Kyle Kulinski goes to town on Andrew Yang

 So, I had the privilege of watching Kyle Kulinski really go to town on Andrew yang and his enlightened centrist schtick lately. He discusses a tweet in which Yang talks about how Kyrsten Sinema is now an independent and how most people are independents these days and want a sane and rational third choice.

Except...just because many of us are independents, we don't want enlightened centrism. I'm an independent in my mind, because I dont mindlessly support either party. Even if I like the democrats more than the republicans, I obviously have expressed distaste with democrats in the past, and I have voted for third parties. And most research ive done on independents does imply that they clearly do have partisan leanings despite claiming to dislike both parties.

And honestly, a lot of people hate Kyrsten Sinema because she sells out the democrats. Even though the democrats arent popular because they cant govern like a crap and are almost seized by this obsession with enlightened centrism, their agenda largely is, and many left leaning independents want the democrats to go further in that direction, supporting initiatives like...Bernie Sanders' run for president, or ironically, Andrew Yang's 2020 platform.

But...Yang sold that out, and Kyle had scathing criticism of that, pointing out that he used to be the UBI guy and he ain't even that any more. And that right there is my core criticism of him. I don't mind him starting a third party, if anything I was a day 1 supporter. I dont mind him not having a position on every issue. After a while it does get exclusionary and it is better to unite people with diverse backgrounds around a few core topics. BUT...and this is where Yang goes wrong...you need SOME unifying policy and principles other than "two party system bad." I know it's bad. Wanna know how I know it's bad? Because i want to pass policy into law neither party is willing to openly embrace. And Yang, being on the same page as me in theory knows that. But, giving up those principles to embrace the enlightened centrist circlejerk IS bad. 

You guys read my blog I assume, you know what I'm about. You know I was actually quite at home in the original third party that still stuck with its human centered capitalist roots. And the evolution toward a third party movement was positive. I watched the democrats through 2021, I was extremely alienated, yang came along, and then he turned around and alienated me.

Kyle even pointed out a criticism I've been making too, that Yang has just remade the same old third way BS of the democrats. He's not wrong. Yang has done that. And it's even worse. At least the democrats tried to do some good things. Yang has just gone so peak enlightened centrism I can't support forward at all any more. It's just a circlejerk of uselessness that puts the democrats to shame. 

I just can't support that party in its current form, and the fact that Yang was trying to signal to Kyrsten Sinema to possibly join is just the strongest self condemnation the party could do. because her centrism is just everything I hate about the democrats already, magnified. Sinema took it to such an obscene level even the neolibs hate her. And honestly, I saw a thread on the forward party subreddit (complete cesspit of enlightened centrism these days, btw), where when someone suggested she join forward the other day, even those guys were like "please, god, no." Not even most of THEM want her. That's how much Sinema sucks as a politician. 

Honestly, the reason I come down so hard on forward is the same reason I come down hard on the democrats. I WAS a supporter. I want to be a supporter. But...this ain't it, dawg. This is not it. I can't support this. I have a conscience. I have ideals and policy I want implemented. I can't abandon it for...this. I'm sorry, I cannot. Remember what I said about purity testing. It's fine to do it a little bit. it's fine to take a list of say, 5-10 things and say "this is what I want, but the rest I can compromise on somewhat." Well, UBI is that purity test. Universal healthcare is that purity test. Free college and student loan forgiveness is that purity test. A climate plan is that purity test. Housing is that purity test. And then, maybe, if we have time, ranked choice voting, open primaries, and independent redistricting is somewhere below that. Even some social issues like abortion access probably score higher on my priority list than that stuff. Stopping a fascist takeover of the US via the maga movement is more important than that stuff. 

I hate the two party system. I like third parties. I am open and willing to vote third parties, but they have to present an amenable vision to vote for. Yang's current party does not provide this. It is a party of empty platitudes and a couple goals so narrow that while I support them i dont find them compelling in and of themselves to support a movement solely based around them. Yang needs to wake up. His 2020 platform was largely brilliant, although he even had flaws there in terms of execution because the dude is just so wishy washy. But this new movement is just peak cringe.

Discussing the Christian history of public assistance and its contradictions, as well as the reciprocity objection to UBI

 So, I'm not really necessarily sold on the book idea I mentioned previously, but I am investigating it. To be fair it's been something I've had in mind for a while, and a lot of books I've read over the past year were because I wanted to consider writing my own, but I don't just want to copy everyone else's, I want to actually build my own brand and make my own arguments. This makes things harder than I thought. There are plenty of basic guides to UBI. And now I'm reading Philippe Van Parijs' "A Radical Proposal for a Free and a Sane Society". It's been on my list for a while, and given my renewed drive on the subject, I ended up going with this one. 

And it's good. Unfortunately it does do a lot of the work for me where he argues for UBI far more persuasively I can. But, I did read a chapter discussing the history of public assistance, and there was something in there that did relate back to my previous premise about the world not being "fallen" and how we got to get out of the thumb of Christianity and its influence on modern society. That said, i would like to discuss the Christian history of social assistance and how it is full of contradictions that lead to it being an inherently bad policy vs something like a basic income.

The earliest forms of social assistance were based on two conflicting principles, which both arose from Christianity. The first is that Christians have a duty to be charitable and care for the poor. The second is that such charity and care should not be so generous to allow people to not work, because "those who do not work shall not eat." Christianity cares about solving poverty, but it insists on doing so through getting people into employment and working. For much of social assistance's history, this has led to a rather cruel and authoritarian welfare state. For much of history from the 1500s on, social assistance was contingent with one's willingness to work, with the poor over thrown into work houses (the same ones considered cruel in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"), and those not willing to work being forced into hard labor. Society couldn't just give people a minimum income and not work, no, it has to be cruel, it has to be punitive, it has to try to pressure people to work, because idleness is the source of much evil in Christian mindsets. This mindset has been prevalent for much of modern society, and persists to this very day. While early public assistance was replaced with social insurance to some extent, it is still contingent on one's past labor contributions, so that the argument is framed that people "earned" these benefits. Society is still very much the idea of giving someone something for nothing.

I could almost, kind of sort of be sympathetic to the argument of pressuring people into work if it were based on some form of structural functionalism, the idea that if we did NOT do such a thing, society would fall apart as people would become lazy, never work, and lead to an overall collapse in productivity, with leads to scarcity, which leads to poverty and starvation. Putting aside the religious dogma associated with the idea of original sin, and crap like "those who don't work don't eat", I could find that convincing, if it were true.

As we know from studying basic income, it's not really true. Assuming a UBI is truly basic and set near the poverty level at least, and that the marginal tax rates associated with it are not completely crushing (<70% or so), we find that there is still plenty of incentive to work within a capitalist structure. Chandra Pasma's "Working Through the Work Disincentive" has actually looked into the 1970s studies in detail and found only a 13% labor reduction on average, which is more than sustainable in the grand scheme of things in my personal opinion. Many more modern studies seem to show much less work effort reduction, to the point that there is no statistically significant difference from traditional coercive social welfare. That said, I am hard pressed to truly view the idea of work reductions to be a problem in a modern context. Most arguments against UBI are based on a more normative, subjective ground, and that's really where I think my own talents and journey on this subject really qualify me to discuss this subject in detail. 

The fact is, our society has this almost religious obsession with jobs. After reading this chapter of Van Parijs' book, I'm actually reminded it's not quite an almost religious obsession, it IS a religious obsession. The protestant work ethic is what underpins much of our modern approach to work, where we buy into the dogma of jobism, the idea that jobs are the solution to any and all social ills associated with capitalism. We don't talk about giving people money, except within the paradigm of either limited public assistance based on those christian principles, or social insurance, we talk about giving them jobs. All during the great recession, we had an obvious shortage of work while there being no real material shortages in the economy (if anything it seemed that things were just very poorly distributed because of our obsession with jobs and work), and rather than encouraging people to work less, we encouraged the creation of more jobs. Jobs jobs jobs, and more jobs. The solution to everything is jobs. It really is like this collective mental illness we have, that is borne out of literal religious dogma. Max Weber talked about this too. According to 8 bit philosophy, he saw capitalism as an iron cage which keeps people on a treadmill of working just to survive, and subjecting people to extreme levels of anxiety in order to keep going. To me, this leads to a rather hellish existence, which is a huge reason that I have come out so hard against this stuff.

With me, I'm a bit different. I have no religious faith in Christianity by this point, and in re-evaluating my worldview from a secular humanist perspective, and rethinking work and what it actually is, what its purpose is, and our pathological obsession with it, I've come to realize that yes, a lot of it does seem to go back to religious faith, as well as other things, and that as someone who drifts more toward nihilism and absurdism in my approach toward morality, preferring largely subjective and human made moral systems over objective "god given" ones, that I really don't identify with the concept of having a purpose and needing to work for my own good. And as I regained my spirituality somewhat through a more new age perspective, yeah, if I have any purpose at all, it's to challenge this crap. 

So, I just don't identify with it, I dont identify with the underlying value systems, and I really just resent this stuff. I HATE the idea that we all spend our lives working like sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill. I hate this religious devotion to this idea of jobs and productivity and wish the concept would just die already.

Honestly, a criticism I get a lot of my views on this subject really does seem to come back to things like "well how do I handle the reciprocity objection" and other similar things. Well, I may have answered this before, but to put it simply, here's my honest to god opinion of the reciprocity objection. I do not feel like it is worth addressing directly. Because the reciprocity objection is based on an underlying moral system that has all of this religious nonsense in it. Keep in mind, if we start from a rather morally nihilistic perspective, all social structures are human made. There is no inherent morality behind them outside of whatever their functional purpose is, and most stuff comes down to peoples' collective preferences that they end up forcing upon everyone through the state. Property rights are subjective. Division of labor is subjective. And while there are arguably functional reasons behind these things that we should perhaps consider or take pause of, reciprocity is ultimately a normative argument based on a specific set of beliefs which evolved out of this christian work ethic. By addressing it directly, I acknowledge the validity of the underlying belief system and I limit myself by being forced to contort my own answer to fit that value system, which hobbles my ability to properly address it.

For me, the solution to the reciprocity objection is to largely ignore it. Because it IS a normative argument, and ideas like that only have as much power as we give them, and I refuse to give such an idea any power. 

But, to put things another way, why should anyone who works give you money that you didn't work for? Shouldn't laborers be entitled to the full value of their labor? This is an interesting statement because it could be made either by an anti taxation right winger, or by a marxist arguing from a labor theory of value perspective. So, let me address that in my own way. When looking at the relationship between work and income, we need to recognize it for what it really is. A relationship based on structural functionalism. The reason we pay people to work is to incentivize them to work. If income wasn't to some extent tied to work, then people would not work unless coerced another way. I can acknowledge that fine. BUT, as we discussed above, a UBI and taxation associated with it would not dramatically threaten that relationship in itself and there will still be plenty of positive incentives to contribute to society. The reason I choose to remain within capitalism rather than support another system, like say socialism, is because socialism requires a reinventing of the wheel, while the incentive structure of capitalism does have positive aspects here. I just believe it needs to be adjusted a bit to be significantly less coercive. Assuming a UBI works, and work incentive remains intact, well, I really don't have a problem with redistribution.

"But", and you might say as you feel anger and outrage rising within you, "that just isn't fair! I worked for the money, I should be entitled to it!", well, let me again remind you that such an argument is normative. This is a subjective fairness argument. It is not a practical argument. And to interject my own normative system, I believe that reducing the sway of work over our lives is more important than one's sense of fairness in this situation. if anything, this idea that we must all work for a living and we must all work for ourselves with zero responsibility for another is the core source of most suffering under capitalism. We will never get away from work as a concept, we will never get away from full employment, and we will never solve poverty. Our ideas will continue to be dysfunctional like those generations of the past, and we will never truly solve the "work" problem. Solving the work problem and working less overall inevitably means at some point we're going to have to swallow our pride on the subject and acknowledge that moving in the right direction means future generations are not going to suffer as much as they did, and will not be subject to the same coercive forces that enslaved you in your own life. And if you cannot accept that mentally, because it causes so much anguish and invalidates your suffering in this life time, well, then we're going to have a problem. Because UBI activists have a term for this mindset. It's known as crab mentality. It's based on the idea of crabs in a bucket, and how any one crab trapped in a bucket could easily climb out of it, but the second one tries, the others try to drag it back down into the bucket so none of them can escape. If you are not letting people escape the idea that we need to work for a living, then you are one of those crabs in the bucket dragging everyone down.

Besides, to make another argument, under my system, everyone gets a UBI, so everyone can make the same choices. Sure, it is unfair to force some people to work so others can live off of the proceeds obligation free. Why should you suffer so others have it easy? The answer is that no one should suffer like that involuntarily. That's the point of UBI being unconditional. Conditional welfare breeds resentment as the working classes go on about how they work so hard while someone else gets something for free. Under a UBI, you ALL get something for free, and you ALL are free to make the same choices with your income. If you choose to work, while someone else chooses not to, you should not feel injured because you made a different choice than they did under roughly similar circumstances. The fact that you have more expensive tastes and feel a need to live in an area with a higher cost of living or a need to work for a higher standard of living is inherently your choice. if they managed to make it on a UBI near the poverty line, then that is their choice and they should not be begrudged just because you chose differently. If you still aren't convinced by that, then you are still likely holding on to some resentment of someone else getting something for nothing for whatever reason. Maybe you do adopt the religious ideology that everyone be forced to work under authoritarian means. Maybe you are still bitter and resentful, despite obviously choosing a different choice than someone else. Or maybe you're simply one of the 20-25% of people who would be made worse off on a UBI as their tax burden would exceed their UBI itself, in which case you are literally making more than anyone else in the country post UBI anyway, and I really have little sympathy here. The fact is, at some point, I just have to stop caring what you think and write you off as an acceptable loss. I have nothing else to say to you at this point. You just value different things than I do.

I view myself as a social libertarian. This is like being a social liberal or a social democrat, but with a more libertarian bend. And all of this UBI and anti work stuff is precisely what gives me that libertarian bend. I view public assistance as based on old school religious views that have more of a hint of authoritarianism wrapped up in religious dogma. Such people take a cruel and contradictory stance toward social assistance, feeling the need to take care of the poor, while also forcing them to work. And because for me, this idea that we are all coerced to work under capitalism is the core problem with it. If we resolved that, we would eliminate poverty, people would be freer to live as they please, and would be able to self actualize on their own terms. People would live happier, healthier lives, than they are under a society in which we are all forced to work because of these old religious ideas that really don't have much validity. In my world view, the true moral crisis of our society is that we are still stuck in these old ideas in which our main goal seems to be to force people into work, rather than taking care of their needs directly and letting them live as they choose. So for me, the solution to our modern economic ills isn't more jobs, it's guaranteeing peoples' basic needs and letting them be free to make their own decisions. Where society goes from there is up to it, and from there we can reevaluate things an focus on the next set of problems. Whereas traditional ideologies are going to have this authoritarian or paternalistic streak in them to try to modify or micromanage their behavior, I just want to give people access to their needs while otherwise minimizing the role of the government in their lives.

Kyrsten Sinema leaves the democratic party...nananana hey hey hey, goodbye!

 So, Kyrsten Sinema is practically Arlen Spectering herself. Remember Arlen Specter, the GOP senator from PA who I regularly reference in terms of how the democrats should treat moderates who don't go along them, and how the GOP ran him out of the party and got Toomey in instead? Yeah, that's basically what seems to be happening here.

It's been floated for a while that Arizona might wanna primary her if she runs on the democratic ticket. So instead she's going to run as an independent. No primary, no problem. Except, her leaving the party is a bit more insidious. Unlike Specter, who tried to join the democrats, Sinema is going to be an independent. What's the logic behind this? Well, democrats didnt like Specter either and he lost their primary. She can't run as a republican or she'll lose. So she's instead running as an independent, hoping to appeal to the enlightened centrist vote. This serves as a warning to the democrats not to run anyone against her because she will split the vote and that whackjob Keri Lake will win if she runs again. She's trying to jockey for the kind of treatment the likes of Bernie Sanders and Angus King get, where they're not democrats, but get the blessing from the democrats to keep their seats. After all, if the democrats run anyone it would split the vote, and it would backfire.

Except...ya know what? In this situation, I'm fine with the democrats running someone. Here's the thing. Given the incumbency problem in this country, once these people get in power, it's hard to dislodge them until they voluntarily retire or unless they majorly piss off their constituents, which Sinema did by taking the compromise and incrementalism thing so far even the neolibs are getting pissed off with it. She is one of the two logjams sabotaging Biden's agenda and stopping the senate from being able to do anything despite dems having control of it. And you know what? I'm fine with just purging her from the party. If she loses her election, she's done, she's probably not coming back, if she did she would get like 1% of the vote, and the democrats would just run someone who actually plays ball like Mark Kelly, the other senator from AZ. 

And you know what? That's what the republicans do. I recommend people read What's the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank to look at how the GOP did things in the 2000s and early 2010s. There were the same problems the current democratic party has between moderates and more right leaning voters, and the right leaning voters just freaking voted out their moderate candidates. Moderates tried to play their games to stay in power there too, but the voters wouldn't have it. That's the culture between the left and the right. The democrats kiss up to moderates and put incrementalism and compromise on a pedestal. The republicans were fine with losing one election, and temporarily getting some democrats into power in order to play the long game. Then the GOP came back with the tea party and after and boom, they dont have a moderate problem any more. If anything they're going too extreme.

I would advise against going as extremely populist as the GOP did. They're going full steam toward fascism at this point, although it looks like there's a glimmer of hope with the 2022 mid terms and how suddenly, people are gaining a conscience and dumping trump and his Jan 6th crap. I mean, I know how obnoxious and extreme the far leftists like the socialists, the Bernie Bros (which I used to consider myself one), and the SJWs can get, but there's a sane middle ground there. I just want social democracy. And in this case, we're expelling one moderate member who pretty much showed herself out and sabotaged Biden's relatively weak and already watered down agenda. I'm FINE with running her out, even at the temporary cost of that seat, and then installing someone more progressive in 2030. Honestly, that's how bad our political situation is. While the GOP is extreme, the centrist dems literally do hold the system hostage trying to save their own legacies and political careers by playing these games of chicken with their voters. And while I admit that calling the dems on their BS is painful, especially given the radical nature of the modern GOP...the alternative is being stuck with these moderates who constantly sabotage progress while using the threat of said radical GOP as the alternative to them.

At some point, something HAS to give. And I'm fine with just expelling Sinema like the cancer that she is, because you know what? if it werent for moderates like that, we would have student loan forgiveness through CONGRESS. We could weaken the filibuster. We could strengthen abortion protections federally. We could get a half decent climate bill and save this planet from cooking itself. Ya know? I'm not saying biden's agenda is great, it's kinda the bare minimum all things considered. BUT, we can't even get THAT. Why? because of crapheads like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

AZ is a state that has gone increasingly blue in the post McCain era there. It's kind of astonishing how fast they've shifted from being a pretty safe red state to a purple state, and it's one of the few states the dems' new "southern strategy" seems to be working in (the other being Georgia). And it's not even that moderate. Outside of Sinema, they're electing pretty mainline democrats. We're not getting Bernies or AOCs from them. But we can do better than Sinema. So yeah. Expel her like the cancer she is, and replace her with another Mark Kelly. That's my stance on it at least.

THIS. WORLD. IS. NOT. "FALLEN!"

 So, another friend of mine died this year. This makes #2 this year. And much like the first one, I watched their funeral livestreamed online. We weren't super close, but we did talk on occasion, generally about politics and about PC gaming. Shortly before he died he actually told me I should write a book on UBI. I tend to struggle with organizing my thoughts in a book format though, and tend to do a lot better with the free form nature of this blog. Once I start trying to put it in book form I lock up and ugh. Hence why I haven't, and why I end up writing here instead.

But yeah, I watched his funeral online. And it was a Christian funeral. No disrespect to him, or the other person who has died this year (as they also had an explicitly Christian funeral), but please, for the love of God, if I die, I don't want a Christian funeral. I don't want some pastor talking about Jesus. A funeral is supposed to be discussing the life of the person who died. Celebrating it, mourning what was lost, etc. Talk about UBI and human centered capitalism at my funeral. Play Rammstein songs like "Zeit" and "Adieu" rather than songs about Jesus. Maybe "Attack of the Dead Men" by Sabaton if you wanna get trolly, or "Ich Weiss Es Nicht" by Lindemann, which is arguably about reincarnation (and probably more theologically correct than the Christian stuff in my humble opinion).

Anyway, I couldn't help but cringe through most of it, and while I was going to try to work on the book idea, I got writer's block again, and I felt like writing a quick blurb here.

Christians tend to have a very dismal worldview toward this life. Their entire perspective is based on the idea that this world is "fallen" and that that's why bad things happen. That's why my friend died, according to them. Because some mofos ate an apple 6000 years ago, we all have to suffer. We all have to die. He died in a car accident, because some fricker 6000 years ago ate an APPLE (or a fig, it doesn't have to be an apple and that's a western retelling of the story). How screwed up is that? It kind of infuriates me, as a non Christian. Like in the primitive days of humans, this was arguably the best they could do to explain the way the world was, but in our modern era, we should do much better. Our world is the result of billions of years of playing out from the big bang, with evolution being the big thing that defines us biologically. And while I do believe there is potentially a soul component there, I can't NOT believe in such a mindset given what I've experienced at this point, but that doesn't mean we should settle for the answers Christianity offers. 

I mean, I believe in an old earth, I believe humans have evolved from more primitive monkey forms, and that we have emerged over a long period of time. I do not believe god made this perfect earth where nothing bad ever happens and that we all must suffer because someone ate a piece of fruit they weren't supposed to some time along the way. That seems really screwed up actually. My friend died for a crime that he didnt commit. And while yes he arguably committed all crimes, the idea of this overly authoritarian god who just keeps track of all of the crimes we commit against his nature like he's santa claus except we're all on the naughty list seems kinda screwed up. Ya know?

And this actually does have political implications too. As a matter of fact, the entire worldview that my views on work and UBI are based on are based explicitly on a rejection of the Christian worldview. After all, why must we work? Well according to the Biblical worldview, it's because some mofo ate a piece of fruit. Everything wrong with the world is because some mofo ate a piece of fruit. And because some mofo ate a piece of fruit, we all have to toil to grow our own food, because god kicked us out of his house like an angry parent kicking their kid to the curb on their 18th birthday. "Don't drink the alcohol", then proceeds to NOT get a lock for the liquor cabinet, and then kicks him out because he got drunk once or something. That's the modern day equivalent of this story. No other reason. Just...you shouldnt have drank the liquor, so now you must suffer, and your children must suffer. And because the Biblical worldview is literally based on a single couple inbreeding their way to growing the species, we're all guilty. Kind of messed up.

But yeah. This is why, according to Christians, we must all be doomed to toil for a life of work, and we must all suffer the pains of childbirth, and everything wrong goes back to the moral equivalent of one's kid drinking some alcohol after their friend dared them to and they didn't lock it up properly. It's stupid. This worldview is stupid.

I wouldn't mind leaving the past in the past and letting stories be stories, but sadly, a large plurality of Americans take this stuff literally. Literally 40% of this country believe in creationism. Literal. Freaking, 6 day, creationism. And sadly, a lot of "liberals" who are still religious don't fall far from the tree. The result is a world in which a vast majority of people do not have a worldview in which they can properly discuss the real reasons things are the way they are. They are literally living in plato's cave, hence the name of this blog, and its reference to my deconversion from Christianity in 2012. They see the world as shadows of what it actually is, they do not see it, itself, clearly. So as a result, all of their conclusions that they derive from that clouded worldview are themselves unreliable and factually incorrect. Including their views about work.

If we instead adopt a secular, or hell, even a new age view, as I would classify my current epistemological views as closer to new age, then the world looks a lot different. And honestly, I would say at this point, the differences between a secular view and my new age view are pretty minimal. Both tend to come from a position of moral nihilism, the idea that all human morality is subjective and created by humans rather than derived by an angry god seeking to punish us over a piece of fruit, and the idea that the world is what we make of it.

As a matter of fact, my political views ARE secular, as I still deem the whole first amendment and constitutional test under Lemon v Kurtzman to be the best way to approach the subject. Laws should ultimately be secular, because let's face it, my spiritual views are based on personal revelation, not scientific truth that is externally verified and demonstrated to the proper scientific confidence levels, and I have no business legislating morality simply based on them. Rather, I must base my views on secularism. I would argue my secular phase was literally designed by the divine in my own personal life plan to bestow this knowledge onto me, and now I use it to make my case. Against the Christian worldview. But I digress, you shouldn't believe anything I say just because I say so. The whole point is that you SHOULD go by the secular perspective of questioning everything and building up knowledge from the epistemological level of nihilism up. 

And when you do that, you get a much different view of human institutions. Suddenly laws aren't these black and white idea of right and wrong that can never be challenged. Rather, everything is up to debate and the only things that should be taken seriously are the ideas that can be argued for successfully via the standards of reason, evidence, and science.

My idea of human centered capitalism rests completely on this idea. The idea is that morality is largely subjective, and all institutions exist to serve people. Including work. Why do we work? We work to produce the things we want and need. That's it. That's why we work. Work is painful, it's a burden, it's annoying, we would rather ideally be doing something else, but it has to be done, in order to produce what we want and need. For needs, doing such things is non negotiable as we literally need them to survive. With wants, things are a lot more subjective, and whatever choice we make between productivity and work life balance are ultimately...up to us, as people.

We have this society that still acts as if work is necessary for human thriving. It is a punishment from God, and we must all do it. I would argue that work is a drudgery that should be minimized. The purpose of human progress isn't just to make more stuff and increase living standards, but also to WORK LESS. We just assume that the work aspect is necessary, and whatever amount of productivity increases we make from technology, automation, etc, we just keep forcing people to work 40+ hours a week and seeking full employment to maximize GDP. We act like this one number is an end all to the value of our society. We don't value the idea of having time. Time is money, and you better be spending it to make money or you're a lazy piece of crap. Why yes, maybe I am lazy. Maybe because I understand that this is all a load of crap. As I see it, we should be working less, and freeing people from the coercion to work at all, within our means to do so of course. If we could automate the jobs and all work less, we should do so. The way society is currently structured, we tend to just automate jobs, throw people onto unemployment, try to make new jobs to do, and then force them to take them. To me, it just leads to this existence to be hellish. Rather, we should strive to make this existence heaven on earth, as much as possible. We need to stop making utopianism a bad word, as the right defines the terms of debate. We should strive for utopia. That doesn't mean we'll ever get there. But we should try. And we should do it responsibly, without falling into the pitfalls of the past.

And you know what, maybe I should write that freaking book. I'm fired up now. This actually is a good premise to organize it around. After all, everything in my worldview flows from this premise. That Christianity is wrong. That we work our lives away for nothing. That life is what we make it and we currently let a bunch of old mythology define what it is for us. A huge issue I've had with the idea of making a book is the idea of "okay well theres dozens of books on the subject out there, what can I do that's different"? Maybe this.

I can't promise anything here, I mean, again. I write here on this blog and given the lack of structure this stuff FLOWS. I try to write a book and suddenly, I'm writer's blocked. Maybe it will happen again and I'm best off just posting my crap here. I don't know. We'll see where this goes.

Obviously if I am writing a book I'll be writing less here. Of course you'll always get random blurbs here, like this one.

Should workers be able to strike in critical industries?

 So, I wanted to go a bit more into what I think about this, since the rail strike seems to have brought the issue to a head, and I feel like I should discuss it.

I kind of feel sympathetic to both sides. I despite my anti work stance, I value a functioning society and don't support my ideals conflicting with that. But at the same time, if people are effectively forced to work, then that's de facto slavery to me. If strikes happen, they can cripple the nation. Rail strikes could shut down our logistics infrastructure in many ways. And imagine what would happen if hospital workers striked and people on life support risked dying. I mean, the consequences of strikes and fights for worker rights can be destructive in some cases. Also consider the fact that in some cases, workers' demands become too much for the economy to sustain. That's why the fed tends to balance unemployment with inflation. If unemployment gets too low and bargaining power increases too much, inflation is the result. Workers demand more money and better working conditions. Businesses are forced to give them but pass on costs to the customer. Everything costs more. People complain about cost of living increases. They demand more money. The cycle continues. At some point the government DOES need to step in and just say "ENOUGH!"

At the same time if the rights of workers are curtailed too much, they can end up over worked and not having their demands listened to. This is what I feel like is happening with rail workers. Sure these workers are well paid, but they put up with a metric crapton of crap. And for them it isn't even about the pay, it's about the hours, lack of sick pay, and working conditions. The same is arguably said of the hospital industry. I know a lot of people who work in healthcare make good money. It's a highly skilled industry that pays extremely well, which is why people seek employment there. But...the conditions are horrid. Extremely long hours being arguably the worst aspect of it. And of course, workers are just expected to endure it and are guilted by employers to put up with the crap as striking would be screwing their patients. 

Honestly, I could arguably see an argument against organized labor pushing strikes in critical industries, as doing that would cripple the country, and possibly kill people in some industries. BUT...I also feel like workers should be accommodated too. I guess, given my UBI oriented "indepentarian" mindset, perhaps UBI is a superior solution here. After all, UBI gives people individual rights and the ability to say no, not just to any job, but all jobs. And it could arguably fix the market. The problem seems to be that given the forced labor social contract we have, most grievances are solved with throwing money at the problem. Hence why rail and medical workers can be paid so well, but still have to put up with hellish working conditions. You're gonna have to get a job somewhere so might as well get paid well, right? But if people were free not to work at all, they might choose not to, and employers might have to actually cave on the actual working conditions to draw workers back. In some cases it's not about the money. It's about the working conditions. 

And of course, UBI putting quitting in the hands of the individual rather than an organized movement, people could quit without shocking the economy. Rather than a union shutting down the entire industry at once and crippling the country as a result, people would quit. And they would have trouble hiring. But some would still work in those industries. And of course, employers would have to rely on appealing to workers to draw people to those industries. After all, most people do want to work to some extent, but they want to be treated well, have work life balance, and be paid decently well. I personally would rather work a job for say, $40k that gives me a decent work life balance than one that pays $120k but makes me work 80 hour weeks. No amount of money is worth my soul. What's the point in working a job that i give my life to working, only to be able to afford a house and a fancy car i never use but going to and from work? What's the point in being able to afford any luxury i want if i never have time to enjoy it? That's the paradox of modern American capitalism. People with time are poor. People who make good money have no time to do anything. Maybe I'm "lazy", but hey, maybe Doreen Ford was onto something when she said laziness is a virtue. 

But yes, maybe UBI really IS the solution here, as it gives people money, lets them choose to go where they want in life, but it likely wouldn't shut down critical industries.

Mind you, I don't think striking should be illegal for the most part. But if the industries really are that critical to the well being of the nation, then perhaps there should be a mechanism to break organized labor when needed, while still preserving its ability to operate as much as possible. 

I think the problem here comes down to the "traditional left" and their simultaneous love for work, and belief that withholding labor in an organized is a necessary part of their model to gain concessions from employers. It just causes leftists to put their faith in organized labor, which creates this dilemma in the first place. They simultaneously believe in forcing people to work, and their mechanism for solving disputes is workers shutting down the entire industry to force concessions. If people weren't forced to work, and people were given individual power to withhold their labor, perhaps the attrition would force employers to respond to demands without threatening the core industries.

After all, they would lose workers, but not all of them at once, and they would be forced to eventually make changes to attract new workers, while still having some do some of the work to keep the core of the industry afloat, if that makes sense. It would put pressure on employers to increase wages and improve working conditions without shutting down the entire industry.

Idk, that's just my take on it. Generally speaking I value the right to say no over more traditional organized means to improve the work place. The left just values collective action too much and I feel like that's its achilles heel, for better or for worse. I feel like my solutions could probably give both sides what they want. We can keep industries running, while using the macro effects of the economy to force concessions for workers. It's possible it may not work as well as I think it would, as either the fed would reduce the number of jobs available to keep things in favor of workers, but if those jobs aren't necessary for the economy then that's their prerogative. It's also possible that UBI won't be high enough to guarantee a true freedom to say no, but I still would support the highest SUSTAINABLE amount to give people the most rights possible.

Keep in mind, I'm an idealist, but I also temper that with pragmatism. I do understand it's possible that an economy with true freedom to not work may be a while off, but I would like to push society in that direction as much as humanly possible. I also understand that beyond a certain point, workers can demand more than an economy can reasonably sustain, and in that sense, their push for better pay and working conditions might just lead to higher costs for society in the form of inflation and the like. I'm okay with labor bending society to get what it wants, but once things start to actually break and fall apart, uh...yeah it can go too far.

Again, I support what can be SUSTAINABLY done. if it isn't sustainable, then at some point the government is gonna have to step in and tell people no. Some leftists might not like that, but they are also tribalistic and not looking at the big picture.

As far as going back to the railroad strikes, yes, I absolutely believe that the Biden administration, if they truly care about stability, rather than just forcing workers to put up with crappy conditions while increasing pay to shut them up, they should push the railroad industry to treat people better in the first place. This isn't a matter of what they're asking being unsustainable or too much. You could have either pushed for more pay (and given they're already making 6 figures, that's arguably enough), or better working conditions. They should have chosen better working conditions. Isn't it better to make $130k a year and have sick days and weekends off than $160k a year and be a de facto slave? Seriously. Think about it. So yeah, throwing more money at them and declaring their strikes illegal is stupid. I'm more discussing the concept of critical industries vs worker rights/freedoms in a more abstract environment with this post, using the above situation as a springboard.

Looks like the democrats are trying to rig 2024's primaries before they even start again

 Before I begin, calm your crap down, I don't mean "rig" in the same way Trumpers do, for reference. There are no random boxes of mail in ballots that guarantee the results for democrats or whatever. What I mean by "rig" is "influence the circumstances surrounding the election to guarantee a specific desired outcome". For example, in 2016, the democrats used their media influence to astroturf for Hillary Clinton and push her as the "inevitable" option that we had to vote for or else, with alternatives being buried, hidden, or subject to adverse conditions. That and how super Tuesday was front loaded with southern states that trend toward the more conservative nominee to discourage people in more progressive and swing states from supporting the more progressive option.

They did this again in 2020 with the South Carolina Primary and Super Tuesday with encouraging all of the other moderates to get out and back Joe Biden, leading to a landslide in his favorite while the primary up to that point was going in Bernie's favor.

Kyle Kulinski discussed the issue tonight for 2024. Apparently they want to replace the Iowa caucus with another state. Now, don't get me wrong, I support doing away with the current primary system. Iowa is NOT a very relevant state for politics. It's small, it leans red these days, it isn't really a good indicator of anything. New Hampshire is small but at least it's a swing state. So what are they going to replace Iowa with? South Carolina.

...

Okay, can we just get the elephant out of the room here? Here is exactly why the democrats seem to LOVE south carolina. It's full of these old (50+) black voters who are rural conservatives and support the establishment wing of the democratic party unquestioningly. The democrats love to elevate the opinions of people like these under the guise of "promoting diversity" or something, or doing this weird SJW circlejerk of "elevating black voices", but in reality, it's basically because these guys will vote for any centrist that they throw out there. They supported Clinton in 2016, Biden in 2020, and if South Carolina goes first, as Kyle points out, well, the result is going to be that it will dictate the terms of how the rest of the primary will go. Biden will win in a landslide, it will be the big news of the cycle, and the rest of the primaries will be an uphill battle of "Biden is inevitable." And if you dare question the narrative, they will call you a racist. The democrats LOVE hiding behind black voters because it allows them to play their BS little SJW rhetorical games. When they win they circlejerk about "OMG T3H BL4CK V0TE, T3H BL4CK V0T3!" and go on like "you see you WHITE progressives, you don't understand BLACK people." 

Now, I want to make this clear. I'm not saying this to be racist at all. I have nothing against black people. I really don't want to make an issue out of this. But given that this is how the democratic establishment weaponizes politics, and given how the intent behind doing this is to INDUCE discomfort in discussing the subject in a critical light, it's necessary to do. The fact is, the democrats make this an issue by motivating these voters specifically on the basis of race, push politics specifically on the basis of race, and if you push back at all, boom, you must be racist. No. I'm just telling it like it is. The democrats are weaponizing this stuff in order to promote their own brand of politics and displace any challengers who want something different.

There's NO real reason, other than to promote Biden or whatever centrist replaces him if he chooses not to run as the presumptive nominee. South Carolina is not a strategically important state for democrats in the general election. They can't win South Carolina to save their lives, outside of like, LITERALLY ONE blue district that happens to contain both Charleston and Columbia (the two largest cities) and looks blatantly gerrymandered. It's not a blue state. So why should this state be first in the nation? Because the voters are black? That seems to be the logic. Iowa is "too white" so we need a "diverse" state in order to represent the TRUE democratic voter. Uh....how about yall both are wrong? I mean, I get the arguments about Iowa. it is arguably "too white", its population isnt representative of most of america, and like South Carolina, it hasnt been a swing state since the Obama era. It now swings like 6-10 points red or something. 

What state should go first? Idk, maybe a larger state. Maybe something that is actually in play. Maybe my own state of Pennsylvania? It seems fairly representative of America as a whole, has a lot of diversity in it as far as race goes, and it's literally just about the swingiest of swing. We literally determined who won the election both in 2016 and 2020. 

I know Michigan was floated as an early state. That's actually not bad. And it has a lot of racial diversity there too. What about Nevada? They are normally right after Iowa and New Hampshire. Also a swing state. 

Hell, even GEORGIA would be a better southern state than south carolina. At least georgia is in play these days. 

But oh wait, maybe if we chose another state like PA or NV or MI we would get a non establishment approved candidate. I bet that's the obvious reason they dont do that. After all, we just won with John Fetterman here in PA. In Nevada, they actually voted for Bernie last time and I remember that's where Chris Matthews had his melt down. That's the point. The democrats DON'T want the race to go in favor of an anti establishment progressive. They want to stop another Bernie run, or because Bernie is getting too old, whomever his replacement may eventually be. It's a machine. They're playing machine politics. They control the machine, so they can tilt the field in favor of their preferred outcome. 

It's frustrating. This is why I voted third party in 2016 and 2020. I could tell that it was obvious what they were doing, and when they do crap like this, I just wanna vote third party. Sadly, I'm cooling on third parties too as Forward has gone in a weirdly conservative direction, and the greens are full on socialists with unworkable plans and a fetishization for large scale jobs programs. So I really don't know how I'm voting come 2024.

The sad thing is, this seems unnecessary too. If Biden runs again, he's going to be the favorite, he has the incumbency, and any insurgent campaign against him will likely fail. Are they really that scared for Biden's numbers? I know he's unpopular, his net approval rating is negative, and there was real talk of a progressive challenger in 2024, but after the 2022 mid terms, I think that if anything made a case for Joe Biden being the nominee, it would be that. I mean, the dems won, all things considered. We actually gained ground in the senate given the runoff tomorrow runs well. We only narrowly lost the house. All things considered, that is a win. 

Are they really that scared that someone can challenge him, and that he could actually lose? Really, I say this AS a more insurgent progressive type, but I really dont think my side of the aisle has their crap together for 2024. Any campaign we mount against Biden will likely be ineffective anyway, and no one will pay much attention to it. And given Bernie will be like a bazillion years old, I actually DON'T want him to run again. I would prefer someone who isn't literally in their 80s. Because that dude will probably die in office and we're really voting for their VP. And I really don't think someone like Nina Turner or Marianne Williamson has the chops to beat Biden in the current environment. So why stack it?

Honestly, you could even argue Biden is the most electable candidate and replacing him means certain doom for the democrats. Any attempt to replace Biden with anyone else, whether it Bernie, or Harris, or Buttigieg, seems to imply that democrats will lose support relative to Biden. And given how I expect 2024 to be a nail biter, you could argue Biden is the only one who can pull it off. 

Of course, the democrats are doing what they always seem to find a way to do. Alienate people and screw up while the opposition runs full speed toward fascism. It's like they wanna piss people off and lose. Really, way to destroy any good will you have with voters. Here I've been somewhat warming up to democrats but between this and the railroad strike, they seem to be quickly destroying any good will they've gained with me. 

We'll see what happens come 2024. I will not, at this time, guarantee my vote for democrats. Because they need to earn it. And the best way to get on my bad side is to stack the process in your favor. We should have fair and open primaries. That's one thing Andrew yang gets right. Ranked choice voting, open primaries, ending the duopoly. I might not make it my core concern, but if the democrats are going to go into 2024 not wanting to do anything on my major concerns but insisting I must support them or else, I MIGHT just end up going back to Forward.

Why should we care so much about hate speech?

 So, I've seen some rather disturbing media spin to the whole Elon Musk takeover of twitter. The corporate liberal media seems to be portraying this as a moral panic in which "hate speech" is on the rise, and how that's bad, and OMG, we need to DO SOMETHING about this. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned, growing up in the wild west days of the internet, but why? Why is this such a big deal? I'm going to be honest. I don't endorse ANY hateful views. I want to make that clear. But I AM a libertarian of sorts, and I tend to trend toward the whole free speech absolutism line. That doesn't mean I support complete free speech absolutism, but I support it about as far as SCOTUS is willing to take it, where unless you're inciting violence, making direct threats, or something along those lines, your political speech is generally protected under the first Amendment. It seems like few people actually believe that these days, especially on the left. Mind you, the right proclaims beliefs in it but given they're doing their own moral panics over drag queens and transgender people and "wokeness", I can't really say they care about it either. But hey, I don't feel responsible for the right. I feel responsible for the left. The left is my side of the aisle, and generally speaking I do not believe they do a good job speaking for me these days. Especially on these issues.

Back in the day, the dividing line in culture wars was clear. The right wanted to tell people what to do with their religious nonsense, and the left just wanted a world where everyone tolerated each other, and we were all free to live as they want. Sure, there have always been some more authoritarian "paradox of tolerance" types of lefties, my pastor in Christian school used to rail against them all of the time while being anti homosexuality, but as I kind of found out later, at the time at least, those lefties were more a strawman of the left, not the actual left. What allowed me to actually come over to the left was the fact that those kinds of crazies were extremists who didn't represent modern liberalism, and that most liberals were far more chill.

But as we live in this post 2016 environment and how there has been a cultural revolution where the right is more mask off on the racism and the left is more mask off on their own authoritarian woke BS, I feel like an alien to both sides. I just wanna be left alone, man. I don't care about all of these BS causes and that includes the left and all of their woke nonsense. Do I generally speaking support a world in which we're all tolerant of each other? Sure, but I don't believe in mandating it, or suspending peoples' rights over this crap. The fact that the corporate media screams "WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT HATE SPEECH!" Just...alienates me. It's not that I like hate speech, it's that I like freedom, and I feel like the left is falling into this same weird moral panic BS our parents did when talking about Harry Potter, Pokemon cards, and drugs in our Halloween candy. OMG THIS IS A PROBLEM WE NEED TO DEAL WITH IT. And thus, a whole generation got sucked into this weird authoritarian tough on crime BS. It literally took us decades, and a new generation of people not indoctrinated into this crap, to break this mindset. And now the left is going right back into it again. It's bad enough that the right does this stuff. But, as we should know by now, for all they scream about freedom, right wingers are very culturally authoritarian. For all of their talk about the government being bad, they sure like using it to push their moral views and censor people for their moral panics, and that is wrong. But you know what? It's just as wrong for the left to do this too. I keep saying it, the reason I hate the woke left is they remind me of the religious right in a lot of ways. They have the same religious zealotry, and the same authoritarianism and moral panic toward views that they don't support. It sickens me. 

I'm sorry, but I don't believe in the paradox of tolerance. I believe that free speech means that people have a right to be hateful. I believe people have a right to be stupid. I have come around on the idea of "hate crimes", something I was opposed to in my conservative days, on the basis that motive is an aggravating factor in the determining the severity of a crime. Negligent homicide is considered less severe in the eyes of the law than first degree murder, for example. And hate crimes implies a motive based in intentional malevolence. BUT, I honestly only restrict that to the commission of things that are otherwise crimes, or should be as they cause bodily harm to others. 

Hate speech isn't that. Hate speech is just people saying stuff that is deemed hateful toward a particular group, and i kind of put the idea of outlawing bigotry as a thought crime. You can't just purge your way to a perfect society. Authoritarianism is what leads to horrid outcomes in the first place. As they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Leftists purged people who didn't think like them and they had a body count to show it. Rightists on the auth side of things literally did commit mass purgings based on hatred, and in their own ideologies they deemed such things as moral and necessary. We can talk about how twisted the nazis and the like for that stuff. I certainly ain't endorsing those views. But...the real question is, should people be able to have them? I would say so. I honestly never seriously considered taking away the right of my political opposition to express certain views. I mean, I believe religions are awfully authoritarian and intolerant, and I dislike a lot of crap they push, but that doesn't mean I wanna make it illegal to be religious or to kick people off of social media. The same goes other crappy views. I would say unless you're outright calling for the deaths of people or making direct threats or intimidating people or soemthing direct like that, it should be allowed. Kanye should be able to say he likes Hitler. I should be able to call him a "freaking idiot" for doing so. People say crappy things, and I say what i actually think back. And it all works itself out. Of course, some people can't stand the idea that maybe that would lead to a society that looks like a COD lobby, but as someone who grew up in the glory days of COD lobbies, and got my ideas and ethos from that era, I long for that. I mean, I really don't think mean words should be banned for the most part. Whatever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me"? 

Ya know?

I just hate this moral panic crap my side of the aisle is promoting. And I feel the need to keep my side of the aisle honest on this matter, because I believe they can do better. It is not the state's job to mandate what people think and feel. It is largely not its job to mandate what thoughts and feelings they can express either. Unless those ideas cause an immediate threat of harm under a very narrow definition in keeping with the exceptions to free speech that have always existed, then I do not believe speech should be curtailed. If that leads to the rise of questionable views then so be it. I'd rather live free and in a sea of filth in terms of what people say, than to live under some seemingly benevolent authoritarian mandating we conduct ourselves a certain way. Ya know? This is an issue that shouldn't exist. If people wanna say crappy things, let them. It's not the government's problem. it's not elon musk's problem. it's not mark zuckerburg's problem. It's not those sites' problem. We need to stop this BS cancel culture crap of trying to censor people for saying bad things. Let them say them. I like to know where people really stand anyway.