The One-Way Media Used to be the Ultimate Weapon

The One-Way Media used to be the ultimate weapon of social control. It was like the intro to The Outer Limits:

We will control the frame, we will control the narrative, we can change the focus to a new subject, or sharpen it to endless stories about a nothing burger. Sit quietly and we will control all you see and hear.

I had no idea how powerful they were.  Recent revelations show that they could protect anyone by simply ignoring the story. I think it is called “spiking the story.” Woman after woman tried to expose behavior they believed was criminal or near criminal, and people today seem to agree with that characterization, yet some gatekeeper of the One-Way Mass Media “spiked the story.”

The first indication of a change was Monica and Drudge. Apparently the mainstream media spiked the story of POTUS doing some questionable things with a White House intern some thirty years younger than he and in his employ. Then Drudge spread it all over the world wide web. The One-Way Media could do nothing to stop the story from reaching the attention of the public.

This trend has only grown since then. While the public really wasn’t doing Google searches for “exposed penis to me,” the progressives ginned up a war of sexual innuendo against Trump and Moore that brought attention to indiscretions to the forefront of the hive mind.

This time, the One-Way Media could not even shape the direction of the resulting narrative. If it involved a white male, public attention jumped on it. Then it was a black Congressman. Any sensational sex accusation has its day in the sun with no filter.

The public will tire of diddling stories about diddling. This will die down like stories of shark attacks on east coast beaches. Eventually they will not be reported because they will no longer get eyes.

Still, the old One-Way Media is not what it used to be. I wonder what it will be like to be no longer ruled by the gatekeepers of an old mass media technology? Who will step in their place?

 

 

Men are Pigs

This is the narrative growing out of the Hollywood Producer/Starlet stories: Men are pigs and use their workplace power to make innocent women put out to get anywhere.

That is true, many men use power to get sex.

No one would deny that attractive women sometimes also use sex and sex appeal to get ahead in the workplace. A major question to me is whether in fact the situation is consensual, or similar to extortion or similar to bribery.

If a producer can give a starring role in a movie, and lots of attractive women could fill the role in a satisfactory way, is it wrong for a sexual relationship to form between the producer and a starlet? It depends.

Extortion is the criminal offense of trying to obtain money, property or services through threat or other form of coercion. The threat need not be an illegal act, threatening to expose some embarrassing  fact about the victim would be sufficient.

Bribery is offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty.

Some things can never legally be sold. The determination of a judge or police officer, human organs, sexual favors. Still, everyone in America agrees that a woman can give sex for any reason or no reason at all. It can’t be for $15 in the front seat of a car, but a woman who accepts a diamond and decides that she likes her suitor would never be accused of a crime. Neither would her suitor, as long as no force was involved. Offering gifts, praise and attention are not even metaphorical use of force. In that case it is a consensual union.

I don’t see how you could make the case that sexual relations between a starlet and a powerful producer with a part to offer is like extortion. A starlet may want the part, but it is not force to deny or offer it.

In a way  the producer has a legal duty to his backers to choose the starlet with the best chance of creating a hit. In that case if the starlet offers sex for the part, it is most like a bribe. Both parties are wrong in a bribery situation. Clearly the person initiating the bribe is the greater wrongdoer, but it might well be the starlet offering a bribe as a producer soliciting one. It depends on the facts.

I don’t think you should hit on people who you have workplace power over. If we outlawed that, however, women would be the most outraged. Students could not date and marry their famous professors, surgeons would be totally off limits to nurses, waitresses could never date the chef or restaurant owner. Women love to marry higher status men with power in the workplace and defend their prerogative to do so.

I’m not defending Harvey, the stories are of non-consensual behavior.  But I certainly am not equipped to judge the facts in the accusations, maybe ten or more years old, against men for pig like behavior. Did the woman flash her thong in a job interview? (We all know that a woman should be able to flash her thong at a man without him getting the idea he can try to turn the relationship sexual.)

I think this is a witch hunt and it totally ignores the agency of women. If you mix men and women in the workplace with large rewards available, you can expect some attractive women to use their sexual power over men to forward their aims. That may be flirting, promises of future relations or outright sex. Our culture accepts that that is perfectly fine for the woman. But if the man gives in to the offer, he is a pig.

For a somewhat concurring view see JudgyBitch.

Virtually 100% of women, at some point in their lives, capitalize on their looks and appeal. From the barista at Starbucks to the cop in her just-a-little-too-tight uniform, women have always known, and understood how to use, their physical appeal to men.

 

Should NFL Players Express Political Views During the Game?

Suppose there were an anti-abortion NFL player. For him, abortion is killing innocents. So each time a touchdown is scored, he unfurls a sign that reads “Abortion is Murder!”

Is that OK?

The Dallas Cheerleaders display a sign during the national anthem , “Women earn 70% of what men earn in equivalent jobs!”

Is that OK?

Trump supporting players and Trump opposed players put on baseball caps expressing their particular political views while seated on the bench.

OK?

 

 

 

Uses of Money

We are all familiar with one use of money: spending it to buy something we want.  it might be a new car, kitchen appliances, a nicer home in a nicer place.

There are other uses of money.  I sort of think of money as distilled power. We all know powerful people. The cop who stops you is powerful relative to to you. Your boss is powerful. Your children’s teacher is powerful in some ways. Heck, the receptionist at your doctors office is powerful.  That is why she talks to you with such disdain.

Money equalizes the playing field. People who sell their beloved businesses console themselves by saying, “Now I not have ‘fuck-you’ money.  If I don’t like what anyone is saying to me I can say ‘fuck-you’.”

That takes care of the boss.

Police? OJ showed what money does when the police get in a pissing contest with you. No money? It could get nasty.

Teacher? In a private school they are always concerned about a parent taking little paycheck out of the class. If the school is super prestigious it will not be moved by your implicit threat to dis-enroll little Johnny, you need to apply the carrot – that you are thinking of endowing a teaching chair, but there is this one little problem.

Doctor’s office disrespect?  Come on. There is concierge medicine available for a (hefty) price.

Money is a great incentive, and if you have it you can incentivise many people and institutions around you

Worldwide Growth is Stagnating, and Everyone has a Theory.

The central banks of the world are explaining worldwide economic stagnation on insufficient aggregate demand. For some reason people do not have enough money to buy things and drive the economy, or people are frightened and choose to save instead of consume.

Their solution is lower interest rates, or negative interest rates, to make more money available, discourage saving, encourage borrowing and increase demand.

Other academics say that we need an engine of growth, in the 1970 it was a computer revolution that was followed by innovation in networking (the Internet), than globalization and liberalization of China, then sophisticated financialization of assets. Now we are out of new prods to growth.

I would say it is plainly evident that growth naturally occurs. It is the natural state of free people if they have relatively low corruption, rule of law, private property and contract. The United States from 1800 to 1900 moved from agrarian ex-colony to  one of the most powerful and largest economies in the world with no policy directing growth, no central bank, no business incentives, no master plan. In fact I would say there was no national goal to grow the economy or become a world economic power at all. It was simply free individuals trying to better their lot that made things better for everyone and made a powerful economy.

So why the stagnation today? Obviously the conditions for people to better their lot have deteriorated.

There is more official corruption. There is less incentive to better you lot and invest in producing something if you are not secure in enjoying the results of your efforts.

The rule of law is being eroded. When I was in law school, if the professor wrote a hypothetical on the exam, there was basically a correct answer. Common law develops by actual cases coming before courts and the decision made in each case becomes the rule for future similar cases. One could tell objectively what a future set of facts should result in given knowledge of the prior cases.

Only in Constitutional Law as that not true. In Con Law there were not Rules you could outline from the cases, there were balancing tests. The Court instructed future judges to balance, for instance the value of the category of speech against the societal costs. What would they weigh “value of speech,” how would they weigh “societal costs?”

Compare and contrast to the rule from Regina v. Dudly and Stevens. Four ship wrecked sailors facing starvation kill and eat one so that the others could live. After an improbable rescue, murder charges are brought. The defense is necessity. If they had not killed one sailor all four would have perished. The rule of the case: necessity does not justify killing. Verdict, Murder. The only things that justifies taking the life of another is self-defense. Ironically if Richard Parker (the boy killed by Dudley and Stevens) had turned the knife on them and killed them both he might have been acquitted of murder. One thing you have to glean from this case is application of a rule without respect to emotional considerations. The seamen endured 28 days in an open boat thousands of miles from land with no hope of rescue. The boy Parker was weakest and likely to die first anyway. The court that condemned Dudley and Stevens even noted “Other details yet more harrowing, facts still more loathsome and appalling, were presented to the jury, and are to be found recorded in my learned Brother’s notes.”  There was no balancing of the interests of Dudley and Stevens against the interests of Parker. There was no subjective holistic attempt to provide cosmic justice. There was a rule of law, necessity does not justify murder. Anyone could discern it and apply it. You could tell if the court was correct or not.

As a matter of fact, there was an institution capable of weighing the intangible relative factors outside of facts the law was able to consider. The Queen of England pardoned Dudly and Stevens.

 

Alt-Right is Asian and Jew Supremacist

Contrary to official distortion, the Alt-Right ≠ White Supremacist.  As a matter of fact, from my research it appears the Alt-Right = Asian and Jewish Supremacy.

The salient feature of Alt-Right belief appears to be that IQ tests measure something real, and that something has a high correlation with success in most fields, probably even in living a successful life itself.

Of course some consequences of that belief are troubling to the Left and to the establishment. The establishment says that all groups would do equally well if there were a level playing field. Under that view, if a racial or gender identifiable group does less well than other groups it cannot be due to differences in average abilities but must be due to ugly acts of the majority peoples.  These ugly acts unjustly hold down people who deserve more success.

If IQ were a measure of something real and consequential, and if the distribution of high IQ in different groups were unequal on average, than there is an entirely different explanation for  the different outcomes. Suddenly the majority is not necessarily collectively ugly and unjust.

I’m pretty sure it is established fact that Ashkenazi Jews  and North Eastern Asians as  groups have average IQ test scores above those of other racial/ethnic groups.  So if you want to talk about which race/ethnic groups an adherent of the Alt-Right would expect to excel in a fair contest, it would be Asians and Jews.

Noted With Pleasure

Every so often I come across a turn of phrase on the Internet which I really enjoy. So I thought I would post about some of them.

First we have Patrick J. Buchanan:

 

In the 19th century, power meant control of the means of production; today, power lies in control of the means of communication.

Along the same line, Mencius Moldbug:

All decent, reasonable men are horrified by the idea that the government might control the press.

None of them seem concerned at all that the press might control the government.

Of course the present state of affairs where the megaphone controls the people with guns and handcuffs is strange. Probably it is due to some old institutions functioning well enough to preserve democracy combined with other institutions decaying enough to bring on unlimited government power. With so much power at stake it seems almost capricious to have the vote determine who wields it.  Almost like having a dice roll determine who will be absolute dictator.

This state of affairs cannot continue long. The power is too great an attraction.  There are now no limits on the federal government.

The media, or press, presently have a large amount of power, but very shortly I expect “rougher elements” will have more say, and the press will become an instrument of propaganda for whomever runs the government.

The United States Federal Government is not Broke.

I used to be upset about the amount of money the United States Government (USG) is borrowing, and promising to pay in the future. National Debt is about $20 Trillion. Add unfunded liabilities, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the total may be $126 trillion.

Since the entire output of our nation, all business, everything is about $18 trillion per year, we seem to be in deep dodo.  Many commentators say that default or massive inflation to inflate away the debt is inevitable.

Its like an individual having debt 7 times his annual income.  If you income was $ 200,000 pa, you debt would be $ 1.4 million dollars! Holey Mackerel.

Yet I know lots of people who have under $500 thousand pa income and a $2 million house (with a $2 million mortgage).

The issue is, they have very large debt, but they have very large assets. Most homeowners with massive debt only get in trouble if the value of their real estate assets takes a dive, then in essence they then have massive debt and little assets.

Lots of countries with lots of debt have very little in value of assets. The government of Greece has some really nice islands that they would be loath to sell. Otherwise the purchasing and debt service power of Greece is mainly its ability to tax its citizens.  You can’t get blood from a stone. They are in the situation the USG would be with $126 trillion obligations and a $18 trillion economy to skim money off of. You ain’t going to get anywhere  for decades.

The USG, however, has lots of assets.  It has the largest gold reserves of any nation by far. Unfortunately all the gold in Ft. Knox is worth less than a half of one trillion dollars. A drop.

The USG is a big landowner: The Federal Government owns nearly 650 million acres of land – almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States. What so you think 30% of the land in the USA is worth if sold at auction?

The USG ownes about $128 trillion in energy resources.

 

 

Thank Goodness The Government is Helping us Afford Housing, Education and Health Care.

The Government has many programs to help us acquire affordable housing, affordable health care and affordable higher education.

Thank goodness.

Think how painfully expensive these things would be if we let the free market deliver them, like we pretty much do with food, household consumables, clothing, shoes, transportation, electronics and energy.

What thirty year old has not run up $ 50,000 of debt to feed, house and clothe themselves for the last four or five years? You know, like the debt they had to run up in order to get a undergraduate degree and be taken seriously in the job market.

Who does not rage over their weekly grocery bill like they do over the payroll deductions and the unaffordable co-pays for health insurance  that recently appeared?

Who is not driven to despair each time an article of clothing or an automobile wears out and they need to buy a new one? Like they are when they discover that it is time to buy a house and a house in a safe neighborhood with decent schools is beyond their reach. Not a luxurious house, just in a safe neighborhood with decent schools.

What’s that? You say food, clothing, transportation, electronics and energy are not very expensive relative to our paychecks. Exactly.

In 1976 it took 3.5 times the average income to buy a house. In 2012 it took 5.0 times the average income to buy a house. Good work.