January 3rd, 2023
Democracy: The God That Failed
It is worse than I thought. The author is some sort of a neoliberal libertarian. I read the introduction and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish the book. It’s just shy of 300 pages, so do I want to lose 6 weeks to this? The idea is to compare the US as the ultimate democracy and the Austrians as the ultimate monarchy and to view monarchy as privately-owned government. The twist is there will be a third comparison to the “natural order”, which is some sort of stateless anarcho-capitalism. What a nightmare. I can smell the “taxation is theft” all over it. I thought it was going to be an interesting read about the advantages of monarchy, but it’s just an economic farce.
January 4th, 2023
Democracy: The God That Failed
He assumes that people act for more goods sooner. This is the fallacy that people act selfishly. It is idiotic to think that in all cases, instant gratification is more valuable. I quit. The man makes so many irrational assumptions in his "economic" views on man that it is painful to read. Horrible book.
A Critique of Democracy
This one might be a bit more readable, but already it is making bogus points. The author says public government has a "rob the future to spend on the present" effect. He is confusing democracy for capitalism. He says it breeds conflict, breeds bad "populist" leaders, have high debt, voters are irrational, and some other nonsense points. I'll give him the populism and dumb voters, but the rest are seen in any government. The guy is a whackjob. The 2nd chapter goes on about the habits of apes and then talks of hunter-gatherers, as if this will have relevance on modern government. Possibly on human nature, but nothing else. The rest of the chapter is about Indo-Europeans. That's insane. You cannot use horse people who are only known through archaeology as the basis of modern civilization. First, they are poorly understood because they left no writing. Second, it is a very Eurocentric view. Greeks are viewed as the "founders" of Western thought because they are the first to leave writing. Not only was it a high quantity, but we can also actually read it. Of course, Bronze Age cultures would have impacted the Greeks, but they left comparatively fewer writings, and we can read them with much less ease. So far it has been nonsense, but perfectly readable nonsense. That makes it scarier, but I'm already a fifth of the way done. Hopefully we are done with this idolizing the past wankery and we can get to the meat of it.
January 5th, 2023
I read another 2 chapters and it’s not very good. A lot of it is the “decline of civilization” scare tactics that right wingers use when they see divorces and abortions rising. A lot of what is second is easily questionable and it is a stretch to blame things like the rise in antidepressant usage on the state of the union. The next chapter is about that damn book by Hoppe I couldn’t stand. Hoppe is an incredibly biased source who hates government because it interferes with money making. A lot of the “points” are nonsense that can be disproven by looking at history. For example, wars were a “king’s affair” that was not expected to use public money or harm innocents. Look at the Hundred Year’s War and how horrible it made life for the lower classes. Look at the slaughtering in the various crusades or the 30 Year’s War. He claims there was no conscription, but what do we call the Tsar’s conscription? Wars were for territory, then what why were Russia and Austria fighting during WWI? It’s all garbage. Then it goes on about Hoppe’s Austrian time preference garbage which assumes that private government looks to the future and public looks to the present. Compare Louis XIV and FDR and tell me who’s looking to the future. I can’t stand this nonsense.
January 6th, 2023
The next chapter just discussed GDP between democracies and authoritarian governments and did not add much. The chapter after that got to the meat of things. Essentially, these guys think inequality is good. I hope that’s just a reactionary statement and not a true belief. Inequality is not good. Inequality is not bad. Excessive inequality is bad. No human should starve while another has two kitchens. No human should live in a condemned building while another has a tennis court. No human should drink lead poisoned water while another has a yacht. No doctor should make half a million while another can’t afford to see one. Wealth should be distributed so that all people have a comfortable life. Nobody is trying to make the poor millionaires, but they should have equal access to quality homes, medical care, and food. They should need to work two jobs and another man has some ancestor’s money. Ability, upbringing, and intelligence have something to do with it, but the people who support aristocracy downplay the large amount of luck related to success. A 130 IQ in Sudan isn’t going to make you rich. A 130 IQ in Detroit will hopefully get you an engineering job. A 130 IQ and a millionaire father will get you very far. When people advocate for equality, they really advocate less inequality. Democracy is necessary because history tells us you can not rely on the genetic lottery of royalty. To remove a bad king, many people must die in process, and more often than not they will fail. To remove a bad president, you have to wait 4 years. Even the crazy libertarians who want to run the country like a corporation, they fail to see how often the drive for growth and instant profits has tanked companies and caused long term problems. Idiots.
January 9th, 2023
Finished this little book today. The second to last chapter was okay and probably the only one I sympathize with. It discussed the problem with the average voter. There are a lot of issues with the average voter, but the mostly ignorance and bias. The majority of voters are easily swayed by propaganda. Even Winston Churchill famously said (I think), that a conversation with the average voter will turn someone off from democracy. However, voters are not voting on policy, they are voting for a person who will act with their interests. The ignorance of the voter is not relevant when someone in the State Department is conducting negotiations. The problem then becomes that voters choose poor representatives. In that case, I do not think the solution is a permanent representative who can be replaced by only one man out of 300 million. The solution is improving education of the majority so that they can make better decisions. I know, some people are only capable of absorbing so much education. This does not negate the right of man to choose his representative. It does not mean that an arbitrary individual and his arbitrary descendants should choose for him. The final chapter is on alternative systems, and thankfully these neoreactionaries are not libertarians who think corporations the free market should govern. They believe in smaller government, but privately owned. They don’t like fascism because it is state owned, but there is enough xenophobia and cultural fetishism that there are similarities. All these guys want is the archaic aristocracy. They fail to see why this system collapsed. Arbitrary absolute power failed to bring justice, peace, and prosperity. The majority of the people were reduced to slavey and they would be again. Most people are slaves to their jobs, but the author does not see the modern ruling class as a true “aristocracy” because they have no loyalty to anyone. The romantic view of lords and peasants is childish and any study of history will show its injustice. I sympathize with the lack of faith in democracy, but not in the naïve longing for the return of the king. That said, I’m going to read Fellowship of the Ring next. Not sure if I’ll write anything about it.