Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

In this recently unearthed posthumous book by J.R.R. Tolkien, the fantasy world filled with dragons and magicians has evolved from warring medieval times to peaceful modernity; furthermore, in the second volume, it is resolutely entering post-modernity.

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Thus, the situation in Palestine is caught in a vicious cycle that will not end anytime soon. For a peace that be something else than the silence that follows a genocide, what is needed in the Middle East is that on one side then on the other there should emerge an ideology that opposes the religio-national-socialism that not only goes undisputed but is supported world-wide on both sides. What is needed is an ideology at the same time universal and peaceful, capable of establishing a lasting peace. What is needed is this essence of civilization, that the West has won then lost for lack of having understood it: Libertarianism.

Ainsi, la situation en Palestine est prise dans un cercle vicieux qui ne prendra pas fin de sitôt. Pour une paix qui soit autre chose que le silence suivant un génocide, ce qu'il faut au Proche-Orient, c'est que d'un côté puis de l'autre surgisse une idéologie à l'opposé du religio-national-socialisme non seulement incontesté mais mondialement soutenu de part et d'autre. Ce qu'il faudrait, c'est une idéologie à la fois universelle et pacifique, capable de fonder une la paix durable. Ce qu'il faudrait, c'est cette essence de la Civilisation, que l'Occident a gagné puis perdu faute de l'avoir comprise: le Libéralisme. Article cross-posté sur la Page Libérale

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The key to maximizing cooperation is to eliminate the negative sum games of predation that may happen between individuals. Which is exactly what individual property rights and only individual property rights can do. Any other political solution but opens a permanent war of all contenders against all other contenders about each and every resource over which individual property rights are denied, in which war the value of the resource is destroyed. And so, if we define Socialism as the dream of men cooperating with each other as much as possible, then Capitalism is indeed the utmost form of Socialism: Stygmergic Socialism (merci jesrad).

So I told this liberal colleague about my speaking at a Libertarian conference in Europe. They must be loaded was his immediate reaction. How much cognitive dissonance must it take to establish who's promoting the Synopsis, and who are the dissenters speaking truth to power?

It's official: I'm an evil capitalist pig, oppressing a poor wage slave in a third world country, and dispossessing him from the productive surplus of his work for my own selfish profit!

Sure, I didn't make (and adamantly oppose) the statutes that prevent him from moving to a first-world country, where he could sell his valuable services for more than I can afford. Sure, I have to pay him almost three times what he was previously making in my bid to convince him to serve my multi-national company. Sure, he'll be working on a much more interesting project than he was at his previous job, under much better work conditions. Sure, I'm taking all the risks: in the faint hope of some uncertain future profit, I'm committing to months or years of bleeding money regularly and foregoing any short-term plan of parenthood, while my employee will be spending the same months and years in the certainty and comfort of a regular salary with which to enjoy family life. But you see, I'm the employer, a tyrant giving orders, so of course I'm evil, whether I'm an incompetent bungler, or much worse, a taker of profits.

At least, thus goes the formal discourse of the many factions of socialists. For the real reason why I'm evil in their eyes is not that I'm an employer. Indeed, if I were a goon of the State or of any other emanation of the Collective, embodying The People's Romance (gracias, PLIMO), then my employership would be pardoned, as well as any wealth I generate for myself. Not only would I not be the godawfullest monopolest exploitest of an employest, instead I would be the incarnation of everything that's Good about Society, leading All Of Us towards our Shared Destiny; my arbitrary orders would not be unbearable tyranny, they would be the Sovereign Will of The People, to be enforced with arbitrary ruthlessness upon any reluctant antisocial miscreant. But I'm a individual who dares to follow his own purposes and who refuses to submit to my Social Duties as proclaimed by the anointed representatives of the Common Good. And that is my mortal sin. Forget employership. The reason I'm irredeemably evil is thus: I'm selfish.

As for my venture, it doesn't have a name yet, but if you know me, you already know what it is all about. News at 11.

You think the title of this post is a metaphor? Wrong. Listen why progressives celebrate the death of individuality, from the horse's mouth. Give them some I!

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Notons aussi les soucis environnementaux à deux vitesses de nos amis national socialistes. L'environnement, ça veut parfois dire sauver nos amis les bêtes des balles des méchants chasseurs. Mais une fois les bébêtes nationalisées, ça veut dire des gentils chasseurs en uniforme gouvernemental qui abattent les nuisibles bestioles maintenant déclarées trop nombreuses. Ah le prestige de l'uniforme! L'environnement ça veut surtout dire un bon prétexte pour justifier tout et n'importe quoi pourvu que ce soit le gouvernement qui le fasse, et qu'il nous balance le mot environnement dans ses explications. L'environnement c'est le nouveau refuge des totalitaires de tout poil. Mot-clef suscitant une réaction émotionelle pavlovienne d'approbation sans critique chez les citoyens préprogrammés.

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A bunch of lowlifes blame society for their own self-inflicted wounds.

Misdirected angst, stupid lyrics and insignificant songs can't be saved by the energy of the actors who work hard for big bucks on Broadway and Hollywood. As usual, the real moral of the movie is the opposite of its superficial moral. Socialists make me puke.

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Toleration as a political norm is demonstrably invalid because it is obviously self-defeating: must we tolerate the intolerant who attack peaceful dissenters? if muslims threaten and kill those who dare criticize their religion, and some people say won't tolerate it, are you to tolerate the former or the latter? Effectively, you cannot tolerate the deeds of one party without approving intolerance towards the other party.

That said, there is indeed a political system that promotes toleration as a general phenomenon, and this system is Capitalism, not Socialism. And obviously so, because Capitalism is a system where everyone can create a domain where he can live according to his ideas unimpeded by others, namely his property, whereas Socialism (and after it the lesser forms of Statism) assumes communal domains where everyone is the victim of whoever manages to temporarily or permanently seize political power.

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Libertarian Socialists believe in the world being organized in "freely organized" collectives of some kind. (Socialists in general vye for collectives maintained by force if need be.) But if that were all there was to it, well, we're already there, and everyone including all conservatives wholly approve. The world is already organized into "natural collectives", called families, with one-person families of bachelors being a degenerate case.

Oh, but this is certainly not what the Libertarian Socialists imagine. They imagine large collectives made of lots of people, that may or may not have sexual relations and children. As a Heinlein fan, I will certainly not object to the idea of large families, and as a libertarian, I don't think I have anything to say about who has sex with whom and children with whom inside a family that isn't mine. And so there again, the specificity of the socialist "collective" lies in the political norms relating the "collective" and its actual and potential members or non-members, and to other collectives.

Can a member have any kind of commerce with a non-member, or do you have to be members of the same collective so as to cooperate with each other or otherwise go through hierarchical channels? Yay for promoting cooperation. How does one become member of a socialist "collective"? can one leave afterwards and divorce from his family? or is the whole scheme some kind of an oppressive caste system? Can members split over some issue? can they form a schism? how do you divide existing resources? can one make a schism of one, and which part of the resources does he get? Can one leave for another collective? can one enter any existing other collective? can one found a new collective if none exists that suits him? including a one-person collective called "invididual"? Can a collective reject applicants or does it have to accept the first come parasite and treat him as well as those who work hard, and as those who worked hard in the past to get the collective where it is? How are conflicts settled between a collective and an individual? is a collective politically sovereign over its members to the point of exacting punishment and death on those who would reject its terms? What if the member says that he represents the collective and all the other ones are the schismatics who reject the proper collective will? Is there a justice system outside of this collectivist construction?

How do collectives interact with each other? With a collective of collectives, etc., in a hierarchical order? If collectives cannot disassociate, then the topmost collective is indeed a State, and the Libertarian Socialist chimera is indeed but another Totalitarian Socialist State in disguise (as attempted in Spain). If collectives can disassociate, then these collectives are with each other in a Capitalist order, where collectives trade with each other. If furthermore individuals can secede and become their own "collective", we have a full Anarcho-Capitalist order, and the Libertarian Socialist chimera is but distracting ramblings on top of an Anarcho-Capitalist society. If on the other hand individuals cannot secede, then indeed each Libertarian Socialist collective is a State, these States span the world, and Libertarian Socialism is but distracting ramblings on top of the usual Statist Oligopoly, to be recomposed after an optional bloody revolution.

Whichever way you split things, Libertarian Socialism has nothing new to propose in terms of political norms.

Dear Kevin Carson,

thank you for your attention, and thank you for your comment. It shows that indeed my previous post requires clarifications. Since I invite socialists to join phalanstères, kibbutzim or cooperatives instead of trying to engineer society, you ask the very relevant question of whether or not kibbutzim, cooperatives, and similar organizations are socialist or not, and whether or not they demonstrate that there is a peaceful brand of socialism, namely libertarian socialism.

Let's distinguish several forms of socialism. Socialism #1, the political project, is a crime -- forcing people into some collectivist dystopia. Socialism #2, the economic theory, is a lie -- explaining society in terms of conflict and negative-sum games. Socialism #3, the egalitarian spiritual impulse, is a death cult -- wishing to dissolve individuality into a blob. If by Socialism, you would only mean a project for a just society where the meek are protected, then the only proper Socialism is Capitalism, which also has political, economical and spiritual variants, all opposite to Socialism in the common meanings.

So yes, a kibbutz, if based on voluntary adhesion of its members, may be an instance of Socialism #2 and #3, but not of Socialism #1. It is a legitimate way in which socialists may associate with each other, and demonstrate by the example the inanity of their ways. It may even be done in a way that only pays lip service to socialism, keeping its internal inefficiency low enough that it costs less to the socialists to live in such a setup than would cost to them the checking of their premises (see the evolution of kibbutzim in Israel since the subsidies have been cut - Cám ơn Vincent Bénard).

But for the very reason that a kibbutz isn't Socialism #1, it will remain unsatisfactory to the Socialist, who yearns for a world-wide collectivist order, be it a State, a giant Kibbutz, a cooperative federation of cooperatives, or any conceivable hierarchical division into collective organizations of his liking.

And there remains the crux of the problem: in as much as libertarian socialists, adhere to Socialism #1, they too are criminals in ambush. I will refer to Bryan Caplan's fine essay on the Anarcho-Statists of Spain for a demonstration. Indeed, as long as you hold as political norms, i.e. enforceable rules, the precepts of Socialism #1, as soon as you forbid or regulate commercial relationships between individuals, including trade and employment, as soon as you allow the capital accumulated by ones to be seized by others, it doesn't matter whether this enforcement is done by a self-proclaimed central State or by self-proclaimed free-lance liberation fighters. It will still be a group of self-proclaimed violent people aggressing peaceful other individuals.

Do libertarian socialists in general, and you, Kevin Carson, in particular, support saving poor oppressed employees by killing, imprisoning, fining, despoiling or otherwise coercing the employers and forcing employees to either join collectives or effectively starve, under the pretense that employers are making wage-slaves out of employees, and that the relationship between them is one of feudalism? I can't speak for you, but that's exactly what your writings suggest, and this norm is indeed adhered to by all socialists I know, libertarians or not.

If you renounce this norm, if you affirm that employer-employee relationship though distasteful to you are perfectly legitimate, if you agree that economical error (whichever side it be on) is no excuse for political enforcement, only then will you cease to be a Socialist #1, only then will you avoid being a criminal-in-stalking in my eyes.

So far, I haven't found a Socialist who passes this litmus test. I'm hopeful to find a few, and you are the most promising one I know. But I believe it unlikely that more than a marginal minority of them ever will, because Socialism has deep roots in human psychology, spirituality, and economic theory, and the individualistic political norm of Capitalism is alien to it.

Socialists are not just liars and absurdists; socialists are slavers. They claim that one man should live at the expense of another man -- and pick precisely those best men in society as their sacrificial victims. The penalty for enslaving innocents should be death. How much more should be the penalty for targetting specifically the best friends of the very poor you claim to protect? Socialists are the enemies of those they claim to save as well as against those they explicitly target. They are criminals against mankind. A good socialist is a dead socialist. A very dead socialist.

Oh, in a free society, people are free to say whatever they want. Socialist liars will be free to spread their absurd religion. Their predicament will be met with laughter. The laughter of free men who will kill the bastards the second they are caught plotting to implement their crazy utopias by force -- and particularly so by public force. "Democratic" socialists are just connivers trying to subvert supreme force to enslave all other people in the country, and they deserve hanging for their attempt, just like any attempted crime calls for the penalty of the successful crime -- in this case, high treason against the society in the name of which they claim totalitarian power. Their displayed "good intentions" are worth the smile of any con man and should be considered aggravating circumstances -- fraud in addition to violence.

Socialists, do onto yourself what you propose to force upon others: go live in your phalanstères, your kibbutzim, your cooperatives, your autarkic or trading "intentional communities". And leave others in peace -- or be crushed as the mass criminals you are, have always been, and will be again every time you are let loose.

Between socialists and honest men, no peace is possible. They know it all too well. We ignore it at our own risk.

So the socialist story goes, employees are being exploited by employers because they have to work or starve. Yeah right. Paul Marks properly debunks this rhetoric, as defended by incoherent "anarchist" Kevin Carson (Cám ơn, Samizdata).

But let's examine what the socialist theory predicts. According to Lassalle's "iron law of wages", employers pay the minimum needed for survival and workers never rise above the limit of starvation -- and thus socialists claim that only the government-mandated minimum wage helps the poor workers. OK. Then how come some wage earners earn more, sometimes much more, than this decreed minimum wage? Weird isn't it? If government is the only cause for employee wealth, why would any employer ever bother to pay anyone more than the minimum? If there are other forces at play, what are they?

The socialist argument is only a one-sided consideration of the competition between employees that keeps their salary low. But they forget to consider that competition between employers keeps the salaries high. The balance between the two is called the market price. The socialist "solution" is to reduce the competition between employers through regulations, taxes, confiscations and state monopolies. And the inevitable outcome is that actual wages lower through this combined reduced competition and overall destruction.

But let's take competition between employers seriously. If a given worker chooses an employer over another one, clearly, it is because this employer offers him the best deal the worker can find. The deal may suck badly -- it is the best. And so, if the actual employer is to be blamed -- how much more to be blamed are the other potential employers, who proposed even worse deals? In the job market, the actual employer proved to be the worker's best friend. And you want to punish him for that, through taxes and corvées? Yeah right. Why not punish all the other employers instead? And why not punish all those non-employers who didn't even have a job to offer? Or the worker himself for being a burden to others to begin with? The socialists claim that the employer saves the workers from starvation -- if that were true, then he should be honored as a life-saver, not fought as an enemy. Sure it's bad to work just for food, but the alternative of starvation is much worse -- and that's what happens when there is noone left to offer this above-starvation wage. And note how rich workers are in the countries that are least burdened by taxation and regulation... how come workers have nice clothes, good food, cars, fridges, computers, holidays?

Will killing or robbing the employer help the poor? Replacing him with a socialist bureaucrat in the name of the worker will certainly help the ruling socialist bureaucrat who becomes the new employer, now with a state monopoly. As for the worker, he still has an employer, under another name. But now it's a monopoly employer who owes his title to force rather than persuasion, an employer who faces no competition. One that claims to be a friend, but destroys the former best friend and the freedom of choosing this friend (for competition between employers is nothing else but freedom for employees to choose between employers).

Socialists are not the friends of the working poor, but their worst enemies. They are slavers. They enslave the rich and the poor alike, by force and by fraud.

When downtown, be sure to go the Zocalo, the great central market plaza, with the presidential palace and the Cathedral, where the ruins of the Templo Mayor was recently unearthed. The ruins and their museum are well deserving of a two hour visit.

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The Constant Gardener

Nice pictures, nice actors, but my, what a heap of leftist nonsense.

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