The Minimum Income

This is part two of the Kallipolis series, which began with "Only Veterans Deserve to Vote".



One thing I've never understood was brought up in one of my favourite books Generation Kill. You go all over the world and poor people are skinny, yet in America, for some unknown reason, poor people are obese. That makes no sense. Why are poor people fatter than rich people in America? How can someone living entirely off the welfare possibly purchase or otherwise acquire enough food to actually become obese? That does not make sense.

You look at these Mexicans who come over to mow lawns or put up roofs (rooves?), they are 130, 140 pounds, and it's pure muscle. They get paid one shiny penny per hour and they work themselves to death and they have zero body fat. I like that (I like their work ethic, not that they are underpaid or die early). I greatly admire the amount of work they do. More poor people should be like that. One big problem is that there aren't enough good jobs for poor people. The roads are disintegrating, inner cities look like war zones, all this construction needs to be done but there's no money to pay for it because all the money goes into the pockets of bureaucrats.

I read somewhere that at least 80% of all money spent on welfare in the US goes to pay government salaries, not to actually help poor people. If all that money were redistributed from the bloated government then every adult in the US could be given $10,000 per year. I actually recorded (I have not uploaded or even thought to edit it yet) a 50 minute video defending the idea of replacing welfare with a minimum income. 1 January everyone gets a direct deposit of $10,000 into their bank account (this makes the bankers happy because of all the new customers they get). The people who won't work wouldn't work anyway under the current system, so you're not actually losing any additional money, poor people who do work and are making slave wages are automatically lifted out of poverty, it incentivises more people to invest more because they now have more to invest, and for the people who don't need the extra money you get it back with taxes, so you don't lose anything that way either.

Yes, but how do you pay for it? Welfare spending is (one of the contributing factors in) bankrupting America. It's a sunk cost. The government is spending that money anyway. If the money is already spent it might as well be spent on something useful. But I do have some ideas on how to eliminate government spending while maintaining the minimum income.

Step One: cut the size of government by 50% over the next 10 years. As I mentioned earlier, nearly all the spending on welfare is wasted on the government itself. Get rid of everyone in the federal welfare department and have the jobs reassigned to the Treasury without hiring any additional employees. "But you've just laid off thousands of people!" Yes, but remember, with the minimum income they're still getting paid anyway.

Step Two: Stop inflating the currency. The number one reason people are poorer today is because the money is worth less. In fact, the US Dollar is almost completely worthless, having lost over 90% of its original value (The British Pound, by contrast, has lost only about 10% of its original value). People are talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but if the value of the Dollar had not been destroyed by inflation than the current $7 minimum wage would be worth about $23 an hour. Here's a real world example of inflation. 100 years ago you could take a $20 gold coin, worth exactly $20 USD, and have a finely tailored suit made. Today you can still use that same gold coin to get a finely tailored suit made, but the gold and the suit now both cost $2,000 USD. The gold coin and the suit are still worth exactly the same, the US Dollar is just worth 100 times less.

Step Three: Stop the war on drugs. Legalise and Tax. I read about 8 years ago that if weed was legalised the government could tax it and make $400 billion per year. That right there is equivalent to federal welfare spending, just with weed. You break the backs of the cartels, empty the prisons, and make a huge windfall in taxes simultaneously. That's win-win-win. That's a Charlie Sheen level of winning.

Step Four: Stop policing the world. There are 50,000 US troops in Germany and another 50,000 in Japan even though we beat them 70 years ago. Der Fuhrer is not coming back. The Reds are not going to pour through the Fulda Gap with "more tanks than God" and make it to the Rhine in a week. What the hell are we doing there?

Step Five: Stop the waste in general. SpaceX has spent about $500 million on its Dragon capsule and has already tested it and it works beautifully. The only thing holding them back is red tape. The official NASA government contract for the Orion system, which was obsolete when it was first proposed, and has not gotten off the paper yet, is $17 billion. What's wrong with this picture? The government has tried to produce a POS rocket, spent a load of time, wasted a tremendous amount of money, and hasn't made anything. The SpaceX guys see there is a huge market for commercial spaceflight design AND BUILD something that works perfectly for a fraction of the cost and they're finished already! And why is government so damn slow and why does it wast so much money? It's just like the welfare problem. People see government as a means to line their pockets because they can't do real work producing something. Government is nothing more than one giant slush fund.

I'm not saying government has no purpose. I'm not a wackjob looser utopian fanatic who brays about "the free market" solving all the world's problems. I don't want Apple to put their logo on the Moon even if they pay a trillion dollars for it. I don't want ExxonMobil to drill for oil in Yellowstone. I don't want Blackwater policing US streets (and I don't want to see the friendly-looking police I remember as a kid dressed like mercenaries with machine guns and black ski masks either). I think a world with three or four nuclear powers is a much safer world, and I see nothing wrong with bombing Iran or Saudi Arabia into submission to kill their nuclear ambitions. If a million Iranians die that's better than five billion people who would die in a nuclear war. Stopping nuclear proliferation is not policing the world, it is the calculus of survival. Nuclear weapons represent such a grave threat that they are awarded a special category. Policing the world necessarily involves nation building. Blowing up reactors and then hauling ass is not nation building, it's limited war. The government should police the streets, put out the fires, and kick ass in limited, defensive wars (keeping Iran from getting nukes is defending the US). The government should maintain protected wilderness areas and make people like BP accountable for releasing millions of tons of oil. And the government can do all this in a much more efficient way than it does now. And being efficient starts with cutting jobs and eliminating corruption. I'm not saying everyone needs to be perfectly moral, although if my only veterans get to vote scenario was adopted that would contribute greatly to the morality problem of government (not because veterans are inherently moral in themselves, but because history and moral philosophy will become a mandatory part of their training).

And I think all that can be done while implementing my minimum income system. I'd love to say more but I can no longer see the top of the page, so I'll save that for a part three.

Was Atlantis in Bolivia?

This 10 minute video details Jim Allen's hypothesis that Atlantis was located in Bolivia. IT goes quickly, so you may have to stop and start it often. The evidence is circumstantial. 1. There was definitely a very large civilisation in South America that left behind ruins, 2. Pre-Columbian travel between the old and new world really happened, and 3. that ancient South American civilisation bears a resemblance to the description of Atlantis in Plato's dialogues, but while 1 and 2 are established facts, 3 is an inference alone. The resemblance might well be coincidental. There may or may not be issues with the dating of these sites, I don't know, I haven't looked into it too carefully. The video is worth watching and, as always, I recommend you form your own opinions.

Differences Between Soviet Socialism and European (and American) Socialism

• Soviet socialism values the
collective over the individual

• European socialism values special
snowflakes with six self-diagnosed mental illnesses over the
collective

• Soviet socialism has no minorities,
all are equal

• European socialism worships
minorities and grants them special privileges

• Soviet socialism reveres strength
and patriotism

• European socialism reveres
weakness, autism, morbid obesity, and multi-culturalism while seeing
patriotism as racialist

• Soviet socialism has no racialism

• European socialism is nothing but
racialism

• Soviet socialism punishes leeches
and promotes negligible unemployment

• European socialism rewards leeches,
punishes workers, and promotes extremely high unemployment

• Soviet socialism has women be equal
to men

• European socialism has women be far
superior to men with feminist bullshit

• Soviet socialism has freedom of
religion, with people being free to profess belief in any peaceful
religion or "atheist propaganda" (their words)

• European socialism has no freedom
of religion, you are either a cultural marxist or a radical seventh
century islamist; Christianity is outlawed in all but name

• Soviet socialism is proud of its
cultural heritage

• European socialism is ashamed of
its cultural heritage and instead worships cultures of barefoot
hunter-gatherers and head hunters who still live in mud huts and die
at age 30 in 2016

• Soviet socialism promoted
childbirth for the good of the motherland while keeping abortion
legal, which allowed for replacement level fertility rates

• European socialism sees childbirth
as the greatest sin of them all and promotes abortion as the unholy
sacrament of cultural marxism, resulting in well below replacement
level fertility rates

Only Veterans Deserve to Vote

I'm working out a war game scenario and I am amazed by just how many ranks there are. It got me thinking about more than just military hierarchy.



How many ranks do you need? I'm thinking there are so many mainly as a prestige thing, since many times it seems acquiring a higher rank seems automatic, just by serving for a set period of time. Well, if you haven't done anything why are you climbing to a higher rank? You haven't earned it. Okay, I can understand, you climb up one rank after your first year just to discourage desertion and reward guys for making their beds fifty thousand times and doing a million pushups and shining Sergeant's boots until he can see his own reflection, but after that, do you really need to climb rank automatically for any reason? It seems like rewarding people for nothing.



It's just like the situation with universal franchise. Anyone who knows me knows (or should know) that I hate the idea of universal franchise. Presto change-o you turn 18 and now you can vote! It doesn't matter if you can spell your own name or count to 10 or if you're an asshole or a drug addict, you get to vote just for having existed for 6,574 days. You haven't done anything to earn the privilege to vote, you haven't demonstrated the slightest competency, because that would be racialist, you have just existed, like a stone, and like a stone you can know absolutely nothing and still get to vote!



Well, why should that be? And don't think I'm waving my finger saying "I don't think those people over there I don't like shouldn't vote," no, I'm saying "I don't think I should vote, because I haven't done anything to earn it."



That's why I support the system Robert Heinlein set up in Starship Troopers where you need to serve in some federal capacity in order to vote (it wasn't just military, there were other things you could do, but it had to be equally as dangerous and important as military service). That way you have taken part in the upkeep of the society the laws of which you are deciding. You've earned it. And since you have worked for the privilege of voting you appreciate it more, and, furthermore, you understand the workings of government better. And since most of the voters are veterans they are far less likely to vote for war since they all know how horrible war is.



This solves a tremendous great big horrible problem with government as is. It solves the problem of politicians who are rich, entitled elitists who start wars for their own aggrandizement and who got into office because their parents bought them the office or so they could appease special interest groups with deep pockets. It also solves the problem of the legions of voters with below room temperature IQ's who are all living off welfare who vote for politicians who promise to give them free stuff stolen off the backs of the workers.



You see now the hyperbole of the title. Anyone who has completed their federal service can vote, not just combat veterans.



Some people might object "Oh, but that government would not be representative of everyone." To which I reply, why does it need to be? Why does the government need to represent everyone? The answer is it doesn't, and almost no one actually thinks that it does. Very few people, a few lawyers maybe, think government should represent murderers and child molesters, and that makes absolute sense. Furthermore, most people don't want the government to represent everyone, just people like them. They certainly don't want the government to represent people they disagree with. The only difference between them and me is that I'm honest and they are lying sacks of crap who hide behind phony holier-than-thou moralisms.



As I have pointed out earlier, everyone is most certainly not equal. Is Ted Bundy equal to Isaac Newton? Is a murderer equal to a steel worker or a truck driver or a Girl Scout? Is a drug addict equal to a nuclear scientist or a brain surgeon? Unequivocally no! Not everyone is equal, some people are horrible monster and some people are heroes who have saved hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives. Some people are much better than others and some people are much worse. Admittedly there is a large grey area between the murderers and the brain surgeons, but there is no need to delineate exactly where everyone fits in the hierarchy to see that a hierarchy does exist.



In a rational society competency is rewarded. This is what Chingis Khan did. It didn't matter whether you were the son of a king or a peasant farmer, if you were really good at the military you were given an army and if you were really good at administration you were made a government official of some kind. This is called meritocracy.



"Oh, but that's racialist/sexualist/discriminating against that group of people over there who I look down on and think they're not good enough to make it on their own!"



Most leftists tend to have a tremendously low view of "minority" groups (even when those "minorities" happen to be the majority). They think blacks or women or whoever are too incompetent to accomplish anything on their own so racial or sexual quotas like Title IX and affirmative action are needed to give the poor ex-slave a big boy hand out so he can feel good about himself in a job he couldn't have earned on his own. It is an extension of the "white man's burden" dressed up in a new suit to assuage the guilt of people who like to feel guilty because the idea of collective guilt is in vogue. It seems the louder someone cries "Racialist!" the bigger the racialist that person actually is.



Getting back to the point of a meritocracy, which is actually fair in that it focuses on equality of opportunity instead of equality of outcome (which privileges people you like more, be honest and admit it), there's a reason a few tens of thousands of Mongols conquered one fifth the world's land area and several hundred million people, because the person who got the job was best suited for the job. You can't argue with results like that. The person who serves a government office should be the person who is best suited for fulfilling the duties of that office, not the richest person or the person who makes the most phony promises. You wouldn't want your brain surgeon to be someone just picked up off the street for being the tallest or most charismatic liar, you would do a ton of online research and find the most qualified brain surgeon to remove the tumor from your head and damn the expense (I'm not here to make any arguments about healthcare).



Why shouldn't the same be true with government? You wouldn't be so damned interested in letting someone vote to take your money away, would you, but you would vote to take money away from people you don't like in a heartbeat (be honest), and that's a huge problem with the system we have in place now. People with absolutely no qualifications are voting for their own selfish interests based on the height of candidates or catchy slogans rather than voting for the greater good for society even if that means they get left out personally. The system we have now is grossly inefficient and powered almost exclusively by greed. The obvious solution is to restrict voting only to those people who have demonstrated that they know how the system of governance works, the ins and outs of bureaucracy, of organizational structures, of logistics, of getting things done. Voting and public office should be restricted to only those people who have served in some capacity at the bottom of the ladder in that very government hierarchy as the grunts and laborers. They more than anyone know how the chain of command works, how communications between departments work, and they more than anyone appreciate just how hard people at the bottom have it, so they better than anyone would look out for the welfare of those who have the least. Restricting voting does not make a less compassionate government, it makes a more compassionate government, because everyone in office got there only through struggling. No one was born into wealth or privilege, everyone has to work for it from the bottom up. It ensures the most efficient, compassionate, rational system possible, and stands the greatest chance at being free from corruption and gridlock.

The Tenth Planet

It seems that Caltech may have discovered a TENTH planet in the solar system (Pluto is a planet and always will be*). Gravitational disturbances within the Kuiper Belt have led to a number of researchers hypothesising the existence of a massive planet very very far from the Sun. This planet, if it exists, is estimated to be 10 times as massive as the Earth and is at a distance of 700 AU, and it takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one orbit (90 times longer than Neptune). It may well be the long hypothesised fifth gas giant.



The planet has not yet been directly observed, only its gravitational effects on other bodies. This is exactly how Neptune was discovered.



[Mike] Brown
notes that the putative ninth planet—at 5,000 times the mass of
Pluto—is sufficiently large that there should be no debate about whether
it is a true planet. Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as
dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of
the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the
other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it "the most planet-y
of the planets in the whole solar system." 



One key prediction of the planet hypothesis is that a group of Kuiper objects should be detected inclined perpendicular to the ecliptic, and five such objects were discovered. Unlike global warming, the computer models for the tenth planet actually match the observed data. This is how to do real science, not political science.



Making visual observations of this new planet, if it exists, will be difficult. It should be quite dim, and no one knows exactly how far away it is. It is not known where to look, but at least there is good evidence that there is something out there to look for.









* The International Astronomical Union, a good ol' boy's club for elite astronomers, decided to cancel Pluto's membership in the planet club. They took a vote. But a vote isn’t exactly a rigorous scientific argument, so to give its decision the flavor of science, the IAU came up with a definition of "planet" so convoluted it seemed entirely arbitrary.



To qualify as a planet, a body must orbit the sun and be large enough to be at least roughly spherical, two rules that make sense. But it must also have gravitationally "cleared its neighborhood" of other bodies, meaning it has its orbital traffic lane all to itself, which Pluto doesn’t, at least during the most remote portion of its journey around the sun. The rule seemed carefully crafted so that "dwarf planets" like Pluto, Eris and the asteroid Ceres didn’t make the cut.



But that's not the half of it. If the Earth were placed where Pluto is it would not have enough mass to "clear its neighborhood", and so the Earth would not be a planet! That's right. An earth-sized object situated between 30 and 40 AU from the Sun would not have enough mass to qualify as a planet. The farther from the Sun the more area must be dominated by the object's mass, so it gets harder and harder the farther away you get for a large spherical object to qualify as a planet.



But the Earth IS a planet where it is in space, meaning the third criterion doesn't signify anything intrinsic about the body itself! The definition of what is and is not a planet should not rest on some factor independent of the planet itself.



Until someone can come up with a compelling, intrinsic reason (a reason that would not disqualify the Earth!) why Pluto should not be a planet, then I am considering it a planet.

Stuart Hameroff and Deepak Chopra

Did Stuart Hameroff just explain what is vibrating when spiritualists have spoken of spirits existing on different vibrations? At 18 minutes he discusses the different resonance frequencies of the microtubules of the brain. I've watched this four times now and I don't fully understand it, but the the different frequencies of the microtubules corresponds to something that has to do with quantum gravity, and that makes it possible to have different worlds (physical, etheric, astral, etc.) all superimposed in the same physical space. A mind vibrating at 80 hz would be aware of one world (ours), while a mind vibrating at 8000 hz would be aware of a different world, and a mind at 80,000 hz would be aware of a different world, but they would all be in the same place, just at different frequencies, and an observer in one would not be aware of any others. The smaller the scale, from our scale to the Planck scale, the lower the energy but the greater the information processing capacity. That means the higher planes described in channeled messages are actually microscopic in size!



Also in this dialogue is a discussion of zombies, near death experiences, reincarnation, and quantum holography. Runs 33 minutes.

Ancient Versus Modern Views of Religion

"I'M GOD! WHO THE HELL ELSE WOULD I BE?!"



Ancient people were not stupid. Did the Greeks really believe the gods were people who sat on Mount Olympos doing all the crazy stuff in the myths? Probably very few did, but most were smart enough to see the truth of the stories. They were written as a way to get a point across about very complicated subjects in way that was easy to assimilate and remember. The gods are so obviously anthropomorphized versions of abstract qualities. Aries is unchecked rage and Athena is the rational mind that takes over in warfare, the two primary ways in which people fight. These are psychological qualities that are represented as people as a form of shorthand.



It's just like, where did the idea that the Christian God is Zeus + Santa Claus come from? Maybe people, possibly idiots, would look at woodcuts from the middle ages and see images of a bearded God, but those are just a form of short hand. They're like using G to stand for the gravitational constant. When a physicist today writes G in an equation, or draws a diagram of electrons orbiting an atom like mini planets that's not meant to be taken literally, it's just an easy to remember reference. No physicist thinks electrons are little balls circling around the nucleus just like no medieval theologian thought God looked like an old man in the clouds (nor did the Bible writers). And where does the idea that God shoots lightning bolts come from?



Judaism and Islam both have strict prohibition against any depiction of God, and Christianity was like that for a long time too. Jesus had taken human form, so there's nothing wrong there, but God the Father is formless, and everybody knew that for a thousand years. At most artists would depict a hand reaching out from the clouds as a representation of God's interaction with the world, but no one believed God really had hands or lived in the clouds. It was not until much later that restrictions were relaxed and then a bunch of people who probably didn't believe in God all that strongly began experimenting with art and started to depict God in human form.



When losers and defeatists within the naytheist and the "new age" community always bring up the idea of God as Santa + Zeus living in the clouds, this is either a symptom of extreme laziness or is a deliberate malicious presentation of a cartoon version of God that no one believes in so as to mock religion. "I believe in 'god' (Gaia, The Force, whatever bullshit extremely watered-down abstraction "new age" people like to use) but I don't believe in 'god' as an old man in the clouds." Well, neither does anyone. Neither HAS anyone, ever, believed God was an old man in the clouds. It's an artistic representation, not meant to be taken as literal. Don't be stupid. The "new age" person implicitly continues in the original statement "I believe in a god that is my own ego, that permits me to do whatever I want and makes me happy without imposing any restrictions, because restrictions are meanness, not like recommendations from a doctor or a therapist 'if you want to improve X aspect of your life, here's a list of activities you should do. If you want to run a four minute mile, here's a workout regiment, if you want to know Truth, here's a method for looking into the deepest aspects of your mind.'"



Don't be stupid. The purpose of religion is not to stroke your ego, the purpose of religion is to completely and permanently destroy your ego. You're not supposed to like it. You're not supposed to like the restrictions placed on your animal nature. Religion is not a social club, it's not dancing or sticking your ass into the air on a vinyl mat or detoxing with green coffee enemas after a night of anonymous sex and heroin use.



That's why I can't stand the three main groups of people engaged in the whole religion issue, because they're all profoundly misinformed and anti-intellectual.



You have the naytheists who go to revival meetings where they bray about how they don't believe in God and worship "science" which makes as much sense as worshiping algebra. "Science" is nothing, can do nothing, has done nothing. Individual scientists - causal agents - are responsible for all the discoveries of "science". These people read the inner flap of Dick-to-the-Dawk-to-the-PhD's book and then know-it-all-ism takes place. They think a re-packaged argument that the Scholastics refuted a thousand years ago is the be all end all of religion and then they act like douchebag teenagers.



You have "new age" or "spiritual but not religious" people who are suffused with holier than thou mentality because they're not Christian and they worship the cultural zeitgeist of postmodern cultural marxism. That's what being "spiritual but not religious" means: Cultural Marxism + belief in The Force from Star Wars. If the TV comedian tells you to believe something about religion or politics or anything, that's what you believe in coupled with literal belief in The Force. You dare not say God, because that's masculinist. You'll worship gaya or divine vagina or midichlorians because it's softer and not judgmental of deviant behaviour, it's just super duper judgmental of the values that built Western culture and invented everything you use on a daily basis.



Then you have the super duper throwback Lutherians. I think they are called Evangelicals, but they worship the perversion of Christianity invented by Martin Luther, the most Devil obsessed man in the history of the world. The Catholic Church had, and still has, a tremendous intellectual tradition. Most of the great Western universities began as Catholic seminaries. The Church preserved the Graeco-Roman world while books were being burned everywhere else for firewood. Then Luther came along and decided to do the exact opposite of everything Jesus actually said and invented a religion out of it. If Jesus said sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and not to worry about life, God will provide for you, Luther believed to work from the moment you open your eyes until the moment you pass out at night, never have a moment of fun, and hoard all your money like a miser, never spending a cent. Poor? The poor don't deserve charity, they should start a business. Intellectual tradition? One book is sufficient. Read the Bible and throw everything else out, including the newspaper. These people worship ignorance. The more ignorant they are the prouder they are. It's the same worship of ignorance and reliance of a single book that makes Islam the scourge of God. These people are the anti-naytheists. Naytheists worship "science", Luther's followers don't believe science exists. It's witchcraft. The Church a thousand years ago said witches are fake and the world is not demon haunted. It was a much later development, of Luther's followers, who invented the idea of witches and demons having unlimited power. UFOs are demons! They want to challenge your ignorance of one book! Ghosts are demons! Never mind that the Bible mentions genuine encounter with deceased spirits and says they were who they said they were, with Saul contacting Samuel, not a demon impersonating Samuel, and Jesus brought Moses and Elijah's spirits on the mountain, not demons impersonating them to test your faith. That voice you hear on the telephone is a demon! Medicine is a trick by demons! These people are obsessed with demons. That's all they ever think about. Everything is a demon to them.



And that's very nearly all the people you'll find on the Internet, and probably in real life too. Douchebag teenagers who "know" God doesn't exist because Newton can predict the gravitational constant, Cultural Marxists who worship deviancy, and demon obsessed hillbilly Christians who are proud of ignorance. And how far have I deviated from the original topic?