The Worth Of Man: A Slightly Early Rumination

By way of the esteemed David De Gerolamo, I've just encountered a brief but remarkable essay. I'll quote the intro on the condition that you read the rest in its entirety:

Growing up, I heard lots of complaints from parents and teachers about children being conceited, proud, and arrogant. Looking back, it seems to me that most of these complaints were related to a failure to obey. We did have one or two kids who were arrogant jerks, but the rest of us received the same comments they did.

But whatever motivated the adults of my youth, they were mostly wrong -- it's not our overvaluation of ourselves that is the real problem; it's our undervaluation.

Here is a passage from G.K. Chesterton's The Defendant that makes this argument:

There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility.

Go finish it; I'll wait right here.

---

Back so soon? My, my. What did you think, Gentle Reader? I'd especially like to hear from those of you who received conventional Jewish or Christian upbringings. Does this comport or clash with your understanding of the generally noncontroversial virtue of humility?

If my experiences were representative of the Baby Boom, the great majority of us were systematically taught to "undervalue ourselves." It was the prevalent practice in those years that children raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition were continually admonished against taking pride in their abilities and achievements, cautioned against being confident of their capacity to meet challenges, and chastised for "having a big head."

Yet I remember quite clearly that my parents had no problems with self-undervaluation. If anything, they thought more of their abilities and achievements than those things properly deserved. Nor were they exceptional in that regard. American adults from the "greatest generation" carried themselves with pride. They'd been endlessly lauded for all they'd done, particularly their conquests of the Great Depression and America's enemies in World War II.

The contrast seems even starker today than it did back then. I can't help but wonder whether they sensed it as clearly as I did. Whether they received the same conditioning in self-abasement as children, I cannot say with certainty, but let's imagine that it was so. How does one "graduate" from such a "weird and horrible humility" to a properly adult, confident stature? Is it a normal progression for a healthy mind? Most critical of all, how does it bear on our understanding of ourselves as a species and our appreciation of genuine humility?

Ponder that while I fetch a fresh cup of coffee.

---

Many of "our problems" derive from a reluctance to discriminate.

Oops! I used a naughty word, didn't I? "Discrimination" is the cardinal sin of the Twenty-First Century, right? We're all supposed to be exactly the same, precious little snowflakes, of absolutely equal worth yet somehow unique. That this bunch is better at something than that one, or that those folks over there really shouldn't be trusted, are absolutely inadmissible observations in contemporary society...even when they're correct in all particulars.

There are substantial differences among us: between any two arbitrarily selected individuals, and between any two arbitrarily defined groups. You don't even have to look hard to see them. Realism about the variety of Man would seem to follow naturally. Yet hearken to essayist Paul Rosenberg:

We are, since childhood, trained to view ourselves as dangerous creatures, teetering on the edge of error and harm....Bear in mind that I’m not saying all humans are good. Clearly, some of them are violent and vile. But these are a small minority, and we should not lump normal people in with them.

Whatever the size of that minority, once it has been identified and classified, why would anyone deem it just to "lump normal people in with them" -- ?

But that's the crux, you see. We're not allowed to identify a subgroup of Mankind as dangerous or destructive, while exempting the rest of us. We're required to maintain the myth of the Uniform Aggregate: that every last one of us might prove violent, or untrustworthy, or unfaithful at any instant. Because without that myth, the power structures that lord it over us will topple:

Whenever it is that a significant number of people develop healthy psyches, modern systems of rulership, including "law and order," will fail. These systems assume that they will always enjoy instant and unreasoned obedience.

Of course, there are assumptions built into the inverse posture as well:

• That without legislatures and their law, we will know right from wrong.
• That without rulers, men will act on their own to establish justice as appropriate.
• That unruled men's justice will be superior to that of conventional "systems of rulerhip."

Yes, they're assumptions. And yes, recorded history, which is largely about the deeds of governments, tends to ignore the record of Mankind's few unruled societies. But if we start from the accumulated horrors that attach to the record of the State, it seems to me that there is no reason to prefer the Statist assumption -- that men must be ruled by an authority with sole jurisdiction and an overwhelming command of coercive force -- over that of freedom.

But it must begin with the willingness to discriminate -- and to draw the appropriate conclusions.

---

A favorite poem:

The Stranger within my gate,
    He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk--
    I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
     But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
    They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
    They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
    When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
     He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control--
    What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
    Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
    Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
    And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
    They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
    And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf--
    And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
    By bitter bread and wine.

[Rudyard Kipling]

Kipling was, of course, referring to the pressure for the mass admission of persons from the colonies of the far-flung British Empire to England itself. Those who argued for such a policy were relatively few in Kipling's day, but in the end they proved quite persuasive, as the current condition of the United Kingdom makes plain. Yet the central theme of The Stranger is not race or place of origin but trust: one's willingness to repose confidence in the words of others and in their willingness and ability to fulfill the commitments they make.

Benjamin M. Anderson, one of the greatest financial analysts of the first half of the Twentieth Century, wrote in his magnum opus:

There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. -- Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914 -- 1946

Anderson, a child of Nineteenth Century America, was appalled by what he saw from our federal government in his adult years. He had reason to believe that it should and could behave far better, especially with regard to the economic activities of American citizens and their voluntary associations. But the governmental experiences of Nineteenth-Century Americans were incredibly far from the human norm. The contrast they made with the great mass of human history is so stark as to be white against black.

If we agree to omit consideration of the federal government from roughly 1876 through 1912, the entirety of recorded history screams a single unadulterated message:

The State cannot be trusted.

Which is why those who seek to become the masters of the State encourage us to distrust one another.

---

Few Americans would claim to want power for themselves. However, the moral and spiritual degeneration of the century past has been so dramatic that many of us -- perhaps a majority -- want power to "do something," usually with the aim of "solving a problem."

Here's where the inculcated perversion of the virtue of humility bares its teeth, for it is impossible, in one's heart of hearts, to think oneself a lowly or unworthy creature. Our innermost selves know better, for as Rosenberg tells us, the Bible itself says so:

I [God] have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. [Psalms 82:6]

But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. [Hebrews 2:6-8]

It is perhaps the most "obvious" [cf. "overlooked"] feature of the Bible that it seldom tells us anything about ourselves that we couldn't have figured out for ourselves. This bit of revelation is no exception.

If I am an ace, but you "should" be humble, it follows that what I think should be preferred to what you think, regardless of the subject. Therefore I should be permitted to dictate to you -- and if my "humility" requires that an intermediary enforce my will upon you, well, that's what intermediaries are for, right?

The State never had it so good.

---

We come at last to the elucidation of humility as it's properly understood: the grasp that would free us from so much that is evil and misdirected in our time. On this subject, I refer, once again, to the great Clive Staples Lewis, through his inverse, that experienced expositor of evil, the demon Screwtape:

You [Screwtape's "nephew," the demon Wormword] must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.

To anticipate the Enemy's strategy, we must consider His aims. The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the, fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.

Though we are equals nowhere else, we are all absolutely equal in the sight of the Supreme Judge, He who holds the only unreviewable and irrefutable jurisdiction: God. The root word of humility is humus: soil, the dust from which our flesh arises and to which it will some day return. In that light, what privilege of lording it over you should any other creature formed of clay possess? No matter how many other clay-footed friends he can muster behind him?

Humility thus understood makes room for just pride: pride in one's abilities and achievements that nevertheless respects the abilities and recognizes the achievements of others. It's infinitely distant from the self-abasement we're bludgeoned into pretending from childhood onward:

    A large, raggedly circular clearing took her by surprise. At the center stood a great oak, an enormous tree more than a hundred feet tall and at least five feet through the trunk. The trees that formed the perimeter of the clearing were pines and firs of unusual height: a fitting honor guard for the creature at the center of the circle.
    She went to the great oak and touched it gingerly. It had to be several centuries old, perhaps a thousand years or more. Louis had told her that trees of such caliber were rare, because they grew so slowly. To achieve such dimensions and yet endure against the elements and the pull of the Earth required that their annual increments of height and girth be tiny, such that their growth could only be perceived over a span of decades.
    I bet it's not as old as Malcolm.
    She chuckled to herself. Too long a baseline cheapened the glories of the world. No man but Malcolm could dim the august majesty of this being. Malcolm himself would agree. Yet she knew what else he would say.
    It has no eyes, or ears, or heart or brain. It has endured the years, but it has not witnessed them, let alone affected them. You say it is beautiful, and awe-inspiring, but the beauty is in your appreciation, and the awe is in your heart. It is Man's heart and mind that create beauty and awe. Nothing else in all the world can do it. Nowhere is there anything as great as Man.

[From On Broken Wings]

It also makes room for freedom.

May God bless and keep you all.

The Vacuum Part 2: Benign Or Malign?

"When all the errors are in the bank's favor, you can be forgiven for thinking there's more than sloppy arithmetic at work." -- Me.

I didn't originally intend a follow-up to the previous piece, but some of the comments have been priceless, and the "private" email that invariably outweighs them has urged me to continue. Why, you'd think I might have accidentally illuminated some heretofore undiscovered truth about human nature or something!

Charles Murray pointed this out in his classic Losing Ground:

"People respond to incentives and disincentives. Sticks and carrots work."

When America's foremost social analyst says something that pithy, people should pay attention -- especially as it crosscuts the "received wisdom" of our political class. And they did, Gentle Reader, they did. But when that unsurpassed fount of wisdom Fran Porretto follows with something like this:

"An agreement to sell one's labor is the same as an agreement to sell anything else: the good to be delivered and the payment for it must both be well defined."

...the sky trembles, the Earth moves, the angels weep...and the horde determined to differ with me rushes forward to quarrel, quibble, and declare all manner of exceptions.

I don't mind disagreement, as long as everyone respects the rules of polite argument. Some of my emailers didn't, as you can probably imagine, and as Liberty's Torch is a family-friendly website...well, most of the time, anyway...I shall refrain from elucidating further. But one particular thread that ran through quite a lot of the emails was the assertion that anyone hostile to making working arrangements more flexible must hate business or lack a decent work ethic. With that, I must take serious exception -- serious enough to merit another essay.

---

The joint-stock corporation was originally conceived as a way of amassing capital for a new venture. In that regard it was quite successful. However, that mission was quickly encrusted with others that were, to be gentle about it, less constructive. Today I'm uncertain that the "traditional" corporation, with its paired command and control structures of a managerial hierarchy and a Board of Directors, will survive more than a few decades longer.

The most controversial of all the accretions to the corporate idea was and remains that of limited liability. Stripped to essentials, limited liability treats the corporation as a person in its own right, whose responsibilities may not be offloaded onto uninvolved others. This concept protects individual shareholders from being held liable for damages caused by employees and agents of the corporation. Only the assets of the corporation may be garnished to pay for such damages.

The idea seemed quite reasonable at first. After all, a shareholder typically stands at some remove from corporate operations, interested only in getting a return on his money. He might not have the faintest idea what agents of the corporation are doing. However, the Law of Unintended Consequences was bound to have its say.

The first obviously negative consequences -- the use of limited liability to shield a wrongdoer from the consequences of his deeds -- are difficult to place in time. However, they evoked sharp legal responses: corporate officers, plus persons whose service to the corporation involves fiduciary responsibilities (e.g., lawyers and accountants) were excluded from the limited-liability shield. The change in incentives elicited a swelling of middle management's ranks, to bury ever more decision making below the corporate-officer level so that shenanigans could be plausibly denied. "Shell corporations" and "interlocking directorates" further complicated the picture. As litigiousness by and toward corporations increased, legislatures anxious for clear legal targets enacted "whistleblower laws" intended to protect non-officer employees from retaliation for having reported wrongdoing by their superiors.

But laws can only have such consequences as people's knowledge of the law and faith in its enforcement will sustain. A law that's generally unknown, that's obscure of import, that cannot be invoked for contextual reasons, or that's enforceable only at the discretion of an indifferent or biased authority, will fail of its purpose at best or be turned against its devisers' intentions at worst. This is especially the case as regards enactments intended to elicit candid testimony about wrongdoing behind a corporate facade.

Worse yet is the impact of the SNAFU Principle:

Shea and Wilson [Illuminatus!, 1975] defined an illuminating notion called the SNAFU Principle, which they stated as “communication is only possible among equals.” The basic idea is simple: when two people do not perceive one another as equals, they will slant their communications — unconsciously and without any particular volition — to protect themselves in that disparate relationship....

Wilson and Shea were both writers, and basically literary people; their summary is literate and verbal. But, being a computer scientist and at least somewhat literate in signal theory and information theory, it struck me that the SNAFU Principle wasn’t sufficiently precisely stated. It should be restated as followed:

“In any social hierarchy, the noise added to a communication between individuals in that hierarchy is directly proportional to the distance between them, and the factor of proportionality will be proportional to the perceived risk to them.”

In a corporate-employment setting, the SNAFU Principle functions bidirectionally. Not only will lower-level employees shade the truth when reporting to their superiors; those superiors will condition what they tell lower-level employees out of consciousness of possible hazards to themselves. This effect arises directly from the recognition that inside a corporate hierarchy, power is a two-way street. Yes, the superior has overt power over his subordinate, usually through assignment of responsibilities, salary reviews, and the power to fire. But corporation law as it stands today gives the subordinate power over his superior as well: through the "whistleblower laws," and through the effects of imputation upon corporate well-being.

The result is a systematic bias -- a degradation -- of communication, command, and control that often suits upper corporate management very, very well. It drives the relocation of as much responsibility for decision making as possible to levels in the hierarchy where power-deadlocks can effectively silence all parties concerned.

---

One of the functions of a Board of Directors -- in many analysts' view, the central one -- is protecting the stockholders against the effects of wrongdoing by the officers and agents of the corporation. The most obvious hazard is, of course, stockholders' potential loss of their invested principal. However, as enactments multiply that allow the penetration of stockholders' limited-liability shield, the protection of stockholders' private, uninvested assets becomes ever more important.

The powers of a Board of Directors will be set forth in the company's by-laws. Some such boards will have very narrow powers, limited to decreeing dividends and appointing or removing the chief executive officer. Others will have broader scope. But except for those made up of corporate officers themselves -- a dubious and highly dispreferred arrangement -- all boards have limited knowledge of the internal workings of the corporation, usually conveyed by monthly or quarterly reports. Here again, the SNAFU Principle comes into play.

Chief executive officers are anxious to perpetuate their tenures. Those who report to them are fully aware of the CEO's incentive structure, and will seek to propitiate him by serving it. To the extent possible, bad news traveling "up" the hierarchy will be filtered out, diluted, or qualified to reduce the probability that those required to report it will be made to suffer for it. The CEO will qualify or suppress whatever remains to the extent required to keep his Board of Directors from summarily replacing him. However, at every stop along the way, he who receives bad news will make it known to those who reported it that "you should never report a problem without having a solution already in hand." No one likes to be forced to deceive those who hold his fortunes in their hands; the risk of being found out is never zero and the consequences can be dire.

This creates an incentive that drives management to push the perceived responsibility for decisions that embed a degree of risk -- essentially all decisions of consequence -- ever downward toward persons whose positions effectively prevent them from being identified or interrogated. The more layers of management stand between the CEO and the line workers, the easier and more effective this is. However, perceived responsibility is not necessarily authentic responsibility. Authentic responsibility must be mated to authentic authority over the decisions for which one will be held responsible -- and managers are always reluctant to surrender authority.

How much duplicity occurs in the corporate environment will depend on the ethical soundness of those who populate it. That, of course, will be conditioned by the ethical soundness of the population from which corporate employment is drawn. Time was, the American people being the most ethical of all the peoples of the world, we could count on that soundness being very sound, and therefore on deceit being rare and generally easy to remedy.

Time was.

---

The enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, “their lives made bitter with hard bondage,” were a bickering, back-biting lot. Moses had to give them a promised land before he could join them together. -- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Sad as it is to accept, people under pressure will more often serve their personal material interests than obey their moral-ethical conditioning. Contemporary corporate employment places the employee under a kind and degree of pressure unknown to previous generations of Americans. This pressure is exacerbated by those political trends -- e.g., rising taxation; rampant inflation of the currency; regulatory authorities that obey no limits and recognize no regions of personal property or privacy -- that endanger the material well-being of Americans generally.

Long ago, as part of a story, I wrote:

    Everyone who ever works for a sizable company eventually faces an ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas are created by middle managers; a company whose top bosses were in direct contact with the peones and knew what they were doing could never have one.

    There’s really only one ethical dilemma for an employee: a middle manager tempts you to suppress something you know you ought to broadcast. He’s invariably trying to advance at the expense of his equals in the organization. Deny him, and he’ll vow revenge. Accede to him, and he’ll own your soul.

    The middle manager is indispensable to the dilemma because you can’t tempt yourself. If you have ethics, then you’ll know what’s right and what’s wrong. If you don’t, then you’re not a man; you’re vermin, and you ought to be crushed.

The protagonist of that story was an unusually clear-eyed young woman. Yet in retrospect, her view fails to account for the general deterioration of ethical conduct in our era of secularism and moral relativism. These days, managers at any level can and will impose ethical dilemmas directly on their subordinates whenever it suits their interests. He whose livelihood depends on corporate employment is vulnerable at every instant of his working life.

Combine that with the "progressive" trend toward "flexible working arrangements" in which one can never be sure when one is "off the clock" -- author and occasional commenter Joseph P. Martino captured this as "Am I working at home or living at the office?" -- and the picture becomes too muddy for the typical working stiff to be certain of anything.

There are still corporations whose mamagements' conduct consistently conforms to Judeo-Christian ethical constraints, but fewer than before. As relativistic moral-ethical rot progresses through our society -- and really, Gentle Reader, what influences are poised to halt it? -- these will dwindle still further. The implications for traditional wage employment are grave.

Food for thought.

The Vacuum: A Monitory Statement

The political stuff has turned monochromatic. Yes, it's all deadly, but it's also become deadly boring, so perhaps you'll excuse me for punctuating it with a rant about a long-time irritation of mine.

We begin with a few quotes from an unforgivably ingenuous article about "work-life balance:"

In theory, the concept of “work-life balance” seems to make sense – splitting your days and weeks between a collaborative and connected working life while also enjoying personal activities and leisure time with friends, family, pursuing hobbies, exercise or just watching TV....

But what if everything you thought you knew about work-life balance was a myth? Alexander Kjerulf, founder of Woohoo, and an international thought leader and author on topics relating to happiness at work, says he believes “work-life balance” as it's traditionally defined doesn't actually exist anymore....

"The modern concept of work-life balance is focused on offering employees the flexibility to work anywhere, anytime -- leaving fewer fixed working hours and more project-driven or service-level deadlines and opportunities for ongoing streams of innovation and communication between team members," [managing partner of AgreeYa Solutions Ajay] Kaul says.

The emergence of cloud-based IT infrastructure and the prevalence of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies now allows employees to work from home or remotely and seamlessly continue collaborative efforts with colleagues and team leaders, Kaul says.

"With companies of all sizes becoming more dynamic, flexible and accommodating in their use of enterprise social collaboration tools and solutions and BYOD, the 'mobility effect' will continue to cause an overlap of the workforce’s professional and personal lives," Kaul says.

Soak yourself in that for a minute or two, Gentle Reader. Let it distill itself within you. Let its essence s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y pervade your brain. What do you think these "thought leaders" are really trying to say -- without saying it, of course?

In the future they're steering toward, you'll be "on the clock" 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Oh, they'd protest to the skies that that's nowhere near what they mean. They're offering you freedom! You could choose your own hours, decide for yourself when to work and when to play, without being tied to the Procrustean bed of a standard work day and work week. Do you feel like going on a wine-tasting this Tuesday instead of dealing with the pile of crap in the in-box? Or perhaps you'd rather keep watching the latest episode of 24 than answer your insistently ringing company-issued "emergencies-only" cell phone? No problem! Our future will be all about flexibility: your unchallenged right to do as you damned well please at any instant of the day!

Not a chance, Gentle Reader. As you'd discover the very first time you declined to answer that cell phone while straining to relieve yourself of a particularly stubborn turd.

---

The "mobile worker / flexible workday" canard that article promotes isn't a boon; it's a trap. It would allow management to view your entire existence as being at their disposal. They would regard your in-office hours as being written in the stars, theirs by divine right, with no need to appreciate you for them, nor for the contributions to the company you make during them. Their invocations of your time and attention when you're not in the office would become the balance sheet upon which you'd really be evaluated. Your entire career would depend upon being immediately and unconditionally available for whatever they might choose to ask of you.

I've been there. It brought about the one and only occasion on which I've offered violence to a supervisor. (Believe me, he had it coming and a lot worse.)

The hell of it is, this isn't an entirely new idea. Rather, it's the culmination of a long trend. Telecommuting, which does provide certain advantages to the employee to whom it's available, is just the least part of the puzzle.

The seed idea is that of the salaried / exempt or "white collar" corporate employee.

About half of all office workers in these United States are salaried / exempt. That means:

• Your salary is fixed at a certain amount until management decides to review and adjust it;
• As an exempt employee, it's up to your employer whether to pay you for your overtime;
• As an exempt employee, you need not be paid an elevated rate for overtime or "off-shift" work.

In my field, software engineering, overtime pay is a rare exception. Inasmuch as most software engineers voluntarily work more than the statutory 40 hours per week, it would seem that their employers are getting the better of the bargain. Sometimes that actually is the case. However, the incentives are bad both for management and for the engineering labor force. Management comes to rely upon the availability of overtime at no cost, while the engineer steadily comes to resent management's assumption that no hour of his life belongs exclusively to him.

Adding overtime pay to the equation doesn't improve matters. Suddenly quite a lot of salaried / exempt employees will absolutely "need" that overtime to complete their "urgent" projects before their deadlines. Management will, of course, be dismayed at the increment to its costs, and will fix a limit to the practice -- which will elicit a slowdown with which any union member would be quite familiar.

Absent a rigid insistence on a 40-hour work week that neither side has the right to violate, there is no solution. The "mobile worker / flexible workday" notion, however benignly it might have begun, is an attempt to rupture that bargain irreparably.

---

It can be hard to insist on a rigid work week, especially when times are tough and there are more willing and able workers than there are jobs. That doesn't reduce the importance of the bargain one iota.

About twenty years ago, I went on an interview at a company about which I knew little. (No, I didn't need a job at the time; it was simply my policy not to turn down an interview, especially one to which I'd been invited without my solicitation.) The interviewer was a typical middle manager who hadn't been hands-on for some years, if ever. He spoke glowingly (of course) about the company's plans and prospects, and fetchingly (of course) about the position he had in mind for me. It took him longer than usual to reach the point I'd been anticipating, which was (of course) that "our engineers are available to our customers at a moment's notice, no matter the day or the time."

"Oh!" I said. "I didn't know this was a field service position." I stood. "In that case, I'm not interested, but thanks for thinking of me."

He became alarmed. (Probably never had a really big fish spit out the hook before.) "No, please don't misunderstand me! You'd be running our entire research and development effort. It's just that our market window is so tight that all of us must be immediately responsive to any contingency."

I smiled. "That's a pity. It means that you're more likely than not to miss that window. If [the company's] fortunes are that precarious, I'm only available on a consulting basis. I charge $250 for every hour or part of an hour."

His look of chagrin was classic. "But this is a permanent position, and the career possibilities..."

"Sorry," I said. "If you intend to pay me a salary, I intend to work 40 hours a week for it." I extended my hand, and he took it numbly. "From what you've said I'm really not the man you want, but thanks for thinking of me."

This is a lot easier if you're financially secure and confident of your value. Nevertheless, it's at the core of my understanding of an employment relationship:

An agreement to sell one's labor is the same as an agreement to sell anything else: the good to be delivered and the payment for it must both be well defined.

That definition becomes impossible if your "workday" can be altered arbitrarily by your management and your "workplace" is wherever you happen to be at the moment. Your whole life -- possibly the lives of your spouse and children as well -- will be sucked into the vacuum that results.

Be tough about it. Give an honest day's work for your day's pay, but nothing more. Take it from someone who's looked into the abyss. It's not a pretty sight.

The Naked Face Of Evil

Courtesy of Maetenloch at Ace of Spades HQ comes the link to the most despicable, monstrously evil piece of opinion writing I've read in many years:

They’re huge, they’re ruthless, and they touch every aspect of our daily lives. Corporations like Amazon and Google keep expanding their reach and their power. Despite a history of abuses, so far the Justice Department has declined to take antitrust actions against them. But there’s another solution.

Is it time to manage and regulate these companies as public utilities?...

They were created with publicly funded technologies, and prospered as the result of indulgent policies and lax oversight. They’ve achieved monopoly or near-monopoly status, are spying on us to an extent that’s unprecedented in human history, and have the potential to alter each and every one of our economic, political, social and cultural transactions.

Please read the whole thing...preferably on an empty stomach. From first to last it's a tissue of lies, baseless contentions, and expressions of ravening envy. And it is a perfect illustration of the core agenda of the Left: to ensure that nothing that actually works shall be left in the hands of those who created it.

---

The history of governments' invasions of enterprise is a record of unparalleled, undiluted failure. The reasons should not baffle anyone with a sense for how people respond to incentives and penalties. Milton Friedman boiled it down to a 2x2 matrix:

	The Benefit Will Accrue To Me	The Benefit Will Accrue To Others
The Cost Will Be Borne By Me	I	II
The Cost Will Be Borne By Others	III	IV

The unwisdom of government as a "provider of goods and services" really becomes quite simple when one reduces the question to incentives and their absence:

• When Smith is spending his own money on himself (I), he strains to optimize both the cost of what he buys and the quality of the thing purchased.
• When Smith is spending his money on something for someone else (II), he'll still try to keep the cost down, but the quality of the purchase won't much concern him.
• When Smith is spending on something for himself, but with someone else's money ( III), he'll still be interested in a quality purchase, but the minimization of cost will no longer concern him.
• And when Smith is spending someone else's money on something for someone else (IV), neither cost nor quality will concern him.

An enterprise "owned" by government is a Type IV enterprise. Those who operate it are providing something to persons other than themselves, using tax revenues or fees coerced out of private citizens. They cannot profit -- legally, at least -- from doing it economically or well. Indeed, in the usual case there's more gain to be had from doing it poorly. After all, it's always the failing projects and the overrun budgets that get the biggest increases in staffing and funding, isn't it?

But note! Governments very seldom seek to take over a business that's operating at a loss. They target profitable companies that are appreciably more popular than their competitors. The usual cry is "monopoly" or "exploitation," even when the targeted company has a number of competitors -- Amazon has thousands of them -- or provides its services for free, as does Google. When a government seizes such a concern, it almost immediately runs it onto the rocks, providing ever poorer goods or services at an ever higher end-purchaser cost, in obedience to the incentive structure outlined above. Examples are innumerable.

Given that the advocates of "nationalizing" this or that are seldom deaf-blind idiots who can't grasp the logic above, they must have some other end in view than improving the quality or cost of whatever they seek to seize. And they do, Gentle Reader, they do.

---

I have no previous acquaintance with Richard Eskow, the author of that atrociously evil article above, but the tag line at the end makes him "a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future," a hard-left "progressive" advocacy group. We may take it as written that his covert aim is the elimination of private enterprise: the overarching agenda of all "progressive" activists and organizations since the word first entered our political lexicon.

"Progressives" -- semi-closeted totalitarian social-fascists -- are animated by envy and power lust. Joseph Sobran and Ayn Rand had a common definition for envy, the one and only sin God forbade in the Ten Commandments: hatred of the good for being the good. Virtually none of them are capable of producing a good or service that others would willingly purchase. Virtually none of them have any substantive achievements of any sort. (No, I don't regard the acquisition of an Ivy League degree in "political science," "social policy," "journalism," or "communications" as a substantive achievement.) And virtually none of them, if pressed with maximum force, could justify the treatment of any enterprise as something that "should belong to 'the people'" -- and that includes all the various "nationalized" and "municipalized" enterprises we endure today.

I used the word justify for a reason. To justify something is to establish that it accords with the principles of justice: that is, with right and wrong as they're encoded in our fundamental laws. Eskow is so far from justifying the nationalization of Amazon and Google that he has to resort to lie after lie even to make a start on it -- the assertion that the development of broadband Internet access was "publicly funded" is only the most risible -- and to what purported end? To reduce Amazon's irreducibly thin profit margin? To make Google's services cheaper than free? Or might he have it in mind to use the information-gathering powers of those giants of the World Wide Web, which he excoriates for "spying on us" -- the term "progressives" invariably substitute for "market research" -- for his preferred political purposes?

Given that the "progressive" pole star is unbounded and irresistible power over all that exists, regardless of the "justification," which would you prefer to know about your purchasing patterns? Your tastes in entertainment? Your affiliations with other online groups and advocacy sites? Your Web-enabled vices, whatever they might be? Amazon and Google, or Richard Eskow and the Campaign for America's Future?

Think it over.

War Over The Documents

Time was, people could both read plain English and could recognize (and would jeer aside) an attempt to distort it. But time was, people were both better educated and less disgusted with politics than they are today.

A quick question for you, Gentle Reader: In Constitutionally enumerating and separating the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government, what purpose or purposes were the Founding Fathers trying to serve?

The readers of Liberty's Torch are bright enough and erudite enough to have no trouble with that one. But there are some supposedly smart people writing for major periodicals that would contradict you:

In the May issue of the Boston University Law Review, Joseph R. Fishkin and William E. Forbath of the University of Texas School of Law show that at key turning points in our history (the Jacksonian era, the Populist and Progressive moments and the New Deal), opponents of rising inequality made strong arguments “that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our republican form of government — without constitutional restraints against oligarchy and a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone.”

Their article is called “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” though Forbath told me that he and Fishkin may give the book they’re writing on the topic the more upbeat title “The Constitution of Opportunity.” Their view is that by empowering the wealthy in our political system, Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United directly contradict the Constitution’s central commitment to shared self-rule.

“Extreme concentrations of economic and political power undermine equal opportunity and equal citizenship,” they write. “In this way, oligarchy is incompatible with, and a threat to, the American constitutional scheme.”...

The idea of a Constitution of Opportunity is both refreshing and relevant. For too long, progressives have allowed conservatives to monopolize claims of fealty to our unifying national document. In fact, those who would battle rising economic inequalities to create a robust middle class should insist that it’s they who are most loyal to the Constitution’s core purpose. Broadly shared well-being is essential to the framers’ promise that “We the people” will be the stewards of our government.

Note the Leftist shibboleths in that passage: "inequality," "oligarchy," "concentrations of economic and political power." These will appear in virtually any tirade that emanates from the Left. Marx was handy with them. So was Lenin. Yet of this you may be very sure: E. J. Dionne has absolutely no objection to any of those things...as long as they're in the hands of people whose views he approves.

"Inequality" has been the goal of every Leftist policy advanced since Woodrow Wilson. the idea is to make an increasing fraction of Americans beholden to the federal government for their material sustenance...if possible, all the way down to food, clothing, and shelter. "Oligarchy" is what we have now: absolute power by a small group, concentrated in Washington D.C., over all Americans and all American enterprise. As for "concentrations of economic and political power," Dionne himself should have recognized that as a belly-laugher. Which is the richest district per capita in these United States? What is the average net worth of a United States Senator? And who has done more to concentrate political power in a single man's hands than Barack Hussein Obama?

Yet Dionne claims the notion of a "Constitution of Opportunity" -- the idea that the federal government exists to create prosperity by positive action rather than to protect the rights of the citizenry -- is more compatible with the Founders' vision than the conservative view of it as a bill of limitations on the mandarins in Washington. Well, he's been spouting this sort of nonsense for a long time now. I have a book of his titled Why Americans Hate Politics, published in 1991, that's chock-full of similar bilge.

PJ Media's Ed Driscoll destroys Dionne and his fellow-travelers with a single sentence:

It’s tough for “Progressives” to reclaim something they’ve spent the better part of five years openly attempting to jettison.

After all, less than two years ago "constitutional law professor" Louis Seidman argued openly that the Constitution is being ignored and should be ignored. To this point Driscoll adduces this pithy exchange between law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds and economics professor Russ Roberts:

REYNOLDS: Oh, well, then I’m free to do whatever I want! And actually, that is a damning admission, because what that really says is: If you believe Seidman’s argument; if you believe that we already ignore the Constitution anyway, then in fact, the government rules by sheer naked force, and nothing else. And if that’s what you believe, then all of this talk of revolution suddenly doesn’t seem so crazy, it seems almost mandatory.

ROBERTS: Well, he would say – well, I won’t speak for him, but some would say that, well, there’s a social contract, we’ve all agreed to kind of play by these rules…

REYNOLDS: Oh really?!

ROBERTS: …of electing officials, and…

REYNOLDS: Well, the rules I agreed to electing these officials are the Constitution. I thought we were going to ignore that. That’s my social contract.

The interesting thing about Dionne and the article he cites isn't any novelty of insight or special penetration of logic; it's the reason for the argument they make:

The Constitution of the United States explicitly forbids nearly every element of the Leftist agenda.

Conservatives have been making headway in promoting the Constitution, noting its ties to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and raising general awareness of the "progressives'" destruction thereof. The process is gradually restoring Americans' sense for our libertarian heritage. This alarms the Left like nothing else in our national discourse.

So the Left has decided to wrest the Constitution away from us -- to turn it to leftists' purposes.

That is, leftists have decided to try. Which is why refreshing one's knowledge of the Constitution, and arguing from its text and nothing else is the order of the day...if you're not yet completely burned out from previous efforts, that is.

It's not possible, if one sticks to the text, to claim that the document authorizes an Omnipotent State, nor that it embeds at its core the notion that the federal government exists to oppose "inequality" or create "opportunity." The only way to make such assertions is to obscure the carefully phrased, closely fought text and prattle instead about what the Founding Fathers "must have intended" -- and then to obfuscate the meanings of terms such as "inequality," "oligarchy," and "concentrations of economic and political power." That's the heart of the Fishkin / Forbath project, which Dionne heartily endorses.

I will repeat this once more:

"The Constitution is the supreme law, the foundation for all other law. If it doesn't mean exactly what its text says—the public meanings of the words as ordinary people understand them—then no one can possibly know what it means. But if no one can know what the Constitution means, then no one can know whether any other law conforms to it. At that point, all that matters is the will of whoever's in power. And that's an exact definition of tyranny."

Consider this also, from novelist Lois McMaster Bujold:

"Egalitarians adjust very well to aristocracies, as long as they get to be the aristocrats."

If ever there was a gaggle of power-mongers determined to become an American aristocracy, it's our "progressives"...and they've made a disturbing start on the project.

On this front in our political wars, there can be no holding actions and no compromise. The life of the Republic is at stake. It will be victory or death.

Quickies: Labor Productivity And Standards Of Living

I hope Concerned American at Western Rifle Shooters won't be angry with me for borrowing this graph:

CA adds the following questions:

You should have 170% of the standard of living you obtained in 1980 from one hour of labor.

You don’t.

Why not?

And what is to be done?

"Should" is a funny word. It's used in all sorts of situations where other words -- "is," "isn't," "can," "can't," "must," "may," "might," and "must not" -- have greater objective import. Let's look at this instance of "should" with our best skeptical eyes.

The graph says one thing: that economic output per labor hour is up 70% since 1981. It doesn't say what caused that increase. Neither does it provide any information on the distribution of that gain across all kinds of enterprises, which, in the nature of things, is unlikely to have been uniform. But perhaps most important, it doesn't comment on the distribution of the gain across occupations.

Some occupations, especially those best positioned to capitalize on technological advances, have done very well these past thirty years. Others have slipped backwards, because their value in the labor market has been partially or totally displaced by technology. And another group has stagnated, often because the good or service they provide has itself remained static -- unimproved.

With a huge caveat, which I'll address in a bit:

• Persons in those trades in which technology, especially the microprocessor, has genuinely empowered the people involved, on the whole have done very well.
• Those in trades where technology has reduced or eliminated the requirement for human involvement have been penalized by the advances.
• And those where technology has failed to change the nature of the product they can offer in a substantial way have stagnated.

There are two counteragents to those effects: occupational mobility and political clout. The former is productive: it generally yields gains to the individual worker. The latter is destructive: in the short run it can reward those it favors, but over time it can cause the downfall of whole industries. Look at those trades conspicuously associated with new and advancing technologies, and you'll find a labor influx; look at those associated with heavy political interference, whether direct or indirect, and you'll find labor shrinkage.

Of course, it's possible to shrug all that reasoning aside and simply assume a de facto conspiracy among "industrialists" and "banksters." Such "devil theory" explanations are emotionally appealing: they give us a face, albeit an obscured one, at which to direct our ire. But they tend to imply other trends that aren't in motion -- at least, not detectably so. Nor do they counsel anything but violence and despair.

The best bet is still to rely on oneself: to work to make oneself ever more valuable to one's customers. That has its limitations, of course. Not all of us can become great scientists, engineers, or inventors. Not all of us are sufficiently energetic or unencumbered to drive ourselves eighty hours per week. And not all of us are positioned in space, time, and circumstance such that we can move adroitly among opportunities. As Ecclesiastes would remind us, "time and chance happeneth to us all." Still, working on oneself costs a lot less than getting Congressional subsidies or tariff protection, doesn't it?

What's that you say? But then there'll be nobody to blame for your failures except yourself? Hey, everything has its downside!

Still More For My Fiction Readers: Land For Peace

Yet another free download at Smashwords.

A few words of explanation before anyone accuses me of apostasy...

Wars are rife with propaganda. "The enemy" is usually painted in the blackest hues "our side" can manage without descending into absurdity. More, "our side" almost always makes "our" victory sound inevitable... but war knows no such thing as inevitability. Unforeseen intra-war developments can discombobulate any combatant. For example, consider what the tank did to seemingly indefeasible Germany in World War I.

But far more important than that are the postwar histories. These, as they say, will always be written by the victors, who get to assert their moral propaganda a second time -- this time, without contradiction. In such histories, God is always on the side of the victors. Right and might are united, and no one dares to say otherwise.

But some wars are won by victors whose postwar conduct proves them to be the bad guys -- badder, at least, than some of the other combatants. Consider the Soviet Union, which was part of the victorious alliance in World War II. Stalin's regime was one of the most evil political entities ever to befoul this planet. It could even be argued that it was worse than the Nazi regime. Over its tenure it took more lives and inflict more suffering on its subjects than the Third Reich did.

I don't want to pound this point into the magma. Just be careful about what you believe. Try to recognize propaganda when you encounter it. Mind you, not all propaganda is deceitful, but all of it should be treated as what it is -- a weapon of war -- and assessed on that basis. And remember: what matters in war is the outcome of the final battle, which propaganda can do nothing to overturn.

May God bless and keep you all.

For My Fiction Readers: Mainstreaming!

A free download at Smashwords. Just a little something light-hearted to brighten your day. After the tirades of the past week, you might need it.

On The Grounds Of "Why Not?"

...and because it's Independence Day weekend, after all:

To all the other geezers (and apprentice geezers) out there: Remember when music like this -- upbeat, optimistic, celebratory of America -- wasn't the exception but the rule?

(Yeah, I know: I just dated myself. But who else would date a wreck like me? Besides, I'm married.)

For Independence Day: Arms Race.

[Pax Americana. Roll the phrase around in your mind for a bit. Savor the flavor. Ponder all the good we did in the world during our years of unchallenged dominance. Then ask yourself a few questions:

• How much "good" did we really do?
• What price did we pay for doing all that "good?"
• Did we make any "friends," or mostly inspire enmity?
• If the Pax were to be made permanent, would we be happy with the consequences?

Herewith, a bit of fiction for you. Think it over. -- FWP]

---

    Stephen Graham Sumner’s expression was a portrait of astonishment stippled with horror.
    “How?” was all he could bring himself to whisper.
    Tyszczenko smiled. “By breaking a rule.”
    “What rule?”
    “The first rule of genetics, sir. The rule that says that your genes’ effects on you are determined entirely at conception, independent of any subsequent experience.” He flicked a hand at the apparatus behind him. “It was a foolish notion from the very beginning. What we’ve learned about cancer should have disillusioned us long before this.”
    He turned and beamed at his device with evident pride. “The secret to inducing mutagenesis lies in electromagnetic resonance. It wasn’t an easy hypothesis to test. Much of the garbage lying around the human genome either lacks a resonant frequency or does nothing of interest when it’s stimulated. But a pair of genes on chromosome six, and another pair on chromosome seventeen, do possess resonant frequencies–as it happens, the very same one–and when bombarded with that frequency induce runaway teratomorphism.” The biophysicist’s smile turned bloodthirsty. “Imagine a satellite equipped with my device, a precision aiming mechanism, and sufficient power. At your command it could reduce anyone in the world to a quivering mass of unrecognizable flesh. No longer sentient. No longer human.”
    Sumner closed his eyes and breathed deeply, struggling to calm himself. When he opened them, Yuri Tyszczenko was still there, arms crossed and smiling gently.
    “Mr. President, I think you can see why I asked that this meeting be entirely unwitnessed.”
    “Have you...” The president’s voice failed briefly. “Have you made your discovery public yet?”
    “Good heavens, no!” Tyszczenko shook his head vigorously. “We don’t want anyone else replicating this discovery. It completely transforms warfare. It gives you the power to visit unthinkably horrible degradation and suffering on whoever might oppose you. Whoever might displease you. It allows you to take innocent men off the battlefield—men guilty of no more than having volunteered to serve their country—and put their leaders on it, naked and alone. This,” the biophysicist said as he caressed the device’s gleaming flank, “is the key to a true Pax Americana...one that need never end.”
    “And you would trust the president of the United States with this?” Sumner said.
    “Of course I would! You, sir, are the first man since Washington who has genuinely earned the right to sit in this office.” Tyszczenko glanced up at the Gilbert Stuart portrait that hung above the mantel. “I have no doubt that he’s been watching and waiting for a man of your character and caliber for more than two hundred years.”
    “Yet I won’t be, God forbid, the last man to sit here,” Sumner murmured. “By gifting this to the president, you would be trusting my successors quite as completely as myself.”
    Tyszczenko’s expression turned mischievous. “If you choose to have a successor, sir.”
    “Ah.” Sumner looked down as if in thought. “I assume you have...suggestions for the first targets.”
    All pleasure drained from the biophysicist’s expression. He faced Sumner squarely, spread his feet slightly, and clasped his hands behind his back. “One, Mr. President, if you should choose to hear it.”
    Sumner cocked an eyebrow.
    “Anatoly Danilovich Borisenko.”
    Sumner’s mouth quirked. “He has been something of a thorn in our flesh lately, hasn’t he?”
    Tyszczenko said nothing.
    “Allow me a moment, would you please, Yuri?” Sumner circled his desk and pressed the intercom button.
    “Yes, Mr. President?”
    Sumner chuckled. “Sally, please! Haven’t I asked you to call me Steve?”
    “Well, yes, sir. But—”
    “Let it pass for the moment. First, please cancel all the meetings on today’s docket and hold all calls. Second, would you scare up Chris D’Alessandro and Geoff Nolan and have them join me in the Oval Office, please?”
    “At once, Mr....Steve.”
    “Thank you, dear.” Sumner turned back to Tyszczenko. “We’ll have some company in just a moment.” The biophysicist’s face clouded. He started to object, but Sumner held up a hand, and he subsided. “Two persons I trust beyond anyone else in the world. I assure you, you’ll be pleased to meet them.”
    “Yes, sir.” Tyszczenko returned to passivity.
    Less than a minute later the door opened. Secret Service Agent Geoffrey Nolan and presidential advisor without portfolio Christine D’Alessandro strode into the Oval Office. They spied Tyszczenko’s device simultaneously, took positions flanking it, and halted.
    “Mr. President?” Nolan said.
    Sumner smiled. “Thank you for being so prompt, friends. I imagine you find this apparatus a trifle mysterious.”
    “What’s it for, sir?” D’Alessandro murmured.
    Sumner’s smile broadened into a mask of triumph. He circled his desk and wrapped an arm around the shoulders of a surprised but immensely pleased Yuri Tyszczenko.
    “For taking over the world.”
    With that, Sumner’s grip on the biophysicist shifted. He took Tyszczenko’s head in an inescapable grip and wrenched it sideways with his full strength. Tyszczenko had only an instant to register his surprise before he slumped to the Oval Office floor, the life gone from his body.
    Nolan and D’Alessandro gaped.
    Sumner looked down at his handiwork and made the Sign of the Cross.
    “May God forgive him all his sins and welcome his soul into his nearness,” Sumner murmured. “He only did what he thought was right and necessary...as I just did.”
    He turned to his other guests.
    “I meant what I just said about taking over the world. Yuri made it possible. It must not be possible, at least not for the present. Would you like to hear the details? Or to summon the police?”
    D’Alessandro shook her head. Nolan muttered “No, sir.”
    Sumner nodded. “Thank you for that.”
    “Steve,” D’Alessandro said, “I’d have...taken care of him for you.”
    Sumner grinned ruefully. “I know you would have, Chris. Geoff would have, too, if I’d asked him. But this blood has to be on my hands. With no one between him and me. This was my sole decision. It had to be my action as well. I don’t want anyone else to bear the least part of the culpability. Geoff, does the Detail have a sledgehammer handy?”
    “I can find out, Mr. President.”
    “Please do. And then do...what’s appropriate with this contraption, and scatter the bits widely. Chris, I’d appreciate it if you’d see to the disposal of Yuri’s remains.”
    D’Alessandro nodded. “I will.”
    “Thank you both. Now I think I should be alone for a while.”
    The two departed in silence. Sumner glanced down at the corpse once more, seated himself at his desk, and dropped his face into his hands.

==<O>==

UPDATE: You can download the above story from Smashwords.

Chains: A Personal Perspective

Brace yourself, Gentle Reader. I'm about to slap the conventional wisdom across the face with a wet mackerel. The conventional American wisdom of the past seventy years, at least. It proceeds from my own reaction to a very recent event, one few Americans get to experience these days.

---

Political freedom, de jure at least, is gone from these United States. Our sociopolitical disease, which Ayn Rand captured in her observation that "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission," has reached its terminus. What freedom remains to us is solely de facto: the ability to "get away with it" without adverse consequences. Because there are so many of us, that can embrace a pretty wide variety of undertakings, but the potential for a punitive reaction from some organ of the State will attach to all of them.

But you still want to be free, don't you? You still want that sense of being totally unencumbered, infinitely mobile in a land of unlimited opportunity, even if the opportunities themselves have begun to seem a bit drab. You want to "feel the wind in your hair." (That's probably easier for you than for me, given my tonsorially challenged status, but the image is still compelling.)

Short of advising you to buy a convertible, there isn't much I can tell you about that last. But I might be able to tell you a little something about how to feel freer than you currently do. I experienced it yesterday.

Yesterday morning, at 9:06 AM EDT, I paid off my last ongoing installment debt. It was a minor home-equity line of credit I'd used to pay for a few improvements around the house. I'd carried it for four years, and as the time passed it felt ever more like a chain around my ankle. When I forced the balance on that debt to $0.00, I swear I felt that chain shatter in my hands.

I haven't felt that free since...well, ever.

---

I hadn't needed to take out that line of credit. I did it on the advice of my accountant, who also happens to be my wife Beth, and who can be unnaturally persuasive. Our savings would have covered those home improvements many times over, but Beth felt the debt would serve us at tax time. So I swallowed my misgivings and opened the credit line...and regretted it ever afterward.

A debt really is a chain on you. It constrains your decision making in several ways, some of which you're unlikely to foresee. But practical considerations to the side, if you value your emotional freedom -- your sense of mobility, of unaccountability to others -- a debt is a millstone on your back. A reasonably self-aware person will always be conscious of his obligations to others, and monetary debts are the crassest of all such.

Yet have a gander at this condensation of the conventional American "life script:"

• Do well in school.
• Rebel with music from the entertainment corps.
• Get shoes, clothes, and gadgets with the best corporate logos.
• Get a university degree. (If your family isn’t rich, take student loans.)
• Take a job at a big firm with good benefits.
• Get a loan and buy a house.
• Build a 401(k).
• Believe in democracy.
• Send your children to daycare, then school.
• Buy brand-name goods.
• Watch the best in entertainment.
• Rely on Social Security and Medicare.

Six of those twelve steps involve spending money, in some cases a great deal of money you're unlikely to have on hand, so if you elect to follow the "script," you'll probably have to incur debt. Educational-loan debt, mortgage debt, chattel (i.e., car loan) debt, credit-card debt, and variations thereof. And if you're a typical American, those debts will constitute the most important constraints upon you lifelong, your personal commitments to family and loved ones excepted.

Your debts will have sharply decreased your aggregate mobility. They'll be considerations of importance every time you confront a major decision or a life-altering possibility. If you value that sense of freedom I mentioned -- which, by the way, really is preferable to "crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women," and yes, I speak from experience there, too -- they will chafe you from dawn to dusk every day of your life.

And you will have done it to yourself.

---

Regardless of anything anyone says, you cannot be saddled with an obligation against your will, no matter who might try to saddle (or bridle) you. Regardless of the situation or the adversary, you will always retain the ability to say No! and accept the consequences. The only thing anyone can force upon you is death, and as a lapel button I cherish says, the willingness to die enables you to do anything.

The sincere, willing acceptance of an obligation is often a sign of maturity. After all, unless you've accepted that your burdens are yours alone to carry, you're not an adult. If those burdens have zero weight, you don't possess the practical demonstration thereof. But I've become ever more firm in my conviction that there are obligations whose acceptance is more foolhardy than mature.

An obligation accepted from foresight and after planning can be defended, even if the foresight was inaccurate and the planning was flawed. At least you tried. An obligation accepted to indulge oneself in a frivolous or transient pleasure is far harder to justify a posteriori. Worst of all is an obligation accepted because of peer pressure; that's allowing others to set your priorities and make your decisions for you.

A debt is an obligation. To the extent that your true values persuade you to incur a debt, it is rationalizable even if you later come to doubt the wisdom of the decision. You acted on your best knowledge, comprehension, and judgment at the time. But how painful it is to look back at such a decision and to admit to yourself that you were being frivolously self-indulgent, or foolishly headstrong, or just doing what "everyone said" you should do!

Yes, yes, only hindsight is 20-20. But given the weight of the chain, a strong, healthful reluctance to incur debt should be your default posture...even if you're married to an accountant.

---

I've been more fortunate than most. I've managed to avoid incurring debts a lot of people have plunged into and later regretted. But I accepted some of the major tenets of "the script:" I took out educational loans; I bought a house with a mortgage; I bought several cars on credit. As each of those chains fell away, I felt a degree freer than before. Today, debt-free at last, I possess absolute discretionary mobility. I can walk away from anything. Nothing in my life, apart from my love for my wife, has the power to constrain me.

Even in these final years of my life, I cherish that sense of absolute personal freedom. No, it's not political freedom; I'm no better off than you in that regard. But the practical possibilities open to one absolutely unencumbered by debt are far wider than those available to one who still wears the chains.

I might never exploit any of those opportunities or possibilities. Given my age, my reclusive nature, and my preference for the quietest of satisfactions and amusements, that's more likely than not. But that sense of personal latitude, now that the last chain has fallen away, is beyond ecstasy. It beggars my powers of description.

I will never wear those chains again.

Guilding The Polity Part 2: Recognizing The Distribution

Yesterday's essay introduced the concept of a contemporary guild system -- i.e., a governmentally enforced distribution of "rights" among recognized groups -- as the Left's structural aim for American society. However, I deliberately left the treatment incomplete, and a good thing, too.

On Monday, the great Charles Murray wrote in the Wall Street Journal (sadly, subscriber-only) about the Right's failure to recognize a correlated distribution on the Left: "The Trouble Isn't Liberals. It's Progressives."

Social conservatives. Libertarians. Country-club conservatives. Tea party conservatives. Everybody in politics knows that those sets of people who usually vote Republican cannot be arrayed in a continuum from moderately conservative to extremely conservative. They are on different political planes. They usually have just enough in common to vote for the same candidate.

Why then do we still talk about the left in terms of a continuum from moderately liberal to extremely liberal? Divisions have been occurring on the left that mirror the divisions on the right. Different segments of the left are now on different planes....

It is that core philosophy [Progressivism] extolling the urge to mold society that still animates progressives today—a mind-set that produces the shutdown of debate and growing intolerance that we are witnessing in today's America. Such thinking on the left also is behind the rationales for indulging President Obama in his anti-Constitutional use of executive power. If you want substantiation for what I'm saying, read Jonah Goldberg's 2008 book "Liberal Fascism," an erudite and closely argued exposition of American progressivism and its subsequent effects on liberalism. The title is all too accurate.

Murray's distinction between liberals, whom he can judiciously approve, and progressives, whom he characterizes as the enemies of American ideals of freedom, is an important one. It illuminates a critical parallel to the behavior of the various segments of the Right at election time.

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Despite the policy differences that divide social conservatives from libertarians, we in the Right tend to rally behind the same Republican candidate, especially in presidential elections. The general thinking is that the GOP candidate might not satisfy us in detail, but that he's "the lesser of two evils." Anyway, there's too much to lose should the Democrats gain or retain political hegemony. Similarly, liberals (in Murray's sense) will rally behind the same Democrat candidate as progressives (again in Murray's sense) under the same rationales. While that effect tends to make the Republican Party "split the differences" among the preferences of its subsectors, on the Left it causes a continuous, fierce struggle over the control of the Democrat Party, especially its mechanisms for choosing and promoting candidates for federal offices.

For the past eight years at least, the progressives have held the levers of Democrat Party power. They've striven to use their period of dominance to make themselves its permanent rulers.

The dominance of the Democrats by progressives has put the liberals in a corner. They can't bring themselves to side with the Right except on the most singular subjects. Atop that, absenting themselves from votes and public debates over progressive policy prescriptions is electorally hazardous. In consequence, these two blocs, which would appear to be separated by important differences on fundamental principles, vote together -- and as the progressives hold the whip hand, that will both advance the progressive agenda and solidify progressive control of the Democrat Party.

Contemporary American progressivism, as Murray delineates it, is militant social fascism. It's a perfect fit to Jonah Goldberg's conception of liberal fascism, marching under the flag of "social justice." Indeed, we can penetrate it further by noting its similarities to National Socialist Fascism, the key figures of which populated its hierarchy of "fuhrers."

The fuhrer personified the leader principle of National Socialism. A fuhrer of any level wielded absolute authority over all matters given to his jurisdiction. He was subject to being overruled only by fuhrers above him. Just as Hitler had ranks of "fuhrers" -- "leaders" -- inside his regime with himself at the pinnacle, in the cosmetically private sector, every industrial organization of any significant size had its betriebsfuhrer: an official approved by the Reich who exerted absolute authority over every aspect of the firm's operations. It was the National Socialist way of preserving the fiction of private enterprise.

Compare this to Obama's "czars," and to the progressives' demand for the absolute submission of any and every private organization, regardless of its purposes, to the dictates of the federal government.

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The enormous foofaurauw over the Hobby Lobby decision is because the Court's defense of the private rights of the owners of a family corporation crosscuts progressive fascism. Progressives are unwilling to allow that any aspect of employer / employee relations should be exempt from federal mandates or a requirement for federal approval. The recent (2011) flap between Boeing and the Washington state machinists' union was a fine illustration of the progressive mindset. The NLRB permitted Boeing to shift aircraft construction to a site in right-to-work South Carolina only after Boeing agreed to preserve and expand union employment in Washington state.

Unions, as I mentioned yesterday, are a modern variety of guild. But let's not limit our perspectives to formally organized groups. Consider gender-war feminists, who are united mainly in sharing a hostile, aggressive attitude toward anything and everything they deem "patriarchal." In recent years that community of conviction has advanced through the law, steadily slicing away at employers' rights, men's rights generally, and longstanding conceptions of justice. It's hardly mattered that their assertions are nearly always counterfactual and foolish, for they are politically favored by the progressives who dominate the federal edifice, especially its regulatory sectors. They have the power and influence of a guild without being openly organized or recognized as such.

When viewed in that light, the Left's tumult over the Hobby Lobby decision becomes easier to comprehend. It's a step backward for the progressives' drive to eliminate the individual as the possessor of rights, and to replace him with guild-like groups whose "rights" are parceled out and protected by the State. Sandra Fluke and her ilk have never had a problem obtaining or affording contraception. Cost-free provision of contraception is merely the next hill their campaign has determined to secure, on the way to establishing "women" as a "stakeholder group" with specific "rights" it can exercise at the expense of non-members.

The ultimate beneficiary of this creation of de facto guilds is, of course, the State -- and America's progressives are determined to remain its masters.

More anon.

Guilding The Polity

Just a few days ago, Radley Balko wrote as follows:

The American Civil Liberties Union has released the results of its year-long study of police militarization. The study looked at 800 deployments of SWAT teams among 20 local, state and federal police agencies in 2011-2012. Among the notable findings:

• 62 percent of the SWAT raids surveyed were to conduct searches for drugs.
• Just under 80 percent were to serve a search warrant, meaning eight in 10 SWAT raids were not initiated to apprehend a school shooter, hostage taker, or escaped felon (the common justification for these tactics), but to investigate someone still only suspected of committing a crime.
• In fact, just 7 percent of SWAT raids were “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.”
• In at least 36 percent of the SWAT raids studies, no contraband of any kind was found. The report notes that due to incomplete police reports on these raids this figure could be as high as 65 percent.
• SWAT tactics are disproportionately used on people of color.
• 65 percent of SWAT deployments resulted in some sort of forced entry into a private home, by way of a battering ram, boot, or some sort of explosive device. In over half those raids, the police failed to find any sort of weapon, the presence of which was cited as the reason for the violent tactics.
• Ironically (or perhaps not), searches to serve warrants on people suspected of drug crimes were more likely to result in forced entry than raids conducted for other purposes.
• Though often justified for rare incidents like school shootings or terrorist situations, the armored personnel vehicles police departments are getting from the Pentagon and through grants from the Department of Homeland Security are commonly used on drug raids.

In other words, where violent, volatile SWAT tactics were once used only in limited situations where someone was in the process of or about to commit a violent crime — where the police were using violence only to defuse an already violent situation — SWAT teams today are overwhelmingly used to investigate people who are still only suspected of committing nonviolent consensual crimes. And because these raids often involve forced entry into homes, often at night, they’re actually creating violence and confrontation where there was none before.

Slightly more recently, Balko wrote as follows:

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.

Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

Isn't that interesting? A principal source of armed violence, acting under color of law, denies all its essential information to the public that funds and endures its predations.

Those SWAT "corporations" are a modern guild.

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Meanwhile, David French notes a parallel development among the political elite:

Andrew’s and Molly’s post reflecting the hysterical reaction on the Left to the Hobby Lobby decision makes for both entertaining and instructive reading. It’s entertaining because — regarding the issue they claim to care most about, access to contraceptives — the decision blocks exactly no one from obtaining the drugs they choose to purchase. There’s just slightly less free stuff on the market. This is hardly Handmaid’s Tale territory.

It’s instructive because it demonstrates the extent to which the Left is emotionally and ideologically committed to the power of the regulatory state. For some time, the Left has been selling the public and the courts on the notion that somehow the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually the entire panoply of property rights. In effect, your business is not “your” business at all, but instead all aspects of its operations exist at the whim of the state, and if the state wants to draft you into its child-killing abortion crusade — or wants to muzzle you during political campaigns – then you best salute and fall in line.

...concerning which the esteemed Ace of Spades comments thus:

The Left, were it to have its way, would forbid anyone who is not primarily in the business of politics (or working for the government or university) from exercising their full political rights.

If you work in any other industry, your rights are substantially reduced.

Think how much this proposed rule would benefit the Left, were it fully accepted. (It is 85% accepted at the moment.)

The only people who would be permitted to speak on political issues, or at in accordance with their social/cultural/religious/political principles, would be the Political Class Itself, which is of course largely "progressive."

Shopkeeper? Nope, you're not a professional of the political class. Shut up. You have no right to run your business as your conscience dictates.

Baker? You're not a professional in the political class. Shut up and bake the cake.

And so on. By choosing an economically-productive trade which is not politics, you have ceded most of your rights in the political sphere, per this line of thinking.

The people who retain their full rights are the artists, the academics, the media class, the union officials, the teachers and other civil servants, and all the various functionaries of the permanent DC lobbying/think tank class.

This seems to me to be very congruent with the Left's conception of a cadre of people who will Do all the thinking for the rest of the country -- the revolutionary vanguard -- and the rest of the people who will actually generate the economic surpluses that the vanguard will then divvy up.

The Left continues to conceive of their idea of a Utopia in which some -- they themselves -- are the thinkers, the plotters, the dreamers and the schemers -- and everyone else is merely a doer, a revenue-generating economic unit which is expected to follow the orders issued to them by the Thinking Class.

Dead on target...and a cogent argument that the Left's aim is a guild system.

If your memory of European medieval history is a bit vague after all these years, this Wikipedia article is a compact presentation of their nature and how they functioned. The central reason for a guild was to confine the practice of a certain trade to the guild's members. Non-members were forbidden to trespass on the guild's privileges, enforcement thereof provided by the monarch. If you find the whole idea to be a bit too similar to modern trade licensure, you're not alone.

Guilds are entirely antithetical to freedom. Beyond their pernicious economic effects, they were a baleful influence on family cohesion, through their imposition of onerous, excessively prolonged apprenticeships. Moreover, guilds imposed a version of omerta on their members, who were forbidden to discuss the "secrets" of the guild or their trade with outsiders. They had to be protected, and their rules enforced, by the political power of their day...just as the contemporary licensure regime is enforced by political power today.

The guild idea is well advanced in the realm of law enforcement. Yet it's a point of law that the policeman has no greater authority to perform an arrest than a private citizen. Indeed, the policeman is more constrained than the citizen, for a citizen making a criminal complaint against another individual must be heeded. The cop is forbidden -- again, a point of law -- to refuse to perform the indicated arrest, on pain of being arrested himself for nonfeasance.

One could make a plausible case that unionization, especially when it covers an entire industry, is an attempt to create a guild. The auto industry and "public" schooling are excellent examples. Note also that the federal government and the majority of states require all their employees to join some union as a condition of employment.

The attempt to enact guild-like rules about political expression began with the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, which gave "established media organizations" (e.g., newspapers and broadcasters) privileges to orate on candidacies that the rest of us were denied. It was struck down some time ago. But it's clear, given Democrats' fury over the Citizens United decision and their current attempt to repeal the First Amendment, that the political class hasn't given up. Their incandescent rage over the Hobby Lobby decision will cause them to redouble their efforts.

We shall see.

Fundamental transformation of the United States.

On the Rage-O-Meter, this is over in "volcanic" range:

Huge stockpiles of US armor, weapons, heavy artillery, mortars, armored vehicles, tanks, the entire main weapons depot and the main helicopter base, have been captured, mostly intact, by ISIS.

The largest oilfield in Iraq has also been captured by ISIS. No US airstrikes, and none are likely any time soon.^[1]

This qualifies as the "fundamental transformation" of the United States of America alright.

Into a joke.

Sadly, the article shows that it's far worse than even this shows. Assassination of prisoners. Killing of civilians. Targeted assassinations.

Islamic hell.

Notes
^[1] "On the Ground in Iraq." By U/I contractor, Stormbringer, 7/1/14.