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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
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&& &&
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&& &&
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&& THE CHAOS ADVOCATE &&
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&& &&
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&& An Electronic Journal Advocating &&
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&& Personal Freedom In All Things &&
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&& &&
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&& &&
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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
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*-------------------------------------------------------------*
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| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
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||
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
|
||
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
|
||
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
|
||
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
|
||
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
|
||
| mailing $2.00 to |
|
||
| |
|
||
| Mack Tanner |
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||
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
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| Moscow, ID 83843 |
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| |
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| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
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||
| stamped envelope. |
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
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PAGE 2
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Letters to the Editor........................page 3
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Editor's Page ...............................page 4
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Chaos and Social Engineering.................page 6
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The Common Good and the Voter's Paradox......page 10
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Bad Citizens and Freedom.....................page 18
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Getting All You Want.........................page 23
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Wanted: A Few Good Writers...................page 28
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PAGE 3
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*---------------------------*
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| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
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*---------------------------*
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Obviously, as this is the premier issue of THE CHAOS ADVOCATE, we
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don't have any letters-to-the-editor to publish. We hope that we will
|
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have some to publish with the next issue. Letters to the editor
|
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should be sent to one of the following E-mail addresses and marked as
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letters to the editor of THE CHAOS ADVOCATE.
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Compuserve: 72037,2673
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Delphi: MACKTANNER
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The Rational Life Bulletin Board
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615-433-7869
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Fidonet node number 1:116/38
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Internet: Mack.Tanner@f38.n116.z1.fidonet.org
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Letter writers must identify themselves with their real identity
|
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and include a telephone number or an E-mail address which will permit
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us to verify identity. We will, however, publish letters anonymously
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at the request of the author.
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PAGE 4
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*--------------------*
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| THE EDITOR'S PAGE |
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*--------------------*
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Freedom is the natural state of every creature. No human being,
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no law, no constitution can give another human freedom. It can't be
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granted, it can only be taken away.
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Freedom is not necessarily beautiful nor comfortable. It is never
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predictable and always chaotic. A free life can be dangerous,
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unstable, and sometimes violent, but always unpredictable.
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A lot of people don't like freedom very much. It scares them.
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They want a predictable world in which they can trust that things will
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always turn out just the way they want them to turn out. They delude
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themselves into thinking that humans can create a world in which there
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will be no anger, sorrow, hunger, sickness, violence, or hurt. Why
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wait for heaven when they can create heaven here on earth?
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But to create that wonderful, mythical world, they must first
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force everyone to obey a long list of rules, laws, regulations,
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morals, and ethics, all designed to insure that no one will do
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anything that might upset the harmony and predictability of the world
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they want to live in.
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The kind of world they want isn't possible if humans remain free.
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So while they are writing their morals, ethics, and laws, they also
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write out a new definition of freedom. They tell us that to be free
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we must be free from want, from pain, from fear, from hunger, and even
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sickness. They call the slave a free man because the slave master
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promises to provide for every need.
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The priests, politicians, and teachers tell us that we are free
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individuals while they feed us myths designed to make comfortable,
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well-fed slaves think they are free. The tragedy is that the kind of
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world they want also isn't possible if people are not free. So, while
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they take freedom away, the brave new world they promise never
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appears.
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No one owns your life but you. The only way you can be happy is
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by making the choices you want to make about what you do with your
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mind and your body.
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Because we live in a highly complex society, neither you nor I
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||
are every going to be able to do *everything* we want to do. Life is
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||
a constant bargain in which we give up some things we might like to
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have, so that we can have other things we want even more.
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The atomic basis of a happy, healthy society is the voluntary
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exchange. I give someone my time and my work for eight hours a day
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||
and he or she gives me money so I can make other voluntary exchanges
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to buy my bread, drink, shelter, and entertainment. But the exchange
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must be voluntary, not dictated by some priest or politician. If you
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are free, you get to choose what it is that you give up in order to
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get what you want to make you happy.
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We are sick of listening to people telling us how our
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PAGE 5
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institutions of church, government, school, and medicine are going to
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make us happy. We think it's time we started talking again about how
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we can each maximize our own freedom in our own daily life.
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We think it's time to advocate freedom now. That's why we have
|
||
started this journal and why we are distributing it through the
|
||
electronic media. We're going to take a tough minded, no nonsense
|
||
approach to freedom with no compromises. We expect to make a lot of
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||
people mad at us. A lot of people don't want to be free.
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Because they don't want to be free themselves, they don't want
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||
you or me to be free. We think it's time we started telling those
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||
people where they can go.
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We want to talk about freedom on both the philosophical level,
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||
and on the very practical level. How does one help his children
|
||
survive the compulsory public education system? How do you protect
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||
your privacy from spying police thugs? How do you avoid troubles with
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||
the child welfare authorities? What legal ways can you avoid taxes,
|
||
and how do people get away with illegal tax cheating?
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||
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||
We intend to challenge the very limits on the first amendments.
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||
No subject will be taboo or forbidden, as long as it is directly
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||
related to the concept of individual freedom. We don't want to go to
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||
jail, so we won't advocate that anyone break any law, but we will
|
||
describe how other people have broken the law in pursuit of personal
|
||
freedom, and sometimes, how they got away with it. We will respect
|
||
the copyright laws. Anything that appears in this journal will be the
|
||
original work of the author and computer encoded with his permission,
|
||
and we do understand the difference between free speech and libel.
|
||
|
||
But with those caveats we will advocate the chaos of freedom.
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||
Welcome to CHAOS. We are the organization that Max Smart was out to
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stop.
|
||
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
|
||
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
|
||
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
|
||
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
|
||
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
|
||
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
|
||
| mailing $2.00 to |
|
||
| |
|
||
| Mack Tanner |
|
||
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
|
||
| Moscow, ID 83843 |
|
||
| |
|
||
| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
|
||
| stamped envelope. |
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
|
||
PAGE 6
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||
|
||
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||
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||
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*--------------------------------*
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| CHAOS AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING |
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| |
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| by |
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| Mack Tanner |
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*--------------------------------*
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"Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine
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||
beforehand which side of the bread to butter." --Anonymous
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||
|
||
Most of you have probably heard the story about the clever young
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||
man who offers to go to work for a businessman on a try-out basis in
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||
which the young man will be paid only one cent on the first day, two
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||
cents for the second day, four cent on the third day, and so on, the
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||
salary doubling each day until the businessman decides whether or not
|
||
he wants to hire the young man on a permanent basis.
|
||
Thinking he's getting a good deal, the businessman takes on the
|
||
kid and a month slips by before the businessman decides he won't keep
|
||
the young man on. When the young man presents the bill for his wages
|
||
for thirty days, the businessman discovers it's cheaper to sign over
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||
the company than paying the wages.
|
||
The businessman has just learned the truth of compound interest.
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||
By doubling a single cent thirty times, you end up with $5,368,709.12
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on the last doubling. The business man owes the young man over 10
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million dollars for the thirty days of work.
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||
While this common mathematical principle has long been
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understood, it's only been in recent years that scientists have
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||
examined and explored what impact compounding small sums can have on
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what are called chaotic systems.
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A chaotic system is any dynamic physical, biological, or
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mathematical system in which a complicated set of data interact in
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non-linear and non-repetitive way. (Anyone interested in a more
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||
technical explanation of chaos theory should check out a library book
|
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on the subject.)
|
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Until recently, the philosophy of determinism was the basis
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||
for much of scientific thought and direction. The concept was that if
|
||
we only knew the equations and had the precise data, the future
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||
could be predicted. This concept is best summarized in Laplace's
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||
famous statement:
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"An intellect which at any given moment knew all the
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||
forces that animate Nature and the mutual positions of
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the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast
|
||
enough to submit its data to analysis, could condense
|
||
into a single formula the movement of the greatest
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||
bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom:
|
||
for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and
|
||
the future just like the past would be present before
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||
its eyes." Pierre Simon de Laplace, 1749-1827
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||
|
||
Chaos theory now shows how naive and ridiculous this
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||
statement is. What scientists have come to understand in only
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the last few years is that in all chaotic systems, very small
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variations in input data can have a profound impact on the future
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development of the system. The more the variables at the
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||
PAGE 7
|
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initiation of the system, the greater the difficulty in
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||
predicting what impact tiny increases or decrease in a single
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variable will have on the progress of the system. In a perverse
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||
sort of way, the longer term the prediction attempted, the
|
||
greater and more accurate the amount of initial data that is
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||
required to make the prediction. As the thousands, or millions
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||
of different variables act upon each other, no human, nor human
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||
manufactured computing machine can predict what the smallest
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change to any single variable will do to the future of the
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system.
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The most commonly cited example of a chaotic system is the
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weather. Other chaotic systems include hydraulic turbulence,
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biological species interaction, epidemiology, and all human societies
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and economies.
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||
Understanding chaos theory explains why scientists have such a
|
||
difficult time predicting the weather more than twenty-four hour in
|
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advance and why they now realize that they will never be able to make
|
||
trustworthy long-term weather predictions. It is simply impossible to
|
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collect the in-put data in the quantity and with the degree of
|
||
accuracy necessary to make a credible long term prediction. (Of
|
||
course, the government will never admit this is good reason to stop
|
||
spending billions trying to do so!)
|
||
Understanding chaos theory also explains why it will be
|
||
impossible for humans to ever control the weather to produce a desired
|
||
result with no danger of unexpected and undesirable results. Cloud
|
||
seeding may make it rain over a dry Iowa corn field, but the impact of
|
||
that intervention might result in an hurricane destroying a coastal
|
||
city in Florida six months, or six years in the future.
|
||
Given the complexity of the non-linear equations in describing
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weather patterns, no scientist will ever be able to prove that it was
|
||
the cloud seeding that caused the hurricane, nor, for that matter,
|
||
that the cloud seeding didn't contribute to the hurricane's
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development.
|
||
Humans can impact on or redirect a chaotic system, but we can not
|
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prove or disprove exactly how the human intervention impacted on the
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system over the long term. We will know we changed the system, but we
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can never know how we changed the system, nor what the system would
|
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have done if we had changed nothing.
|
||
All human societies and all human economic systems are chaotic
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systems. They develop and progress as a result of an incredible
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amount of input in which any single individual may do something that
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will have an unexpected and unpredictable multiplier impact on how the
|
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system will operate at some future point in time.
|
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Chaos theory explains why social engineering can never produce
|
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the expected result and why such schemes will always produce
|
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unintended results. Chaos theory also explains why neither the social
|
||
engineers nor the critics of social engineering can ever prove what
|
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real impact an attempt at social engineering actually had on the
|
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economy and the society.
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||
We have been listening to a lot of political debate about what
|
||
caused the riots in Los Angeles. The conservatives blame the
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deteriorating situation of the city on social programs of the Great
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Society, welfare dependency, government regulation, minimum wages
|
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laws, high taxes, and moral decline while the liberals blame the
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failure of the government to spend enough money, racism, police
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brutality, illegal immigration, and the entire American corporate
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cultural.
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||
The entire debate is total bullshit!
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There is absolutely no way anyone can scientifically establish
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what things might have been done differently that could have prevented
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the deterioration of our cities into the current social morass.
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Furthermore, there is no way anyone can scientifically demonstrate
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PAGE 8
|
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what new proposals for social engineering will produce intended and
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only intended future results.
|
||
The entire political debate over the domestic agenda that goes on
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in connection with the current presidential election is also total
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bullshit!
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Nobody can explain scientifically exactly what caused the recent
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recession nor place with any scientific certainty the blame on any set
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of government actions. And nobody can predict what impact all of the
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different proposed economic solutions will actually have on the future
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world economic situation.
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Yet every politician is demanding that we spend a trillion
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dollars on programs that they can't demonstrate will work and they
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won't ever to be able to prove that they did work once they are in
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place.
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The national economy and its interrelation with the world economy
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is a chaotic system even more complex, unpredictable, and unmanageable
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than the world weather and climate patterns. Any politician who
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claims he can control it for the benefit of everyone without damaging
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large groups of other people is either a fool, or a crook, or more
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likely both.
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The government can do lots of things that will have short term
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impact on the economy. Political leaders can lower interest rates,
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shift investment opportunities, legislate prices, regulate exchanges,
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and all those things will alter the economic future of the economy.
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But chaos theory explains why we can not predict what the long term
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result of such action will be and why the unintended results may well
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be much more disastrous than the original problem could have ever
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become if left alone and free of government intervention.
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All of this is scientific fact that can be described by
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observation of prior events, the examination of mathematical formulas
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and demonstrated with computer modeling.
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But don't expect any political candidate, office holder, member
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of congress, bureaucrat, or scientist working on a fat government
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contract to admit the truth of this. For them to do so would be for
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them to admit that the American federal budget is being wasted on
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social engineering projects with no guarantees that they will work or
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that they won't produce disasters.
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Chaos theory not only explains why economic central planning
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can't work, it also explains why government bureaucracy grows so fast.
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Because political leaders and the bureaucrats refuse to recognize
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that what they are trying to do can't be done, they work under the
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delusion that they only thing preventing ultimate success is more and
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better data. They excuse their repeated failures by insisting they
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didn't have enough data, *which is right*, but they refuse to
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understand that no matter how much data they collect, it will never be
|
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enough to allow them to predict and control what the economy is going
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to do.
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Instead, they collect and quantify increasingly greater amounts
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of data as the cost escalates much like the salary of the boy who
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stated out at a penny for the first day's work. The more information
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they collect, the more difficult the task of correlating,
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interpreting, and analyzing the information they have. They hire ever
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larger numbers of people who can be put to the task of collecting and
|
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handling the information.
|
||
When things go wrong, the excuse is always a failure in
|
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intelligence and the proposed solution is to hire more people and
|
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gather more raw data. The more things go wrong, the more money they
|
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spend trying to fix it. A fascinating conclusion of chaos theory is
|
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that you cannot predict the result of the fix, even if you try to put
|
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everything back exactly like it was! When we used DDT to kill the
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PAGE 9
|
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bugs and found out that it did more harm than good - in unexpected
|
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ways - the decision to quit using DDT may have resulted in greater
|
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damage than would have been the result of continuing its use.
|
||
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But if the government can't control the economy for the benefit
|
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of all, what is the government doing?
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Our politician leaders and the bureaucrats they hire play exactly
|
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the same role in the modern secular state that pagan priests and
|
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shamans played in ancient civilizations. Except, where ancient pagan
|
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priests and shamans promised to magically control the weather, stop
|
||
the earthquakes, and curse the enemy with disease and pestilence,
|
||
these modern wizards and magicians promise us that everyone will have
|
||
a good job, decent medical care, and a useful education while avoiding
|
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drugs, unwanted pregnancies, and crime in the streets.
|
||
Fortunately for us all, the weather generally does treat human
|
||
populations pretty well, and despite the bungled attempts of
|
||
government interference, millions of free people, all looking out for
|
||
their own selfish interest, usually succeed in creating a chaotic, but
|
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healthy economy that provides most of us with all the good things of
|
||
life and a few of us the chance to get rich.
|
||
Like their ancient counterparts always claimed credit for spring
|
||
rains, sunny weather, and good harvests, the modern political wizards
|
||
and magicians claim credit for the successful economy and insist that
|
||
the taxpayers contribute even more money to guarantee continued
|
||
success in the future. They are taking credit for things they didn't
|
||
do and charging us high prices for not doing it.
|
||
The amount they take for themselves and for those whom they
|
||
decide to bless with entitlement programs continues to grow. Most of
|
||
us are working five full months a year for the sole purpose of feeding
|
||
our monstrous and useless government beast. And still the wizards are
|
||
telling us they need more money.
|
||
They will keep demanding more money for as long as the taxpayer
|
||
will pay it. The debt will grow like the wages owed the clever young
|
||
man until it reaches the point where the whole government system will
|
||
collapse under the weight of it's own debt.
|
||
But don't worry. Just like the good weather stuck around for
|
||
long after humans gave up on paying pagan priests to guarantee good
|
||
harvests, the basic economy, the sum total of all human interactions
|
||
and economic exchanges, will still be around long after the collapse
|
||
of big government.
|
||
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
|
||
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
|
||
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
|
||
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
|
||
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
|
||
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
|
||
| mailing $2.00 to |
|
||
| |
|
||
| Mack Tanner |
|
||
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
|
||
| Moscow, ID 83843 |
|
||
| |
|
||
| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
|
||
| stamped envelope. |
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
|
||
PAGE 10
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
*----------------------------------------------*
|
||
| THE COMMON GOOD AND THE VOTER'S PARADOX |
|
||
| |
|
||
| by |
|
||
| Leon Felkins |
|
||
*----------------------------------------------*
|
||
|
||
"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."
|
||
--Graffiti
|
||
|
||
How many times has someone told you that everyone would be happy,
|
||
healthy and content *if only* people would forget their selfish
|
||
desires and work for the common good? By serving the common good,
|
||
don't we also serve our own enlightened self interests because the
|
||
common good guarantees the maximum benefit for every individual?
|
||
Wasn't the *me* generation a tragic mistake? Isn't it time we
|
||
returned to the ideal that each individual puts the community
|
||
interests above his own selfish interest?
|
||
|
||
Does working for the common good give a person greater benefits
|
||
than working for one's own selfish behavior?
|
||
|
||
If the answer is *yes*, then we should to be able to demonstrate
|
||
that an individual sacrifice has a real effect on the common good. If
|
||
my single, personal sacrifice can alter the final result, then I can
|
||
say that my sacrifice produces more in rewards than my personal costs.
|
||
But if my sacrifice makes no difference to the final result, why
|
||
should I make it, especially if I receive the benefits of the
|
||
sacrifice of others even if I make no personal sacrifice?
|
||
|
||
The truth is that an individual sacrifice for the common good
|
||
never produces a personal reward equal to the cost of the sacrifice.
|
||
Let's look at some examples to demonstrate what we are talking about.
|
||
|
||
Almost everyone will agree that voting is an important civil
|
||
duty. Moreover, it's a duty that requires little personal sacrifice
|
||
in our society. For most of us, it takes no more than a few minutes
|
||
of time. Polling places are easy to find, almost always near the
|
||
place where we live, registration is simple, the process is painless
|
||
and most of us have pretty definite opinions about whom we want to
|
||
elect. So how come only about half the eligible voters actually get
|
||
to the polls?
|
||
|
||
Let's say that on election day you find yourself 150 miles away
|
||
from home on a two day meeting. (The meeting was scheduled after the
|
||
final date for requesting an absentee ballot.) Your have a choice:
|
||
you could do your duty, drive home, vote and drive back. Or, you could
|
||
just forget the whole thing.
|
||
|
||
Most likely you will chose the option of forgetting about it--
|
||
this time. Your reasoning is sound. The cost for you to vote is
|
||
substantial while the return is, for all practical purposes, zero.
|
||
Why is that so? Because your vote will not actually make a difference
|
||
in the results of the election! While you may have other reasons for
|
||
voting or not voting, as far as the election process itself is
|
||
altered, your vote is just not significant.
|
||
|
||
|
||
PAGE 11
|
||
|
||
You won't be alone in deciding not to bother to vote. As many as
|
||
half the voters will not only decide voting is not worth the sacrifice
|
||
of driving two hundred miles, they'll decide it's not worth the
|
||
sacrifice of the risk of getting rained on, missing a favorite TV
|
||
show, being late for dinner, or driving six blocks out of the way on
|
||
the way home from work.
|
||
|
||
Let us look at the voting situation more carefully and examine
|
||
some of the counter arguments often made for why you should vote.
|
||
|
||
*What if the election resulted in a tie? Would not my vote count*
|
||
*then?*
|
||
|
||
Sure, if that ever happened. But ties don't ever occur in large
|
||
elections and if they did there would be a re-count. Your vote would
|
||
still get obliterated!
|
||
|
||
*But I like to vote. I really don't care whether my vote does*
|
||
*any good or not - I get an internal feeling of having done my duty.*
|
||
*And, if the candidate I vote for wins, I can brag about how I help him*
|
||
*get elected.*
|
||
|
||
This is the real reason why most people do vote. They have
|
||
bought into a group of myths that make them think that their single
|
||
vote really does count. Because they believe those myths, voting
|
||
makes them feel good. If voting gives you a good feeling, by all
|
||
means do it, if it doesn't cost you a lot of time or money. But what
|
||
if you don't like any of the candidates, you know they are all crooks
|
||
and that not one of them will do what he or she is promising they will
|
||
do? Do you really feel good when you are forced to choose between
|
||
Slick Willy, Read My Lips, or a rich Texas shrimp?
|
||
|
||
*What about the possibility that my employer may reward me for*
|
||
*voting and/or there are other rewards for being a registered voter?*
|
||
|
||
If the reward exceeds the cost of voting, then vote. That is
|
||
rational. But how often does that actually happen?
|
||
|
||
The question is not why do so few people vote, but why does
|
||
anyone bothers to vote at all. Voting may be a fun and pleasurable
|
||
experience but it doesn't make rational sense as a way of getting a
|
||
payoff for the effort and sacrifice.
|
||
|
||
*If my voting will do nothing, what can I do to help get my*
|
||
*candidate elected?*
|
||
|
||
Simple: get other people to vote, lots of them. If you can get
|
||
10,000 people to vote the way you want and your personal reward for
|
||
doing that exceeds the cost of your doing it then, rationally, you
|
||
should do it. It doesn't pay to vote, but it does pay to donate a
|
||
great deal of money to a political candidate which is then used to con
|
||
less intelligent and less rational people into voting for the
|
||
candidate who will promptly ignore the desires of those who voted from
|
||
him but do everything he can to serve the desires of those who made
|
||
big contributions to his campaign.
|
||
|
||
That is why it's so easy to buy elections. The thinking voter
|
||
gets no real, tangible rewards for voting; the bought voter gets
|
||
whatever pay-off he/she is offered.
|
||
|
||
|
||
PAGE 12
|
||
|
||
But if a single vote makes no difference to the outcome, what
|
||
about the other things our leaders ask us to do as a civic duty?
|
||
|
||
Let's look at another example of civic duty, one in which we
|
||
could argue that the personal sacrifice has a much greater impact on
|
||
the public good than the simple act of voting. Suppose you live in a
|
||
California city that happens to be running out of water. The mayor
|
||
declares - among other things - that the residents are to take baths
|
||
only two days a week. Although this is not your day to bathe, you
|
||
have just finished making a plumbing repair in the basement and you
|
||
are feeling really grungy. The desire to take a bath weighs heavy on
|
||
your mind.
|
||
|
||
You consider the options. They can best be stated by the
|
||
following "payoff matrix".
|
||
|
||
| Direct |Member of Community |
|
||
| Impact | Impact
|
||
|
||
----------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Take Bath | Great | - negligible |
|
||
----------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Don't Take Bath | Awful | + negligible |
|
||
----------------------------------------------------------
|
||
(The '-' means slightly negative; the '+' means slightly
|
||
positive)
|
||
|
||
When I take any action that uses community resources, it impacts
|
||
me in two ways. I am impacted directly by my action and I am impacted
|
||
as a member of the community.
|
||
|
||
With regard to the bath water example, the pay off matrix would
|
||
provide enough evidence to a rational person to conclude that the net
|
||
pay off is heavily in favor of taking a bath. The loss that he/she
|
||
would get from cheating as a member of the community is
|
||
insignificantly small.
|
||
|
||
Both of these scenarios present examples of a situation sometime
|
||
referred to as "The Voter's Paradox". Basically that paradox states
|
||
that the return to an individual from a group contribution that is
|
||
beneficial to the group will be less than the direct cost to the
|
||
individual. The paradox results from the fact that while the
|
||
individual may have a positive personal gain in not voting, if
|
||
everyone declines to vote, or to conserve water resources, we have a
|
||
disaster on our hands.
|
||
|
||
The two scenarios actually present two classes of the problem.
|
||
|
||
With regard to the voting dilemma, the problem is that there is
|
||
no return *at all* to balance the voter's cost of voting. The reason
|
||
why this is so is because elections are a binary (to use a term from
|
||
the computer world) event. Your candidate is either elected or not.
|
||
We do not put 55% of candidate A in office and 45% of candidate B. It
|
||
is all or nothing, which means that one less vote simply has no impact
|
||
on the final result. The very improbable case of a tie vote is
|
||
statistically insignificant.
|
||
|
||
The second example of a water shortage is not binary in that
|
||
every little bit of water in the reservoir does help, even if the
|
||
actual difference one bath may make is down in the noise ( to borrow
|
||
|
||
PAGE 13
|
||
|
||
another term from electronics). But one always gets a significant
|
||
reward for cheating, i.e. instant cleanliness. Yet, if half the
|
||
population does as I do, the impact is disastrous.
|
||
|
||
*What if everyone did that?*
|
||
|
||
Experience tells us that everyone won't. We can be pretty sure
|
||
that a significant segment of any human population will believe the
|
||
myths and do their duty. Like the sheep they are, they will vote,
|
||
conserve water, and offer every sacrifice for the common good that the
|
||
preacher, teacher, or politician tells them to make.
|
||
|
||
But we are not writing this for the sheep who do what they are
|
||
told to do. We're addressing this to those who think and act
|
||
rationally in their own self interests. The rational individual is
|
||
first concerned with the results of his/her actions as it impacts on
|
||
his/her own happiness and well being. Such a person may decide to
|
||
make a sacrifice in the common good, but will do so only if he or she
|
||
is certain that the personal sacrifice will produce a common good
|
||
result that is at least equal to or, hopefully, greater than the value
|
||
of the personal sacrifice.
|
||
|
||
What we are arguing is that such a situation almost never occurs.
|
||
Most of the time, a personal sacrifice never produces an impact on the
|
||
common good that would justify the personal cost.
|
||
|
||
The final paradox is that if everybody did as I contemplate
|
||
doing, then it would me even less sense for me not to cheat. The more
|
||
people who cheat, the less rational it becomes to be one of those
|
||
sacrificing personal good for the common good. The more rational,
|
||
self directed, selfish people there are in a community, the less
|
||
likely that appeals that everyone should work for the common good will
|
||
produce results.
|
||
|
||
This dilemma is sometimes called *The Tragedy of the Commons*
|
||
which refers to the early New England practice of establishing a
|
||
grazing commons used by everyone in the village. The commons pasture
|
||
was a limited resource which all members of the village could use for
|
||
grazing their milk cows and horses. The assumption was that the good
|
||
citizens of the community will each limit their use of the commons to
|
||
a fair share that would insure that the grass was not overgrazed. It
|
||
never happened that way. In every case the commons was overgrazed
|
||
into a dust patch. The reason was simple. Too many people recognized
|
||
that as the grass was a limited resource, they had to get the maximum
|
||
amount into their cows before some one else did. The expectation was
|
||
always that if one didn't take more than his or her fair share, the
|
||
next fellow would.
|
||
|
||
The *Tragedy of the Commons* poses an extremely serious dilemma
|
||
to those who would try to design a society based on the assumption
|
||
that individuals will contribute to the group's well being rather than
|
||
looking out for their own selfish interests. If we recognize that
|
||
individuals are driven by selfish desires and we are looking for a
|
||
rational basis for voluntarily contributing to community welfare, we
|
||
are in serious trouble.
|
||
|
||
Faced with the reality of the tragedy of the commons, society
|
||
usually opts for one of two different methods for insuring the common
|
||
good as well as the preservation of community resources. These two
|
||
methods are not complimentary, but contradictory.
|
||
|
||
|
||
PAGE 14
|
||
|
||
One of these is the pay-as-you go method, that is, the free
|
||
market. In the free market approach, every common resource, whether
|
||
managed by private owners or by a community government, is sold to the
|
||
public at a price high enough to insure that the resource is not
|
||
depleted. If there is a water shortage, then the price of water is
|
||
jacked up until people have no choice but to limit the amount of water
|
||
they use for bathing. This not only has the advantage of insuring
|
||
that water consumption goes down, it also gathers capital that can be
|
||
used to increase the supply of water through the creation of new
|
||
sources.
|
||
|
||
But the modern advocate of *socially responsible* government
|
||
objects to the market place approach because it results in an *unfair*
|
||
situation in which the rich wash their cars while the poor can't take
|
||
a bath at all. Such advocates of the common good claim that the only
|
||
way to fairly distribute a common necessity is by regulation. That
|
||
means that you jail people who take baths on the wrong day and the
|
||
only fair way to gather capital to finance new public projects is by
|
||
taxation. You not only have to collect enough tax to pay for the
|
||
water system, but you must also collect enough to hire the water cops,
|
||
pay the judges, and to build the jails where you will put both water
|
||
and tax cheats.
|
||
|
||
But does such government action really solve the voter's paradox
|
||
or the tragedy of the commons, or does it simple create a new commons,
|
||
a public treasury, that then becomes the target of plunder for selfish
|
||
people who will always put their own selfish interest above the common
|
||
good?
|
||
|
||
If we look at recent political history, it is obvious that the
|
||
tragedy of the commons could also be called the tragedy of the public
|
||
treasury. No matter how much we collect for the public treasury, it
|
||
will never be enough to meet the demands of those who claim a right to
|
||
use the money from the treasury.
|
||
|
||
It is not remarkable that each individual describes the public
|
||
good as those things that are in his own best interest. The elderly
|
||
want more social security and medical benefits, the trucker better
|
||
roads, the farmer crop subsidies, the investor bank guarantees, and
|
||
the politician every single benefit that will result in more votes for
|
||
him at election time. The inevitable result is that the government
|
||
never spends the revenue in the public good, but only for the benefit
|
||
of those clever enough to manipulate the system to their own benefit.
|
||
|
||
We can see the result in America today. The entire political
|
||
process has degenerated into a mad scramble over what should be
|
||
financed with public funds as our politicians spend us into national
|
||
bankruptcy.
|
||
|
||
This paradox affects our lives in a variety of ways every day. A
|
||
few more examples are provided for your amusement and to further
|
||
illustrate the general nature of the problem:
|
||
|
||
-- The congressman votes for more spending and higher taxes
|
||
because his direct reward is greater than the small loss to himself
|
||
of having to pay higher taxes. Further, the electorate of each
|
||
district continues to encourage the congressman to spend for the
|
||
benefit of their area, while complaining about the ever increasing
|
||
national debt!
|
||
|
||
|
||
PAGE 15
|
||
|
||
-- Even though free trade would benefit all nations and most
|
||
consumers, I, as an auto worker or textile mill owner, will
|
||
personally benefit more if I can elect politicians who will set
|
||
high tariffs and limit competitive imports.
|
||
|
||
-- The ecology of the earth will not be measurably affected by
|
||
my actions. The destruction of the mahogany forests does not really
|
||
depend on whether I buy this mahogany table or not. In any case,
|
||
not much is likely to happen in my lifetime.
|
||
|
||
-- If I somehow know that a chemical company stock is about to
|
||
gain $5, and I decide not to buy because the company makes
|
||
chemicals that end up in toxic dumps, two things happen: I lose a
|
||
chance to make $5 for every share I could afford to purchase and
|
||
the chemical company will feel absolutely no additional pressure to
|
||
abandon the production of these chemicals. In fact there will be
|
||
no impact on the company, nor their policies, whatever I decide to
|
||
do.
|
||
|
||
-- Currently the government is encouraging all of us to buy all
|
||
we can in order to stimulate the economy. It makes much more sense
|
||
for me to cut my spending and pay off my credit bills. If everyone
|
||
does that, the recession becomes a depression.
|
||
|
||
-- Young people who want to use their credit cards demand that
|
||
the government lower interest rates even though that cuts the
|
||
income of the elderly who are living on the interest off their
|
||
savings.
|
||
|
||
-- Should I contribute to Public Television? Not only will my
|
||
$25 contribution not impact whether the station stays on the air or
|
||
not, but my use of their service costs them nothing more than what
|
||
they already spend. Rationally, I use but don't pay.
|
||
|
||
--Consider the situation of a bank near possible failure.
|
||
Suppose that you know that the bank's situation is precarious and
|
||
that if several people suddenly withdraw their deposits, it will
|
||
have to close. You have $5000 in deposit. What should you do?
|
||
The bank will not close because of your individual action so your
|
||
withdrawal will not hurt other people. But if there is a "run" on
|
||
the bank, you lose $5000.
|
||
|
||
If the above arguments are correct, we can only conclude that a
|
||
rational and selfish individual will not voluntarily contribute to
|
||
community welfare even though he/she would share in that welfare. We
|
||
could even suggest that the only people who do voluntarily sacrifice
|
||
personal rewards for the public good are nothing but patsies. The
|
||
person who refuses to contribute to the common good gets a double
|
||
reward. He or she gets the immediate reward of the money or effort
|
||
saved, and the long term reward of collecting whatever public good the
|
||
patsies created.
|
||
|
||
*But doesn't altruism have it's own rewards?*
|
||
|
||
There are very convincing arguments that living human beings are
|
||
rarely altruistic. It is easier to believe that positive civic
|
||
actions by individuals result from stupidity, intimidation, bribes, or
|
||
the success of propaganda campaigns rather than true altruism!
|
||
|
||
|
||
PAGE 16
|
||
|
||
But can't we educate our children through the school system about
|
||
the importance of working toward the common good?
|
||
|
||
We have been trying to do that ever since the beginning of this
|
||
century. Education hasn't converted children into altruistic adults
|
||
in this country and it certainly didn't work in the Soviet Union where
|
||
the school system tried desperately to create the new socialist man
|
||
who would always work for the common good. Indeed, it seems that just
|
||
the opposite happens, the more educated a person is, the more he/she
|
||
is likely to take rational actions and less likely to be easily
|
||
convinced to sacrifice his own good for the common good.
|
||
|
||
What is the solution to this dilemma? Do those of us wise enough
|
||
to recognize the mythologies and the bull shit that priest and
|
||
politicians hand out decide that we have no choice but to go along
|
||
with the program of inducing guilt, intimidating the ignorant,
|
||
propagandizing the uneducated, and bribing the electorate as it has
|
||
been practiced by the churches, governments, and teachers for
|
||
thousands of years?
|
||
|
||
Or, do we shout out the truth? Do we admit to ourselves, and
|
||
tell anyone who wants to listen that sacrificing for the common good
|
||
makes no rational sense, that the only way to achieve the common good
|
||
is to make every thing a pay-as-you-go proposition with the free
|
||
market place determining what the price of every commodity and benefit
|
||
will be? Moreover, do we make a rational decision to take every legal
|
||
advantage of the common good and the common treasure for as long as
|
||
others are willing to believe in the myths that teach it is better to
|
||
serve the common good rather than look out for one's own selfish
|
||
interests?
|
||
|
||
Indeed, do we dare examine the very concept that there even is
|
||
such a thing as the common good? Or is that idea as mythical as the
|
||
morality that claims humans must put aside their own interest in order
|
||
to serve the interest of the community?
|
||
|
||
In reality, society is always a chaotic mixture of competing
|
||
needs in which the needs and wants of no two individuals ever match.
|
||
No matter how much you may want tax supported public schools, I'll
|
||
remain convinced that public schools are a failed social experiment
|
||
that should be junked. Some argue that the war on drugs does more
|
||
damage to society than drug addiction could ever do. Do agricultural
|
||
subsidies really serve the common good of the consumer who must pay
|
||
higher prices at the food counter?
|
||
|
||
There is not a single major political issue in modern America in
|
||
which there is anything approaching a consensus agreement about what
|
||
action must be taken in the common good.
|
||
|
||
*Would a society in which no one gave a damn about the common*
|
||
*good, be such a bad place to live?*
|
||
|
||
Such a society would not put the butcher, the baker, or the
|
||
farmer out of business. We all must count on other people, but the
|
||
best way to make sure that someone does what we want them to do is to
|
||
return the favor by performing for them what they perceive to be an
|
||
equal favor. That's what the free market is all about.
|
||
|
||
If you really think about it, we already live in a society in
|
||
which every individual is really looking out for their own self
|
||
|
||
PAGE 17
|
||
|
||
interest. It's just that we've allowed too many people to glibly lie
|
||
that they were supporting the common good when all they are really
|
||
interested in is their own selfish rewards. They lie about their love
|
||
for the common good because they want to take advantage of our
|
||
gullibility to get what they want out of the system. That includes
|
||
every person who now holds political office and every person who is
|
||
trying to get elected. Throwing the current bunch out and replacing
|
||
them is not going to solve the problem.
|
||
|
||
But what about the voter's paradox? How do we solve that
|
||
problem?
|
||
|
||
Why bother? If we give up the idea that people should sacrifice
|
||
for the common good, we take away most of the justification for the
|
||
politician. In a free society, voting shouldn't count for much. If
|
||
people take full responsibility for their own lives, that leaves
|
||
nothing for politicians to do. It's only when we allow the politician
|
||
to make us slaves of the common good that we have to worry about whom
|
||
we elect.
|
||
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
|
||
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
|
||
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
|
||
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
|
||
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
|
||
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
|
||
| mailing $2.00 to |
|
||
| |
|
||
| Mack Tanner |
|
||
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
|
||
| Moscow, ID 83843 |
|
||
| |
|
||
| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
|
||
| stamped envelope. |
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
|
||
|
||
PAGE 18
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
*-----------------------------------*
|
||
| BAD CITIZENS AND GOOD FREEDOM |
|
||
| |
|
||
| by |
|
||
| Jefferson Mack |
|
||
*-----------------------------------*
|
||
|
||
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every
|
||
class is unfit to govern." --Lord Acton
|
||
|
||
If every class is unfit to govern, then who will lead us? The
|
||
answer is obvious. No one!
|
||
Free, independent, competent people don't need leaders. A truly
|
||
free society is disorganized. Nobody is in charge. Nobody takes
|
||
orders. Everyone does exactly what he or she wants to do, taking
|
||
orders from nobody else. If you want something from someone else, you
|
||
make a voluntary trade or exchange in which both of you are happy with
|
||
the deal.
|
||
The people who preach the need to organize don't want you to be
|
||
free. What they want is for you to pay their bills and do their dirty
|
||
work so they can be free to do what they want to do.
|
||
The last thing someone who wants to boss others wants around are
|
||
independent, competent people who want to left alone to live their own
|
||
lives. Such people never make good citizens, not the way a politician
|
||
talks about good citizens.
|
||
A political leader will tell you a good citizen obeys the law--
|
||
every law. A good citizen works hard--at whatever job the government
|
||
tells him he is suppose to work at. A good citizen pays his taxes--
|
||
even if he doesn't have enough left over to feed his kids. A good
|
||
citizen volunteers his or her time to work on civic projects the
|
||
leader designs. A good citizen goes off to fight and die in wars with
|
||
people he doesn't know so that the leader can win a place in the
|
||
history books. The good citizen never complains--no matter how stupid
|
||
or crude a government official treats him nor how much a leader asks
|
||
him to sacrifice.
|
||
Give a politician enough good citizens and he will rule forever,
|
||
fat and happy, while the good citizens sweat and suffer and die to
|
||
make sure the political leader keeps the good life.
|
||
Politicians and bureaucrats spend a great deal of time and effort
|
||
trying to convince the people they rule that a moral person must be a
|
||
good citizen. Back in the dark ages they called it the "Divine Right
|
||
of Kings". Now days it's called patriotic duty, or civic
|
||
responsibility, but it all adds up to the argument that every decent,
|
||
honorable person must put the interests of the state and the
|
||
government above their own personal interests.
|
||
|
||
BAD CITIZENS HAVE MORE FUN BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE FREE.
|
||
|
||
A free society is supposed to have free citizens, not good
|
||
citizens. The day you wake up and realize you don't have all the
|
||
freedom you want, the first thing you want to do is bad citizen.
|
||
A bad citizen may love the place where he lives. He may love his
|
||
country and respect his neighbors. But a bad citizen won't love or
|
||
respect the people who run the government. A bad citizen will always
|
||
put his own interest and the interest of his family and friends above
|
||
|
||
PAGE 19
|
||
|
||
the interest of some common good as described by the people who hold
|
||
political power.
|
||
We are not talking here about violent criminals or rebels.
|
||
Political leaders love those kinds of people. They love pulling their
|
||
guns, arresting people and putting down riots. If you don't think the
|
||
politicians loved the recent events in Los Angeles, you haven't been
|
||
watching the TV news. Every single politician in the country has
|
||
jumped on the band wagon by promising us they'll solve the problem if
|
||
we'll just give them some more of our money and a little more of our
|
||
freedom.
|
||
Political leaders love big trials with lots of newspaper space.
|
||
It gives them a chance to show how powerful they can really be. They
|
||
are expecting open confrontation and they will be prepared to deal
|
||
with it. They have detention camps, secret police, riot control
|
||
equipment, and the army ready to go after all those who dare openly
|
||
confront the government.
|
||
But any political leader who's got a country full of peaceful bad
|
||
citizens has got a serious problem. Bad citizens work hard to support
|
||
themselves, they treat their neighbors with respect, they won't cheat
|
||
others for their own gain, and they don't do violent acts that hurt
|
||
innocent people.
|
||
What bad citizens won't do is help the government make his or her
|
||
life miserable. They continually try to maximize the freedom they
|
||
have, even if they have to break or ignore a few laws to do it.
|
||
Too many bad citizens make government almost impossible. That's
|
||
one big reason why the Soviet Union didn't work. Too many Soviet
|
||
citizens realized they were never going to get a fair share out of
|
||
socialism and they stopped being good citizens. They looked out for
|
||
themselves rather than the good of the State.
|
||
|
||
GOOD CITIZENS MAKE TYRANTS POSSIBLE.
|
||
|
||
Nazi Germany wasn't filled with people who wanted to throw Jews
|
||
into bonfires, make slaves of eastern Europeans, or rule the world
|
||
from Berlin. Nazi Germany was filled with good citizens and Hitler
|
||
did everything he could to make all those good citizens think they
|
||
were better off with him in charge, even if they did have to give up a
|
||
few freedoms. Hitler was more frightened that all those good citizens
|
||
might stop being good citizens than he was of the allied armies.
|
||
North Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq are filled with good
|
||
citizens, all of them hoping that by being good citizens, they will
|
||
help things get better. Only things keep getting worse. The good
|
||
citizen works harder but gets less to eat, has less fun, enjoys life
|
||
less, and has less hope for a better future.
|
||
|
||
BAD CITIZENS HAVE KEPT THE UNITED STATES FREE.
|
||
|
||
Back in 1917 a majority of the voters in the United States
|
||
decided they knew what was best for everyone and passed the Eighteenth
|
||
Amendment, taking away the freedom of a man to relax with a beer after
|
||
an honest day's work. Hundred of thousands in this great country
|
||
suddenly turned into bad citizens. They didn't organize into a let's-
|
||
bring-back-the- booze political party or start blowing up police
|
||
stations. All they did was to keep on drinking. Some bad citizens
|
||
were more than willing to smuggle, distill, or brew the booze and sell
|
||
it for a profit.
|
||
In 1933, the social manipulators and the do-gooders finally gave
|
||
up, agreed to throw out the great experiment and a tens of thousands
|
||
of people went back to being good citizens.
|
||
These kind of things keep happening all over this country. Have
|
||
|
||
PAGE 20
|
||
|
||
you tried driving a fixed fifty-five along our highways? A whole
|
||
industry has gotten rich selling us radar detectors to give us a
|
||
chance against the modern technology of the Highway Patrol.
|
||
Eventually, the wizards in Washington had no choice but to up the
|
||
speed limit to 65, at least in a few places.
|
||
The Drug Enforcement Administration, and every State and local
|
||
police department spend billions each year to try and stamp out the
|
||
use of recreational drugs. Yet every year, the price of the drugs go
|
||
down, while availability go up. Anybody who wants to smoke pot, can,
|
||
any place in the United States.
|
||
Other freedoms are under constant attack. Take the issue of gun
|
||
control. The people who tout this totalitarian principle keep telling
|
||
us that the majority of Americans want some kind of gun control. So
|
||
what? No majority in a free country has the right to take away the
|
||
freedoms of any minority. That's what freedom is all about, and
|
||
owning a gun is a damn good way to help make sure nobody starts
|
||
interfering with your personal freedom. As long as the people who
|
||
understand and believe that principle insist on keeping their guns, we
|
||
are going to be able to keep them.
|
||
In California the state government outlawed a whole collection of
|
||
different kinds of semi-automatic weapons and demanded that every
|
||
citizen register those weapons and turn them in. Non-compliance has
|
||
been almost total.
|
||
Americans used to be pretty good tax payers, way back in the
|
||
forties and fifties. But one day we woke up and realized that the fat
|
||
cat friends of Congress had all been given special privileges and were
|
||
paying less than their fair share.
|
||
So a whole lot of good taxpayers have turned into bad citizens.
|
||
We are now a nation of tax evaders. We figure every angle, both legal
|
||
and illegal to bring down our own taxes. Every increase in the tax
|
||
structure is matched or exceeded by losses as more ordinary middle
|
||
class citizens figure out ways to cheat on their taxes or join the
|
||
underground economy. We've now got the politicians against the ropes.
|
||
They are bankrupting the treasury, but they can't raise taxes any
|
||
farther because the know all us bad citizens aren't going to take it
|
||
any more.
|
||
If we keep protesting and evading new tax increases, eventually
|
||
the politicians will have no choice but to start cutting the waste if
|
||
they want to leave enough money in the treasury to keep paying them
|
||
their fat salaries.
|
||
Each of the above examples shows just how much we are a nation of
|
||
bad citizens. That's why we have as much freedom as we do. That's
|
||
why in recent years, this country has been moving in the direction of
|
||
more freedom, not less. The politicians are finally beginning to
|
||
understand that you can't take an American's freedom away and make it
|
||
stick. There are two many bad citizens in this country.
|
||
|
||
HOW TO SURVIVE AS A BAD CITIZEN
|
||
|
||
Once you realize that you are not living in a free country and
|
||
that there is no go reason why you should be a good citizen, there are
|
||
a few rules you need to learn so you can get the most benefit out of
|
||
being a bad citizen without suffering more loss of personal freedom or
|
||
even going to jail.
|
||
A smart bad citizen won't let himself get caught being bad. He
|
||
won't brag to his friends and neighbors about what a bad citizen he
|
||
is. He won't tell the local newspaper how proud he is of being a bad
|
||
citizen. He will not deliberately confront the government, and he
|
||
will avoid doing anything in public that will warn any government
|
||
official he is not a good citizen.
|
||
|
||
PAGE 21
|
||
|
||
The bad citizen tries to be the invisible man or woman, the
|
||
person the government official would never expect is denying the
|
||
government his help and cooperation.
|
||
That means if you want to be a bad citizen, you don't want to
|
||
stand on any street corners making speeches demanding revolution and
|
||
you don't want to run with a mob throwing rocks at police vehicles.
|
||
You just want to live your own life, doing everything in private you
|
||
want to do, exactly the way you want to do it.
|
||
You want to look like a good citizen. You will even want to do
|
||
some things that all good citizens do, like vote.
|
||
Only once you are in the voting booth, you vote against every
|
||
bond issue, every politician who's in office, and every new initiative
|
||
that will increase government power or raise your taxes. If the only
|
||
choice is between two common thieves then a bad citizen writes in
|
||
someone else's name, or even his own.
|
||
You insist on getting every possible government benefit you are
|
||
eligible for and demand every government service the law says you are
|
||
entitled to receive. If you are eligible, you'll collect social
|
||
security, unemployment benefits, use food stamps, dip into Medicare,
|
||
claim farm subsidies, and try to get the government to pay you for
|
||
drawing obscene art or writing nasty stories.
|
||
You may even decide to take a government job, if you can make
|
||
more money doing that than working for some private firm. But a bad
|
||
citizen who's got a government job takes all his sick leave, goofs off
|
||
every chance he gets, and does everything he can to minimize the
|
||
damage the government can do to other bad citizens.
|
||
But don't cooperate with the bastards when it's not to your
|
||
advantage to do so. Except when it's in your direct, economic
|
||
advantage, you ignore the government. Never voluntarily do anything
|
||
that will help the government in any way.
|
||
If bad citizens know someone who is cheating on their taxes,
|
||
violating a business license law, working in a job paying less than
|
||
the minimum wage, or selling a little dope, they don't call the
|
||
authorities.
|
||
A bad citizen files his income tax return but cheats in ways
|
||
that take advantage of IRS incompetence. Bad citizens work off the
|
||
books and don't declare the income. They'll drive one hundred and
|
||
fifty miles to buy a truck load of groceries in another state that
|
||
charges less sales tax.
|
||
A bad citizen loses his census form, or fills it in wrong. Bad
|
||
citizens don't provide the government any kind of information unless
|
||
they get an immediate benefit or there is a government official
|
||
standing there insisting that they do it.
|
||
Bad citizens don't sacrifice their own pleasures or happiness
|
||
just because the government tells them such sacrifices are in the
|
||
common good. They don't volunteer their services for anything the
|
||
government is trying to do, no matter how worthwhile the project
|
||
appears to be. If the politicians tell them there is an energy
|
||
crisis, they don't turn the heat down and the lights off if they can
|
||
afford the electricity.
|
||
Bad citizens enjoy the freedom of driving their own personal cars
|
||
instead of riding tax-subsidized mass transit systems or subjecting
|
||
their personal schedules to the demands of car pooling. Bad citizens
|
||
don't waste time sorting garbage unless there is a direct economic
|
||
benefit for doing so. They don't man a voting booth, support the
|
||
local sheriff, waste time in town meetings, donate to political
|
||
parties, report poachers, nor contribute to the Community Chest and
|
||
United Fund. They recognize that a government that steals freedom
|
||
shouldn't get any voluntary help.
|
||
|
||
PAGE 22
|
||
|
||
Of course, there is a chance that someone will show up at your
|
||
door pointing a gun to make you volunteer for some civic duty like
|
||
jury duty. When that happens, don't argue, go. But a bad citizen
|
||
won't do anything more than what is absolutely necessary. On
|
||
something like jury duty, it may even be possible to help screw up the
|
||
system even while pretending to act like a good citizen.
|
||
It the person on trial is accused of tax evasion, drug offenses,
|
||
bootlegging, pornography, non-violent sex offenses, a failure to
|
||
obtain a business license, or any other crime that shouldn't be a
|
||
crime in a free society, a bad citizen can always find some
|
||
justification for voting not guilty, even if every other member of the
|
||
jury is convinced he's guilty.
|
||
Such a bad citizen is exercising the right of jury nulification,
|
||
that is, the right to set a person free because the juror thinks the
|
||
law is not constitutional. But the bad citizen won't admit that to
|
||
the judge, the jury, nor the press. Instead, he or she will insist
|
||
that he or she was not convinced by the prosecutor's evidence.
|
||
When the government confronts a bad citizen, the bad citizen will
|
||
insist that the government official respect every right that the
|
||
Constitution and the law gives every citizen. The bad citizen makes
|
||
sure he knows what rights the law gives him, and then he demands they
|
||
be respected. The bad citizen will be polite, he will fight the urge
|
||
to get angry, he will never, ever, initiate violence against a
|
||
government official, but he will insist on his rights. Unless he is
|
||
presented with a warrant, he won't let a government official into his
|
||
house, he won't give permission to any officer of the law to search
|
||
any of his belongings, and he won't answer any questions, even
|
||
apparently innocent questions without first checking with a lawyer.
|
||
Even in the United States with all the protections against self-
|
||
incrimination, most of the people in jails are there because they
|
||
talked too much.
|
||
When questioned by a government official, the smart person in
|
||
such a situation becomes the dumbest citizen in the county. He hasn't
|
||
been reading the newspapers, doesn't listen to the radio, doesn't know
|
||
a thing about what is going on, but he loves the government, and loves
|
||
doing his civic duty, and he knows his rights.
|
||
If bad citizens are asked a direct question, they won't lie, but
|
||
they give as little information as possible. They never gives any
|
||
information that they are not required by law to give. But the do it
|
||
all courteously, never suggesting by tone or attitude that they are
|
||
being anything but totally cooperative.
|
||
All you have to do is say, "I don't want to answer that
|
||
question." If the government official insists you answer the
|
||
question, then you say, "I want to speak to my lawyer before I answer
|
||
that question."
|
||
But most of the time, the bad citizen will never be bothered by
|
||
some government thug because he will learn how to maximize his own
|
||
happiness without having to have any dealings with the politician or
|
||
the bureaucrat.
|
||
|
||
PAGE 23
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
EDITOR'S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING WILL NO DOUBT ANGER MANY OF OUR WOMEN
|
||
READERS AS WELL AS SOME MEN. WHEN YOU GET SO ANGRY YOU REFUSE TO READ
|
||
ANY FURTHER, PLEASE JUMP TO THE LAST PAGE AND READ OUR OFFER.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
*------------------------*
|
||
| GETTING ALL YOU WANT |
|
||
| |
|
||
| By |
|
||
| Roger Victor |
|
||
*------------------------*
|
||
|
||
All you want of what? Come on! You know what I'm talking
|
||
about, the thing that most of us spend every waking hour thinking
|
||
about when we aren't getting all we want.
|
||
I'm talking about the one thing that women have a one hundred
|
||
percent monopoly on. And don't they know how to use it to get what
|
||
they want? As the old country song says, they learn it in the cradle.
|
||
They tease us, threaten us, deny us, bribe us, and get us to act like
|
||
cretins and idiots before they hand it out in small batches.
|
||
Most of us men will do almost anything to get it. We'll lie,
|
||
steal, pay, and even promise to love the little darlings.
|
||
Now unless you're rich, or so handsome that Greek Gods hide when
|
||
you walk by, there is only one way you will ever come close to getting
|
||
all you want.
|
||
You have to have a wife.
|
||
That's the deal men made for thousands of years. We brought
|
||
home the meat, fought off the wolves, plowed the fields, and held the
|
||
ladies when they were scared, all so that when the cooking fire burned
|
||
down, we'd get access to the treasure cave. The girls didn't just
|
||
furnish loving either. They cooked our food, sewed our clothes,
|
||
chewed leather to make our moccasins, and generally made themselves
|
||
handy all day long.
|
||
I've never known a bachelor who was getting all he wanted. I
|
||
certainly never did during those times in my life when I didn't have a
|
||
wife. The feminine libbers like to call it prostitution these days,
|
||
but call it what you like, most husbands paid well. Perhaps, they
|
||
paid too damn well.
|
||
Men didn't like to come home to find the creature with whom they
|
||
wanted to roll with the ground too exhausted to move because she had
|
||
spent the day scraping deer hides, stirring the mastodon stew, or
|
||
pounding the clothes on a rock to get them clean. The answer was a
|
||
credit card, a gas stove, a stainless steel pressure cooker, and
|
||
automatic washers. All the sweetheart really had to do was to push
|
||
the buttons on the dishwasher, run a vacuum cleaner across the floor,
|
||
throw the clothes in the Maytag, pop dinner in the microwave, and get
|
||
ready to make hubby's day as soon as he came home.
|
||
Leave it to Eve. She kicked herself out of paradise. She got
|
||
the idea that loverboy was having nothing but a good time all those
|
||
hours he was out making a living so she decided she wanted a career
|
||
too.
|
||
Instead of looking on men as great guys who did so much for a
|
||
woman just so he could get a bit of loving, they suddenly decided we
|
||
were oppressors, the people keeping them from discovering their true
|
||
selves.
|
||
Look what we have now, a real war between the sexes. If you are
|
||
|
||
PAGE 24
|
||
|
||
an educated American male between the ages of twenty-five and sixty,
|
||
if you went to college, and if you work with brains instead of brawn,
|
||
there is an eighty-three per cent chance you're not getting all you
|
||
want, even if you have a wife.
|
||
You're spending hours in singles bars pretending you're the
|
||
"new" male; you're changing diapers and washing the dishes after
|
||
you've cooked the meal; you're learning how to cry; and you're
|
||
watching TV reruns alone because your wife's out of town on a business
|
||
trip. You may not even be reading this in your own home because the
|
||
current woman in your life won't let you keep "sexist trash and
|
||
pornography" in the place. Whether you're married or single, the
|
||
*new* woman has got you jumping through hoops in so many different
|
||
directions that some of you are opting out, learning to live without
|
||
any of it at all.
|
||
Isn't it about time you stopped worrying about what women want,
|
||
and started to think about what you want?
|
||
Most men have pretty damn simple wants, a stomach full of tasty
|
||
food, a place to put our feet up in the evening, and all the loving we
|
||
can handle.
|
||
So, how do you do it, how do you get all you want?
|
||
The answer is so damn simple, it's surprising more of you
|
||
haven't figured it out.
|
||
|
||
YOU GET A HOUSEWIFE!
|
||
|
||
The word is housewife, like helpmate, a woman who accepts you as
|
||
the supplier of the good life and thanks you for being that by giving
|
||
you all you want--a woman who cooks your food, washes your clothes,
|
||
takes care of the kids, and crawls in beside you every night.
|
||
I'll bet you thought that wonderful creature didn't exist any
|
||
more. Your wrong, they are not extinct. But they don't hang around
|
||
the places the average modern American male lives.
|
||
Whether you're a twenty-two year old just drawing your first pay
|
||
check, a thirty-five year old that's about to renounce sex forever
|
||
rather than risk one more put down, or a forty-five year old with a
|
||
divorce settlement that makes the sex his wife handed out for fifteen
|
||
years the most expensive thing he ever bought, there is a woman out
|
||
there who can make you a good housewife, if you know where to look.
|
||
You are not going to find that woman in the senior class at the
|
||
local university. You won't find her in the corps of junior
|
||
executives in the corporation you work for, nor at the country club
|
||
your folks belong to. She won't be waiting for you in a bar where the
|
||
drinks start at $5.50 a shot. If you're young and you grew up in a
|
||
middle, or upper income family in the United States, there is a good
|
||
chance you have never met the kind of woman that makes a good
|
||
housewife.
|
||
If you want a housewife, you'll have to find a woman who is
|
||
living such a miserable life that she'll grab the chance of cooking
|
||
your meals, cleaning the house, spending your money, and playing
|
||
cotton tail in bed at night just to get out of the mess she hates.
|
||
For thousands of years, women gladly jumped at becoming a
|
||
housewife because that was a hell of a lot better life than anything
|
||
else they might do.
|
||
Now days, the modern, college educated, American women sees
|
||
herself as having a lot of other options that she thinks are better.
|
||
So where do you find a woman who doesn't have those options.
|
||
Here's a few suggestions where you can start looking.
|
||
|
||
PAGE 25
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE AMERICAN POOR
|
||
|
||
There are thousands of women working in jobs that pay minimum
|
||
wage with no prospects for moving up the salary scale. They are not
|
||
working because they like their career, they're working because they
|
||
will go hungry if they don't. Most of them have been working since
|
||
they were teenagers in drudge jobs that leave them dragging their ass
|
||
back home to small apartments and tasteless meals. They are the women
|
||
that never saw the inside of a disco, who read the funny papers and
|
||
romance novels, not THE SATURDAY REVIEW nor the Sunday edition of the
|
||
NEW YORK TIMES.
|
||
That's right, one way to find the perfect housewife is to slide a
|
||
few steps down the social ladder. Look for a woman who never went to
|
||
college, and maybe didn't even get a chance to finish high school. Go
|
||
hunting for a poor thing who will be only too happy to get pulled up a
|
||
ladder she never thought she could climb.
|
||
Make sure she understands what the bargain is when you find her.
|
||
You want a housewife that will stay a housewife, that will stay home
|
||
with the kids figuring out ways to make tasty but economical meals,
|
||
patching the hole in your sock instead of throwing the pair in the
|
||
wastebasket.
|
||
I'll admit that with the joys of the American education system,
|
||
the poor young ladies are much rarer than they used to be. But there
|
||
are still some of them out there. All you have to do is look. Belief
|
||
me, they will be happy you found them.
|
||
But where do you look for them?
|
||
You can't hunt deer in Central Park and you can't catch fish in
|
||
the bathtub. If you want to find a woman that will happily sign up as
|
||
a housewife, you'll have to go to the kinds of places they gather.
|
||
One place to look is the small cities and rural towns of
|
||
America. For every run-a-way from Minnesota that ends up selling it
|
||
on Times Square, there are a hundred more back home still keeping it
|
||
as a private stock and dreaming about a prince charming who doesn't
|
||
have black grime under his finger nails and won't insist that she keep
|
||
working at her job as a waitress or a construction crew flag girl so
|
||
he can afford a six pack every evening.
|
||
Save the money you would have spent on a Club Med vacation, and
|
||
drive up for a weekend to one of the rural towns of the state you live
|
||
in, not one of the places the tourist all go, but someplace where
|
||
everybody, especially the women, know that a male stranger is in town.
|
||
Take a summer vacation in the mid-west or one of the mountain
|
||
States. Forget about the girls sitting at the bar, or eating in the
|
||
fancy restaurant. Talk to the waitress, the girl checking out
|
||
groceries, the counter girl at the motel, or the meter maid putting a
|
||
parking ticket on your car.
|
||
You may not even have to go that far from your own home. Most
|
||
big cities have working class neighborhoods where parents often don't
|
||
have the money to send their children to college. Instead of sitting
|
||
at home watching the Celtics play basketball, take in a high school
|
||
game in the part of town where the fathers all carry lunch boxes off
|
||
to work every day.
|
||
The secret is making it clear from the very beginning exactly
|
||
what you are interested in--a housewife. When you meet a girl a
|
||
couple of social classes down the way, make sure you work into the
|
||
conversation early on how much you like the old fashion way, how badly
|
||
you want a wife that will be a housewife.
|
||
Making them understand that has a double advantage. First, you
|
||
weed out those girls who have read so much modern junk they think a
|
||
jump up the social ladder should mean an exciting career, not a life
|
||
|
||
PAGE 26
|
||
|
||
of luxury tending house and waiting for a man to come home for some
|
||
tender loving. The second reason is that you create a situation of
|
||
trust. Too many lower class women have been burned by the man with
|
||
money in his pocket who was looking for variety, not a lifetime diet.
|
||
You want to to convince them you're for real.
|
||
|
||
THE FOREIGN BRIDE
|
||
|
||
If you've made it in this country you wear Italian shoes and
|
||
suits from a London tailor. You use a Japanese camera and watch a
|
||
television set made in Korea. You drink German beer and French wine
|
||
and who with any money drives an American car? So why not look for a
|
||
wife in one of those countries that producing everything else that
|
||
makes life so nice to live.
|
||
You've seen the adds in the back of magazines. "Asian women
|
||
want to meet American men." It's not just the Asian women who are
|
||
jumping at the chance of becoming American housewives. There are
|
||
women waiting for someone like you in Mexico, Spain, any of the
|
||
recently communist countries, all of South America, and even Australia
|
||
and New Zealand too.
|
||
Don't just answer a magazine ad. Learn all you can about the
|
||
different foreign cultures. Pick the one that appeals to you most and
|
||
spend some vacation time visiting there. If possible, learn the
|
||
language of the country you focus your attention on.
|
||
I've spent years living overseas and I know dozens of American
|
||
men who have married foreign women, some as a first wife, and many as
|
||
a second try. It doesn't work every time, but most of the men I know
|
||
with foreign wives are a lot happier than the boys back on Madison
|
||
Avenue who are still trying to figure out what the American model
|
||
they're living with really wants.
|
||
|
||
THE NOT SO PRETTY
|
||
|
||
Every one likes a pretty girl on his arm and all cats aren't the
|
||
same in the dark, not if one weighs one hundred pounds and the second
|
||
one breaks the scale at three fifty. Still, homely women can make damn
|
||
fine lovers, and grateful ones too. There are thousands of women who
|
||
have given up the hope of ever being held, cuddled, and loved because
|
||
their parents never paid to get their teeth straightened, their
|
||
features don't quite fit together, their breast are too small, their
|
||
hips are too thick, or their hair too thin. When you meet one, make
|
||
her day and give her a smile. You might find there is a nice person
|
||
there, one that would be only too happy to play the old fashion game
|
||
of helpmate, if some man would only give her a chance. You'll be
|
||
surprised how pretty they can be in the dark.
|
||
So what if your friends smirk whenever you show up in public.
|
||
When they're home begging the stunning beauty they married for another
|
||
tiny bit of the loving she hands out once every two weeks, you'll be
|
||
sacked out and sound asleep, the dark hiding the silly smile on your
|
||
face the same way it hides your wife's crossed eyes or dumbo ears.
|
||
If you absolutely have to have a stunning blond hanging on your
|
||
arm whenever you show up in public, hire one for the occasion.
|
||
Believe me, it will be cheaper in the long run.
|
||
|
||
THE RELIGIOUS LADY
|
||
|
||
Don't forget about the woman who thinks Phyllis Shafley is
|
||
right, the girl who believes that God intended for the man to rule and
|
||
the woman to obey. However, move carefully here, unless you share
|
||
those same religious beliefs. If you don't, expect her to spend half
|
||
|
||
PAGE 27
|
||
|
||
her life trying to save your soul. Worse yet, sometime the religious
|
||
ones have been so sold on sex being evil, they never get over it being
|
||
a no-no. They'll let you, because the priest tells them they have to,
|
||
but they won't enjoy it, and neither will you.
|
||
|
||
THE DIVORCED AND THE WIDOWED
|
||
|
||
The older you get, the more of these there are going to be in an
|
||
age group that fits your needs. There will be so many of them by the
|
||
time you reach sixty, you may not even need to take a housewife to
|
||
make sure you get all you want. Way back when I was a kid I knew a
|
||
fellow named Chester who was sixty-five. He had a stable of women
|
||
hauling his ashes that would have done a Mormon patriarch proud. His
|
||
only problem was scheduling which one was putting out on what night.
|
||
Still, it's not just sex we're talking about, it's the other
|
||
goodies that go with living with a woman. If you're still healthy,
|
||
able to pay the bills that come from supporting a woman, and look like
|
||
you have a few more years, the widows and the divorcees, especially
|
||
the ones with children, will be lining up to listen to your offers.
|
||
|
||
ONCE YOU'VE GOT ONE PICKED OUT
|
||
|
||
The real problem isn't finding a helpmate, it's the hard
|
||
bargaining you have to engage in to make sure you get what you want.
|
||
No matter where you find the woman, the key point is making it clear
|
||
before she moves in exactly what the deal is. You'll be the one who
|
||
earns the salary, she'll take care of the housework, and you decide
|
||
when it's time to not make love. If you want to really be smart,
|
||
you'll put it in writing, along with some very clear understandings
|
||
about how you divide up the property and the kids if you decide she's
|
||
no longer living up to her share of the bargain.
|
||
The modern American woman working beside you at the office will
|
||
hate you for it. She'll sneer at you, call you a pig, and try to talk
|
||
your wife out of the happiness you both have. She will also spend a
|
||
lot of time wondering why she can't have what that poor, foreign,
|
||
uneducated, homely twit waiting for you at home has--a man who acts
|
||
like he wants to act, not like NOW thinks he should act.
|
||
I ought to make it clear here that I like the modern, educated,
|
||
career oriented American woman. I've always liked bright, intelligent
|
||
ladies. I agree they must be paid exactly what a man is paid if they
|
||
are doing the same kind of work, and I have absolutely no problems
|
||
taking orders from one if she happens to be the boss. At different
|
||
times, I've worked for three different women and I got along great
|
||
with all of them and promotions from two of them. I agree that they
|
||
have every right to work free of sexual harrassment with the full
|
||
respect of their co-workers.
|
||
Some modern, educated American women even make good housewives.
|
||
There are those who have figured out that being a wife and a mother
|
||
can be just as rewarding and certainly as important to society as any
|
||
job they could ever find. If you find one of those, you may have
|
||
found the best of everything.
|
||
|
||
EDITOR'S OFFER: EVERY HUMAN BEING IS ENTITLED TO FIND HIS OR HER OWN
|
||
HAPPINESS, INCLUDING HAPPINESS IN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE, THROUGH
|
||
THE BARGAINING PROCESS. WE WOULD LIKE TO PRINT A COUNTER-PIECE TO THE
|
||
ABOVE ARTICLE, WRITTEN BY A WOMAN AND SUGGESTING HOW THE MODERN
|
||
AMERICAN WOMAN CAN BEST FIND THE KIND OF MAN SHE WOULD LIKE TO SHARE
|
||
HER LIFE WITH AND WHAT KIND OF BARGAIN SHE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE WITH
|
||
SUCH A PERSON. WE PROMISE WE WILL PUBLISH IN A FUTURE ISSUE OF *THE
|
||
CHAOS ADVOCATE* THE BEST SUCH PIECE SUBMITTED TO US.
|
||
|
||
PAGE 28
|
||
|
||
|
||
*----------------------------*
|
||
| WANTED: A FEW GOOD WRITERS |
|
||
*----------------------------*
|
||
|
||
We are looking for a few good creative writers, philosophers, and
|
||
political theorists who are committed to the idea of personal freedom
|
||
in all things. If you have something to say on this subject, let us
|
||
include it in this electronic magazine. We are especially interested
|
||
in personal experiences and practical advice that explain how an
|
||
individual can maximize his or her own personal freedom in confronting
|
||
and surviving the suppressive institutions of culture, state, church,
|
||
school, and corporate business. We will also consider good fiction
|
||
that deals with the same set of problems.
|
||
|
||
For legal reasons we will not publish anything that advocates
|
||
specific criminal activity nor anything that libels or slanders a
|
||
living human being or legal person. Other than that, we will give
|
||
serious consideration to any manuscript that advocates chaos and
|
||
freedom.
|
||
|
||
We can not offer authors any recompense other than the chance to
|
||
get published in an electronic medium. We welcome articles that have
|
||
been previously printed in other medium, provided the person making
|
||
the submission has the legal right to put the manuscript into
|
||
publication.
|
||
|
||
Anyone submitting an article for publication in THE CHAOS
|
||
ADVOCATE will retain all rights to the article or story except for the
|
||
electronic publication of the article in a single issue of this
|
||
electronic magazine.
|
||
|
||
Writers wishing to submit articles and essays for publication can
|
||
upload them to any one of the following E-mail addresses.
|
||
|
||
Compuserve: 72037,2673
|
||
Delphi: MACKTANNER
|
||
The Rational Life Bulletin Board
|
||
615-433-7869
|
||
Fidonet node number 1:116/38
|
||
Internet: Mack.Tanner@f38.n116.z1.fidonet.org
|
||
|
||
We welcome queries and comments.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|