprised when the government takes an interest in you as a potential extremist threat? Cut that crap out. I mean, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I might have rather radical and unconventional views, but at least I don't advocate for violence. 

If the left doesn't want to be targetted as potential terrorists, they should renounce those tactics right here and now. Whatever your beliefs are, you should advocate for them via peaceful, political means. Even with how screwed the system is against the left. We should be trying to build a coalition and either take over the democratic party from within, or run a third party to challenge them from the outside. We should focus on winning over hearts and minds so we can win elections. No good is ever going to come from violence and calls for revolution. That just gets you on an FBI watch list where your civil liberties get curtailed. I mean, this is common sense people.

The Steven Crowder vs Sam Seder debate debacle is hilarious

 So, I assume people know who Sam Seder and Steven Crowder are. Steven Crowder is a conservative pundit who likes to throw his crap around. He's very sure of himself, he's infamous for going to college campuses and debating ignorant college students to own the libs and show how stupid they are. But, he likes to avoid debating anyone who knows what they're talking about, such as Sam Seder, a liberal talk show host who is pretty intelligent. I don't agree with him all the time, but he knows his stuff. 

So, Crowder, being the showman he is, decided to saber rattle with the wrong person. He picked on an apolitical talk show host named Ethan Klein, wanting to debate him over listening to the CDC, and tried to have a debate with him. Now, Klein isn't, in any way, a political commentator. So Crowder is looking at this, and being like "this guy isn't gonna be a challenge at all", he even described him as a "lay up" once. But, Klein kind of knew of this ongoing spat between Crowder and Seder, where Crowder kept ducking debates from Seder on the grounds that he would probably lose (officially it's due to subscriber count, but Crowder always dishonestly describes his count as much lower than it actually is to make Seder look like he just wants to debate for attention). So what happened? The day of, Klein brings Seder onto the show to debate Crowder, and Crowder loses his crap. It's like watching a pedo being told to sit down by Chris Hansen on "To Catch a Predator". He loses it, they argue for several minutes, and he runs off. 

Apparently it got so bad, that this was actually the second scheduled debate. The first time Crowder suspected Seder might be brought onto the show so canceled when Seder wasn't broadcasting, claiming a medical emergency. So Seder went so far to prerecord his own show and then play it live when it wasn't really live, just to trick Crowder into thinking this wouldn't happen. And it did.

I normally wouldn't support the idea of bait and switching in debates. It's dishonest and hacky, and I could almost see why Crowder ran off, it was a bit of an entrapment in an uncomfortable situation. If anyone else did it I would likely condemn it. But, in this case, it was just so sweet. Crowder doesn't deserve any sympathy. The dude is basically like a predator. He goes after low hanging fruit to make himself look good. So him getting a taste of his own medicine is good in this case. And it's hilarious as fudge.

I encourage anyone to watch it.

So, Yang lost in New York

 Can't say I'm surprised, but Yang lost his New York mayoral race. However, I am going to say I'm somewhat surprised at the margins. I was under the impression Yang was going to get 3rd place or so, at around 14-15% of the vote on the first round, with it going up as ranked choice voting did its thing. Instead, we're seeing Yang at only 11-12%, in 4th place. So, Yang not only lost, but he did badly, and got totally stomped. 

I assumed Adams would win as his polling was strong, but he was only at like 18-20% last I checked in the polls, he's at around 31-32% right now. This reminds me of the 2020 race, with Biden winning the primary overwhelmingly. Honestly, I thought the big loss for yang would come from progressives, and I guess that is somewhat correct, but honestly, I didn't think Adams would do this strongly. What do people see in establishment politicians like Adams? Like I get there's a moderate establishment faction of the democratic party, and I get that they got a lot of support, as well as support from the media, which controls the narrative, but I didn't expect him to win by such a margin. Also, I feel like progressives dropped the ball there, and I'm going to be throwing shade at them too. Yang got so much crap over every statement he made, but Adams seemed to get a pass, even from progressives. Progressives were so focused on purity testing everything Yang ever said and done, while ignoring Adams is even more conservative. If I'm pissed at anything, it's that.

To be fair, Yang didn't do himself any favors. Yang tried to play fake politician by pandering to moderates on certain issues like Israel, and it just made progressives pissed. I know a lot of yang gangers think, given progressive hostility, that the solution for Yang is to pivot to the center, but that's a lie. Centrists have no interest in someone like Yang, if they did, don't you think I would be more charitable to them on this blog? They don't want UBI, or medicare for all, or nice things. They're centrists. Mild conservatives. There's zero reason for someone as progressive like Yang to appeal to them. They're just gonna end up going for Biden or Adams anyway. No, Yang is like an alt-progressive. He's progressive, but a different progressive ideology than progressives. He fails progressive purity tests, but he's also very progressive in his own right. I would know, I have a similar ideology. But he has no coalition. He's going up against both the establishment, that wants nothing to do with an outsider like Yang, and progressives who are becoming increasingly closed minded toward anyone not in their own echo chamber. And to a large extent, Yang's loss is his own fault.

Now, this doesn't mean I blame him. To gain favor with the centrists, IMO, involves selling your soul, giving up all aspirations for actual change, and being as boring, dry, and unwilling to do anything as they are. I don't think the yang gang has a centrist route to winning, because centrists have no intention (en masse at least) of ever embracing UBI. That leaves the progressives, who aren't as theoretically opposed to it, but it conflicts with their emerging ideological vision which ranges from being more traditionally FDR/social democratic to literal socialism. Even though I take swipes at progressives, I believe someone like Yang ultimately needs to work with them to win. And that means that Yang needs to freaking shape up. Yang made many missteps that earned him the ire of progressives. The Israel thing for instance. Open mouth, insert foot. That's on him. At the same time, sometimes they are unfair to him and attacked him worse than the centrist wing did. We on the left tend to eat our own sometimes. I know I take swipes at the left sometimes, but most of it is ideological, and theoretical, and come election time I'm far more accommodating. After all, I supported Bernie, twice. I supported Bernie over Yang even because Yang just has a lot of shortcomings. And I voted green both times in the general. So I'm a friend to progressives, if progressives are a friend to me. I don't feel as welcome among progressives as of late, but that's mainly due to them crapping on UBI and Yang unfairly and making quite frankly unreasonable demands. But generally speaking, I'd rather side with a FDR style progressive over establishment trash.

Anyway, if Yang wants to have a political future, and I admit, this is hard, he needs to build his brand and create a sizeable coalition. Something that can challenge both the establishment, and the burgeoning progressive movement. Also, he needs to gain some political instincts fast. While there's a lot of factors beyond his control here, there's a lot he did wrong, straight up, and he needs to own that.

Defining what the heck the "middle class" actually is

 So, this is a pet peeve I have with American politics, and it's the idea of the "middle class". Now, middle class should mean, well, the middle. But then when some liberals on a message board were asked to define it, they ended up describing an upper class 6 figures lifestyle based on their metrics of affordability and the American dream. And even some 6 figures makers complain about a high cost of living while living in say, New York or San Francisco. 

Obviously this is because the bourgeois democratic party is being infested with these upper class suburbanites everyone is fawning over, and they portray themselves as the "middle", when no, no, they aren't actually the middle. Not even close. The top 20% of income earners aren't middle class by definition. That's the upper class. I don't care if the difference between someone making $130k at the 80th percentile and someone making millions is radically different. You're not in the middle! The threshold to the top 1% last I checked is like $536k or something. Not even a millionaire. You can be at the 99% mark and not have millions of dollars. But that doesn't mean they're middle.

So what's a better definition of "middle class"? Well, it should be, what the median is, roughly. Or, if we want to expand beyond that, whatever, say, the 30th-70th percentile of income earnings is. That's the real "middle class" of the country. 

On an individual level, that's an income range of $26,101 to $66,017. The median is essentially $43,206 and that actually seems much higher than I've seen elsewhere. 

On the household level, that's an income of $40,348 to $109,560. The median is essentially $68,400, which is more in line with previous expectations. 

That's what the real middle class is. It's not people making 6 figures mostly, although some households may make in the very low 6 figure range. It's households that make around $70k on average. The so called "upper middle class" is really the upper class. There's no other way to put it from a statistical perspective. People have a real distorted view of what the middle class is. I've seen people making $20k a year describe themselves as middle class. People who make $200k try to make the same distinction. Neither are anywhere near the middle by any definition.

And if the middle class isn't really the middle and is just this petit bourgeois stepford wives stuff made up of the top 20% of people, what's the point? Why have 80% of people suffer so we can go on about how cheery the economy is for the top 20%. Guess that's America for you. People believe in the American dream because they have to be asleep to believe it.

This article ties together so much of my disdain for the democratic party and related ideologies

 So, in discussing Andrew Yang and his struggle to gain traction due to a hostile media recently, someone sent me an article describing the democratic party's sphere of influence of being much like a "blue church." And I have to say, this ties together a lot of what I find wrong with the democratic party.

I'm gonna be honest, you guys know this already if you know me, and you've read my work over the years on here, and I still hold this perspective even in finding spirituality again, but I HATE religion and attempts to control other human beings through dogma with a purple passion. The name of my blog is a reference to me leaving both Christianity, and the republican party, around 2012. Because I decided, around that time, that I would no longer be controlled by dogmas or religions. And I established a form of free thinking and free thought after. I became a democrat, in large part, because at the time, given the political context of the pre 2016 environment, they aligned with the atheist community. The republicans were the party of religion and dogmas, and "fake news". The democrats were the party of facts, and freedom of thought. A lot has changed over the past decade, at least for me, but 2012 was when I finally say "no more" to this stuff. I'm out of "plato's cave", ie, the cave where we're all chained to walls and force fed narratives through a filter, never looking at reality for what it is, but looking at it through the lens through which those chaining us and performing their little puppet shows want us to see things. Still, at the time, I didn't realize that the democratic party was yet another cave, and had its own media control structure. I learned quickly in 2015 when the next election cycle started and they rammed Hillary down my throat and pushed all kinds of dishonest narratives to push me into line.

That said, describing the democratic party and its media control structure as a "church" makes sense. They do like to centrally put forward a narrative, talk down their followers, and use virtue signalling to make their members adhere to certain dogmas as a testament of their faith and loyalty. But as a free thinker, I'm just like screw that.

The fact is, I hate the democrat's media control structure. I don't go along with their media campaigns. I don't lose my capacity for reason just because I'm on their side. I'm out of the freaking cave, I didn't leave one just to join yours, what part of this don't you understand? I dislike how authoritarian the party is, and how it tries to synchronize things from above. I'm not your little puppet to guide around as you command. I'm someone who believes respect needs to be earned, and you have not earned it. You can't just snap your fingers and tell me what to do. No, the reason I went with the democrats is they earned my respect in 2012. But after that, they lost it, and largely haven't regained it. So I didn't vote for them.

But yeah, this article really touches on a lot of things. The fact that members of the party are expected to be good little passive lapdogs who go with the flow and accept orders and narratives from above. How the party is used to promote a certain kind of tribalism and team play, when I don't work well with others. And even SJW-esque virtue signalling. I've been making analogies recently about how cult like it comes off, but when looked at in reference to this blue church stuff, yeah, it really is a dogma being enforced on people. A purity test, if you will, in which the community polices the opinions of its members by encouraging dedication to certain dogmas, and attempting to sanction and bully members for refusing to go along with such things. Given my extreme anti religion bias, and how I've studied all of the religious control mechanisms and largely reject them for the manipulative BS they are, yeah, that stuff doesn't go well with me. 

My views are my views, take it or leave it. I base my views on reason, and my own internal moral compass. Which has parallel, but different bases than the democratic party. Hence my own unique focuses and shifts toward left/social libertarianism as opposed to traditional liberalism. I largely come to similar conclusions as much of the left, although for different reasons, as I think myself into those positions, and hold them on the basis of my own moral compass and free will, not because someone tried to shoehorn me into such views via authoritarianism. 

And much like the article points out, in recent years, the internet has challenged the authority of the blue church. Which is why I get the impression that through informal means like deplatforming, shaming, and astroturfing, these guys got their little inquisitors up and running trying to maintain control and punish noncompliance. I say screw them. I will not be controlled, and I will not be silenced. 

And you know what? Just to show how different my own ideology is on these issues, and why I have a disdain for the modern left on free speech, let me just explain something else. Pre 2016, I saw the internet as the most important tool since the printing press. What did the printing press do? Effectively, it challenged the rules of kings and the catholic church. As people started writing and reading books, it took the control of the flow of information out of authoritative sources, and into the hands of the people. This challenged and ultimately defeated a lot of old ways of thinking, essentially shaping the modern society as it exists today. But over time, due to money, and centralized control from new institutions popping up to replace the old, information became centralized again as per the above article. Well, here's the thing. The internet breaks that. And when I became a liberal atheist overnight, I realized that. The internet is what allowed me to get out. It exposed me to ideas I otherwise would not have access too. That's why millennials and gen z are way more progressive than boomers and gen x by the way. Older people are still under the influence of "the church" and cable news, younger people are freer and have more access and presence on the internet. This allows the sharing of ideas that breaks the old paradigms.

But, the blue church doesn't like that, and rallying crys of fake news and misinformation lead to calls to control these platforms, bringing the blue church in to police the interactions on it and try to push things back in their favor. They're partially successful, and that's why I rip the democrats so hard, between their media control, and SJWs, and authoritarian views on speech. I'm a left libertarian, not a "liberal" under the control of "the church". I'm basically a protestant or a heretic to their catholic orthodoxy. And they don't like that. 

Well, tough luck, I ain't changing. The way I see it, I'm here to spread my views. I dont give a flying crap what people think of me for it. Haters gonna freaking hate. I support what I support and the church has no presence here. I'm an independent leftie. And as you guys know, I agree with almost no one entirely, not even those I consider allies like, say, Yang or Sanders. 

I just wanted to talk about this, and share this article, as it ties together so many seemingly disjointed grievances toward the democratic party all into one and expresses why my views are different. I just lost that ability to be "religious". Even in my spirituality, I'm not religious, and don't follow any set of strict dogmas that must be adhered to. That said, I dislike control structures that seek to impose either a spiritual or secular religion onto me. Because I'm out of plato's cave....since 2012.

Discussing Biden's anti-terrorism policies

 So, Biden has recently proposed a new anti-terrorism program for dealing with domestic terrorism, and apparently leftists are freaking out. The program appears to be related to the January 6th and other extremist incidents in recent years, calling for a stronger response to dealing with terrorism. 

The left is claiming this will suppress their speech. Let me just say, since this is my "see I told you so" moment, this is why I'm not for attacking fascists like the far left is. The left wants to deplatform fascists, and punish them for their views, and suppress them, but these leftists dont understand, often times given their own radical anti capitalist views, this makes them a target too, because if we want to be objective and target extremists who threaten people and our way of life, leftists who advocate for violent crap are going to be on the list of targets along with right wingers, and this could lead to red scare-esque suppression of these people. So yeah, as someone who borders on being a Kyle Kulinski style free speech absolutist, let me just say, see I told you so.

But to delve deeper into this, as someone who has taken a class about terrorism in college, I feel like I can offer a less hyperbolic and more nuanced perspective on this. Looking at the verbiage the leftist twitter user posted above, it seems very clear that mere advocacy for positions is not grounds for being treated as a terrorist. Embracing violent tactics to get your point across is. This is good. I mean, that's the balance you want to take. You want to not violate free speech, while targetting people who act in violent ways. But people claim that because on the anarchist section they did not elaborate as much as other sections, that the standard is lower or something. Given the graphic it's not like they have enough space to elaborate, and such elaboration is redundant, so it seems ridiculous. Yet leftists are claiming this will violate their rights.

I mean, I get it to some extent. The US government has been crap to leftist activists in the past. But here it just seems like an even handed approach of saying that while we all have free speech rights, actually committing violence to accomplish your political goals is unacceptable. This is a no brainer, folks. You can't have a civil society, if you take the civility out of society. People should be free to express whatever view they want, even awful ones, but they should not act in a violent way to get that across. I feel like leftists who are obsessed with revolution fail to understand this. I hate to be one of those "the only people who have something to fear have something to hide" kind of guys, but maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be advocating for freaking overthrowing the government if you didn't want to be a target? I mean, I get it, I'm a bit of a soft leftist myself, but I've always tried to align with reformism, strongly. I dont like the violent rhetoric leftists used about guillotining people and how real change can't come unless we overthrow the system, blah blah blah. These are extremist beliefs. I'm sorry, they are. And I feel like the Biden administration has the right balance here. You're free to have your views. You're even free to use strong rhetoric or have philosophical beliefs toward violence according to the link above. But if you actually act violently, well, sorry, free speech doesn't protect that. Freaking deal with your consequences.

In fairness though there is one aspect of this anti terrorism program that I have an issue with, and that's pillar 4, which focuses on combating the root causes of such extremism and polarization. After all the root causes...are speech. I mean, people on the right are allowed to be racist. People on the left are allowed to make guillotine memes. And....honestly, I think that's part of free speech. And this is where I side with both leftists, and crappy rightists who the left hates me for...showing fairness toward? I mean, you should be free to express what you want, and I do think that when the government talks about, and I quote, "counter the polarization often fueled by disinformation, misinformation, and dangerous conspiracy theories online, supporting an information environment that fosters healthy democratic discourse.", I have to seriously ask a simple question. How? How are you going to do this? Because it seems to me like they're going to try to stamp out extremist views on the internet somehow, or establish some sort of ministry of truth to establish what is truthful. And that does make me uncomfortable. As we know, for the past 5-6 years, I've been very anti establishment in my views. And I have views, despite disliking outright violence and believing in rule of law, that could be considered to be polarizing. I've found, post 2016, much of the effort to suppress speech has had cynical political motivations behind it. I feel like the democrats go after sources of so called "fake news" because they wanna control the narrative. They want to tell people what to think and not be challenged. That said, i'm not sure I really want the government using its resources poking around into online discourses to try to steer things toward the narratives they want. Because the narratives they want suck. 

Look, if the government wants to go after violent people who do violent things, that's perfectly fine. But leave free speech alone. To be fair, I feel like the Biden administration's language, reading into the details, seems to be focused on "we need to do a good enough job at governing so people don't turn into extremists in the first place." Yeah, I agree, you guys have been sucking at that. I know my views left the political overton window in large part because of a failure to do a good job at governing. But at the same time, they need to do a much better job than they're doing. I feel like Biden has been doing the bare minimum acceptable. Regardless, if we could hash out these differences at the ballot box, rather than with extremism, yeah, I agree with Biden on that. For the record when I talk about shifting things, I talk about doing it electorally. That's why I believe the left needs to leverage their votes against the dems to pull them left. And that's why I'm perfectly fine with splitting the democratic coalition if need be. Because if they dont do a good job, there's no reason we should remain democrats. 

That said, in practice, is Biden's anti terrorism policy bad? On paper at least, no. I'm fine with most of this and it strikes a good balance. However, I am concerned about the potential for governmental efforts and otherwise to crack down on dissenting opinions online. This might not even take the form of overt suppression by the way. It could involve troll farms a la correct the record, or deplatforming people off of social media, or downplaying them in the algorithm on youtube, all of which I oppose too. But other than the potential for that, I feel like the leftists need to chill out. And, you know, maybe stop advocating for violence if they don't want to be considered violent extremists.

Explaining Andrew yang's homelessness comments like a reasonable person

So, NYC's mayoral race had a debate recently, and the progressive left is skewering Yang for comments made on homelessness. Ignore his competition making jabs at home for this being a nonanswer at the end. I'm more focusing on how the progressive base is just ripping him for this.

Honestly, I like the progressive left on a lot of things. But their smearing of Yang is...distasteful. They're spinning it making it look like he hates homeless people, the mentally ill, blah blah blah. Uh, anyone who has spent any time in cities should know exactly who Yang is referring to. He's referring to the crazies who hang around bus terminals screaming about Hitler and telling wild stories about how the Clintons killed their family (yeah, I may or may not have a true story going along with that specific description). And he's talking about these crazy homeless people running around the streets attacking people. He's not talking about all homeless, or all mentally ill people, mostly that specific class of relatively dangerous mentally ill people who do attack people. These people need help, and Yang is trying to get them help, and get them off of their streets so they're no longer harassing people or even physically attacking them on occasion.

Yang isn't someone who hates homeless people, or the mentally ill. Yang has robust, progressive plans to reduce homelessness, including a very progressive Bernie-esque housing program. And in response to backlash he has pointed out Yang has been to counseling before when he was young. It seems blatantly clear to me that Yang was clearly talking about people who have no support structures who harass and attack people. I mean, are people going to deny homeless people sometimes do that, especially if they require certain mental help they're not getting due to being homeless?

I mean, really, while we can debate Yang's policy specifics (I don't feel qualified to do that at this time), I mean, his sentiment is reasonable and not wrong. This comes off as progressives just taking crap he said out of context to pull their little virtue signalling games. 

Honestly, and I say this as someone who can be a purity testing jerk myself a lot of the time, I feel like a lot of progressives as of late are as bad as the SJWs with the virtue signalling nonsense. Yang isn't a bad guy here. I'm sorry, he's not. We should be looking at policies to help people with severe mental illness, as they require resources they cannot get while being homeless, and simply giving that subgroup a UBI isn't going to help because, by definition, they're not in a proper state of mind to take care of themselves. Yang's not wrong on this.

Debunking the argument from entropy

 Okay, so I know I shouldn't bother, but I got into an argument with an ancap tonight and his entire argument on work came down to this weird...idea about entropy. He seems to argue that because it takes work to survive, and because the universe trends toward entropy, that work is...justified, I guess? It was a very weird argument, and something that makes no sense to me.

So, entropy is a concept in thermodynamics. It states that energy to do work in the universe is finite, and that over time, the amount decreases. Eventually, after all energy is expended, we will reach the heat death of the universe. 

Okay, yeah, but what does this have to do with work, as in, labor to survive? It seems like a complete nonsequitur, among other things. There are many things wrong with this argument.

First of all, the definitions of work are being mixed up. When someone who is anti work talks about work, they're talking about wage labor. They're talking about earning the resources to survive. They're not talking about "work" as in, your body is constantly working just to survive, it's what it does. By this definition, breathing is work. No one is denying that certain biological functions are, by some weird metaphysical definition work, but how does this justify work, the institution as it exists, as in, you need to go to work at walmart and take orders from a boss 8 hours a day to earn currency to survive? It makes no sense.

There are several logical fallacies that apply to this argument. First, it's a non sequitur. It doesn't follow. Second, it's an appeal to nature. Because something is a certain way in the state of nature, because it's natural, that somehow makes it morally justified, even if we can change it. That's fallacious. Third, it's an is ought fallacy, confusing what is, with what ought to be. Just because people work to survive, doesn't mean this is moral, if we can change it. 

The fact is, the institution of work, and the requirement to work, as a means to survive, in the 21st century political economy, is a choice. We could choose more leisure if we wanted. Our entire society is obsessed with work, and work is so ingrained in some peoples' ideologies that they just see it as natural like it's breathing or something. It's wierd. Of course, that's the presumption I want to challenge on this blog. The fact is work is, to some extent, a collective choice. We could all choose to work a lot less collectively, and change our institutions in society to accomplish it. We actively choose not to, and in my opinion, people suffer as a result. 

Just because something is, or seems natural, does not make it moral, especially if it is somehow unpleasant or coercive, and can be changed. Arguments from nature should never be used to hold back society from achieving all it can achieve.

Looking at The New School's basic income proposal

 So, The New School's Institute on Race and the Political Economy recently released a new UBI/NIT/EITC plan, and since I like analyzing UBI plans, well, this is the right place to discuss this.

Not a true "basic income"?

So, essentially, this plan is an EITC expansion, which, off hand, is a bit cringe. I've criticized NIT/EITC expansions in the past, and I do believe that they are a bit weak. I mean, fundamentally, such a proposal, in ideal form, is going to mirror a basic income perfectly, but instead rely on the tax system or other bureaucratic institution to means test and modify benefits according to a formula based on income level, rather than just giving people an unconditional monthly check. This will give people the same benefits, but the bureaucracy will be much slower to respond to changes in situation (see: our overloaded unemployment system people couldn't even log on to during covid), and because there is a bureaucracy that gatekeeps benefits, it is much easier for a future republican or bill clinton style democratic administration to come along and "reform" the system by rolling back these changes or instituting work requirements or something. You gotta keep in mind, often times a lot of "pragmatic" thinking people will go the EITC route with UBI, claiming it's cheaper and they can just tweak a couple things about the existing system to sign it into law. But if it's that easy to modify a few lines of text in the existing tax code, think of how easy it is for future administrations to reverse that. That said, such a program by design may not have staying power and could be subject to attack by hostile republicans. 

Now, these guys tend to fall into that weird "pragmatic" thinking approach centrists/welfarists tend to have with these things. A big appeal to this program, according to them, is rather than costing $3 trillion like most UBI plans, this plan will only cost $876 billion to implement, the net cost of the net transfers within the system. They also claim that giving everyone the same amount of money will dilute the purchasing power of the poor. Never mind the fact that the fact that a UBI is more expensive goes hand in hand with that. Why is a UBI more expensive? Because instead of relying on a clawback mechanism, it relies on extra taxation. The taxes will roughly equal the clawback mechanism. Only the poor get the "true" real benefit of UBI, because everyone else will have higher taxes to pay back their UBI. Ugh, I hate "progressives" sometimes. They always make these terrible arguments against universal and conditional aid when in reality it's just an ideological predisposition toward means testing the everloving crap out of everything in practice that does this. 

Beyond that though, that is my one negative thing I have to say about this. Beyond this point, most of what I discuss is going to be overwhelmingly positive.

So what's the plan?

Well, this plan is essentially an EITC expansion that guarantees everyone a near poverty level income. It also is as universal as an EITC scheme can get, as it actively removes the work requirement. So basically, despite my criticisms, these guys are serious about some form of UBI, even if it's not a true UBI. 

Essentially, the maximum benefit (aka, the "UBI") is $12,500 for adults, and $4,500 for children. Slightly less than the poverty line, and my plan, but still, nothing to complain about, this is very good. This benefit would be given to every adult under $10,000 for 1 adult households, and under $15,000 for under 2 adult households. It will include a phase out at $50,000 for single adult households, and $70,000 for 2 adult households. These values were chosen at being the approximate median income. This amounts to a phase out rate (read: tax, if we implemented an actual "UBI") at 31.9% for 1 adult households, and $46.4% for 2 adult households. The child basic income would have lower effective phase out rates at 11.25% for 1 adult households and 8.18% for 2 adult households. 

I'm going to be honest, this isn't bad. I mean, the phase out rates are a little high, my UBI phase out would be 18.5% starting at $0, with the benefit extended well beyond the median. If I recall, for the phase out level of my plan for a single adult was in the ballpark of $70,000 and for a family of four,it was around $200,000. That said, I think my plan actually is a bit more progressive than this. Still, this isn't bad. 

And despite my criticisms above, they do have protections for people in case of income changes. First of all, they aren't abolishing the traditional safety net at all. Second of all, they plan to use employer salary data to account for changes to income, as well as encouraging people to contact the IRS when their income changes. And if the IRS screws up and overpays, they would repay the UBI in a more just way, without having to worry about being hammered with penalties. These aren't perfect solutions that provide the elegance UBI offers, but this is good. They're trying. 

Another minor issue I have with it is the benefit is paid out by household. I don't like this solely because what if someone leaves? I mean, a benefit of UBI is it can get people out of abusive situations FAST. Imagine leaving and then needing to contact the IRS and fill out paperwork to separate your UBI from the family's. It's a bit of a hot mess. But eh, EITC, what are you gonna do?

Tangent: This is how you play identity politics

Being from the New School's Institute of Race and the Political Economy, a lot of this plan discussed how it would affect people, and it played hard into identity politics. It discussed how white, black, latino, etc. households would be affected this plan. And it pointed out how such a plan would greatly impact minorities' lives. I've been saying this for years, really, UBI disproportionately impacts minorities because minorities are disproportionately poor and have the most to benefit. Regardless, I get screamed at for being a white dude telling minorities what's good for them and not being for targetted programs specifically for them because universal programs aren't "good enough". Well, yeah, they kind of are. These plans help minorities the most. And this article shows it. Bravo for pointing out the positive impacts of a universal program on specific identities without getting all sectarian about it.

How will they pay for it?

Well, as far as the net $876 billion cost, they don't really say. It's cheaper than other plans, but that's because they made it an EITC and focus on the net cost. My plan costs more but relies heavily on existing program cuts combined with broad based taxation to replace the phase out mechanism. 

I'm sure they can raise $876 billion somewhere, it's not particularly difficult, but given they aren't repealing welfare and they dont have anything about extra taxation on high earners, I do wonder.

But say they do pay for it with, say, and I'm just guessing, a 10% flat tax on income earners beyond $50/70k. Well, here's the thing, if this entire system was proposed as a "tax", it would be "regressive" and I would never hear the end of it from progressives. Imagine taxing the poor and middle class at a rate of 32-46%, but then the rich are taxed at 10%. That isn't really..fair. And I tried to avoid that in my own UBI plan. But, for some reason, when it's an EITC, it's magically progressive through the magic of government bureaucracy and means testing.

I don't get it either. Not really a criticism at these guys in particular, but just a criticism I see from "progressives" about UBI constantly that I feel the need to throw shade at.

Conclusion

All in all, this is still one of the better plans I came across. Yang's plan was horrifically lacking in funding details at times, and despite attempting to fund it, well, he had a $900 billion deficit roughly with it because he lacked the balls to balance stuff and relied on nebulous math. He also made questionable sacrifices to the safety net, and removed the standard deduction in effect by making UBI count against taxation. Yang's plan kind of sucked. 

Allan Sheahan's plan was interesting but it was mostly funded by removing tax loopholes and destroying the existing safety net, and it seemed to be fairly rough on the poor. This plan made more sense than Yang's, but it still has some issues IMO.

This plan is arguably better than both. My biggest issues with it are thus. First, it's an NIT, which makes doling out the dough more bureaucratic, and opens the program up to vulnerability from future administrations to sabotage it. Second of all, the clawback mechanism does make the plan a bit...regressive. If this were taxation, and not a phase out, progressives would lose their crap.

Another issue is they don't discuss how it would be funded, but I'd imagine it would be notoriously easy to do. $876 billion is definitely doable. So I'm not worrying about it.

If I had to give this plan a letter grade, I'd give it a solid B, maybe even a B+. I cant give an actual A to flat out NIT/EITC plans, sorry, but this is just about the best NIT/EITC plan I've ever come across, and that's the strongest compliment I can give this idea. It's solid, and it kind of mirrors my own plan in a lot of ways. I have to say I'd approve of this if it were passed in congress. I know I was very critical, but I tend to end up being attracted to the negatives than the positives, just my approach to things. But yeah, despite complaining about it so much, it's actually a really nice plan overall. Not exactly how I'd do things, but close enough where I approve.

The art of compromise

 While on a roll regarding my strong position vs my weak positions, it might be good to go deeper into my art of compromising, and expressing where democrats go wrong. I get accused of being a purist a lot from the democrats, and how I'm a purity tester, but in reality, they just aren't selling me on my vision. The fact is, I never agree with anyone 100%, I always compromise. I've written extensively on here criticizing my closest political allies like Yang and Bernie. I fall in behind them regardless, because I can at least say I agree with them by like 65-80%, but honestly, I still get ripped regardless, because they think I support exactly what they support.

The thing is, I believe, when you're campaigning, you're there to sell a vision. You're there to sell your ideals. You're there to get out there, push the overton window as much as possible, and sell your vision. And this is where democrats go wrong. They pre-compromise. We're told from the get go, the ideal, stuff like medicare for all or a UBI (alternatively green new deal), free college, are "unpragmatic", that they'll never pass. That we can't have them, and we have to settle. Democrats push this vision like, well if we dont have the votes, why should we even try? So they basically sell ideas half baked to begin with, taking the "strong position" off the table from the get go. They default to a weak/compromise position, on the basis that they need to compromsie and cant pass stuff in full anyway.

This would not be as bad, if they actually kept to their word. After all, I know that President Yang would have trouble passing UBI, and president sanders would have trouble with medicare for all. Maybe they would need to compromise. This is also why I'm so willing to settle for flawed candidates, like Yang, who sell flawed plans that won't work. Because I know, at the end of the day, that whatever they campaign on isn't going to be the final product. It's gonna have to go through congress, they're gonna rework the flaws, blah blah blah, and a lot of stuff might even be watered down. Such is the nature of congress. Okay. So, I know Yang isn't gonna necessarily get us UBI, but what I do know is he would fight for it. I know Bernie isn't necessarily gonna get us medicare for all, but I know he is gonna fight for it. And that's all I ask, that we push candidates who are willing to fight for certain things. I've always saying, that UBI and medicare for all are my ideals. If we can't do them fully, I'm open to compromise plans. I've even crafted watered down compromise plans. I support medicare extra for all if I cant get medicare for all. I have a $9k UBI plan if I can't do my $13k one. I mean, once I get my core mechanisms figured out, I can modify them any which way to improve or reduce them. My UBI is scalable, I have several healthcare models to choose from. I know things won't pass exactly as I envision. But hey, you gotta at least fight for your ideal, ya know? 

This is where democrats go wrong. They meet the right half way, before the election, and now they wanna meet them half way after. Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema are holding up tons of legislation, and forcing Biden to negotiate with the GOP. All those fancy (well not really fancy, kind of half measures, but still progressive enough to support) infrastructure and childcare plans? Gutted. The dems are taking Biden's plans, which were already compromises because they said they couldn't pass the real thing, and they're compromising on them, because they can't even pass their compromises, so now we're getting crap.

I knew this was coming. This is why I fought the centrist camp so hard in 2016 and 2020. They're literally useless. And my opinion on Biden has plummetted over the past few weeks to month or two to the point that I'm now at my pre election "screw this guy" mentality. All that crap about vote blue no matter who and holding his feet to the fire, where are you all at right now? Hold them to the fire HOW?! The time you hold them to the fire is before you vote for them, by forcing them to work for your vote, not after. So yeah, congrats vote blue no matter who progressive, you got played. 

I'm not saying Bernie or Yang would be able to pass everything, but at least they would start with a strong position and maybe after compromises get down to a weaker compromise position reminiscent of what Biden originally proposed. Maybe single payer would become a public option. Maybe UBI would become an NIT or EITC expansion similar to what I plan to discuss in my next article after this one. But at least we would get something substantive accomplished. 

The art of the compromise is this, you gotta start out with the strongest position possible, and then you bargain down to a weaker, but still respectable position. You wanna shift the overton window so much, that what your compromise is, is closer to what your original aim was, than your original position. That's why, when I pushed for UBI in my last 2 articles, I argued for the highest sustainable UBI, not merely a subsistence level UBI that's the minimum to guarantee people from coercion. I took the strong anti work position, so I could get any anti work position. If I start from the weak position, I'm inevitably going to be watered down to a weaker position, which is exactly what's going on with democrats, and exactly why I despise them. They're worthless and dont even try. They just screw the left, the people who actually wanna do something, over, in every way possible. And then they wonder why we're not enthusiastic to support them. Yeah, this is why.

Clarifying my position on lazies vs crazies: my strong position vs my compromise positions

 So, I admit sometimes my writing isn't the best, as I often use this blog to spitball ideas. Don't get me wrong, this kind of makes it like a public diary, but it does mean that some of my ideas aren't perfectly refined. This is okay, because I'm learning as I go along too. While I often start a post with a specific goal in mind, sometimes I end up deviating, coming to interesting conclusions I did not expect, and learning something as I go. I think my lazy vs crazy position is one of those things.

The fact is, I think my strong position is just. We have so many pro work philosophies that are extremely in favor of the crazies, often to the point of veneration, but often end up demonizing the lazies. Conventional moral theory holds that "crazies" who are workaholics are upstanding members of society, while "lazies" who are work shy are the scum of the earth. I believe pushing a strong position to the contrary is valid. I mean, my strong position in my last one almost mirrors the position we have toward lazies in our current society. Rather than viewing the lazies as scum who must be coerced into labor via propertylessness, I tend to take the opposing view, that taxing the crazies at the highest sustainable rate to fund the largest basic income possible guarantees the most freedom for society. 

But, the crazies might protest. After all, taxing at laffer curve rates and then some severely hampers their ability to make money, and violates their theory of justice that if you want something, earn it. Despite work being voluntary in my system, I've heard arguments from the right argue that taxation is a form of slavery, and I do understand that I do coerce people to surrender large amounts of income to fund the highest sustainable UBI.

But you know what? These guys support the opposite. They support an atomized society in which no basic income exists and everyone is forced to earn their keep, whether they want it or not. They support a theory of justice that forces all to work like they do. I support a theory that heavily taxes people, but frees them from labor. THey claim work is voluntary in their system when it is not. I claim work is voluntary in mine, and it is, but the taxation that comes with it is not. I claim they oppress me by forcing me to work. I have a point under my own theory of justice. They claim that I oppress them by taxing them to fund my UBI. They have a point according to their own theory. 

Even if we go by my two conditions test of everyone who wants to work can work, and everyone who doesn't doesn't, those who work can claim that they're unsatisfied with the diminished rewards and wish for a lower tax rate and lower basic income. They have a point. But again, if we lower the rate, I could argue that they are making my UBI level unsatisfying to the point of coercing me into the labor force to earn more income. 

Ultimately, where we come down between these two theories is, like everything else, subjective. Once we stop assuming the jobist theory as the moral default, and start considering different theories on equal footing, we start realizing we have equal claims to having valid models of distributive justice. Which one we support is ultimately a matter of public will.

But that said, that is why I'm willing to offer such a strong position for the sake of argument. Too many philosophers and theorists dance around outright just justifying laziness and leisure as a default, and often end up trying to justify their views within jobist and pro work philosophical frameworks. They feel a need to go through this complex dance of justifying a basic income, arguing on their opponents' terms. I ask, why should we work? What if we were forced to justify work, the way are forced to justify not working? Maybe we should subject the jobists to the same absurd standards they try to impose on us. I don't necessarily accept the strong position in reality, mind you. But I present it for the sake of argument. Because if we start from the assumption that all morality is subjective and all theories are models, like I actually do, why does this model not deserve to be heard? That's not to say that there aren't objections to it, of problems ith it, but such is life. I've been in enough political debates over the years to watch the complex dance people of differing ideoologies and moral systems do with each other. Watch capitalists and socialists go at it. You can spend hours watching them argue back and forth, posing different theories, and then responding to each other that those theories are wrong, while arguing such a thing from within their own preferred theory. And after hours of discussion they end up not changing their minds at all, hating the other side's arguments, not understanding how the other side can't see how immoral and unreasonable they're being, and nothing gets doone. Heck, I've done it myself. Virtually every discussion I have with a right libertarian ends this way. They're not wrong, but neither am I, it's simply a matter of your specific moral compass. That said, I'm willing to understand what a farce political theory and arguments can be, and I'm willing to push strong arguments that many will find objectionable, just for the sake of argument. Consider it my opening offer in a complex debate in which we must fiind common ground.

That said, where do I compromise from here? Well, if I want to bend my extreme position to a more reasonable one, I would go from arguing for the highest sustainable basic income taxed at laffer curve rates, to proposing a basic income merely sufficient  to free people from forced labor, if such a UBI is lower than the maximum sustained one. This is a moral compromise with a jobist society. I say, okay, I will settle for the bare minimum to liberate me, rather than a freedom maximizing basic income of a higher rate, and we can agree to work for the rest. Now, what is the functional difference between those two positions? Not much right now. I susepect the max sustainable basic income and the minimum to liberate people from poverty and coercion are roughly the same. With my ideal basic income being around $13,000 riight above the poverty line, and the maximum reasonable income being around $15-16,000. 

But over time, the differences will widen. A maximum sustainable UBI will only increase as automation takes over, while a subsistence one will stagnate. Over time, the weaknesses of this compromise will become appparent, and ideally, people will shift their attitudes away from labor and toward leisure. Perhaps once people get a subsistence UBI, unwanted jobs automate themselves, wages go up, and over coming decades, desire to work plummets. Well, by that point, the political compromise will do its job. We will have enough freedom to live as we want, and as freedom gives people the ability to rethink their lives, it may also give them the ability to rethink work. In the long term perhaps we will seek full unemployment, and try to shift toward a maximum sustainable UBI, lest we shift toward a highly unequal society of haves and hve nots. I would argue in a post work society, my strong position may eventually become a ppolitical necessity.

But it isn't right now. Right now, we have a strong pro work environment that favors work, and demonizes leisure. Merely arguing for the minimum subsistence level is revolutionary in and of itself. And that should be the immediate political goal. Strike a grand compromise with the jobists, and then leave future debates to future generations. 

Still, seeing the importance of the strong argument, I believe it should be heard today. Even if we cant quite come around and agree with it yet, because of the political and economic realities of 2021, it's a nice vision to have for the future, and it may be nice too revisit in 50-100 years. Either way, I believe that putting forward such a countercultural and subversive ideology is worth doing. I think we need to challenge the assumptions of the overton window we find ourselves in, and rather than dancing around the ideological framework of our opponents, we argue on our own, pushing for a new progressive system unmoored by the problems of the past. So dream big, even if we have to settle for something that compromises with the same political establishment we need to challenge. 

Lazies vs crazies, why even bother with detailed philosophy?

 So, I'm reading more of Van Parij's work on "real freedom", and it's really reminding me of why I dislike a lot of formal philosophy. While this stuff is, to some extent, the bedrock of modern society, a lot of philosophizing comes off as mental...well...you know. Like, people start out with assumptions, and then they build on those assumptions, and then they conclude things. This is all well and good, but I think with morality, many of these assumptions are...arbitrary. And that ultimately, most of these arguments come down to a framing of issues.

I mean, given my unique perspective, I'm assuming people know what framing is. Say you have an issue, a hot topic of the day, you can frame the issue in any which way. You can frame abortion as a matter of a woman's right to choose, or the life of a fetus. Virtually, all political argumentation comes down to framing, and as I say, I tend to view detailed political philosophies, like libertarianism, or marxism, or critical theory, to be lenses. Now, lenses are good, but you kind of have to agree with the framing the lens is going for in order to value it, and that's kind of why I tend to run into so many problems with ideologues of different political philosophies. They just see their worldview as objective truth, and they lack the ability to introspect about their chosen philosophy's weaknesses, and often argue with each other all of the time. This is why a lot of political argumentation is stale to me. It often doesn't solve anything. I can say work is slavery and someone with a different philosophy can just come in and say 'but nature is forcing you, not people", which is true from a certain perspective, but is unhelpful when I have a worldview based on the idea that just because something is natural doesn't make it right, or optimal. 

The more I read into "real libertarianism", the more I see a lot of these issues with this particular take on the philosophy, despite my agreeing with the general idea of the philosophy. We saw this when I flat out rejected the idea that people of different abilities and preferences should perhaps be given different levels of UBI to optimize happiness and well being. I instead argue that no, people should just be given the same, and from there, it's up to them. The only exceptions being the disabled and elderly who should be compensated more on the fact that they literally can't work, so they should have a higher living standard to compensate for this, as the basic income living standard is kind of lean.

Now Van Parijs is looking at the dichotomy between the "lazies" and the "crazies", ie, the people who don't want to work, vs the people who do. He argues that his highest sustainable basic income is potentially unfair to the people who want to work, and that this has a bias toward leisure and laziness. My stance on this is unironically that maybe it does, but maybe this is a good thing. Maybe most other political philosophies have a bias toward work, and they do. Capitalism, socialism, and anything in between like social democracy. They all treat work, and a moral obligation to work, as a core part of their political ideologies. Capitalism, despite the protestant work ethic, is arguably the least firm on this, claiming no one has to work, but then yeah...they kinda do, because without property, you know, what's the other option? That said, capitalists instead demonize redistribution of wealth to resolve this, the same kinds of redistribution I'm for.

Here's the thing. We need a political ideology, IMO, a lens, if you will, that actively rejects work as an assumption about life. And due to my atheist phase, I was able to go full nihilist to do it. Without an authoritarian religion to dictate morality to me, I embraced the nihilistic perspective that comes along with atheism, and I kind of realized, you know what? Work is just a thing we do, to make the stuff we do. It doesn't have any inherent value beyond that. All that stuff about jobs being about dignity and blah blah blah is just what "the man" tells you to justify forced servitude. It's why I despise many mainstream democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (well, one of the reasons). Our modern attitudes toward work are actually, weird in my opinion. People of the past never valorized this stuff like we do now. In the 19th century "wage slavery" was a common criticism of capitalism. In the ancient times, philosophers saw wage labor as just one step divorced from literal slavery. But nowadays, the pro work mindset has such a hegemony even left libertarian philosophers I otherwise agree with feel the need to dance around the subject. All of this stuff is just subjective framing. We can literally create any moral system we want, insofar as distribution of work and resources goes. And while I'm not totally against the "crazies", I am in favor of the "lazies", if you don't establish a basic income or other similar system to outright give people the ability to say no to forced labor, you end up falling into that pro work hegemonic trap, and that's far more oppressive. "Crazies" might ask "why should I have to pay you to sit around?", but if we're not assuming a hegemonic moral system everyone agrees with from the get go, I can also ask "why should I be forced to work, to justify a system that makes you feel good about work?"

Ideally, a moral system, at this present state of time, would try to do a balancing act between both. "Lazies" want a higher basic income and don't want to work. "Crazies" want to work hard, and want to earn higher living standards from their work. If you err too much on the side of the lazies, you will discourage the crazies from working via excessive taxation, and this will lead to a smaller economic pie for all of us. This is a huge reason I focus so much on laffer curves and acceptable rates of taxation while formulating my economic plans. I could just do "soak the rich" schemes like the progressive left wants to do, but often times those are just feel good measures based on bad economics that are just punitive toward the rich, without accomplishing much good. As you can tell, ultimately, what I deem to be the acceptable limits of taxation come from what people are willing to put up with and do. If people stop working because the UBI is too generous and there isn't enough financial reward, and this harms the economy, then the UBI is too high. But, if people are willing to work, then taxation isn't necessarily immoral, no? I mean, given my taxes are tied to labor, and I make labor voluntarily, aren't you signing up for that by deciding to work for what the basic income provides? Obviously, as Van parijs would argue, people would want lower tax rates keeping more of the pie for themselves, but if we lower the UBI, we also make the economic system more inherently coercive, forcing people into the work force when they otherwise would not want to be there. If we truly desire a just world where people are maximally free, then won't a sustainable basic income both 1) try to give people the most freedom possible not to work, while simultaneously 2) trying to give people the most freedom to work, if they want to? Isn't that the true perfect balance between the lazies and the crazies? If you make the UBI too low and people are forced to work to survive, that's coercive. If you make the UBI too high and people who otherwise would and want to are discouraged from working because there's no reward on it, then that's too high. The perfect balance between these two factions is, IMO, decided by the best balance of people being able to do what they want to do.

So that said, isn't the maximum sustainable UBI, by definition, the optimum level of UBI? Because if a UBI isn't sustainable, then people would quit their jobs and no one would work because there's no financial incentive to do so. But if a UBI is sustainable, and we cut it, aren't we just forcing the "lazies" back into the workplace and being coerced to deal with the world of the "crazies"? That's just how I see it.

Another possible way to view it is to make the UBI just high enough to not be coercive. This will be enough to solve the coercion problem for the lazies, but also ensure that the crazies get rewarded for work. And in a society still highly dependent on labor, perhaps it would be a good thing to incentivize people who want to work for more than just the minimum to work. For our modern economy, this could work, the potential is the future.

Honestly, I think right now, we can settle for just solving the coercion issue. Once we get the minimum UBI to attain that, I think we can settle for not raising it higher, even if arguably sustainable. It's a political compromise, given these jobist times, and one that is advantageous to make, given a poverty line level UBI is close to my estimated maximum anyway. And if we can't even get the minimum required to free everyone from coerced labor, the highest sustainable is obviously going to be the standard anyway, because, well, I'd rather have a partial implementation than no implementation. But what about the future? By aiming for that poverty line level UBI, I might be roughly satisfying both standards of mine, as a UBI set at or just above the poverty level is arguably the "highest sustainable UBI" based on math I previously done ($13k-16k or so). And from there, I leave it up in the air. I assume that from there, jobs that no one wants to do will either be eliminated, or have to adjust to a new market in which they pay more and treat workers better. 

 But what if, over time, jobs disappear, and the labor force plummets, as automation replaces many jobs today, and new jobs don't really pop up because no one really wants to do them. That said, the balance of power tilts from the crazies to the lazies over the course of the 21st century. And imagine it's now 2104, 83 years from now, in keeping with the fact that 1938 was 83 years ago and I constantly rip those standards for being dated. Say that these morals that I espouse now, in 2021, become dated. Imagine that now most wealth is held by a handful of people, and most people are stuck at a poverty level UBI, told if they want more they can work, but no jobs exist, or really deserve to exist, and we just end up with extreme inequality based on inherited wealth, with only 10-20% of people working scarce jobs that need to be done?

Well, just as I'm arguing for a new social contract that breaks from "jobism" today, I totally would understand if people took the compromises I take for today's economy and say, you know what? outofplatoscave2012 had it right in 2021, but it's now 2104 and the standards of the 21st century no longer apply to the 22nd, we need to do something different. Maybe you'll choose to tax people at a higher rate, potentially pissing off the fewer crazies that still exist. Maybe you'll support some form of socialism. Or maybe due to climate change and resource scarcity, you'll find yourself in an age where work is more necessary than ever, because our entire economy as it exists today has collapsed and is racked with massive shortages, leading to a new dark age. I don't know. That's the thing about all of these philosophies, they're lenses written for specific snapshots in time, to solve a problem of that era. And I hate the idea of the present being haunted by old ideologies that have long expired. And that applies to what I'm arguing about now in 2021 being applied to the 22nd century's political economy.

And that's the problem I have with Van Parijs worrying about the whims of the workaholic "crazies". We have enough ideologies that favor them and glorify them. We live in a country based on insane inequalities and excesses, in which we literally venerate the crazies and their culture, and demonize the lazies. Let the lazies have an ideology that validates their chosen lifestyle for once. If people want to worship the crazies, there's always capitalism, social democracy, and even socialism, etc. I'd rather not cede ideological ground to them more than necessary. That's not to say I can't make compromises in the face of economic or political necessity, as I recognize the dominance of their current ideas, but their ideas aren't sacred, and their sacred cows can and should be tipped. 

I'm not trying to make a perfect world where everyone is perfectly happy, including the right of people to make tons of money from work to the point it enslaves the rest of the human race to behave just as they do. The way I see it, everyone who wants to work can, and everyone who doesn't, doesn't have to, then that is my ideal as of right now. If you aren't perfectly happy with that, then tough. We can't raise a basic income higher than that's sustainable because it kills the goose that lays the golden eggs, and we can't lower it because that is a tacit endorsement of slavery in my opinion. Find your own happiness from there. I'm giving you all the freedom and the tools to do so. It might not always be exactly as you want it, but that's the grand compromise between the two groups in my opinion. Everyone gets what they want.

Watching liberals freak out over Merrick Garland gives me schadenfreude

 So, Merrick Garland, once a supreme court nominee under Obama, is now the Attorney General. And everywhere, liberals who were pissed off over the republicans' unreasonable obstruction of nominating SCOTUS justices felt a great sense of justice as "their guy" finally got a prominent position in a Biden administration. A few months later, these same liberals are salty because now Garland is defending Trump. And now liberals everywhere feel betrayed, and pissed off, and wonder, how? How could he do that to us? Isn't this a stab in the back? Well, yeah, it is, but you guys should've seen it coming.

I remember when Garland was proposed in 2016, he was an ill advised attempt of the Obama administration to compromise with the GOP. Sound familiar? Garland was not a really left wing judge. he was a moderate. But, the Obama administration, in all of its great wisdom, decided, hey, you know what? We're never going to get a full left wing justice confirmed to replace Scalia, so let's compromise. I'll offer this moderate justice and...

Wait what? You aren't holding ANY hearings on SCOTUS justices at all until after the election? This is outrageous! You're literally failing to uphold your constitutional duties! It didn't matter. SCOTUS nominations required advice and consent of the senate, and the senate was run by republicans, and McConnell did this really nasty thing of deciding, hey, we're just not gonna even hold hearings on this. See you next year! So the election determined who would fill the seat, and them Trump won and rammed Gorsuch down our throats. Huge reason why Hillary's entire campaign strategy to progressives relied on "BuT tHe CoUrT!!!11!"

Then RBG died four years later and McConnell, in a sheer display of hypocrisy, rammed Amy Comey Barrett through right before the election, because, well, screw you, that's why. 

So why do I have schadenfreude over democrats being salty over Garland defending Trump? Well, because when Biden got in, Garland was at the top of the democrats' list for a position, and they made him AG. But they seem to ignore the fact that he was a compromise to begin with, and then he turns around and starts defending republicans.Admittedly there may be some deeper legal reasoning behind it. Law isn't always like politics. Judicial philosophy is a bit more sophisticated than rank political ideology and left vs right fights. 

But still. Liberals end up unhappy with their own compromises? Sounds like them. They love to compromise with the GOP, get rejected because the GOP are extremist ideologues, and then they end up compromising on their compromises. And then they end up unhappy when their compromised compromises don't do anything or backfire on them politically. It's like, wake up. You guys were the ones who wanted this. We could've told you you shouldn't have compromised in the first place and fought for what you believe in, but then i'd be told to shut up and that I'm not practical and I need to compromise and be for incrementalism.

Screw your compromises and incrementalism. This is what you get. The Biden administration is exactly what you get. You bend over backwards to appeal to the GOP with moderate conservative nominees and policies, they move to the right, you get nothing done, you end up compromising on the compromises, and you end up unhappy with what you get. This is what you get. I told you guys freaking 5 years ago on here, what you get with Biden is what you get. The infrastructure deal, the childcare deal, the nonexistent healthcare and student debt plans, Merrick Garland. You compromise. And then you compromise on the compromise. And then you get nothing, and no one is happy. Next time fight for what you actually believe in. We know that at some point, you're gonna have to compromise. But it's better to start far left and only have to compromise once, than to live your life compromising, getting <25% of what you actually want, and then being unhappy. That's what you get.

Finding the maximum sustainable UBI (new numbers)

 So I recently did something like this, but with my old numbers. I want to look at what the maximum possible UBI is with my new numbers.

I'll be looking at various scenarios in this article. First I'll start out realistically, given the assumptions I operate off of now, but then I will switch to more and more zany and outlandish ones.

Maximum sustainable UBI with Medicare for All

First, I'll look at the maximum sustainable UBI given my own plan, and combining that with a medicare for all plan. Keep in mind, the biggest limitation of UBI is how much we can tax the rich. Anything over 70% is technically over the laffer curve peak, and while 70-75% may be sustainable, I'm going to keep it at 70% to be cautious. Given the rich pay about 47% now between federal and local taxes, and medicare for all would raise this by 4%, the maximum sustainable UBI would tax at 19%, plus the spending cuts that I have proposed.

Given my UBI already taxes for 18.3% to fund my UBI at revenue neutral levels, we don't have a lot of breathing room for higher levels of UBI. This would raise $3.666 trillion, while $3.565 trillion is needed to fund my UBI as is. This is a 2.8% increase in UBI, meaning we could fund a UBI at $13,570 a year for adults, and $4,934 for children. 

What about if we get rid of Medicare for all?

Admittedly my medicare for all plan is extremely expensive and severely hampers our ability to properly fund a UBI. This is why, for a brief period of time, I gave up my medicare for all aspirations and talked myself down to a public option in order to properly fund a UBI. I came to the conclusion last time we could only fund like a $9k UBI with M4A, but after a lot of numbers tweaking and designing a M4A funding scheme specifically to get around the limitations of traditional M4A schemes that conflict with my UBI plans, I was able to make the numbers work. But just barely, as you can tell. My standard UBI plan is very close to the maximum sustainable UBI in my estimation with an M4A plan. So what if we got rid of it? Well, we could transfer the M4A tax to UBI, raising the limit of taxation up to 23%. Assuming we also raise corporate taxes and implement a wealth tax, we could raise $515 billion from that as well. Eliminating the overseas operations contingency fund from that plan gives us $80 billion per year, and the estate tax changes increases the budget by an additional $34 billion.

That said, by this point we would have:

$669 billion from spending cuts

$187 billion from a carbon tax

$240 billion from a corporate tax increase

$275 billion from a wealth tax increase

$80 billion from eliminating the overseas contingency operations fund

$34 billion from estate tax reform

$3.401 trillion from a 23% flat tax

+                                                                         

$4.886 trillion

This is a 37% increase from my main UBI plan, which means the maximum UBI would be $18,084 for adults, and $6,576 for children. This would eliminate any ability to do healthcare reform, however, even a public option.

If we stuck to my old plan, discounting the new additional taxes except for raising the flat tax to 23%, we would instead have $4.257 trillion to spend on a UBI. This would be a 19.4% increase from my main plan, allowing a UBI of $15,761 for adults and $5,731 for children. At least with this we could likely fund a robust public option and perhaps some free college and student debt forgiveness too.

What if we went all out?

So, the amounts above are assuming we stick to some variation of plans I already support. We tax at the maximum possible amounts, we eliminate other reforms I support. But let's say we decided to go all out. We destroyed the entire welfare state, including medicaid, medicare, social security, section 8, and we reduced the military down to 2% of GDP. Moreover, we eliminate the standard deduction, and cut bureaucracy as per Andrew Yang's plan. What can we raise, if we do all of that, on top of my maximal tax increases?

Well, spending cuts would be raised to $3.487 trillion (going by FY2019 because 2020 and 2021 are weird with COVID and spending is way higher than "normal"). This includes, social security ($1.107 trillion), medicare/medicaid ($1.236 trillion), all welfare ($362 billion), all the tax credits from my original plan ($238 billion), the standard deduction ($207 billion), and $337 billion in defense cuts. 

Then we can raise $187 billion from a carbon tax, $300 billion from a corporate tax increase, $275 billion from a wealth tax, $80 billion from the contingency fund, and $34 billion from estate tax reform.

My tax base for my flat tax shrinks as social security and unemployment are gone, reducing it to $13.113 billion, meaning a 23% flat tax would raise $3.016 trillion. 

All of this gives us a grand spending amount of $7.192 trillion. This is 2.017x what my current UBI plan is, yielding a $26,624 UBI for adults, and $9,682 for children. This is an extremely high UBI, but there would be no other safety nets, none, and the tax scheme would be very oppressive.

What if we funded a UBI purely from spending cuts and eliminating tax credits and deductions?

Speaking of which, if we wanted to fund a UBI purely from spending cuts like conservatives want, without raising taxes, we could. $3.487 trillion is just short of what would be needed to fund my initial UBI plan ($12,909 for adults and $4,694 for children). We could have a UBI without raising taxes if we eliminated social security, medicare, medicare, and all welfare, tax credits, and a significant amount of defense spending, but that would leave many people, especially seniors, vulnerable people relying on healthcare, etc. extremely vulnerable. We can do it, I just would not want to. 

Conclusion

That said, what the maximum UBI is depends purely on what you're willing to spend and cut. If you're looking at the maximum sustainable UBI given other progressive priorities like medicare for all, something just north of my $13,200 UBI is about it (around $13,570). If we want to give up on medicare for all and pursue a smaller healthcare plan like a public option, something around $15,761 would be feasible. If we abandoned any and all healthcare reform, $18,084 is possible. And if we eliminated all welfare and cut the government to the bone, in combination with my spending increases, we could raise enough for a $26,624 UBI.

Of course, if we're reasonable and support other priorities, the maximum sustainable UBI is going to be around $13-16k or so. Any more than that and it severely hamstrings our abilities to fund other things like healthcare, education, or infrastructure. Still, if we really wanted to, we could theoretically fund a UBI of around $27k. I would not recommend that though. It would combine an oppressive tax scheme with an insane amount of austerity in other forms of government. Moderation is better. 

My issue with the idea of "undominated diversity" and how most people should get the same UBI

 So, I'm reading into Philippe van Parijs' "real freedom", and I have to be honest, I'm not super into this theory vs Widerquist's indepentarianism. It's a very vague theory. Whereas Karl Widerquist seems to have a very pointed goal, a basic income of at least the poverty level to give people access to resources needed to survive so they are not subjected to the labor force, Van Parijs' goals seem a bit more...vague. He supports the "highest sustainable" basic income to grant people the most possible freedom. Okay, cool, I can see an argument for that. I tend to believe something similar in terms of if we cannot fully implement Widerquist's goal. Implement a partial UBI so at least we can move in that direction. And as we enter "post scarcity" and work becomes less essential, the UBI should be higher. But generally, I aim for a poverty line level UBI as a rule roughly to secure independence in the form of a minimalistic lifestyle, with work incentives for more. It's what can be realistically accomplished at this time, and it would work seamlessly with the existing market economic system powered by wage labor.

But Van Parijs really goes in a weird direction with the whole idea of UBI being set at the maximum sustainable level to give people the most freedom, and this comes in the form of "undominated diversity". Van Parijs asks questions about whether everyone deserves the same UBI. Should someone who is less talented entitled to more money? Is someone who prefers expensiive tastes get more money? How are goods and services to be distributed in a way that's fair to everyone, to ensure everyone gets what they deserve? He even goes so far to undermine the concept of a sustainable UBI for all if needed to pursue these wierd theories of justice. That said, I want to focus on how I think UBI should work, and why I think most people should get the same amount.

Look, UBI is inevitably going to be implemented in a market economy along side an already existing wage labor system with lots of inequalities. And the goal to me is to ensure everyone is entitled to a basic standard of living, but nothing more. You're kind of forced to make your own decisions from there. If everyone demands the same piece of land by the beach, well, that's a supply and demand problem isnt it? There's no unfairness there in the highest bidder getting it. That's how capitalism works. If there's a lack of supply and high demand, prices go up. People who live purely on UBI are not going to be living on the best beaches, or the most luxurious city areas. They're going to be making do in low cost of living areas that are relatively undesireable. Some might make out better by living with others, or with wage earners, but UBI alone, at least insofar as a modern economy goes, is not going to guarantee a luxurious life. It's the minimum floor. If you want to live on the beach front property everyone else wants, get  job and earn it. We can discuss more of these detailed ideas about fairness in a post scarcity economy if everyone earns the same amount of money and there is no inequality at all, but honestly, I am obviously not thinking that far ahead. 

I'm not saying this to be blunt, jobist, or conservative. It's just that we have a system to figure out these issues already, and it's called the market. As demand goes up, price goes up. People on basic income alone will not get first dibs on prime location spots and the like. Relatively affluent people with higher purchasing power will. Basic income is intended to give people money for a basic existence, but until post scarcity or the case of mass automation causing mass unemployment, it's not going to be the default way of life. Most people will still work, inequality will still exist, and peoples' purchasing power will not be equal. I want everyone on UBI to live a dignified life. But that dignity does not necessarily entail owning beach front property in Malibu. Everyone gets the same amount of money. You do with it what you will. As the economy becomes more productive, and more money is given to people, that amount goes up. But people will be making different choices with the same limited resources. That's just economics. Supply and demand. I'm not interested in giving everyone a different UBI amount based on their tastes, preferences, and capabilities. People are to pursue their own happiness with the same opportunities. That, to me, is what freedom is.

Now, to be fair, there are two groups of people who arguably are entitled to more money. The elderly and the disabled. These people cannot work for more money, and as such, we could argue that they should get more than just the UBI. However, we have sytems for this in the social security system, and my UBI does not abolish social security. I do believe such programs will need to be reformmed long term if they exist alongside a UBI, but ultimately, they should exist in some form, to ensure the truly disabled and the elderly can get a form of income above the UBI to ensure not just a bare minimum subsistence level of living, but a higher standard of living akin to the "living wage" discussed. Basic income, as it stands, amounts to $6.75 an hour for one person if they worked full time. Slightly below minimum wage. But, it scales in households. A family of four might end up earning closer to $18 an hour for example. Well, someone on UBI and social security might instead have the earning power of $12-15 an hour individually, roughly double what the UBI offers by itself. That's fine and fair. THese people can't work, and being retired or disabled, should be given a higher standard of living to compensate for that. After all the existing safety nets for these people are more generous than UBI itself and it would be unjust to strip them away.

But other than that, I don't believe we should be in the business of ensuring everyone gets differing amounts of money through misguided utopian theories of justice that cannot work. We just can't make a perfect life for everyone. Not everyone is going to always live their perfect ideal life on basic income alone. But, if we can guarantee people have access to the basics without being forced to work, well, that's a huge step in my opinion. That said, I stand firm on the idea that everyone gets the same amount, and how they spend it is up to them. Let supply and demand take it from there. If we run into problems with markets in certain industries, such as healthcare, well, we can address those separately, but I'm not particularly interested in catering to everyone's individual tastes and carving out specific levels of UBI based on their preferences, talents, etc. 

Why racism is wrong from a social/left libertarian perspective

 So, I dunk on SJWs enough, but at the same time, I saw a forum thread asking why racism and discrimination is a big deal, and I decided to write my response here instead. While I dislike SJWs and their version of critical race theory and the religious devotion to the idea, I actually don't support racism in any way, and think it's bad. But I want to explain why I think its bad from my own perspective. A lot of this should be self evident, but apparently the alt right, neoconfederates, neonazis, and Trumpers exist, threatening a core egalitarian ideal, so I wanted to explain, within my alternate framework, why such ideas are bad.

Racism and discrimination are a violation of fundamental rights

Now, I want to keep in mind I don't mean rights as in "natural rights" a la Locke's theory, as I don't believe rights inherently exist. Rights are social constructs that establish important meta rules for governance in society. They're kind of the rules we put on the rules and the rulemakers to ensure they never cross such lines, and if anything, rules should exist to strengthen these personal protections. I would argue that important fundamental rights within my perspective are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and access to basic resources needed to survive. Note how I do not necessarily include property. While property is a right too, it's also a right that if treated in excess from a fundamental level, enslaves others. If we have 100 people living on an island, and one dude owns everything, the other 99 must work for that one person, as slaves pretty much, to access the resources they need to survive. So I focus on access of resources, which precludes some level of property in my opinion. But I don't believe property is absolute. 

But, generally speaking, I believe everyone should be given access to these rights. All human beings. And people who are nonwhite are still human. I know hardcore race realists like to pretend this isn't a thing, but they're biologically identical to us. They just have a different skin color. Species are defined by those we can actually breed with and produce offspring, and obviously, we can do that with people of different "races". So they're the same species. They deserve the same rights. Sorry race realists, you're not just wrong, you're bigoted idiots. 

So, that said, race does not factor at all into who is a member of a society, and who is entitled to fundamental human rights. Regardless of race, you are deserving of the same rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, access to enough resources (aka property) to survive, and perhaps property beyond that as long as it doesn't encroach on the other rights. 

That said, it makes perfect sense that racism and discrimination are bad and violate these human rights. Violating the physical well being of ethnic minorities violates their right to life. Enslaving them violates their right to liberty. Discriminating against them violates their access to goods and services. There's no valid reason, at all, why any form of racism or discrimination that impacts the physical, mental, or financial well being of any ethnic minority is justified, meaning no rules against them are justified, and even worse, such rules and actions violate their rights. 

We should vigorously fight against racism from a legal standpoint

As it seems clear that racism and discrimination are a violation of obvious rights in society, many stated, some not stated but implicit, the state has a role in protecting those rights. Many legal protections implemented over time have done a good job at doing this. The 13th-15th Amendments eliminated slavery, established voting rights, and guaranteed equal protection under the law. But, still, discrimination remained, as Jim Crow shifted to a form of institutional racism and discrimination that was legal "on paper" but had the impact of violating minority rights. These discriminatory measures were often justified from a legal standpoint, and were often upheld by terrorists known as groups like the Ku Klux Klan who basically would kill and intimidate anyone who stepped out of line. 

That isn't good. So a century later, under the Johnson administration, the federal government stepped in, desegregated the schools, strengthened voting protections by outlawing BS like literacy tests, and ensuring that Jim Crow like discrimination was illegal. We should preserve and continue to expand on this legacy to ensure that people of all races are granted equal protection under the law, and equal access to activities such as work and consumption within the free market. A market isn't free if you're denied access to it based on your skin color or any other discriminating factor while we're at it. 

Where I differ from critical race theorists

So, it seems like I'm reinventing the wheel as far as critical race theory goes, am I not? Well, as I said, it is a valid lens, isn't it? Most of my disagreement with them are over the tactics they engage in to enforce their behavior, as well as the vigor they pursue solutions with. Let me explain.

A lot of solutions critical theorists propose to solve problems regarding racism, are themselves discriminatory or otherwise violate peoples' rights and liberties.

For example, I support a largely unrestricted freedom of speech. This includes access to platforms and reasonable protections from retaliation for having bad views. Some CRT advocates want literal hate speech laws, making hate speech a crime. But if the first amendment doesn't exist to protect unpopular views, does it really exist? A lot of CRT advocates may acknowledge this, and pursue more private forms of sanctions, such as deplatforming people off of social media, or getting people fired from their jobs. These are informal forms of censorship and discrimination that are market driven. But is this really any better than the informal racism and discrimination under Jim Crow? Looks awfully the same to me. Using the private sphere to do your dirty work when the public sphere is off limits. The way I see it, social media should be treated as a public utility, as an expansion of the "net neutrality" idea (something the left was in favor of not long ago...), and people should be free to post whatever they want as long as it is not deemed a form of threat or harassment against specific individuals. And people should not be allowed to be let go over their political speech. There should be employment protections that exist specifically to stop that.

And before people go "BuT wHaT aBoUt CoLiN KaPeRnIcK? ThE rIgHt CaNcElS pEoPlE tOo!", well I'm not a right winger, now am I? Obviously I thought that was just as BS as the cancel culture the left is engaging in, and just because the right does crappy things, doesn't give the left a free pass, you guys are supposed to be better than that. Obviously what happened to Kapernick was wrong, and the NFL should not have been allowed to discriminate against him based on his speech either. Hell, I'll go further. the NFL shouldn't play jingoistic songs during their games in the first place. Totally avoid the issue altogether. Note, that is not to say they should be forced not to, but I believe that they created the whole controversy in the first place by doing so.

Here's the thing. I'm sorry, but we should not violate other peoples' rights in pursuit of ending racism. That's one thing I differ with CRT theorists on. To them, they have this mentality that if you are not actively antiracist and make these issues your #1, you are supporting racism and are a racist. That's ridiculous. People have a right, as part of their liberty, to be racist. I mean, the first amendment protects unpopular views. It is basically a right to be wrong. You have your freedom to express views too, but you cannot take away someone else's right to think a certain way. Only how they act insofar that it violates YOUR rights. 

Another disagreement is over teaching CRT in schools. I'm not opposed to this in principle, but CRT theorists dont want to educate people, but brainwash them. CRT is held with an almost religious regard amongst these people, and they want to spread their dogma by forcing it down kids' throats. This is literally no different than Trump's "patriotic education", and before I once again get "BuT tHe RiGhT dOeS iT!!11!", yeah, and I didn't leave the right, to join the left, only for you guys to do the same thing. You're better than them, act like it. 

CRT should be taught as a sociological theory, a lens through which to see the world. A valid perspective, but not the only one. I believe multiple perspectives and schools of thought should be taught in schools, and students should be allowed to drift toward what they accept and not accept. I don't believe we should use authoritarian tactics to force people to not be racist, or indoctrinate them a certain way. 

And finally, a third disagreement I have is with CRT theorists is over their solutions to equalize the workplace. I don't believe that active racial discrimination via affirmative action or racial quotas is a good way to solve problems. Unequal treatment of people based on race is wrong, and it doesn't matter if it's done in a reverse way to solve past wrongs. The fact is, while we can push anti discrimination stuff, sure, perhaps people of different races might face institutional barriers, but if we cannot solve those barriers without even more discrimination, I'm not sure that's a good thing. Again, CRT advocates believe solving racism trumps everything, including all rights, or forms of fairness. Quite frankly, these kinds of solutions are divisive, put other people at a disadvantage in the name of "justice", and simply act to spread misery a bit more equally in a larger, unjust society.

The fact is, if we cannot guarantee full equality in the workplace via legal measures, we should instead at least ensure that everyone has their rights taken care of in the form of a basic income, as well as other measures I support. This may not completely solve the problem, but it will alleviate the burden POC face, to the point that I believe these issues are secondary to it. Everyone should have access to a good life. But the way to do that is for the state to provide the means to everyone equally, rather than through unfair means tested schemes or relying on employment. Employment, to me, is notoriously unreliable as a means of subsistence, as employers have as much of a vested interest in minimizing costs by hiring as few people as possible for as low of a wage as possible while working them as hard as possible, as any worker has in securing a job with a good income and good hours. These two diametrically opposed forced are at odds with people, and once again, the core problem is needing to rely on these businesses to secure one's needs at all. That said, my basic income stuff should be seen as a way to secure a better life for POC over relying on ending employment discrimination, something that is difficult, has a questionable overall impact on society, and has many unfairness issues attached to it. So, while we should ban provable overt discrimination, trying to solve every institutional barrier in the workplace isn't a priority for me. Sorry CRT theorists, i know I'll get rakes over hot coals for that one, but eh, I have higher priorities. To be fair, this is consistent with stances I hold otherwise, as I've stated many times previously, regulations are mere band aids on coercive, exploitative relationships, and all CRT oriented solutions are just more band aids on a broken system. You cannot fully solve issues in this way. You can resolve them as much as reasonably possible, but at the end of the day, guaranteeing a governmental solution to the whole poverty and coercion issue is going to be more important.

What about the police?

Well the police is run by the government, and there are many institutional factors that lead to systemic discrimination and bad treatment by police. I don't claim to have all of the solutions, but it's quite clear these issues need to be studied more closely and changed. We should probably end the war on drugs as that was just a way for Nixon to crack down on black people and hippies anyway. We should probably require some form of training involving CRT to ensure fairer treatment of POC by police. Anyone with overt white nationalist sympathies who joins the police should face stiff sanctions if found to unjustly use force against POC (as white nationalists are known to infiltrate police forces specifically to commit violence against blacks and the like). They should wear body cams, etc. And as far as protests go and the excessive force used last year, defunding the police is a must. Police should not be able to buy military surplus weaponry. Those resources should remain under lock and key and should only be unleashed when the property authorities, like a governor or the president decides they need to be used to quell violence. 

All in all, cultural changes are going to be hard. the reason the acronym ACAB exists is because these cultural and systemic factors are so bad that police often cover for each other and protect each other from prosecution. This needs to end. I don't always have the solutions for it on hand, as I have not researched it extensively (it is a bit outside of my expertise), but I do believe that these institutions being government run, means the government must be held accountable in ensuring fair treatment of people. 

Conclusion

That said, my views are pretty straightforward. Racism and discrimination is bad and a violation of rights. Legal protections should exist and be protected and expanded to ensure fair treatment of POC in society. However, we should not trample on the rights of others or implement discriminatory or unfair solutions in solving these problems. CRT theorists are too zealous and authoritarian and seem to want to impose their extreme ideology on people by force in order to solve problems and that rubs me the wrong way. Where we cannot fully solve private problems associated with racism and discrimination, progressive libertarian solutions like UBI should be used to lessen their impacts and make them secondary issues in society. And of course, the police should be defunded and heavily reformed, being a governmental institution with an obligation to uphold the law and treat people fairly.