See, as you can tell, I'm not a huge fan of the LP. Well, I'm a BIG fan of libertarianism, and I even support the LP mostly, but the people actually IN the LP can be so fucking annoying. I was on the State Central Committee for a state LP that went through a big political feud over trying to oust the Party Chairman, and it was just stupid posturing, backbiting, and slick maneuvering over, what, 1% of the electorate? Hardly a big enough piece of the pie to get bent out of shape over.

They call themselves the "Party of Principle", but I think they could stand to lighten up on the "principle" part. Being the party of principle doesn't mean shoving *your* principles and self-righteousness down everybody else's throat, Christ. The LP needs to get their fucking act together before they get anymore of my money.

I just read Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce which is all about how businesses must become not just eco-friendly, but design their businesses for long term sustainability. Sounds pretty libertarian, I'll do a post on libertarian environmentalism in a bit.

How much do they have to flaunt it before you realize that Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the SAME FUCKING PARTY?

Christ, they’re practically fondling each other in their cute little sunglasses. Do your homework on these two, fellas - this picture says a lot more than any campaign talk will this summer.

That libertarian environmental post is still coming…

I can’t do it justice with words. You have to see it yourself. The people who distributed it in America (it’s in German, and I was actually pleased that I could understand much of it without the subtitles) also just released an interview documentary with Robert MacNamara that looks really interesting called The Fog of War. Good, good stuff.

Don’t dispair, loyal readers… libertarianism… environmental policy… I’ll get to it.

I’m still not sure why I’m embarking on blogging. All in all, it just seems like a way for malcontents to rant and rave. It seems to do more sometimes to marginalize discussion on the internet than to promote it, and from some of the conversations I’ve been in over the net, I can understand why that would be desirable. I’d like to believe that dialogue on the internet can lead to creative and thoughtful discourse (even humor like my bud Wil’s blog) but experience has shown that the internet tends to draw out the worst in people (such as my bud Wil’s blog - HAHAHAHA).

However, holding with my idea that the internet represents a major step forward in the conversion of humanity to a more integrated, interdependent sense of identity - indeed, a Social Memory Complex (more on that later, in the meantime, check out my original music under the same name - I want to at least put my views out there and let the chips fall where they may. I think recent events are catalyzing change at both an individual and collective level, whether or not people realize it. My bet is that there is value to be gained by talking about this. We shall see.

And for anybody who’s finding this from Wil’s blog, calling somebody gay is hereby verboten. If you’re gonna insult people, use your fucking imagination.

Now let’s see what happens in the comment list, now that I’ve released their inner creativity… express the child within.

However, on the other hand, it was precisely this ideal of duty, accountability, and willingness to sacrifice that I believe was the problem in Vietnam and the problem now. This flawed idea that, somehow, government can advance ideas and ideologies and that that justifies people dying en mass. That government is not, in the end, just the business end of a big stick. MacNamara states point blank that if we had lost World War II that we would be considered war criminals for what we did. But he takes the completely opposite view as I do - he says we need to think about how to codify a just approach to war that minimizes loss of life. I say forget it - make war as horrible and brutal as possible, don’t make it a game. You fight to win, so nobody dares fuck with you, BUT you only fight when necessary. Vietnam didn’t start out with 500k troops on the ground - but it did end up there, and it happened because we tiptoed into a battle because we weren’t truly willing from the beginning to accept the costs.

Yes, war is sometimes necessary in order to defend your nation - but the more you try to institutionalize it, conventionalize it, make it a more and more acceptable extension of politics, the more often you will have to wage it. Like where we are now as a superpower - perpetual war for perpetual peace. And all that does is just make war more and more acceptable, and destabilizes the world. No, war is horrible, and it should be accepted as such. It should be waged so terribly and brutally as to make each and every human individual determined never to accept the conditions of war from their leaders unless absolutely necessary - and even then with skepticism. I do not accept that we have to engage in these maintenance wars like Vietnam and Gulf War 1/2 (I do, however, believe that our foreign policy requires such maintenance, but it is that policy that should be regarded as the problem).

This sort of liberal idea that government is a force for progress in the realm of ideology and culture and economics is the problem, I think, and it’s hard for the more academically inclined to accept (which is why I think our education system is so liberal). They’re so married to the idea that government can manipulate the world stage to bring about some sort of “good”. Then they cry over the eggs they have to break to make an omelet. You can tell the guy has a conscience about what he was involved in, and yet, after the war he went to work for the World Bank, a quasi governmental agency pushing globalization (i.e. free trade for special interests) on the world.

People who believe that the future lies in the individual have a long way to go in this world.

The whole point of this book I read (The Ecology of Commerce) by Paul Hawken was the idea that, if you look at the natural ecology, there is a remarkable efficiency to the way biological systems work. There is no waste whatsoever. It is the ultimate example of economic efficiency, applied to the problem of how to sustainably maintain a diverse biological environment healthily. The premise of Hawken’s argument was if business could adapt to incorporate this natural, organic efficiency, it would be not only more efficient, but more sustainable: economic efficiency and environmental sustainability and reduced ecological impact should go hand in hand. Essentially, the business that incurs the least waste and least environmental costs should also be the one that can produce the least cost widget. So why doesn’t capitalism work like this?

I can’t find the quote now, but there is a quote in the book by some anti-globalization writer that puts it quite succinctly: “The problem with the free market is that we’ve never had one.” This is precisely the problem: externalization of costs cannot occur without government interference in, and distortion of, the market. Corporations pollute the air because government will not - cannot - hold them accountable for the common problem they are creating (whether because of the principles of limited government or the effects of corporate influence on politics). Artificial limits on liability and legal ambiguity allow the corporations to continue polluting public resources like the land, air, and water because in most cases the public owns these assets. Of course, what that really means is that politicians control these properties - and these politicians have no stake in the future value of the properties.

Hawken proposes a system of green taxes to make environmentally harmful and inefficient production methods more expensive. For example, his argument is that organic milk SHOULD be less expensive than conventional milk because, if you factor in the externalized costs of conventional dairy farming methods vs. organic methods, organic milk represents a more efficient and more sustainable way of doing business. It is only because conventional (often corporate) farmers can dump their costs on future generations that they are able to produce less expensively. So the government should phase in taxes on these unenvironmental businesses and their products so that costs are paid up front, so businesses and consumers have a real picture of the expensiveness of doing business the old, wasteful way. He even suggests that all proceeds from green taxes be earmarked to reduce the public income tax liability, so nobody could use the money for political agendas.

On the surface, the green tax idea seems like a good idea, until you remember the downside: politicians are going to run it. And the more power you give politicians, the more you encourage the selling of that political power to the highest corporate bidder. I bet corporations would find a way to use green taxes to unjustly put competitors at a disadvantage. Not only that, I seriously doubt that the government would simply decrease your liability for income tax in the long run - they would simply find a way to reach the same equilibrium they are at now, which would mean raising the income tax liability to factor in the new taxes. The major problem is that, just like central planning in the Soviet Union, government has no possible way of accurately fixing costs on anything, let alone something as ambiguous as environmental sustainability and hazards. We should abandon once and for all the idea that government is an effective solution to this problem. It is too centralized, too self righteous, to manipulable, to money hungry, and too corruptible.

However, I think Hawken is definately on to something, and we should not chuck this baby out with the bathwater. If we can find a market mechanism for accounting for these costs, it is likely that business would be forced to pay them, which means consumers would be forced to pay for them, which means the same effect would occur. I believe the best method is to privatize everything to the maximum, so there is no public property. If all lands had a private owner, that owner would have a personal stake in the future value of that property. He would pursue any pollution of that property (air, land, or water) so that it would cost money to the polluter. Obviously, we would need more efficient, third party arbitration of this system. I’m sure if these property rights were enforced efficiently, we would find community centers that would pursue, say, air pollution claims. Businesses who pollute would be forced to account NOW for all pollution they dump on the public, PLUS they would be liabile for any future health or property damage. They would be accountable to somebody for their pollution instead of now being able to externalize these costs on the public. In this way, wastefulness would be less efficient, and the bottom line would push business in the right direction. Incidentally, it would also force consumers - and environmental nutcases - to put their money (not simply somebody else’s tax dollars) on the line for the environment. We could finally have a genuine, public debate (without corporate manipulation) on what kind of environmental quality we want, and people would be able to see how costly it is to be such a wasteful, polluting society.

Personally, I think we need to rethink the corporation as an institution for doing business (I will write more on this later, as I feel passionately about it), as this focus on the bottom line has been part of the problem (as the corporations get bigger they tend to resemble government bureaucracies more and more, and the inefficiency and wastefulness that accompanies them). Getting them to account for the costs of their wastefulness and destructiveness, however, is one way to ensure that profitability and environmentalism go hand in hand. Ideally, this is somethig to which corporations should be accountable directly to the public without the corrupting influence of government murking up the waters. Hawken makes the argument that capitalism and free enterprise have been the driving force behing human progress since the 19th century, and that if long term change is going to occur, it must occur in the market. Indeed, the more we look at the picture, it turns out that an unholy alliance between business and government to offset costs onto our children have resulted in a dangerously distorted pricing mechanism that is creating a false dichotomy between economics and environmentalism that should not exist.

Oh yeah, check out this essay a wrote for my friend Eskmo and his website The Helix Network called History as the Evolution of Identity.

Why did I write this article? Because the idea of the social memory complex is the type of collective I think our planet is headed towards throughout history and currently. It’s been coming for some time; the question is simply whether it will be positive or negative. We must come together to solve the problems we face, but we have to do it in via each and every individual. We can’t form this complex, and thus tap into the power of the collective, without each and every individual taking his or her irreplacable spot in the collective.

Let me know what you think. Well, not you, but the rest of you.

Why are y’all groaning like that?

Anyway, my girlfriend, who is a full time, self employed potter, is doing another art show this weekend in Fredericksburg. This means I get to sit at a booth with her while women going through or already past menopause ask dumb questions and whine about how cute everything is without buying anything. The worst ones are the ones who try to talk down your price, as if she really should be charging less for this stuff that she works her ass of at. “Hello, this took a lot of time, it’s only $15, just give her the money, take it out of the big sack of bills your husband got when he cashed in his stock options, you pretentious sack of botox!” I swear, I have no idea how she does it. I could never do any retail, I would just give myself an ulcer.

Lately I’ve been getting back into it, and there’s some really good production out if you know where to look. I really can’t listen to any of that gangster shit - I know some people just wanna laugh at it, but I think it’s funking sad people take that shit seriously. But there’s a lot of good stuff - not neccessarily underground, either. Blackalicious (The Gift of Gab, the rapper from Blackalicious, just came out with a great new solo album called Fourth Dimensional Rocket Ships Going Up - yeah, the whole album is about spiritual evolution and it just makes me wanna sing) and anything from the Quannum collective (DJ SHADOW!), Jurassic 5, I even dig Dilated Peoples most of the time and Eyedea and Abilities are good too. I love the production but most of these guys are really on their game lyrics-wise, mad skillz plus they’ve got a positive message to spread. I love that moment when the beats and words come together and give you that rush like a shot of smack in the arm….

Whew, speaking of which, I’ll be right back… now where’d I put that spoon?

There should be some sort of protection against letting your high class tastes outpace your ability to afford them. Anybody know where you can find sashimi grade yellowtail in the Bum Fuck Egypt area?

Anybody ever notice that Internet Explorer problem where you enter a password, then tab down to the “Submit” or “OK” or whatever button, and when you click that button with the space bar it puts that space in the password text entry box somehow, and messes up the password?

Oh, yeah, Reagan died last night… for all his failures to deliver on his promises, he kept us out of war (probably in spite of himself) and put the “small government” idea on the table. Too bad he never actually did anything about it, nor did any republicans. I think the Republican and Democratic parties are basically dead as opposing forces; they’re basically just two factions of the same elite anymore. Yeah, Steve, I know, I know, but get your own damn blog.

Anyway, the articles in question. First there’s this one on some unnamed witnesses’ testimony that Bush knew about the intentional leak of the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Check this out:

Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

You knew there was more to Bush getting an attorney than “routine procedure”. Second, there’s this article about Bush being a nutcase.

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be "God's will" and then tells aides to "fuck over" anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.

That kinda explains the Plame leak, doesn’t it? It also explains Tenet’s resignation:

"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now." Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."

The article goes on to point out that Ashcroft and Bush are “tight” because they both believe “any action is justifiable in the name of God.” Reading shit like this makes me almost think I should vote for Kerry - then I remember that at least the Bible thumpers are predictable. It just looks more an more like Bush ain’t gonna win. Plus, since Republicans always take my home state, it doesn’t matter whom I vote for anyway.