Month: September 2015

New Wealth Is Constantly Being Created So Take Advantage Of It

Neoliberals, communists, and socialists focus primarily on wealth distribution. Much of their rhetoric revolves around the top one percent holding a majority of the world’s wealth. In their eyes there is only so much pie to go around and the top one percent have a vast majority of it while everybody else has to fight over scraps. The error of this viewpoint is that wealth isn’t fixed, it’s constantly being created.

I think part of the problem is people often mistake fiat currency for wealth. Fiat currency, as the name implies, indicates nothing more than a number some oligarch commanded to be created. Wealth, on the other hand, is the abundance of valuable resources and material possessions.

Throughout the entire history of our species wealth has continued to increase. As our agricultural knowledge increased food became more plentiful. As our metallurgical knowledge increased tools became more plentiful. As our mining knowledge increased raw materials became more plentiful. Human history is the history of more knowledge leading to more wealth. Today electricity, running water, and a plethora of home appliances are common in first world household. Internet access, automobiles, pocketable computers, 3D printers, and an almost uncountable number of other products that didn’t even exist merely a generation ago are now widely available. Their isn’t a single pie we all eat from, new pies of constantly being baked at an every increasing rate.

If you only believe there is a fixed amount of pie you focus on taking pie from others. This, in my opinion, is one of the biggest flaws in neoliberalism, communism, and socialism. Instead of trying to take pie by seizing the means of production and increasing taxes a more effective strategy is to start baking pies.

This is where agorism shines. Agorists aren’t trying to seize means of production or increase taxes. They’re focused on creating more wealth. Whether via creating more efficient means of production, preventing the State from taking a cut of everybody’s wealth, or simply creating wealth that has been forbidden by the State agorists are focused on creating more for everybody instead of redistributing what is already there.

The fact that more pie is constantly being created should be taken advantage of by everybody. Why relegate yourself to taking what already exists when you can create something better? There’s no reason to limit yourself like that.

Minneapolis’ Finest

A lot of people, but neocons especially, have a hard time understanding why the public’s view of police officers has been degrading rapidly. They often try to blame the media for focusing too much on the bad things cops do and not enough time on the good things they do. Truth be told the biggest threat to the public’s view of police is police. If there weren’t so many bad cops doing bad things for the media to cover its influence would be minimal. But there seemingly isn’t a day that goes by where something like this hasn’t happened:

The handgun found near a teenager shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2006 could not have been carried by the teen, new court documents allege: It had last been in possession of police before it was found next to the body of Fong Lee.

Admittedly the Minneapolis Police Department is fairly well known for its corruption. That’s something it shares with the police departments of most sizable metropolitan areas. And therein lies the problem. Police departments in large cities seem to have a high rate of corruption, which means their corruption impacts a lot of people. It’s not that the media is necessarily covering the bad things police officers do; it’s that police departments continue to give the media bad things to cover.

Sometimes I Forgot How Ignorant Of Guns Non-Gun People Are

Sometimes I forget just how ignorant of guns most gun control advocates are. Maybe this is because most of my friends are either gun people or have no interest in guns whatsoever. In the case of the former they know their shit and in the case of the latter the subject almost never comes up. But I was involved in a conversation with somebody who doesn’t know the technical aspects of guns but has a very strong opinion, which they express loudly, about what regulations are needed.

Although the entire conversation was comedy gold the thing that really hit my funny bone was his claim that assault rifles shoot assault bullets. What the fuck are assault bullets? Bullets that are larger than pistol bullets and smaller than rifle bullets. And, of course, they need to be banned because they’re, like, super dangerous and stuff.

This is probably why I don’t get along with gun control advocates very well. It’s not just that I disagree with them but it’s that they’re entirely ignorant of the very thing they want regulated. Why does anybody expect their opinion on something to be taken seriously when they don’t know jack shit about that thing?

Monday Metal: Empire Of The Clouds By Iron Maiden

It’s Labor Day so I wasn’t expecting to post much but decided to give you guys a Monday Metal to celebrate the official released of Iron Maiden’s new album, The Book of Souls. Since I had to drive back to my parent’s place this weekend I had plenty of time to enjoy the new album. It’s a masterpiece. Seriously. In my opinion the album rivals Brave New World and A Matter of Life and Death.

Of all the songs Empire of Clouds, the 18 minute song that closes the second “disc” (I obtained my copy via Apple Music so no discs were actually involved). It’s about the ill-fated R101 airship.

Now you’re probably wondering where the song is. Good question! It seems YouTube’s copyright infringement algorithm has become exceedingly ruthless. I found one good post of the song but noticed it was taken down before this post was scheduled to go live. Since I really didn’t have time or desire to grab another song I decided to leave this post up as a testament to shitty copyright laws and a solid album that is worth your money.

Law Enforcers Have It Too Easy

Law enforcement agents are being more heavily scrutinized now than they have been in the past. This is a much needed trend since law enforcers have been acting (and still continue to act) with very little accountability. In addition to raising awareness of the dangers created by allowing law enforcers to act without accountability this trend has also given rise to two extremes. One extreme wants to see every law enforcer gunned down in the streets. The other extreme wants everybody to get down on their hands and knees to lick the boots of every law enforcer. While most people are asking what can be done to hold law enforcers accountable for their actions the two extremes are embroiled in a battle of rhetoric.

Neocons tend to lean towards the boot licker extreme. Scott Walker is a classic example of this. To prove his piety he typed an article claiming that law enforcers today are being targeted far more than law enforcers were when he was growing up. Because he’s running for president (at least I think he is, I can’t be bothered to remember all of the completely irrelevant Republican candidates) he had to blame Obama but even setting that point aside his claims are bullshit:

Walker was born in 1967. In a blog post a few months ago, my former intern Dan Wang looked at the fatality and homicide figures for police going back to the 1960s. Here are a few notable numbers he found:

  • “More officers were feloniously killed in the 11 years between 1970 and 1980 (1228 deaths) than in the 21 years between 1993 and 2013 (1182 deaths).” Walker would have been 3 in 1970 and 13 in 1980.
  • Between 1971 and 1975, when Walker would have been between age 4 and 8, an average of 125 police officers were feloniously killed per year. Between 2006 and 2010, the average was 50. In 2013, just 27 officers were feloniously killed. In 2014, it was 51. So far this year, the number of cops killed with firearms is down 16 percent from last year. Two of those officers were killed by other cops.
  • If you look at the rate at which cops are killed, the numbers are even more dramatic. There are quite a bit more police officers today than there were in the 1970s. So in 1975, for example, when Walker was 8, there were about 411,000 cops on the street, and 129 police officers were feloniously killed. That’s a rate of 31.38 murders per 100,000 officers. In 2013, the rate was about 5. Last year it was higher at 9.4, but that still means the rate was about 3.5 times higher than when Walker was growing up.*
  • To put those rates into perspective, consider the death rate for fishermen, the most dangerous job in America: 131 deaths per 100,000. Even if you factor in traffic fatalities and other accidents, policing isn’t among the 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Another way to look at these figures: The murder rate for police officers is about the same of the overall murder rate in cities such as Bakersfield, Calif.; Louisville; and Omaha.

The rate of assaults on police officers has been falling, too. So you can’t argue that cops are safer solely because they’re killing more criminals, or because they have better equipment (though there’s evidence that the latter has helped). People are just less likely to attack police today than they’ve been in the past. And that’s despite the increased public scrutiny.

Even with the much deserved increase in scrutiny being a police officer today isn’t nearly as dangerous as it was in decades past. In fact law enforcement isn’t even in the top 10 list of deadliest jobs. You’re more at risk being being an aircraft pilot than you are being a cop.

As an anarchist I don’t believe the State is a legitimate entity. Because of that I don’t believe the State has any business involving itself in law enforcement. I believe government law enforcement agencies; be they federal, state, or local; should be disbanded and replaced with market solutions. With that said, I don’t agree that police officers should be gunned down in cold blood. Many law enforcers should be charged with the crimes they’ve committed and forced to pay restitution. Some officers are almost certainly deserving of being declared outlaws. In other words justice, real justice, should be served. Murdering officers ensures justice won’t be served.

Licking their boots also ensures justice won’t be served. So long as a handful of people are given authority over everybody else, a concept I hope to see abolished someday, that handful should be scrutinized with extreme prejudice. Every action they take should be analyzed under a public microscope. Nothing they do in their official capacity should be private. Boot lickers whine that such transparency makes law enforcers’ jobs harder. Good! Their job should be hard. The second wielding authority becomes easy it gets abused. Justice can only be served if those tasked with providing it are subject to oversight.

Law enforcers have it too easy today. That needs to change. But gunning them down in cold blood isn’t the answer.

End The Bathroom Wars

Out society is finally, albeit slowly, moving away from ruthlessly enforcing strict binary gender identities. For reasons unknown to me this is making some people very uncomfortable. Those uncomfortable souls lack any real argument for why this move is unacceptable so they’ve resorted to emotional appeals. The most common form of this manifests in an obsession with bathrooms. When a transgender individual expresses a desire to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as implications that they’re really sexual predators wanting to prey on innocent girls are made (apparently these bathroom obsessed individuals don’t realize female-to-male transgender individuals exist).

In the most recent episode of this bathroom obsession a bunch of high school students staged a walkout:

(KMOV.com) – More than 150 students walked out of Hillsboro High School over a dispute about the use of the girl’s locker room by a transgender student.

The walkout lasted for about two hours. Roughly 30-40 people showed support for senior Lila Perry, who wants to use the girls’ locker room during gym class. Perry was born a male but said she has identified as a female since 13.

“There’s a lot of ignorance, they are claiming that they’re uncomfortable. I don’t believe for a second that they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry,” said Perry.

A short distance away, a counter protest was being held by people claiming they have relatives at the high school.

“Boys needs to have their own locker room. Girls need to have their own locker room and if somebody has mixed feelings where they are, they need to have their own also,” said protester Jeff Childs.

I’m a peacemaker by nature… you’re not buying that, are you? Admittedly I’m an extremely opinionated man with an obvious bias on this topic. But like Thorgeir Thorkelsson my bias doesn’t prevent me from being capable of advocating for a mutually beneficial outcome.

The fact of the matter is the strict binary gender identity is becoming a thing of the past (and good riddance, people should be free to define themselves on their own terms). That being the case segregating bathrooms by gender is silly. Why not just give everybody an individual stall so they can do their business in peace? It would allow these bathroom obsessed individuals to finally calm the fuck down and alleviate us men from ensuring we’re always in compliance with proper bathroom etiquette.

This is the setup at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis. The bathroom area is located in the basement. It’s composed of individual stalls and a common sink for hand washing. In my opinion it’s the best setup because it isn’t based on assumptions about customers and fulfills customers’ expectations that a bathroom will be made available.

If You’re Going To Spy On Us At Least Use The Data

Police have been in overdrive expanding their pervasive surveillance apparatus. They want camera, cell phone interceptor, and license plate scanner coverage throughout the country. Just to enjoy the privilege of driving we’re required to submit our personal information, including home address, to the Department of Motor Vehicles so it can print it on a piece of plastic that we have to hand a police when they pull us over so they can check if there are any outstanding warrants. I don’t approve of this widespread surveillance but I do ask that they at least use the data they collect to ensure they storm the correct house when they’re on one of their domestic dog hunting excursions:

Returning home from her Monday evening walk, Tama Colson rounded the corner into her subdivision and saw DeKalb County police cars.

Then she heard the gunshots — and her neighbors’ anguish.

“I hear Leah screaming, I see Chris walking out, ‘They just shot me, they just shot me, and they killed my dog’,” Colson said Tuesday. “So I got him to lay down, took my shirt off and rendered first aid. And Chris just kept saying, ‘Why did they shoot me? Why did they shoot my dog?’”

Those are the key questions in the fourth controversial police shooting in DeKalb County in less than two years — an incident in which, according to authorities, officers responding to a burglary call went to the wrong home, shot the unarmed homeowner, killed his dog and wounded one of their own.

Admittedly shooting two innocents and one violent criminal is a better ratio that the police usually walk away with in these situations. But shooting the homeowner and the dog was criminal and charges should be filed. I would say shooting the cop was, if nothing else, bad form but the police are supposed to help homeowners defend against invaders so the shooting officer was technically doing his job.

More importantly this entire mess shouldn’t have happened. There is no excuse for having both a pervasive surveillance apparatus and raiding the wrong address. When officers are sent on a domestic dog hunting excursion the address should be displayed on a very obvious map (one using small words and basic colors so the city’s finest can understand it). Upon arriving at the address a picture of the home should be sent back to headquarters and checked against photographs already in the database. Then the officers should check their cell phone interceptor to ensure the phone they have associated with the target is at the address.

Obviously I say this halfheartedly. I don’t believe the police should be spying on us. I’m merely illustrating just of how incompetent wrong address raids are when considering all of the data law enforcement agents have available to double check they have the right place.

Apologies

Last weekend Black Lives Matter marched on the Minnesota State Fair and held a protest. A lot of people are very worked up about this but I wasn’t there so the event didn’t impact me in the slightest. In addition to the protest itself some people are upset that some of the protesters were chanting “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.” Was that phrase a call to kill cops or a clever play on words in context of an event well known for having every food you could imagine in fried form? I don’t know and I don’t care. But representative Tony Cornish cares very much:

Representative Tony Cornish is calling for an apology from the protest group Black Lives Matter for a chant made at the State Fair.

Well since we’re on the topic of apologies, I want an apology from Tony Cornish for his active support in expanding the already pervasive police surveillance apparatus. I’m guessing we’re both going to end up disappointed.

I haven’t written much about the activities of Black Lives Matter. From my point of view the organization is an inevitable reaction to decades of abuse perpetuated by those in authority. If you keep punching somebody you can’t cry foul when they finally retaliate. Since at least (but likely well before) the war on drugs law enforcement agents have been focusing more on generating revenue than protecting and serving the people. Revenue generation, in this case, means stealing wealth in the form of both assets (fines and civil forfeiture) and labor (prison labor). Black people have been far more frequent targets of this quest for revenue. This backlash shouldn’t surprise anybody. The only thing that should surprise anybody is that it has taken so long.

If anybody is owed an apology it’s the people who have been aggressed against by the police. Every nonviolent person who has been confined, extorted, beaten, or killed by agents of the State are the real victims. They’re the ones who have been wronged by the State and left without recourse because of the State’s monopolization of justice. Cornish is a retired police officer. He was one of those responsible for victimizing nonviolent individuals. Instead of demanding an apology he should be the one apologizing.

A Surprising Change

It’s not often the actions of politicians surprise me but I was admittedly caught off-guard by this:

A Dakota County sheriff’s deputy allegedly caught two Minnesota lawmakers “making out” in a parked car last week, according to law enforcement reports and court records, but the lawmakers say that accusation is “completely false” and a “lie.”

State Rep. Tim Kelly, R-Red Wing, and Rep. Tara Mack, R-Apple Valley, were issued citations for causing a nuisance on Aug. 25.

The two, who are married to other people, were in Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan when they were allegedly spotted by the officer ‘making out’ in a parked car about 4:30 p.m., according to documents. The officer’s notes claim Mack was half undressed when he approached the vehicle.

I wasn’t expecting to hear about a Republican representative being caught in a park screwing around with a woman. Around these parts they’re usually caught in an airport bathroom screwing around with another man.

A Crisis Of Faith

It may surprise you to know that several of my friends hold very strong Christian beliefs. Why would a devout Christian be friends with somebody like me? I have no idea. But they do and I appreciate it. What probably isn’t going to surprise you is to hear most of my Christian friends are anarchists. For many of them their views of anarchism are directly related to their faith. None of them work for the State because they will not server to masters.

Not all Christians are so devout though. The recent fiasco with the lady from Kentucky who was told to go pound sand by the Supreme Court is still working for the State of Kentucky and still refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on the grounds of her faith:

MOREHEAD, Ky. — A county clerk in Kentucky who objects to same-sex marriage on religious grounds denied licenses to gay couples on Tuesday, saying she was acting “under God’s authority,” just hours after the Supreme Court refused to support her position.

In a raucous scene in this little town, two same-sex couples walked into the Rowan County Courthouse, trailed by television cameras and chanting protesters on both sides of the issue, only to be turned away by the county clerk, Kim Davis.

Perhaps it’s not my place to say but if your faith says same-sex marriage are a sin and the State commands you to issue a license to same-sex couples you should maybe consider alternative employment. How could somebody who claims to be such a devout Christian continue to work for an organization that commands them to sin? Wouldn’t that be like Jesus taking a job with Satan?

The State is the antithesis of the commandments against murder and theft. Not only does the State commit murder and theft but those are it standard operating procedures! How could a Christian willfully work for an organization entirely dependent on sin? It makes no sense! If this woman really had an issue with the State issuing same-sex marriage licenses she should quit and find some honest work.