Would you prefer  an America in which the three-and-a-half million richest Americans and their spouses, children, grand-children and great-grand-children  disappeared forever (assuming you were not any of the persons named or an America in which everyone in America but the persons just named, and you and the one hundred people closest to you disappeared forever?  I thought this question up to illustrate the difference between egalitarianism.  Since the richest Americans are (for the most part) the Americans making the rest of us the happiest their loss would diminish our lives much more than the loss of the masses.

On second thought, I realized that would not be the case because of all the high productive Americans who are not rich, and also because I doubt that the very rich would not be fairly easy to replace with the almost very rich.  It’s also true that the disappearance of the masses would make it difficult for the very rich to be anywhere near as effective as they had been.

Or would it?  Things would surely be bad for a while, but possibly they would eventually . . .

NEW SCENARIOS:  nicer ones (because while I have very little problem with the painless extinction of anyone, including myself, due to my belief that extinct people will not likely be unhappy about their state, I do have a proper problem with causing the unhappiness their extinction would cause those left behind, so however easy it is for me to make up dire scenarios, it would be impossible for me to cause them in reality if I could, and as the Christian God and most of his brothers and sisters can and do): my new scenarios would be the same as my old except that no one would be rendered extinct–and America would first be transported to an exact duplicate of the earth a billion light-years away except that it has no human beings on it until the duplicate of America is deposited on it.  The choice given then is which of the two groups I described should be sent back to the now unpopulated original America, and which left with you on the new planet–which will have not outside countries to contend with.

My not yet carefully-thought-out verdict is that the one with the very rich would be less successful for those in it than the other one would be for those in it, but after a generation or earlier, it would become stupendously better.  The one with the masses would definitely not be better off with the very rich gone because the huge majority of the very rich are not the monsters that the socialistic demagogues rant that they are.  But its suffering would not last long, I don’t think.  It might even fairly quickly become significantly better than it has because of all the positions that would open up at the top for younger persons equal to the old people blocking their way.

A scenario more interesting to me would replace the richest 3,500,000 and families with the 3,500,000 most anthreffective Americans and their families, by some evaluational process vastly better than we have now.  “Anthreffectiveness” is my term for, roughly, “full human capacity to be effective,” or over-all intelligence, including the physical intelligence to catch fly balls, the auditory intelligence to compose symphonies, the “cartoceptual” intelligence to be able to find your way around, the social intelligence to get half-wits to elect you U.S. president, and so on.

An interesting question would be how many of these would be in the very rich group.  Certainly much less than half . . . I think.  But I’m basing that on my impression that many more of those of the past (before the twentieth century) who got into encyclopedias for their positive cultural achievements–e.g., not Nero–were not rich than were.

Lots of other varieties of either/or choices based on scenarios like the ones I’ve described are fun to think about.  How about a choice between an America on the far-off second Earth having either only  the best 3,500,000 American “progressive” minds (according to Paul Krugman and Elizabeth Warren) and their families or the best American anti-authoritarian minds (according to George Will and Rand Paul)?  Or the actual best (and most benevolent) progressive minds and the actual best (benevolent) anti-authoritarian minds according to a computer with a political IQ of 10,000 and access to the total political understanding of every American . . .  That would get me in with the anti-authoritarians, something that might not happen with Will and Paul running the show.  (Maybe as a long-time subscriber to both The New Criterion and Free Inquiry I’d get into both far-off Americas.  Nah, neither side would want me.)

An interesting possibility is that an America here without its best freedom-loving minds might soon become entirely socialized.  What would happen then?  A revolution of the right-wing few against the wimp majority?  And how about the other possibility: an America here without its leading progressives.  Also a revolution?  Again of a wimp majority against a right-wing few, but much bett

A related idea: two Americas on two far-off planets, one with just the best freedom-lovers, the other with just the best security-lovers, let me try neutrally to call them.  Would leftists evolve on the free planet, anti-authoritarians on the welfare planet?

How about two Americas one of which has no one but the 3,500,000 and their families who most ardently believe in a supreme being like the Christian god, and the 3,500,000 who most ardently disbelieve in such an entity?

Now the best pairing: the 3,500,000 and families most enchanted by poetry, and the 3,500,000 and families least enchanted by it.  Frankly, I think I’d rather be with the latter.

I suppose I’d really prefer (sob) America as is.  I’d love to learn what happened to each of the others, though.  Some will, in virtual realities of the future.

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I began this entry with a near-complete blank mind.  Finally, thinking I would present a brief description of my first pairing of Americas, then kept going.  Have I abominated even worser than usual?  I seem to have devolved from poetry and poetics into a village socio-political ranter against all that is holy?  I do seem to have stopped composing poetry.  I am not happy about that.  Why?  Maybe I’ve run out of creativity.  Maybe now that I’m in my final years I feel a need to have my say.  A big reason that makes sense is it has been obvious for a long time that trying to keep from being too ignored by the just about all Establishments (including the libertarian one)  by keeping quiet about my political views has no chance of helping me.

Humorously, the true main reason for all my pronouncements and blither is simply my need to get a blog entry posted daily!

Let it be inscribed on the pot holding my ashes: “He was Honest, but nevertheless Harmless.  Urp.”

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From one of my ongoing arguments through cyberspace (with nothing new in it except maybe the expression of a few of my standard thoughts):

First to correct an error: None of my beliefs is based on FAITH although many may be mistaken.

I sympathize with you regarding problems with corporations but don’t think any system of economics can prevent morons, due to their numbers, from screwing things up.

As to your expertise in economics, you forget that credentials and assertion mean nothing to me.  I am sure you know more about economics than I because I know you, not because you say you do or have a degree in it, etc.  Similarly, I am sure many academics know a great deal more about poetry than I–but I am able to think, which they are not, so have developed a far better understanding of poetry out of my meagre knowledge of it than they have out of their sprawling knowledge of it.  I’m not anywhere near that sure my understanding of economics is superior to yours, however.  It doesn’t matter, because my genes force me to value individual property rights and the individual freedom they result in over any form of government-run economic system.  A business-owner should be allowed to run his business any way he wants to so long as he does not commit any violent crimes in the process.  At present, only criminals are allowed to hire and fire as they please, set a price on their goods, etc.

I would go along with you to the extent that, as much as I hate the idea of a government’s redistribution of wealth–in any way whatsoever–I do think that if the government must continue to do it, it ought to do a better job of it.  On the other hand, I’m sure you won’t agree with me that it’s stupid to give more and more money to people incapable of rising out of impoverished, worthless lives no matter how much money you dump on them.

To which, I later (24 January 2015) realize, I need to add that this does not mean I believe all those the government dumps money on is necessarily “incapable of rising out of impoverished, worthless lives,” etc.  If a government is of as affluent a country as ours is, and required by its dependents to support those supposedly in need, it should do it in such a way that the worst of its recipients can go to a government-run soup-kitchen to keep from starving, and live in a single heated or cooled room and bath if they need to, and nothing more–other than directing them to opportunities to improve their lot if able to.

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“One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith,” the Pope recently said, in a discussion about a bunch of killings in Paris by Islamofanatics. “There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity … in freedom of expression there are limits.”

The right to liberty of expression comes with the “obligation” to speak for “the common good,” Pope Francis said, cautioning against provocation.   –from somewhere on the Internet

This kind of nonsense always annoys me, this idea that freedom of speech is fine–unless you use it.  And I have nothing but contempt for those who believe so little in the validity of their ideas that they want the government to protect those ideas from ridicule, or anything else.  Then there is their failure to see that if freedom of speech is reduced to protect one religious idea or object or person from ridicule, it will soon be reduced to protect any religious  idea or object or person; at that point, why should it not be reduced to protect all ideas or objects or persons from ridicule?  And why stop there, why not cancel freedom of speech to assure that no ideas, objects and persons will ever have to put up with any verbal opposition to them whatever?

Hey, it could be done!  People could be trained throughout their schooling to express only positive opinions without odiously comparing what they are praising to anything else–e.g., write how wonderful a president Barack Obama is but not say he’s better or worse than James Buchanan.  The only problem would be how to force everyone into never saying anything offensive without being mean to them.  Well, except for the problem of the hyper-offendables who will find ways to take offense at anything–for example, that someone who has chosen to praise Obama is insulting the memory of Buchanan by not choosing to praise him.   In both cases, all you could do is say nice things about people who always say nice things, with arguments, even, one of which might be that people who always say nice things are much less likely to be socked in the jaw than people who sometimes say things that are not nice–which would be true in both cases since the hyper-offendables would be saying those praising Obama instead of Buchanan were not being nice to Buchanan, which would not be nice to say.

Note: I’m at the level of a child now.  In fact, I think I’ve been there from the beginning of this entry (but not all my life!)  That’s because one can’t discuss the topic at an adult level because of its beginning point–incredibly sub-juvenile expressions of morality (i.e., totalitarian regulation of others’ behavior).

Conclusion: it would be very hard to say nothing but nice things.  As I did not mention but which should be immediately obvious to any intelligent person, it would also by very dull.

I just remembered something else needing to be mentioned: that mockery is a relatively benign form of hostility.  This, I suspect, is something we are all aware of, but that is hard for some people to remember, especially progressives.

Another digression: You know, I think the two main parties in the west are the sentimentalists and the realists, with the former more numerous, and stronger verbally but weaker mentally.  I like to believe I’m more sentimental than the sentimentalists and more realistic than the realists.  Another thought: that the realists are only realistic about reality!  I’ll let you work out what I mean by that since it seems pretty clear to me.

The sentimentalists are too sensitive to pain, so see what’s wrong with reality excessively, the realists are too thick-skinned to be bothered by what’s wrong with it.  Among other things, as you should always take me to be saying.  Dogma: there are a multitude of reasons for just about everything.

Back to ridicule and hostility, actually more physically-demonstrated hostility.  Simplistic dogma: we automatically hate the stranger, by which I mean someone who is significantly and obviously different from us (and therefore an U?n?k?n?o?w!n).  This makes sense biologically, since it’s better to be prepared to antagonize a stranger than let down one’s defenses against him.  Obviously, it’s best to simply be warily on the verge of attacking a stranger–and carefully learn as much as possible about him.  Eventually he will become known enough to accept as a friend-in-progress or more, up to a full-scale friend, or to reject as known enough not to be feared but still unfamiliar enough to be shunned, or recognized as an enemy to be fled from or fought.

Most social friction is due to differences of Life-Manner (yes, I’m sure there’s a better word for this, but I’m bad with words).  Every such difference is  small, probably tiny considering how many things in common every hum Life-manner has with every other life-manner (e.g., we all drink water and urinate), but each one that causes damaging friction seems large to someone some important part of whose Life-Manner is in opposition to it–whether God is three unified beings or just one, for example.

Here is where I finally get to the point I’ve been trying to make: when component A of your life-manner opposes component A of my life-manner, it has to cause me pain.  The pain has to cause me to do something about your component A.  Murder you?  I’m a realist, so my answer would be, yes, if your were about to set off a bomb containing bacteria capable of making everyone coming into contact with them say nasty things about mathematical poetry.  Ordinarily, however, murder would be impractical.  It may even be that your life-manner has enough other components that harmonize with my life-manner for me to prefer that you live even if not wholly compatible with me.  (Actually, in many cases, I would want you to live because your life-manner was sufficiently unlike mine to keep you from boring me, but I’m trying to keep this as simple as possible.)

So I don’t murder you, but I hate you passionately while the difference of our component A’s dominates my consciation (dang, I just knew that word would be useful!)  I can’t murder you.  Should I just smoulder?  No, I can combine friendship and enmity in an insult, for instance, if you were an African American, I could say, “Well, that’s just what I should expect from a nigger-man.”  Of course, I would have to know that you were not a hyper-offendable, and knew me well enough to know that I was merely letting off steam (or joking).

And now I’m into another subject.  But first let me say I consider myself not a racist, but am not a sentimentalist, so define a racist not as someone failing to consider all races 100% nice and valuable, but simply as one who physically treats everyone the same, however different so long as he does not damage or  threaten to damage my property, which includes my body, and who interpersonally treats everyone in accordance with how well he treats me interpersonally, while trying my best to take into consideration the effect of my interpersonal interaction with him–e.g., not referring to a black I know has trouble rising above sensitivity to insults using the n-word.

Now, my new subject–and today I’m going to let myself bobble wherever I feel like bobbling until I’m tired of bobbling–is that the hyper-prohibition against the horrible n-word (and all like prohibitions against words or ideas, like burning a star of David on one’s on front lawn) is moronic.  There are four major reasons for this, in my opinion:

(1) When serious, the use of a tabooed word or reference to a tabooed idea can helpfully indicate a hostility to those offended by it (or sympathetic to them) that will allow them  accurately to gauge its strength and location–and, if accompanied by any hostility to some specific hated component of the victim’s life-manner, and person, possibly allow something to be done about it–perhaps the use of the n-word is due to a person’s error about blacks that can be corrected, or he may–brace yourself if you’re a sentimentalist (although if you were, how could you keep reading this entry of mine?)–he may be bothered by some component of life-manner or person he ought to be bothered by and that they ones offended might well be able to correct–e.g., the tendency of blacks to commit crimes of violence more often than whites do (if that is the case, and I’m pretty sure it is).

(2) The use of a tabooed word or reference to a tabooed idea can give both those justifiably upset and those unjustifiably upset with some component of a person or a group’s behavior an outlet for their anger less damaging than lynching.

(3) It can, in a work of art at its most effective, carry out all sorts of valuable expressive effects–the way the use of ugly colors makes happy colors in a painting all the happier, for instance; or coverage of the full gamut of human behavior (including the use of racial slurs) enlarges the scope of a novel.

(4) By far most important good that allowing people to use tabooed words and reference to tabooed ideas to me but just about always overlooked in discussions like this is that it will make the most verbally creative members of a society feel free.  Why should a sociologist feel inhibited when trying to present a valid overview of the nature of intelligence by a fear that the understanding of it he has reached will offend some group that has the power to keep him from publishing his view, and even jeopardize his career?  Why should some other sociologist closing in on an important insight be prevented from reading something the first sociologist has written that is exactly what he needs to nail his insight?  And why should some playwright’s play be banned because partially universally offensive, given that the rest of it may have an exhilaratingly inspiring effect on just about everyone?  Or even if totally evil in everyone’s eyes except some few who want to see it–since it will remind the best of us of our good fortune in living in a country where freedom of expression is allowed (or so my intuition tells me, although I’ve never experienced the feeling myself).

Having said that, I will agree that some speech or the like should be banned–but not by a government, only by an individual–on his property.  This introduces complications I believe ingenuity can get around.  The most famous is the fatuous fear that, given genuine freedom of speech, may result in someone’s falsely calling out, “fire,” in a crowded theatre, thus endangering  the theatre’s patrons if they panic.  (1) full freedom of speech is more valuable to the world as a whole in the long run (which sentimentalists never consider) than a few lives lost when due to the misuse of speech in a theatre; (2) anyone stupid enough (and stupidity is the cause of malice) to yell, “fire,” in a crowded theatre will not likely be deterred by a law against it; (3) a theatre-owner can state on a sign outside his theatre and signs inside it as well as on tickets sold, and even an announcement before the show, that he is prohibiting anyone in his theatre from falsely yelling, “fire.”  He can also have a man in a fireman’s uniform come onstage and tell the audience to ignore anyone yell, “fire,” because he will come onstage to take announce a genuine fire and direct them out of the theatre.

As far as I can see, there’s only one problem with this: how to punish someone who is apprehended after falsely yelling, “fire,” in a crowded theatre.  I would say he should be punished in any way the theatre owner wants to punish him so long as the various announcements that what the culprit did would be regarded as a crime on the theatre-owner’s property also described the punishment.  A fair punishment if no one was injured would be imprisonment in the cellar of the theatre for ten days and a fine to cover twice the cost of keeping him there, which the culprit would have to pay before he could be released.  There would have to be a government supporting the theatre-owner, with a record of the prohibition and the penalty for ignoring it.

If people were injured, the culprit should be injured worse than they were as well as imprisoned.  If anyone was killed, the person should be imprisoned for life, and forced to work at some low wage that would be paid not to him but to the family of anyone who had died because of his crime.  Being an elitist, if it turned out he had some talent, I would allow him to exercise it, and if he invented a useful drug or wrote a terrific musical, I would allow him to buy his freedom.  Pragmatism versus a stupid egalitarianism that penalizes the world at large.

I believe all complications like yelling fire could be handled with minimal governmental involvement in some way like yelling fire was.  Libel, for instance.  Some ways of dealing with such things would for a while be ineffective, so it might be best slowly to reduce censorship rather than drop it altogether.   Contracts would be important.  The contract the theatre-owner I was discussing required his patrons, in effect, to sign is an example.  A person working for a security agency, for instance, could be required to sign a contract not to divulge anything he finds out about his company on pain of severe punishment, including execution for giving secrets to a country at war, or close to it, with his.  Libel would be tricky.  I have a few ideas about that, but will need time to work them out.

And that’s it for today’s entry.  (Anyone still here?!)

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The following poem, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, almost perfectly expresses what William Voegeli calls “liberal compassion,” in my view.

The World’s Need

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind,
Is all the sad world needs.

It’s completely valid. It is also completely vacuous. It’s here because I feel I ought to have a poem here at least once in a while. Another reason is that I’m in my null zone again. I think my right hip is going bad, which means another hip replacement. I also just had some kind of sonar exam of my carotid arteries, my cardiologist’s nurse-practitioner having thought it would be a good idea although my blood pressure is fine, and my cholesterol-related numbers excellent (although my doctors’ have me taking [low doses of] drugs for both). I have to go back in eight days to find out what it shows. But the nurse-practitioner originally had told me she’d just call me if exam showed anything wrong. So I’m sure I won’t make it out of 2015.

Tomorrow I’ll be better.

Oh, and what’s wrong with what today’s poem is the same thing that’s wrong with the equally vacuous diction of the French utopian Étienne-Gabriel Morelly that Karl Marx popularized, “For each according to his ability, to each according to his need”: nothing is said about who gets to decide what a person’s ability or need is. Inevitably, it will not be the individual involved but some commissar who knows better than he what his abilities and needs are. Not that the individual himself will necessarily have an intelligent idea what they are.

There are further problems. One is that the supply of goods is not infinite. There will always be goods the demand for which is greater than the supply. I’ve used in one or more of my excessively unread texts the example of whatever is the world’s best means of observing the stars: thousands of astronomers will have a need for it; who should be allowed to use it? What about a painter’s possible need for it? Or just a little boy’s?

In a freekonomy, the ones who can afford to build it, will either use it, or decide who uses it. What if they sell time on it? It is my claim that eventually its most profitable use will be for the gathering of data that can be sold (as seems to have been the case in the real world), so the best at using it for that will most likely be given access to it. The process will be messy, not always fair, not always leading to good profits, but much more flexible than the astronomy business’s being run by commissars–or so it seems to me.

Actually, the commissars cannot help but being guided by some kind of profit-making goal, profit not necessarily being money (although in practice it mostly is), but hero-medals, high position and the material comforts connected with it, etc.

The bottom line is that it is just a matter of opinion whether or not anyone’s use of the world’s greatest telescope, or the equivalent, would be better than shutting it down and turning the observatory over to a homeless family.  Compassion versus aspiration, again.  I think that which of those two wins will be a matter of who has the most political power in the country where the telescope is, (genuine) males or females.  If males, the masses (because of the many male losers making them up) will be unhappy, and slowly find means to castrate them (or send them into hiding) as in the West.  If females, Arabs or the equivalent will conquer the country . . . and over-masculinize it.

Now that I reflect on it, I think females never dominate a country politically.  But opportunists use female compassion to get females and male losers behind them to slowly castrate the males in power–they’ll feminize the country in order to weaken it enough for them to win it.  Then they’ll try to keep it with bread, circuses and free medical care.  Lesser males will put up with the feminization because of the bread and circuses, which would be too expensive for them if forced to trade the limited goods they are able to produce for them–except their greatest product: getting in the way of their betters if not bribed not to.

There may be a post-adolescent idea in what I’ve said here today–however badly expressed.  I’s jes’ wingin’ it.  Mebbe tomorry I’ll do better.

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I may be the wrong person to discuss the problem of libel because I truly don’t give a damn what anyone says or writes about me.  But I do realize that someone who needs to be known as honest can suffer economically from libel–because people are too often too stupid to be able to judge the validity of information.  So there are instances when it would seem proper to offer protection from being damagingly lied about.  So, does that mean we need to suspend freedom of speech–as we indirectly do in American by making the legal meaning of the phrase, “freedom of speech,” “the right to say anything you want to, so long as the State allows you to? ”  I say no.

In the first place, libel will be damaging regardless of the laws against it since there will always be law-breakers, and having to take someone to court will always be a hassle and costly.  Still, if laws giving a person a right to sue another person for damaging one’s reputation with lies were the only way to compensate a victim of libel, I could go along with it.  But I believe much the same thing could be done without laws. How?  With an unlicensed meta-legal court of law.  Here’s how it would work:

1. A group of intelligent people–6, say–would make a decision room available which a person believing himself the victim of libel could rent.

2.  By renting it, he would hire the six to determine whether or not he had been libeled.

3. The alleged victim would set a charge for damages and give the six the money to cover it.

4. The six would notify the person or persons accused of libel to contest their Preliminary Conclusion: that he or they had been guilty of malicious . . . slander (better word, I think).

5. If the defendant (and I’ll assume there is only one) wanted to contest the charge, a trial would be scheduled for a time convenient for both defendant and plaintiff.  If not, the defendant would be declared guilty.

6.  If contesting the charge, the defendant would have to give the six an amount of money equal to the charge for damages.

7.  Each side would argue until such a time as the six decided they had heard enough.

8.  The six would decide whether slander had occurred, and if so, how serious it was.

9.  If the defendant won, all the money covering the charge for damages would go to him.

10.  If the plaintiff won, all that money would go to him.

11. The six would get the rental fee.

12.  The six would announce the verdict (regardless of whether there had been a trial or not) and defend the reasoning that led to it.

13.  I claim that once people had gotten used to an intelligent free court system, the media would give the winner of such a trial effect publicity.  In any case, the winner could declare himself innocent with good credibility.

A main argument against this is that the six might sell their decision or be crooked in some other way, or stupidly biased, or otherwise incompetent.  But the same could be true of the judges we now have.

Counter-argument: as such meta-legal courts went into business, and the government left them alone, private enterprise would take over. The best would flourish, the corrupt or stupid would fail.  Just as in the relatively free world, the best manufacturers’ goods outsell the poorer manufacturers’.  And no meta-legal court will stay in business unless it is effective, unlike courts run by the government.

Another argument against it is that someone poor couldn’t avail himself of it.  But someone poor can’t necessarily avail himself of legal action now.  But in both cases if right was with him, he could scare up support, and even get someone good at argument to present his case–a lawyer or anyone.

I believe I’ve just presented a sketch (my first one, which is why is is no doubt very rough) of the proper libertarian response to making speech unfree because some will misuse to practice slander.  In any event, I don’t call for the meta-legal court to replace the current legal court, but I think it worth thinking about.  Note: I think such a court could do many things meta-legally besides decide libel/slander cases.

Note: abolition of libel laws would benefit poets because it would make them feel more comfortably able to exercise true freedom of speech, which they must have to be able fully to express themselves.  So this entry isn’t off my blog’s supposed subject.

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