Why communism will never work

 So, I may have made similar articles at times, such as this one about the problems of the far left, but I do want to update and expand on the concepts here. I often hear from communists a mix of "true communism has never been tried", combined with defending states they would consider to not be true communism anyway, so I would like to go into the issue and explain why communism will never, ever, ever, work. 

The revolution problem...

As stated in my previous article, the first problem is one of the issues with revolution. Karl Marx is a prolific critic of capitalism, but he wrote in a zeitgeist of revolution. We just had the American revolution and French revolution not long before Marx wrote, and it was pretty common to have political violence and turmoil at the time. Revolution was just the way of doing things. If you disliked your government, you overthrew it and replaced it with another. But...revolution isn't pretty. I'm convinced we got lucky with the American revolution. We happened to have people in charge of it guided by enlightenment ideals in which they were especially sensitive to the tyranny issue, so they made a government with the express intent of having a weak federal government and executive. They were anti power almost to a fault. And while I may have criticisms of their constitution in the 21st century, that mindset generally led to positive results.

But...most forms of revolution don't end anywhere near as cleanly. The french revolution, for example, got rid of the monarchy, had a period known as the "reign of terror" in which anyone and everyone was beheaded, and then they got Napoleon running the country. Then he tried to take over Europe twice, and failed both times, and then they went back to monarchy for a bit before having another emperor and eventually setting into democracy some time in the 1870s mostly because they couldn't agree on who should be king. Russia, well, we know what happened with Russia. Lenin, then Stalin. China had Mao. Cambodia had pol pot. North korea had the Kim family. Cuba had castro. In all cases, we ended up with an authoritarian dictatorship. Tankies will defend this by saying that if they didn't turn to authoritarianism, capitalists would've used democratic mechanisms and freedom of speech to overturn their communism, but doesn't that just mean that communism can't survive without authoritarianism? So these countries will have revolutions, overturn the government, kill the people they don't like, and then suppress freedoms because they fear being overthrown themselves. Gee, and you wonder why I don't like communists and rip on the illiberal tendencies of many far lefties. 

Okay, so how does socialism actually work?

Okay, say we got a country that has somehow had a successful revolution, and managed to have a truly democratic government with civil liberties. Okay, so how do we establish socialism? While I can give some credit to market socialists at least, who want to have worker coops act as businesses within a market environment, a lot of the far left are anti market. They want to replace market structures with some other system. But if you don't have markets, what do you replace that with? Generally speaking what you get is some sort of government control of industry. Now, for the record, I'm not against government control of various industries, particularly those with market failures. I support universal healthcare paid for by the government, and I could get behind stuff like free college like K-12, public utilities, the USPS, etc., but I wouldn't want the government to make my deodorant. I wouldn't want them to control food production. I wouldn't want them to control the entire economy. There's a reason capitalism is given so much credit, and it's because markets are generally more responsive to market failures. For example, Nvidia is overcharging for graphics cards after the crypto bubble popped still. AMD came in and offered a card with 50% more performance for the money. With monopolies you get stagnation, with competition you get lower prices, innovation, etc. One company gauges, another can theoretically come in and make crap cheaper. Medications. Mark Cuban released that site charging "at cost+10%" for medications, attempting to solve the healthcare crisis in that sense. While I do believe we need to actually have medicare for all, markets do sometimes have a certain level of resiliency and innovation that communist countries don't. Bernie sanders complained about like 20 different kinds of deodorant at the grocery store. I mean, you want that. Because some companies make better products than others. And while we tend to have a terrible oligopoly problem in the US at times leading to price gauging and inefficient options, if you have only a government service, often times there's few checks or balances to ensure the products produced are good. People in Russia often had to eat the same foods all of the time with little to no diversity, while in America we make so much food we throw it away and the options are endless. Ya know? Again, sure, government can step in when there's a legitimate market failure (and i think healthcare is as such that it would be a good idea), but I don't want the government making my iphone. With just communism we probably wouldnt have iphones at all. Sure, china has huawei, a state controlled company making mobile devices, but if not for the west doing it first, I doubt they would have anything. 

Even "democratic socialism" would probably lead to poor results. Because while the control would be democratic, can you imagine average people voting on what products should be made? In reality, much like our existing bureaucracy and federal budget, the vast majority of the expenses and sausage being made would be largely ignored by the people, with some people complaining everything is waste, and others not even knowing what is and isn't being made. With capitalism, people vote with their pocketbooks. I'm sorry, but I just can't get behind some centrally planned system here. I'd rather a decentralized system. And while I might put market socialism in a different category due to the fact that is decentralized and market focused, when I hear "democratic socialism" and I see these people advocating against markets and for literal socialism, I tend to cringe, because I just can't imagine that working well. Decentralization and market forces provide a lot of positive incentive structures that without them, we would need to reinvent the wheel and come up with an entire new way of doing things. And I'm just not convinced it would work as well. There are a lot of legitimate criticisms by capitalists against communism and I am ultimately on the whole "capitalism won the cold war, let's keep it that way" mindset, even if I DO think there needs to be a resurgeance of the left within a capitalist framework.

The work problem

Much like capitalists, communists are generally speaking NOT anti work. If anything, as Bob Black would say, "Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else."

Seriously, if you thought the right had a massive work fetishization, the left is just as bad or worse. To me, they look almost the same, they just seem to complain about the bourgeosie more than safety nets. Conservatives glorify work and go on about how hard they work and how the government needs to stop taking their money. Leftists go on about how hard they work and how the bourgeoisie and landlords need to stop taking it. Same kind of energy, just a different boogeyman. Marxists do not hate work like I would say I do. Rather, they hate capitalism. They love work. They just believe capitalism alienates people from their work because capitalists control the institutions in which they work, and if we only had communism, work would be a just and noble idea. Communists are such work fetishists that they go on and on and on about their labor theory of value and how all value in society comes from workers. They take this to crazy degrees, almost to the point of being luddites and being anti automation. Because without work, their entire ideology seems to collapse. 

There's an old anecdote about Milton Friedman going to China. I know that this was never a proven thing, as the anecdote changes, but it has some good points. Anyway, Friedman goes to China, and he sees all of these workers and shovels building roads. Friedman asks his guide, where is all of the heavy machinery, you could build the roads more efficiently if you had better technology? His guide responds, "you don't understand, this is a jobs program." Friedman responds, "if jobs is what you wanted, you should have just given them spoons instead of shovels." 

Hence why I'm so anti jobs programs. Because when people glorify and fetishize work, and see work not just as a right but a sacred duty, they don't try to eliminate work. They don't try to make our lives easier. No, they buy their propaganda so much that they keep work around simply because their ideology is dependent on it, and the idea that people not work goes against their principles. For as much as leftists rely on the grievances of workers in order to promote their ideology, they ultimately have no solution to the work problem, so you'll still be working under communism, just as under capitalism. And you likely won't work any less, or in any better conditions than under capitalism. Why? Well, let's focus on that next.

What about work incentives?

Work incentives are a tricky issue under communism. Because they just eliminated the market and replaced it with this centrally planned system that removed the entire underlying incentive structure from capitalism. Capitalism has solutions to get people working. I am often a critic of these solutions as I view them as coercive, but generally speaking, capitalism relies mostly on market forces to enforce itself and encourage work. basically, you need to work to survive. You work for money, and you buy things you need. No real force is needed to force you to work, because the consequences of not working are severe enough most will voluntarily do so regardless. And this is often a criticism of capitalism from the left. Wage slavery is a real problem, and as you guys know it's something I criticize myself and offer solutions to. But....leftists solutions aren't my solutions.

So what do leftists suggest we do to make everyone work if we don't have markets pressuring people to? Well, in the best case scenario, the government is a monopoly on the entire economy, and all work available, and you need to get your basic needs by working for the government. So a market with a monopoly, with no other alternatives being viable because when you allow people to build their own businesses or trade, you suddenly got capitalism and markets again! 

But in reality, it's worse than that. Since work is the sacred duty it is under communism, it's literally illegal to not work. You are forced to get a job. We discussed this with Rammstein in the GDR recently. If you don't work in a communist country, they'll probably kill you or ship you to the gulag. Starvation is the least of your problems, although that's a risk in some cases even if you do work (see: holodomor, great leap forward, north korea in general, etc.). 

See what the problems are now?

Growing up in America coming off of the cold war, we were always taught that capitalism is good and communism bad. Capitalism has freedom of choice and diversity of services. Communism doesn't. Communism has shortages and a lack of innovation. Communism struggles to incentivize work effort. Communism is oppressive and should never be tried. ANd you know what? I STILL believe that. I mean, even reinvestigating it post deconversion from christianity and discussing stuff with leftists too...i mean, i can't really find much positive about communism itself. Even if leftists are often correct in criticizing capitalism at times, the solutions leftists propose are bad. Overthrowing the system is dangerous and is prone to purges, political violence, and authoritarianism. Replacing the market leads to centrally planning the entire economy via the government, leading to inefficiency, bureaucracy, and a lack of freedom or choice. Replacing the market and forcing people to work under communism leads to inefficient outcomes since work is treated as the end, not mere the means to it, and people are denied the ability to work for themselves or find their own way in life. 

I'm not saying capitalism is perfect. It's not. But...ultimately, I think we need some level of capitalism for society to work optimally. We need markets. We need decentralized planning. We need freedom of choice and the ability to vote with our dollars and our feet. And we need democracy. My ideas are more about improving the current system without abolishing it, reforming it rather than replacing it outright. Maybe my ideas aren't perfect. leftists tend to have this idea that nothing can save capitalism and no matter how many reforms they make, they'll be rolled back or compromised or the rich will find ways around them. This isn't completely untrue. But we have to ask, are whatever problems remain after solving the core issues really worth addressing? Sometimes it's better to allow some problems to exist because the "solutions" are so much worse than the problem itself. I'd say that is true of their goal to abolish capitalism. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to ALL forms of socialism as firmly as I am ripping the idea here. I've discussed market socialism before and find it...interesting. I just believe it's overrated and much like everything else won't solve all of the problems with the market and the workplace. But I am somewhat supportive of worker cooperatives or codetermination. The thing is, I'm not sure we can mandate such things, especially coops (codetermination has been tried and works) without destroying innovation or desire to form new businesses within an otherwise market economy. Having to share the profits when you built a business from the ground up might cause people to rethink starting a business. Why go through the risk when you don't get the reward? There are ways to potentially allow small businesses to be individually owned while having larger businesses be gradually more collectivized, but yeah, it's just not a priority for me, nor is it a solution.

My ideas work better

I don't believe there are many problems with capitalism that can't be solved within capitalism. My own ideology was formulated by people like Phillippe Van Parijs, who actively tried to bridge the capitalist-socialist divide and create a new libertarian ideology within capitalism that achieves the best of both worlds, recognizing the neoliberal era left needed to shift away from traditional leftism to something else. And karl widerquist offered his idea as a sort of third way between traditional capitalism and socialism, recognizing both are coercive and that forced participation is the problem in the first place.

I want to build on that briefly here. Capitalism actually IS more conducive to freedom. it is good if you can choose what products and services you buy and to choose among alternatives. it is good to have money somewhat tied to work incentives, and to have that kind of reward structure, it just shouldn't be as coercive as it is. It's good to be able to choose among employers, or among businesses, and more importantly, since this is what raw capitalism gets wrong, the ability to choose nothing at all. If anything, my ideas fix the oppressive flaws of capitalism, without abolishing the system's advantages. Socialists and communists want to reinvent the wheel, tearing down the entire system to build up something else in its place. And what they build up is objectively inferior IMO, if you care about human well being and freedom at all. My ideas expand on capitalism, and make it all that it can be. It makes it deliver on its promises, and compensate for its flaws. The best, most developed and advanced countries in the world have done variations of this. The places I look to as the gold standard as far as what currently exists are the Nordic countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, etc. And as we discussed, indepentarianism and human centered capitalism just expand on that "Nordic theory of love" and make people even more free by freeing them from the economic compulsion to work at all. As it turns out, to truly be free, we need to be able to resist all (within reason) coercion by social systems and be able to live our best lives without others trying to control us. And in order to do that, we need our basic needs met, unconditionally. So, governments should focus on having a form of capitalism that does that. Human centered capitalism if you will. Capitalism that doesn't start at $0 as others would say. Basically, capitalism with UBI, universal healthcare, free college, and a robust response to other forms of market failures that threaten to rob people of their freedom and well being, but without abolishing what makes the current system great in the first place. That is what I believe we should strive for.

Communism doesn't deliver

Communism doesn't deliver that. It is an inherently violent and authoritarian social and economic system that tends to rob people of their freedom, and makes them all slaves of the government. Whatever economic security it provides is offset by the crushing authoritarianism that it imposes on people otherwise. It ruthlessly suppresses all opposition because it allegedly can't sustain itself otherwise. It replaces the market with a state run economy prone to inefficiency and lack of choice. And it replaces more natural incentive structures with straight up state coercion. Communists will say "real communism hasn't been tried" but "real communism" as they state it is a pipe dream. The result we got from communist states....is precisely what we get when we try to accomplish communism. So communism is not the solution and should never be tried. We need to look elsewhere for positive solutions to capitalism's problems. And if you have read the rest of my blog, you will know what I'm about by now, and why my solutions are arguably better.

The utilitarian argument for UBI

 So...I got in a bit of a political argument over UBI. And the person I was arguing with said that I had no ethics and no right to take money from someone and redistribute it. So I ended up making a rough utilitarian argument for UBI that I figure is valid here. I rarely argue like this here, but it really is a good argument I want to make. 

Essentially, as I keep saying, I'm a human centered capitalist, or a humanist capitalist if I want to be more precise and distance the concept from Yang a bit. I don't see our social and economic systems as dictated from "god" on high, but as human creations that serve human needs. That said, in order to really have a discussion with me on a serious note, you need to eschew most concepts of objective morality. The closest thing I get to objective morality is as such. Morality is geared toward human happiness and well being, and any attempts to create a moral system should serve to further those ends. From there, we can debate endlessly over the methods of how to get there and what they might look like, and I believe we can have a thousand different people propose a thousand different systems that all technically meet that criteria. But, not all of those systems are going to be compatible with one another. Some people might prefer more freedom and less state intervention. Some will be more authoritarian. Some will preserve the status quo, some will seek radical change. Some will seek individualism, and some will be collectivist. And honestly, we can achieve any result in between those outcomes too. I acknowledge my views aren't gospel either. As passionately as I argue for them, and as rigid in my self righteousness that I am, I acknowledge that at the end of the day, to a large degree morality is a matter of preference to some degree. 

But, that still means that our social systems and the morality and justness behind them are also a matter of preference. To a large degree, we're indoctrinated to perpetuate them, regardless of whatever problems they cause, and as long as people think in such a rigid way, I don't expect things to change. The big problem with capitalism is...work. Jobs. We have this idea that everyone should go out there and work, and where they end up is a matter of their own effort. We consider the successful hard working, the not successful as lazy and undeserving, and in a lot of cases this seems to be done in an ex post facto way, as a matter of people just regurgitating indoctrination. We don't think about how social mobility might be limited, or how the worker-employer relationship is unjust, or how income inequality is exploding. We just tend to assume that those who make it deserved it and those who don't don't.

And of course, a lot of people who tend to view politics in different ways might have some idea of the problem, but may accept rival ideologies that approach the problem a different way. For example, the person I was talking to was not necessarily a conservative, but a liberal. They were one of those upper class suburbanite professional class types who didn't think it was right that I wanted to tax her at $80,000 to fund UBI (never mind that her tax bill would be neutral and we would only START paying net taxes at that point). Meanwhile, she seemed overly concerned about how hard she worked and how white males in the same job as her make much more than she does, claiming she has a coworker who makes $120k and isn't as qualified as her and it isn't fair. Now, while I do support the idea of equal pay for equal work, there is no good way to enforce this, as stuff like affirmative action and quotas are divisive and alienating, driving others to the right, and you need to PROVE gender discrimination to have a case. She thought my idea of wanting to redistribute her income to other people was unjust and I had no right to do it and how I would like it if I had her band together with other feminists against all white males. Now, the fact that a lot of feminists literally act like that aside, I told her that her employer is the problem here, not white males, and if she wanted to band together with her coworkers and form a union, she should. I have nothing against people banding together to better distribute the fruits of the economic system. As a matter of fact, i wish we would do it. There is no inherent justice to the current system, and a lot of the principles on which the current system are built don't work any way. Does anyone seriously think a billionaire works millions of times harder than a middle wage or even median worker? Of course not. I don't even think a lot of professional class people work harder than minimum wage or median wage people. I think they just have more education, connections, and opportunities to develop skillsets that make them employable in high demand fields. In a way, for all these kinds of people talk about privilege based on identity, these guys' entire lifestyle is built on a form of privilege that others don't have. 

Even if the system worked perfectly, I still would find it unjust under indepentarian ethics. After all, for me, while the issues with income inequality and failures of meritocracy do play into my support for UBI too, I still think forcing people to work and participate in this system in the first place is unjust. The value in meritocracy and the idea of markets rewarding effort is effectively rooted in the idea that we need those things to create work incentive. After all, wasn't the problem with "communism" as capitalists point out the fact that if everyone makes the same regardless of how they perform, doesn't that not give people much incentive to work hard? So, income DOES need to be tied to effort to SOME extent, but I don't tend to fetishize the idea. I mean, ultimately, I'm a structural functionalist and nothing more. I support the idea of markets, inequalities for work incentives, yada yada yada, but I also tend to recognize that a system that relies solely on this is kind of nasty and brutish. Our system does guarantee that so much poverty will exist. There are real structural problems with the jobs system in creating enough jobs for everyone, having them pay well, and be rewarding. In reality, most americans are slaves to a system that doesn't benefit them much. UBI is my solution to this. We've discussed that before.

But, I came here to discuss the utilitarian aspect of it, so here it is. Ultimately, my ideas are, to some extent, guided by Rawls' veil of ignorance. Widerquist in discussing indepentarianism cited Rawls too as an influence, discussing the veil of ignorance and how we should place ourselves in the position of the worst off person possible, and design the system around treating THAT person well. If we can treat THAT person well, then we, by extension, treat everyone better. And basic income does that. By guaranteeing all citizens and legal residents of society a minimum income of at least the poverty line, that means there is no poverty. 

From a utilitarian position, UBI decreases income inequality. Generally speaking, the top 20% pay for the bottom 80% of so. Why is this fair? This person asked this, as a member of the top 25% or so (she was an individual making $80k, which is the 74th percentile for SINGLE earners, although for families the income threshold for paying into UBI is in practice much higher). But, generally speaking, the top 20% are the ones who benefit most from the system as is. While statistics vary, I've seen stats suggesting only the top 20% have gained net income since the 1970s, while others break it down showing the most extreme gains are among the top 5, 1, or even 0.1 percent. Still, I think the 80-20 divide is fairly helpful here, and I do think it's fair that the richest 20% pay for the bottom 80%, here's why.

Money is a matter of utility to a person. It is directly correlated with happiness and well being, and arguably does so in a way of diminishing marginal utility. Going from $0 to $10000 leads to greater improvements in well being and happiness than going from $90k to $100k. And the difference isn't gonna matter at all for Jeff Bezos. His net worth probably fluctuates by more than that every few seconds when the stock market is active and people are actively trading. The fact is, the richer you get, the less additional money matters. You already can live comfortably, and be fulfilled as a person. But, for someone who is lower class, stuck in a dead end job in the working or middle class, a few thousand extra dollars can change one's life. And for the poorest of the poor, it can literally be life changing. 

If we are to create the ideal safety net, is it not fair that those who have the most are expected to contribute most as they are able, while those who don't have much are asked to contribute little? If we want to have a better society that resolves income inequality, poverty, and other problems that are directly associated to this messed up existence we call the job market in the post industrial 21st century, I am perfectly fine with expecting the top 20-25% to pay for the bottom 70-75%. At the end of the day, the people at the top will still be the most comfortable. If you make $80,000 a year, you will pay $14400...and get $14400 back. If you make $200k, you'll pay $36k, and get $14,400 back. You might be about $22k poorer, but you know what? THat's only 10% of your income. And you make more than 10x those at the bottom.

Sure, those who goof off and play video games have an income, but it's only $14,400. Even at the current minimum wage, working a job for $15,000 is going to net you double income before taxes. After, well, you'll pay 18% more, amounting to around $2,700, but you'll still be over $12k richer than you would be if you stayed home. That's almost doubling your income. Even including stuff like social security taxes, a very basic income tax (with the standard deduction still in place), okay, so you lose like another $1-2k. Still, work is rewarded. And that's if you make the MINIMUM. If you make a good wage, like $40k or something, you would pay an additional $7200 and get $7200 back in net. 

 I mean, work is still rewarded, and while I support the right and freedom to say no to work altogether, the amount is not high enough where most would be satisfied to not work. UBI is designed to take care of basics, but still leave room for actual effort to acquire higher standards of living. While we can talk about higher levels of UBI as the NEED for work goes down over time, currently we still live in a society dependent on labor, and will be for the time being. UBI is a good compromise between moving away from work, while acknowledging the need for human effort to get crap done. 

So, I really don't see the problem. maybe die hard jobists who believe everyone should be FORCED to work and it's okay to deprive people of their needs if they choose not to will be against this, but I'm going to be honest, I don't take their opinions seriously, as that is such a nasty and brutish way of looking at things. Again, work exists as a means to an end, not an end to itself. It exists to serve our needs, we don't exist to serve it. I feel like we forget this. 

Honestly, UBI would decrease income inequality, alleviate poverty, increase overall happiness, and well being, and it would make society better. By my one "objective" standard of morality, it passes, with flying colors. And I'm going to be honest, I view the movement against it to be, quite frankly, regressive, and ideologically driven. I have nothing against those with the most being expected to contribute to those with the least. Regardless of how much they deserve it by meritocratic standards. Because again, those standards only exist to motivate people to work in the first place. People need to stop seeing work as the end, but the means to the end. All of these social systems exist to serve that end. Everything else is just a pretext, or justification, or necessary function to make it all work. And it's only valued insofar that it contributes to that end. Work in itself is meaningless. Meritocracy in itself is meaningless. What isn't meaningless is the alleviation of human suffering, the improvement of human living standards, and the increase in human happiness and well being. All ethics should follow that core idea, regardless of what they are.

I'm sorry, but economic nationalism is NOT a bad thing

 So....the concept of "nationalism" has been controversial in recent years. This is largely in part because Donald Trump effectively realigned the republican party to be an economically protectionist party, while Hillary Clinton realigned the democrats into a neoliberal party. And now, being any sort of "nationalist" is akin with being seen as a "nazi" or something, while the "left" is super duper pro open borders and pro immigrant and free trade and blah blah blah.

But, as someone whose views were mostly formed before the 2016 election cycle, it wasn't always this way. If anything, this was a relatively recent invention in modern politics, and before 2016 I think there were protectionist and globalist strains of politics on both sides of the aisle. And sadly, I feel like 2016 ultimately ended up being a clash between neoliberalism and a more protectionist ideology, and it just happened to take the form of the neoliberal-Trumper divide. As the democrats like to throw around, elections have consequences, but you know what? So do primaries. And that's why I was (and still am to an extent) as anti democratic party as I was/am. Hillary and her ideology didn't represent my politics at all, and while I couldn't in good conscience vote for Trump, I really found myself alienated from both parties. So that said, I feel like the left needs to somewhat reclaim economic nationalism for itself, and I will try my best to explain why it should be a prominent idea on the left.

In my own ideology, the nation state is the effective unit of governance. Let's go back to humanism and its atheistic roots here. Imagine there is no god. No divine figure telling people what to do and how to live. Well, in that environment, there is no law. All laws and rules are made by humans. We have this idea of the "social contract" in modern enlightenment theory, and while I do believe this idea can be flawed too, I still see it as the best justification of the nation state that I've seen. Despite being indepentarian/social libertarian, I am ultimately still somewhat of a Hobbesian, and believe anarchy is generally bad. And I do believe that the nation state is good, it just actually has to abide by the principles of the social contract, the idea that they gain the consent of the governed. I do not believe this can truly be achieved as dissenters are bound to exist, which is why I have my social libertarian/indepentarian roots suggesting a basic income to compensate these people, and to ensure people are as free to live their lives as they want, but I do believe that generally speaking, the state is legitimate, democracy is legitimate (assuming minority protections against the "tyranny by majority"), and that government is generally a good thing to some extent. This doesn't mean I don't have libertarian ideas otherwise, I believe that government is compatible with libertarianism to some degree, and in my own version, even conducive to it. You need a nice stable environment in which to thrive after all. 

So, nation states are generally a good thing. And they are effectively the main unit of governance in my ideology. And while, again, I do believe that states should generally leave people alone to live their lives unless significant negative externalities result from that (and they sadly often do), I do believe that they should have the power to govern affairs in which their absence leads to markedly worse outcomes for people. In economics, I especially believe in government interventionism, as laissez faire economics leads to wild inequalities, exploitation, and a whole host of negative outcomes from pollution to worker deaths to poverty, to wage slavery. 

As I stated in an extremely early article on this blog from 2016, there are four primary ways to solve economic problems: regulation, unions, safety nets, and socialism. Unions are a non state means of solving the problems, but let's face it, they face an extremely uphill battle and as I'll discuss later, their gains can very easily be erased. Regulations can reduce the suffering involved in relationships but often don't solve the root causes. Safety nets can correct markets, but require the ability to raise money and and tax people. And socialism can have some potential depending on the exact implementation, but the mechanics of implementing it properly, as well as its past failures, make me leery of it.

Generally speaking, modern social democracies are a mishmash of these things. You have strong union power (and regulations protecting those unions), you got regulations protecting workers and the like, and you got large safety nets. My own ideology of social libertarianism takes things a step further. Given I have a social libertarian outlook, I do believe in basic income, freedom as the power to say no, and ability to bargain on one's own terms. Regulations are nice, but kind of serve as band aids on the problem. And unions are too collectivist, unreliable, and job oriented. In a lot of ways, my problem isn't with the ownership of the means of production, or simply the conditions of work, but work itself, and I take things in a different direction, generally being more in favor of supporting safety nets in order to solve capitalism's economic woes. 

This kind of puts me in a position where I feel like I have to be more economically nationalist than other lefties. After all, the nation state is needed to implement things like UBI, or regulations, or protect unions. Heck to go deeper than that, much of what the right relies on requires states too. Property rights, a safe environment in which to practice capitalism. Let's not forget the excesses of laissez faire capitalism are legitimized via the state, they wouldn't happen without it because without it we'd all be killing each other with rocks and dying in our 30s. That monopoly on violence is a necessary evil to "keep the peace" so to speak. 

But here's the thing. In order to regulate the economy where we can do things like UBI, we need to tax people. Neoliberals and right libs wanna make it where anyone who is taxed too much can flee the country and take the wealth with them. And they want to bring in immigrants in order to work and grow the economy, which causes tension with my idea of large universal safety nets. Perhaps a more work oriented ideology like third way neoliberalism where safety nets are considered more of an afterthought to the market and the focus is on people getting jobs and full employment, you could argue that such ideas make sense. But with my own ideology, no I am more nationalist. As I see it, if the government doesn't have the power to regulate the market, what ends up happening is the market limits what governments can do. Which we often see. "Oh we need to lower the corporate tax rate!" "Why?" "Because all the corporations are leaving because it's too high." So you mean corporations are voting with their feet and going to countries with lower taxes. Hmm, it's almost as if states are in a race to the bottom within a global market over tax rates. Then apply that to regulations. Often times businesses will leave countries to undermine union power or regulations to make products more cheaply overseas. So you got countries using cheap foreign labor to undermine American workers. Which is one of the reasons I feel like the right went protectionist in 2016. The democrats were pushing the trans pacific partnership, which was like NAFTA on steroids, and in response to people noting that their well paying factory jobs were disappearing, democrats'  mentality was "JuSt MoVe". Basically move to cities and pay $2000+ on rent trying to find a job in a highly dense and competitive urban environment, yay. 

Ya know, I recognize capitalism provides positive benefits in culling bad products and the like from the market, as the "invisible hand" is just institutionalized darwinism at work, but when that process is applied to PEOPLE, well, that's just cruel. Hence human centered capitalism. I want the economy to work for people, not the other way around. And I believe that means we need regulations to make stuff work. We need safety nets, like a UBI. We need union power. We might even be able to utilize market socialism. But we need a state. We need to respect state sovereignty to properly regulate economic affairs within their own borders, we need to control immigration to ensure that people can't just leave the country and take their wealth with them, and also to ensure that we don't get flooded by poor desperate people distorting the market by flooding in (or alternatively collecting generous, universal safety nets). We need to fight against "globalism." 

As Bernie Sanders said in 2016, "open borders is a Koch brothers proposal". Notice how Sanders frames it has a right wing proposal. Because, economically, all of this globalist open borders free trade crap IS the right wing view. The right wing view on economics is laissez faire. The less regulation the better. And what the right wants to do is to supercede the power of the state, by subverting it to the market. I'm on the left. Maybe not the socialist left, but pretty far left for someone who is still a "liberal" or "capitalist". Again, the fact that the right has become protectionist and the left is for open borders is a product of the times. The fact that the divide between the two parties is a far right nationalist movement (and their nationalism is more than just a product of economic policy, they are nationalist in all of the bad ways too), and a neoliberal, culturally left but economically centrist party. Meanwhile I consider myself more culturally centrist but economically left person, with politics more aligned with Bernie Sanders or Andrew Yang, than anything that represents the mainstream of either party. 

I honestly believe that at the root of 2016 was a divide between nationalism and globalism. And this battle happened both on the left and the right. it just so happens the victors of each side's internal battles represent the mainstream politics of the parties. That's why I believed that back in 2016, Bernie could have won. Because I believe there was a faction of independents who would've went for Bernie, but not for Trump. I also believe this is why Fetterman beat Oz this year, and why democrats actually exceeded Biden's margins in that race. If you click on that link, in particular look at the map that show the arrows. Look at how most counties actually went harder blue, while only a handful went red. Centrist dems view PA for example as Philly and Pittsburgh, with a lot of red in between. While those internal PA counties do go red, they went red HARD in 2016, compared to 2008 or 2012. This was because the democrats alienated white working class voters in those regions. This is also why Biden managed to eek out a win that Hillary didn't, and why Fetterman expanded on that win. People in internal PA, and the cites there do lean more conservative than philly and pittsburgh, but many are concerned about jobs. They're concerned about immigration, as many cities have had an exploding immigrant population in the past several decades. They're concerned about jobs going overseas, automation, etc, and if the left cannot provide an answer to those voters, the right will. Instead the democrats tries to win over suburban voters, for example, in Chester county, which is fully of rich Philly suburb people, and one of the only counties to become more red in 2022. And the other counties were allegedly full of people from NJ and NY, presumably living in their second vacation homes (much like Dr. Oz). I feel like the fact that Fetterman beat Biden's numbers during what should've been a red year is a repudiation of what the democrats have been trying to do with all of this woke neoliberal stuff. Bernie would have likely won in 2016. And I do believe he would've run up the margins in the rust belt in 2020 vs Biden too, although he likely could not have carried georgia or arizona. Still, I didn't consider those to even be in play for democrats in a serious way until recently, and they're the only places the democrats' "sun belt" strategy seems to be working at all. In Arizona's case I see it more a repudiation of Trump, as prior to the Trump years, it was known as a bastion of moderate republicans like John McCain. Georgia seems to be legitimately shifting to being "in play." Still, given democrats have been losing ground in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, and even Minnesota to some extent, all states Obama was able to compete in and win, I feel like this strategy has generally been more good for the republicans and bad for the democrats.

The fact is, the neoliberals and right libertarian types can go on all they want about the benefits of immigration and open borders and free trade, and try to guilt trip people with memes like "why do you hate the global poor", but ultimately, most people care about themselves first. And unless you can get the economic boot off of peoples' throats, as Andrew Yang would say, they will go into defensive mode, trying to protect their own lives, even at the expense of others. And unless the left has an answer for these people, then some groups will continue to shift right. And the left right now is in a very precarious place. Specifically because it HAS made these choices toward woke neoliberalism, and specifically because the right has countered with a more culturally and economically nativist narrative. If the democrats cant cede ground and triangulate to the center even a little, then I fear that whatever wins the democrats have had in recent years will eventually be undone. As some lefties are pointing out, constantly being in a position of being one election away from a fascist takeover and winning only by the skin of your teeth every time is NOT a good position to be in. But it's the position the democrats have dug themselves into. If they want to ultimately take the narrative back and put the right on defense, they need to embrace some form of economic nationalism for themselves. And I believe my ideology provides a blueprint to do it. The Bernie/Fetterman brand of left provides another vision. What we don't need though is woke neoliberalism. That crap is toxic and costs the left elections. 

Now, before I conclude, I do want to end this by correcting some misconceptions people might have of me, since they can point to some very factually correct criticisms of what I posted. For example, they can push the idea that immigration is a boon to the national economy, and that free trade makes us richer. Sure. And I'm not totally against those things. Even though I believe in the concept of borders and controlled immigration, being for controlled legal immigration isn't the same thing as open borders. What I don't want are just millions of people coming in without our approval, and I definitely don't want them collecting universal benefits intended for citizens and legal residents. Still, I would support a relatively moderate position on immigration, consistent with say, the Biden or Obama administrations generally. On free trade...only with countries with similar economic standards as ours. Both standards of living, and also things like laws, regulations, taxation, union membership, etc. Again, Im not against trade, I'm just for regulated trade and not the unfettered free market capitalism crap of the right, which undermines national sovereignty and locks us all into a neoliberal/right wing libertarian dystopia. I'm not trying to take a right wing nativist position a la the Trump administration here. I don't agree with the Trump administration's approach on these issues. I am advocating for a moderate triangulated position largely coming from a place of left wing values as an answer to that. I believe the best way to derail the right is to approach the core concerns that drive people that way, and then to provide our own answer with our own values instead. So, I just wanted to make that clear.

But yeah, this is my position. I don't think economic nationalism is necessarily a bad thing. I am an economic nationalist of sorts. I believe in the nation state as the primary unit of governance on this planet. I believe that it can provide positive benefits assuming it is structured properly. I believe that it has a right and a mandate to properly regulate economic affairs, as economic anarchy generally leads to bad results for most of the populace, and I believe that globalism is an inherent threat to left wing goals and causes as it can undermine national sovereignty to properly regulate economic issues, subverting the concept of nation states themselves to the market. And I believe that it is in the best interests of the left to adopt some form of economic nationalism in their political brand/ideology as opposed to neoliberalism, as I believe that the strength of trump's movement and his populism comes from poor positioning on the left regarding these issues and the right outflanking the left in winning over certain segments of voters. I believe that economic nationalism is not just compatible with the left, but necessary for it to function properly, and that globalism is just more right wing laissez faire economics which has been a disaster for the average person no matter when and where it has been tried. This is not to say that there is not a role for some forms of immigration, trade, and multilateralism on the international stage, but it should be approached with caution, and it should happen in a regulated environment that is consistent with our values, not in an unfettered state.

Answering "to pro guns centrists and liberals, what amount is enough?"

 So, a liberal forum I sometimes view and post comment from had this specific question, and I decided to answer it, as I haven't really elaborated much on my stance on gun rights. But first, to present the question in full:

There seems to be a high amount of pro gun independents centrists and liberals on here.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/mass-shootings-2022.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

600 mass shootings this year alone and we are not in December. Some who die are kids of the future of not only America, but the world. Some target minorities such as the recent one in Colorado at the LGBT club. The Asian parlor, the Buffalo black owned supermarket. Is this your idea of a healthy country? Of freedom? At what point is enough enough?

 First of all, and this is one of the reasons I no longer post on the location this specific question came from, this person can shove their self righteousness you know where. This is a guilt trip. They're presenting a body count, and then shoving it in our faces and asking WHEN IS IT ENOUGH?!

Well, in order to present my specific moral framework on gun rights, we need to contextualize these statistics. First of all, let's focus on assault weapons, the big and scary weapons that most liberals seem to be focused on banning. Depending on definition, 38-513 people have died to mass shooters in 2020, out of 45,222 gun deaths. This is only 1% or so of all gun deaths in the US. To put things another way, from the same source, only 3% of firearm related murders are from assault weapons, with the overwhelming majority of stated deaths being from pistols. 

In other words, for all the notoriety mass shootings get, they are really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of gun deaths. Ya know how everyone screams about Chernobyl as a rallying cry against nuclear power despite it being the safest form of energy out there by the numbers? Yeah. That's what I feel like all of the focus on mass shootings are. They are high profile incidents that make national news and given there are enough incidents where there happens to be one every few days, the country feels like it's under the constant assault of mass shootings, but in reality, these are just a minor aspect of gun violence. 

Yet, liberals want to go nuts banning the things. They push for "assault rifle bans" although right wingers will quickly point out that the definition of what qualifies as an assault rifle is subjective and often there are rifles of similar capabilities not considered assault weapons. Then they want to limit the mag sizes to 10, despite most PISTOLS having 15 rounds these days. I can understand wanting to get rid of crap like drum mags and bump stocks, but honestly, I'm largely fine with anything up to a standard 30 round STANAG mag for assault rifles. People make emotional arguments about "but if they had 10 round mags that would save the 11th person shot"....ok, but what about 9 to save the 10th? What about 8 to save the 9th? What if we just forced people to load every round individually like an old musket or early bolt action rifle? I mean, when does it end? Don't get me wrong I get what they're saying, but it's like...really?  Idk, I just think given 15 is your standard 9mm pistol mag anything less than that is silly. Maybe I could compromise at like 20 rounds (since some pistols can carry that much with a standard mag), but that's about it.

Now, let's talk about gun violence. It IS a major problem. My city is a cesspit of gun violence and I know several people who have been shot and killed including someone from my high school, and someone from my old church when I was a christian. I live in the kind of neighborhood where you have to wonder, "gee, is it gun fire or fireworks?", when you hear loud pops. I've had my parents call the cops reporting gunshots only for the cops to find a neighbor across the street dead the next morning. Hell, my parents even had their car shot up earlier this year when two people decided to have a shoot out in front of the house. I live in kind of neighborhood where you've had those kinds of shoot outs only for kids to be shot by stray bullets flying through the living room window. National news doesn't cover these kinds of stories, only local ones do, but forgive me if I'm a little NUMB to the gun crisis we have.

Again, most gun violence is caused by handguns. And most guns are acquired ILLEGALLY. I know this is true in my area too as most gun violence is linked to gangs and drugs. And if they can acquire drugs illegally, often from overseas, what does that say about guns? If they can get drugs past the border patrol or coast guard, what does that say of guns? The fact is, you could go full on anti second amendment, ban it, torch it, and I'm not fully convinced we could ban gun violence. We're not Europe where that stuff is more tightly controlled. The US has a 2000 mile border with mexico and thousands of miles of coastline. Again if the drugs can get here, so can the guns. I'm fully of the opinion prohibition won't work.

It might take a chunk out of the crime stats, mind you, but it won't eliminate them or come even close to doing so. Also, I fear that it might cause other problems. For example, due to the insane violence in my area, some family members of mine did get guns...legally of course. For protection. Because the risk of being robbed or getting caught in the crossfire of some shootout is real. And you want a gun to protect yourself, from all of the people who have all of these illegal weapons and using them on each other. Taking away gun ownership would only harm many law abiders while not harming those intent to commit criminal acts anyway. 

And honestly? I kind of do believe in that whole "we need guns to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government" bit. I mean, admittedly, the most gun happy people are currently the people who are also the most sympathetic with authoritarianism push comes to shove, but regardless, I do support guns in case the legal system descends into tyranny. Likewise, I support guns to deter the government from doing that crap anyway. And while yes yes, i know the US military has tons of stuff all of the larpers with their AR15s and doomsday bunkers can't stand a chance against, I do believe in the right to bear arms and do believe that given the nature of asymmetrical warfare, yeah, we should give civilians a fighting chance.

This isn't to say I'm against all gun control. I do think there are a lot of loopholes in the law that can be plugged. Gun show loophole. Stricter mental health screening. Restricting guns from domestic abusers. And while I do believe that these ideas, done correctly, may not be enough as there should ideally be some due process to restricting firearms here, yeah, there are laws we could implement to fix gun violence somewhat. I do think that smart implementation of laws could reduce the amount of legally acquired weapons used to commit crimes, by filtering out some people who quite frankly should never have a gun themselves. 

However, that doesn't mean that I ain't regardless, a second amendment liberal, or a social libertarian who is pro second amendment. I do believe anyone who is legally qualified to have a firearm should be able to get one, and I don't support strictly limiting gun ownership relative to the status quo. This does not mean I support the NRA or am an "ammosexual" or whatever (my favorite term for right wingers obsessed with guns, you probably know what I'm talking about), but yeah, I am a second amendment lib, I do believe that the mass shooting crisis is overblown in terms of overall gun deaths, and while I do sympathize somewhat with the gun violence problem, I really am at a loss for how to fully SOLVE the problem without greatly restricting freedom here. While technically, given the harm principle, I could just say "guns should be illegal because they can harm others", my American nature and experiences in this world have made me a moderate in favor of gun ownership. I'm not saying there shouldn't be restrictions, but law abiding, mentally stable individuals should be able to purchase guns for protection, whether from the government, or the nutcases and criminals who acquire guns through less than legal means and are causing a significant portion of the gun violence going around. Again, if you just ban all guns, you're still gonna have a ton of gun violence, and now the people who are obeying the law won't be able to protect themselves from the criminals.

Can we please stop hosting sporting events in regressive countries?

 So...I don't care much about sports, but this World cup in Qatar seems to be a disaster. I mean, between the de facto slaves dying to construct it, to the slapshod construction itself, to the fact that they're imposing regressive islamic policies on the spectators and athletes who attend, I really have to wonder...why even have it there? I don't get why these event planners decide to have these events in the crappiest locations possible. Reminds me of the Olympics, which has been bad over the years. Remember the Russian Olympics in Sochi? What about the olympics in Brazil basically having swimmers compete in raw sewage? Or what about the mess that were the olympics in Beijing earlier this year? I swear, every time these events are held in regressive countries, it turns into a crapshow. Literally in Brazil's case, more figuratively in the others.

In the world cup's case, and I expect this is the case for the olympics as well, the decision is justified under the veneer of wokeism.  FIFA president Gianni Infantino basically started going on about the sins of the European countries over time and how we need to keep apologizing and feeling sorry for the actions of colonialism, as if this implies that first world nations don't have a right to criticize the living conditions and governmental policies of other, more regressive countries. 

GIVE ME A BREAK!

I mean, this is another reason why I hate wokeism. I know, as a "humanist", I tend to not believe in objective morality, let me explain that. Yes. I reject divine command theory. I believe that there is no moral code imposed on humans and that we are all free to act as we want. Still, that doesnt mean all morality is necessarily equal. Morality should, at its core, seek to improve human well being, whatever that may be. It needs to have a progressive lens toward improving things over the state of nature. Because if morality isn't superior to the state of nature, maybe that morality sucks and is unjust. To justify a particular legal code or standard of morality, it has to improve one's lives more than some other standard, or lack thereof. 

And I'm sorry, but a lot of these third world nations DON'T have their crap together on that front. Russia and China are authoritarian states. Qatar is too, basically being a muslim theocracy with de facto slavery. Brazil isn't as bad in this sense, but still, raw sewage and questionable living conditions? Come on, man. The fact is, if a country can't provide a certain standard of living, both in terms of actual material conditions, but also in terms of rights, then they shouldn't host international sporting events, period. And I know this is gonna piss off the wokies, but yes, I believe that in general, "the west" are the most advanced nations on the planet. Both morally and materially. We can discuss the exact differences between countries, and I'm not above criticizing my home country of the United States, either. We are very regressive in many ways, even if we are arguably around the 90th percentile of countries overall (20th out of 200 doesn't sound too out of place). 

As far as colonialism goes, while I know that the state of many countries is directly the result of past european actions, uh, it's been around 75 years since the end of WWII when the west divested itself from most of their overseas colonies, get over it. Just about anyone living has lived under a post colonial world at this point. If you were born in 1945 when WWII ended, you are now 77. These people had an entire lifetime to get their crap together, and if they didn't, yeah, that is their problem to some extent. Not saying it totally is, as systems can be hard to change, but deflecting from the issue by going on about "but the Europeans" just rings hollow for me right now. Those generations did NOT fix their living situations, and perpetuated past problems. Yeah, I will blame them for being regressive.

Here's some ideas, maybe we shouldn't host sporting events in third world countries, authoritarian states, or Islamic theocracies. Ya know? I'd never want to travel to these countries to attend. Why would I wanna go somewhere I would get arrested? Why would I want to spend top dollar to stay in some hastily constructed village? I mean, have you seen the kinds of accommodations Qatar is offering here? We're talking literal tent cities. Is this supposed to be a posh accommodation or the Arizona prison system? WTF people?

Yeah, let's host most stuff in North America, Europe, and maybe a few other places that meet standards. I refuse to give third world countries a chance simply because ermahgerd they're poor and it's our fault and blah blah blah. They don't have their crap together, and this seems to be an issue that perpetuates itself again and again, in multiple different events.

The prisoner's dilemma and foreign policy

 So, I figured it might be a good idea to further explain my views on foreign policy, and how I tend to differentiate between valid interventions in the world, and bad ones. For example, I support helping Ukraine to weaken Russia, but I don't support invading Iraq or Afghanistan. Basically, my approach to foreign policy is akin to the prisoner's dilemma. For those who don't know how it works, you have two options: to cooperate or betray the other person. Mutual cooperation tends to lead to long term benefits and prosperity for both parties. However, it might be better in the short term if one party betrays the other. If this happens, then you might get short term gains at the expense of the other person, if they cooperate, but if both betray simultaneously, both lose.

In a foreign policy sense, this is basically the same thing as intervention. We generally want peace and stability. Were over here, you're over there, you stay over there, we stay over here. Invading other countries are like the betrayal option, in which we can get short term gains at the expense of another, which is, quite frankly, unethical. And of course, if both parties betray each other, we both lose because wars suck. And this is how I support how we do foreign policy.

Invading a small country is like a betrayal with few to no drawbacks. They're powerless, they can't fight back, and we can gain lots of natural resources. But it is, as the left would say, imperialism, and that's bad.

But, at the same time, Russia "betrayed" Ukraine, and given this can upset the balance of power in Europe, we have decided to counteract that to punish that behavior. The goal is to stop Russia from harboring their own imperialist ambitions, and to stay within their own borders, and operate in the current system. So, foreign interventions that are unjustified should generally be punished to prevent that behavior in the future. Even if the negative effects go both ways, it is generally worth it to prevent further interventions the first time it happens, lest Russia be emboldened. 

While we should both avoid "betraying" each other as this leads to world war 3, and we ALL lose in that scenario, we do have to push back at some points. But the left doesn't have any stomach for brinksmanship. Russia is testing how much they can get away with, and they want to give them some concessions so they can "save face" and back down. But if they do this, it rewards the initial behavior, and that behavior should effectively be punished, not rewarded. So I am for punishing the betrayal option. 

That's generally the best way to solve the dilemma. Cooperate when possible, but if someone else insists on "betraying", you gotta betray, yourself, in order to punish the other party for betraying in the first place. However, it's best to do this in a simple "tit for tat" way, and then let bygones be bygones. Punish the behavior, make them stop, and then cooperate again. Constant betrayals just perpetuates the cycle, and we honestly want cooperation. Cooperation simply meaning we tolerate each other and don't do anything aggressive ourselves. 

This is why I can say that many of our interventions like Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically Iraq as Afghanistan was arguably a response to 9/11, were unjustified, but defending Ukraine is justified. One is an aggressive action on the part of our country, and the other is defensive in nature. Of course, Russia has attempted to manufacture consent to claim their actions are defensive, but everyone knows they're full of crap. 

And that's generally speaking how I see foreign policy. I don't want to have to play the imperialism game and all, but foreign policy is a tricky, amoral mess given states are the highest actual arbiters of enforced morality and international organizations like the UN have symbolic power at best and have no actual teeth to enforce anything. The best we can do is to simply defend our interests, but largely play defensively. If someone tried to start trouble, we need to respond to make it not worth it to the country in question to try such a thing in the first place, but otherwise, we need to largely act passively. Be the actual benevolent "empire" that simply stabilizes the world, keeps trade open, and discourages aggression, rather than be actively involved in conflicts ourselves. We shouldn't be involved in the Iraqs and Afghanistans and Syrias of the world. But we should punish Russia for getting involved in the Ukraines of the world, or China for getting involved in the Taiwans of the world. Ya know? Defense, not offense.

Trump back on twitter and the truth about the "ItS a PrIvAtE cOmPaNy" argument

 So, Overlord Musk decided to have a democratic poll of whether to bring Trump back to twitter, and the idea won with a narrow margin, so The Donald is effectively unbanned on twitter. And of course, the leftist sphere is freaking out over this, acting like twitter should be shut down and crap.

Before I get into ripping on my fellow lefties, I do want to give my own personal thoughts on bringing Trump back. I'm going to be honest, I've been uneasy about banning him, given I am the free speech absolutist I am. Still, I have come around to the idea, given he did effectively incite an insurrection, and I'm basically going to give a standard "limits of free speech 101" argument that applies in our constitution. Basically, you're free to say what you want with few restrictions, but sometimes there comes times where saying certain things can present a "clear and present" danger to the public. Ya know, like shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater and causing a panic. I would argue Trump's behavior actually did arguably cross that kind of line, given his actions produced an insurrection at the capitol and it's been established that he intended as such. So it did make sense that twitter banned him. I would argue his behavior did meet the "clear and present danger" standard. And that said, bringing him back? Eh, given we're 2 years past that, I can see doing so, but I'm not really enthusiastic about it.

That said, now I kind of want to focus more on the leftie reaction. The left is now starting to say things about how it's good twitter is dying and how in the care of Overlord Musk, that it's a threat to society, and whether we can do anything to remove twitter from the internet. And suddenly, the right is starting to be like "but what about the 'ItS a PrIvAtE coMpAnY iT cAn Do WhAt It WaNtS"...uh...the left never cared. Like, this is why i am so against the left on its censorship sprees in recent years, and why I view wokeism as as much of a threat to society that I do. Because here's the thing. They never cared about private companies doing what they wanted. They just cynically used that argument to justify censoring people. These guys don't care about principles or rights or rule of law. They literally just wanted to be able to censor viewpoints they didn't agree with, and think the end justifies the means. They are illiberal and have dictatorial tendencies. And this is why, as a more principled left libertarian leftie, I generally opposed this. Because I have an extensive political science education, and even took a class all about the first amendment once. And I understand it from a philosophical and legal perspective, and largely agree with its perspective on speech. If you dont allow people to say whatever they want, youre basically putting limits on free speech, and can we really trust people to police what others can say? I would argue no. It just leads to one group telling others what is and isn't acceptable. It should only be in the most grave circumstances that this freedom is infringed upon. Like posing a "clear and present danger" to society by inciting a mob to act violently and attack the capitol.

And sure, the constitution only applies to state actions, but as I stated yesterday in talking about domestic abuse and the freedom to say no, and private companies technically do have the ability to police content as they want. I largely believe they SHOULDN'T. Because I believe private entities have just as much of an ability to restrict peoples' freedom as the state, just by leveraging unequal relationships in their favor. Employers can control employees' actions outside of work via speech, and you can be fired for what people say online. And wokies like to leverage this to get people fired for breaking their idea of what decorum should be. Interpersonal relationships can also be leveraged to police behavior. And the big argument I always had with the "libertarian right" is that they generally overblow the threat of tyranny from states, while turning a blind eye to private tyranny. A lot of "small government" conservatives are quite authoritarian when it comes to private relationships. We saw this with Charle Murray and his ideal society with a UBI. And while I see UBI as counteracting that in situations where money is the big factor of leveraging control, a company like twitter leveraging their position as owning a social media platform can silence people at will. And we should be concerned about this. 

The left actually used to care about this. Remember how Obama pushed for net neutrality because he saw the clear problems with the corporations that control the internet prioritizing content and how this represented a real danger to free speech? My own views on social media companies are a lot closer to that. Im not sure how much we can actually regulate this without destroying article 230 and the foundation of the open internet, but im not gonna actively cheer on censorship. 

But the "woke left" that leverages right wing arguments does so cynically and hypocritically. They were just using the right's logic against them, and in a sense selling out to the right in the process. Something I always disagreed with. And they really just cared about the end result of censoring groups they didn't like, something I disagreed with. And now that a right winger owns twitter, theyre abandoning the argument and trying to find a justification to punish twitter for daring to give someone "free speech". Now, i aint really gonna defend musk here. I think he's a raging jerk if that makes any sense at all. He's been flat out abusive to his staff and its clear hes running the platform into the ground. And as I said above, I have potential issues with bringing Donald back. I aint FULLY against it, but given he DOES represent that "clear and present danger" to the country, perhaps he should stay gone. But at least I'm honest about my reasonings here and I base them in sound principles that also govern the first amendment. But let's face it, lefties never cared. They value conformity to their ideas over freedoms, or principles, or what have you. They think of the result they want, and reason their way

The anti-abuse argument for basic income

 So, without getting too personal, I have a few friends in a tight spot right now. Their living situation got turned upside down really fast, and they are potentially looking at the prospect of homelessness. To put it succinctly, it turned out that the relationship one of them was in ended up being a lot more toxic and abusive than I thought it was, and now they're more or less a step away from being out on the street. 

And as this situation hits the fan, I can't help but feel that a universal basic income would be a positive thing that would prevent this sort of behavior. After all, many people in abusive relationships end up staying to avoid homelessness. In our system, you need relationships with others to get one's needs met. For many, this means explicitly being tied to the work force, where one exchanges labor for currency in the form of a job. For many others, this can mean dependence on others who control finances. The reason jobs get the good rap they get about how they provide independence and freedom is that the alternative to them either means dependence on government, which the right views as a gateway to tyranny, or dependence on others, which can mean to them being tyrannical. basically, anyone who you depend on for your paycheck has the potential to be tyrannical.

Now, I don't really buy the government argument here. You need a government just to have a stable society in which trade and capitalism are even possible. The government providing checks to people is inherently no more tyrannical than having a government in the first place. What matters are the latitude that government has over peoples' lives in giving people money. And that's where my approach to welfare via UBI is different than most forms of welfare. Welfare is generally regarded as a kindness. The government gives you money temporarily, and imposes restrictions on you paternalistically to try to force you to get a job. There are job requirements, time limits, asset/income limits, drug testing, and aid normally takes the form of something other than cash. But by giving people a UBI of say, $1200-1300 a month, which is about the right amount right now, and you treat it as a RIGHT OF CITIZENSHIP rather than a kindness or form of temporary charity, then that's how you do do welfare right. Because that form of welfare isn't designed around domination of others, but non domination. The government is not allowed to, in any way, use the money to control your behavior. Unconditionality is KEY. You NEED unconditionality for it to actually work and be liberating. Any potential restricting characteristic rather than say, citizenship or age (ie, limited checks for those under 18) has the potential to be used against people. This is why I insist on having the simplest UBI with the fewest restrictions possible, and am so particular for how to properly implement it. I want to stop the government from potentially restricting who gets the money in order to control behavior. But assuming we do that, then the threat of controlling someone's behavior becomes significantly less of a problem.

And this extends to other spheres of influence too. Keep in mind, my brand of social libertarianism is based on ideologies like Karl Widerquist's "indepentarianism". I support the right to say no, not just to any job, but all jobs. Because if you're stuck in a job, that's like an abusive relationship you can't leave. And even if you do, the institution is so unsound that the problems will replicate themselves at any other job, forcing people to work to survive. The only way to avoid this is by giving people the ability to say no altogether.

And this also applies to relationships. If someone doesn't control the finances for the entire household, and people have literal F U money that allows them to survive without dependence on another, then a lot of abusive relationships would end a lot sooner. Amouranth, you know, the famous streamer on twitch, had this problem with her husband. She was forced to stream and he controlled the finances and threatened to burn everything down if she defied him. If she had a UBI accessible only to her, and not her husband, then she could kick this person to the curb and leave. As it turns out, many people only stay in some marriages and relationships because of money and the threat of homelessness, and basic income was actually criticized back in the 1970s when it was tested because it led to an increase in divorce rates. Because people could actually leave those relationships. 

And that brings me back to my friends. They were financially dependent on the person who was abusive. And now that things have come to a head, they're threatening to throw them out entirely. And I just keep thinking, gee, if only we had a basic income, these guys could pave their own way better, rather than be forced to work in a market that doesn't work for them (they have tried to get jobs only to fail over the past year or so), or be dependent on someone who is abusive.

Like really, this sucks. I mean, this goes back to the Nordic theory of love. Families are made up of strong individuals who are independent and can love each other freely and voluntarily. Being dependent on others for relationships can often be bad. And while I wish the nordics would take this idea a step further into full on indepentarianism and social libertarianism, they are onto something there. If you want healthy relationships, it starts with everyone being financially independent and not indebted or forced to rely on others financially. And this can only properly be accomplished in my opinion with UBI.

UBI isn't just the freedom to say no to jobs, but the freedom to say no to bad relationships. It's not jobs themselves that give people dignity. It's the income that jobs provide. By having an income, you're treated as an independent free agent who can live their live as they want, not forced to be reliant on others. And while the right will scream about dependency on government, I think my objections to that are sufficient to poke holes in the idea, and I think these guys also ignore that dependency on employers is not really the ideal way to live either, as work relationships can be just as abusive as everything else. The fact is, we need freedom from employment, freedom from others, AND freedom from government. UBI provides the first two, and a strong set of checks and balances provides the third. And honestly, as a social libertarian, I have to believe in all three here. Even if this means balancing each of these things against each other. Personal relationships and government provide a check on employers. Government and employers in the form of income can provide a check on personal relationships. And Personal relationships and employment can provide whatever check needs to be had on the idea of government giving people money. Not to mention the checks and balances of government itself. The fact is everyone deserves freedom, not just in a negative sense, but also a positive sense. People need both freedom from AND freedom to. And a UBI provides that, giving people the ultimate insurance against domination by others, while also providing the positive freedom for people to self actualize and live as they want.

Nancy Pelosi out as house leader, who will succeed her to lead the democrats?

 So, with the republicans officially getting a house majority, Nancy Pelosi is apparently stepping down as speaker of the house and will not be serving as house minority leader. I honestly have to say here, good riddance. Nancy Pelosi is the kind of leader who has been in office for too long. She's in her 80s and is part of that geriatric democratic leadership that has to go. I kind of wish that her family being attacked didn't happen and that this didn't likely have at least some role in this, but I am largely supportive of her stepping aside regardless. We do need new blood in there.

However, I've been hearing rumblings that the guy poised to succeed her might not be any better. Hakeem Jeffries is a name being floated by the media. And this guy is kind of questionable. To put it simply the dude fits the template of what the democratic leadership has going for it. Woke and neoliberal. He focuses a lot on racial justice issues, but then at the same time, he has a strong anti leftie streak and is being considered by the left as "as neoliberal as they come" based on comments I've seen from the peanut gallery. 

That said, I'm not sure really hot on this guy. My problem with Pelosi, and much of the democratic leadership, arent the people themselves. It's their ideas. As you guys know, I'm not a fan of economic centrism OR wokeism, and while the dems will obviously push these guys to the top of their power structure for a reason (perpetuates their current values), my reason for wanting change is that we need people with different ideas. For as much potential as democrats have in the future demographically, they seem insistent on replacing 80 year old leaders with bad outdated ideas with 40 year olds with the same ideas. That's why the party is pushing for Buttigieg and Harris and now this guy for speaker. But I'm going to be honest, I don't want that. I dont care if you're 25 or 95, if your ideas suck, they suck. And while I normally consider these kinds of ideas as pushed by the old generation, the organization itself is setting itself up to perpetuate their ideals and shut out the competition in the future. Which is why I went nuts and bailed on the democrats and have been so critical on them in recent years. It's not that I actually want to be against them, but I don't like their current brand, and believe it needs to change. And the reason I support third parties is to try to force them to change. If they won't change from within, they need to be pressured from without. Unfortunately, the major source of pressure comes from the right, who are already portraying this guy as too far left based on wokeism alone. 

And I'm going to be honest too. I no longer really support what the left is doing fully either. A lot of them ARE too socialist. A lot of them have outdated and harmful ideas. ideas that are also competition to my ideas. They'd push jobs programs and perpetual labor at the expense of a UBI, for example. And while they have some good top level causes like medicare for all, free college, etc., ideologically I have as many differences with them as I do with the center. if not more. At least with the center most of my MAJOR grievances are related to economics. With the left, I also have grown significant disagreements on social and foreign policy issues, being largely against wokeism, and largely against the anti American sentiment of the far left. 

So idk. In a lot of ways, I aint really a fan of the far left types either. I kinda sorta have an uneasy relationship with them push comes to shove where I WILL side with them over the centrists to get support on my pet issues, but honestly, in a lot of ways many of these guys are too far left. 

Still, would I rather have a squad member? Generally speaking, yes. I mean, sure the squad is arguably to my left, but they still have better ideas than the center does on a lot of core issues. 

Anyway, I'm not really sure I like this guy. I could be proven wrong, but eh...a lot of mainstream dems just aren't left enough for me, even if the actual leftists are too left for me. Honestly, my politics just dont align with the democrats well in specifics, even if I largely agree with them in generalities.

Missile hits Poland, what now?

 So, a delicate foreign policy situation has arisen in the past day or so. A missile has struck a small border town in Poland, and it's causing massive international tensions. As we know, hitting a NATO member is a big red line that could mean war with Russia. But based on the context, it looks like it was probably an accident? It looks like the missile was from Ukrainian air defenses, not Russia itself. Of course NATO is blaming Russia anyway, since if they didn't invade Ukraine, none of this would have happened. 

This is NOT a good situation. An attack on Poland can trigger an article 5 declaration, which means World War 3 and possible nuclear war. We DON'T want that. That's bad. And I'm hoping cooler heads prevail, and people just accept a mistake for what it is, a mistake. Ya know, 108 years ago, we went to war because some butthole shot some arch duke, and because we were rigid with our alliances, everyone clamored over it and used it to go to war with each other. It led to one of the most deadly and brutal wars in human history. I really don't want that to happen again over 2 polish farmers in some border town. If Russia forced our hand and intentionally started attacking Poland, sure, we'd more or less be FORCED to react, but what are European leaders thinking with this blame Russia stuff? I'm FINE with helping Ukraine defend themselves, but getting involved directly is no. I'm NOT liking this posturing on it. It was a mistake, sure it sucks, but let it go. This isn't worth having World War 3 over. Take the high road, guys.

Donald Trump announcing his 2024 run, does he actually have a chance?

 So, Donald Trump just announced he is going to run in 2024. I'm going to be honest, everyone saw this coming, he was going to do this regardless of the mid term results, and he was very quickly posturing to do so. If you asked me before the mid terms if Trump had a chance, I'd probably say, yeah he really does. We were staring down the biggest red wave in over a decade and it looked like Trump had crazy popularity. But, it seemed clear that the voters rejected Trump. Trumper candidates lost, and often lost badly, and it seemed clear that America didn't accept his big lie BS. And many of the polls on RCP's website, much like everything else from before the election, pointed to a 2024 landslide for Trump. 

But honestly? Let's think about this now. First of all, the primary. I know most polls prior to the 2022 mid terms had trump leading, but there have been major swings since, with DeSantis leading Trump in new data. I know it's early, but the lower end of the distribution of polls cited in the above articles was 7 points, and potentially as high as 11 points. It's still early, this can change a lot. It HAS just changed a lot. But based on my normal 4 point MOE based model for calculating probabilities, if this does not change, we're talking a 96-99.7% chance of DeSantis beating Trump. Now, again, take that number with a grain of salt. Polling is a snapshot in time, and a lot can change in the 1+ year between now and the primaries in early 2024. But, yeah, it's not looking good.

As for Trump vs Biden, RCP's polls from before the election have a Trump blowout. But, we just saw that during the mid terms, the results followed the 2020 election closely, with the democrats often expanding their leads over the republicans relative to 2020 in most states, and most wins being in the same states that Biden won in 2020. Wisconsin admittedly flipped to the GOP here, and Georgia is kind of in the iffy 50/50 territory, but if I had to come up with an electoral college map based off of the 2022 midterms, it would look like this. Basically, 293-245 democrat. I gave georgia a SLIGHT democratic edge, but kept wisconsin red to reflect the results there. I aint expecting any oddball shifts like washington, oregon, or kansas to actually be in play here.To give an idea of the color legion:

Solid red/blue: 98%+ confidence in outcome, not considered "in play."

Darker pink/blue: 85-97% chance, implying polling in the 4-8% range. Expected to go to the party the color represents, but you never know, there's a small chance it may not. 

Lighter pink/blue: 60-84% chance, implying polling in the 1-4% range. Expected to lean toward that party, but depending on whatever "wave" year this is, it COULD go the other way. 

Pale pink/blue: 50-60% chance, implying polling in the <1% range. These are the real hard ones to guess and are the true toss ups. 

Now, given this, what would it take the GOP to win? Well. They'd need to keep Wisconsin red, and take Georgia back for starters. Those are the two states I think will be most hotly contested. Taking Georgia would bring it down to 277-261 for the democrats. From there, I'm guessing Arizona and Nevada would be the next weakest states probably polling maybe 2 points ahead for dems. If Nevada goes red but Arizona stays blue, we could expect a democratic win still, although a narrow one. If AZ goes red but NV blue, or both go red, then you are talking a GOP win. As for PA and MI, I would put them more in the R+3-R+4 category vs my baseline projections, and believe the GOP would have a harder time winning those. Wisconsin I put in the red column because it's been more unreliably blue in recent years, and has gone red for both governor and senator this year. Whereas MI and PA both went more blue. Still, they are in play and worst case scenario within a 1 standard deviation of the my baseline (4 point red wave), and we're talking a pretty red map, not much different than Trump's win in 2016. This I see as the best realistic case for Trump. NH would probably be next, I'd estimate that around D+5-6. Minnesota is probably D+6-7, and NM, CO, and VA, eh...I really dont see them going red and they MIGHT be safe, but they're not as reliable as the other blue states so I put them near the D+7-8 area for the purposes of this discussion. So yeah.

As for democrats overperforming, well, I don't think  Wisconsin is a foregone conclusion by any means. Dems could easily win that. I'm just less confident in it than other states. If we get that, we basically get the Biden 2020 map. But then I think it gets exponentially harder for democrats. The next state I would assume to go blue would be North Carolina...and...I wouldn't count on it. They haven't been blue since the Obama years. I'd start them off with around a R+3-4 rating here, but even then they arguably should be in the next category. Say they win that, okay, 319-219 D. Next up? Probably ME2, which is one electoral vote. And then I'd say Iowa and Ohio. But they're getting closer and closer to being a foregone conclusion for the dems. Florida....yeah, I think its safe to say after 2022 and the near 20 point leads the Rs got, its a lost cause. I just included it here for the sake of argument. 

Honestly, this is another factor we got to discuss post 2016. Like....Ohio, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, all used to be in play for the democrats. Obama won some of these in 2008. And Ohio and Florida were the swingiest of swing back in 2000-2004. But...since 2016, we've been realigning. And we can discuss young people and blah blah blah, sure, young people like dems a lot more. But....honestly? This country is still realigning around the Trump-Clinton battle lines. And that's not really the best outcome for the left. Keep in mind what motivates the dems. Identity politics and centrism. POC and suburbanites. And the democrats had this dream of trading the rust belt for the south, and we're seeing it happen here. Ohio and Iowa have gone hard red. Wisconsin and Michigan are getting a lot less reliable for democrats. Pennsylvania is too, although I do think Fetterman shows a working class progressive can win the state. Keep in mind, Fetterman had Bernie politics, and he kind of proved what I've been saying about PA, that if you start whittling down the margins in the middle of the state and in areas around cities like Allentown, Scranton, Reading, Lancaster, York, Harrisburg, etc, you can actually motivate people with a Bernie style candidate. But...outside of PA, that strategy doesn't seem as reliable. The rest of the rust belt is going toward Trump. Even Minnesota is getting more purple.Meanwhile Arizona? Georgia? Yeah, just a few years ago, I considered those foregone conclusions for the democrats. Why appeal to yeehaw territory? They hadnt gone blue in decades. But the POC+suburbanite strategy works there. But it's also turning off the more white working class states in the North. And then you have florida, which is showing that latinos dont automatically go democrat just because you use the term Latinx and start speaking spanish in an obnoxious pandery way. 

I really don't like this. The fact that the north is going red and the south is going blue kind of scares me. Because it represents that right wing populism is here to stay, and so is the snooty high brow neoliberal/social justice obsessed left. And that aint really good. because while yeah, people went blue for now, I'm not sure that the democrats will ever really gain enough popularity to have a mandate to push a left wing agenda. Meanwhile the right will remain powerful in its current form, and given that form has fascist tendencies, that aint good.

To be fair, it's also possible, at this point, that if the republicans dump trump, all of those states in play will flip red, as democratic ideas arent popular and republican ones are. But it really is hard to say. What is the future of America? Is it really more right wing populism vs left wing elitism? Or does that just represent old peoples' politics? Keep in mind, most people under 45 or so hate the GOP, and while not big on the democrats, they think more like me. So maybe our time will still come. It's hard to say what way American politics will go in the next few years. I couldnt even predict 2022 right. 

As for 2024, my predictions are subject to a lot of change. Again, we JUST had the mid terms a week ago. And this is my first idea of what a Trump vs Biden matchup might be. BUT, we might not even have Trump win the primary. Biden is expected to run at this point, but if he doesn't, the dems will be scrambling for someone else, and I'm not sure what will happen there. We might see a left wing challenge like another Bernie run. We might also have a third party challenge like Forward, although who the hell knows what THAT would look like given Forward doesn't even believe in platforms apparently. 

I mean, idk. 

And as for how I plan to vote, if it's Trump on the republican side, I'm just likely gonna go democrat. If DeSantis or someone else, I will be more open to a third party challenger. But I'm going to be honest. I'm not really very happy with the third party alternatives. Greens are too extreme and socialist and my only reason for supporting them was to push the dems left. I dont actually like their platform. Sure it hits all the right chords on paper, but given their obsession with the GND (while I prefer Biden's framework), and their UBI and healthcare plans seem to just be for show, well, yeah. Again, I can't treat them as a serious candidate this time I don't think. And then you have forward. I like Yang, I like UBI< but Forward doesn't seem to represent that. I know a lot of people are wondering if people like say, Kyle Kulinski are becoming more centrist as they're more aligned with Biden these days, and I am kind of in the same direction as that, but for me, the answer is, eh, maybe a tiny bit, but I still believe in what I always have (at least since 2014 or so...). It's just that the political landscape is changing, and I'm shifting my alliances around based on what I think is in my best interest to advance my agenda. And currently, given the failure of the left and third party movements, and the dems trying to do some good things, I'm kind of going dem by default. But that's the thing. I'm really just dem by default. I'm a little warmer toward them than I've been in recent years, but only because they've made some good faith efforts to make some progress on some things I like, and because I realize the alternatives kind of suck. That and I really do believe Trump is a threat to democracy itself. Post January 6th? Yeah no, F that guy. 

So yeah. Anyway, that's where I stand on 2024 right now. I cautiously project that Trump will lose the primary, and if he runs in the general, I expect a relatively narrow dem victory only slightly more in Trump's favor than 2020 was. Still, it's not a foregone conclusion and we're really talking like 70-30 here if I had to put a percentage on it. 2/3 outcomes would be a Biden win, 1/3 would be a Trump win. So while I would project a Biden win, I'm not exactly certain.