Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Category: Musings

  • Victimhood as Social Currency: A Case Study of Victimhood Culture

    Moral Cultures

    A couple years back, a paper made the rounds through the daily “science” “journalism” blogs. It discussed three types of moral cultures that exist: honor cultures, dignity cultures, and victimhood cultures. In the context of the US, the country started as an honor culture, evolved into a dignity culture in the early 19th century, and is in the process of evolving into a victimhood culture now.

    As a background, honor culture is a type of culture where small slights are amplified into grievous insults, and are addressed with direct retribution. For example, a cad insinuates that your wife is his paramour and you slap him across the face with your glove to challenge him to a duel. A dignity culture is a type of culture where small slights are ignored and larger conflicts are elevated to a paternalistic overseer like a court or an administrator. For example, your neighbor builds a fence on your side of the property line, and you take them to court to resolve the issue. Finally, a victimhood culture is a natural outgrowth of the other two. Victimhood culture amplifies small slights into grievous insults (microaggressions) and elevates these small slights to their overseers, usually campus kangaroo courts, social media censors, or advertisers.

    Victimhood as Social Currency

    Campbell and Manning, in the linked paper, discuss the virtuosity of claiming victimhood status in a victimhood culture:

    When the victims publicize microaggressions they call attention to what they see as the deviant behavior of the offenders. In doing so they also call attention to their own  victimization. Indeed, many ways of attracting the attention and sympathy of third parties emphasize or exacerbate the low status of the aggrieved. People portray themselves as oppressed by the powerful – as damaged, disadvantaged, and needy. This is especially evident with various forms of self-harm, such as protest suicides and hunger strikes. Other such gestures include the ancient Roman practice of “squalor,” where the aggrieved party would let his hair grow out, wear shabby clothes, and follow his adversary through the streets, and the Indian practice of “sitting dharna,” where he would sit at his adversary’s door. But why emphasize one’s victimization?

    Certainly the distinction between offender and victim always has moral significance, lowering the offender’s moral status. In the settings such as those that generate microaggression catalogs, though, where offenders are oppressors and victims are the oppressed, it also raises the moral status of the victims. This only increases the incentive to publicize grievances, and it means aggrieved parties are especially likely to highlight their identity as  victims, emphasizing their own suffering and innocence. Their adversaries are privileged and blameworthy, but they themselves are pitiable and blameless. To the extent that others take their side, they accept this characterization of the conflict, but their adversaries and their partisans might portray the conflict in the opposite terms. This can give rise to what is called “competitive  victimhood,” with both sides arguing that it is they and not their adversaries who have suffered the most and are most deserving of help or most justified in retribution.

    . . .

    Appeals that emphasize the victimhood status of the aggrieved appear to arise in situations where people rely on authorities to handle their conflicts. Even relatively wealthy or powerful litigants might approach the court by presenting themselves as victims in need of assistance against a bullying adversary (see, e.g., Bryen 2013: Chapter 4). Most state propaganda, on the other hand, is not aimed at superiors or equals, but at subordinates. It seeks to inspire not sympathy, but loyalty, fear, and respect. This is also largely true of the communications between states, particularly those of similar size and military power. Warring states have no central authority to which they might appeal to handle their conflict or deter violence, and so they handle their conflicts directly through aggression and negotiation. In this respect states resemble individuals living in settings where legal authority is weak or absent.

    In essence, victims try to amplify the harm done to them, usually in an oppressor-oppressed context, to elicit pity from the authority, which they see as a parental figure. Usually, this results in an escalating comparison of grievances between opposing parties. Sound familiar? It should to all of you parents out there, especially parents of small children. Victimhood culture is the triumph of the tattle tale. One of the big themes of a victimhood culture is “actively retarding the process of growing up.”

    Victimhood Culture and Statism

    If you read the above excerpt carefully, you’ll notice something predictable, but rather telling. “Appeals that emphasize the victimhood status of the aggrieved appear to arise in situations where people rely on authorities to handle their conflicts.” Victimhood culture is a characteristically authoritarian culture. Campbell and Manning explain:

    In sum, microaggression catalogs are a form of social control in which the aggrieved collect and publicize accounts of intercollective offenses, making the case that relatively minor slights are part of a larger pattern of injustice and that those who suffer them are socially marginalized and deserving of sympathy. The phenomenon is sociologically similar to other forms of social control that involve airing grievances to authority figures or the public as a whole, that actively manage social information in a campaign to convince others to intervene, and that emphasize the dominance of the adversary and the victimization of the aggrieved. Insofar as these forms are sociologically similar, they should tend to arise in under similar social conditions. These conditions include a social setting with cultural diversity and relatively high levels of equality, though with the presence of strongly superior third parties such as legal officials and organizational administrators. Furthermore, both social superiors and other third parties are in social locations – such as being distant from both disputants – that facilitate only latent or slow partisanship. Under these conditions, individuals are likely to express grievances about oppression, and aggrieved individuals are likely to depend on the aid of third parties, to cast a wide net in their attempt to find supporters, and to campaign for support by emphasizing their own need against a bullying adversary.

    With the growth of authoritarian control factors in our society, whether through government, increasingly invasive social media, pussyfooting corporations, or university echo chambers, the flitting peacock dance of the victim isn’t truly focused on the so called offender, but is primarily signaling their virtue to the relevant authority. The demented offspring of the helicopter parent generation have choppered their way back home to roost. When somebody hurts your fee-fees, you tell your parental figure, and they will tell that nasty bully/teacher/coach/professor/employer/bigot/random internet person/wrongthinker what’s what and buy you an ice cream cone on the way home.

     

    Watching It All Play Out In Real Life: #NeverAgain

    As we deal with the political fallout of yet another school shooting, we can see exactly how this victimhood culture operates on a very public scale. In this case, the issue wasn’t a microaggression, but a legitimate tragedy. Of course, the backdrop of this entire charade is the fact that an activist authoritarian movement is working with a complicit media and a well-established community organizing infrastructure to ban guns.

  • Constitutions, guns and limited government: a constant uphill battle

    As I may have mentioned before, I hail from the far away land of Romania, a country with a history of communism which basically wrecked the country and without a particularly strong tradition of limited government, where most peasants were still serfs almost up to the 19th century. I was asked before on various positions on limited government Romanians hold, and thought I’d write a quick post on it, mainly an anecdote, really.

    Romanian built, number 1 best quality, good price
    Too scary for locals, but we export them

    Are notions of limited government increasing? Not really. You would think after a history of bad government and massive abuses of power, many would think to give the other side a shot. But sadly, this does not happen. We just need the right top men, you see. One problem is that people want things and rarely thing of the implications, the ramifications, and both the expected and unexpected consequences. They have the view of government which does everything they want and nothing they do not. And I am talking here about the upper echelon in terms of intelligence, education, and professional success. As such, I have little hope of clear improvements in the future.

    As an anecdote, I will talk of someone I know who is, let’s say, someone I had high hopes of when I thought of a move towards freedom in Romania. He grew up in communism, finished Polytechnic university in Bucharest, got his PhD in France, and was a very successful semiconductor engineer. Of course, for most of his life, he was the kind that didn’t pay much interest to things outside his field, and only recently did he read some books on economics and political philosophy. But this makes him more knowledgeable than most in my company who did not read anything on these topics, although they have really strong opinions on politics and economics. He is what, for Europe, would be vaguely classical liberal / libertarian on economic issues, although quite vaguely. When he reads a libertarian book, he often agrees with what it says, but he simply cannot get past his many years of thinking that government must do way too many things in society. So this generally causes a few days of thinking a bit differently, followed by a comeback to the old ways.  So he would not be a reliable voter for strictly limited government, and if he is not, I have little hope for most other Romanians.

    As a Romanian, he hates guns. He thinks they are dangerous and wants them banned. The government’s job is to disarm the population, he states. In this he is joined by his brother, also an engineer by trade in semiconductors, who immigrated to the States and now lives in a leafy and quite lefty suburb of Boston. His brother also hates guns and republicans in general, and thinks America is too right wing.

    But, to be fair, the guns are scary amendment is desperately needed in the US. though
    We need ourselves a better version of one of these things in Romania

    The man I speak of trusts his brother’s judgment, and I had several debates with him on US politics which ended because his brother is his ultimate argument and tells me he is more informed than me because of what the brother tells him. I, frankly, find this rather annoying because his knowledge of US culture, economy and its politics is probably 10% of mine. And his brother’s does not seem much better, as he forwarded to me some emails that could have been taken directly out of the New York Times. I remember speaking about certificate of need legislation in US and he outright said that is not true, such things do not exist; it is not possible in a capitalist country like America for the government to prevent a hospital from expanding, let’s say. He did not really care to read about it because he had his sources. This is his answer.  It is obviously impossible to argue with someone whose main argument is “my brother told me this so it must be true.” I have asked countless times for data for his claims, but he literally said, “I do not have data but it is true. I have my sources,” – his main source being his brother. This is quite dispiriting. Someone who is more politically knowledgeable than most people I know, one of the few to have actually read some economics. If he can’t argue properly and form a more informed opinion, who can? Most Romanians still tell me that the US is the land of no government and unrestrained free market capitalism, and they believe that. Especially when it comes to the completely private and completely unregulated healthcare systems you Americans seem to have.

    Recently I hear the complaint – coming from the brother originally, of course – that the problem with US in that the constitution is too difficult to change as to disarm the population. A smart, accomplished engineer with some knowledge of economics does not give a jot of thought to the ramifications of what he claims if it will lead to his preferred outcome. He would be so willing to see all guns banned for civilians, that he would tear the constitution apart for this. Of course, he does not claim that. He says only the second amendment, not others. But if you give the power to easily change the second, how would you prevent that power being used to change the others? How can you create a system where just one article of the constitution is easily changed? The ridiculous view of government doing everything I like and nothing I don’t.

    What is the point of the constitution is it is easily changed? Majorities are fickle. One may have the 51% now, the others the next time. Laws change with majorities. The whole point of the constitution is that it is not as easily changed and it needs broad consensus. And if you look at US history, many bad things came exactly when the constitution was not respected. How can we get a more libertarian view in Romania when people lose their reason when it comes to topics they feel strongly about? How can we argue when people say, ‘I don’t have any data but my brother told me”? I do not know, but I do not have my hopes up, lest I be too often disappointed.

  • Tails of the the Teufelhund, Part 5 – Anniversary!

    I got Bella on 3/4/17. My oldest granddaughter wanted a puppy, and we were looking for a new dog anyway, so I saw this:

    And I got one. And now she’s about 14 months old. So this is our anniversary. On to Destruction!

    A few shirts:t

    She is much better about what she chews, but she is That Which Chews. So I buy $5 worth of rope a week for us to play with, and for her to tear up.

    Here’s my hardwood ukulele stand that I found in my bed one morning:

    I wake at 5 AM and she wakes at 5:15, ready to play, and if I don’t play, she flips out and starts throwing her toys about and hilarity ensues. I end up doing some hardcore upper body exercise that I certainly don’t need, but I guess she does. My dog follows my every move. She watches me. She knows when I’m going to work, and hides out ’til I get back. She greets me with great fanfare, yet waits until I have all my work shit off before she comes for love. And she gets lots!

    She knows she can clear the porch wall and do anything she wants, but she sits and waits for my signal. That’s a good pup, IMO.

    Bella is finishing out at about 30 pounds, a mid-weight cruiser dog, and damn, what a good dog!

    She loves porter and a good stout and meat! Just like a good hum–I mean dog does….

    Am I hopelessly in love with my dog? You betcha!

    Music both you and your dog can appreciate:

     

    And:

    Pet your dog. Give ’em a treat. Bella says, “Arf!”

    Kittah says, “ROUNNN! Leave me be!”

  • Anarcho Capitalism, private property, bank failure and use of force

    Anarcho Capitalism, private property, bank failure and use of force

    Throughout my life, people have often wondered why I’m an anarcho capitalist. Often asking questions like “Why?” and “How about roads?” and “Why is private property not theft?” and a million other questions. This is a series of essays on the subject so that I can refer people to them, just to make my life slightly easier. So let’s start out with a small description of what Anarcho-Capitalism is.

     

    Anarcho-Capitalism is not a system of government–it’s a system of society, one which allows for the existence of whatever subsystems you want: Anarcho-Communism, Socialism, free market communes, whatever you want. The whole point is that people engage in free association and don’t aggress against each other. In fact the central tenet is the NAP, or the Non Aggression Pact, which stipulates that someone can’t attack someone else unless previously attacked or trespassed upon beforehand. There is of course a simple problem however, how does one avoid a “tit for tat” situation? Well that ends quite simply in that although others cannot punish the infractor normally, they may instead enact an effective ban on interaction with the aggressive actor. Because of this, one can’t force people to follow certain rules, unless they’re on your land or property, and you may peacefully eject people who are on your property, assuming that you can persuade them to do so.

    Is this so hard?

    So now that that’s out of the way, time to answer the meat and potatoes of this essay, “Why is private property not theft? If people are laboring and the factory owner sits in his office, why does he deserve the money and profits that they make?”

    Products rely on a few simple things, the actual labor going into them, and the organization of that labor. 20 men digging randomly with spoons is a lot of labor, but in fact very little is made, whereas if 3 men are using shovels to dig a trench with 1 man organizing it to lay a pipeline, there is far less labor but the actual product is worth far more. The private property is organized by the owner while the laborers enact the labor. The point is that the business is an agreement between the workers and the owner, the owner organizes their labor and adds most of the value to their work, thus the owner is entitled to most of the profit. Especially in situations where a single owner has accrued massive wealth by the virtue of their company, if an owner can manage to make it so profitable then they are still entitled to all of the profits. One ought to notice that playboys themselves often have very lackluster lifestyles.

    I’m on a bit of a roll, so how about another question, “How would people be protected against bank failure without insurance on their deposits?”

    Well the answer to that is simple, the banks will be organized slightly differently, or insurance companies will ensure the customers just like any other product is entitled to. But how is everything organized you might be asking? Well, allow me to explain. The insurance company will be entitled to a fee, a fee which is determined based on your choice of bank and the practices from that bank, as well as how much you are insuring under them. The worse the bank’s practices, the higher fee they charge and the lower the percentage they will return to you is. But what about the new organization of bank? Well that’s even more exciting, the bank is organized so that it may not fail, it must be organized so that in case of a severe series of withdrawals, that it may force all people who have taken loans to return those loans to them.

    Let’s throw down one more before I have to leave before this turns into a novel, “How would people be protected from attacks without an organized military or even a police force?”

    For this single question I have two answers, the first is protection without the police. Private police forces, these police forces are actually better than the current system, because if you don’t like the way your police force is handling your protection, you can easily fire them and instead hire a different force or even start your own. In fact a private police force will have far more accountability, after all if an officer shoots your dog, he can’t say “I feared for my life” and the company he works for will fire his ass to make sure that it doesn’t get out that they hired a psychopath and lose many more prospective customers. But what about the second component: protection without a military? For this I must use a small part of Machiavelli’s one book, The Prince. He states that republics and other freer states are more difficult to dominate, because the people will not submit to an outside force. So there is no reason for another state to be able to move in and expect to retain that land. But what about someone who wants to kill everyone in the area? Quite simply it’s harder to execute an entire population without encountering extreme resistance, especially if the natives are armed with high grade weaponry. There’s not even a reason to fear a nuclear attack, because nuclear weapons are only useful in destroying a state’s will to fight.

    Anyway, those are my answers to those questions, if there are any other questions about the answers of an AnCap, don’t hesitate to ask! I love answering questions about this.

  • 1st Anniversary Thoughts

    1st Anniversary Thoughts

    A year ago this site burst forth, like Athena, fully armed, from the brow of Zeus!

    Behold, Glibertarians.com!

     

    OK, maybe not that dramatic. Or that cool. Or… enough of that. Anyways, here we are at one year. If you look at what we said we are all about, I think we have stayed true. We have had many join, a few leave and a couple kicked out…but it has been an interesting time – most of it because of you, the Glibertariat. We have had terrific content (largely contributed by all of you) more snark than a Borscht Belt comedian reunion and a place we can call our internet home. I think the biggest thanks of mine would go to SP, for making this more than a cruddy, free “blogspot.com” site and to sloopy for being the driving force for the site even being done in the first place.

    So those are my thoughts – I will hand this off to my fellow Glibs for theirs.

    Brett L

    I’m grateful to have a place I can come and be wrong. I’ve learned a lot about interesting stuff I didn’t even know was out there this year. This feels like the internet version of my big Irish family. Inside, we fight and drink and cut up at each other, outside, we mob up and kick the shit out of anyone who messes with us. Wait. Not that last part. I’d like to echo Swiss. SP has done a bang up job with this site. Sloopy was so hardcore about this site, he paid a cop to beat up his mom. Hopefully, we won’t need any more of that in year two. Special shout out to Riven and SugarFree, who carry the brunt of the load on user-submitted pieces. And thanks to Swiss, SP, OMWC, and SF for picking up the afternoon link slack. Finally, next time SP does afternoon links, you all better tell her what a great job she’s doing or I’m doing an all Goatse and Eagles (the band) links.

     

    Gojira

    I only wish I had cat-butted more people. I think I only did it once. Oh well, there’s always this coming year.

     

    JW

    Who are all you weirdos? Huge kudos to the gang of malcontents who keep this place running and humming and give us a place to belong, even if I don’t really have time to participate much these days.

     

    SP

    Happy Anniversary to all you degenerate mockers and scoffers, now free from the tyranny of TOS! I’m proud to be a contributing freedom fighter.

     

    Sloopyinca

    I am so happy to be a part of the two close-knit communities Glibs plays a part of.  First to the people who put this project together and were gracious enough to include me in their plans: thanks to all of you. You are a wonderful group of friends and I am blessed that you let me contribute here. Second, to the larger group of readers, contributors, lurkers and benefactors: thanks you all for turning this into the most enjoyable virtual part of my life to date.  Many of you are what I would consider friends and the rest of you I consider close acquaintances that have added immeasurably to my knowledge, have made me laugh to the point of tears and have made me rethink positions to better respect the individual rights of others.

    You guys people are, to a man person, the best.  And looking forward, I’m drawn to the words of Dirk Diggler:

    Wow. I dunno what to say . . . I guess. Wow. I guess the only thing I can say, is that I promise to keep rocking and rolling and to keep making better films posts. It seems we make these movies this blog . . . and sometimes . . . they’re it’s considered filthy or something by some people . . . but I don’t think that’s true. These films This blog we make can be better . . . they it can help . . . they it really can, I mean it. We can always do better — and I’ll keep trying if you keep trying so let’s keep ROCKING AND ROLLING.

     

    Old Man With Candy

    Reason did me a great favor- it allowed me to meet and become real-life friends with an amazing group of people. Funny thing was, I could never get SP to read it, and on the few occasions she looked, she didn’t find the comments appealing. The first turning point was a few years ago when she joined me on a trip to visit SugarFree; “You keep telling me that his stuff is disturbing and horrifying- I can’t believe that, he’s such a sweet, charming, and intelligent guy!” That sort of hooked her into my libertarian social circle and she did not come back unscathed. So when it seemed obvious to our friends that it was time to make Virginia Postrel’s fondest wish come true, she was the one who really made it happen.

    I’m shocked and very pleasantly surprised at how fast we became a community in the Burkean “little platoon” sense. Crowd-sourcing content is a recipe for disaster, unless your crowd is unusually smart and articulate. And the Glibertariat is definitely Mensa-gone-terribly-wrong. In any case, having this site has allowed SP and me to meet lots of you whom we wouldn’t have met otherwise, and we’ve ended up with people who are truly friends. That is priceless and makes all the work involved pale into insignificance.

    Thank you. Thank you all.

     

    SugarFree

    This is all I have to say:

    I will not be taking any questions.

    WebDominatrix

    I am oddly pleased to be a member of this community! It’s nice to know there are people out there as messed up as I am! (And I say that with love!)

  • Monday Morning Links

    Well, its been one year today hanging out with you people here.  I won’t speak for any of the other folks involved here because its not my place, but I want to personally thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making this such a wonderful experience.  I’ve learned a lot in the past 365 days hanging around in our own little place. A lot about diversity of opinion, a reasonable discourse and what quality user-generated content can be (hint: it has been excellent). So many of you, those that are still here commenting daily, those who lurk and those who have come and gone, have contributed more than you’ll ever know.  And a special thank you to the people that came together and founded, fostered and labored for this place to be the wonderful venture that it is.  The site has evolved a lot over the last year and the format has been tinkered with, and it seems to be drifting in the way you guys want it to drift. For that, I am happy.

    Anyway, you guys are the best. Thanks for everything.

    Ohio State and Liverpool both won this weekend. Man United shit the bed, Michigan State beat Purdue to put Ohio State atop the Big Ten. And in hockey, the Pens, Red Wings, Rangers, Canucks, Avalanche, Bruins, Flames, Flyers and Sharks won.  That’s it. I blew my load on the anniversary bit so I didn’t have time for much else.

    And now, I present you with…the links!

    The smiling face of an evil member of a murderous clan

    This is what happens when you let your political hatred of a rightfully-elected President cloud your judgment so much you beclown yourself on a global stage. I mean…yeah. Well done, WaPo. You’re officially a joke after your “Democracy dies in darkness” schtick followed up with this.  Collect your door prize and GTFO of the building if you think for a second you’re a publication to be taken seriously anymore. You can join CNN’s Lester Holt over there in the corner with the dunce hat on.

    Damn, that’s harsh. Looks like he could have used a few of those cats’ nine lives.

    California gets the immigrants it deserves.  Unfortunately, these guys won’t be paying into the system.

    Dindunuffins get a break in Chicago. Hey, maybe you lazy-ass cops up there can start charging these assholes to the fullest extent of the law and will let your unarmed populous defend themselves from them and this kind of shit won’t continue to spiral out of control. And stop throwing people in jail for drugs at the expense of these idiots walking free.

    Boston police apologize for tone-deaf tweet. Yeah, its a little tone deaf, but its still completely accurate. Don’t these people have more important shit to complain about?

    Shut down due to Nazis

    No, not a bu-, a bomb. London City airport closed down when unexploded WW2 bomb found nearby in River Thames. Shit, I remember when that nation used to fly planes out while under a torrent of bombing. Now they shut down an airport when somebody spots a Nazi shell in the general vicinity. The sun may have finally set on a once-brave people.

    This goes out to all of you.

    Have a great day, friends. Thanks for a hell of a good year.

     

  • The Party is Over in Illinois

     

    Things are not good in the Land of Lincoln and believe it or not, they’re only getting worse.  Illinois already has the lowest credit rating of any state in the union (BBB- according to S&P and BBB3 according to Moody’s), along with having the dubious distinction of being the only state in the union to ever have a credit rating so low.  Coupled with this, the State continues to run deficits (with its deficits representing roughly 10% of its total revenues), along with having a backlog of bills in the hundreds of billions (for comparison, the State’s total operating fund revenues total roughly $60 billion), and having several woefully underfunded pension plans (the liabilities are conservatively estimated to total $100 billion).  Despite all this, though, recent news suggests that today may be remembered as better times in the State’s history.

    Most likely future state of the State

    The State is now floating an idea to  issue $100 billion in new bonds in order to shore-up its pension plans.  Essentially, the State is hoping that it can issue taxable debt (pension bonds are not tax exempt) and invest it in stocks and corporate bonds (which are the bulk of the underlying assets in a pension plan) and achieve a return greater than the interest payments on that debt.  This is utter insanity.

    At the State’s current rating category, the taxable bond interest rate on such debt would be roughly 4%, which is a lazy estimate and assumes that the issuance of such debt would not automatically trigger rating agencies to downgrade the State to ‘junk bond status’ (the State’s BBB- and BBB3 ratings are currently just one step above ‘junk’).  More likely than not, the State will have to pay an interest rate well above 4%, particularly since such a large debt issuance would only attract a very small segment of the market (more supply than demand equals higher interest rates for the issuer).  But, even assuming a 4% interest rate, the State will have to come up with roughly $4 billion in interest payments each year (again, this is a lazy estimate and does not account for several factors and the interest payment will likely be larger).  Remember, the money from this debt issuance is suppose to be invested in its pension plans, therefore even if the returns on this investment exceeds 4% on a yearly basis (which is likely in the near term) that money is just reinvested into the plans- the State cannot access those funds.  Additionally, the State is hoping that its interest payments will be less than the annual pension contributions that the State is required to make.  At a 4% interest rate (which, again is a very conservative estimate) the interest payments would be slightly less than the required annual pension contributions, however the State will have no flexibility with regards to making these interest payments.  With annual pension payments the State has the ability to reduce or not make such payments (which has occurred too often in the past and has resulted in the underfunding of the pension plans), but interest payments cannot be missed.  So in order for the State to ensure adequate revenues to make regularly scheduled interest payments it must raise taxes.

    Last time, we swear!

    The State of Illinois just raised its income tax rate in 2017.  The City of Chicago, the State’s largest municipality, has also been on a tax raising spree and will be raising taxes even more going forward.  And on a completely unrelated note, I’m sure, while these tax increases have been occurring Cook County (the second most populous county in the country and home to Chicago) has been losing more residents than any county in America; the City of Chicago has been losing residents (more than any other major city in the country), and the State of Illinois has been losing residents (more than any other state in the country).  People vote with their feet and they’re leaving the Land of Lincoln.

    Many seem to take this road, lately…

    Not to worry, though, while the State’s financial position spirals out of control Republican governor Bruce Rauner and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly have been focused on the important issues (cosmotarian moment!, because reduce government spending, but not woke spending) What’s the point of bankrupting a State if you can’t approve more spending on culture war issues?  Somehow, I don’t think this spending will improve the State’s population decline.

    Whether these pension bonds are issued or not, the fact that the State is floating such an idea suggests that cost cutting reform is not being considered.  This means that Illinois is irrevocably broken.  No change in political leadership, whether in the legislature, or in the executive, can salvage the situation – this problem has long festered under both Republicans and Democrats.  This is a tragedy of the State’s own making, more than anything.  And though I fully expect Congress to discuss an ‘Illinois bailout’ within the next ten years, this misery should only be borne by the Illinois electorate and the poor decisions that it continued to make in the voting booth.  Let this be a lesson to the rest of the country.

  • Kinky Kierkegaard, AKA Dude, Where’s My Meaning? AKA Shut Up and Let Me Look at Boobs!

    Kinky Kierkegaard, AKA Dude, Where’s My Meaning? AKA Shut Up and Let Me Look at Boobs!

    I said to myself, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’ But that also proved to be meaningless. ‘Laughter,’ I said, ‘is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?’ I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly […] I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well—the delights of a man’s heart. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
    – Ecclesiastes, Chapter 2

    We all stand at a precipice. Not the Chicken Little, world is coming to an end, “society” is falling apart, WHER MUH KUNTRY DUN GON precipice; but a personal precipice from which each and every one of us could step off and fall at any moment. This, of course, is true now, has been true in the past and will continue to be true forever. The human condition is a precarious one; one of constant challenge and grief and suffering and boredom. In addition to the standard, garden variety existential crises we continue to experience, sex, love, family, death, tribe, legacy, purpose; all have transformed rapidly while simultaneously not transforming at all. In fact, it is precisely because humans have not changed and cannot change at the same pace as their environment that we face unique challenges today our ancestors didn’t. At the risk of being overambitious (as well as sounding insufferably pretentious), I’m going to attempt to analyze one aspect of modern Western existence through the lens of my pathetically layman understanding of Kierkegaard. Buckle up buckaroo.

    Preamble

    “Who is Søren Kierkegaard and why should I give a shit?” “What’s with that stupid O with a cross through it? Seems vaguely communist…” “What the fuck am I reading this for? Show me some cheesecake pics, clown!” are all comments that are likely spinning in your head at the moment. Question 1: I’m getting to it, settle down. Question 2: In English it’s called a “slashed o” and it’s a diphthong “oe”-type sound. And it’s Scandinavian so it probably is a little commie. Question 3: How the hell should I know why you’re reading it? And don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll include lots of tits in the comments.

    Despair, Not Just For Moody Teenagers Anymore!

    Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher. He was THE Danish philosopher; Danes are crazy about the guy and I can understand why. He is generally considered to be father of Existential Philosophy. Existentialism in today’s world is typically associated with nihilism and emptiness. However, at its core it’s actually quite simple; it starts from the assumption that the individual is the beginning and the end of the philosophical question of what comprises a life well lived. It rejects that meaning can be derived from any collective, be it societal or religious. The nihilism enters when people are unmoored from these waypoints of existence. Freedom is profoundly uncomfortable, especially when it is the very meaning of your existence at stake. You must make and accept authentic choices of existence then live with those consequences. This is why over the years existentialism gained a reputation of being dark and meaningless; it wrestles with the question of what happens when you remove any bedrock metanarratives from an individual’s life.

    It would be impossible, both in theory and in practice for a dolt like myself, to summarize the entirety of Kierkegaard’s philosophy in such a forum, but I will do my best to outline it for the purpose of this short piece. Suffice it to say that he is a man of great contradiction; he spearheaded a philosophy dedicated to liberating man from metanarratives and authoritarian diktat, but he was extremely devout and religious acceptance is key to his understanding of living well. He was passionately in love with and engaged to a woman. He also spoke very highly of marriage in his works as being a proper ethical duty to all people. Yet he inexplicably broke it off with her in a very callous way, causing her to nearly be institutionalized from the intensity of her heartbreak. In fact, much of his work shows he never got over it; he begged her for forgiveness for years, even after she had married someone else. Finally she and her husband fled the country. He was a recluse of towering intellect, but once got into the 19th century equivalent of a flame war with a third rate satire magazine for their unattractive cartoon of him. I personally find him to be one of the most fascinating figures in history.

    In the smallest of nutshells, Kierkegaard’s theory of existence hinges on a metaphysical model of the human essence as two competing parts, the finite and infinite. The finite part encapsulates our mortal nature; physical, carnal, material, covetous and demanding. The infinite part is that touch of divinity endowed within us by our Creator; the transcendent, non-corporeal and eternal. Furthermore, his definition of the “self” is, as he calls it, “a self becoming itself” through the irreconcilable conflict between these two parts. The self is an ever-evolving thing that is utterly unstable and, frequently, miserable.

    Kierkegaard was the first to explore the concept of existential angst or in his terminology, despair; the sickness unto death. Despair is a cornerstone of his philosophy in that every living human experiences it, and hardly anyone ever resolves it. He divides the human experience into three types of despair: being unconscious in despair of having a self, not wanting in despair to be oneself and wanting in despair to be oneself.

    The first is despair born of ignorance that there is an infinite part to the self at all. Think of your favorite vapid celebrity or the clueless idiot at your office or any one of a million other examples. This would, in my estimation, be by far the most common type of despair in our world. The second type of despair is a refusal to accept any self beyond immediacy. An individual realizes that there is an infinite part to the self, but that realization is so distressing it must be immediately suppressed with finite pleasures.

    An individual in the third type of despair has full recognition of the infinite part of self. However, this person refuses to acknowledge that the only way to reconcile the conflict between the finite and infinite parts is recognition of the self’s complete dependence on “the love of the power that created” (typically seen as G-d’s love, but open to interpretation).

    Kierkegaard openly acknowledged that this was not something that could be understood logically and that a “leap of faith” (he coined the term) was necessary to resolve the despair inside. Once the leap of faith is made, one becomes either the Knight of Infinite Resignation, or the Knight of Faith depending on that individual’s level of actualization. It’s important to note that the Knight of Infinite Resignation is still in despair because his leap of faith has left him empty and nihilistic. This is the ultra-Reader’s Digest version of Kierkegaard’s metaphysical philosophy.

    What. The. Fuck.

    I know right? It’s totes coming together now! OK… that may have seemed like a pointless slog, but I promise I’m going somewhere. The types of despair outlined roughly correspond to Kierkegaard’s stages of life. This connects his metaphysics to his aesthetics and his ethics. Kierkegaard envisioned that there are three stages of life; calling them stages may be a bit of a misnomer because they were not necessarily sequential, you could return to a stage later in life and not everyone hits all of them. They consisted of the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage and the spiritual stage.

    The prototype of the aesthetic stage is the seducer; an individual devoted to worldly pleasure and the avoidance of any commitment or responsibility. This is most closely associated with the first two types of despair. The prototype of the ethical stage is the spouse and the parent. One in this stage accepts responsibility of action and makes commitments as an ethical obligation to those around him. Typically the third type of despair and the Knight of Infinite Resignation are in the ethical stage. In the spiritual stage is a person who has fully resolved the existential crisis, taken the leap of faith and become a Knight of Faith. This is kind of like attaining enlightenment.

    Still Not Understanding What the Point of Any of this Is…

    OK, for those few who read my comments on the site outside of the titties, you’ll know that the inspiration for this piece was an article on RealClearLife extolling the virtues of sex parties as a replacement for relationships while living in the shadow of #metoo (article here). I have long been fascinated by the conflicting priorities our reptilian, mammalian, neo-cortical and spiritual parts place on us. I’ve always considered humans to be kind of like onions; we have a lot of layers built on top of one another from all the billions of years of evolution and all the shifting demands placed on us. We have carnal, venal and insatiably destructive appetites on one end, and a yearning for meaning and spiritual understanding on the other (sounds a bit like those finite and infinite parts eh?).

    The principal point here is that, as a species, a culture, a “society”, whatever you wanna call it, I see us more in despair and further from enlightenment each day. I must remain mindful of the so-called “good old days” fallacy, but I think my reasoning here is sound. I’m far from a SoCon and, as usual, standard libertarian disclaimers apply; live however you please and in accordance with what allows you to look in the mirror each day and be satisfied. These are simply my observations and conclusions and not meant to be seen as judgements being passed.

    I strongly believe that if you are attending sex parties as a substitute for authentic relationships, you are deeply in Kierkegaardian despair. I do not see this as an isolated phenomenon either. The addiction to the immediacy, the refusal to acknowledge anything beyond the physical, the constant need for dopamine stimulation; it’s all a way of shielding one’s eyes from the Void. Kierkegaard says that when confronted with the Void, we should all have “fear and trembling” and be deeply uncomfortable. Running from that discomfort to immerse ourselves in physical pleasure is not an authentic response. Though it would be just as easy to talk about smartphones, I’m going to pick on sex here because it is the most consistent, biological way to feel euphoria and distract oneself from the Void. It has also been subjected to, IMO, the single most revolutionary development in the history of mankind: the Pill.

    More than antibiotics, more than anesthetic, more than powered flight or interchangeable parts or nuclear power or the Internet, I believe the Pill has done more to fundamentally change the human experience than anything else, ever. See, we’re still on the African Savannah 50,000 years ago you and I. Not literally, of course, but from an evolutionary standpoint, our brains still are. And outside of basic survival needs like food and water, there is no stronger drive out here on the Savannah than the reproductive drive. That *is* your purpose. Mate. Copulate. Fuck. Make and raise babies. Beyond that, there is nothing else.

    How do I know that we haven’t moved from that point? Because you watch porn (so do I BTW). If the brain had kept pace with technology, porn would hold no sway over anyone. Our brains would understand that it’s just an image of a receptive sexual partner and not one in real life, thus, not arousing. In fact, if you were a cis-het male shitlord, you’d be utterly uninterested in any woman on the Pill because your brain would have evolved some way to distinguish and identify a woman who is not fertile. The same reason that women after menopause become much less alluring, women on the Pill would have some inchoate quality that would turn men off. Concealed ovulation, year-round sexual receptivity, men’s zillions of sperm vs. women’s finite number of eggs; these are all physical adaptations that serve mating strategies following a playbook that has remained unchanged for millions of years. The Pill took that playbook and put it through the woodchipper.

    The Pill and the subsequent sexual revolution has mind-fucked us. We have now opened the door and allowed our deepest, most basic urges to run wild and have free reign over our lives. Never before in the history of mankind has such a cornucopia of fleshy pleasure been available to such a wide spectrum of the population with so few consequences. Previously, rampant copulation inevitably resulted in parenthood and increased responsibility. Our very biology alters our hormone levels (male and female) upon becoming a parent. In the past, only monarchs could have such excess in their lives as we do now; which brings us full circle to the quote at the beginning of the article. Ecclesiastes is widely attributed to King Solomon, a man with hundreds of wives and concubines, massive wealth, beloved by his people and still he struggled with the despair Kierkegaard describes. Maybe, just maybe, he actually struggled with it more…

    Our access to easy pleasure and distraction has given way to a species-wide naturalistic fallacy; if it’s natural, it must be good. While it is, at a fundamental level, natural to be as promiscuous as possible (or as acquisitive as possible, or as gluttonous as possible etc. etc.), it is fallacious to assume that doing so is automatically good. Speaking from a Kierkegaardian perspective, the easier these pleasures become, the *more* despair people should feel because we are regressing further away from resolving the crisis of finite and infinite. We immerse ourselves in the finite, as Solomon did, and find our lives wanting.

    Under no circumstances should this be interpreted as a condemnation of modern medical advances and the abundant wealth that technology and capitalism has provided. By every possible measure, our lives are healthier, wealthier, more comfortable and longer than ever before. What it should be interpreted as is a warning and a reminder to acknowledge your infinite self. Those conflicts and the Big Questions are always there, hovering in the background no matter how many sex parties a person goes to. Refusing to acknowledge those questions and resolve them in an individual manner means despair. I don’t necessarily think that Kierkegaard was a prophet whose prescriptions for living a good life are universal.

    However, I do think each person must try to find their own way to live a good life and I believe that an individual is ill-prepared to do so if constantly distracted by the immediacy of the finite. I agree with Kierkegaard that each person does have a spark of divinity inside and we ignore it at our peril. I would like to see more people living in less despair. Now shut up and let me look at boobs.

  • Yusef explains HVAC

    Yusef explains HVAC

    Yusef and a client?

    Yusef Adama(not real name) has been in the HVACR trades for 31 years, Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Refrigeration and currently runs a small operation out of Southern California.

    Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning, HVAC – a silly acronym for the most valuable thing man has created to advance Civilization. What, Yusef? What about Computers? Medicine? Food storage?

    NONE of those things would not be possible in their current form without HVAC, so let’s get started.

    Behold Your God (of AC)

     

    Way back when we used Fire, people began to notice if you gave Fire an easy place to vent smoke, it will go that way, Later we discovered Pressure Differential, and used it to our advantage. Today we use a variety of materials including PVC plastic to vent our Products of Combustion, and have developed standards of safety to insure said PoC don’t mix with our breathing air. 

    Yup, a that is a furnace alright.

    Gas ranges, old boiler systems and floor furnaces all give off some PoC, but the legal maximum is 9ppm so that’s O.K. However any forced air furnace is limited to 3ppm. 

    Bad burning gas

     

    Good burning gas

    CO and You: CO is cumulative in the bloodstream – you start out with flu-like symptoms, then it gets worse…and if you don’t catch CO poisoning soon, you will die. If you have a good running gas furnace, it will produce NO CO, CO is created by incomplete combustion, Modern furnaces burn really clean, but even an old furnace with a clean burn, Will. Not. Produce. CO. If your CO detector does go off, I, personally, would do the following;

    1. Check for a clear vent,
    2. Run the unit and check with my million dollar meter for actual CO,
    3. Check the combustion air supply,
    4. Check for living air incursion,
    5. Look for cracked heat cells,
    6. Check and adjust burners,
    7. Check and adjust gas valve manifold pressure.

    Combustion air and You: Furnaces need oxygen to burn clean (as does all fire) and a separate air supply is provided for just that purpose. Seen a screen or 2 in the furnace closet? That’s combustion air and it needs to stay clear of blockage – so don’t store things in there, not good.

     Heat Pumps and electric heat: This is the fun one; First, they aren’t really AC in reverse, they require a number of check valves, 2 different metering devices for the refrigerant and a bunch of other things that make them work. When it gets below about 25 degrees, they lose the capacity to draw heat from the surrounding air and begin to freeze, this where defrost comes in…

    “Why is my heater blowing out freezing air?” Defrost occurs via sensors in the outdoor unit, and flips it into cooling mode. This results in switching valves around and thawing the outside coil, then it flips back to heat… so hang tight, it will come back. If you have electric heat installed, this will temper the cold air until defrost ends. Heat pumps are really only useful in a clime like California or maybe Arizona, cause once you get below 25 or so your running strip heat, which is extremely expensive.

    Back to modern furnaces: The days of fires and rollouts are long gone. Off the top of my head, there are; the centrifugal switch, the pressure switch, 2 rollout switches, a high limit in the burner compartment, another on the blower, the igniter itself, and finally the flame sensor. If any ONE thing fails, the whole machine will shut down, and you must unplug and reset the system to check those faults, takes me about ten minutes, unless there are birds in the vent,etc. 

    NOT a birdhouse

    Bottom line, you are much safer than even 20 years ago.

    Yusef what can I do to be safe and enjoy my comfortable warm/cool home? Filters, if you don’t know where they are, find them! Or ask me 🙂 usually located at the bottom of a furnace in a closet, in the ceiling as in a filter grille, turn off your system before changing, and no less than every 6 months for a forced air system, here’s why.

    NOT CLEAN!

    The filter is to keep the equipment clean, not your precious breathing air!

    The indoor coil is capable of acquiring tons of dirt, blocking air flow for heating, and cooling and destroying equipment that demands airflow. It is expensive to clean up, and quite embarrassing for the homeowner. 

    Did someone say “dirt”?
    How it Works:

    Forced-air furnaces, work like this;

    1. Thermostat calls for heat,

    2. Furnace calls for inducer motor (or vent motor if positive pressure)

    3. Centrifugal switch closes to turn on motor,

    4. Pressure switch closes,

    5. Control circuit goes through all limit switches,

    6. Igniter is energized, (could be a spark igniter or a hot surface igniter)

    7. Gas valve opens for 7 seconds,

    8. If flame is produced, flame sensor sends a signal to the control board,

    9. After 90 second delay, blower comes on,

    10. Once the thermostat is satisfied, the exact reverse happens – starting with the gas valve.

     

    Heat pumps, electric heat:

    1. Thermostat calls for heat,

    2. Compressor fires off and reversing valve engages,

    3. 2 sensors calculate ambient and coil temps every 15 minutes or so,

    4. When it gets too cold and the outdoor coil begins to freeze…

    5. Unit goes into cooling mode, defrosting outdoor coil, strip heat comes on,

    6. Unit defrosted, goes into heating, strip heat turns off.

    Yusef what can I do? I’m cold! Go to your breaker panel and rest the furnace breaker, or if a HP, both outdoor and indoor breakers. What we are trying to do is clear a programming fault in the circuit board, it does work sometimes and can save you oodles of cash, worth the small effort IMO.

    If not, call an expert. the most expensive thing in your house is your HVAC… but it’s often the most neglected. It’s what keeps you comfy, and it will kill you if you don’t pay attention. I see dog hair clogged filters that look like a fur wall and ask my BMW driving customers, “would you do this to your car?”

    “No? But you do this to your half a million dollar home.” (I despise those types)

    Don’t be afraid, enjoy your comfort and don’t panic – but be aware, nothing is perfect, and CHANGE YOUR FILTERS!