Psychopolitik 2.0

User “GussieFN”, in response to Logan Ferree, further down his Kos entry on Trent’s challenge to (mainstream) Democrats stating that corporations wield coercive power due to government, and not in and of themselves:

I too wield coercive power due to the gov’t. I can sue someone. I can force them to retract slander (or libel, I always forget which is which) or face penalty. I can shoot them for entering my house, with a legally-purchased gun. I can call the cops when they pee on my lawn. I can get them arrested for punching me. I even have illegal coercive power due to my gov’t. I can use the internet to stalk someone or trade in illegal pornography. I can use the highway system to get away from a bank robbery.

Corporations do wield coercive power because of the government, and wouldn’t without government aid. Yes. Nobody disagrees with that. But so what? So do I. […]

GussieFN is making some very critical errors here: misunderstanding the nature of coercive power, overrating minor police powers (which minarchist libertarians — like, um, Logan — actually do not oppose except in amount of application), & classifying making an action easier unintentionally in the same category as overt subsidy. Let’s break this down, shall we?

-Access to the court system: GussieFN thinks because one can, in theory, sue someone for slander that they wield the power of the State. That assumes that no decision as to the merit of the claim has to be made, it’s as easy as sue–>win. If it was like that then there’d be so many lawsuits that half the population would have a law degree. Sure, they can THREATEN to sue & possibly get a settlement instead, but that depends on the person being sued thinking that the government is not going to take their side. Fate is still held in the balance when you exercize this “power”, so it’s as likely to work as it is to get you nothing.

That’s not power, it’s luck.

See, when we say that corporations wield coercive power through government, it’s not this kind of power we’re talking about. Technically, everyone has that access, and it shouldn’t really be referred to as a “power” anyway. No, corporate-state power would be more like being able to take someone to court while secretly paying off the defendant’s attorney to “take a dive”, or being able to pick a judge that’s staunchly biased in your favor, or threatening members of the jury with death if they vote against you. Notice a common theme with those? These tactics all involve not using an impartial system to come to a decision, but deliberately rigging it to be unfair.

Using the power of government to direct unearned funds towards themselves, to subsidize operating costs, to limit competition, & to squash internal dissent. That is corporate power. The thing is, it is all because of government power that this is even an option. A truly private business cannot go around with firearms extracting money from people to make their operations artificially cheaper, the State has to do that; a truly private business cannot blockade & shut down competitors, the State does that via lopsided regulations; a truly private business cannot respond to discontent over compensation with force without a government that implicitly GRANTS them that power & is willing to back it up with its own force if deemed necessary. No surprise here: the corporation as a concept started its existence as an explicit agent of the State, back in the glory days of imperialism. The only difference now is rather than the government using the corporation it’s the other way around.

-”I can shoot them with a legal gun!”… I can’t believe this statement was even made, seriously. The government not punishing you for shooting an intruder is in no way whatsoever a wielding of their power — besides, some people do get punished. Ask Cory Maye what he thinks of that…

-Subsidy vs unintentional ease: true, the internet at its absolute roots started as a government project — specifically a military project. But no one today would recognize the Arpanet if you showed them. Saying simply “thank the government for the internet” would be like saying the car was invented in prehistoric times because some neanderthal made a wheel. This is beside the point though: the internet was not created to facilitate stalking or pornography, that it is used for those purposes is chance. The highway system was actually created by the government — for military purposes (notice a pattern?), and as a huge subsidy to General Motors (though in effect the two were one in the same, since the head of GM at the time was Secretary of Defense, after having previously been director of the “War Production Board” during WW2) & is still maintained by government. Yet, again, the purpose was not to facilitate bank robberies — that is, unless you mean the money that car companies got from goosing demand for cars, & the subsidizing of sprawl.

So, the analogy of corporate-state coercive power to anything the average person can seek from govenrment or take advantage of is completely void. A more appropriate one would’ve been the ability of a loud plurality to get laws passed that attack a minority group. For example, the Religious Right’s war on homosexuality. Even that though is only strength in numbers, and for all the screaming it doesn’t have as much effect as it could — thank yahweh. A corporation, by law, is seen as a meta-person, a group that has morphed like Voltron, with the CEO forming the head, into an immortal individual, with all of the rights an individual holds by nature but none of the responsibility. Rectify this, and you’ve solved the problem.

(Cross-posted to Freedom Democrats)

“This is EXACTLY what we were talking about when we said political power was the wrong tool to address morality.  You trust politician rhetoric about doing things “for the children”, you will end up with them eventually trying to screw your children, if not literally then financially by leaving them a heaping mound of debt from using your tax dollars for their own interest.  That’s the fundamental issue with government, morally the everyday actions of politicians are no different than what Foley did.  The GOP might’ve been surprised that the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing & Exploited Children was seducing teenage boys online during votes, but we can actually say ‘told you so’.  Considering how often politics results in your interests being represented by people who actually oppose you & everything you work for, it’d seem that’s the whole point.”

Felt like getting that out there.  Though I welcome any development that discredits political power & sows much-needed cynicism among the public, I worry that there could be tunnel vision on this, and hope that while the sleaze is being slagged on we keep in mind that our rights are being molested as we speak.  Barring criminal charges, I will not be addressing this issue again.

That’s the answer to the unasked question (via Lew) “including contractors, just how many employees of the US government are there?”

Ponder that for a moment.

Blargh:

Laura Mallory is not a Harry Potter fan, and she isn’t giving up the fight to have the popular character taken out of elementary school. She says the series may encourage reading, but it also encourages witchcraft and evil.

She made her argument before a state school board hearing examiner on Tuesday.  “Witchcraft is being mainstreamed to our kids today but people are not aware of it. They think these books are fantasies but Wicca is a real recognized religion,” Mallory said.

She finds the series so disturbing she says she’s never completely read one of the books by popular author J.K. Rowling. And she told the hearing officer she doesn’t want her three children exposed to Harry Potter at the school library.

“They are my most precious thing in the whole wide world to me and I don’t want them indoctrinated into a religion whose practices are evil,” said Mallory.

Lady, far as I’m concerned you should consider yourself lucky your kids CAN read, considering how dumb Georgians are on average.  I can count the native-born GAers I’ve met that seemed like they could read above a 3rd grade level & speak proper english if they had to on one hand.  By her logic, I should be stockpiling weapons in anticipation of doling out vigilante justice since my favorite comic book character growing up was The Punisher…

As for wicca, maybe we should ask some real-life wiccans about it:

Among her arguments is a central theme that the books promote witchcraft and evil, but people who know about real life witchcraft, or Wiccanism, say the witches in the Potter books have nothing to do with reality and a lot more to do with getting children to enjoy reading. […]

[Wiccanism practitioner Marcia Gaither] says the controversy about Harry Potter is absurd.  “No one tried to take ‘The Wizard of Oz’ away, you didn’t see them taking ‘Bewitched’ off the air when it was on; ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch.’ All of these things are fantasy and nothing in any of these are even remotely close to what Wiccans practice,” Gaither said. (emphasis mine)

So, if Harry Potter has nothing to do with Wicca in actuality, it can’t be said that the books promote it. This woman doesn’t care though, she’s just another jesus-freak who thinks any book other than the bible is “evil”.

Markos Moulitaszulongname makes the slightest bit of a lame attempt at courting an alliance with libertarians, and this is how much of his crew responds:

I am no libertarian Democrat. I am a redistribution-of-wealth, tax the fuck out of the rich, regluate the shit out of business, much-stronger-than-we-have-now safety net Democrat.
-user “ChurchOfBruce”

Yuk.  I’m for the Common Good / Civic Virtue Democratic Party.
-user “philgoblue”

It’s your blog, you can post whatever you want, whenever you want Kos, but that doesn’t make it any more appealing to real Democrats to see our party, the party of FDR and active government for the common good, to be tarred with the brush of libertarianism, which stands above all for “me first, devil take the hindmost”.  You can put all the lipstick you want on that pig, but it’s still a pig.
-user “geordie”

Bravo geordie, I couldn’t have said it better myself. I mean, WTF? True Democrats can never form an alliance with Libertarians. Period. My experience communicating with Libertarians about politics is the same as yours … they hate Government in all forms but most of all in the form of taxation and gun control. They want business unregulated. Maybe they are softening now but I would hate for the Democratics to even give them an ear. Their party doesn’t have the support to make much progress because their ideas suck. That is their problem and the last thing the Dems should do, IMHO, is whore out to the Anarchy Party for votes when we are gaining momentum.  I mean really…Kos, this is your place but to court an alliance with a party that disdains the very values most Dems hold dear (social programs) is beyond belief.
-user “COTeach”

People need to get the following through their heads:

• government cannot have the power to grant you things you didn’t earn without having the power to take what you did*.
• centralized political power is INHERENTLY unrepresentative, as its complexity bars the average person from understanding it enough to sway anything.  By default, the levers of the State fall into the hands of people who want to game the system for their own benefit.
• when you “regulate the shit out of business”, business will regulate the shit out of YOU in retaliation.
• the “common good” assumes unanimous agreement, which cannot exist in a free society
• civic virtue does not assume state action
• active government “for the common good” is a myth.  In practice it will serve the interests of whoever the hell happens to be in power at the time.
• Active government for it’s OWN sake is unspeakably ridiculous.
• One cannot simultaneously believe that the capacity of the government to conduct unwarranted surveillance should be nullified & that only officers of said government should be trusted with firearms without being a hypocrite.

Oh, yeah, one more thing: if you truly think “social programs” are a value to hold dear, you need to get out more.

(* -  case in point: The shit-obvious answer to the dumbest question to libertarians I have ever heard.)

Logan Ferre discusses the origins of libertarianism, comes up with another “map” of views (the axes being Statism vs Anarchy, & Collectivism vs Individualism), & asks “so where are we?”

IMO, the proper question is more “where are we going?”

Personally I’ve come to see libertarianism as not a specific point on such a map, but a constant line going in the general direction of the anarchist end. Some of us have a different timetable for “arrival”, but overall the idea is to end up with a literal “self-governing society” eventually.

As for collectivism: provided that it is COMPLETELY voluntary, one can actually be both an individualist AND a collectivist, since the decision to pool resources is a willing one. If you want to form a group of some sort, completely made of willing members, then there is nothing to libertarianism that prevents you from doing so. The key variable — I’d say the ONLY variable, even — is the State. The further away we can get from it, the better, though we have to have the will to replace it with ourselves to make the transition work.

Though, to be honest, I think “anarchy” is a misnomer, if only for how people have come to interpret it. The average Joe out there hears “anarchy” he thinks of people running the streets blowing stuff up & kicking babies, basically doing anything & everything no matter how cruel and/or idiotic simply because The Man isn’t dishing out beatings. This misconception implies, unknown to the person holding it, an indictment of humanity itself: if all we understand is violence, and without being forced to not harm each other we’re guaranteed to do so, are we ever truly civilized?

In some sense of the term, there will always be some kind of order, even in a post-state society, the issue is how that order is to be arrived at. Authoritarian types of all stripes answer that question with “we will impose it with our boots to your face!”, while we reject force as a tool for maintaining a society, it is as simple as that. Whether you want to call the end result of our views “anarchy” or not is up to you, I personally don’t care, long as we get there.

2002: “If we don’t invade Iraq, the terrorists will have won”

2003: “If we don’t stay in Iraq, the terrorists will have won”

2004: “If we don’t stay in Iraq, & Bush doesn’t get re-elected, the terrorists will have won”

2005: “If we don’t stay in Iraq, conduct warrantless surveillance on US citizens, & torture detainees (most of whom are NOT al-qaeda), the terrorists will have won”

2006: “If we don’t stay in Iraq, conduct warrantless surveillance on US citizens, torture detainees (most of whom are NOT al-qaeda), & let Hastert & Boehner get away with covering up a congressman’s attempts at screwing 16-year-old boys, the terrorists will have won” (scroll the comments)
Props.

I’d like to know the thought process behind this one:

A Turkish Airlines plane carrying more than 100 passengers from Tirana, Albania, to Istanbul, was hijacked Tuesday and landed at Italy’s Brindisi airport, company spokesman Ali Genc said.

The plane was hijacked in Greek airspace, Genc said.

Turkish television channel NTV, quoting unnamed security officials, reported that the plane was hijacked by two Turks to protest Pope Benedict XVI’s planned visit to Turkey next month. (emphasis mine)

Simpler minds out there look at stuff like this & conclude that what the pope said that 14th century emperor said that the pope quoted was correct. So why do it?

This would be like if in response to remarks by some moralist type calling libertarians irresponsible brats we decided to go drunk driving.

Edit @ 2:10AM EST 100406 — Associated Press fucked up. The moron that jacked the plane was actually a converted christian who thought he couldn’t serve in a “muslim army”. So rather than this being an example of illogical action in the name of islam, it’s illogical action in the name of christianity. Props to Emre for alerting me to this correction.

Gee…notice that atheists don’t tend to do this kind of shit?

They’ve got balls alright — the balls to blatantly contradict themselves:

On Friday, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, correctly denounced a border-fence bill as a concession “to the radical anti-immigrant right wing” of the Republican Party. It’s absurd to fence off 700 miles of the border and leave the other 1,300 miles open; besides, the government lacks the manpower to prevent migrants from defeating the fence with tunnels or ladders. But if blowing billions on this symbolism is a sop to right-wing nuts, why did 26 Senate Democrats vote for the bill while only 17 opposed it? (emphasis mine)

Simple: because, unfortunately for the somewhat more principled among the party (and for the US itself in the long run), enough of the public has an irrational fear of mexicans (not all of the illegals are mexicans, but the types so scared don’t know the difference) to swing an election.

What, you thought it was something less crassly self-serving?

In principle, there is legitimate reason for concern about border security as long as one exists — though, in the long run I’d rather it not be a factor.  The concept of borders, lines where simply crossing them can be illegal, is artificial, a political invention.  Problem is, you cannot make a border irrelevant without first making the politics that created it irrelevant, and those are raging out of control.  Despite the obvious root of illegal immigration being overly strict rules to LEGAL immigration, an overwhelming majority think levels of legal immigration should either remain the same or be decreased (not to mention they’re fast accepting a national ID card — might as well tattoo barcodes on our asses while you’re at it…).  So, rather than show a united front against what is not only meaningless demagoguery but a waste of money when we’re already racking up debt like crazy, the Democratic Party decided to press the “Me, too!” button.

People think they have to co-sign empty gestures of pseudo-populism to win elections.  It’s our fault, folks…