Australia is one of the world’s biggest importers of American weaponry, though apparently it would rather use its force to govern its own citizenry than for defense. But of course the people there gave up their right to own arms long ago. Now they have no choice but to beg for American protection, lest it become a communist or Islamist satellite. What is left of them? Who knows? Who really cares?

No, I had no such reservations. I just like pointing out that Biden’s campaign was a lie. But it’s true; the sooner the world learns to defend itself and stops sucking at America’s tit the better. You sleep cozy knowing that American military protects you while you sleep, and I wish it wasn’t so.

The Biden they voted for

Question:

Given the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the civil war in Yemen, what changes, if any, would you make to U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia?

Biden:

I would end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen and order a reassessment of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. It is past time to restore a sense of balance, perspective, and fidelity to our values in our relationships in the Middle East. President Trump has issued Saudi Arabia a dangerous blank check. Saudi Arabia has used it to extend a war in Yemen that has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, pursue reckless foreign policy fights, and repress its own people. Among the most shameful moments of this presidency came after the brutal Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Trump defended not the slain U.S. resident but his killers. America’s priorities in the Middle East should be set in Washington, not Riyadh.

President Trump’s first overseas trip was to Saudi Arabia. As President, I will rally the world’s democracies and our allies in the Free World. We will make clear that America will never again check its principles at the door just to buy oil or sell weapons. We should recognize the value of cooperation on counterterrorism and deterring Iran. But America needs to insist on responsible Saudi actions and impose consequences for reckless ones. I would want to hear how Saudi Arabia intends to change its approach to work with a more responsible U.S. administration.

https://www.cfr.org/article/presidential-candidates-saudi-arabia


The Biden they got

Biden administration notifies Congress of $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia

This sale is the second to Saudi Arabia under the Biden administration, the first was for $500 million. Congress has 30 days to review the sale and the sale may face pushback from Democrats on the Hill.

Simply because it is better, at least against “proportional representation”, in my opinion.

The repression of other parties is not the repression of flexibility. As Karl Popper argued, when suffering electoral losses the parties in a two-party system must seek ideological reform or they continue to lose.

As things stand, an inclination to self-criticism after an electoral defeat is far more pronounced in countries with a two-party system than in those where there are several parties. In practice, then, a two-party system is likely to be more flexible than a multi-party system, contrary to first impressions.

https://amp.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited

In the United States, the two main parties have gone through significant reforms during their lifetimes, and continue to this day.

Further, politicians in a system of proportional representation are beholden to their party before their constituents. Often, the party chooses who will lead it, and thus, who will lead the country should they win. Also, coalition governments are ass.

The principle of laissez-faire was never realized in the first place, I’m afraid, especially in economic affairs. One of the first pieces of legislation in the United States was the Tariff Act. It couldn’t do otherwise; absent begging, every State requires the economic exploitation of the people to exist. It wasn’t long until we had land-grants and subsidies, with monopolists clamoring to get a piece of it. As invariably happens, the more regulation the more regulatory capture. The point becomes not to abolish state intervention but to use it.

As far as I can tell, never once has industry wanted laissez-faire, anyways. At best they wanted protectionism, at worst they wanted hand-outs and monopoly, but in each case they ran to the State for all of it.

The usual canards like “laissez-faire” or “rugged individualism”, at least insofar as critics and proponents use them to describe some aspect of American reality or history, are mostly nonsense. No policy of either have ever existed. And of course the US is “capitalist”. So long as capital is capital, there is no system that has existed or will ever exist that is not.

Anyways, that was a round-about-way of saying maybe abandoning laissez-faire isn’t the best idea—it hasn’t been tried yet.

You’re the one supporting state confiscation of wealth, not me.

I would prefer to defend myself or pay for a service that defends my rights and property, instead of funding an agency that defends the interests of a central authority. But that’s theoretical. Hundreds of years of living under state rule makes it almost impossible to think how it would work in a practical fashion.

What are you grateful for when it comes to government?

Musk’s wealth exists largely in Tesla stocks, that is, on paper only. He lives off borrowed money. So the question arises, why should he pay income tax if he never made any income? When he sells his stocks (which, on a cursory glance, he just did) he will be subject to taxes you or I could never pay in many lifetimes. They don’t mention that.

Although filings detailing Musk's stock sales on Tuesday and Wednesday didn't mention any motivation, he does have an additional massive tax bill looming. When he exercises the additional options that are due to expire, he will have to report the value of the shares as regular income, at 40.3% federal tax rate, and likely some state tax.

The exact tax bill will be determined by the value of the shares at the time the options are exercised, but the federal tax bill is likely to be nearly $11 billion if shares stay near their current value.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/11/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sale-taxes/index.html

If I could end the relationship, it would mean I am no longer paying any money, so I would no longer expect anything in return. Since there is no chance of that, I have to content myself with whatever morsels the state will offer me, which turns out to be very little.

I’m not sure how that is possible in a progressive tax system. The tax-rate increases the higher the income bracket.

Like I said, people do not know where the sum total of their money goes. This is because the government, not themselves, get to decide what to do with it. They cannot know whether it goes to feed someone in dire need or to droning some family on foreign soil.

My argument was not that FEMA doesn’t help—it’s their job, after all, one that they’re not very good at—but that giving the state wealth and power could not be considered an act of help or compassion, and for the reasons I stated.

FEMA is not the greatest example. It has gone through more reforms due to its failing responses than it has had successes.

It doesn’t work like that. All we can be sure of is that they’ll take our money, they’ll spend it, but we don’t know whether it’s “helping others” or buying a politician’s neck-ties. And if they change directives, spend all their money on this or that program inimical to the citizen’s interests, we have no choice in the matter. Worse, every time we give the government the power to do something for us we give them the corresponding power to do something to us. Much better to skip the middle-man entirely, in my opinion.

Every state thus far—liberal, fascist, socialist, Islamist—has been organized monopoly and exploitation. One thing is clear to me: as government consolidates and strengthens, the power of independent moral judgment in the citizenry weakens. So it isn’t long before statists of all types beg for more government wherever their own morality is waning.

I can’t fathom it. You say you want to help others then delegate some government official to do it for you. But even then, erecting a bureaucracy is helping no one, so no help arrives at all, just more machine.

By all means, help others with help, but none of what you provide or do can be considered “help”. Rather, it’s an escape from having to help others.

Exactly right.

Socialism is state monopoly and power-grubbing, nothing besides. It has only ever served asa means to dupe entire masses into giving up their autonomy.

It does matter who pulls the levers. What you're describing is the state being controlled by the capitalists, and so you generalize this to all states. A nation-state is a kind of social organization, and there are various forms. Just as there are various forms of business. It would be nice if we tried democratic participation in both. You rail against the former while defending the latter, and so you forfeit any right to be taken seriously.

Abolish the state? Fine. Let's first abolish capitalism.

You can only pretend the two are alike in any way. If I could end my relationship with the state like I can with a business, by simply walking out the door, I would.

There is nothing but your own inaction stopping you from creating the business you keep demanding of other, so I read all you write with a clucking sound.

Democracy has this often resented feature that political movements do sometimes get their objectives and accepted by all sides. Hence if you refer to wealth transfers and social welfare nets being socialist, then both parties in the US (or parties in Canada) are all socialists. That hardly is the case. Yet when you look at how the UK, Finland or your country Canada actually spends the tax income (or the new debt), a lot of it goes into wealth transfers with systems similar to those implemented by Roosevelt and Truman in the US.

They are socialists to me. So-called “social” legislation and other mollycoddling adopted by governments these days are but the successive steps to a socialist regime, if they’re not there already. Let’s just swallow the pill already, name and all.

The state is a tool, true, but more of a machine. Its sole purpose is the exploitation of one class by another, and to secure its interests from insurrection from within and without. It doesn’t matter who wields it or pulls its levers, it goes on doing what it always has, in fact, what all states were created to do. If you were to man the state with a flock of honorable men, what exactly would change? Extortion, robbery, exploitation, coercion, mendacity, hypocrisy, rent-seeking, corruption—all of it would go on, simply because no state was formed for any other purpose.

If anyone other than the government acted like the government, took wealth as they did, they’d be rightfully called a criminall. That’s why it’s difficult to distinguish the government from any other criminal class.

Thanks for the explanation.

I don’t care who it’s for. It’s done because others have given them the power to do it.

I’m not an economist. I have no theory as to what caused the Great Depression.

Who knows? It’s out of control. It’s amazing how fast an institution can spend other people’s money.

Yeah, $7 trillion/ten-year defense budges will do that to you. Anyway, no matter how high inflation gets, do you think we will ever pay true cost for anything? Wouldn't that be nice.

There is so much government intervention in the way that no one could ever know.

Speaking of neoliberalism, the debt-ridden, big government policies that led to it are now occurring once again. Stagflation?

Inflation jumped 6.2% in October, biggest monthly rise in 30 years

Sure, it arrived at a time when people were nervous about having to pay the just penalty of their collective ignorance and greed. There is no better way to absolve man of his failings than to devise a state program to cover for him.

On the contrary. A Democrat with balls saying the truth. And of course, why wouldn't Truman be for the New Deal? Odd if he would be against it. Tells actually also a lot about the Democrats, in fact.

He was equating a massive transfer of wealth and power with “every advance the people have made in the last 20 years”. As is common, he confuses the state’s aggrandizement with that of their subjects. Insofar as socialism routinely pretends that state ownership is social ownership, his critics are not far off the mark.

It’s a regretful quote. “Socialism” fits better than “progress”.

And neoliberalism.

DPRK, not PDRK.

Oh ok, so just what you think are in the best interests of society as a whole, then.

Maybe adding another emoji will help you out.

In the interests of society as a whole. It’s the best you can do and the best you have done, isn’t that so?

So he loved the policies and programs that dominated the "Golden Age of Capitalism"? Greatest growth in the 20th century. Etc.

Compare to the last 40 years of neoliberal Reaganite policies. You'll find the real fascism there.

Fascists hated liberalism. Another swing and a miss.

“Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty being, like any other individual right, a concession of the state.”

- The Doctrine of Fascism

Yet you aggrandize the state at the expense of your own freedom, just like a fascist would do. Funny stuff.

That’s why you don’t know what fascism is. Mussolini loved the New Deal and Keynesianism. Not-so-odd bedfellows, then.

I’m not so sure about that.

“You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal!”

- Benito Mussolini

The best we can do is allow the state to monopolize the “common good”. I guess it’s not as common or as good as we make it out to be.

That’s hilarious. Apparently Camilla couldn’t stop talking about it.

Camilla Parker Bowles can’t stop talking about Joe Biden’s ‘long fart’

House of Windsor meets the house of wind.