Really the last one: on the anti work movement, and being "anti work"

 So, this is the one thing that does fire me up, and since it relates so strongly to my string of burnout posts, I figured one last post on this would be worth discussing.

So I came across this article today about the state of the anti work movement, and I see a lot of myself in this.

Essentially, it notes how the anti work movement didn't actually arise overnight, but came to being after work has failed a generation of people. many of us have been coerced into giving up large parts of our lives for a pittance, and many people aren't happy.

Traditional labor activists, they still believe in labor, and believe in work, and simply support striking to improve conditions. A lot of leftists are also in this camp. Marxists believe capitalism alienates people from their labor, but they still believe in labor.

But, the failures of capitalism have done something else to this generation of people, and that is, they alienated a lot of people from work completely. And quite frankly, I'm one of these people.

The demand start small. You want better pay, you want better working conditions. but I think workers are coming to terms with the concept that after they spend so much time fighting for incrementalism, they still have to show up for work on Monday morning. And now their boss hates them for organizing for better conditions.

This is, by the way, why I'm burned out even with the left on traditional labor stuff. Much of what they support is just incrementalism like this. Yay, now pay is $20 an hour instead of $15. But hey, I still gotta spend 40 hours a week working.

So now, people are starting to wake up, and realize the rat race isn't all its' cracked up to be, and that people are alienated and turned off from it. It isn't just a matter of finding your passion, or improving working conditions, it's work itself. People are starting to realize their position as a de facto slave in society, and starting to fight back against it. Not everyone, but this stuff is taking off. If anything positive comes out of this crapshow it's this. And I honestly believe, as one of these people, once you start seeing the farce of work as it is, there's no going back. That's the thing about plato's cave, once you leave, you can't go back. You don't want to go back. You can't go through the motions, because it's so fake, and you realize it's fake. It's like going back to some kid's amusement park as an adult and being like "yeah, this sucks, why did I ever enjoy this?", maybe the nostalgia is there deep down, but you can't just go back and relive it in the same light.

I've kind of realize this about certain things in my life. Once you leave the cave, there's no going back. That illusion of a simpler reality is gone. 

If the great resignation wakes people up, good. It's the one hope we actually have in my opinion of building a better society. Incrementalism isn't going to do it. Traditional politics isn't going to do it. And maybe the reason I'm so turned off from the mainstream is precisely because I am this burnt out and bitter anti work person who just feels alienated and ignored by the mainstream. 

I don't want to spend huge portions of my life working. I really don't. I see work is the ultimate waste of time. It's time stolen from me I can never get back. And the fact that people aren't more outraged by this fact, and that this isn't the #1 issue that all of us, regardless of class, creed, or political affiliation, to solve, just..baffles me. And then I see people pushing all these other causes and I just don't care. How can i, as long as this giant weight is hanging over me? 

The real progress this generation has to make, it's regarding these issues. The modern work week is a relic of the 20th century. We should strive to minimize the amount of work that exists in society, so that we can be free to spend our time, actually doing things. The fact that we spend the same amount of time, if not more time working, than our grandfathers and great grandfathers who lived around 80-90 years ago, is just sad. We shouldn't have to live like this any more. And despite my malaise, this is the one thing I have an insatiable will toward resolving. Because it's something that impacts us all on a personal level.

We all have to wake up in the morning, and spend at least half our time working, for a majority of the days we exist. It's sickening. We should be protesting against THIS great sin of humanity. And the fact that these politics are still so not mainstream, is why I can't tolerate mainstream politics. 

This is also why I'm an indepentarian. Rousseau was right when he said," man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." Indeed we are. And the one issue that I do care about, is liberation from that. And the best way we can do that is by supporting basic income and medicare for all, and that is what I shall focus on. The way to free people from labor is to ensure their basic needs, forcing the market to adapt and automate jobs, and driving the price of labor to what it really deserves. After all if people have to inconvenience themselves taking hours of their time to serve someone else, they better be paid for it darned well.

One last message: the power of "enlightened self interest"

 So, the traditional divide in american politics over the past century or so seems to be this. The right is essentially individualistic and self interested, the left is essentially collectivist with less emphasis on self interest. And it's a crap divide, and it's one that is unfavorable to the left.

I don't believe that human interest is "evil" per se, but I do believe it's self interested. At the end of the day, people care about themselves, their families, and maybe beyond that their local communities and close circles of friends, but that's it. People only have limited mental bandwidth and expecting people to care about everything and everyone is something that just doesn't compute for most people. Me, being autistic, my bandwidth is even more limited. I care more intensely about fewer things, but all people only have a limited amount of bandwidth for caring. 

That said, most people trend toward the right. The idea that people get more conservative as they get older is a nod to this, and might actually be summing up my malaise to some extent. I'm in my 30s now, I have less bandwidth to "care", so I just...don't. Honestly, I don't really believe my values changed, but I will say that how much I care about advocating for them has. I've focused more intensely among my top priorities, and have kind of stopped caring about so called lesser priorities. I could see, as people get older, get entrenched in jobs, and have kids, that that becomes their world and any challenge to it scares them. So they seek to preserve what they have. Of course, being a millennial, and living in this dumpster fire of an economy, I just...haven't done that. Instead I got a fire under me about how this economy sucks and needs change and I ran with it. But still, over time, I've become more narrow and focused on what that means, what the core issues are, and how to solve them. I can't afford to get bogged down on everyone else's issues. THis means that I'm not driven to the right, but maybe I am some sort of yang-esque center. 

But, in a sense, that's what I believed all along, and I'll get to that in a bit, before that, I want to go back to outrage culture on the left. The left has this obsession with caring. Even Rush Limbaugh noted this when i was a conservative in his books. he pointed out that a big thing about the left is they need to constantly circlejerk about how much they care. They gotta wear those little pins for cancer or AIDs awareness. They gotta hashtag everything about BLM. And encountering leftists online, everything is a purity test of caring. You're supposed to drop everything and care about the latest flavor of the month, or you're a bad person. Even progressives do this. Like screaming about israel and brown kids being bombed. is the treatment of palestinians awful? yes. Can you expect people to want to perform activism surrounding that constantly and purity testing people who might see the issue in a more nuanced way? No. After a while, outrage culture leads to backlash culture, and backlash culture leads to the right gaining more dominance as people focus more on self interest and "screw you I got mine" mentalities. And people eat it up. And this is, in my opinion, why the left seems to struggle so much in politics. Because they come from a disadvantageous position of lofty causes that dont connect to the every day lives of people, and people stop caring, start getting annoyed at the self righteousness of people who do care, and it just leads to the right gaining more support.

So, how would I, as an ex conservative, counter this? Simple, what I liked to call "enlightened self interest". There is nothing wrong with being interested in yourself. But, we need to have a left wing movement that actually furthers most peoples' individual self interests. And this is why I'm so big on UBI and medicare for all. Basic income is a policy that structurally would benefit roughly 60-80% of the population. Sure, the top 20-30% would lose under it, but those are the richest 20-30% of Americans who pay the most money in taxes. Most people, including most of the middle class (as defined by the literal middle, none of this nonsense about an 80 percentiler being "middle class"), would benefit from these proposals. In an immediate way. They would see themselves getting more money in the long term. it would be positive for them. And it would fit yang's idea of modern and effective governance. People might hate paying taxes, but they like getting money, and if you get more money than you pay in taxes, then you should support the policy. And given the prevalence of anti work culture in modern years (the one good thing to come out of this crapshow), maybe UBI could appeal to those with anti work goals. Not everyone would be a winner here. Those upper class suburbanites the democrats love to pander to will be horrified and vote republican, but if we can get the rest of the working class on board, it won't matter. 

Same with medicare for all. Many people hate the healthcare system and its full of holes. If we get universal coverage we might see not just the poor get covered, but the middle see clear benefits as the cost of their coverage decreases significantly. No more insane copays and deductibles and everything else. This is kind of why I'm for M4A even if expensive. People are paying anyway, it's a matter of how. And medicare for all could do a good job reducing costs for most Americans with, once again, only the rich paying more.

These are only a few ideas, but this is the sort of stuff the left needs to embrace. Because you could sell it to people as "hey this directly benefits you." It makes your life materially better, in a direct way, and the only people it backlashes against are the top 20%, who are the most wealthy in society anyway and would remain so even after higher taxes. 

If we did this, there would be no need to keep the left in cycles of perpetual outrage and caring that turn people off. After a while, I just get to the point that all of that caring is energy wasted that could've been spent more productively. If we do things this way, we can ensure that most people will be better off. We can eliminate poverty, a lofty goal, while being able to go to normie voters and say "hey, this appeals to you, vote for us."

Honestly, I think this is what yang does right that everyone else on the left gets wrong. Hillary's big slogan was "I'm with her." As in, im gonna give up my own interests to vote for her in an abstract way even if I dont benefit from it. Bernie once asked if you're willing to fight for someone you don't know. A noble sentiment, but one that I don't think will work long term.

Yang is basically like, hey, how much better off would your family be with $1000 a month? What if the government was much simpler? What if things actually worked? He is the perfect blend of left wing humanitarianism combined with the self interest of the right.

It's not left or right, it's forward. And policies like UBI are forward. They combine the best elements of both sides to create what should, in theory, become the ideal approach to do things. Sadly, due to extreme factionalism, I feel like this is getting lost as culture wars and constant outrage over abstract issues wins the day.

Maybe if politics focused more on this sort of stuff, I wouldn't be so darned burnt out. Or maybe I would, as autistic burnout is common and happens. It remains to be seen, but yeah. 

Anyway, I expect this to be my last post for a while, unless I have some other random thing I want to talk about. Even if burnt out, i feel like doing this blog for the past year has accelerated my own personal growth politically. I now know where I fit in in a post 2020, post bernie electoral environment. And while I hate the environment, at least I found a home and some sort tenets to get behind.

I still might post once in a while if I have something to say. But honestly, I'm just so burnt out on most politics right now that I expect I'll be taking a long break after this. Heck, maybe I'll do one more before I leave as it's another topic worth discussing.

Addendum to being burned out: I wonder if this is how Reagan won...

 As you guys know, a big topic of interest for me is the last party realignment, and how Ronald Reagan came to power. And given the sheer amount of "malaise" I'm feeling over politics, I have to wonder if these kinds of attitudes are what led to the rise of modern conservatism. 

Looking at the 1970s we can see the same patterns repeating. First, we have the civil rights era in the 1960s. This led to a period of massive change, and one that divided the party. The feds imposing civil rights on the south alienated them, driving the south from the democratic party.

The party also experienced other problems, as the establishment failed to maintain control over their party. Humphrey was essentially the chosen one, and alienated the progressive base of the democratic party, which further contributed to his loss.

In 1972, no one really wanted the democrats, and nixon had a solid grip on electoral politics. And the progressives banded together and promoted McGovern as a nominee. He won, but the party establishment hated him, so they sabotaged him. He was "too far left" as he proposed *gasp* basic income, as well as a lot of extreme (for the time) social policies. People love to point out the UBI as the reason for his loss, but in reality, IMO, it was the social stuff, and the sabotage from within the party, and just the fact that people liked Nixon.

But then, much like today, supply shortages sent the "good" (It wasn't really "good", as UBI advocates even back then were saying tons of issues existed undernieth those growing wages and 4% unemployment) economy into a spiral of inflation, and people just starting being frustrated. As the nixon administration went down in flames and no one really liked Ford, Carter won in 1976, only to be handed every problem under the sun, from the hostage crises, to the USSR invading Afghanistan, to the economy, to the energy crisis, to the fact that his own party was against him, and nothing got done.

It was a period of malaise. People just lost faith in the government. because it was doing things but it wasnt really doing things, if that made sense. And people didn't feel positive effects in their lives as a result. They just saw the problems.

With Biden in office, and facing supply chain crises and a so called "labor shortage" from covid and the economy being knocked all out of whack, democrats are flailing in approval ratings. Biden isn't doing anything. he's passing token bills but those bills dont make peoples' lives better. And the left hates biden for being moderate, and then manchin and sinema are just clogging everything up. 

No one is happy. Everyone is freaking out calling for ideological purity. While some calling for purity is a good thing, as the different factions of the party want different things and often see the world in fundamentally different ways, it's getting a bit much, as even people who kind of sort of support a side aren't welcome because they don't support every aspect of it.

I really have to wonder if, back in the 70s, after being subjected to constant crises and outrage for a good 15 years, if by the time we got Reagan, if people just didn't care any more. The left doesn't like to admit it, and seems to work against this on a fundamental level sometimes, but human nature is selfish. Most people are first and foremost interested in their own well being, including myself. Now, I understand this. This is why I don't expect people to "care". I base my views on what I call "enlightened self interest", branching my own concerns, with those of the community, bringing individualism and collectivism together in a way that works. but the left...doesn't do that. They just keep people on a perpetual outrage cycle of expecting people to constantly care, and it just...doesn't work. 

I could see the boomers, having spent their entire 20s and 30s in a crapshow, basically turning around in the 1980s and saying screw it, economy is back to normal, economy is growing, I'm making money, this is fine. They hated the wokies because they were constantly screaming as they always do. And maybe people just really liked Reagan despite him structurally setting up the future generation for failure because he brought a sense of normalcy back to America. 

I don't think Reagan's path was the right one. I've been convinced that small government conservatism can't work. But the left isn't working either. In my opinion, we need Yang, or someone like him. Someone who is for some level of government involvement, but who simplifies it and makes it work. Yang's principle of modern effective governance appeals to the ex conservative in me because I understand how conservatism has a point in saying that government doesnt work. if your entire approach to government is based on incremental band aid ism and bureaucratic solutions that people can't feel, yeah you're gonna lose support. I don't want the old left back. The reason I supported bernie was to get back to a starting point, and bring to an end the era of conservatism. But it seems like instead the left is repeating its past mistakes and turning people off.

If we're not careful, trump could win, and the right might push an ideological victory yet again, relegating the left to being that alternative party of demonized and unpopular ideas no one wants to touch for the next 40 years. It scares me, but it can happen. The reason I feel malaise is because I don't feel like the left represents me any more. But obviously I'm not a right winger either. It's literally only the forwardists who are remotely close to my politics.

Burned out on politics, tired of "caring"

 So, we're getting to that time again, where I just get turned off from politics and feel the need to isolate myself more and not focus as much on it. I went into a slump like this post 2016, and I'm feeling a need to do it again. Back then, it was because Trump won, I lost all faith in both parties, and the politics of the day was painfully boring and I just wasn't willing to engage with the topics. That's kind of a side effect of my autism. I can care passionately about issues I hold dear, to the point of obsession, but literally everything else...no. I just can't. 

And I feel like, outside of advocacy for some forward party stuff, I'm getting to that point again. Politics is exhausting these days. I feel like it's just a perpetual outrage cycle where people get hyped up and polarized over the latest issues of the days, and then they just castigate anyone who doesn't share the same exact values or concerns. And given the general mismatch between my politics and the rest of the left these days, I just am getting to the point that I just can't any more. I'm finding engaging in politics increasingly exhausting over the past few months, and I'm just to the point I'm out of craps to give. 

The fact is, almost no one represents me. The democratic party is divided into four factions, and I'm part of that alienated, disenchanted outsider faction. I've gone over my issues with the moderate neolibs to death. How they seem to love the status quo and are the true conservatives in this country (with the right being reactionaries), and how they don't want to solve any issue in a meaningful way, only to act surprised when their approval ratings tank when they struggle to pass a compromise of a compromise of a compromise of a bill that was another compromise and was never good in the first place. 

Then you have the progressives, who are on the opposite end of this cycle. I rolled with these guys from 2016-2020, but as I've been pointing out, I become increasingly out of sync with them. Quite frankly, our priorities are diverging, and they're becoming more obsessed with ideological purity around "socialism" and seem to scream and castigate people over the silliest reasons like not supporting an immediate end to all 'regime change wars", supporting israel on twitter, and other things. Even stuff I largely agree with like unions, just the amount of vitriol and outrage I've seen toward people who just dont care enough is outrageous. I literally got into an argument with a vote blue no matter whoer tonight who basically weaponized labor concerns against me decision to vote third party, going on about how because of me, the court skews right and now unions cant force people to pay dues, and I'm just do the point I DONT. CARE. like, labor unions are well and good, but they're not my ideal approach to getting gains from an anti work perspective. Union supporters are still jobists, and they largely believe in "the dignity of work" and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, I'm more like "let's abolish work and give people money" and that just doesn't have a role in the modern left. 

Speaking of which, the amount of hatred I see toward yang for daring support a UBI that *gasp* removes parts of the fundamentally flawed welfare state, is outrageous, and I'm sick and tired of being told I'm a right winger every time I mention I support yang or UBI because he's a neoliberal libertarian shill or something. 

Like, a big condition of my support on the left was that they would shift the overton window where UBI BECAME something that is able to be openly discussed and supported. And it kind of is, because of yang. But now this same left is turning against it and tribalistically defending a flawed welfare state I really dont believe in and only really accept as an alternative to literally nothing like the right supports, and yeah. I'm just getting turned off.

This isn't even getting into the idpol obsessed people. Who seem in their own little world and scream at anyone who doesn't care about THAT stuff enough. While lecturing people about how choosey POC are in supporting candidates and how they gotta make everything about them.

If the left had their crap together and built, you know, a cross faction coalition, bringing progressives, outsiders, and even POC together, appealing to all of their concerns to some extent, while making compromises on more minor issues if necessary, that would be fine, but instead they gotta scream everything isnt literally perfect, and therefore everything is bad. Honestly, there's only a handful of issues that for me are non negotiable. UBI, universal healthcare, and free college/student debt forgiveness. Even on the last 2 I can compromise on in terms of the overall policies and degrees to which stuff is supported, if, in exchange, it means my UBI gets supported in an uncompromised form (because I've done the math and understand balancing all of these things is hard financially). As long as you support some version of them.

But, instead, the modern left seems to be about being forced to care and circlejerk about issues that you don't really care much about, and being bullied and shamed if you don't. 

I'm just tired, man. Like, it's getting to the point I have zero energy to discuss politics. If I try, I just get frustrated too much. And it's taking a clear toll on my mental health.

I can't, in good faith, continue to advocate for even issues I care about dearly, in this kind of mental state. Because I'm not debating at my best in the first place, as I have no energy to, and even worse, I'm not really representing my views well. I understand this is purely a me problem. i know the counter arguments exist. But I'm out of energy. I have full on dillahunty syndrome. And I just get angry and lash out instead. 

I'm sick of politics, man. I still might post here if I have something more to say worth saying, but other than that, I just cant any more.

News that surprises no one: most latinos do not like "Latinx" verbiage

 So, in news that surprises no one, "latinx" terminology goes over with the latino community like a lead balloon. I don't really have a lot to say about this, I just wanted to bring it up because I just find it to be a hilarious instance of identity politics eating itself. On the one hand you have the anti racist people who are so hardcore on letting POC speak and not imposing their cultural norms on them, and then you have the more anti sexist people doing crap like this. And when the different idpol factions start conflicting with each other, wars break out. We saw it with dave chappelle recently with him using black identity politics against the trans community to pull a form of suffering olympics, and in the more distant past, I remember the 2008 primary was a dumpster fire of this stuff. 

I mean, this stuff is a joke of an ideology. It means well, but in practice it just leads to hyper factionalism and purity testing. It's just stupid. Like, spanish is a highly gendered language, and these guys trying to push a form of politics that's gender neutral ironically just comes off as colonialism in the first place. I mean, let them speak their language. Who cares if its gendered. All trying to force this stuff does is alienate people. And I'm just tired of it. As I keep saying, trying to police cultural norms on people that are not popular does is piss people off and alienate people. We need fewer over culture warriors trying to convert people like an inquisitor trying to convert people to christianity, and more focus on actual bread and butter issues. not to say we cant influence culture subtlely. But all engaging in these kinds of fights does is turn people off.

Envisioning a "free to play" society

 So, this has actually been something I've touched on in places other than this blog, and has entered my mind again in the wake of halo infinite and its controversy over it being free to play and having lootboxes. And maybe, given how many people are losing their crap over it being free to play, this post will come off as alienating to some, but as someone who actually really LIKES the free to play model when it's done correctly, well, yeah, I like the concept.In a lot of ways, I actually think my ideal society would be run like a fairly designed free to play game, rather than a paid game.

As we know, I consider myself an indepentarian. I believe that poverty is a form of economic coercion, and that wage labor is slavery. Without having enough resources, guaranteed to you as a right, you are not free, you are coerced to work (grind, in gaming terms) for the purpose of acquiring property to survive. Now, it could be argued, in the past, such a system was needed. After all, if everyone didn't work, there wouldn't be enough, and society couldn't afford laziness because that would lead to people starving. That's a perfectly fair way to look at things. And that's why we have such statements as "he who does not work does not eat." It isn't a divine command like some who believe in the bible treat it, it's a common sense statement of look, we need people to work in order to produce things we need. If you want to not starve to death, you have to pitch in.

But, some time in the past 200 years, things have changed. Modern capitalism led to great economic growth, and technology has allowed us to do far more with less. But rather than using this technology and economic growth to work less, we instead seek to force people to provide higher levels of goods and services while keeping them under the same levels of economic coercion. At this point, the idea that we need everyone working just to survive is madness. We're just creating jobs that don't need to exist for the purpose of providing them an income to buy things we need because we still see it deep in our being as fundamentally unfair for people to not work. Those who work become resentful toward those who don't, and thus, the key thing keeping us creating jobs seems to be to ensure we're all miserable. And to make numbers on spreadsheet go up.

But let's face it, the economy has exploded in the past 200 years, and as COVID has proven, we could afford to work a lot less without a major impact on quality of life. Maybe some higher luxuries like restaurants and movie theaters might be harder to come by, maybe that video game you want gets delayed a year. Oh well, isn't it worth it to ensure a more just world? Right now, we have a society of slaves, where lower class people are basically forced to work in service of much more entitled middle and upper class people. Think about it. The people screaming about going back to normal generally aren't going without basic needs, but luxuries. They want to eat out. They want to get their nails and hair done. They want people to be forced to work, to serve them. And to me, it's sickening. In some ways I like how the pandemic changed how many of us think about the economy. More remote work, less unnecessary luxuries, and while let's face it luxuries are nice, I'm not really one to suggest that people be forced to be slaves to provide them. If anything, I want people to be free to live as they want. 

In some ways, I suggest rather than have the current paid model, we move to a free to play model.

Paid games vs f2p games

The traditional model of gaming is this. If you want access to the game, you pay for it. Period. if you don't pay, you can't play the game. Period. I mean, it makes sense. You want a product or service, you pay for it. it's only fair. I mean, the developers aren't working for free, if you want to play a game, you need to give them money to buy it. How can you give games for free, isn't that an unsustainable business model?

Well, maybe not. But before I get that far, let's draw comparisons to a work based society here. THe logic behind a paid game is the same logic behind a "no work no eat" society. If you want something, you need to contribute. Period. otherwise why would we provide this good or service to you? I mean, we need to expend effort to make this stuff, why should you get it for free? 

But, as we know, paid games tend to have issues. They tend to shrink player bases, as there's a paywall stopping people from playing your game. And as the price goes up, often times these business models are subject to DLC and subscription models which are kind of coercive in the sense that you need to keep paying more money to get the complete product. Ultimately, the product, rather than offering a flat rate, tends to extract as much as they can from consumers, often with backlash.

Which brings us to f2p games. Free to play games started out in the 2000s or so, when the internet started being widespread. They made the base access to the game free, so that it's free to play, but then monetized other stuff. Cosmetics were always a huge part of it, but on top of that, they often monetized in game advantages and stuff. However, this was largely deemed unfair, and these aspects were largely removed from the business model as time went on. Nowadays, modern f2p games are run on cosmetics, rather than pay to win elements. And even paid games often include similar cash shops, often at the expense of DLC. So now games are cheaper, and now free. The game quality has largely stayed high, and they are often monetized purely though cosmetics or maybe in game grinding toward elements that impact game play, in ways which are deemed fair. 

This has actually been good for the industry in my opinion. It has made games cheaper, and often free. THis has grown their player bases, leading to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to play them to play them, and some people tend to go for paid items. Developers make money by offering cash shop cosmetics and other such items, which often do little to impact game play, but tend to make the user feel good. Ultimately, most people who play f2p games are free loaders, but a smaller number of core players who pay for such voluntary content often drive the sustainability of the whole game.

A free to play society

Essentially, when I argue for an indepentarian society, I argue for a society based around similar principles. Rather than require every member of society be forced to participate or lose their access (which in the modern world means poverty and death), I suggest we make the basics of society free. Everyone should have access to the basics and be able to freely participate as much or as little as they want. So how do we get the sausage made? Offering positive incentives. Obviously, starting out, a basic income oriented f2p society is going to be barebones, a lot like an early f2p game from the 2000s. Free players can play but they don't really get a good experience. You'll be given enough to be kept alive and relatively comfortable, but if you really want a good experience, you need to work. If you want to eat out on the regular or get your nails done, you would still probably need to work to get extra money to afford such things. Given our current labor needs, and the fact that society still needs a relatively large labor force, this is fair. And those who work would gain access to the "pay to win" experience of being able to afford much nicer houses, and clothing, and food, and luxuries, etc. 

However, as time goes on, and labor needs go down, perhaps the basic experience could be raised to ensure everyone a much higher living standard, with those who work being willing to do so for more abstract rewards. I never imagined we would get to a point where in halo infinite despite such a high quality free to play game people take their skins that seriously they complain about them literally as hard as a more flawed game's issues like battlefield 2042, but here we are. But perhaps if we have several generations of the f2p basic income society I want, things will advance that much and concerns that seem stupid and petty now like grinding for cosmetics becomes the most pressing issue of our society. That would be wonderful. But sadly, I probably wouldn't be able to even grasp these debates given my current 21st century mindset much. 

Anyway, people always ask the question about who would work if we gave people a basic income. I counter by asking who would pay for freaking cosmetics in a f2p game? people do. And apparently they do it enough to make it a viable business model where even AAA developers are offering free games or at least free modes to paid games in some cases. 

My ideal society would work in a similar way. Everyone gets the basics, and then depending on the labor needs of society, we incentivize people through positive incentives to work. And while some might not work, many will, and as long as enough choose to voluntarily work under such a system, I don't see the problems with it. We get to solve poverty and make everyone's lives better, and it seems to me that the challenges and debates that would be had under such a society seem so petty and minor compared to the real issues we face in modern society. 

That isn't to say people will always be happy. Maybe some people would deem the tax system too unfair, or dislike free loaders, or think the cost of luxuries is too high or something like that. People are people, and I'm to the point of thinking people will always find something to complain about. Again, I dont think people become conservative as they get older as much as society changes to make people relatively conservative compared to it. It would be possible where given society changed enough in the direction I support it changing I would become the out of touch boomer while people would complain about something I deem petty while I talk about how I walked 5 miles in the snow to go to school. 

Conclusion

Anyway, I just felt like this was a good analogy through which to explain my indepentarian principles and how we can move from a society where everyone has to work, to one where everyone doesn't. I dont necessarily believe if people werent coerced to work that they wouldnt work. Rather, I think it depends on the incentive structure offered. Some absolutely would work regardless of coercion assuming we balanced incentives right. And I do believe that much like a f2p game can provide high quality experiences to gamers for free while still making money, on the large scale, we could do the same thing with society as a whole. The real question is changing peoples' attitudes to be accepting of such a society. Which is where we have our work cut out for us. Oh well, that's what this blog is for. To try to enlighten people to my way of thinking. Hopefully if you read this I changed your mind or at least got you thinking. 

Why the left's fight against "racism" seems futile to me, aka, why culture wars don't work

 So, I've been thinking about what I said in my previous post, and the post I made almost a month ago about people fearing the downfall of democracy, and I think I kind of came to a new realization of why I dislike the left's approach to fighting racism and blah blah blah..

It's essentially because I don't truly believe culture wars work through the methods they're trying to make them work though. 

As I've noted before, the SJW left is a lot like the religious right. They seem to want to impose their cultural views by force. They want to teach their ideas in schools, they want to punish people who don't support their ideas. They don't believe in free speech or freedom of expression. If you're racist, you're a bad person, and bad people need to be punished to stop them from being bad. It's an extremely authoritarian mindset and rubs me the wrong way on multiple levels.

You know, after I left the religious right in 2012, I went through a period where I was a bit of an anti culture warrior too. I believed that religion was one of the major things wrong with the world, and that if no one was religious, we would be able to have more reasonable discussions about things and progress as a society. I no longer believe that. 2016 onward have kind of beaten that out of me, as I watched the "intellectually superior" political left devolve into the same kinds of tribalism I expected from the right, and for the right to start finally breaking away from religion and back toward a more secular form of "fascism" under Donald Trump. Not to say we completely got rid of the religious aspects, but I kind of realize that if we solved the issues and made everyone not religious any more, it wouldn't solve the problems.

Also, I always tried to avoid using the same kinds of tactics SJWs do in trying to promote my ideas. The last thing I wanted to do was to galvanize the religious right against me on the basis that I want to "persecute" them. No. I might have thought their views were wrong and downright harmful to society, but I understood that they had a right to hold them, and that if I took away their right to do so, I would be the bad guy, and they would rightfully lash out against me. 

Now, that isn't to say I'm not willing to step in at times and preserve the rights of OTHERS when they come in conflict with peoples' religious rights (ie, yes, you have to provide employees with birth control as part of your health insurance, yes, you have to bake gay people a wedding cake, yes, you have to get vaccinated to ensure that people don't die from being exposed to your cooties). But, I'm not going to do so lightly. I'm not gonna act like I'm trying to actively stamp those ideas out of existence,. That IS persecution, and that is wrong. 

Racism, by the way, always felt under the same kinds of ideas that religion did for me at this time. Racism is a harmful view, but people have a right to be racist. And express racist views. And while I don't like those views, I believe that preserving peoples' right to be racist is a necessary component of free speech. I mean, if you really support free speech, you have to support the right if people you don't like to express their views publicly, without retaliation. 

That said, it really frustrates me to see the left in such an authoritarian way. And I can honestly say, I don't believe this approach would be harmful. Okay, so imagine you are like a fudnamentalist christian, and the left tries to push organized efforts to ban discussion of religion. Say you can't discuss those ideas on social media or you get banned. Say you cant express them publicly or you have people calling up your employer to get you fired, or you're trying to otherwise punish people for having these views.

Are you going to change your mind? Think about it, think of whatever views you hold dear, are you going to change your mind, if someone tries to forcefully stop you from having such views? No. At best, you might force those ideas underground. But you're not gonna eliminate them. You're just being an authoritarian ###hole who punishes people for having those views.

At worst, what might happen is such attempts to censor views might cause you to backlash and find solace with others who think like you, causing them to polarize themselves against you and organize, becoming a potentially dangerous counter force to your side of the aisle.

Well, congratulations, that's what you guys (SJWs) are doing with racists. You're not really making people less racist in trying such authoritarian tactics to force racism, you're polarizing people against you. You're driving them to Donald Trump. And places like voat instead of reddit. All this deplatforming nonsense just drives people deeper into their own echo chambers where they tend to develop their own alternative networks and social structures, which will just amplify those views. Being not represented in mainstream corporate media forced them to make their own corporate media in the form of Fox News, and more recently Newsmax, OAN, and the blaze. And honestly? I think a lot of fence sitters are so turned off by a lot of the behavior the left engages in that people who would otherwise be moderate, become more extreme. Because they dislike the left trying to repress them. They might not even have hardcore racist views themselves, but, they don't like being told what to do so they end up turning against the left as a result. 

I even saw a meme today where the SJWs went full stupid where they said "when you expose a racist student, you stop them from attending a university that will allow them to become a racist healthcare worker, teacher, lawyer, real estate developer, politicians, etc."

There is so much wrong with this statement.

First of all, you're talking teenagers and young adults who were indoctrinated by really bad influences in their youth. I see racism a lot like I see fundamentalist religion, as I keep pointing out. it's not really something that people get in a vacuum, or that they're going to always hold, etc. it's indoctrination. That said, what breaks indoctrination? Uh, going to college. Forcing people to confront views they otherwise wouldn't. Challenge them intellectually. So, by kicking out racist students, you're stopping them from learning, which means they will continue to be racist. Congratulations, you played yourselves.

Second of all, will the person kicked out of college actually change their tune by being kicked out? Hell no, you just made an enemy for life. We already have an anti intellectual problem in this country, where the right doesn't trust educational institutions, and this problem will just reinforce it and make it worse.

Third, they're gonna have to get a job anyway. You just forced them down the income and prestige ladder, basically to punish them. You do realize people need to work in society and this is coercion right? of course you do, you're trying to make it where they can't get a job and instead impose economic violence on them for having crappy views. But say they do get a job. Well, now your fast food worker is gonna be racist. Or your car mechanic. Or any other blue collar type job. And we all know white blue collar workers lean toward trumpism on the whole, so, once again, congratulations at just reinforcing that. 

So, what's my solution? Well, to a large extent I don't have one. I understand these ideas are here to stay, and I believe in working around them in order to minimize their damage. The thing about forcing a culture war is it doesn't work, and creates a backlash, while violating core principles we hold as a nation. We have to be tolerant of others, even those who are intolerant (yes, I hate the paradox of tolerance and believe it to be a hypocritical and harmful ideal). We gotta live with the fact that people will have crappy views. And if we want to encourage people to get out of those views, we need to do what new atheists believe we gotta do with religion. We gotta educate people. Instead of trying to punish racist people in college with kicking them out, why not subject them to mandatory critical race theory type classes? This is on the college level of course. Make them take credits in sociology to graduate. Ultimately, I believe the solution to the race issues is to deprogram people indoctrinated into that crap. And that relies on education, and engaging people in order to try to change their mind.

But we should NEVER EVER try to go the punitive route of trying to deplatform them and take away their rights. 

I guess a final reason I dislike culture war stuff is because I see it as a lot of effort for not a lot of return. The main role of politics should be to implement POLICY. We vote for leaders not to virtue signal about identity politics, but to pass policies that solve issues. And while I guess idpol can be important in politicking around these issues, ultimately, what matters is POLICY. And that said, when i look at politics, while I might make intellectual cases for shifting our values on things (I do it a lot with the anti work stuff), ultimately, I back up my values with policies. UBI, medicare for all, free college. All things that would make people much better off in an immediate and straightforward way. I feel like the left goes more for ideas that arent really felt by much of the population, and then they lose them as they end up being divisive. Nah, i'd rather go straight to solving problems.

On a policy level, I believe the best approach to racism is defensive. We preserve the rights of those who are underprivileged. We pass policies protesting people from discrimination, along with the basic color blind economic policies that benefit everyone, but in reality will benefit POC a lot more because, you know, poverty and lack of material security. 

I'm not gonna try to impose piecemeal policies with like a 30% approval rating that are divisive like racial quotas, or affirmative action, or reparations. We don't want to get in a battle where we're called out for taking opportunity away from whites to give to other people. That's dumb, that's how you lose people. You make it cost your typical average joe something and they'll turn against it. Because ultimately, most people care primarily about themselves and their own situation. Again, SJWs try to force people to care, and even sacrifice their own priorities on the altar of white liberal guilt, and that doesnt work.

People might not like my enlightened centrism and moderation on this topic. I tell them tough crap. I am a bit of a centrist on these issues these days. Maybe center left as I acknowledge the issues to some extent, but yeah, i'm not really die hard on solving it at all costs. Because I kind of believe the costs of doing so aren't worth it. If we force people to not be racist, they lose their freedom of speech and expression, opening the door for more attacks against other ideologies we don't like. Not to mention creating a polarizing counter movement which isn't good for the country. If we try to force people to give up something to solve the problem, the majority of people will turn against it.

The thing that gives my ideas strength, IMO, is that they're universal, and I can make a case to a majority of people that they will benefit from them. I can even calculate how much better off people will be under my UBI plan than they are now in a lot of instances. And those who do pay into the system are not just a minority, but they're arguably the most demonstrably materially best off among us. As you make more money, you pay more in taxes, and the top 20% pays in net. 70-80% benefit, 20-30% pay. That's fair, under utilitarian principles. 

And yeah. I know, I'm starting to ramble now. But that's how I see things. All things considered, I don't believe the left can win a fight against racism as they are. They're just going to end up driving it if anything and make the problem worse as their methods are heavy handed and polarizing. The downside of trying to cast racists out of polite society is that you're just concentrating them all in one place and making them a political force to be reckoned with. Which NO ONE wants. So stop it. You guys might not want to hear it, but you gotta live with these people. The goal is to educate them and minimize the impacts of their harmful views, not take the bull by the horns only to get bucked.