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Shake off your chains like dew / You are many, they are few.” - poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
Here are essays on how to reform liberalism so that liberals could actually start winning elections again by shifting to the left (rather than shifting to the center or even to the right and still losing, as they have been doing for decades), and some additional, miscellaneous essays I've written on politics. My main essays, on the central themes I talk about, the interrelation of politics, economics and automation, are on my economics page. Essays on the technological Singularity (the hypothesized upcoming tremendous speed-up in the rate of technological progress) and its relation to leftist economics are on my Singularity page. Additional essays about rationalism and purely social political issues are on my rationalism page because they are about science vs. religion. My futurology page also has plenty of political overtones.
Another Modest Proposal, a satirical essay, the title of which is based on Jonathan Swift's famous essay "A Modest Proposal", in which he advocated that we solve the problem of the poor not having enough food by having them eat their own babies. It's hard for my parody to stay ahead of reality though, since the Republicans keep making reality more and more like my nightmare presented here.
A Serious Proposal, This Time, in which, having blasted the Republicans, I blast the Democrats as well, and propose what they should be doing to shift back to the left, and yet win elections again.
How to Steal the Fear of Terrorism from the Republicans, another issue in which the Democrats could actually win elections by being more liberal rather than less.
A New Kind of Union, in which I tell why I've never been pro-union, but present a friend's idea for a union that corrects all the problems I've had with traditional labor unions.
Dumb Things Liberals Do, additional things I haven't mentioned in other essays about why liberals keep losing elections.
Top Ten Ways the Democrats Could Win Elections, a more recent take on this, written for the 2004 presidential election. Sorry for me repeating myself somewhat.
Old Man Market - a musical interlude.
Trans-Environmentalism. A third stance on envirionmental issues, better than conservatives' anti-environmentalism and liberals' environmentalism.
Bogiples. What is a bogiple? You'll just have to read the essay to find out.
Marketing and the Death of Democracy.
(written in 2002)
Now that I have gotten my $300 "tax rebate" from Dubya (which, thankfully, is greater than if he had spread the money out among the poor as well), I have finally seen the light. The Republicans were right all along, and I am switching my party affiliation to them. In fact, the only problem is, we Republicans haven't gone far enough. Therefore, I have a proposal for how we should alter our party platform. I wanted to call it "A Modest Proposal", but I understand that Jonathan Swift already used that title.
Dubya's efforts to make the taxes paid by rich, poor and middle class more equal, by lowering taxes more the more taxes you pay, are only the beginning. It is grossly unfair that the more you make, the more you have to pay in taxes. After all, for nothing else in life are rich and poor charged differently. When Bill Gates orders one of his hamburgers at McDonald's, they charge him the exact same amount they do anyone else, even though he is the richest person on the planet. We all get the same services from government, so it's only fair that we all pay the same amount for them. (If anything, we should have the rich pay less than their share, and the poor pay more, to make up for all the years when it was the reverse, and to make up for the fact that the poor tend to get more services from government than the rich. But I say, let bygones be bygones -- that's the kind of "compassionate conservative" I am.) Therefore, we Republicans should work to have all Americans pay the exact same amount of taxes. An added benefit would be that nothing could make our tax system simpler. Whatever the federal budget is, every one of the 270 million Americans would pay their fair share.
How much is that? The federal budget is now $1.7 trillion, so divided between 270 million people, that comes to $6,300 per person. That's how much everyone would have to pay. What could be simpler and fairer? No more complicated 1040 forms, no more having to pay accountants to do your taxes.
Compare that to what we have now. By having the poor pay nothing, the middle class pay less than that average and the rich pay millions, even billions, we are giving the poor a $6,300 break, and the middle class a lesser break, paid for by the rich, so we are in effect redistributing wealth downward. There's a word for that: socialism. We didn't win the Cold War only to have socialism exist right here on American soil, and it's long past time we put a stop to it.
Admittedly, it would be hard to keep the economy strong if we take away even more money from the poor and middle class, since they would have less money to buy our business' products. But there is a solution to that which has worked successfully for decades: Once we take away their money, we lend it back to them by allowing them to run up credit card debt, so they can still buy our products. Not only do we get to call the money "ours" instead of "theirs", even as they spend it, but as an added bonus, we get to charge them 20% interest on what they borrowed, so they can never get out of debt to us, and must work for our businesses right up until death. It is a win-win situation.
$6,300 in taxes may sound like a lot to poorer whining elitist minimum-wage-earning socialist liberal commie pinko Americans, but remember that we Republicans are the party of small government. By getting rid of all but essential programs and cutting our bloated federal government down to size, we could reduce taxes to a fraction of what they are now. For instance, by getting rid of Social Security, which no one can depend on to retire because it is going to run out of money (especially if we Republicans are in charge), we will have Americans depend on the completely-dependable stock market for their retirement. Under our plan, most Americans will have a secure income in their retirement, still working. And that is as it should be, since we are all for the work ethic, as long as someone else is doing the working. And by eliminating all commie do-gooder government regulations, such as preventing corporations from putting arsenic in the drinking water, and preventing electric companies from charging whatever the market will bear, we will benefit all Americans. Once corporations are allowed to do whatever they want, they will make more profits, and be able to create more jobs for Americans. As you can see, we have everyone's interest at heart.
We Republicans believe that the Defense and Criminal Justice Departments are the only essential parts of government. The only roles government should play are protecting us from foreigners abroad and criminals at home. Also, giving money to corporations, so they can create more jobs, to benefit all Americans.
Defense spending in particular should be increased. This is a dangerous world, and we are surrounded by powerful enemies who could be marching armies down Main Street at any moment if we let our guard down. And if there are no enemies currently powerful enough to do that, they will be, once we let our patriotic flag-waving defense industry sell arms to them, to create more high-paying jobs to benefit all Americans.
Between higher defense spending, greater corporate subsidies, and the cost of incarcerating all women who have abortions and all drug users now going uncaught because the hippie liberals won't let us finally get tough on drugs, we Republicans figure we will be able to cut the size of government so greatly that that $6,300 tax bill per American will be reduced to a mere $20,000.
Now, we realize that full-time minimum wage jobs pay a mere $11,400 a year, and that once we get rid of the socialist minimum wage, they will earn even less. We realize that additional large numbers of Americans toward the bottom of the economic ladder won't earn enough to be able to live on plus pay their taxes. But that is not a problem, since all of those people will be thrown in jail for tax evasion, where, even though they don't deserve it, we will be housing and feeding them. Liberals claim that we conservatives won't do anything to help the poor, but as you can see, though we refuse spend any money to help them afford housing and food on the outside world, since that would be giving them a "free lunch" that this country cannot afford (or at least, can't afford while the top 1% get to hoard 40% of the wealth), we will gladly spend many times the money to house and feed them, as long as it is in jail. As an added benefit, since people in jail don't show up in economic statistics, we will have achieved 100% employment, and completely eliminated poverty at last, by making it illegal. We will also have virtually eliminated crime, since the poor commit most of it, and they will all already be in jail. (The economic crimes the rich commit, such as what happened with Enron, don't count as crime, since we Republicans have the good sense to legalize it first.) As still another benefit, people in jail aren't allowed to vote, and since, when they vote at all, the poor tend to vote for the commie pinko Democrats, we will have cemented our majority in the government.
Now, keeping people in jail is expensive -- approximately $30,000 a year per person. By keeping in jail the poorest half of the population, which we estimate will be unable to pay their taxes, that will regrettably increase the tax bill per American to $100,000. Since 99% of Americans will be unable to pay that, that will mean we will be able to throw another 49% of the population in jail for tax evasion. That, however, will raise the taxes of the remaining 1%, so that almost everyone in the country, except for the small group of multi-millionaires and billionaires that the Republican party is really for, will be thrown in jail. The only problem would be that the tax bill for those few remaining Americans not in jail would be enormous. However, by cutting back on food, medical care and legal aid to the prisoners, and keeping them subdued while using fewer expensive prison guards through the use of flogging and shooting at will, we will be able to cut costs tremendously. Those wealthiest Americans not in jail will each be paying a lot in taxes to keep everyone else there, but still less than they pay in taxes currently. And as an added benefit, to keep the country running, we will not coddle our prison population, but have them engage in slave labor. Since most of these people are already employees of the businesses that top 1% mostly own, the situation will be basically the same as it is already, except that as slaves, they will not have to pay them salaries, and the slaves will not be able to call in sick, take vacations, talk back to the boss, talk to coworkers, or take bathroom breaks anytime they feel like it.
At that point, much of the middle class, who now vote Republican, and who now think of themselves as being allied with the rich against the poor, may finally realize that we Republicans were against them just as much as we were against the poor. Fortunately, they will be in jail, so no longer able to vote.
(written in 2002, and updated repeatedly since)
NOTE: This essay has been rendered almost irrelevent by the events since the Democrats took over Congress in the beginning of 2007. This essay assumes that the Democrats were losing elections starting with the Reagan Era merely due to stupidity and spinelessness. But in the back of my mind, I kept wondering if they have kept shifting to the right because they REALLY wanted to shift to the right, not just to win elections, but because they had become a 2nd Republican party, corrupted by big money. I kept giving them the benefit of the doubt. But the events since the beginning of 2007 have proven my worst fears, or even beyond, to be true. It used to seem a bit over-the-top to call the Republicans fascists ever since Reagan, even though it was true ... but to call the Democrats fascist as well???? "Fascist Democrat" sounds like an oxymoron, as if I've gone completely off the deep end, but unfortunately, it is the Democrats that have gone completely off the deep end. If you don't believe me, look at this astonishing list of all they have done as of this writing, October 2007, after 10 months of being the majority party in Congress:
Why they are doing this has been the subject of much debate among me and my friends. Perhaps they have all been bribed to do this, since The Billionaires have amassed so much money that they can now buy the entire political system, not to mention all the mass media. Perhaps they have all been blackmailed with dirt dug up on them. (Photoshopped pictures of them having sex with a goat, maybe?) Perhaps they have been threatened with assassination. Perhaps it is a little of everything, depending on each congress member.
Regardless of the reason, this essay no longer applies to the Democrats. But it is still worth reading, in case a legitimately liberal major party ever comes along again.
Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same unsuccessful thing over and over again and yet somehow expecting a different result. After having blasted the Republicans satircally in the essay above, now I'd like to offer my own rebuttal, blasting the Democrats! I want to blast the Democrats because they are so stupid that they manage to lose election after election -- not an easy thing to do, considering that their economic policies are better for 99% of voters than the Republicans' policies are -- yet never seem to stop and think about what they've been doing wrong, and change. I want to present a proposal that could make them win again, by landslides, even while shifting to the left politically.
True, the Democrats finally managed to win the mid-term 2006 elections, but it took the colossal bungling and lying of Bush (who I prefer to call Resident Gump) for the Democrats to win. As many have pointed out, the Democrats didn't so much win as the Republicans lost, since the vote was a backlash against the Republicans and not an endorsement of the Democrats. Waiting for the Republicans to screw up big time rather than offering any worthwhile alternative is not a successful long-term strategy, and does nothing for the good of the country. And what did the Democrats offer when they won? The same tired old policies that lost them elections for decades, and will make them go right back to losing elections as soon as the right-wing mass media make the voters forget all about why they threw the Republicans out on their heads in 2006. The same pathetic, timid, increasingly right-of-center policies that offer little to ordinary people and give them no reason to be enthusiastic about the Democrats, only give them a little more than the Republicans do, and make such a small difference that many people can't even see it. That timidity is a result of Democrats being terrified of seeming "too far to the left" after losing election after election for decades, when in fact, them being too far to the right to offer ordinary people much of anything is much of the reason they have kept losing.
But first, before presenting my proposal for what the Democrats should be offering, some economic statistics that should be an eye-opener to most Americans.
First, the GNP is now about $10.5 trillion. There are about 105 million households in the US (with an average of 2.7 people each), so that makes the math easy. The GNP, if divided up evenly, would be about $100,000 a year per average-sized household. In other words, there is now so much wealth in this country that the GNP, if divided up evenly, would put everyone into the beginning of the upper class. For a single person, that's around 40K.
Yet wealth is so concentrated in the top 1% (those families making about 400K and up, or 200K per individual) that the MEDIAN total income per household is only 40K, 15K per person. About 90% of Americans get less than the average! The huge incomes of those few people at the top skew the average far above the median. The income of the top 1%, as of 2001, was 26% of the GNP. Add in the rest of the top 5% (those families making about 200K and up), and they got 40% of the GNP. Add in corporate income, which is owned almost entirely by the top 5%, and that's another 20% of the GNP, for a total of 60% of the US economy.
Those in the top 1% that really control this country politically are thus able to create a false sense of economic scarcity by their very act of hoarding most of the wealth, which keeps the bottom 99% from demanding more. Any time a politician says there isn't enough money for (you name it - health care, housing, education), that is a giant pile of steaming bull doo-doo. Most people probably still believe the old Republican line that there's no point spreading the wealth of the rich around because there are so few of them, it wouldn't amount to much per American. That used to be the case, but no longer. Even if, say, only 1/3 of the disparities of wealth were evened out, even those at rock bottom, earning nothing, would be getting a bit over 13K per person, 40K per average-size family, nearly enough for all necessities. Meanwhile, billionaires would still get 2/3 the income they do now - presumably still enough to live on, if they scrimp a little.
The next astonishing economic statistic is the growing wealth of the top 1%, which has been responsible for most of the growth of the economy in the last quarter century. Among the Forbes 400, the list of richest Americans, their wealth DOUBLED every 4 years on average from the early 1980s, when Reagan came to power and started tilting the economy in favor of the rich, till around 2000, when increasingly far-right-wing policies (including under Clinton in his 2nd term, when he became a Republican in everything but name) finally became so extreme that they created a recession and started to slow economic growth, even for the rich, ironically. During that period, their wealth increased THIRTY-FOLD, even while middle class wealth stayed stagnant! The whole top 1% grew at nearly that rate -- they tend to get most of their income from investments. Even for those who get it from work, as is well-known, corporate CEOs' and other higher-ups' salaries increased 10-fold during those 2 decades, while everyone else's salaries stayed stagnant on average, after inflation. The wealth of the middle class hardly budged, most of the rest of the growth in the next top few percent below that top 1%. If the middle class has more stuff than it used to, it's only because they work longer hours than they used to, and borrow more to pay for it all. The bottom 30% even sank into debt. As usual, with all the coverage of the sudden unexpected change from government deficits to surpluses in the late 1990s, the media never bothered to explain what caused it - the growth of the taxes from the top 1% as their incomes skyrocketed (caused in turn by technology, as computers have rapidly become more powerful and widely used to increase workers' productivity, increasing profits)..
The federal budget is $2.5 trillion as of 2005, 24% of the GNP. Under a Republican president and both houses of Congress, it has increased tremendously in just 5 years, from $1.7 trillion. You remember the Republicans, don't you, the party of (ha, ha) small government? Surprise, surprise, they were only for small government when government was redistributing wealth from the rich downward, and not the other way around, for they are really nothing more than the party of redistributing wealth upward. Less than $.2 trillion of that increase is because of increased defense spending after 9-11, which would seem justifiable. Before Bush took office, the top tax rate was 40%, but he lowered it to 35%. And with all the loopholes, the top 1% was only paying 33% of their incomes in tax, now 27%, and the top 5% just 2% less than that. If they were actually paying that 40% rate, without all the current loopholes, they would be paying 24% of the GNP (40% of 60%) in taxes, or exactly the entire federal budget, so that the bottom 95% wouldn't have to pay any federal taxes!. State and local taxes add up to another 7% of the GNP. Those taxes are highly regressive - the poor pay a much higher percentage of their income (15%) than the rich (6%). That's the real reason why Republicans want to move government to the local level. If the top 5% paid all of that, that would add another 11% of their incomes in taxes, for a total of 51%, in order for them to pay ALL taxes in the U.S., and everyone else, no taxes at all. If a 51% tax rate seems excessive, consider that during the prosperous 1950s, a time that many Americans idealized for decades after, the top 1% were actually paying 85% of their incomes in federal taxes alone! Almost all Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that the economy would wind up like the Soviet Union's if we taxed the rich at that rate, but that's obviously not the case. The top 1% alone could pay for all levels of government if we taxed about 75% of their incomes. If we eliminated all corporate welfare, that rate would be around 70%. Not that it would matter much; we'd be taxing them less, then giving them back less money in corporate welfare -- same difference.
If the economy picks up again (something I don't expect to happen substantially while the Republicans are in power), and the incomes of the top 5% resume growing, the top 5% and even the top 1% alone would be able to pay for the entire federal budget increasingly easily, with an even lower tax rate. Thereafter, further doublings in their incomes (as technology marches on, increasing workers' productivity), and their taxes would be twice what's necessary, then 4 times, etc. Talk about surpluses! We could afford to help the non-rich on a massive scale, either by lowering their taxes further or by giving them help. Or on the other hand, we could keep halving the tax rates of the rich each time their incomes doubled, and still collect the same in taxes, enough that ordinary people wouldn't have to pay any.
We have two political parties in this country, which I like to call the Vacuum Cleaner Party, and the Total Moron Party. (However, if you prefer to call them the Repugnicans and the Dumbocrats, be my guest.)
The Vacuum Cleaner Party, better known as the Republicans, is the party of the top 1%, dedicated to sucking up all additional wealth, as it is created by automation, from the bottom 99%, like a giant vacuum cleaner, so that only they get all the benefit from the increases in worker productivity that have been going on, and the middle class just stays in place, at best. They manage to convince a majority to vote for them through an endless series of clever economic sleight-of-hand, so that most Americans don't even catch on to what they are doing. For instance, they give tiny token tax cuts to most Americans to get them to vote for them, but take away government programs that benefit them, or create deficits in other levels of government so that taxes must be raised there to compensate, so that most Americans wind up no better off or even worse off without even realizing it, while the rich walk off with all the loot. They manage to find ways to put just the right "spin" on issues so that most Americans come to think that unfair policies are fair, and vice versa. For instance, they called the inheritance tax, paid only by the rich, a "death tax", and got a majority of Americans to be in favor of repealing it. Now they complain that the rich are an oppressed minority because they are "taxed twice" on investments - never mind that what is important is HOW MUCH people are taxed, rather than how many times they are taxed. Thanks to automation, there has been such tremendous growth of wealth in this country (which most Americans never see), they have tremendous leeway in sucking up all that new wealth without the middle class sinking any. The middle class thinks they're doing okay, because they're not sinking, maybe even rising a drop. They never realize how badly they are doing compared to the way they COULD be doing, if they saw their share of all that new wealth.
Only a bunch of total morons could manage to lose elections to the Vacuum Cleaner Party, despite the fact that their policies hurt 99% of Americans. Unfortunately, running against them, we have the Total Moron Party, better known as the Democrats. While the Vacuum Cleaners are masters of election strategy, the Total Morons are, well, total morons. Bush didn't give us ordinary people those tiny token tax cuts for nothing. Ask stupid non-rich people who vote Republican why they do so, and the most common reason they give (in addition to the religious nuts and, since 9-11, terrorized people who think Bush's insane response to 9-11 is going to protect them) is because "the Democrats take all our money in taxes!!!!". Go try to explain to them how they still wind up with more with the Democrats than with the Republicans, despite the tiny token tax cuts Bush gave ordinary people just to get their votes, and the taxes required for all the government programs that the Democrats advocate. It simply goes over their heads. (The explanation, of course, is that when it comes time to pay off the budget deficits Bush has created in order to reduce the taxes on the rich toward zero, the non-rich will be the ones doing the paying, either in the form of higher taxes, lower entitlements such as Social Security or Medicare, or economic policies that create higher inflation and take away real wealth in that way. On the other hand, the tax money for all those Democratic programs comes right back to the people taxed in the form of benefits - seems like a rather pointless exercise to me, taking money and then giving it back, but still, what's the big deal, when they come out about even in the end?) Most Americans simply want tax cuts to help them out, not more government programs. If the Total Morons just offered to cut taxes, but the opposite of the Vacuum Cleaners, on everyone EXCEPT the rich, they could offer FAR bigger tax cuts than the Vacuum Cleaners could, and win elections in landslides, even while shifting our country to the left. They wouldn't lose liberal voters, since, although most liberals in this country still only think in terms of government programs to solve problems, they would surely still vote for the Democrats even if they offered tax cuts (to those toward the bottom instead of the top) instead of programs. And they would gain centrist voters, who only want tax cuts. And remember that most elections are very close, so all the Democrats need is a small additional boost to wind up in solid control of the government again. When the Total Morons DO offer tax cuts, they always offer highly targeted cuts that just further complexify the tax system, for education, for instance, instead of simple across-the-board cuts. That's brilliant strategy, limiting the number of voters who will receive those cuts, therefore limiting the number of voters who will vote for them! For many people, their supposed "help" is so complex to get that it isn't even understandable or worth the bother.
In general, they insist on advocating big, complex government programs to help people instead of just GIVING PEOPLE MORE MONEY by reducing their taxes (or rather, taking less of their money away in the first place), so they can help themselves. Yet all I hear each time the Democrats lose another election is a debate between those of them who think they lost because the party is "too liberal" and should be more like the Republicans, and those who think they lost because they're "no longer liberal enough", and should go back to offering more of their big government programs (and the taxes to pay for them). I never hear any Democrats who seem to be aware of the fact that there are DIFFERENT WAYS of being liberal, whether small-government liberal or big-government, and that they don't have to retreat from being "liberal", only have to change the way they go about it. There are many more moronic things they do that I'll leave for another essay.
Tax cuts would help ordinary people far more than more government programs would. The higher taxes to pay for those programs negate their benefits and make them really of little or no help at all. While conservatives only talk about the taxes to pay for them, and purposely never mention their benefits, liberals do the exact same thing in reverse. They only talk about the benefits, never mention the taxes to pay for them. The truth is right in between. Those programs and taxes have little net benefit or harm; they are merely pointless! Government programs are pointless unless the people receiving the benefits are NOT the same ones as are being taxed, since the only possible point to them is redistribution of wealth. The only point of programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance is really forced savings, for people who don't have the willpower to save for retirement or loss of a job on their own. But even those programs are in a sense redistribution of wealth - from people during the point in their lives when they're working, so have a relatively high income, to the point in their lives when they're not, so have a relatively low income. So what is the point of universal government healthcare, for instance, as many liberals advocate? People would get that benefit, but they'd have to pay taxes for it. Whatever advantages it might have could be accomplished just as well or better with the general downward redistribution of wealth that I'm advocating, plus some much-needed regulation of that industry. Another thing is, the idea that people earning as little as $7,950 a year now have to pay federal income tax (not to mention other taxes) is incredible and outrageous. Government should be throwing a life preserver to the poor, but is instead throwing them a cement block that pulls them farther under! On the other hand, tax cuts for the non-rich, and the elimination of all tax loopholes for the rich, WOULD accomplish something: the end of the massive upward redistribution of wealth going on now, and the mounting, outrageous and dangerous disparities of wealth in this country, that threaten to create a permanent aristocracy. The elimination of a permanent aristocracy, along with separation of church and state, are just what this country was founded for, and what the anti-American flag-waving Republicans are trying to overturn. Tax cuts would help more than government programs especially since, when the Democrats advocate all those programs, they don't win anyway! What good is advocating those programs, if we'll never see them? If they advocated those massive tax cuts, they would win, and actually be able to bring them about!
Some people, particularly linguist and author George Lakoff, have pointed to the way the Republicans "frame" the issues with their use of language, as in the example above of the "death tax", and say that the Democrats should become adept at doing the same. I agree. But the Democrats need to change their stupid policies rather than just trying to present them better. They need to make changes of substance, not just style. On George Lakoff's website, he talks about how Democrats should change the way they present the idea of paying taxes, to make people feel good about it, to counter the Republicans' talk of "tax relief". But there's no need to do that, because tax cuts could just as easily serve the Democrats' purpose of greater equality as they now serve the Republicans' purpose of greater inequality.
The best part about that tax cut idea is that it would box the Republicans in politically. They couldn't very well oppose it, when tax cuts and small government are just what they claim to be for, without exposing them for what they really are: just out to further concentrate wealth among the already obscenely wealthy.
Here's what Democratic candidates should propose in future election campaigns: not merely to give a tax cut, but to COMPLETELY ELIMINATE ALL TAXES, local, state and federal, for all Americans except the top 10%, who make more than the average of 50K per person, 100K per family, and drastically lower taxes for the lower half of that top 10%, so that the lower 95% of Americans, who make less than 100K per person, 200K per family, would at least get a tax cut. I would eliminate all taxes in the country except for the federal income tax. The income tax started out as a tax only on the rich, in fact, but gradually became a tax on almost everyone in large part because it wasn't indexed to inflation, as it should be. A candidate who advocated such a proposal would surely win the biggest landslide in history, even while shifting the Democrats to the left, so that they actually stood for something again. What I have in mind on the federal level is for the Democrats to advocate that the standard deduction be raised from the current $4,850 (twice that for couples filing jointly) to around $50,000 (again, twice that for couples), and thereafter, indexed to inflation. No one earning less than that -- about 90% of Americans -- would pay anything or even have to file -- talk about tax simplification! All income above that would be taxed at about a 50% rate, with no loopholes. The Democrats would have to roll back all the disasterous changes the Republicans have made since Bush came to power in 2001, that have greatly increased the size of the federal budget in order to give more to the rich, plus they'd have to eliminate all corporate welfare from before Bush came to power. That would be enough to pay for the entire federal budget, and all state and local budgets. If they won elections with the landslides I would expect by offering this plan, they would have the power to make these changes. Even those people with incomes in the $50,000 to $100,000 range (twice that for couples) would get a tax cut, a massive one for those toward the lower end of that range, since the greater standard deduction would more than offset the loss of tax loopholes. All taxes should be at the same standard rate, including taxes on capital gains and dividends. As with the flat tax that Steve Forbes and other Republicans have proposed, everyone's tax return would be simple enough to fit on a postcard. However, in the Republican version of it, as is the case now, even poor people, starting at about 9K a year, would have to pay taxes, on all income over the first 9K. Meanwhile, even billionaires would pay just 17% of all income over 9K a year. In my version of it, the rich would get less and everyone else more.
Those figures are not set in stone, of course. Some people might prefer a higher standard deduction, and therefore a higher tax rate for income above that in order to produce the same tax revenue. For instance, if the standard deduction were 75K, the tax rate for income above that would have to be 65%, which even to me seems too high. Also, if the incomes of the rich continue to skyrocket as they have, then in a few years, such a scheme would bring in enough money to fund the government with a lower tax rate, or alternately, a higher standard deduction.
As for the state and local level, I wouldn't mind keeping the decision-making for local programs at the local level, but the money to pay for them should come from the federal level. Otherwise, states and localities wind up competing with each other in lowering taxes for the rich in order to attract them, and lowering help for the poor in order to keep them away, in a race to the bottom. That is the reason why state and local taxation is so regressive. And when different localities are rich or poor, boxing programs in at their level is a way of keeping wealth from flowing from one locality to the other. Those are the REAL reasons why Republicans want to move taxation down to that level. By moving all taxation up to the federal level, federal taxes would have to be increased accordingly, to the 50% figure I said above, but all state and local taxes would be eliminated to make up for that. State income taxes would be eliminated. Sales taxes, which hurt the poor the most, and property taxes, which hurt the middle class the most, would also be eliminated.
There is another category of taxes: those levied in order to try to influence people's behavior. I would want there to continue to be high taxes on a few commodities that cause society-wide harm, but the social costs of which are not otherwise included in the price, so that people would see the social costs reflected in the price as an inducement for them to limit their consumption of those commodities. The ones that come to mind are oil (due to the damage to the environment, the cost of keeping a military to keep the supplies coming from the Middle East, and the terrorism that that oil money ultimately funds), tobacco (due to the air pollution that smokers inflict on nonsmokers, and the cost to society of smoking-related illnesses) and alcohol and other intoxicating drugs (due to traffic accidents). But what should be done with the revenue these commodities would produce? One possibility would be to use them to pay for part of the federal budget, so that the main tax rate could be less than I said above. Since the marginal rate of that main tax is on the high side, especially if the standard deduction is higher than 50K, that other tax revenue could lower it. However, even the poor would have to pay some taxes if they used those commodities, and in the case of tobacco and possibly alcohol, they probably tend to use those commodities the most. That's still okay with me, although another possibility would be to make those taxes revenue-neutral by simultaneously taxing those commodities, and reimbursing everyone by the average that the government takes in. That way, only people who used more than the average would pay any tax, and those who used less than the average would get money.
The program I have in mind would be implemented in 3 phases, of increasing political difficulty of being enacted, so that if the later steps failed, at least the earlier steps would have been enacted. Merely eliminating taxes wouldn't help the poor very much, when they pay little in taxes as it is. It would mostly help that if they did increase their incomes, they would get to keep 100% of every additional dollar they earned, so that they could more easily rise out of poverty. But in later years, if automation proceeded, raising worker productivity and increasing the incomes of the rich, and therefore the tax money from them, the next phase would be to institute a simple program in which those below the cut-off not only didn't have to pay taxes, but GOT money, in the form of "negative taxes". Even some conservatives, especially Milton Friedman, have endorsed this idea. The Democrats might get that vast pool of potential voters, mostly the half of Americans toward the bottom who never bother to vote because it "doesn't make a difference", to vote for them, and offset any centrist voters they might lose who are against the poor getting "something for nothing". This negative tax would be gradually phased in as tax revenues to pay for it increased. Most likely within a decade, we would reach the point where the same marginal 50% (or other) rate would apply across all incomes. However much people's income fell above or below the cut-off, they'd either pay or get 50% of the difference. A single person getting 50K would neither get nor pay anything. For every dollar of income less, they'd get 50 cents more. Someone at the bottom, with no income, would get a Guaranteed Minimum Income of 25K. (At higher standard deductions and higher marginal tax rates, the Guaranteed Minimum Income would be much higher.) With further increases in tax revenues, the standard deduction could be raised without raising the marginal tax rate, eventually to 100K, so that everyone above the cut-off would get a 25K tax cut, and everyone below would get 25K more in negative taxes, and so on to beyond 100K.
Once that program was in place, all other government entitlement programs (Social Security, unemployment, Medicare, welfare, you name it) could be phased out, replaced by that 1 simple program. My idea would greatly cut the size of government. Spending on police and jails would also plunge, since everyone would be in the middle class at least, and middle class people commit little crime. Corporate welfare would be eliminated. Such problems as the threat of Social Security running out of money would vanish.
The economy would boom as never before because 95% of consumers would have considerably more money to spend than before - something the Total Morons seem too stupid to point out. While the rich would have less, they don't tend to spend much of their money, but save it.
Would civil service unions and accountants scream, as most of those jobs were eliminated? Not very loudly, since people would have that guaranteed minimum income to fall back on, whether they worked or not, so why should they care that much if their jobs are eliminated? And if they wanted more than that in order to afford luxuries, they could still get jobs to add to their incomes.
That 2nd phase would be more difficult to get enacted, because of the hatred of the poor in this country (and the fact that many poor people don't exactly act in a way to dispel that hatred, but rather, act in ways that make them very difficult to be sympathetic toward), and because the half of the population that doesn't bother to vote even in presidential elections is largely the poorer half, so they give politicians little reason to help them. Perhaps if a politician ran for office promising to give them all up to 20K a person per year, that would finally give them the incentive to bother to vote. In that case, even if some in the middle class hated the idea of giving the poor anything -- even if they themselves got a smaller amount from the same program -- so much that they voted for the other party, there are so many people toward the bottom who would vote that that politician would still win in a landslide. If the poor didn't bother to vote in large numbers even still, a 2nd alternative would be to put a maximum cap on the amount anyone could receive, of 10K a year, let us say, and use the money saved to give the middle class more, to placate the middle class a bit and "bribe" them more to vote for the plan, while not losing many of those additional poor voters, because even those earning nothing would still get 10K. If the poor hardly bothered to vote at all, a 3rd alternative would be to put a cap equal to the earnings themselves, so that someone earning nothing would get nothing, but they'd get an additional $2 for each dollar they earned, up to some point where the amount people would get would reach a maximum. The extra money saved could be used to increase the amount given to the lower middle class to "bribe" them to vote for the plan even more. That way, the middle class would be placated that someone earning nothing wouldn't be getting something for nothing, there would be a great incentive for the poor to work because the government would be providing matching funds for each dollar they earned, and we would be helping only the working poor, not the non-working poor. Since the poor weren't voting anyway, there would be few votes of theirs to lose.
Another point about the 2nd phase of the program is that, while I can't prove it, and many people are still highly skeptical about it, the rapid rise in the capabilities of computers could reach the point in the next few decades where computers reach human-level intelligence, and could do anything humans can do and therefore automate away all work. As I'll talk about in later essays, this could happen much sooner than people might imagine, as soon as the late 2010s. If so, and since most people depend on jobs for an income, then we will simply have to give everyone an income, which has nothing to do with working, both to keep them from starving, and to keep the economy running by giving them the money to buy all that the machines can produce. So a prudent idea, to make sure people would still vote for the Democrats, would be to hold off on them suggesting that we give people negative taxes until most people are convinced that total automation is coming. If all work is eliminated, no one would object to paying people who don't work, but rather, would be all for it. Of course, the very automation that would create the profits that would be taxed to provide the money for the 2nd phase of my program would be as a result of the increasing computer capabilities that should convince people. Therefore, around the time when we could afford such a program, people would agree with it. But if I'm wrong, and total automation never happens, then we would never go to this 2nd phase of the program.
The final phase would probably be next to impossible to get enacted, since the people benefitting from it cannot vote for the very politicians who would have to enact it, but it would be the moral thing to do, and would increase our national security more than anything else could, especially considering the near-impossibility of preventing all possible terrorist acts by screening our borders. The final phase would be to gradually extend the program of "negative tax" payments to poor people around the world (in the form of payments to individuals, not to governments, which usually squander the money), and to encourage the other wealthy advanced countries to do the same. (Payments would probably have to be made to most people in the third world in the form of food, technology to make them more productive, etc., at first, rather than money, since most people on earth do not exactly have bank accounts in order to cash checks given to them!) Such is the power of geometric growth, fueled by technology, that if the wealth of the rich continues to grow at anywhere near the rate of recent decades, by 2 decades from now, a tax of 40% of their income would be enough not only to pay 20K to every adult American, enough for all necessities, but to EVERYONE ON EARTH. The program could be phased in either uniformly throughout the 3rd world, or on a country-by-country basis, perhaps to countries bordering us first in order to end the flow of unwanted economic immigrants by enriching those countries, or to potentially hostile countries in order to win their favor. If we reach total automation, we would need this phase of the program to keep most people on earth from starving, and even Americans would see the need for it.
The Democrats would have to conduct studies, polling people on the various versions of the above plan to see how many people would vote for or against a politician advocating each one, or not bother to vote, to see which version would yield the maximum electoral landslide for the Democrats. They could be rated from least to most leftist in this order: Phase 1, Phase 2, 3rd, then 2nd, then 1st alternatives, then Phase 3. My guess, just from the impressions I get talking about my ideas to people at random, would be that Phase 1 (eliminating taxes) would win in a landslide. Phase 2, 3rd alternative (negative taxes for the working poor only) would win in the maximum landslide. Phase 2, 2nd alternative (some negative taxes even for people not working) would probably lose at the moment. Phase 2, 1st alternative (full negative taxes for those not working) would more likely lose, and Phase 3 (foreign aid as well) would unfortunately lose in a landslide, even though it would be the rich paying for that massive foreign and domestic aid and not most Americans.
There are a number of common objections to my idea, especially of negative taxes.
First, a number of people have thought that my guaranteed minimum income would be given to everyone, including children. The moment each baby was born, earning no income, would it (or rather, its parents, since they would claim it as a dependent) suddenly get 25K more per year? That would be a powerful inducement for people to have babies just for the money, and that's the last thing that I, as someone who's always been very concerned about controlling the population explosion, would want to see. The answer is, I would only give that benefit to adults. I wouldn't count children as either dependents, or independent people in their own right, and eligible for that minimum income, until they turn 13, when they tend to become adults biologically. (Why then? See my essay "Technology and Sexuality", on my rationalism page. Giving people a guaranteed income when they reach sexual maturity would restore the natural balance I talk about in that essay, that technological advance has disturbed in recent centuries.)
Second, what about people who would just blow the money on gambling, drugs, etc., and wind up destitute anyway. Here I will sound like Jesse Ventura, the Libertarian ex-governor of Minnesota and former wrestler, and say, "tough!" His policies of providing no help whatsoever to people were totally heartless, but my idea wouldn't be, since I'd be continually giving the people on the bottom money. But on the other hand, I agree with him completely that it isn't government's responsibility to hold people by the hands and guide their lives as if it was their parents. Giving people a constant flow of money (as opposed to a one-time single chunk of money that they could squander, with no chance to learn from their mistakes), enough for necessities, is adequate help, and if people couldn't manage to stay afloat even then, it would be their own fault. At least we could say we tried. (I have known a number of people like that, and am well aware of the problem.) Besides, the money they would spend on gambling and alcohol would only go back to the mostly rich people who own those businesses, so at worst we'd only wind up with the money back where it started. (As for money that went to other, illegal drugs, that drags us into the whole issue of ending the ridiculous and costly "War on Drugs" and legalizing them. However, unlike the subjects I talk about on my website, this issue has been adequately debated in the mainstream media, so there's little need to talk about it here. I'll only point out that parents, who were in favor of the "War on Drugs" in order to try to protect their children from winding up getting involved with drugs and messing up their lives, have only seen their children's lives even more messed up when they received criminal records, or even lifetime jail sentences.)
It's not that I see no value at all in having government hold people by the hands and guide their lives like parents. Studies have shown that people have an inherent tendency to live for today and not save for tomorrow, since we humans evolved in a pre-modern world where life was short and unpredictable, so there was little sense to save for tomorrow. Perhaps most people do need to have a government that forces that upon themselves, and they shouldn't be blamed for their inherent tendencies. Perhaps those government programs came about from more than just the self-serving rationalizations of government bureaucrats trying to create jobs for themselves. But my main reason for opposing such programs is tactical. Most Americans seem to be opposed to the idea of big government, of taxing people and giving them back their own money in the form of government programs. But those programs also tended to redistribute wealth downward. Conservatives use that opposition to big government as an excuse end those programs, and thereby redistribute wealth back upward. If liberal politicians think they have much chance of getting elected by advocating big government (and thereby redistributing wealth downward), they are only fooling themselves. Since they can't, they should abandon the idea! Once abandoned, there is only one way left to redistribute wealth downward: tax cuts for the non-rich only. The choice is either advocating both big government and downward redistribution of wealth, and getting neither because they lose elections, or downward redistribution alone, and getting it because they win elections. So which is the logical choice?! Besides, the government program I advocate wouldn't just redistribute wealth from rich to poor, but from working to retired, just as Social Security does, since people usually earn more while working than retired, so it would have the same effect of enforced savings. While working, people would get little in negative taxes, or even pay taxes if they were among the top 5%. Then when retired, since their income would be lower, they would receive much more, which would be the equivalent of Social Security. Even people who saved nothing and had no investment income would receive enough to live on.
Third, what about people who cheat, who get jobs "under the table", etc. Obviously that is a huge problem. The more that money is taken and given out unequally based on certain criteria, the more incentive there is for people to cheat. So what should we do to minimize cheating, have government treat everyone more equally, regardless of income? Should we go the opposite direction and make taxes more regressive as a way of cutting down on cheating due to the EXISTING system? I'm surprised I don't already hear Republicans making that argument. Should we even divide the federal budget up equally and tax everyone the exact same share, currently $6300 a person, regardless of whether they can pay it or not, as I parodied in my previous essay? Obviously that is impossible. Or what about all the corporate welfare programs for the rich now in existence, which if anything treat people unequally in the OPPOSITE way that my proposal would, so that the richer you are (and can buy politicians to give you tax breaks), the more you get? Such programs are rife with cheating - watch any TV investigative show about all that goes on if you don't believe me. It's funny how the people who say the poor will cheat if we give them money never say that the rich cheat when we give them money. My answer to this objection is that I question the motives of the objectors. They are people who simply want the rich to have more and everyone else less, and this objection is simply another excuse they use for that. There may be no easy solution to cheating, only using law enforcement to catch cheaters. The amount of money spent on law enforcement should be determined by the amount of return we get on that "investment", in terms of money seized from cheaters. If we get to the point where each additional amount of money spent on law enforcement is yielding less money seized than we are spending, then there is no point in spending more. There will always be some cheating, and it is just something we have to live with. However, there might be possible ways to prevent cheaters. One might be for the government to monitor individual people's financial transactions more, so that it could find people who seem to be spending money beyond their reported incomes. But many people would find that a horrifying idea. Another might be for the government to tax interest income only, not earned income. While many people seem to earn income "off the books", my impression is that people rarely get interest income "off the books". That idea would have the added advantage that earned income is more deserved than interest income, while investment income is more heavily concentrated among the rich. Another idea, probably the best one, is that while income would be taxed, those paying out that income to others could count that as "negative income", so could subtract that from their income and therefore pay lower taxes. Right now, it is the opposite; employers have to pay payroll taxes. Since both employer and employee have something to gain from not reporting income, they don't report it. If anyone's gain was reported as someone else's loss, one party to any transaction would always have an incentive to report it, therefore the government would know both sides of it.
Fourth, what about rich people who evade taxes by moving their money to countries that are tax havens, such as certain Caribbean countries, which enrich their countries with another form of cheating. The answer is to oppose such countries with economic boycotts, or even military action. In general, other countries tax the rich much more than we do, since the U.S. is about the most right-wing country on earth at the moment. We could increase their taxes considerably, and they would still have the best deal here. In fact, the only reason other countries don't tax the rich more than they already do is because WE are the tax haven, so they cannot raise their taxes higher for fear that their rich will flee to HERE. They probably want to tax their rich more, but can't because of us.
In one way, I agree with Republican philosophy. At least they aren't pro-work -- at least for themselves. They are all for work as long as other people are doing it. For themselves, they are for living off of investments and inheritances, and piling up even more money from what can best be described as hobbies that they happen to get paid for. They obviously aren't working because they need the money, but only for fun, and that isn't work, that's a hobby. I simply want that for EVERYONE, not just those on top. I am all for work, when it is voluntary and for fun.
The Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have truly embraced the work ethic, and that is at the heart of their stupidity. Their solution to everything is jobs, jobs, jobs, as a way of people getting money, as opposed to simply giving them the money. And their solution to getting more money is education for better jobs -- as opposed to informal education to become a more well-rounded individual, which I wholeheartily support. Since work is the remaining source of lack of freedom in people's lives, and subjugation of the masses by those on top, embracing work is a truly right-wing philosophy. Besides, when they talk about creating jobs, they play right into the hands of the Republicans. For what is the way to create jobs? Most Americans have been brainwashed to think that the way to do so is to give businesses - in other words, basically the rich - more money! Thus they actually convince Americans that their right-wing way works, so therefore, the Republicans' way, even farther to the right, must surely work even better! (As for giving consumers more money so that businesses expand to create more jobs, that idea has just about disappeared from American political discourse.) The most insane thing about the idea of giving businesses more money to create jobs, if ordinary people are paying the taxes to provide the money to give to those businesses, is that basically, the idea is to take money from people that they already had, in order to create jobs that they have to work at, in order to get their own money back!! Don't create those jobs that way, and they'll just continue to have that money in the first place, without having to work for it, so they won't need the jobs!!!!
Why don't the Democrats ever offer tax cuts to the non-rich instead of government programs and high taxes? One reason seems to be that the party is funded by labor unions, which have a vested interest in keeping people working because they would disappear if people no longer worked, and especially civil service unions, which have a vested interest in big government with its complex programs and targeted tax breaks.
But a more fundamental reason is that Democrats never seem to see the Big Picture. They're always mired in all the details of all their various complex government programs that they love to create (which only confuse Americans so much that the Republicans can then more easily trick them). And all their special interest groups, from environmentalists to blacks to gays to feminists, are each one only looking out for its own narrow issue instead of what would help their causes the most: for the Democrats TO WIN!!!! On economic issues, the Big Picture is that THE BILLIONAIRES ARE TAKING OUR MONEY!!!! Once you see that, you see that the solution to our economic problems isn't a zillion different government programs, one to solve every problem. The solution is to STOP THEM!!!! This country has so much wealth that there is no need for anyone to have to struggle to pay the bills, put food on the table, keep a roof over their head and get adequate healthcare. The very act of hoarding much of the wealth enables the rich to keep it out of view of most Americans, creating a phony impression of austerity, so that ordinary Americans don't realize just how wealthy this country is, and how their daily financial struggles have been DELIBERATELY ENGINEERED by the small group of wealthy and powerful. But why am I "screaming" with all those words in capital letters? I've talked to lots of Democrats, and believe me, many of them need to be picked up, shaken bodily to get their attention, and screamed at directly into their ears, preferably with a megaphone, at the top of one's lungs, before there's any chance of getting through their thick skulls. The conservative side of the party thinks the Democrats should win by being Republicans, thus defeating the whole purpose of winning, and the liberal side of the party thinks it should just keep doing exactly what it's been doing in the past, and losing election after election, as if they're somehow going to magically start winning.
Given a choice between vacuum cleaners and morons, I have to go with the morons. I'll take a heart and no brains any day over the brains to push through heartless programs. There is no chance of changing the Republicans. They are truly the party of the rich. They are not even the party of smaller government -- when it benefits the rich, as in corporate welfare, they LOVE big government. They fail on both counts. There is more chance of giving the Total Moron Party a brain than of giving the Vacuum Cleaner Party a heart. Due to the way the electoral system is set up in this country, a 3rd party is a risky business, because it might only split the liberal vote, as with Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election, and assure even more so that the conservatives would win. I would rather try to knock some sense into the Democrats. However, in the case of my political ideas, a 3rd party might work, because my ideas should attract both liberals, who would like its greater equality of wealth, and independents and even some non-rich conservatives, who would like its huge tax cuts that would actually go to THEM.
All of the attention in campaigns is given to which of the 2 choices of party platforms the voters choose. No one seems to go back a step and pay any attention to what choices they are presented with in the first place! One would get the impression that the Democratic and Republican philosophies (plus Liberterian, Socialist, and a few others) are the only possible political philosophies there could be, that voters could possibly have to choose from, but that is wrong! I have just presented a new one: small-government leftism.
(written in 2006)
In the above essay I told my idea for stealing the issue of tax cuts from the Republicans, after they've used it to win elections for decades. I thought of a way to twist the idea of tax cuts into a new form, both so that they would serve liberal instead of conservative ends, and also so that the Democrats could use the issue to win elections for a change. Now I'd like to tell my idea for stealing the issue of fear of terrorism, that the Republicans have been using to win elections since 9-11.
Democrats have been complaining how Republicans keep whipping up hysteria about terrorism each time an election is approaching, and they are correct to do so. Yes, the Republicans are using their biggest ally, Osama Bin Laden, to win elections. But they haven't stopped to consider why it is that currently, when people are afraid, they turn to the Republicans. There is nothing inherently conservative about being strong on protecting the U.S.
Leading up to World War 2, when our looming threat was fascism, it was the other way around. Fascists in the U.S., such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, were the ones who were against us getting into a war, while liberals such as FDR where the ones who were for it.
During the Cold War, when the threat was from the extreme left instead of the extreme right, the situation reversed, and conservatives became the ones more willing to get involved in wars, liberals less so. Liberals got a reputation then for being soft on defense.
Now that the Cold War has ended, and we were attacked by religious fundamentalists from out of the 8th Century, the situation has reversed again. Our main threat comes from the extreme right instead of the extreme left - from brutal barbaric people who believe in stoning women to death for adultery and keeping them barefoot and pregnant, executing gays, etc. Even if they're of a different religion, conservative Christians in the U.S. should just love people like that - they're their kind of people.
Therefore, it's only natural that liberals should now be the ones that Americans turn to for our defense. 9-11 gave liberals the perfect opportunity to become the ones who have the reputation of being strongest on defense, so that they could win elections, so that they could prevent the wholesale economic looting of the middle and lower classes by the billionaires that is now going on.
But instead, what happened? Democrats never convinced Americans that they are the ones they should most trust the most to defend us against such barbarism, particularly the moderate swing voters that elections hinge on. They never presented the new conflict we entered since 9-11 as being one of 21st Century liberal tolerant values vs. 8th Century barbaric values.
Moderate liberals merely went along with Bush's halfhearted war in Afghanistan, when they should have shown more enthusiasm for it than Bush did, since it was against the Taliban - that regime that put all women in that country under house arrest, literally ripped their fingernails out if they were caught wearing nail polish, and instituted the death penalty for such things as playing music. (The war in Iraq is, of course, another matter, and is strengthening the very religious fundamentalists who gave us 9-11.) Few Americans seem to realize how halfhearted Bush's war in Afghanistan was. He committed a fraction of the troops to it that he did to Iraq. Afghanistan was obviously something he merely wanted to get out of the way so he could go on to attacking Iraq, as his bunch of neo-conservatives had been planning long before 9-11, and long before he came to power, at least as far back as 1998. As a result, he let Osama Bin Laden get away, just when he had him cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, mysteriously turning that most important task in the war over to the inferior Afghani forces - perhaps so Bin Laden could continue to serve as a boogeyman to scare Americans into voting for the Republicans.
More extreme liberals even protested the war in Afghanistan - so that we had the unbelievable spectacle of feminists, among others, being against us fighting a regime that was far beyond their worst nightmares. Such liberals lost sight of what their own core values are, sticking with pacifism even though circumstances had reversed, rather than sticking with greater equality and tolerance. They managed to fight against their own values, PLUS hurt their chances of winning elections by doing so! Such liberals insisted that we had no right to interfere with other people's cultures and religions - as if, just because you call brutality a "culture" or a "religion", that means that people can get away with anything. As comedian Bill Maher so perfectly put it, "Don't be so tolerant that you're even tolerant of intolerance."
So the way Democrats could steal the fear of terrorism from the Republicans would be to point out that liberals, who are for 21st Century tolerant values, have far more reason to be against Muslim fundamentalists than conservatives are, and to be far more militaristic against them than the Republicans are. We need a Reagan of the left, who talks and acts as tough against the Muslim fundamentalists as Reagan did against the Soviet Union. Then, every time there is the threat of another terrorist strike, terrified Americans would run to the Democrats for safety instead of the Republicans.
And if the Democrats were equally as tough against the Jewish fundamentalist settlers who are gradually taking over the West Bank and making life as difficult as possible for the people who were already living there, in a slow-motion "ethnic cleansing", and were equally as tough against the insane Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., who support that ethnic cleansing because they think it is in accordance with Biblical prophesy and will bring on the "Rapture", they would actually reduce the threat of terrorism.
(written in 2002 and rewritten in 2007)
Leftists are usually pro-union, yet I am a leftist, but have always been far from enthusiastic about labor unions. Here's why:
Often, unions even agree to throw some workers out of work, while giving greater benefits to those remaining. Those people thrown out of work automatically no longer belong in the union, so can no longer participate in union elections, and can't vote out the leaders who threw them out of work. So there is every incentive for union leaders to do such an underhanded thing.
Ultimately, these problems are caused by the fragmentation of power due to the fact that workers belong to countless separate unions instead of one giant worldwide worker movement, aimed at fighting their common enemy, the corporations that employ them. That fragmentation makes unions do those counterproductive things. Workers should be fighting their common enemy, not each other! By fighting each other, they are actually aiding their common enemy! Workers should fight for their interests in the most direct possible way, by fighting for governments around the world to redistribute wealth downward from The Billionaires to everyone else. Such a fight must be international, because otherwise, The Billionaires will just move their money to tax havens like Switzerland, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, where it can't be touched.
In the 1800s, leftist workers correctly understood that, while if individual workers worked less, they would earn less, if they collectively fought for shorter work hours, all workers would earn more. Shorter work hours turn a glut of workers, bidding down each others' wages, into a shortage, and make their work more valuable. They also understood that automation would better everyone's life, if only the benefits were spread around to everyone in the form of shorter work hours and higher wages. But since FDR passed the overtime time-and-a-half law above 40 hours a week, which was supposed to provide a disincentive for employers to lengthen work hours, it instead provided an incentive for employees to work longer hours, in order to get the overtime pay. So ever since then, unions have stupidly fought for more work instead of less!
However, a friend has suggested an idea for a new kind of union that would correct all the problems with traditional labor unions, and I have quickly come to like the idea, to be used in combination with my idea of tax cuts for ordinary people that I talked about in my essay "Another Modest Proposal", above. The tax cut idea would use political channels, and the union idea would use non-political channels.
I've set up a web page designed to look like the main page of such a hypothetical organization, to see if it gets any response. So please go there to read about it, and email me if you would join such an organization if it existed (my email address is on that page), and tell everyone you can about it. The power of geometric growth is the greatest power in the universe. If each person tells 10 people in a week, in just 9 1/2 weeks everyone on earth will have joined it! They would then collectively have the power to take on The Billionaires by coordinating their actions against them. While I'll be very surprised if this idea gets off the ground, if it does get a good response, those who have responded will collectively be able to turn this from a hypothetical to a real organization.
(written in 2002 and rewritten in 2005)
Why do the Democrats keep losing elections? I talked about the main reason in my essay "A Serious Proposal, This Time": that they insist on tax-and-spend policies for the non-rich, rather than massive tax cuts for the non-rich. Now I want to talk about all the other reasons.
Remember that their downhill slide started when they advocated school busing, which infuriated much of the middle class. Other moronic things they do:
(written in early 2004, during the Democratic presidential election primaries.)
1) Tax cuts for the NON-rich only, instead of more government programs and taxes to pay for them. Most Americans, especially the swing voters the Democrats need to win, HATE paying taxes, far more than they like the government programs those taxes pay for that help them. Give the bottom 95 to 99% of Americans MASSIVE tax cuts, and they'll vote for Democrats in droves. The super-rich now have such humongous wealth that a simple flat tax of a modest 35% of income, with a $50,000 standard deduction per adult, with no loopholes, would pay for the entire federal budget. Therefore, the Democrats could pledge to COMPLETELY ELIMINATE the income tax on the bottom 95%, those people earning less than the national average of $50,000 a year per adult. And since those tax cuts would be redistributing wealth back downward, undoing what the Republicans have done ever since Reagan, Democrats would actually win elections even while shifting to the left. Are you listening, Dean, Gephardt and some of the others, who want to reverse the Bush tax cuts even for the non-rich? As humorist Dave Barry said, just where do these people come from, who think promising to raise taxes will make them win, Planet Mondale?
2) Stop confusing leftism with big government. There is no logical connection between the two, yet this simple confusion is behind much of the absurdity in U. S. politics. Small government can just as easily be leftist, as in my ideas. Big government can just as easily be rightist, as in Dubya's policies, larded with massive corporate welfare.
3) FOR WHOM?!?! It seems incredible, but Democrats have been losing elections increasingly, ever since Reagan, by something as simple as failing to add, "FOR WHOM?!?!", every time Republicans say "tax cuts", conveniently forgetting to mention that they're really only for the rich. Even the token tax cuts they give to the non-rich are later eaten up by tax increases elsewhere on the middle class to pay for their tax cuts for the rich.
4) Government programs for the non-rich are pointless unless the rich pay for them. Republicans are absolutely right that Democrats used to win elections by promising lots of government programs, and downplaying the taxes they'd have to raise to pay for them. (So now the Republicans do the mirror image, promising tax cuts and downplaying the government programs they have to cut to pay for them.) Giving people help, but then raising those same people's taxes to pay for it, is a rather pointless exercise, which gave Americans the illusion of being helped, when that's really no help at all. Most Americans are now wise to that scam. Even worse, welfare helped the poor at the expense of the middle class, the great majority of voters, who rebelled against it, in a classic case of the rich winning with the strategy of "divide and conquer". The only point to government programs for the non-rich is if the rich are the ones doing the paying. If Democrats win enough elections to have the power in Congress to raise taxes on the rich in order to pay for those programs, then fine, program away, if there are good reasons for the programs. If not, forget it!
5) Broad tax cuts, not targeted tax cuts Narrowly targeted tax cuts, that the Total Moron Party advocates when they advocate tax cuts at all, affect a minimum number of voters, therefore get a minimum number of voters to vote for them. Heaping more money on fewer special-interest voters won't get more votes, because (last time I checked), it's still one person one vote. Are you listening, Al "The Moron" Gore? (Besides, isn't the tax code insanely complex enough as it is?)
6) Deficit spending. Republicans, always evil geniuses at campaign strategies, are running up huge deficits that will have to be paid for later, well after this election, rather than raising taxes immediately. Democrats, always complete doofuses at campaign strategies, are whining about those deficits, when the REAL problem is the Republicans' further upward redistribution of wealth. This at a time of a weak economy, when deficit spending (even to give money to the rich, as Dubya is doing, which only weakly stimulates the economy, when giving to the non-rich strongly stimulates it) is the correct thing to do. This when 70% of Americans don't pay off their credit card bills each month, so the idea of deficit spending doesn't seem to bother them much. Democrats should be doing a mirror image of what Republicans are doing. Instead of lowering taxes on the rich and paying off the deficits by raising taxes on the non-rich after they've won the election, they should lower taxes on the non-rich, buying their votes, and pay off the deficits by raising taxes on the rich after they've won the election.
7) Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Speaking of insanely complex taxes, that is exactly what the Republicans use to trick the non-rich into higher taxes when they think they're voting for lower taxes. All those different programs and levels of government are the perfect refuge for scoundrels to play sleight of hand. Already, after Republicans cut aid to the states, the non-rich are seeing governments raising taxes and cutting programs at the state and local level to pay for Dubya's tax cuts for the rich at the national level, and most voters are none the wiser that there's a connection. Democrats only make it easier by complexifying the tax code further! Instead of a bewildering plethora of government programs, I would scrap them all, and replace both corporate welfare for the rich and all the programs for the non-rich with a simple program of graduated "negative taxes" for the bottom 95%, those making less than the national average, so the less they earn, the more they get. I'd keep the 35% marginal rate into the negative, so that, for example, adults making $30,000 a year, $20,000 less than the $50,000 standard deduction, would get $7,000 a year, and adults with no income would get a Guaranteed Minimum Income of $17,500 a year. Such a program would probably be much more difficult to get passed than my initial flat tax, because it would break the work-ethic taboo against giving people money whether they work or not, so I would be cautious about advocating it. Though it would probably lose many swing voters, hopefully it would cause many in the half of population that doesn't bother to vote because it "doesn't make a difference" to come out to vote, so that the Democrats would win with even bigger landslides.
8) Counter "Socialism!" with "Great Depression!" Republicans would of course scream "Socialism!" at my flat tax scheme above, somehow managing to keep a straight face while calling a 35% tax rate "socialism". They know that fear is the best method to get people to vote the way they want, and conjuring images of economic collapse is a good way to do it. As if we'll all be waiting on long lines for shoes, as in the former Soviet Union, unless we continue to allow the super-rich to pay outrageously little in taxes. In fact, it is the Republicans who are the ones risking economic collapse, as they keep screwing ordinary people in every way possible, when ordinary people form the vast majority of their businesses' customers. Up till now, they've kept consumption going, as they've taken away wealth from the non-rich, by extending more and more credit to them, lending the very money they took from them back to them, allowing them to go farther and farther into debt. But there must be some limit to how much they're willing to let the non-rich borrow from them, for fear they'll never pay it back. When we go beyond that limit, the whole house of cards will come crashing down. The rapid automation going on in recent years, with productivity increasing at around 5% each year, makes the crash still far more likely. So every time the Republicans scream "Socialism!", the Democrats should scream back, "Great Depression!", and legitimately scare voters back.
9) Fight the super-rich, not the poor in other countries with trade protectionism. When the super-rich screw our workers by moving work to third-world countries for one tenth the pay, there are three parties to that transaction: the super-rich, our workers, and third-world workers. Our workers lose all of their pay, third-world workers gain one tenth of it, and the super-rich gain the other nine-tenths. So what do leftists do? They stupidly fight against free trade, therefore against those poor third-world workers, who gain a little, instead of against the super-rich, who gain a lot. This is another case of "divide and conquer". The super-rich are our true common enemy, yet they have the rest of us fighting each other instead. They got that nine-tenths of the money without working for it (unless you count screwing the workers as hard work, in the same way that a bank robbery is hard work, so that perhaps bank robbers should get to keep their hard-earned money), so tax them and give our unemployed workers much of the money back, without having to work for it.
10) Fight conservatism, not technology. Technology is a double-edged sword. The rises in worker productivity that it is causing could be bringing us either more stuff, or more leisure, or both. Instead, thanks to conservatives, they're bringing more stuff only for the rich, and forced leisure in the form of unemployment for others. Thanks to conservatives, old polluting technologies such as fossil fuels are protected, while new non-polluting technologies such as renewable energy are prevented from taking their place. Thanks to conservatives (and often Democrats to a lesser degree, because they have shifted so far to the right economically as to be right-of-center), technology is used for warfare, to threaten our civil liberties, and more. But notice that there is a common thread to all those mis-uses of technology: conservatism. Yet many liberals, such as the more extreme environmentalists, fight technology instead of conservatism. Here, Al "The Genius" Gore is right, for he seems to be a pro-technology liberal. To simplify a bit, conservatism plus technology, the way we're headed, means the non-rich getting shrinking slices of a growing pie, so never improving economically. Liberalism without technology, as leftists tend to advocate, would mean the non-rich getting bigger slices of a non-growing pie, a limited one-time improvement at best. Liberalism plus technology, as I advocate, would mean the non-rich getting growing slices of a growing pie, best of all. While the more extreme environmentalists and other leftists love to think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and "technological fixes" only make things worse instead of better, I think most Americans have an optimistic, progressive outlook, and that was something that made Reagan so popular. Those leftists only spread a feeling of deep cynicism, that there's nothing ordinary people can do about anything, so there's no point voting, and ironically, that plays right into the hands of conservatives. Notice that conservatives have been winning elections increasingly at the same time that voter participation has dropped. The elite are probably the people most likely to vote, the poor and uneducated the least. This country hasn't shifted to the right ever since Reagan, only toward apathy.
11) (Okay, so I can't count.)Fight for less work, not more. Considering that "wage slavery" is the main source of lack of freedom in most people's lives, it seems rather strange for liberals to be fighting for jobs, jobs, jobs. Of course, without jobs, jobs, jobs, middle class people wouldn't have any money, money, money, unless we broke the work-ethic taboo and gave people a guaranteed minimum income. And, barring possible complete automation in the future, without work nothing would be produced. But Democrats go too far in their relentless call for jobs. They never ask just what people will be doing in all those jobs, just make-work? Even bigger marketing "arms races" between companies, everyone wasting their time talking each other into buying their companies' stuff? Other "arms races", such as between lawyers, between the I. R. S. and accountants, and between doctors' offices and insurance companies? All of that make-work produces absolutely nothing for people's economic well-being, aside from an excuse to pay them to get around that work-ethic taboo. Ever since the Great Depression, liberals, Democrats and labor unions have forgotten the main cause they fought for since the start of the Industrial Age: shorter work hours. Shorter hours would spread the existing real work around more fairly to everyone, reduce unemployment, and create a slight worker shortage that would raise wages, discourage the creation of more make-work, and encourage companies to increase productivity, to everyone's benefit. In western Europe, workers typically work 35-hour weeks and get 6 weeks vacation, and work hours continue to drop. Here in the U. S., workers are lucky to get 2 weeks vacation, and the work-week continues to lengthen. That is not industriousness, as I've heard some people call it, but backwardness. Between the shorter work hours in other developed countries, and "the dole", which decreases the amount that workers fight tooth-and-nail for their jobs, those countries are quicker to adopt labor-saving technology.
12) Don't be so tolerant as to be tolerant of intolerance. I was saying this even before I heard comedian Bill Maher say the same thing, word for word (I swear!). During the war in Afghanistan, we had the bizarre spectacle of some leftists, such as feminists and secular humanists, trying to stop the war against the Taliban, a religious fundamentalist woman-loathing regime that was far beyond their worst nightmares. Politics sure does make for some strange bedfellows. I heard some leftists say that we shouldn't try to change other societies until we are perfect ourselves (in other words, never). I'm sure glad such nitwits weren't around when we were fighting against Hitler, even while we had "whites only" signs all over our country. It probably wouldn't have been a good idea to wait till the early 1970s to fight against Hitler, when the last of those signs came down. It is Democrats like those that make most Americans feel that when it comes to national security, they are safer with the Republicans.
13) Attack Bush's' record on protecting us. Ever since 9-11, Republicans have been winning elections by making Americans think the Republicans protect us more than the Democrats would do. And yet their record is so monumentally abysmal, it's amazing how any voters could possibly think that. When airplanes stray off their planned paths in US airspace, our government is supposed to react immediately, as it has done thousands of times in such situations. If contacting the pilots by radio gets no response, they are supposed to dispatch F-16s, from bases all around the country, to rendezvous with the planes and get in their path to force them to change direction. If even that doesn't work, and there is the threat that the planes might be flown into buildings as on 9-11, the government even has the authority to shoot the planes down. Yet on 9-11, 4 airliners simultaneously strayed from their paths, and even after 2 of them hit the World Trade Center, and the remaining 2 planes turned onto paths right for Washington, DC, even 2 hours after they first strayed from their paths, our government sat there and did nothing. One of the earliest acts of the Bush administration was to require that NORAD, which is the agency in charge of dispatching the F-16s, get direct approval from the White House before doing so. So on 9-11, NORAD contacted the White House, which first gave them no answer while precious time elapsed, and then actually told them to do nothing. So the White House is partly responsible for the fact that the Twin Towers are no longer standing, and 3,000 people are dead. Bush's popularity plunged after its inept handling of Hurricane Katrina. Yet why has no Democratic politician ever attacked his administration for a far worse screw-up, one of the worst in history? Because they never did, Bush's popularity soared after 9-11 as people "rallied around the president", when in fact it should have plunged due to that monumental, incomprehensible screw-up. (Here, I'm giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, and not assuming that their inaction was something far more sinister, as many liberals suspect: that they either decided on the spot to let the attack go on, so that they could reap the political benefits from the fear it instilled in the public that they have been reaping ever since, or that they even used their political and business connections with Bin Laden and his family and the Saudis to take part in planning the attack. The neo-cons, the group of radical Republicans that gave us the Bush administration, even said back in the late 1990s, when they were already planning the "Patriot" Act and the war in Iraq - which they then pretended were in response to 9-11 after it happened, even though they were planning them long before - that they'd need "another Pearl Harbor" to get those things approved. While there's no proof that their inexplicable inaction on 9-11, and inexplicable stonewalling after 9-11 to keep the 9-11 Commission from getting at the truth of what happened, were something that sinister, Democratic politicians should at least be planting the seeds of doubt in Americans' minds.)
14) No more wet noodles. Liberals have up till this election loved to put up spineless wimps as candidates, apparently thinking that voters would go with the Democrats if they just acted really really nice, against all evidence to the contrary in election after election. Instead, most voters feel that Democrats wouldn't better defend this country if they can't even defend themselves from Republicans. Most Democrats seem to have finally learned their lesson, although apparently not all. Does the name "Gephardt" ring a bell? The Pit Bull Party (a. k. a. Republicans) would eat him up for breakfast. Howard Dean is a Democrat who finally strikes the right tone, but the trouble with him isn't that he screams, but what he screams. He stupidly wants to reverse Bush's tax cuts not just for the rich, but even for the middle class.
15) Fight the Republican propaganda machine. The Republicans are masters of figuring out short slogans that twist reality into a pretzel and make the fair seem unfair and the unfair fair. I rarely hear Democrats attack the fallacies behind their slogans, much less do the same in reverse. Examples:
The Republicans call the inheritance tax for millionaires and billionaires the "death tax", and make most Americans think they're going to be rich enough to have to pay it. How about calling the 10% tax bracket, paid for by the working poor earning just $8,000 to $11,000 a year, the "poverty tax"?
The Republicans call for eliminating the capital gains tax because it "taxes people twice". I have yet to hear a Democrat point out that HOW MUCH people are taxed is the important thing, not how many times they are taxed, and how that rhetoric is designed to distract people from how the Republicans are lowering tax rates on the rich to below those for the middle class. I'd rather be taxed ten times at 1% each time than be taxed once at 20%.
Recently I even heard a Republican muse that if you looked at a map of the US by counties, a large majority of the land area of the country is counties that predominantly vote Republican, and yet the minority of concentrated urban pockets of mostly Democratic counties almost counterbalance the Republican areas. He seemed to imply that this was unfair somehow. I waited for the Democrat he was debating with to point out that it's one person one vote, not one acre one vote! But as usual, the Democrat was either an idiot or a spineless wimp, or both, and said nothing.
How about having Democrats say that they are against people being paid for doing nothing. And then say they were referring to billionaires living off of investments, getting inheritances, and corporate welfare, and not the poor getting welfare. That they are for lowering the crime rate. And then say that the best way to do so is to raise the poor into the middle class, since middle class people commit little crime. And add that the Savings and Loan scandal during the late 1980s under the Republicans was the greatest theft in history, $1.4 TRILLION, or an average of $14,000 stolen from every family in the country. As Don Henley said in one song, "A man can steal more with a briefcase than he can with a gun."
Unfortunately, though I think I am very good at coming up with the right tactics for the Democrats to win elections, I have never been able to come up with the right tactics to influence the Democrats to change tactics, since I am just a lonely voice in the wilderness. Letter-writing certainly hasn't helped. The best I can do is tell anyone who will listen.
(written in 2005)
Several times, when talking with conservatives about how the rich make their money from investments, not working, and then they complain about the poor on welfare not working, I have had those conservatives tell me, with a straight face, that "investing is hard work." (Then going to the welfare office is too, I guess.) I was so touched by their plight, I can assure you, bleeding-heart conservative that I am, that I thought someone ought to write a song about the poor oppressed uptrodden investor class, just as the famous song "Old Man River" from the musical "Show Boat" memorialized the plight of the overworked underpaid downtrodden newly-freed slaves on the Mississippi in the late 1800s. So here it is, sung to the tune of "Old Man River". Be sure to sing it with your best Paul Robeson immitation. (He's the one who famously sung it with his operatic voice in the movie "Show Boat.")
Old Man Market
Old man market, that old man market
He must know somethin', but don't say nothin'
He's fluctuatin', keeps fluctuatin' along
He don't trade futures, he don't trade cotton
And them that trades 'em, they don't get nottin'
He's fluctuatin', keeps fluctuatin' along
You and me, we sweat and strain
Portfolio droppin', wipin' out all gain
Tote that bond, and lift that stock
Ya take a little risk, and wind up in ho - ock
Ah gets weary, and sick o' tradin'
Ah'm tired o' schemin', and tax evadin'
But old man market keeps fluctuatin' along
(written in 2005)
The prefix "trans-" usually means "across" (as in "transport": "across-carry"), but occasionally it is used to mean "beyond". For instance, trans-humanism is a new philosophy that has arisen in the past few decades. It is an offshoot of humanism, but sees humans as not the be-all and end-all of conscious beings. It advocates using technology (such as genetic engineering, computer chips implanted in people's brains to give them superhuman intelligence, and medical technology to give them immortality) to transform humans into something beyond, and better than, merely human.
In analogy with that, here I'm coining the term "trans-environmentalism", for I got the idea to write this essay when I realized that I am a trans-environmentalist. The environment is not the be-all and end-all of possible environments, and I advocate using technology to transform it into something better.
I am certainly not an anti-environmentalist, although, in exasperation with many environmentalists, especially the most extremist ones, I have sometimes called myself that. I am against The Billionaires trashing the planet for their own personal gain.
Yet I am not exactly an environmentalist either. While I'm certainly concerned about the environment, I'm also alarmed at environmentalist extremism, which I consider almost a religion. I find environmentalists to be often extremely irrational. For instance:
They resort to falsifing evidence, as in the case of the pollen from genetically modified corn plants that supposedly killed monarch butterflies (when in fact, genetically modified plants enable farmers to stop using pesticides, SAVING butterflies). (Of course, to be fair, I should add that their anti-environmentalist opponents falsify evidence also.) They resort to preposterous hyperbole, such as calling genetically modified plants "frankenfood", as if the plants will become man-eating monsters out of some bad sci fi movie. They automatically oppose all new technology, especially the extremists, who want to go back to an imagined wonderful romantic simple agrarian past (which was actually horrendous, and would require 5/6 of the world's population to starve to death, although they never seem to volunteer to be among the dead 5/6).
They believe fervently that everything about the natural world must be kept exactly as it is, at all costs. Why they believe that, I don't know, but they take that as a given, and never question it. Some overtly tie their environmentalism in with religion, and say that we shouldn't mess up "God's creation". Even atheistic environmentalists act as if it is inherently immoral to make any changes to the environment. Who they think decreed that, I don't know.
They believe in what's called the "naturalistic fallacy": that natural = good and artificial = bad. I could come up with long lists of natural things that I for one consider quite bad (polio, smallpox, tapeworms, mosquitos, fleas, being struck by ligntning, being eaten alive...) and artificial things that I consider quite good (not having to worry about being eaten alive, average lifespans approaching 80, insect repellent and window screens, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, music at the touch of a button, the Golden Gate Bridge, easy worldwide travel...).
They talk as if the environment is like a house of cards in imminent danger of collapse, and one small change might bring the whole thing crashing down. In fact, the ecological web is very resillient, and when a change is made, such as removing a species, it simply readjusts to it. (However, there is ample evidence in the geological record that worldwide climate does not work the same way, and that at key points, small additional changes cause the climate to snap into a drastically new state, in a matter of just years or decades, going from ice age to warm, or back.)
The natural world, while containing such beautiful things as magnificent scenery, flowers, butterflies and sunsets, is mostly a horrible place filled with endless suffering - "nature red in tooth and claw", as the saying goes. Besides those beautiful things, it is also filled with such "wonderful" things as mosquitos and tapeworms, as I mentioned above, and also rabies (not even the most imaginative science fiction writer could have dreamed up such a horrific disease, which not only causes a slow and agonizing death, but turns animals into robots that attack other animals to spread the disease), and lamprey eels (which attach to the side of fish like a suction cup and keep re-opening up a wound with razor-sharp teeth to drink their blood, as the fish slowly bleed to death), and snakes (which slowly suffocate their prey by squeezing on their chest so they can't breathe). And how can I not mention that wasp that paralyzes caterpillars and lays its eggs all over them, which hatch and slowly suck the caterpillar dry while it remains alive and "conscious", however much a caterpillar is conscious. (Had enough?)
Therefore, I can never understand environmentalists' obsession with preserving the status quo at all costs. And I can't help noticing that environmentalist types tend to be animal lovers also, as I am. I can't imagine how any animal lover could possibly LIKE the natural world, since, as I said above, it is a place of endless suffering. Any animal lover should want to DESTROY the natural world if they could!
Call me crazy, but I kinda like living in a technological cocoon, in which I don't have to worry about starving or getting sick or infested with parasites or eaten alive, and dying really, really young - all of which are natural. I don't kinda like it when environmentalists automatically oppose all new technologies, in a knee-jerk reaction, including ones that could immensely improve people's well-being, such as genetically modified foods, and when they lie, and distort scientific evidence as they do. I also don't kinda like it when they go so extreme as to oppose controlling mosquitos -- I would love to invent little flying bug-hunting robots that would make every species of mosquito on earth as extinct as the dinosaurs. Are they against eradicating polio and tuberculosis as well? Or do they draw the line at multicellular organisms, and if so, why? (They say that fish eat mosquito larvae. I don't know if there are any fish that eat nothing but mosquito larvae. If there are, their extinction would be a small price to pay to eradicate mosquitos. They are just pests one step removed, if their existence depends on people and animals being put in misery. Otherwise, if they eat other things, they'll just have to make do with them only, thank you.)
I'd like to see a future in which all sentient animals no longer live in the natural world, but live in carefully-managed high-tech zoological parks that cover much of the world, or in our homes as pampered pets, where we have kindly brought them into our technological cocoon with us. I'd like to see animal flesh produced in biotech vats that induce muscle cells to grow into pieces of meat, without having to grow the whole animals, so that people would be able to eat meat without having to kill any animals. I'd like to see gazelles live out their days, never in fear of approaching lions. Lions, meanwhile, could be fed biotech-created gazelle meat (or perhaps something lions love even better, made to perfection by robot chefs). But wouldn't the lions get bored, having no gazelles to chase? We could give them robot gazelles to chase, to keep them "entertained" and satisfy their hunting instinct.
At the moment, our environment is the only one we have, and we are dependent upon it, and we have no power to change things. But in the future, I hope technology will enable us to overcome our dependence, and give us the ability to change things for the better. I hope that armies of specialized robots could keep the environment under our control, weeding, and likewise keeping fecund animal pests from over-multiplying. There would then no longer be the problem of unintended consequences to our actions, as we have now with an environment only partly under our control. As with trans-humanists' dreams of transforming humans into something better, the technology is not yet available, but I hope it will be in a matter of decades.
In short, I've finally figured out how to describe my views with it comes to the environment. There is a third way besides environmentalism and anti-environmentalism. Anti-environmentalists want to make the environment worse, environmentalists want to keep it exactly the same as it is ... and trans-environmentalists like me want to make it BETTER!
(written in 2005)
Conservatives claim to be for "states' rights" as one of their guiding principles, for weakening the power of the federal government and strengthening the power of the individual states. Before the Civil War, states' rights was used as a principle to justify letting the South continue slavery. (Never mind that back then, the Republicans were the liberal party and against states' rights, and since then, the 2 major parties have switched sides on most issues.) After the Civil War, states' rights was used to justify not forcing the South to improve civil rights for African Americans.
It so happened that the country as a whole was more liberal than the South back then, so invoking "states' rights" was a way of keeping the country as a whole from imposing its will on the South. Now, the country as a whole narrowly votes conservative (assuming the new highly-suspect electronic voting machines are giving accurate counts, which is another story), and only some regions are liberal. So predictably, while conservatives still claim "states' rights" on certain issues where the country as a whole is liberal, when it comes to other issues where conservatives at the federal level can impose their will, such as gay marriage and euthanasia, conservatives are the ones forcing their national will on individual states, and liberals are the ones asking whatever happened to conservatives' supposed principle of "state's rights".
Conservatives talk about "state's rights", of course, because that sounds like a much loftier principle than the principle of "don't end slavery or conditions tantamount to slavery so we rich people can get even richer", which is what they are really after. Whether power should rest more at the federal or state level is a dry issue that surely no one could get very passionate about, but it's no mystery why they are passionate about it nevertheless. No one is fooled by their rhetoric, and yet at the same time, somehow they still manage to hide behind it like a paper shield.
Why is this so? I think it's because to some degree, language influences thought, and when there is simply no term in a language for a certain concept, whether a single word or a phrase, people have a hard time getting a mental grasp on that concept. There is no term for using a bogus made-up lofty-sounding "principle" as a cover for whatever people are REALLY after, so that common phenomenon in politics never seems to be noticed or commented on, even among the most cynical people.
Therefore, I humbly suggest the word "bogiple" for that concept, short for "bogus principle".
Once one is mentally armed with the concept of bogiples, one can see them everywhere in politics.
For instance, a major bogiple is the issue of big vs. small government. Back before FDR, government almost always helped the rich and corporations, almost never ordinary people. Therefore, conservatives were for big government and liberals were for small government. As soon as FDR instituted all sorts of programs to help ordinary people, and government redistributed wealth more downward than upward, liberals were for big government and conservatives for small government. Their core principles involved ordinary people vs. the rich, while the bogiple of big vs. small government changed with the shifting winds. Now that Reagan, Clinton and W have eliminated much help for ordinary people and increased corporate welfare so that government has gone back to primarily redistributing wealth upward, predictably, W has become the biggest spender in history, increasing the size of the federal budget from $1.7 trillion to $2.5 trillion in just 5 years, almost all of that corporate welfare. One could predict that the Democrats would shift as well, back to being the small-government party. They could go back to winning elections as well, by giving massive tax cuts to ordinary people. However, if one predicted that, one would be wrong, because so far, the Democrats are too stupid to realize this. Instead, they continue to be stuck in a time warp in the age of FDR, wishing for big government programs to help ordinary people, that in the current political climate they will never ever get.
Another example is that when Democrats were the majority in Congress, Republicans made up the bogiple of "term limits" as a way to try to unseat them. How do I know that "term limits" was a bogiple of its own, and not part of their supposed small-government philosophy (itself a bogiple)?
The way to tell if something is a bogiple is easy. A principle at the core of a political philosophy, such as conservatives' anti-egalitarianism, will never change, for that is what its adherents are really after. A bogus principle isn't really what its adherents are after, but only happens to serve their ends for the moment. Under other circumstances it could easily wind up serving against their ends because it isn't identical to what they truly want. For instance, as I showed with "states' rights", while that bogiple usually has happened to serve conservative ends, when it comes to Massachussets approving gay marriage or Oregon approving euthanasia, which conservatives oppose, invoking "states' rights" would serve against their ends. Their lofty-sounding "principle" instantly gets chucked out the window.
In the case of "term limits", it was obvious that as soon as Republicans used it to unseat the entrenched Democrats and become the new entrenched majority, they would drop that bogiple in an instant. Sure enough, as if this was a surprise, as soon as they became the majority, Republicans either mysteriously stopped mentioning "term limits" anymore, or once they got in power, said that, .... hmmm ... suddenly they'd had a change of heart, and realized that there's something to be said for highly-experienced long-term members of Congress after all.... On those rare occasions when our right-wing media pointed out such hypocracy at all, they presented it in terms of the hypocracy of individual politicians trying to further their careers, rather than the organized plot that it actually was, to rig the rules to have one ideology unseat another.
If the people invoking a bogiple are smart, but evil (in other words, the Republicans), when conditions change, faster than you can say "hypocrite!!!!", the people invoking it abandon it.
While conservatives seem to be the ones who usually use bogiples (they have A LOT to hide, after all), they do not have a monopoly on them. But unfortunately, even when liberals do invoke bogiples, lately they do not know how to use them to further their ends or win elections the way the Republicans do. While Republicans are smart but evil, Democrats are well-intentioned, but total idiots, when it comes to bogiples along with everything else. I already gave the example of big vs. small government.
Another example is that, while there are people who are true pacifists, who hold that as their core belief, "pacifism" is often a bogiple, which many liberals are currently invoking. Leading up to World War 2, American fascists were the "pacifists" who urged us to be "isolationist" (another bogiple) and not get involved in the war in Europe ... in which (surprise, surprise), we sided against the fascists. As soon as World War 2 ended and we found ourselves up against the communists instead, who were (supposedly) leftists, the fascists dropped their "pacifism" and "isolationism" in an instant and became the warmongers. Moderate liberals remained strong on defense to show that they weren't communists, while more extreme liberals who believed they were on the same side as the communists became "pacifists".
Then, the Cold War ended, and a decade later, 9-11 began the War on Terrorism, in which we found ourselves up against far-right religious fundamentalists of the most extreme kind. Surely liberals, who are (at least currently) against religious fundamentalism, would drop their "pacifism", right? Wrong. The same liberals who protested the Vietnam War continued to be anti-war against a very different sort of foe. More extreme leftists such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Gore Vidal invoked the bogiples of "pacifism", and "national sovereignty" (usually used by conservatives in the same way they use "states' rights"), and "not imposing our culture on others", when it came to our justified war against the Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan after 9-11. You know it's a bogiple when feminist leftists invoke it to stop a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the most anti-feminist nightmare regime imaginable. As for "not imposing our culture on others", do they hold to that "principle" even when it comes to stopping the practice of female genital mutilation, that goes on mostly in Muslim countries in Africa?
In this case, involving liberals, the fact that they stick to their "principles" doesn't mean that those are really their core principles. It means that they are too stupid to change their bogus principles even when they go against their core principles, because they've lost track of what their core principles are. If they used bogiples to win elections, and abandoned them the instant it was expedient, the way the Republicans do, that would be one thing, for sometimes, the ends justify the means. But of course they don't do that. They really come to believe their own bogiples, and stick to them even after circumstances change. Then, those bogiples not only serve ends OPPOSITE of what they want, but ALSO make them lose elections! In the case of leftists' opposition to the war in Afghanistan, such leftists managed to oppose a war that happened to further liberal (especially feminist) ends, PLUS convince Americans that Democrats were too pacifist to be trusted with national security, all at the same time! Nice going, geniuses!!!! Liberals' own bogiples only serve to muddle their own thoughts to the point where they themselves no longer know just what it is that they really stand for.
Incidentally, I said that liberals are against religious fundamentalism, but added, "at least currently", because another political realignment in the past century was that liberals were originally allied with Christian fundamentalists. Christianity, after all, was originally a leftist ideology about a hippie-like person who advocated peace and love and equality, so liberals and Christians were natural allies. While other parts of the Bible have anti-gay statements (along with all sorts of other statements that most Christians choose to ignore, such as condoning slavery, and condemning men shaving their beards), Christ had nothing to say about gays, or abortion (which the Catholic church approved of until the 1800s), and plenty to say about keeping the rich from getting excessively rich at the expense of everyone else. Liberals also sided with Christians because they equated Darwinism with the social Darwinism of the conservatives -- as if, just because something is natural, that makes it good. Only since then have hypocritical so-called "Christians" who advocate the opposite of everything Christianity stood for, such as W, become the dominant force in religion in the US. There are now some calls among Democrats to point out that conservative Christians are hypocrites and that Christianity is a leftist ideology, and to ally themselves with leftist Christians to win back their votes. That is definitely a bogiple, since the parts of the Bible that advocate slavery, etc., are also part of Christianity, even if Christians choose to downplay them. Perhaps that bogiple is a good idea to win elections at the moment, but liberals should keep in mind that it is only a bogiple, to be dropped the moment it no longer suits their aims, and not one of their core principles. They should accept the liberal parts of Christianity in a marriage of convenience, but not the conservative parts or the mysticism.
If there is one thing noteworthy about this website of mine, I hope it is that I never hide behind any bogiples of my own. I try to bring everything back to my core principles (which can be briefly stated as: using technology and intelligence to make life better). As in the paragraph above, if I advocate using any bogus intermediate "principles" in service of my core principles, I try to state that I am doing so openly. I try not to have any hidden agendas, which are inherent in the concept of bogiples. I continually examine my own thinking for bogiples, to avoid getting caught in them when circumstances change. I always go back to my core principles, when deciding what policies I support, and try not to forget that for any intermediate principles I support, I only do so to indirectly serve my core principles. I try to stay flexible, and am willing to change my thinking if it no longer serves my core principles. For that reason, I often wind up taking opposite positions than most of the people whose philosophies I generally support. I hope that readers find the lack of bogiples on my site a refreshing change from politics-as-usual.
(written in 2005)
We live at a time when democracy seems to be increasingly triumphant. Even as late as the early 1970s, not all of western Europe was democratic, with dictatorships in Spain and Portugal, when western Europe is the heart of the developed, democratic world. Now, even Russia is (at least superficially) democratic. So is almost all of the western hemisphere. For the first time in history, dictatorships are the exceptions to the rule, and it is easier to list the parts of the world that are NOT democratic than those that are: Cuba, China, North Korea, parts of the former Soviet Union and most of the Middle East and Africa.
Yet appearances can be deceiving. Even as democracy is spreading throughout the world, it is quickly rotting away in the country where modern democracies started, the United States, the supposed champion of democracy. In the end, democracy may prove more vulnerable to a subtle and insidious force more powerful than any dictator: marketing.
I'm not sure how far back this sickening of democracy can be traced back, but I think it all started with tobacco ads. The people who market tobacco sure must have a tough job. They have to constantly convince new people to start using a product that makes them stink, and, I've heard routinely, makes them almost violently ill the first time they try it. And while it doesn't faze the youngsters who start using it, it's also highly addictive, and often leads eventually to long, horrible early deaths. You'd think a product like that would be hard to sell.
Up till the early 1900s, advertising was basically utilitarian, telling people the price and quality of products. Tobacco marketing called for much stronger psychological coersion, and as far as I know, it was the first product advertised in the modern way, purely by pushing people's psychological buttons. Basically, when you get down to it, the message of tobacco ads is: If you stink, you'll be more popular. Tobacco marketers must have been amazed when they tried this message out, and it actually worked -- especially when later on, the people marketing deoderant and mouthwash were simultaneously telling the public: If you stink, you'll be less popular. (Granted, we're talking about 2 different varieties of stink here.) The same successful techniques were then used on all other products, so that today, we have ads for soft drinks and sneakers and everything else that tell absolutely nothing about the products, only give people the impression that if people use them, they'll be more popular. They do so by showing people, who are obviously popular, using them. Over the decades, marketers slowly came to the realization that most people can be talked into pretty much ANYTHING, if the right psychological techniques are used.
The next step on the road to the demise of democracy came when marketers realized: "Hey, if this works for tobacco and mouthwash, it must work for politicians too!" So politicians began to be marketed in the same way, through powerful psychological techniques that marketers have continued to perfect.
Anyone concerned about the future of democracy should find this trend highly disturbing. The rise of marketing calls into question the very idea that democracy can work anymore. (I'm not suggesting that we switch to dictatorship, by the way. I'm suggesting that, seeing how dangerous marketing has become, we pass laws to severely limit it. Of course, this country has probably gone far past the point of no return already, and it's too late to ever get such laws passed.) Democracy loses all meaning if people can vote, but an effective way has been found to control how they vote. Democracy is supposed to depend on a population that's well-informed enough to make good decisions. Instead, powerful marketing techniques are being used to identify and exploit weaknesses in human psychology that cause most people to make bad decisions, whichever way the marketers want them to decide. All it takes is the money to throw enough advertising at them.
While it is certainly true that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time", the problem is that it only takes fooling 51% of voters, and it seems like about half the population (the dumber half) are the kind of people who can be talked into almost anything. The other 49% may not be fooled, but they are still outvoted, no matter how they may yell, "You fools, don't you see how they are so blatantly manipulating you into voting against your own interests?!?!"
Conservatives counter that it's just liberal paranoia that advertising has such power to lead people by the nose. However, notice that the businesses those very same conservatives own and control spend mega-billions on such advertising. Seems rather odd, spending mega-billions on something that doesn't work very well. Their own actions prove that they are liars.
The United States now seems to be in the final stages of the demise of democracy, and the rise of what could be called "adocracy", or perhaps "dumbocracy", in which the powers-that-be rule via the slim dumb majority that can be talked into almost anything. In these final stages, a tiny group of very rich people have managed to convince the majority of voters to vote for politicians who take money from ordinary people and give it to those very rich people, making them super-rich. They managed to get enough money to be able to afford to bombard the mass media with their advertising, giving them a solid lock on elections, so that their party is becoming the permanent majority party. The vicious cycle then continues, as more wealth is transfered up to them, some of which they use on advertising to further cement their lock on elections.
Advertising is not the only way the public is informed. Another main way is with news shows in the mass media. The powers-that-be took care of that when they repealed the Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s, and more recently repealed regulations that prevented just a few people from owning all the mass media. Ever since those laws were repealed, the public hears opinions not based on a fair sampling, but based on who owns the mass media, and of course, the rich are the ones who can afford to own them. Therefore, the public now only hears the improbable self-serving idea that the only way the economy can grow, so that ordinary people can get wealthier, is by giving more of their money to the rich. Imagine if I said, "The more of your money you give to me, the more you'll have, so give me all your money!" It seems incredible that most people could be so gullible as to believe that, but it's never put that blatantly.
The end result of the demise of democracy is a new type of subtler fascism than the heavy-handed fascism of the 20th Century. There is no need for those in control to be heavy-handed, because they have ways of getting what they want anyway. In fact, if they were less subtle about it, the dumber half of the electorate might catch on to what they are doing. I once heard about a graffiti someone saw that said, "If voting made a difference, it would be illegal." The same with free speech. The powers-that-be have no need to suppress free speech, because the super-rich owners of the mass media can beam their message out to millions at a time while ordinary people only have the ability to talk to those people they know personally. The internet was supposed to provide a counter-force, but I see little evidence that it is. I think that's because of the very fact that it is "de-massified", catering to niche audiences rather than a mass audience. Dissenting websites just preach to the converted, while those who have been brainwashed by the mass media's propaganda only seek out websites that confirm what they already believe. If the internet ever does make a difference, I'm sure the next terrorist attack, or pornography, or one of the other conservative boogeymen, will give the powers-that-be an excuse to censor it. So far, the super-rich's control of the mass-media isn't complete, and their political situation is still somewhat precarious. If political advertising campaigns aren't adequate, there's always the backup plan of rigging elections, as they've been doing. But soon, their control of the mass media may be so complete that they won't even have to resort to that.
George Orwell said of the future, "Picture a boot stamping on a human face -- forever." But that was the 20th Century brand of fascism. Instead, picture a huge bunch of ninnies blindly following some leader over to an auction where they are sold into slavery, but they are too stupid to know it. Picture them dragging everyone else along with them, kicking and screaming, who know what is happening, but are powerless to stop them because they are too dense to "get it". That, I'm afraid, is the future.
(written in 1998, updated in 2005)
We need more than just new policies. Our representative system of government is completely antiquated and hopeless. It was created at the start of the Industrial Age and was a work of genius that served us well throughout that era, but we need a new form of government that is as untried as our current form of government was when it was created: direct democracy, in which the people vote directly on issues rather than voting for politicians who then vote on issues. At the time our constitution was created, direct democracy was briefly considered, but in those days, when it took weeks to travel from South Carolina to what is now Maine, it was a practical impossibility. We are rapidly approaching the day when it will be practical, and we have already reached the time when it is desperately needed. Let me review the current situation.
First, because we vote for politicians, not issues, our votes are pathetically blunt instruments. We are forced to compromise on who advocates the policies closest to the ones we want, overall, although they may advocate some things we are against. We are forced to choose between 2 take-it-or-leave-it options. There is clear evidence that the powers-that-be like it that way because it serves their ends. Polls consistently show that Americans are much more liberal than they vote. 2/3 of Americans tell pollsters that the rich don't pay enough in taxes, for instance, and yet they then usually vote for politicians who lower taxes further on the rich. Part of the problem is lack of knowledge about what's going in, but part is because, for instance, they may know that a politician will lower taxes on the rich, and may not like it, but have other issues they care about as well, such as national defense.
In fact, because we vote on politicians and not issues, most people wind up voting more on politicians' personalities than on issues. The media tend to concentrate on personalities and scandals, on who's winning and who's losing, leaving little room for coverage of the issues.
The worst problem of all, yet one that I have never seen anyone else recognize, is that the media cover ONLY the proposals politicians happen to make up when they campaign. The public is then inadvertently given the impression that the 2 sets of proposals they hear, from the 2 political parties, are the only possible solutions to problems that there could be, when in fact there could be a whole universe of possible solutions out there that are never mentioned. (Want an example? When was the last time you heard any politician suggest that we encourage companies to allow their employees to work from home, to telecommute instead of commute to work, in order to reduce our consumption of oil, and therefore the money that goes to terrorism? I've read a figure, though by now outdated, that if just 12% of Americans worked from home, the U. S. would no longer have to import any oil, and beyond that, would even become an exporter.)
The worst part is that politicians then take advantage of the above problem, by DELIBERATELY ignoring solutions to problems that would threaten the powers-that-be in our society, and presenting the public with false choices as if they were the only choices. (A perfect example: After the Republican governor in my state lowered taxes for the rich and created a deficit, so that the state could no longer afford to provide better education that the public wanted, such as smaller class sizes, he said, in effect, "Which do you want, A) bigger class sizes or B) higher taxes?" -"Higher taxes" implying that they'd be higher for EVERYONE. Well, given a choice between A or B, I choose C: higher taxes just for the rich, to bring their taxes back up to what they were before they were lowered.) So in fact, the most important choices have already been made before the public votes, even before the campaigns have begun: what platforms the 2 political parties will run on. Forcing the public to choose between those deliberately limited choices is as insane as asking someone, "Which do you prefer, to be shot at dawn, or hanged at midnight?", and concluding from their answer that they want to be executed.
Finally, a comparatively small number of politicians can be bought off much more easily than the general public. The skyrocketing expense of TV advertising campaigns means that politicians are dependent on corporate contributions. No matter how well-meaning politicians may be when they start out, they are quickly and inevitably corrupted, and the system is set up so that only corrupt politicians have much chance of rising to the top.
Now that I've stated the problem, what is the solution? One possibility for the short-term could be that, just as people now participate directly only in the judicial arm of government, in the form of jury duty, then perhaps we could let them participate in the legislative branch as well, in the form of "congress duty". Instead of an elected Congress, a representative sample of the population would be allowed to serve in Congress at any given time. What better reflection of the will of the people than a representative random sample of them, rather than an elected legislature? The best idea would probably be to make such service purely voluntary. But I have a feeling that, unlike jury duty, where people make decisions that affect other people, not themselves directly, most people would clamor at a chance to serve in Congress, where they could decide on such things as how much taxes they will pay, what their money will be spent on, and what should be legal and illegal. To give everyone adequate chances to serve, any given person could serve for perhaps a few weeks, every few years, similar to jury duty. That would mean that Congress would have vastly more members at any given time than it has now, perhaps 1% of the adult population, or about 2 million. With today's communications, they would not need to travel to Washington to serve. There could be local offices where they could go to debate and vote by computer. Perhaps those with home computers connected to the internet could vote on the issues of the day from home, while others could go to their local library. Conservatives love to point out, disingenuously, that such a situation would bias the numbers of people voting in favor of the more prosperous, who tend more to own computers, since it would be far more convenient for them to vote from home than have to go to their local library. As if they're champions of the poor! They of course don't mention that the resulting bias would be FAR less than in today's Congress, that does the voting for us, almost all of whose members must be multimillionaires to afford to run for office. Besides, such a situation is temporary, for as computers are decreasing in price, more people can afford them. By the end if this decade or so, personal computers in homes may be nearly as ubiquitous as telephones are today, so that the poor, who are least likely to have computers, will be more fairly represented. The entire population could function as both the legislative and executive branches of government, with the president and legislature (and governors, mayors, etc.) serving a largely ceremonial function.
The way bills would be proposed could be similar to how anyone can set up a "chat room" on a certain topic on America Online, and then anyone interested can "enter" the room to join in. Anyone could set up a new site with a proposal, and people could enter to debate it, and to add their names to an electronic petition. When enough people "signed" the petition (perhaps the top ten petitions at any given time), the general public would then vote on it, and to give people enough chance to vote, the vote might last a week or a month. For crises that require quick response, there could be an option for each issue asking for a quick vote, so that if enough people signed it in a day, the vote on that issue would only last a day. Alternatively, we could let the president retain the power to act in crises, while the public would retain the right to overrule the president later at their leisure. In practice, various special interest groups might set up new proposal sites, using their expertise to word bills appropriately.
A major problem with voting the way it is currently is that people can only choose who they most want, not who their 2nd, 3rd, etc., preferences are. That leads to the phenomenon of vote-splitting, in which, for instance, though most people may vote conservative, if two conservatives are running, they split the vote so that neither conservative candidate gets the most votes and neither wins. Allowing voters to number their choices by preference would solve this problem, since, in our example, both conservatives would get most of the 1st and 2nd votes, outweighing another candidate getting a greater number of 3rd votes. Because of vote-splitting, people are often forced to not vote for a candidate running 3rd even tho they may prefer that candidate, because they don't want to "waste their vote". Vote-splitting is not just a problem when voting for politicians. Many issues are not either/or, but present a variety of alternatives.
Of course the main objection to direct democracy is that people would never have the time to participate in all of these votes. This is where shorter working hours tie in, for if people had enough leisure time, they would have the time to participate. In fact, one reason the powers-that-be may have no interest in shortening working hours is that they may not want to give the people the time to fully participate, and thereby take power away from themselves. But the number of issues of the day that need to be voted on may be fewer than they seem. The way our current system works (or rather, fails to work), issues fester for years or decades with no resolution. Think of all the issues that politicians campaign on election after election. Politicians may even deliberately fail to solve problems in order to still have them as issues to run on in future elections. If each of the issues today had been debated over a reasonably brief time and put to a quick vote, they might have ceased being issues long ago. Not necessarily, though, since the public would be able to bring up the same issues for a vote any number of times in order to reconsider previous decisions.
Another objection is that the public would be subject to waves of mass hysteria, so can't be trusted making decisions. Yeah, right, like a few hundred legislators are somehow less subject to mass hysteria than millions of people. If anything, politicians are the ones who whip up mass hysteria in order to get votes, so a country without politicians would make far more level-headed decisions, because political careers would no longer be entangled with the decision-making process. Legislators have been responsible for such waves of mass hysteria as McCarthyism. But I should add that there would still be an independent judicial branch of government and a constitution, subject to much slower change, as there is now.
Go to next politics-related page, on the technological Singularity and leftist economics.