Should we End Capitalism?

I see a lot of calls to end capitalism as if that were a button we could press. And assumptions that capitalism is the cause of our problems and that abolishing it would be the obvious solution.

Before I evaluate this idea, I want to define some terms.

Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as:

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Okay, sounds vaguely familiar. Oh, there’s that term “free market,” I’ve heard that before.

But Oxford Languages defines it this way:

an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

That also feels right. There’s that “profit” term I’ve heard that.

I’ll just cut to the chase right now, there are two strong definitions of capitalism that appear to be influencing the debate, and you can even see their influences in these differing definitions from dictionaries.

We’re going to pull one out–we’ll call a “free market” economy one in which, for the most part (we’ll allow some regulation), prices are set by supply, demand, and competition. We’ll associate it with “free enterprise,” which we’ll take to mean that people can start businesses more or less at will (again, we’ll allow for some regulation here).

I want to contrast that with another definition of capitalism, one closer to what Marx called the “Capitalist Mode of Production.”

The capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation, wage-based labour…

The key I want to highlight here is the extraction of surplus value by the owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation.

In other words, many people use the term capitalism to mean an economy set up for the benefit of the capitalist.

I don’t want to use the term capitalism here. Instead, I’ll split the two. When I talk about free markets and free enterprise, I’ll say that. When I talk about a society for the benefit of capitalists, I’ll say oligarchy. I am not claiming these terms are more correct, but rather, it’s important to differentiate.

Back to our Question: Should we Kill Capitalism?

The answer? Crush the oligarchy, and save the free market.

Read on to figure out why.

Okay, you’re King for a Day, and Oligarchy is Dead; Now What?

Well, let’s fix society, right? We need to take the wealth from the wealthy and give it to the rest of society.

Let’s start with a proposal that went nowhere during the olden days, putting a 45% tax bracket on the top 1% of income earners.

A 45% tax bracket on 1% income earners nets $267B a year

Not bad. Now, what to do with it.

I know; we’ll end homelessness!

Taking a huge bite out of homelessness may cost around $30B annually

Now, this doesn’t solve homelessness, but it goes a long way. Estimating how much it would cost to end homelessness gets really tricky really quick, but we at least have a floor here. Let’s be generous and say $30B solves it.

We’ve got $237B left, and we’re off to a great start!

I know; let’s make college free. How much would free tuition at all state universities cost? About $50 Bn

Damn, seems cheap. $187B left, and we have no one sleeping on the streets, and anyone can get a four-year education if they want it.

Why not keep up the pace? Let’s end world hunger.

That would cost upwards of $265B per year, according to some estimates. We can’t afford it.

Squeeze those Fat Cats Some More!

I’m excited at the cat squeezing

45% tax bracket? Please, I thought we said we were going to kill the oligarchy. Let’s put a 70% tax bracket on anything over $10MM. No one needs that much money!

A 70% tax bracket on $10mm above gets only $72B additional a year.

We’re still a bit short, but let’s be generous and ask the nation to look in its couch cushions. Viola, we solved world hunger.

Though, we’re out of money again. Thankfully, we solved all of society’s problems.

Let’s Kill Poverty!

What’s that, you say? There are still people suffering in poverty? Alright, let’s kill poverty. It should be easy. We’ll figure out how much it costs and find some money somewhere. After all, we’re kings, people have to do what we say, and it all magically works out.

Looks like it will cost $539BN a year to end poverty. Oof, this one is painful. Though, I’m sure poverty is more painful. Let’s do it. Where can we get the cash? We probably can’t get much more out of the rich without breaking out the guillotines.

Make Love, not War

You know what we don’t need anymore? A military. I mean, sure, we live in a world where fascist despots invade their neighbors or threaten to.

Still, Noam Chomsky says that we should all just surrender to save lives, and we probably all secretly started these wars according to this conspiracy theory I just saw, so I bet we’d be safer if we had no military.

What’ll that get us?

The military budget in 2021 was $801B so that’s more than enough to cover ending poverty. We’ll have $268B left over! Huzzah!

Money to burn, money to burn. What’s next? Let’s solve society!

Oh, I know. Let’s finally do free health care! No one should have to go without insulin. What’s that cost?

Looks like Medicare for all would cost about $3.4T a year. That’s great; that’s $268 – $3.4, so we’ve got $264.6B left.

Wait, what? That was a T, not a B?

Ah, shit. We can’t afford that. We need more money again.

Fuck it, bring out the guillotines, and seize the means of production!

If we just grab all the wealth of the top 1%, we’d get $45.9T. Now, this is a one-time lump sum, not a yearly thing. Still, should be plenty we can do with that. For instance, pay for medicare for all for… about 14 years. Uh oh.

Where are we going to get more money? We’ve taxed the top earners and even just seized everything the top 1% has. The top 2 or 5% actually doesn’t have that much because wealth is so concentrated at the top.

Whatever, we’ll think of something, we have 15 years. And we’ll need to think of something in the next 15 years because of that whole global warming thing.

Oh shit, we need to do something about that! Okay, we’ll have fewer years of free health care, but we can put that 1% wealth to work fixing the climate.

It should only cost $131T.

Ooof

Even if we didn’t take the free health care route, we couldn’t afford to stop climate change.

What’s the Point of this Exercise?

It is 100% the case that wealth is concentrated in the wrong hands. And society could do a lot better things with that wealth than letting it sit in trust funds.

But there is not enough wealth to solve social problems. We run out. There is a myriad of other issues that I didn’t touch that need money. Reparations, repatriating stolen land, free child care, etc.

The economy is not a zero-sum game. I think a lot of people assume that because there is so much wrong in the world, it must mean that others must be benefiting a lot more. All we have to do is balance the equation, and poof, the wrongs are gone. But that just isn’t the case–the economy isn’t zero-sum. People suffering isn’t proof others aren’t suffering, and trying to just equalize things doesn’t solve the problem because there’s too much suffering.

Can we abate it some? Yes!

Priorities, Priorities, Priorities

Fighting homelessness is relatively cheap! Fighting climate change is really expensive. We need to do both, but what something costs should make you think about it’s value.

If you knew that free public college would take only a small bite out of the military’s budget, you might be frustrated that its so hard to get attention to that issue. But, if you knew that no matter what we did, simply moving money around won’t stop climate change, well, you might have to think of different ideas.

This is economical and financial thinking. This is the return on investment. It’s a useful concept.

I keep seeing folks think we’re going to just abandon money and banks and stocks, and somehow magically, everything will work, and they don’t even apply basic economic principles to their plans.

Aside:

I mean seriously, how are we going to do things without money? The soviets still used money. It’s easier than passing out different ration cards for everything. Were you going to just abolish money then hope people charitably started building houses for the homeless rather than whatever else they were doing? At some point, the whole plan falls apart unless you assume you’re going to make people do what you want at gun point.

Investment!

We simplified some of the math above because that’s how I see people wanting to “abolish capitalism” think online. Simple balancing an equation. But the fact is, medicare for all may end up being cheaper since it would supplant our other medical bills.

Free college makes us money. And getting rid of homelessness could save us on hospital visits.

This is more financial thinking. This time we’re using the concept of opportunity costs–because we did one thing, we didn’t do another. In this way, we can spend money but end up making more money in the long run. It’s magic. And it’s important.

You have to get beyond zero-sum thinking because it blinds you to opportunities to use wealth to create more wealth.

We Have to Grow

As we saw, we can kill the rich, dismantle the military, and still not have enough money to cover all the things we want to cover. Do we just despair?

No–we grow. We grow the amount of money. We need more wealth to pay for the things we want. Star Trek society didn’t get the way it was by just re-arranging who got what; they also invented new technologies and new ways of working. They invented new capital. It’s honestly the only path forward.

Back to the Question

Why must we save (regulated) free markets and (regulated) free enterprise? Because it’s the fastest way to grow wealth.

If we look at what’s most likely the most accurate numbers of the Soviet Union versus the United States, the US still managed to outpace the USSR by about 40%.

“Oh,” you might say, “The USSR wasn’t really socialist.” Okay, you can go that way if you want to, but the onus is on you to explain what would be a good comparison of a non-free market system.

I mean, you can just hand wave and say apparently some Germans figured it all out in the 1800s and that anyone who tried to use their system did something wrong–and ignore my protestations that “either your system is impossible or imaginary.” But hey, you’re the one saying all economics research and mathematics for the past century and a half is apparently a conspiracy by Exxon to make socialism look bad.

The Takeaways

Economics is cool. It helps us make decisions. Using economic models may not actually model how humans behave, but that doesn’t matter; it still models how we should behave if we were rational. In other words, us making the right economic choices doesn’t rely on other people making good economic choices.

Free markets and free enterprise are part of the solution here. We have to grow the pie. Dividing the pie up a different way is absolutely also part of the solution here. The top 1% just have stupid amounts of wealth, and there’s a lot of suffering we could end by taxing more fairly.

Economic and financial thinking can help you solve your other problems too. For instance, do you want to lower the defense budget? Then crush defense oligopolies, don’t just try and make them skimp on uniforms. We could be getting way more stuff for our defensive dollar (or the same stuff for fewer dollars) if we understood that competition lowers prices, and thus, we want competition in our defense contractors.

Do we need to kill capitalism? It depends on what you mean by capitalism. But maybe we just shelve that question for now. We can all agree we need to crush the oligarchy–even if I think maybe we can save free markets and free enterprise along the way.

The Road to Serfdom: Why Socialism Won’t Work

Hayek’s book, “The Road to Serfdom” was written over 80 years ago, while Europe was consumed in a war over totalitarianism. Dedicated to the “socialists of all parties”, he drew a very nuanced, and important, link between the socialism practiced by the Nazis and that practiced by the Soviets.

While much of the socialism he attacked was borrowed from the war time economy – nationalizing the mines, or general industry – and doesn’t look like how we practice it today, many of the arguments still stand.

What we call socialism today, Hayek would have called “the Welfare State”. And Hayek repeatedly argues that some welfare state is beneficial and morally required of a just society.

The arguments against general socialism, rather than one off socialized programs are similar to those against general welfare state economics, and don’t necessarily apply to any one particular program. One can socialize the water supply, for example, as many cities and counties do, without socializing all aspects of life.

There are certainly drawbacks to even these one off socialization approaches too, but let’s start with why generalized socialism won’t work.

Step 1: We Must Make the World a Better Place

Go find your local socialist meet up, and they will tell you about a better world. One which people aren’t dying from lack of health care, or one in which everyone is able to get access to a great college education.

We all acknowledge – and indeed, we must acknowledge that these visions are good visions. These are things we should want. ^[1]

And indeed, at this meet up, you’ll see broad yet very reasonable schemes to get there. Nearly all of them involve taxing the rich, but in our era of historically low rates of taxation for the super wealthy, there’s plenty of money there to tax. With this tax, we can get universal healthcare, with that tax, free college.

Each and every one of these programs, in isolation, seems perfectly reasonable and moral. In isolation.

Step 2: Run out of Money

The problem lies in the fact that the the people who want universal healthcare, while enamored by those who want universal education, aren’t actually combining their plans with them. Because each of them knows that, internally, their own plan makes sense, they assume that all of them put together will make sense too.

But in step 1, each of these planners has already assumed nearly all the benefit of much higher taxes on the wealthy to fund their vision. This doesn’t leave much taxation over for others to use.

So it results that while we live in a society that can afford universal healthcare, OR universal education, we can’t do both. Or, should it be the case that some clever planning, cuts elsewhere and even higher taxes will afford us a kind of universal healthcare and education, we still won’t be able to afford a jobs guarantee. Or the right to affordable housing. Or the laundry list of other socialist ideas.

Our reach exceeds our grasp – Hayek argues that since its so easy to see a world in which we have any one of these programs, and indeed, argues that the benefits of these programs are noble and moral ones to pursue, we assume we can have them all.

But we can’t.

But what about Denmark?

Some might argue that other countries have successfully implemented these social programs as evidence that it can be done here. Yet they usually are combining a hodge podge of countries each which chose different priorities to focus on. There is no single country that is able to afford most of these programs, when put together.

Moreover, these programs are often idealized. Denmark, for example, still requires private insurance which costs about 100 euroes a month, and has a 400 euro deductible. Cheaper than the US for sure, but not the universal free healthcare guarantee that we seem to think it is.

When a politician argues that we can provide free healthcare here, and that she’ll do away with deductibles and premiums, she’s promising a better system than even that of Denmark. Denmark pays very heavy taxes, even on the middle class, to afford their system of social benefits. To provide even better healthcare would, one would assume, require even more taxation.

You can see Denmark’s compromise of premiums and deductibles as the scaling back alluded to in step 2. They realized they couldn’t afford free universal healthcare AND other benefits, so they came up with a plan that was overall cheaper but fell short of the vision.

Step 3: Get Really Angry About It

In Step 1, we became acutely aware that we could live in a better world if not for the wealth gap. If the rich paid more into the social safety net, it was argued, we could afford things like Universal Healthcare or Universal Education.

In Step 2, we realized, well, we probably can’t afford both. Or if we can, we can’t afford the whole slew of social benefits that all, in isolation, seem very valuable.

Now we’re at Step 3, when we just stay in denial about it.

In step 3, its argued that we can in fact have it all, if only we taxed even more. If only we nationalized some elements of it. Taxes are one way to raise revenue, eliminating profits is one way to save costs. The government may also be able to get some more economies of scale by replacing many small players with a single large one.

Notwithstanding how inefficient monopolies are – government run or otherwise – these ideas sound intriguing.

While we’ve learned in step 2 we probably can’t afford it all based on high taxes on the right alone, if we combined higher taxes still (high enough that people probably won’t be on board) combined with nationalization of key steps to reduce costs, and squint, AND scale back our vision^[2], we can afford nearly all of the social safety net we envision.

It will always be nearly all, because at this point, we’re working with fantasy numbers. Just as conservatives trick themselves into believing tax cuts will somehow raise government revenues, socialists will tend to build budgets that magically fit all the programs in.

Step 4: Oops! Stalin!

And now you’ve installed Stalin as supreme leader.

How did we get here?

Look back at step 3 – we acknowledge in step 3 that we needed to push taxes even higher than we thought reasonable in step 1. These high taxes generally are going to be super high on the rich and reasonably high on the middle class. They will never be democratically feasible. So, in step 3.5, you’re going to have to figure out a way to force them in.

After all, you know better, and the people will like this socialist society when we get there. So, in the near term, obviously some amount of democracy is a hindrance. We just won’t get to the levels of taxation and other things we need to roll this out.

But we’re so close!

Check step 3 again – we nationalized some industries. Maybe we nationalized health insurance, or private education. Assuming this actually saved costs, we still just consolidated a lot more power under the government. Now the same entity that can open up an FBI investigation against you can deny you healthcare. The same entity that can audit your taxes can kick you out of school.

This amount of power invariably attracts tyrants. People who lust for power will always want more. Because we limited democratic elements to push our plan through, now power can be achieved not through elections and fulfilling campaign promises, but by playing a mean game of inside politics. Rising in the party replaces rising in the polls – and while bad behavior is sometimes rewarded in the polls, its nearly always rewarded in inside politics.³

Boom, we get a tyrant at the top eventually. We loosened our democratic binds and centralized power, hoping to get our social vision through and our better society started. But those same steps open the way for tyranny.

But what about Denmark?

Again with the Denmark?

Okay, so they have a more socialized safety net, why haven’t they attracted tyrants?

They never gave up on the democratic element – they never had to force anything through. But the cost here was that they had to make cuts that other countries weren’t willing to make. The biggest example would be military spending in the US versus Denmark. It’s often argued that much of Europe could install these social programs because they were able to use military spending towards them.

Good for them.

While I have no doubt our military spending can be streamlined and brought under control, I personally am not going to go willy nilly carving up our defense budget in the middle of a cyber war with our greatest adversary.

And while our adventurism gets us in our fair share of troubles, there really is something to being the arsenal of democracy. We have intervened based on our values about as many times as we’ve intervened for more selfish concerns. Can we really bear to tell believers in freedom and democracy elsewhere around the globe, sorry, you’re on your own, we decided we’d rather keep that money here and give our people more benefits?^[3]

Why Socialism Must Work

The above steps aren’t some sort of normative “we shouldn’t” or “we should” sort of thing, though. They’re natural steps in a society, especially one with a widening wealth gap.

We must get our wealth gap under control, and part of that will be redistribution with high taxation and social benefits. We don’t magically avoid tyranny because we decided not to solve our wealth gap problem. Step 3 is people get angry, and all you’re doing is making them angrier and angrier by doing nothing.

There are two kinds of socialism that fall out of step 3 – the one we’re all familiar with, and the nationalistic kind that many Americans fought and died to defeat. If we do not deal with that anger democratically, socialists of “all parties” are willing to abandon democracy to see through their visions, and I don’t really want to sit around and wait to see who wins.

¹ Oops! Hitler! There’s basically two sides to opposition to universal benefits. One is what I’m outlining here – it is in fact a wonderful vision, but we can’t afford it. The other is the fascistic response – “I’m against universal benefits because then they will get them”. Go ahead, ask around your friends, why are they against housing guarantees, job guarantees or healthcare as a human right? If they cite how it will be taken advantage of by lazy and unscrupulous ‘others’, you discovered a secret Hitler.

² And scale back we almost inevitably will. We’ll become okay with rationing some forms of healthcare. We’ll say people don’t need, say, 800 square feet per person in guaranteed housing, but rather 400 square feet. Maybe we’ll guarantee a job, but we can’t guarantee you’ll like it. We can guarantee some free education, but it won’t be what you want to study. And so on.

³ But that would never happen here! Or will it? Democrats literally had a super majority when Obama care was passed, yet the somewhat moderate vision of a public option was just too controversial. Was the response to double down on democracy, work together and come up with a compromise? Or was it to inflame the grass roots and go for broke? Are the leading and popular camps today appealing to all of society, or primarily their base? Do they sound ‘strong’ when they say they’ll push things through “movements” and executive orders? That’s not democracy. We’re already finding authoritarian tactics appealing when we don’t get our way, assuming “the other side” is greedy and horrible, rather than trying to figure out how to afford all of this.

⁴ Boom, fascism again. Isolationism and nationalism breed it. Americans are a people built on a constitution and philosophy, not on a location. We believe in freedom and democracy, and we must acknowledge that makes us brothers and sisters in arms with many folks around the globe who believe the same thing. Authoritarians are everywhere, and they’re very willing to work together to consolidate their power. We must be willing to intervene on our democratic allies behalf.

We are all Republicans Now

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it

George Bernard Shaw

The Republican Party is dead, it’s corpse reanimated as the party of Trump and Trumpism.

In trying to find a new home as someone with traditionally center-right views, I searched various political ideologies and debated colleagues. I escaped the forming cult of personality a philosophical refugee, in a time that it’s not great to be a refugee philosophical or otherwise. Who’d take me in?

Iterating on these thoughts, and doing some historical research, I did indeed find a home. In name, it’s not far from where I started, though in belief it’s far refined and free of the racist baggage of that Grand Old Party. I found myself surrounded by colleagues who I used to see ‘on the other side of the isle’. I now vote blue, but I’ve never round myself more surrounded by Republicans.

What is Republicanism?

The word republican means one who follows the philosophy of republicanism, rather than the commonly believed ‘a supporter of a republic’. While a republic is any government with a representative form of government, a republican wants a particular form of republic.

Early republicans among the founding fathers looked back to the early Roman and Greek republics for inspiration. Hence, their resulting beliefs had Greek and Roman virtues strewn about.

Civic Virtue

Republicans held in highest esteem “public virtue”, and strongly believed that public virtue only followed traditional private virtue. Private virtues were traditional virtues such as honesty, fair dealing, a value for the truth. Public virtues were self-sacrifice for the community, duty and seeking justice.

Benjamin Franklin is believed to have said when describing what kind of government the founders had when they finished their constitution, “A republic, if you can keep it.” He said this with the belief that unless civic virtue could be cultivated among the populace, it would fall back into monarchy or aristocracy.

Revolutionary Charles Lee said this of civic virtue, hoping Americans would be “instructed from early infancy to deem themselves property of the State…. (and) were ever ready to sacrifice their concerns to her interests.”

Obama Republicanism

President Obama, while campaigning, noted that American Society is great and wealthy because of what we’ve all pitched in to do to support individual success.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

Barack Obama

Warren Republicanism

He was actually referencing Elizabeth Warren, then running for Senate, who said something similar.

I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Elizabeth Warren

Kennedy Republicanism

No one probably promoted civic virtues more in the modern American era than Kennedy in his famous inaugural address.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

John F Kennedy

Designed Government

Machiavelli – yes, that one – argued for republicanism as basically the discipline of statecraft – what it would look like if a rational mind designed a government. Recall during the republican era of the 18th century, many inherited monarchies were being challenged. No one every really designed them, they just evolved over time, and they certainly were never built for the well being of the people or the state they kept.

John Adams note on republicanism that the “science of politics is the science of social happiness”. Republican founding fathers instituted these ideas in the act of writing a constitution – a document that described how a government was to be run – as well as the ideas in the constitution, such as combinations of executive, legislative and judicial authorities and the checks and balances between them.

This view blended well with the ideas of liberalism and progressives, who wanted to use designed civil society and statecraft to solve the problems of the world and can be seen in both Roosevelt’s governing philosophies of using the government to bust trusts and the New Deal.

Individual Rights

Part of the democratic nature of republicanism is the empowering of the individual, but also skepticism of majoritarian rule. Recall Benjamin Franklin’s warnings on the individual’s responsibility to keep a republic. To the individual, he advised virtue. To the government, republicanism advises the protection of rights.

Early republican sentiment enshrined this view too in the Bill of Rights, as well as a general skepticism of centralized power well up into the 20th century. Checks and balances were meant to make the power consolidated in the state hard for any tyrant to wield, while individual rights were meant to protect the people in the times their government still managed to over step.

Republican belief in individual rights definitely found its archetypical moment in the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, however. Before it became the undead party of Trump, the party that bore the name of the republican philosophy was said to be the party of Lincoln.

How far we’ve come.

Disdain of Inherited Wealth and Power

Finally, republicanism saw the ‘republic’ as the ideal government not solely for its representative nature (a nice trick to get just enough democracy for legitimacy when getting every vote on every issue would have been impossible), but also because of their disdain for inherited power.

To a republican, who believed the state should act rationally and the government should be designed rationally, there’s nothing more offensive than someone being in power because of who their dad was.

Indeed, while protective of property rights, the early republicans were no fans of the growing aristocracy in the south, and their interest in keeping a check on the accumulation of wealth – inevitably used to secure a permanent and inherited seat of power – stayed alive well into Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.

What Happened?

Today, individual rights are suppressed so as not to offend a sniveling tyrant. Wealth and power, and their inherited protection are the highest priority. The rational politics of a “city on a hill” have given way to hypocrisy and myopia. Civic virtue has descended into nothing but virtue signaling and pearl clutching.

The Republican Party is dead – but the philosophies that drove Adams, Lincoln, Madison, Anthony, Douglass, FDR, JFK, and Obama is still alive. It’s found a home in today’s Democratic party.

They are asking us to sacrifice for the common good, they are demanding protections for individual rights, they are the party of science and reason, and the only party attempting to fight the scourge of aristocracy and oligarchy.

The Republican Party is dead – Trumpism is all that remains there. And the rest of us? Well, we are all Republicans now.

 

 

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chechnya-detains-100-gay-men-first-concentration-camps-since-holocaust-1616363

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-a-republican-ill-vote-democratic-until-my-party-regains-its-dignity/2017/03/31/4de5ddc0-1553-11e7-bb16-269934184168_story.html?utm_term=.8d04f443a4cc

Anti-fascist Resistance: Rules of Engagement

Given that the #Resistance has been going on for two years now, I think we’ve learned some things about what works and what doesn’t.

Specifically, I think we’ve determined exactly when it’s okay to “punch a Nazi”, which is code for violent resistance.

To pacifists, it might upset you to learn that it does, indeed, have its place.

To militants, it might upset you to learn that its place is pretty rare.

In fact, the TL;DR version of this argument is this:

Resistance members willing to be violent can play an effective role in providing a secure and safe place for strictly non-violent resistance members to protest when authorities fail to do so.

Another way to think about this is as follows:

1. Don’t punch Nazis.
2. For experts only: Don’t punch Nazis. Yet.

Let’s dig in.

The Players

Let’s talk about two types of resistance and better define the names I gave above. There are resistance members willing to use violence, we’ll call them militants for shorthand. Think Antifa and black bloc.

Then there are strictly non-violent resistance members, which we’ll call pacifists for short.

There’s a natural tendency to think that these two groups are against each other. But they’re not. They’re both resisting. They actually very much benefit from working together, known as “Diversity of Tactics” in the civil rights literature.

There are other players too. There’s of course, the fascists. You might recognize them from various “bad guys” in video games and movies.

And there’s also those poor public servants often caught in the middle, Cops. Now, I say ‘poor public servant’ because I genuinely believe that the majority of law enforcement officers want to do good, and try their best to do good. And I also am not so naive as to say that there aren’t some bad cops, and bad police departments, who moonlight as tiki torchbearers. Shit’s complicated.

This Context, at this Time, between these Folks

The relationship between militants and pacifists, and their separate forceful or non-violent tactics lie on a spectrum. Different things are effective in different contexts. Movements in which leaders gas their own people en masse, without care for civilian casualties, are going to end up relying almost exclusively on forceful resistance. Movements in which the right to protest and security of protestors are still for the most part guaranteed are going to rely more heavily on non-violent means.

The rules below reflect only the current situation in the US, at this point in time. Things will hopefully get better but could get worse.

Rule 1:

 > 

Cops Beat Militants

When militants go directly up against the police or other state-sponsored authorities, it’s really bad.

First, force is absurd to use against armed and armored police. They’re going to beat the shit out of you and arrest you.

Second, the optics are terrible. Even though some police departments (though by no means not all, nor even most) have some racist or fascist elements, police are public servants in society, and there are too many stories of police being heroes in the public’s mind to ever convince them that a few cops are racist dicks.

The costs are incredibly high. You’re at risk of getting arrested, and/or legally battered. This has bad morale effects on both other militants and pacifists, lowering turnout. This is bad because high turn out from pacifists is needed for rule 2.

Rule 2:

 > 

Pacifists Beat Cops

Police are far less likely to attack non-violent protestors. That’s just obvious. But what’s better, even if you expect violent police reaction to a social movement, non violent protests work esquisitely against state violence.

Think about MLK or Gandhi. They were protesting the state, and they got the state to attack them and got worldwide good press. Nothing gets more people outraged than seeing a preacher get sprayed with a fire hose, or see peaceful students get tear gassed for no reason.

To review: force is far less likely to be used. And if it is, its far more likely that the public will see the police as aggressors. That means weeks to months of federal, state and local investigations, firings of police officers who went beyond their orders, and revisions to policies and training all intended to stop future violence. This is good.

Optics are amazing. Some of the most striking photos you’ll see that pop up over the AP or Reuters, and they won’t be friendly to the police. For instance, a peaceful BLM protest contrasted with armed and armored police rushing to arrest a single, unarmed, non-resistant black female in a billowy dress. This gets you on magazine covers.

Getting on magazine covers gets you political coverage, and political coverage gets you outrage in Congress.

The costs are in your favor. Non-violent protests aren’t expensive to run, but local unfriendly police mounting a terror campaign to try and suppress protestors is incredibly expensive for them.

But what about when your belligerent isn’t the police?

Rule 3:

 = 

Fascists and Militants Stalemate

In Berkeley, you had a huge turnout of militants (relative to pacifists), and at first, a lack of police interdiction. That lead to riots between militants and fascists. Both sides promptly claimed victory, but in the press and on the streets, it was clear to see that no one really won.

Through force alone, you’re just not going to see that much different. Both sides bring shields and tear gas and brawl in the street. Did that cause a few fascists and a few militants to decide that fighting wasn’t for them and they’d stay home next time? Sure. But probably about the same amount on both sides.

Did you also inspire through valor both fascists and militants to show up next time that didn’t show up this time? This, probably, too. You’re always going to find someone who wants to punch a Nazi (or a Nazi who wants to punch any non-cis white male). They’ll see the photos of the street fight in the news and be inspired to show up next time. Still, this doesn’t benefit the overall resistance any more than it benefits the fascists. It’s a wash.

The optics are bad, again, for both sides. It’s rare to see optics good for fascists. But it should be easy to have good optics when confronting fascism. Still, through sheer lack of discipline, you’re turning your small group of black-clad idealists into street thugs. No one knows what happens when the fog of a riot overcomes any sort of centralized control. You start finding people beating the shit out of anyone they can find, and of course, reporters take photos of that. You have people break windows and set cars on fire, basically hurting completely innocent bystanders. This doesn’t help your cause.

You have Antifa attacking reporters themselves. This means you’ve lost.

In terms of cost, you’re looking to have some high hospital bills and legal fees when the police do come in eventually and round people up.

So when is force warranted? Looks like the best militants can do is a wash.

Rule 4:

 +  > 

Pacifists and Militants Combined Beat Facsists

Charlottesville.

There was no greater showing of unity between pacifists and militants, and no better press for both while also no greater strike against fascism nationwide.

But its a specifically hard recipe to be able to duplicate.

Charlottesville police withdrew, for the most part, and stayed on the perimeter. This can be attributed to ‘kettle’ tactics, or, police seeing themselves as outmanned and outgunned but the much larger protest groups. We really don’t know why they withdrew.

That left both peaceful and forceful resistant protestors in close proximity to one of the largest crowds of fascists we’ve seen during these tumultuous two years.

I’ll let Cornel West describe the scene:

“… You had a number of the courageous students, of all colors, at the University of Virginia who were protesting against the neofascists themselves. The neofascists had their own ammunition. And this is very important to keep in mind, because the police, for the most part, pulled back. The next day, for example, those 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists who approached, over 300, 350 anti-fascists. We just had 20.”

Cornel West

So basically we have this diversity of tactics, this working together, and making both militants and pacifists more effective.

Pacifists main weapon is camera time. It’s to show the brutality of the other side and to show a kind of force in numbers. To do this, they offer up their bodies and spirits.

But this only works when the ‘other side’ sees them as human, and relents at their pain and suffering. It only works if the area is secure enough that reporters can stand somewhere and not themselves be attacked.

Militants can step in and create these conditions. They create the ‘front lines’ whereupon pacifists can stay safely behind it, get on camera, sing and shout and bring attention to the cause. This works when the police can’t or won’t provide order.

In return, pacifists give militants moral legitimacy. We may live in a society where there’s some hand-wringing when we discuss punching Nazis. But we don’t live in a society where someone who intervenes, even violently, on the behalf of a preacher to save that preacher from attack is anyone but a hero.

Charlottesville is not something we want to repeat by any means. The cost was astronomical. Heather Heyer lost her life. There’s no accounting for that.

Additionally, the force was brutal. More injuries to both fighters and bystanders than any other protest.

I won’t even discuss the optics, as it just seems too small a thing to worry about there.

But it was, by all counts, a huge victory for the resistance. What seemed like a riot that might occur in every major city over the next few months was headed off. Many pathetic fascists decided that day and then they were done with showing up to these things, that they’d stick to making shit posts on the internet. And the resistance grew.

Conclusion:

Work with other people in resisting fascism. There is no one right way. It takes a ‘diversity of tactics’ to act and react as the face and approach of fascists change.

Don’t ever see the police as your enemy. Let the pastors take the tear gas from overzealous police forces. Put your black mask away. Be an innocent, and get on camera.

But, if you find yourself without said police protection, able-bodied, surrounding young mothers and preachers and students, and in turn, surrounded by a mob of khaki plaid neo-confederates, then you get out there and you beat the shit out of some goddamn fascists like your granddaddy did.

The Conman’s Contempt

When I was younger, I played a lot of board games. While never exactly dominant at them, they allowed me to roleplay different personalities and approaches to problem-solving.

They also provided a healthy outlet to less than social behavior.

Many games, such as “Mafia”, relied on your ability to manipulate others and to avoid manipulation. In Mafia, you’re either the townspeople or you’re mafia. The townspeople are attempting to find the mafia and lynch them, while the mafia is attempting to assassinate enough townspeople to get a majority in the town.

While the role of townsperson was a natural one (after all, few people actively feel comfortable deceiving others), the role of mafia had its moments, especially when you were able to carry the deception to the end and win the game.

Duper’s Delight

This emotion – when a deception goes well, is often called “Duper’s Delight”. In games, it can be the pay off to a trick well played, however, for narcissists and sociopaths, “Duper’s Delight” can become a dominant source of dopamine.

For a con artist to get someone to buy into their scheme, the delight is palpable. It’s one of the few emotions they can really revel in. They often go on to deceive more and more, and find it hard not to lie, if only to see whether they can get another hit of delight.

Ultimately, under the polite veneer of a simple card game, there is the worry that when you lose at Mafia, it’s because the other team genuinely outsmarted you. That you got conned and trusted the wrong people. And ultimately, when you win at mafia, you believe that you may just be smarter than everyone else on the other team. With other games, you can always console yourself that, well, maybe you just didn’t know the rules as well as someone.

With mafia though, the game is just about tricking people. It’s just conversation. There are very few rules, and it’s about seeing who you can trick to do what. That’s why it feels so good to win.

There’s a flip side to this emotion though because it also stings really bad to lose.

Conman’s Contempt

This emotion is very different than Duper’s Delight, especially for a narcissist.

The emotion is not just the pain of losing, it’s the incredulity that anyone else could win. Recall that duper’s delight is, at its heart, a judgment of intellect – especially by those who benefit from it regularly. They believe they’re smarter than everyone, and the delight they get when tricking someone else reinforces that.

The Conman’s Contempt which they’re figured out, though, is not related to them believing that perhaps they aren’t as smart as they thought they were. I mean, perhaps in a Freudian way, it’s a defense mechanism to avoid that thought. But the main feelings of the conman’s contempt are:

“How could you have figured this out? You’re so dumb! I made no mistakes. No, no, no, you just got lucky. You just got lucky. This is unfair. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen, I am the smarter player. You’re supposed to lose, and you were supposed to fall for my trick, but now just because you got lucky, it makes me look bad, even though I know that I’m the winner. Unfair. Unfair.”

Sound like anyone?

Did you get the Memo?

I think why there is genuinely a huge gap between how most of America read the Nunes’ memo and how Trump and his family read it is that to them, it exposed what they wanted to be exposed. To them, showing that the one fateful mistake (Carter Page got caught by FISA) was due to bias on the part of Christopher Steele (and ultimately, bias from other sources too).

To Trump, issuing a memo that showed Steel was dreadfully afraid of Trump shows – in Trump’s mind, anyway – that Trump didn’t make any mistakes, that Trump isn’t the dumber player in all this. No, on the contrary, due to unfair bias from Steele and only that, Trump was found out.

Trump has complained about unfairness his entire life, but you have to look at what he considers to be fair and not – to a con artist, fair is you fell for it. After all, they’re very smart. They have the best brains. You’re dumb, and you’re supposed to fall for it. Unfair is when they get figured out. Because they can’t cope with the idea of them either being just morally bad people or, even worse, not the smartest people on the planet, they instead cope by telling themselves they got a bad break, due to unreasonable bias someone else got lucky.

They have a contempt of being found out – even when all the evidence is as plain as day, it’s not about the evidence. It’s not about the truth. It’s not about whether they colluded or not or were mafia or townspeople, it’s about how they were supposed to win. That’s how it was supposed to go. And they didn’t, so it must be because someone was playing unfairly. The memo, to them, exposes that. What little bias may have existed in the DOJ or the horrible misunderstanding that Trump’s disloyalty caused Steele to worry, not the other way around, that little bias is why Trump got caught. And now we have to root it out, because it’s unfair, and if we get rid of that bias, then everything should be fair again and the Mafia will win.

Dear Libertarians: Please Learn What Markets Are and How They Work Before You Claim They’re the Answer to Everything

Gather ’round children! We’re going to talk about markets. Anyone who’s actually had an introduction to microeconomics course can skip this part.

Hrm, I’ll take note that there are still a lot of self-professed libertarians in the room. I find that weird – given how much libertarians seem to think that the market will solve society’s ills, you’d think that they’d be experts on markets?

But of course, they aren’t.

Given our audience is now a bunch of libertarians who love to go on and on about how markets will solve everything, maybe we should focus on particular problems that markets solve terribly, why, and what the usual solutions are. Guess what? In all cases, the usual solution is BIG DIRTY GUB’MENT!

Market Failure Number 1: Public Goods

A public good is a kind of thing that when someone purchases it, “everyone” gets it, or at least part of it. Let’s get an example – street signs.

When I read a street sign, it gives me information about where I am and helps me decide where I should go. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to prevent you from reading the same street sign. It’s non-excludable – I can’t keep you from reading it once I’ve put it up in a easily seen area.

Let’s let the market solve street signs – well, each one costs a lot. More than the value we each get from them in our one-off need. So the price of each sign is high, but the value is low. Based on pure price mechanisms alone, we wouldn’t buy that many – not nearly as many street signs as we have.

But because street signs aren’t consumed on use, their value to overall demand is immense. One street sign can serve all of society – the cumulative value of each individual’s need for that sign in the right place at the right time easily overcomes its individual cost. Alas, since we allowed the market to dictate how many street signs there’d be, we bought too few. The few that are up were bought by really rich folks for whom the marginal utility of the sign outpaced its marginal cost to them.

Why are you glassy-eyed when I used the terms marginal utility? Oh right, that’s because libertarians don’t go to economics classes and have no idea what I just said. Let’s just say there’d be fewer signs.

But wait, what if we all decided to band together, put just a tiny bit of money into a common pool (far less than the cost of a single street sign on a per capita basis) and put up hundreds if not thousands of street signs we could all share!

COMMUNIST!

Suffice it to say, goods like street signs that cost too much for any one person to buy but can be used by everyone once bought are great goods for the government to buy. The government will buy just enough, while the markets will under purchase them and society as a whole will be worse off (less utility for all of us!)

Guess what’s another great example of a public good that free markets would under purchase? The National Fucking Defense. Y’all libertarians really need a government to pay for an army, otherwise Canada is going to waltz right in here and take over.

I know that Libertarians complain about “men with guns” coming and taking their “rightfully earned money” (more on that in a second), but at least they’re Americans with guns. It’s way worse when its Canadians with guns because you decided that the “market” would purchase the perfect amount of national defense.

Okay, one more – you know what else is an example of a public good?

MONEY. Look who’s picture is on that piece of paper you constantly claimed you rightfully earned with no help from BIG DIRTY GUB’MENT.

Sorry, that last sentence too me awhile to write as I kept laughing so hard, whiskey came out of my nose.

Market Failure Number 2: Negative Externalities

Markets are great at getting society to build just the right amount of X to help the most number of people for the lowest cost. This is because they use the price mechanism to represent all of this information.

You don’t need to interview millions of people, spend years planning delivery and logistics routes all to figure out the optimal amount of bread to bake. Just let people who want bread and people who can make bread decide on a price and you’re done.

But what if the price can’t reflect the total negatives and positives of a good? This happens frequently. Let’s talk about a coal-fired power plant.

The price of electricity is paid to the power plant. The power plant’s prices are largely dictated by how much coal costs, the capital costs of the plant (amortized of course), the salaries of the workers, plus any interest on loans that the owners of the plant took out to keep it running. The coal miners get paid, the employees get paid, the banks get paid, and the manufacturers of the equipment get paid. Huzzah! Markets in action.

Wait, where’s my pay check?

That’s right, we forgot to pay “the public at large” since we also bought their clean air for free and gave them back air with smog in it, which they didn’t want. But come on, that’s the price of progress baby!

Actually, no, that’s an underestimated price of progress. Since no one’s paying for the smog (except for the public at large), buyers of electricity will get electricity cheaper than what it actually “costs” for society to have it. This means electricity will be overconsumed.

How do we fix this? Well we can’t rely on markets – after all, the coal plant could just use some of its profits from the over-consumption of electricity to, say, fund some misinformation campaign about the dangers of smog. Now people are dying and they’re blaming themselves instead for not eating enough vegetables. Perfect!

So maybe in idealized markets, enough information about the dangers of smog comes out that a bunch of folks voluntarily stop buying coal and switch to cleaner fuels. But that’s still not the right amount of coal to burn. Coal runs hospitals, so it probably cures more cases of cancer than it causes. We just have to remember that it does cause some cancer. We need that amount to be reflected in the price mechanism, and then we’d naturally find the invisible hand buying the ‘right’ amount.

I know, what about men with guns who take our hard earned money? Other people just call these “taxes”, but it seems like if society at large is paying for smog in increased health issue rates, we just figure out an estimate on the cost of that and then tax the coal burners enough to pay for that. Now the equation is balanced – we don’t accidentally over consume coal and over produce pollution – we buy just the right amount.

Market Failure Number 3: Merit Goods or Positive Externalities

What if smog cured cancer? But we still didn’t put a price on it because we’re dumbass libertarians who don’t know how markets work and assume that “rational individual freedom” will figure everything out.

Well, then we’d be under producing smog.

A much more intuitive example might be vaccines. The value of a vaccine to you, and just you, you perfectly rational economic agent, you – it’s, say, $100. You don’t want to get the flu, you figure the flu is worth $100, so you get a shot to ensure you don’t get the flu.

If shots cost $100, you’d buy one. Your friend, who’s decided the flu is worth only $80 to him, decides not to get a shot. He’d rather risk getting the flu and keep his money.

But here’s the thing, when you buy a vaccine, you’ve lowered the risk of your friend getting the flu.

Did you charge him?

WHY NOT?! I THOUGHT YOU WERE A PERFECTLY RATIONAL ECONOMIC AGENT!

You should raise funds for your flu shot from all your friends, set at precisely the value they have for a slightly lowered risk of getting the flu.

You want to set up the LLC, or should I?

OR, and just hear me out here, OR – we could ask everyone at large to pay just a tiny bit, and then we use that money to lower the cost of flu shots for everyone. It’ll pay for itself many times over since we’ll make the vaccine cheap enough that a lot of people will get it, and we’ll have ‘herd immunity’, which is like, the best kind of immunity.

I’ll bet some people won’t turn over the money voluntarily – after all, they benefit whether they get the shot or not, since now all of their friends are immune. We might have to do some coaxing. I know some folks will do it out of their feelings of social contract – I, as an individual, get some benefit out of being in society, so I owe it back to society to chip in on things.

Or we can use the libertarian code for “social contract” and all rant and rave about men with guns coming to take our hard earned (government supplied) money.

Let’s talk about that for a bit more. Do you, as a moral person, not murder others because you’re afraid that men with guns will come and get you? No? That doesn’t make any sense. You should only act because men with guns force you too! Not out of the goodness of your heart!

Why is it that if you don’t murder people simply due to trying to avoid the consequences, that somehow paying taxes is different? That paying taxes you only do because of the threat of being locked up? I mean, let’s face it, the IRS isn’t that efficient (thanks libertarians). The likelihood of you actually getting locked up is low. Still, a lot of people try their best to pay their taxes.

Huh. I guess maybe it isn’t men with guns. Or maybe libertarians just think all tax payers are suckers.

Market Failure Number 4: Monopoly

Wait, wait, wait a second. A monopoly can’t be a market failure, it’s the point. The whole point of markets is for smart white men to compete with each other over who’s the smartestest, and when they win, they get all the gold and get to run things how they see fit.

I mean, some weiner economists might say that there are actually different types of markets, and that perfect market competition is great for both buyers and sellers equally and all this other theoretical bullshit. But we really know that markets should only be good for sellers, and buyers are all suckers.

Bro, do you even economics?

Monopolies tend to set prices too high. Given that other market forces can’t compete them down, the only real competition they have is from people just outright giving up the service. They extract all of the “market surplus” – this is the excess value to society gained from trade for those of you just realizing that people have studied markets for a lot longer than you have been alive – and so the demand side of the equation gets none of this ‘market surplus’. They’re only slightly better off than if they didn’t buy the product to begin with.

Meanwhile, the monopoly is WAAAAAY better off. Or at least its managers are, since monopolies can and often do use their market surplus to:

• Negotiate lower expected rates of return with lenders and investors
• Negotiate lower taxes and regulations (i.e., lobby) with the government
• Build a wider moat to discourage any future competition

None of that sounds like a very efficient way to use a surplus. Remember when suppliers of a good would often use their share of the market surplus to supply the good better? You know, innovate, use technology, create better products or more of them for the same cost? Remember when profits made us all better off?

Yeah, so do I! Only that happened in non-monopolistic markets!

What’s the solution here? Well, there’s two, and they both involve the BIG DIRTY GUB’MENT.

First, we can use government power to bust the trusts and break the monopolies. You know, men with guns and all that shit. Yeah!!  Show those fat cats who’s boss!

This can return a monopolistic market to a more competitive market.

Alternatively, we can just say that a monopoly is okay, but to control the prices we should all become managers and shareholders of that monopoly. This ends up looking a lot like government, and is why the government builds the roads. Roads that compete with each other are really expensive and would over produce roads – instead there’s a ‘natural’ monopoly here. To prevent an actual predatorial monopoly from forming and charging as much as possible to use the roads (meanwhile not building any MORE roads. Also this works for telecom, wink wink nudge nudge), we say the government is in charge of building roads.

They build shitty government roads, but they’re free!

Conclusion

This isn’t even all the ways markets can fail. There are others. And often they have regulatory solutions like taxes or men with guns or rules, and we’re all better off because of it.

Why?

Because free markets optimally allocate goods. All the above market failures are situations where a truly free market needs a little help to get started. The government can and should provide the means to get these markets going since, as we all know, markets – when they work – are fantastic.

But markets are not the same as “every man for themselves.” It’s not “no government involvement”. Again, remember, the government obviously builds the roads, issues the currency, and raises the army. There are not many libertarian arguments that any of these things ought to be done by anyone else. But all of those things are required for markets to form.

Markets can’t form if you can’t get to them (no roads). They can’t form if there’s no trusted medium of exchange (money). And they can’t form if robbers are going to steal your shit on the way too and from the market (armies). The government already plays a very large role in ensuring markets function.

The best markets are free ones, and free markets need the government to be free.

Why the Mainstream Left Must Abandon its Love Affair with Non-Violence

The Takeaway

Non-violence is just one tactic in affecting change. Where and when to apply nonviolent tactics and where and when to apply potentially violent ones depends on the context of the situation. While causing harm is morally wrong, it is understood that morally justified harm can often be done to prevent a potential greater harm in the future.

This is truer now than other social conflicts when one side celebrates a narrative of power and violence as a means to an end.

The Argument:

Let’s talk about two kinds of ‘violent’ protest – ‘defensive violence’ and ‘offensive violence’. Defensive violence is primarily what this argument covers – that is to say, they may hit first, but we hit back.

Offensive violence is covered to a lesser extent by the thought process below. I don’t think we’re in a situation where we need folks pre-emptively seeking out racists and punching them.

My main argument is in the defensive use of violence, that is, willingness to punch when punched.

I’ll admit there’s a huge gray area in between – it’s silly to argue that you have to wait to be punched to punch them. But at the same time, a defensive use of ‘first strike’ violence often implies a very well founded belief violence is about to be done to you, so you have the right to strike first. I think if you’re at a rally with Nazis and they have clubs, helmets, and guns, you should believe they intend to use them against you.

What’s with the Mainstream Left’s Struggle with Violence?

Can I Punch a Nazi?

Nearly a decade ago… Wait, no, only a few months. Sorry, it seems like it’s been that long. Anyway, a few months ago, we saw a well-known fascist punched on camera.

Some on the left celebrated this as a bit of a catharsis for all the rage brewing, whereas others got out their scolding scowls and decided that while racism, fascism, and authoritarianism is wrong, it’s more important to ensure other lesser leftists know it is morally inferior to take joy in someone else being hurt.

Oh, I won’t get into it too much, but this sanctimonious infighting over who’s the most enlightened probably had a lot to do with why we lost the election, BUT I DIGRESS…

The point is that for some reason, a complete asshole having a sore jaw was a cause of moral concern between folks on the left. This faded a bit as the gravity of the national situation sunk in – even the most enlightened pacifist liberal now thinks there are bigger fish to fry than whether or not a nazi gets punched.

The nation also turned its lonely eyes to Bob Mueller.

Sheet Cake and Clowning Around

Then Charlottesville.

An otherwise “lone wolf, mentally disturbed” young white man tried to kill a whole bunch of people using the most recent terrorist tactic de jour – ramming his car into a group of them. Only for once, the right didn’t go for the “lone wolf, mentally disturbed” narrative. This guy was a racist asshole and he was trying to kill innocent bystanders.

Murderer.

For the first week, there was some righteous worship of those who counter protested the white supremacists in Charlottesville, and the left was united in its message that anything is justified to interrupt the ascension of authoritarian, racist power.

Unfortunately, some leftists were only able to maintain their boner/ladyboners for justice for about a week before they remembered how much pleasure they derive from telling the rest of us what to do.

Tina Fey actually encouraged people to not show up, and eat cake instead.

She’s going for a laugh so I wouldn’t take it too seriously. But still, I can already hear murmurs of folks around me asking themselves “If someone gets hurt, is it worth it? Doesn’t showing up to counter protest just get more media coverage for the alt-right?”

Or take the New York Times opinion piece – using the tired condescenion of “you’re doing it wrong”. Instead of violence, we should be making fun of Nazis so that they’re ashamed and go home.

Both of these arguments are countered at the bottom because I don’t want to interrupt my flow. But suffice to say, we’re having a debate over whether it’s okay to punch a Nazi again.

The Thoughtful Left

I want to take a moment to point out that at its heart, the debate over violence is a good thing, and is one of the strengths of the left. The left tends not to rush headlong into anything. While my arguments are mostly aimed at the correct use of certain kinds of violence depending on the context, they’re not aimed at the careful deliberation of such.

That should be celebrated. That the idea of causing harm makes us uncomfortable is a good thing – but it should not make us so uncomfortable that we put prevention of harm above all other social goods.

That’s cowardice.

Non-Violence Is Better Than Violence?

Let’s talk about why it is we think nonviolent protests are better than violent protests.

What Makes Non-Violence Powerful?

The most obvious reasons are that MLK and Gandhi are heroes, and we want to duplicate their tactics. We feel as if practicing any form of violence would betray their message.

Similarly, when we see those practicing nonviolence on TV being brutalized, our heart goes out to them. We’re convinced that the non-violent protester is on the right side. Similar to Christian Martrys convincing others to jump into the colosseum with the lions, the act of refusing to ‘stoop to their level’ hits us at an emotional core.

Let’s respond to these thoughts.

First, let’s put MLK and Gandhi in context. MLK was a gun owner. Both had more violent synergistic movements to their flanks. Neither Gandhi nor King employed non-violence as simply a means to ‘be above it all’. Rather, they cunningly employed the tactic because of the context of their situation.

In both cases, you had a large state actor who’s oppression of a minority was relatively obscure. Similar to how there appears to be a ‘spate’ of cops shooting black men even though it’s actually been going on forever (smart phone cameras brought it out of obscurity), in King’s case particularly, he knew that television cameras would elevate his message of white, state sponsored oppression to everyone in the country.

Gun toting blacks reinforced the image of a violent underclass with mysterious aims, even though all those who carried arms were entirely within their rights to do so. Instead, to portray the black struggle as the struggle of innocence against an oppressor – broadcast around the world – was the way to bring attention to their plight and get the white American voter so disgusted with her government that she would in turn demand change.

This is key – nonviolent protest works best against state sponsored oppression when the oppression is not well known. And it works because it makes the oppression well known.

How is that different from our situation?

Well, first, the police in Charlottesville were out gunned. They stayed on the sidelines and performed surgical operations the best they could. They were not the oppressor. Second, more than two-thirds of the country is squarely against the protests in Charlottesville. They are already sending their time, prayers and money towards that cause. There’s no silent majority left to convince.

Even if it’s the case that non-violence is a contextual tactic without a perfect fit for the context in Charlottesville, we still have not established why violence may also be a contextual tactic as well, and what its effective context is.

First, let’s get into who we’re up against, as it will make the context for violence more clear.

A Short History of Fascism

Fascism Means Power

There’s a bit of an argument over what exactly “fascism” means. I think the easiest way to boil down fascism is to look at the symbols.

To fascists, power is everything. Power is all there is in life. This explains the interrelationship between social Darwinists and fascism, and the fascination with eugenics. The strongest shall survive. Anyone who believes otherwise is dreaming.

You can see this in their language and symbols today – the alt-right’s favorite insults are “cuck” and “snowflake”. Cuck they use on someone who’s been duped to betray the truth (as they see it), and they use it to make an analogy to a man who’s been tricked into raising another man’s child. Snowflake is used for much of the left – a tragically delicate and elegant natural phenomenon whose existence is ultimately temporary and whose structure is horrifically fragile.

Snowflakes shatter or melt. Fascists stay strong.

The symbol of the “red pill”, unfortunately, borrowed from The Matrix is another great example – some people are “red pillers” or alphas – those who swallow the bitter truth that all that there is is power and dominance. Everyone else is a “blue piller”, or beta – those who will be dominated and subjugated.

Power means Racism, Sexism, and Classism

The fascination with power explains the complementarity of racism, sexism and classism with their political philosophy.

Whites currently have the highest political stature in the United States. A fascist looks at that and says “it must be because Whites are the most powerful”.

They’d be disgusted to see any efforts to change that – letting the weak have stature is the opposite of what fascists believe. The powerful are powerful for a reason.

Likewise, a man’s ability to dominate a woman is all a fascist needs to understand that society itself should be organized with men routinely excercising power over women.

You can especially see the ties to sexism in the ‘red pill’ subculture. There, all other men are divided into alphas and betas. Alphas will routinely bed dozens of women because they know how to show dominance over them. Betas may or may not have significant others, but if they do, its only because they’ve allowed the woman to have control over them.

Gamergate was another great example of this in action. Many men wishing to show themselves as ‘true alphas’ felt offended that … well, honestly nothing really actually happened. Suffice it to say, these men all believed that their games were being taken over by feminists. Since they already felt like their lack of sex lives was proof that what was theirs was taken from them, their games being infiltrated by feminists was too far.

A fascist believes that when things go against the ‘natural order’, force and violence are entirely justified in re-establishing this natural order. After all, their belief is that the only natural order is the one which force and violence establish in the first place.

This Goes Back for Ages – Plato’s Republic

Early in Plato’s Republic there’s an argument over “might makes right” versus other forms of government.

Fascism may be the most recent embodiment of this philosophy – might makes right – but it has been with us since the beginning.

It’s in fact in these terms that I will make my main counter argument against a solely non-violent means of protest.

This is because while the actual contradiction to ‘might makes right’ is that ‘might does not make right’, there’s a strong counter argument that must be dealt with.

If ‘might does not make right’, why do we see so many instances of the mighty committing wrongs and getting away with it?

In other words, to truly defeat the argument that ‘might makes right’, we have to establish that right makes might. That is a society organized as justly as possible will be more mighty than a society less justly organized.

What Fascism Is Not: The Use of Force

Nowhere to be found in fascism is the idea that only they may use force. Instead, an important distinction should be made – a fascist believes “there is only force”.

A non-fascist believes “there are other things than force”. Pacifism is not the opposite of fascism!

To sum up, facism is at its root, the social darwinist belief that the powerful are powerful for a reason, that power is all there is, and that violence and force are the only legitimate means to distribute power.

They believe “might makes right”.

To counter act them, counter protestors must establish “right makes might“.

To spell this out – counter protestors must show that by having a society in which racism, sexism and classism are increasingly stampped out, society will be more powerful. They can demonstrate this by showing that their own groups, who disavow racism, sexism and classism, can organize more effectively and if required, do more harm to the fascists than the fascists can do to them (i.e., the counter protestors must demonstrate they are more powerful).

This is the only way to convince a fascist. You must show them that their methods will lead to weakness.

Theory and Practice

A great example of this in practice is shaming, which probably needs to be used very carfully since you’re going to get a whole lot of innocents caught up in it. But cameras on the ‘front lines’ of these protests and a lack of fear in capturing folks faces and getting them on the internet so that they can lose their jobs and friends has been devastating to the alt-right.

This isn’t necessarily ‘punch a nazi’ sort of violence, but it is pretty close to an electronic vigilantism, and it works.

It, along with other intimidation tools, keep white supremacists’ turnout low. If they fear the counter protestors, they won’t show up. If they don’t show up, they can’t get news coverage. If they can’t get news coverage, they can’t up recruitment.

While taking pictures and shaming people online isn’t exactly the ‘punching’ kind of violence, it does require that folks show up to rallys, it requires people get close enough to get good pictures, and both of these things are going to risk getting hit with a beer bottle.

If you have to punch a nazi to get a good picture of him, then it’s probably justified.

Speaking of which, that leads to the second role defensive violence can play – punching a nazi gets great ratings.

Turnout on the counter protest side must be large and we must not get fatigued. Keeping people moralized gets harder and harder as this struggle goes on. While many things inspire people, to a certain degree we must acknowledge our lesser tendencies and admit that – you know what, seeing that nazi punched felt good, and it makes me have more energy to keep doing this shit day in and day out.

We all know in our hearts this is a struggle over what power means and how its used. And when someone who advocates for the use of force to subjugate people of color, women and anyone who isn’t a particular kind of Christian has force used to subjugate him, well, that’s the best kind of satire.

To spell it out – nothing proves the powerlessness of a Nazi quite like punching him.

Finally and very practically, violent and non-violent protest intermingle and compliment each other. MLK would have a harder time without Malcolm X. Likewise, there are already plenty of examples in Charlottesville where antifa were able to run security where the police couldn’t.

Protecting clergy, running a perimeter, and meeting violence with violence when nazis push through nonviolent clergy are all ways that boost the non-violent protestors means of getting things done. Security boosts turnout as people feel more safe, and the knowledge that a group of antifascists is only a few yards away might help you keep up the courage to keep your non-violent human chain up a little longer against fascists who are very willing to punch, mace and kick you.

What about the future?

Naturally we might think Charllotesville is a one off. I’d like to think that in future events, the national gaurd may show up and provide the security the counter protestors need.

But I also know that the fascists are working just as hard to identify cities with small police forces that may lean more friendly to their cause. They’ve proven they can show up en masse in Charllotesville without too much notice. There’s a very real possibility that the police will be outgunned again and the only ones willing to confront white supremacists will be clergy, clowns and antifa.

Police and the national guard are great if you can get them. But Charlottesville, if anything, shows that we’re up against a movement who’s intentionally trying to target places where the police turnout may not be high enough to stop them.

Counterarguments

“If someone gets hurt, is it worth it?”

Don’t be a wiener. Heather Heyer does not want you to stay home.

“Doesn’t showing up to counter-protest just get more media coverage for the alt-right?”

First, the media is your friend in this. While I think they could do a better job of not covering the alt-right so much, remember that 99.9% of journalists are on the counter protestors side.

Second, remember that counter protestors get plenty of coverage too, and this increases turnout and donations to places like the ACLU and ADL.

“Instead of violence shouldn’t we just…”

This isn’t an either or. Except in the rare case of someone having too little room in their car to bring a baseball bat or a clown wig, both tactics such as satire as well as defensive violence can be used and we should be willing to use them.

Antifa can and has run security for nonviolent groups, whether they be clergy using traditional non-violent means or satirists.

If you show up with the funniest and most biting satircal sign, you’re probably just going to get maced. If there’s a bunch of folks in gas masks who are willing to go get maced in your stead, then you can hold your sign up for the whole protest and photographers can get some hilarious shots.

You’ll have both done your parts.

“Doesn’t harming them just play into their narrative?”

Their narrative is on storm front and info wars. Their narrative is fake news and propaganda. Whether you show up or not, they’ll photoshop pics of Antifa being there and causing a ruckus. Might as well actually cause a ruckus if that’s what they’re going to believe either way.

They aren’t listening to CNN or the NYT. They’re listening to people who are saying you’re all controlled by jewish masterminds and helping black men steal their women. These guys are nuts. Thinking that you can hurt their propaganda machine by your actions is giving them too much intellectual credit, as what you do or don’t do is in the real world, whereas their propaganda has no ties to the real world.

Eventually, you have to serve some pizza, even if a bunch of nuts think you keep a pedophile cage down in your pizza parlor’s basement.

“In Engineering, Merit matters more than Gender or Race”

To get it out up front, I’m not going to link to anyone’s rant. But the rant, and its arguments are somewhat well known. I think it’s important to take some of the arguments head on.

Let’s look at the classic referenced in the title,

In Engineering, Merit matters more than Gender or Race

What about outside of engineering?

The argument seems to make the implication that the statement ‘merit matters more than gender or race’ only applies, or most applies, in engineering. Which in turn, seems like a subtle attack on non-engineering fields.

I believe everyone thinks merit matters more than gender or race – although many feminists will take that to mean the exact opposite of what misogynists mean.

It’s pretty offensive to just assume that unless you are in engineering, you’re in a field rife with gender and racial privilege – and not the good ole’ boy white male kind we’re used to. In other words, that engineering is still white and male dominated, and that it is alone in believing ‘merit matters more than gender or race’ seems to imply that other fields are less white and male dominated is due to gender or race mattering more than merit.

In other words, engineering is sacrosanct, and we must keep it that way, lest we turn into the humanities where black women excel only due to their gender and race, rather than their merit.

If Merit matters more, why are gender and race predictive?

Right now, the field is very empirically white and male. That’s the context in which the statement “In Engineering, Merit matters more than Gender or Race” is said. If that’s true, why can you walk into Google and find mostly white men?

There are two conclusions you can draw – the first is that you’ve arrived at a contradiction and that if it’s true that in engineering, merit matters more than gender or race, then we have a problem that we can make certain assumptions about the distribution of race and gender that appear to imply it does matter.

The second, and this is the conclusion drawn from our precious little alt-right snowflakes, is that white men are just better at engineering in general and that they are there based on their merit

A different, more productive world

Let’s say that it’s true – in engineering, merit matter more than gender or race. And let’s also say that since we find mostly white men in engineering, we need to fix that, what does that mean?

It means that until we see 50/50 parity of men and women in engineering, we’re almost certainly keeping some brilliant engineers out and escalating some bad engineers in. If there are 100 engineering jobs, and we let our implicit bias mean we only hire men, then we miss out on the 50 best women for the job and instead take the 50 next best men.

This same argument works across racial boundaries too.

There’s no reason to assume that gender or race is predictive of ability, which means engineering talent – a priori – is probably diffusely distributed amongst the population. To find yourself in a shop that doesn’t reflect that more general distribution means that somewhere along the way, someone was chosen due to their race (white) and gender (male) rather than their merit.

And whats worse, someone with a lot of engineering talent was shut out.

This is Bad for America

We’re in a productivity slump. We have a resurgent and hostile Russia, a growing and ambivalent China, and a widening wealth gap in our own country which leads to lower growth, lower hapiness, and lower productivity.

We absolutely cannot afford to keep our best engineering talent out of the bull pen because we don’t want to offend the old guard and give them any inclination that perhaps they got where they were today because of their race or gender.

It’s not about quotas or political correctness, it’s about standing the fuck aside and making room for the better engineers that have been on the outside this whole time. Because we can’t afford to employ lesser engineers anymore.