Compulsion Vs Cooperation

One of the big issues we as humans have in life is the line between compulsion and cooperation. We almost know instinctively that we must cooperate or die. Yet when we try to compel someone to cooperate with us we get rebellion or something worse. Still it seems that in every generation there are those who will say that the only way to achieve cooperation is to compel people to cooperate! It seems to me that cooperation is the exact opposite of compulsion and that if one tries to obtain cooperation by force (which is the definition of compulsion) then cooperation disappears.

The question remains though if we know that cooperation is necessary to maintain society how do we obtain the cooperation? The answer to that is persuasion. Persuasion that the person being asked to do something will benefit from that which he is being asked to do.

Now it is possible to persuade people that if they steal from 'the rich' it will be to their benefit. But since theft eventually breaks down societal cooperation it does not benefit you to listen to those who would convince you that when a group of people does a thing it is more moral than when an individual does a thing.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Gun Bans are the Instruments of Tyrants

If you don’t believe the title of this article then you should learn history. After all a careful search of history will bear this out as the following quote from the socialist dictator Adolf Hitler shows. This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead into the future.” —Adolf Hitler, 1935

I’m certain that more research into gun control laws on a world-wide basis would reveal that more tyrants than Hitler used this method to obtain total control of their nation. I know that the people of the Soviet Union were not permitted to have guns. Nor were the people of Mao's China. In England right now they are experiencing riots because gentlemen are no longer armed. And one very effective tool of the would be tyrant is to allow chaos to reign until the people demand that something, anything be done to restore order to the society.

I also note this for consideration here: In our prisons all weapons are supposed to be in the hands of the guards yet hardly a day goes by (I’d guess that in aggregate no day goes by) without someone (including an occasional guard) being stabbed. This of course does not include the fact that some prisoners will be beaten by others with fists or feet! Thus in the most controlled society that we have we see the presence of weapons and violence without weapons. Therefore we can draw the conclusion that it is not the weapons that are the cause of the violence but rather the minds of men.

If you are a woman you should be even more up in arms against any attempt to disarm you. After all the greatest indicator that you will not be raped is your ability to defend yourself. And ladies, a black-belt rarely trumps a weapon of any sort not even a knife.

Of course there are lots of laws regarding the size and type of knife you may carry as well all of which make committing a mugging easier. Or a home invasion less risky to the criminal. I join many who ask why it is that after a shooting spree by someone we want to blame the gun (which has no feet) for the mayhem caused by the deranged mind that chose to make his fellow man an object of prey.

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.”
—William S. Burroughs

The invisible holocaust

Some people today all over the world claim to worship the earth. These people have as a sacrament of their worship, the sacrifice of infants. The infants they started with were the invisible ones. The ones that had not yet been born. Now they are reaching for children who have been born. See this column: http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2012/03/07/the_lefts_war_on_babies for more information.  This (abortion) has been advanced as choice or as medical care for women. What is rarely pointed out is that even under the circumstances of a well controlled and well sterilized operating room an abortion (the murder of an innocent) is dangerous to a woman.

What also is not spoken very often is that most abortion clinics (abattoirs for the unborn or temples to a false God of death) are far from a well controlled and well sterilized operating room. In fact except for the fact that they have been declared to be legal they are still almost as bad (if not worse in some cases) as the back alley abortion doctors they were supposed to replace. They replaced them but rather than making abortion safe it just made it more prevalent.

I’m certain that this piece will make some people angry. This includes some deluded women who have bought the lie of sexual freedom. Freedom rarely indicates the ability to do whatever you want especially without consequences. This is because if society does not enforce consequences then nature surely will. Indeed the only thing that women being unwise about the use of their genitals has done is increase is the childishness of men as the men have been able to get that which most men want most without that which men fear most.

What I mean by that last statement is that most men will do most anything for sexual contact with a woman. Most men when they are honest fear commitment to one woman the most. This is because commitment to one woman prevents them from plowing the field next door so to speak. Now we all know that there will be some who will violate their commitment for whatever reason. This does not invalidate the idea that we should hold up the ideal of the kept commitment as best. Indeed the fact of violated commitment proves the necessity of consistently pointing to what we should be doing rather than saying, ‘well no one can possibly do that,’ we should say, ‘yes we have failed to do that, now it is time to get busy and try for the ideal again.’ This is because if we strive to be better people rather than settling for failure and accepting that we will never reach the ideal we become closer to the ideal. While accepting failure, especially saying that because we cannot reach perfection we should not try leads to worse and worse conditions for everyone.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 59 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Since jealousy and greed are related closely, jealousy must obviously be a source or root of evil.

I am not so much interested in defining evil as identifying the cause of evil, these I have boiled down to greed, envy and jealousy. Indeed I believe that envy and jealousy are actually aspects of greed. Behind any behavior that could possibly be considered evil is the root of greed and its expression as naked greed, or greed disguised as envy or jealousy.

Sometimes of course greed is difficult to identify, for example when many people (including BHO in my humble opinion) start to talk about giving to the poor they rarely intend that they should give to the poor but are somewhat more like Judas Iscariot who had his hand in the money bag of Jesus. I say that even if they may not be stealing money for their own enrichment, for when they use the power of the government to take money from one person to give to another in order to appear to be generous they at minimum steal the accolade that would go with such a gift if they had not stepped between the ‘donor’ and the ‘recipient.’

However since BHO is running the money through the government chances are that at more than one level there are people who are diverting some of it to their own enrichment. This is on top of the fact that government ‘charity’ rarely does anything other than to increase the dependency of its recipient. While the increasing control this gives stokes the appetite of the government for ever greater power (which is one objective of some strains of greed) over all aspects of life.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 58 from The Hard knocks School of Life

Evil seems to me to be made up of three basic behaviors: greed, envy and lying.

Greed may be (I believe is) the underlying disease for the behavior for which envy is the motivation, and most of the time greed is also the motivation for lying.

The only motivation I have ever seen for lying other than greed is fear. This then brings up the question of whether or not fear motivated lying is as evil as greed motivated lying. Another issue that muddies the all lying is evil is the fact that at times lying can be very necessary to stop someone from carrying out an evil act. An example of this is those people who hid Jews from Hitler’s SS during world war two. These people obviously lied and did good. Thus lying became not only a necessary evil at that time but became an actual active good.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 57 from the Hard Knocks School of Life

Socialism (or communism) seems to me to be systems of government based on greed and fueled by envy.

Communism and its child/sibling socialism are philosophies that are often hard to discuss rationally because people get heavily emotionally involved in these belief systems. Perhaps the reason for this is that so many people have invested their ‘treasure’ both in worldly goods and belief in these ideas and if anyone refutes these ideas they are devaluing the treasure that has been invested in them.

Yet when one takes the time to examine the idea that everyone should have the same stuff, (goods and services) without all of the emotional baggage, it becomes very evident that communism is childish or infantile at best and evil at worst. The reason for this is that not everyone wants, or needs, or deserves the same things in life. For very young children it may only seem fair that Johnny doesn’t have a cookie when Timmy doesn’t have a cookie. But adults can easily understand that if John works every day he has the goods and services he earns while if Tim refuses (not cannot) to work then he should likewise have what he has earned which is poverty.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Stop SOPA and PIPA

As a creator of intellectual property theft and piracy does concern me; but as a creator of sometimes controversial content these bills frighten me to death. I’m often amazed at the clueless person in the media who decries the exercise of power by the government when men like Nixon (very NAZIesque in my opinion) Reagan, G H W Bush, and Bush the younger; yet they celebrate the increase of government power and interference in our lives by men like L B Johnson, J E Carter III, W J Clinton and their latest hero du jour Barak Hussein Obama. Government power is a corrupting influence no matter which party or person is wielding it! I refuse to believe that the choice we as humans have is between Stalin and Hitler; there must be an alternative to the bad ideas that both of these men put forth.

SOPA or PIPA is a bad idea, just as The Patriot Act was a bad idea. Bad ideas know no party affiliation. They can (and are) put forward by businesses (which despite the media [which is a BIG business] bias toward Obama's weilding of power) or government functionaries. It does not matter where (or what side of the political aisle) a bad idea comes from; all men who wish to be free resist such ideas.

Here is an article that says more and better than I could on this subject: http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/jeffcarter/2012/01/19/stop_sopa_now_why_its_important_to_the_average_joe/page/full/ I suggest strongly that you read this article and consider the implications of this bad bill.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 56 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Men only dare greatly if they expect great rewards. The government that seeks to limit the size of reward that a man may hope for or expect is foolish at best and tyrannical at worst.

Some say that greed, or need is the mother of invention and I would have to say that the first is closest to the truth. That is because no matter how great the need of a people group is the only reason something new is attempted (which is the essence of invention) is if the person who is making the attempt believes he will reap some reward that he feels is adequate to his effort.

The only difficulty I have is in calling the self-interest that inspires invention greed. This is because I do not believe that wanting a better life in and of itself is a manifestation of greed. It seems to me that greed is when you try to prevent other people from having a better life. Or when you desire something and steal it rather than work for it.

The characterization of profit as evil is one of the many ways in which the lazy and greedy rulers of a society work to make it easier for them to steal from those who work and produce the good things they desire but do not wish to soil their hands with the production of.

© 2012 Vic Jones

Lesson 55 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Evil breeds hate. Then hatred breeds violence.

Hatred sets men one against another. The father of evil (if you believe the Bible) is Satan; the one thing Satan wants more than anything else is for men to hate one another. The fact that men hating one another breeds violence and causes men to destroy one another means that we do Satan’s work for him.

Perhaps you do not believe in Satan or in objective evil. If you insist on disbelieving in Satan that is fine; but not believing that we can define evil as one man stirring hatred for another for any reason seems to be lacking in understanding. For if we hate one another we can never have peace.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 54 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built. Abraham Lincoln

Let us paraphrase this for the modern era: Let not the poor man steal (whether with his own hand or by government action) from the rich but rather let him learn to become rich and build his own wealth thereby assuring that his wealth will be safe from the greed of other men.

Greed is without a doubt at the heart of wishing to have what you desire without work. But greed always leads to everyone having less goods and less security.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 52 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Today’s lesson is a quote from Ayn Rand the author of Atlas Shrugged. “One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” —Ayn Rand, 1975

My first question on seeing this quote is: What is a Statist? A Statist is a person who invests the state (government) with the ability to answer all of life’s questions and needs. A person who believes this way is worshiping a false god of course but since the state has become their god you cannot do much to persuade them away from investing all of their effort into it.

In the modern era it is wise for us to remember that the statist will do his (her) best to destroy anyone who even begins to shake their faith.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 51 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Self interest is not evil. Taking away people's incentive to win is evil!

Self interest is often conflated to be greed which is then seen as evil. I find no difficulty in identifying greed as evil. What I do find difficult is to separate honest and reasonable self interest that is survival oriented for both the individual and society from greed which is not survival oriented.

Perhaps the best way to define greed is as a hunger that cannot be sated and that grows greater the more it is fed. In extreme cases this sort of hunger destroys not only the individual but the society of which he is a part.

Taking away a person’s incentive to win  is evil because this is an abrogation of his self interest which as I noted above is good not only for himself but for everyone around him.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 50 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Jealousy and greed are interrelated; if I am jealous of my neighbor's car I am actually practicing covetousness which is a form of greed. If I am jealous of my wife or husband it is because I think of them as possessions rather than as people.

Some people think that self-interest is the same as greed I do not think that self-interest is the same as greed nor is it (self-interest) evil. Yet because it puts your welfare above other people’s welfare it is easy to mistake self-interest as greed.

Greed (and I’ll define it more in a later lesson) is insisting that you should be the only person to have possessions. It (greed) is not wanting more possessions than you currently have unless by having more things you seek to deny possessions to your neighbor.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 49 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

If you can't enforce the law then it is nothing more than empty words.

I suppose that the easy thing to say about this statement is that it should need no further explanation. It seems (at least to me) to be complete without adding to it. That does not mean that there are not other principles that cannot be obtained from it nor that there are not questions that must be asked if this principle is true. The first of those questions is this: When has the law become so complex that it is impossible to know or enforce?

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 45 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

The only way that everyone can (or will) have the same amount of goods and services is if no one has any goods or services.

Of course even in the most aggressively socialistic or communistic countries it is evident that not everyone has the same things or the same services rendered to them. For example consider North Korea. Most of the population of North Korea lives in abject poverty while the ruler of the country (an absolute dictator) lives in luxury that would embarrass anyone with a sense of morality. The same can be seen in Cuba where the Castro brothers have lived in luxury while their people starved. Thus when anyone puts forth the idea that fairness consists of everyone having the same amount of goods and services it is well to ask whether he is willing to divest himself of his goods so that he can live up to his rhetoric.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Lesson 39 from The Hard Knocks School of Life

Emotion rules reason. This is why tyrants appeal to people’s emotion. Lust lures people to death, fear drives them into the cages, and anger can turn them into an unthinking mass willing to commit any atrocity.
This is one of the statements that leads me to believe that less is more. I honestly don’t know what I could add to this statement to intensify it or convince anyone who is unwilling to accept its bold simplicity.

Altogether too often there is living proof that emotion has ruled reason when a riot breaks out or when a group of people decide to attack someone they see as threatening. Yet we do not teach our children to use reason rather than emotion. I wonder why?

© 2011 Vic Jones

6000000 tax payers?

P. Obama has defined rich as making more than 250,000 dollars. So with that in mind I did a little research and found that about 2% of people filing income tax paperwork made over this amount. Therefore if (and trust me this is not true) every person filed an income tax return the number of persons making more than 250,000 dollars in the USA would be around 6,000,000 (this assumes 300,000,000 population). But a great number of people file jointly (I didn’t look up this statistic) and a certain number of people are exempt from filing as well as a certain number who will not file for other reasons.
Therefore we must ask a serious question: what sort of person would in essence destroy (because the end result of taxation is destruction) a resource like people who are ambitious enough to make an income that is higher than others?

Some have suggested that P. Obama is incompetent. I think this is untrue, he has said he will fundamentally transform the USA. All of his activities seem to be trending in that direction with no fumbles at all. So no I do not think he is incompetent. Anything he does that is destructive to the USA is deliberate.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Budget Woes

P. Obama and his cronies in the senate have sent a budget to the people demanding that they be permitted to spend 20% more this year than they did last year. Then when the house which represents the people tells him that he can only spend 10% more than last year he throws a fit like a two year old denied a candy bar. I truly think both he and congress need a reality check. Let me explain a true budget cut. I have had a 20% reduction in actual income, not in projected income. This is a budget cut; not what P. Obama and Harry Reid are complaining about. Reality would demand that the government not spend more than 10% of the GDP and that they cease from taking money from those who earn it to give to those who refuse to work.

© 2011 Vic Jones

Students treated like prisoners in LA

Is Los Angeles taking the lead in treating children like prisoners? The reason I ask this is that I’m listening to a radio show Dennis Prager at http://www.krla870.com/ on the internet and they are reporting that in LA the schools want to fit their students with GPS devices to enforce attendance. My first reaction to this is that this is a horrid extension of government. First schools should be places children are enthusiastic about going. If they are not places where children want to go then there is something desperately wrong and there must be a change made in what is being done in schools so far as the instruction program.
© 2011 Vic Jones