Agora! Anarchy! Action! – Page 15

Why I’m Not a Collectivist Anarchist

In anarchist realms there are numerous subgroups. Two of the most well-known subgroups are collectivists and individualists. Although describing all of the nuances of the two groups would take ages their main divergence point is whether they focus on society or individuals. As societies are made up of individuals I tend to align with the individualist camp. But there is another reason I don’t align with the collectivist camp, the drama tends to run very high in their meetings. I believe drama is inherent in any collectivist movement because those movements rely on organization, collective action, solidarity, and other group strategies. These strategies require each person to be mostly committed to the group, which can cause major issues when the group decides to do something you don’t want to do.

I’ve been to a few collectivist anarchist meetings. Compared to the meetings I have with my individualist anarchist friends, which usually involved beers at a local watering hole, the collectivist meetings were pretty dramatic (also the meetings lacked booze as those meetings were declared “sober spaces”, which may have been 90 percent of the problem). A recent meeting of anarcho-syndicalists at Portland State University, although more severe than any of the collectivist meetings I’ve attended, does give a good idea of what tends to happen:

A meeting of Anarcho-Syndicalists devolved into chaos at Portland State University last week. The “Law & Disorder” conference presented by the Students of Unity was disrupted by protesters complaining about “survivor trauma” and the “patriarchal society” which is “prioritizing powerful white men.”

In my experience what usually happens at these meetings is a general assembly is arranged to make decisions related to the group. Everybody presents their pet issues and tries to convince the collective to agree on fighting for that issue. This usually devolves into a battle of wills as one or two members of the collective don’t want to fight for the issue. The winner is determined by the side that is most charismatic (which is a relative term when the meeting devolves into yelling and sometimes crying) because the group will eventually decided to vote for or against it simply to move on with things (this usually happens after an hour or more of debate). Oftentimes the following weeks will involve a great deal of animosity between those for and against the issue, which breeds more drama. And it’s not uncommon for that animosity to become an outright feud, which really cranks up the drama level.

Our individualist meetings tend to be much more laid back. Somebody presents an idea and those who want to join him do and those who don’t don’t. It’s a far more comfortable atmosphere for somebody like me who only enjoys watching drama, not participating in it.

In closing I do want to clarify that I’m not trying to insult my collectivist brethren with this post. Collectivism simply isn’t for me but if it’s your thing more power to you. And if you have a collectivist group that manages to get things done without a ton of drama that’s great. This post is based solely on my experience and a video of an experience that mirrors mine.

A Real Minimum Wage Proposal

My biggest criticism of minimum wage laws are the people who proposed them. You can tell that those people don’t actually believe the bullshit they spew out. If they did they would propose major hikes in minimum wage instead of the incremental steps they always throw out. Thankfully we have Barbara Lee, a senator from California who believes in minimum wage laws and isn’t a pussy about it:

California Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee expressed support for a $26 minimum wage in her state — a move Republican congressman Andy Harris encouraged, assuming jobs would rapidly flee California to his state of Maryland.

[…]

“Let me ask you this question, you’re a good advocate for this,” Gingrich asked Lee. “The mayor of Seattle is proposing that the minimum wage ought to go up to $15 an hour.”

“Good for him,” Lee responded. “In California — more than likely, from what I remembered — a living wage where people could live and take care of their families and move toward achieving the American dream was about $25, $26 an hour.”

“So would you support that as a minimum wage for California?” Gingrich asked.

“Absolutely I would support it for California. I think the regional factors –”

“And you don’t think that’d have an effect on unemployment?” Gingrich interrupted.

“No, Newt, trust me, believe you me,” Lee replied, “you’d have a more productive workforce, you’d have people who could afford to live in areas now where they cannot afford to live. You would increase diversity in certain communities where you don’t have diversity anymore. You would have economic parity and the income gap would begin to close.”

Finally! None of this $11 or $15 per hour nonsense. I think it’s time for everybody to finally put their money where their mouths are. If minimum wage laws are good for the economy, as many economically illiterate people claim it is, then they should demand a minimum wage that would put everybody into the middle class. That way poverty could be entirely eliminated.

Of course when economic reality hits everybody will be unemployed. Facing the decision between starvation or working in the “underground” economy most people choose the latter. Then we can finally see real markets in action instead of this coercive cronyism we suffer under now. So my desire to see an absurd minimum wage is not entirely without self-interest. As an agorist any restriction placed on the market by the state is a good thing because it pushes people into the “underground” economy, which deprives the state of authority and resources.

It’s My Least Favorite Time Again

It’s time again for yet another frivolous waste of everybody’s time. I am, of course, talking about the biennial political season. This year doesn’t involve a presidential election, which has an upside and a downside. The upside is that we aren’t being assaulted with wall-to-wall coverage of meaningless political drivel. The downside is that the people who involve themselves in off years become more annoying. They believe that the off years are the years where one can really make a difference. Since most of the politicos are supposedly sitting at home the people who show up can get politicians elected who will actually changed thing. Except the politicos aren’t sitting at home because politics is their one and only hobby. Political wannabe power players, the people who run local conventions and are well known in local political circles, never take a year off and they have enough influence locally to get their way every year.

But that doesn’t stop my more politically involved friends from calling, e-mailing, and messaging me on Facebook to beg me to show up to a local caucus, speech by their favored politician, or fundraiser. No matter how many times I explain to them that I’m not interested in politics they keep harassing me. They tell me that “This year is the most important year ever!” Yes, they tell me that every year. When I ask what’s in it for me (because I’m a self-interested bloke) they always try to feed me a line of bullshit that they think will convince me to stop doing whatever it is that I’m enjoying so I can go suffer through the mind numbing political process. As you can guess the most common reason given is that politician So-And-So is planning to take my guns so I must get out there and work for So-And-So’s opposition. Of course they usually leave the part out about So-And-So having a abject hatred of brown people in sandy regions, two men getting it on (they’re usually cool with two women getting it on but they would never tell you that), and people who want to keep secrets from the state. But I digress.

The point is I fucking hate this season. I hate the people running for office. I hate how people think they can make a meaningful difference through politics (trust me if you could it would be illegal). I hate how persistent my friends are no matter how clearly I state my hatred of politics. In fact I hate everything about the political season.

What I am about to write will almost certainly fall on deaf ears but I’m going to try anyways. I’m not going to help your pet politician. I don’t even like your pet politician. The fact that your pet politician is running for office already tells me everything I need to know about his or her moral character (which is to say he or she has no notable moral character). There are roughly 100 trillion other things I would rather do including watch paint dry, getting hit by a school bus that is on fire, or being locked in a five square foot cell with ravenous badgers (the number of badgers doesn’t matter).

An Argument for Cryptocurrencies

The financial industry is a quagmire of censorship, morality policing, and market control. How the financial industry restricts markets is pretty easy to ascertain. Numerous laws exist that prohibit the transfer of money for transactions that the state has declared criminal. That makes the use of the financial industry to perform transactions for things like cannabis more difficult. But how does the financial industry perform censorship and police morality? By deciding who can and cannot have a bank account. We’ve seen this before with gun stores mysteriously having their bank accounts closed. But gun store owners aren’t the only target of the financial industry’s morality policing. The adult entertainment industry has also come under the financial industry’s ire:

Just as ISPs and search engines can become weak links for digital speech, too often financial service providers are pressured by the government to shut down speech or punish speakers who would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. It’s unclear whether this is an example of government pressure, an internal corporate decision, or some combination.

Chase has yet to give an official statement on why the accounts are being closed. At least one of the customers affected by Chase’s decision to shut down adult entertainers’ accounts, Teagan Presley, was told by Chase that her account was being shut down “because she’s considered ‘high risk.'” According to NY Daily News, her husband Joshua Lehman (whose account is also being closed) reports receiving conflicting information from Chase about why the accounts were being shut down:

I’ve heard three different reasons…When I went into our branch, they said it was the nature of our business. When I called, they said they were closing my personal account because my wife is an ‘infamous’ adult star. When I talked to my branch again, they said it wasn’t because we were in the adult industry but because we did business with a convicted felon.

This isn’t the first time Chase has been under fire for morality-based account closures. In 2013, Chase faced a lawsuit from the founder of MRG Entertainment for denying loans to people within the adult entertainment industry. And just a few months ago, Chase refused to process payments for Lovability, an online condom store. After bad press and public pressure, Chase reversed its decision, but it’s unclear whether Chase ever changed the policies that led to the decision in the first place.

Bank accounts are an Achilles heel for most “legitimate” businesses. Without one it’s difficult, if not impossible, to accept credit and debit card payments and many banks will only cash checks for account holders (or charge non-account holders a nasty cashing fee). Imagine if every bank refused to allow MidwayUSA or Brownells to have a bank account. Those stores would likely be finished.

Centrally controlled financial services, like most centrally controlled industries, are dangerous things to rely on. At any point those services can be used to enforce selected ideals. This is why I see decentralized financial systems, namely cryptocurrencies, as an important development.

I will use Bitcoin as an example because it is the most well known, but there are many cryptocurrencies out there with similar advantages. Bitcoin is a decentralized system. It doesn’t attempt to judge whether or not a transaction is legal, moral, or otherwise acceptable. The only thing the Bitcoin network attempts to do is ensure transactions are recorded and the appropriate amount of Bitcoin is transferred between accounts. Adult entertainers can bypass the financial industry’s censorship by accepting Bitcoin and may have to resort to doing so if things continue as they have been.

Cryptocurrencies really shine, at least in my opinion, because they enable the transfer of wealth without the risk of third-party judgements. As governments and industries (but I repeat myself) continue their efforts to control markets it will become more important to develop tools that allow people to bypass their controls. Obviously cryptocurrencies aren’t the be-all and end-all. Controls can still be inflicted by delivery services, manufacturers, and many other middlemen that are commonly involved in a transaction.

Failing to Understand the Real Net Neutrality Problem

The Internet is up in arms over discussions of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) endorsing tiered Internet access. Solutions are being offered by many but most of those solutions involve some variation of “We need the government to regulate itself in a way that’s favorable to the people instead of its corporate partners!” Such solutions are pointless. There is an article by Davis Morris making its way around the Internet that offers a slightly different solution:

With the announcement by the FCC that cable and telephone companies will be allowed to prioritize access to their customers only one option remains that can guarantee an open internet: owning the means of distribution.

This is what I’m talking about. It’s time that we the people stood up to the FCC and Internet Service Providers (ISP) by seizing their monopoly on distribution. Viva la revolución!

Thankfully an agency exists for this. Local government. Owning the means of distribution is a traditional function of local government.

Oh, my bad. I thought Mr. Morris was going to propose an actual solution not simply another variation of “We need the government to regulate itself!” The root of the net neutrality problem is the institution of government itself. So long as any central organization maintains ownership of the Internet infrastructure the threat of censorship, tiering, and other undesirable restrictions will loom over our heads. What happens if local government take ownership of the infrastructure? The large content providers, such as Comcast (Comcast plays both sides against the middle by being an ISP and a content provider), will simply buy the local governments just as it has bought the federal government.

Mr. Morris’ basic idea, that we need to own the means of distribution, is correct. But his method is wrong. To defeat net neutrality we must put the means of distribution in the peoples’ hands (I never thought I’d see the day that I started sounding like Karl Fucking Marx). I briefly describe the work I’m participating in to bring mesh networking to the Twin Cities. The nice part about mesh networks is that individuals can own the infrastructure. Each person can purchase and maintain as many mesh nodes as they desire and establish a system of federation with other node owners. In other words we need infrastructure anarchy.

Through this method we the people become the literal owners of the means of distribution. The biggest advantage of this is that buying off many people willing to operate mesh nodes is difficult since they are oftentimes motivated by the desire to maintain a free and open Internet. It’s people with such motivations that we want owning and maintaining the means of distribution.

Increasing Minimum Wage

One of the political battles currently being waged here in Minnesota is an increase of the state mandated minimum wage:

Minnesota’s legislative Democrats have struck a deal to raise the wages of the state’s lowest-paid workers.

Details of the agreement are expected to be released by House and Senate leaders Monday morning, but two sources with knowledge of the deal said Sunday that the minimum wage would rise to $9.50 an hour and future increases would be linked to increases in inflation.

The first question I have to ask about this deal is which inflation metric would minimum wage be pegged to? There are several different measures of inflation. Inflation numbers reported by the state are heavily doctored to make things appear better than they are. If this deal uses any state-approved inflation metrics pegging minimum wage to inflation will be meaningless.

As an individual who subscribes to the Austrian tradition of economics (also known as the only tradition that actually knows what it’s talking about) I will point out that increasing the state mandated minimum wage will also lead to an increase in unemployment. And as an agorist I believe an increase in unemployment will lead to an increase in the minimum wage.

How can I make such lofty claims? Because there exists an “underground” economy. Being unemployed doesn’t mean a person isn’t making money. Most people faced with the prospects of starvation or breaking the law will choose the latter. That means people who are officially unemployed will seek employment in the “underground” economy. The biggest advantage of working in the “underground” economy is that any income received is off of the books. Income acquire off of the books cannot be tracked by the state and therefore cannot be taxed. By working in the “underground” economy individuals need not spend half of the year working for Uncle Sam.

Without having to pay taxes the average person would enjoy an sizable increase in their wage. Increasing the state mandated minimum wage also increases unemployment. Increasing unemployment causes individuals to seek “unofficial” employment. Income from “unofficial” employment is untaxed. Therefore laws that increase state mandated minimum wage can increase the actual minimum wage but not through the mechanism that statists believe.

The Dark Side of Taxes

It’s tax season. With the circle of friends I have that means it’s the season to bitch about the government taking a huge chunk of our personal wealth. I’m assuming that most of my readers at least lean towards libertarianism so there is probably a strong sentiment that taxes should at least be greatly reduced if not entirely eliminated. That means I’m also assuming that you’ve heard a variation of this debate before.

A libertarian comments about taxes being too damn high. In response a government advocate claims that we need taxes because taxes enable civilization. What that individual means is that he or she believes that infrastructure, welfare, and other pet government programs are only made possible through taxes. Putting aside the fact that anything made possible through taxes can be, and has been, made possible through voluntary methods we still have the fact that such an attitude ignores a lot of terrible things made possible by taxes. Taxes, like anything else humanity conceives, has the nice cheery side that makes people feel good and the dark depressing side that most people tend to ignore.

Let me take a moment to talk about the dark side of taxes. A small percentage of taxes are used to build roads, schools, and civic centers. But a large percentage of taxes are used to directly hurt of kill people. For example, taxes allow the United States government to bomb wedding parties in the Middle East, allowed the Soviet Union to build gulags that were used to murder millions, and enable police forces throughout the world to imprison people for nonviolent crimes.

Here in the United States we get to see the dark side of taxes more obviously than most other parts of the world. We have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. Most of the kidnapped souls inside of the government’s great cages harmed nobody. They were victims of the war on unpatentable drugs. Their only crime was smoking, snorting, or injecting something that the government said they couldn’t. To fuel this war a great deal of tax money is sent to law enforcement agencies so they can put together Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, buy armored personnel carriers, and fight court cases when their victims decided to sue.

Speaking of war, taxes also enable the numerous illegal wars that the United States is embroiled in. Drones and Hellfire missiles don’t build themselves. In order to butcher Middle Eastern children the United States government needs to collect taxes to pay for its military. Aircraft carriers, fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and nuclear bombs cost a lot of money. Since I brought up nuclear weapons I will point out that taxes it possible for the United States to drop nuclear weapons on two major Japaneses cities (after making it possible for it to firebomb Japan’s most densely populated city). Going back in time a bit further we can see another thing taxes made possible: the genocide of this continent’s indigenous populations.

Taxes may have been used to build the roads you drive on and the schools you send your children to but they were also used to destroy the roads and schools people in other countries depend on. The next time you hear somebody talk about all the great things that taxes make possible be sure to remind them about all of the horrible things that are also made possible.

Individualists Must Act as a Collective and Other Political Inconsistencies

Libertarianism, at least here in the United States, is a strongly individualist philosophy. The core of libertarianism is built on the idea that we are each individuals who interact with one another. But according to libertarianism each individual has their own dreams, hopes, and aspirations that they are uniquely qualified to fulfill. Collectivism is the opposite point of view that see individuals as mere components in the real idea of importance: society. Where libertarianism asks what is best for the individual collectivism asks what is best for society. Which one is correct? I side with individualism but that doesn’t mean you have to. However if you subscribe to an ideology I feel that it’s important to be consistent.

Consistency is a problem many libertarians have when it comes to politics. One of the heated debates raging in libertarian circles at the moment is whether or not Rand Paul is good enough to deserve the support of libertarianism. This debate has lead to some real ideological inconsistencies such as this one:

Libertarians need a similar model to help decide which candidates they can support and which they can’t. Without these distinctions, it’s all too easy to reject a candidate who is wrong about an opinion-level issue even though he’s awesome on all “dogma” issues. Or libertarians might support a candidate who got a 90% on simple purity tests—but the 10% he got wrong was a “dogma” vital to liberty.

Concentric circles of politics give us a more dynamic rubric to help libertarians make logical, consistent voting choices without letting media spin, or—I’m gonna say it—the emotional fact that a candidate isn’t his dad get in the way.

So for libertarians who haven’t ordered their political opinions in a concentric circles model, your reason for hating Rand Paul pretty much (logically) sucks.

Libertarians as a whole need a model to decide which candidates they can support and which they can’t? That sentence screams of collectivism, which is ideologically opposed to libertarianism (at least as defined in the United States). Instead of demanding all libertarians adopt the same model for deciding politicians anybody who claims to be a libertarian should defer to each individual.

Who can decide whether or not Rand Paul is a candidate worth supporting? You can. In fact only you can. Based on my beliefs I cannot support Rand Paul. That doesn’t mean you can’t. We are all individuals and must choose our own paths based on our own beliefs.

Political battles are won by getting enough people to agree with your opinion, which makes politics necessarily collectivist (which is probably why socialist ideologies fare better in politics than libertarian ideologies). As an individualist I have found myself unable to remain ideologically consistent while participating in politics. That is part of the reason I have chosen to route of agorism instead.

There are a lot of libertarians who claim that “we” need to stand behind Rand Paul even if we don’t agree with him in order to win politically. Any victory that requires me to go against my most valued beliefs is no victory. Demanding that I do so and arguing that any reasons I have for not doing so are stupid is also a claim that you know better than I do, which you don’t because you’re not me. Claiming that you know what is best for me is, in my opinion, ideologically inconsistent with libertarianism. Therefore I find demands by so-called libertarians that “we” support Rand Paul to be doubly inconsistent with libertarianism itself as it relies on political strategy and requires the person making that demand to believe he knows what is best for everybody else.

Starting an Agorist Business On the Cheap

Last week I discussed my views on on wage slavery. In it I proposed a solution for those wanting to increase their independence from wages: start a business. Many people are fearful of starting a business because they think the initial costs are too high and the prospects of failure are too risky. To alleviate these concerns I’m going to dedicate this post to offering some advice for stating a business. Before I begin please note that this post is being written from the perspective of an agorist. That means I any advice given here will assume that the business you’re starting is “underground” and therefore I won’t waste a bunch of time writing about regulatory compliance. If you want to handicap yourself by starting a “legitimate” business then the costs and risks will be quite a bit higher because you need to pay off the middle man, the state.

The biggest hurdle to overcome when starting a business is the concern about start up costs. Most people believe that starting a business requires a great deal of initial capital. While that is true of some businesses you aren’t required to start one of those businesses. In fact many businesses can be started with the equipment you have on hand already. Look at your hobbies. Can you think of a way to monetize any of them? I reload ammunition to lower my ammunition costs when shooting. That means I already have all of the equipment and some of the knowledge required to reload ammunition. There’s no reason I cannot sell some of the ammunition I load to fellow agorists who are looking for cheaper ammunition that is also free of taxes.

I’m a programmer by trade. That means I have all of the tools and some of the knowledge necessary to write software. I can even write websites if I’m really motivated to do so. Programming is a skill many people already know and most people are able to learn. It’s a skill that only requires the equipment most of us already have, a computer. Resources to learn programming are available for free online. Used programming books are a dime a dozen. Everybody seems to want a website or an iOS or Android app. Becoming an agorist programmer is a business one can start will minimal investment capital.

Are you a practical person? Can you do plumbing, automobile repair, or electrical wiring? Do you already have the tools for these activities? Good news, somebody is willing to pay you for such work! Are you a person who enjoys baking? I guarantee that there are people who would be willing to buy fresh baked bread, pastries, and treats from you. Have you learned any skills that you would like to teach others? Consider giving lessons. Perhaps you’ve been working on a novel for the last 10 years. Think about finishing it up and selling it or building a reputation as an author so you can crowd source funding for a later novel. Many municipalities now allow individuals to own chickens and there are a lot of people willing to pay decent money for organic eggs. Speaking of organic, did you know people will pay good money for organic vegetables? Maybe it’s time to start that garden you’ve been talking about.

Admittedly the ideas I’ve given here won’t make you rich (unless you’re super luck). But that’s not the point when starting out. The point is trying to find a marketable product or skill that you can provide without needing a large amount of investment capital. Even if you fail to make money at the endeavor you will learn something from the experience. Whether you succeed or fail you will come away with knowledge that will improve your possibility of success in your next enterprise. If you do succeed you will enjoy a little piece of mind knowing you have some income source that is independent of an employer, which will make you a freer person.

If you start by trying to monetize one of your hobbies you will have most of the equipment needed and therefore keep your risks low. Failure simply means continuing to use the equipment you already had as a hobby. Success means more independence.

Wage Slavery

I pride myself on the fact that those who self-identify as leftists accused me of being a rightist and those who self-identify as rightists accuse me of being a leftist. Failing to fit into the preconceived notions of others is a good indicator that you are on the right track.

As an advocate of non-aggression and truly free markets I believe my philosophy fits under the libertarian umbrella. But, for reasons I’ve describe previously, I believe that my philosophy is leftist in nature. This not only means a tendency towards radicalism but also a willingness to question ideas that have traditionally been thought of as libertarian.

Today I want to spend some time discussing a term often used by socialists and communists. That term is wage slavery.

Traditional libertarian thinking opposes the concept of wage slavery. The reason for this is that employer-employee relationships are seen as voluntary arrangements, which I agree with. Socialists counter this statement by noting that employees are reliant on their employers for their very survival so the relationship isn’t really voluntary, which I also agree with. Thus I come to my favorite point regarding wage slavery. Both sides have valid points.

For a relationship to be voluntary one must be free to termination that relationship at will. A person’s relationship with the state isn’t voluntary because attempting to break off that relationship tends to end with the person being kidnapped and caged by agents of the state (or outright murdered). But a person can leave their job at will — unless they can’t. Something libertarians often forget to consider is how dependent an employee generally is on their employer.

Why do people work for an employer? Because they need money to buy goods and services. Everything from food to water to healthcare are reliant on acquiring money. Here in the United States an individuals healthcare accessibility is also dependent on their employer’s provided health insurance policy. In other words there are sizable barriers preventing an employee from simply up and leaving his or her job.

Now that I’ve covered why I think wage slavery is a valid condition I think it’s time to address solutions to it. Socialists tend to favor ideas such as a universal basic income (UBI). The idea behind a UBI is that each person receives an income necessary for survival regardless of employment status. While the idea sounds good on paper any descent economists will rightly point out that such a program is necessarily inflationary and libertarians will point out that such a program requires the use of force to implement.

No, a UBI isn’t a working solution in my opinion. Instead I find the solution to wage slavery to be similar to solutions for most relationship-based problems. You don’t need a job, you need a business. This is a common saying amongst Minnesota’s agorist community and it rings true. So long as you’re dependent on an employer you’re not really free. If your survival is made possible by your work alone then you are much freer. Granted, you are still dependent on your customers but at some point anybody unwilling to subsistence farm is dependent on other human beings. With that in mind I still believe starting a business is the best option for achieving as much independence as possible.

This doesn’t mean you can’t be an employee. Many agorists work for an employer and operate a side business. If they lose their main employment they are able to fall back on their side business to make ends meet, at least until they find employment again. Sometimes a side business becomes successful enough to become an agorists primary source of income. It also doesn’t mean that you have to start a business. Many people are content working for an employer and they should be free to continue doing so if that is what they want. All that I’m saying is that having your own businesses makes you more independent and therefore freer.

So I believe wage slavery is a valid condition, which makes me a dirty leftists, but I also believe a libertarian solution exists, which makes me a dirty rightist (by United States standards anyways). Wage slavery is something that both sides of the aisle could find common ground with. Sadly the self-proclaimed leftists seem unwilling to accept a libertarian solution and the self-proclaimed rightists seem unwilling to acknowledge wage slavery as a legitimate condition. Thus two radical philosophies will continue to find themselves locked in an eternal death spiral while the statists continue to rule over everybody.