Amerika

• Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years

  The illusion of competence also explains why — despite falling student enrollment, which should reduce costs — Grosse Pointe and similar school districts succeed in raising school taxes. Instead of being outraged at paying dearly for abysmal academic results, those who favor school taxes double down on their support! It’s a combination of psychological denial and fiscal Stockholm syndrome. In denial, “the faithful” desperately cling to the notion that their elite high-tax district is exceptional despite the data. They cannot admit they have been duped. And since they cannot escape the fiscal dragnet of this tax-fed monopoly, in a classic display of Stockholm syndrome, they adopt the stance of their captors and cheer all the louder!

  Public schooling is symbol — education good! make democracy work! more money because educated workforce! — rather than reality. The reality is that it bores the smart and normal kids in a quest to educate people who have no business learning anything more than the 3 Rs and how to pick turnips.

• Setting the record straight on the benefits, and heavy costs, of immigration to Canada

  In our most recent study we used basic statistics from the previous census and the National Household Survey to estimate that because of Canada’s progressive income tax system, recent immigrants paid much lower income taxes than non-immigrants. We added to this amount other taxes related to income and wealth, such as the GST and capital gains taxes, and concluded that in 2008-09, recent immigrants on average paid $13,100 in tax compared with $18,000 paid by other Canadians, yielding a shortfall of $4,900 per year.

  With average benefits included, it is $5,300 per year. In Germany, refugee costs are between 12,000 and 20,000 euros per year. Mass immigration in America costs up to $300 billion a year with your average illegal immigrant causing a $14,000 per head cost. Not to mention that 62% of illegal aliens use at least one welfare program. Even cautious studies suggest that we are paying more than we are receiving from the newcomers.

• George Will Strikes Out by Attacking National Conservatism

  Will dismisses national conservatives as simply trying to rationalize the Trump administration’s behavior, and labels their economic thinking “Elizabeth Warren conservatism.” He excoriates Oren Cass as a socialist for suggesting that the United States adopt an industrial policy that allocates resources well rather than “to their most economically productive uses.” He scorns Tucker Carlson’s contention that the private sector now poses a greater threat to personal liberty than government, dismissing corporate power as “friction of circumstances.” To Will, national conservative arguments come at the expense of conservative principles.

  The Buckleyites (spawn of fake WASP William F. Buckley) beat back the John Birch Society in the 1960s in order to make conservatism palatable to a new Left-leaning audience that included lots of Southern and Eastern Europeans, including bog trotters like Buckley. This made conservatism — a variety called “fusionism” or the (American) New Right — more like Leftism, which caused its takeover by Leftist hybrids like neoconservatives, but also redefined conservatism as a libertarian philosophy with a few token conservative elements (defense, Jesus/Israel/rapture, big business).

  George Will comes from that tradition and essentially insists that conservatism be nothing but classical liberalism, when in fact we came before classical liberalism and aim for social order instead of The Enlightenment™-styled individualism, which naturally leads to greed and sociopath-level thinking, even if it is collectivized into Crowds which hide their mutual selfishness behind a facade of altruism, compassion, pluralism, pacifism, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism.

  Reagan was a brief return to sanity, although he did not reject the neoconservative principles, because he was like Trump not an ideological but a pragmatic, realistic, and function-oriented president. After him, we got an able manager in Bush I, but he failed to capture the conservative imagination because he ultimately wanted a neoconservative New World Order based in democracy, equality, and other Leftist tropes, and then the Clintons took over, at which point the voters looked at the horror and turned back to the Bushes, getting Bush II who wanted the type of staid conventional socially liberal “conservatism” that is popular in megachurches. Not surprisingly, the voters then ran to the other side and got Obama, after which they fled in droves to Trump, hoping for more of that Reagan-style realism instead of either Leftism or conservatism-as-an-ideology, which is de facto Leftist.

• Are the Kids Al(t)right?

  And I have more bad news for my fellow conservatives: the talented kids who’ve found this book aren’t listening to us. It doesn’t matter whether they aren’t listening because they found the book, or they found the book because they aren’t listening. The fact remains that all our earnest explanations of the true meaning of equality, how it comports with nature, how it can answer their dissatisfactions, and how it’s been corrupted—none of that has made a dent.

  We want to get to the root of the problem, and that is the idea that equality in any form can be achieved. In fact, it is human woo, a fixation on being able to escape natural selection — when we are all equal, you do not lose rank for incompetence, libertinism, or hubris — that takes over our minds and drives us crazy. The founding fathers tried to limit it (“all men are created equal” limits equality with the state of creation, which is unequal) but the symbol won out in the end, and now we have to reverse it and all other Enlightenment™-style thinking which places the individual human form above broader orders like nature, the divine, and logic.

• How Much Is A Tree Worth?

  Assoc. Prof. Tlna Offler, University of Newcastle, and Bill Nethery, State Forests of New SouthWales, plus some library work revealed some startling but often overlooked facts about the true value of trees.

  She said the true value (considering only oxygen output) of a tree such as a Pine or Cedar would be about $120,000 each yea . If the tree lived 50 years, it would have produced about $6 million worth of oxygen!

  A better way of thinking about nature: instead of resources, these are processes, and we need to value them in order to allow them to continue.

• Why Liberal Internationalism Has Already Lost the Global Struggle for the Future

  Yet the Big Lie is dying on its feet: It has delivered suffering, misery, uncertainty and even terror to the subject populations on whom its devotees have imposed their creeds, regardless of the clearly expressed democratic will. Throughout the Western world and, for that matter in Japan and India, populist, national leaders have emerged who are seeking to defy the suicidal principles of open borders, unlimited trade and immigration flows that the supra-national institutions of the past 75 years are trying to impose upon them.

  What creates this international elite who keep pushing insane Leftism? First, the fascination of the voters, especially the left half of the bell curve, with equality; second, the massive opportunities to be had through usury, fiat money, international banking, and democracy combined, even if these devastate the host nation once the scam is revealed:

  On March 17, 1790, the revolutionary National Assembly voted to issue a new paper currency called the assignat, and in April, 400 million were put into circulation. Short of funds, the government issued another 800 million at the end of the summer. By late 1791, 1.5 billion assignats were circulating and purchasing power had decreased 14 percent. In August 1793 the number of assignats had increased to almost 4.1 billion, its value having depreciated 60 percent. In November 1795 the assignats numbered 19.7 billion, and by then its purchasing power had decreased 99 percent since first issued. In five years the money of revolutionary France had become worth less than the paper it was printed on.

  The effects of this monetary collapse were fantastic. A huge debtor class was created with a vested interest in the inflation because depreciating assignats meant debtors repaid in increasingly worthless money. Others had speculated in land, often former Church properties the government had seized and sold off, and their fortunes were now tied to inflationary rises in land values. With money more worthless each day, pleasures of the moment took precedence over long-term planning and investment.

  Goods were hoarded—and thus became scarcer—because sellers expected higher prices tomorrow. Soap became so scarce that Parisian washerwomen demanded that any sellers who refused to sell their product for assignats should be put to death. In February 1793 mobs in Paris attacked more than 200 stores, looting everything from bread and coffee to sugar and clothing.

  In short, when people are talking about “equality,” they mean embarking on a social and political system which requires constant subsidies to function, in turn necessitating a transition from currency backed by production to money valued by demand, which connects it to international capital. That moneyed class of people without any particular culture then buys governments, since democracy is inherently corrupt, and steers us toward further suicidal policies.

• Europe’s Fading Cosmopolitan Dream

  In Europe, as in America, attitudes about immigration are closely tied to class. Migration is much more popular among those whom British author David Goodhart calls the “anywheres”—largely cosmopolitan in outlook—but less welcome by many less educated European “somewheres.” The anywheres predictably dominate the European press, which often downplays jihadism and crimes associated with refugees because it threatens the preferred narrative of a post-national, secularized world. Most mainstream European politicians also belong to the anywhere camp, regardless of their constituents’ views.

  In other words, the internationalists — products themselves of diversity — want more diversity, but its failure has caused it to die as a workable policy. The real problem, low European birthrates, most likely relates to adoption of entitlements states and the manic workplace culture required to fund all those taxes.

• Stay the Course on China: An Open Letter to President Trump

  We note the PRC does not recognize the principles and rules of the existing international order, which under a Pax Americana has enabled the greatest period of peace and global prosperity in mankind’s history. The PRC rejects this order both ideologically and in practice. China’s rulers openly proclaim and insist on a new set of rules to which other nations must conform, such as their efforts to dominate the East and South China Seas and the so-called “Belt and Road Initiative,” with its debt-trap diplomacy, designed to extend such hegemony worldwide. The only persistently defining principle of the CCP is the sustainment and expansion of its power.

  In short, like most Leftist states, it is a runaway reaction. The people want equality, which creates an unstable society, and that in turn causes it to militarize to keep order and then to wage war for conquest in order to acquire wealth to stabilize its unstable center. It will grow until it runs out of space then implode, leaving behind a vast third-world wasteland.

• Leftist Mass Shooters

  But whether real or fake, these incidents all have the effect of accelerationism, that is, encouraging both copycats by others and crackdowns by the federal government limiting the second amendment, and even the first amendment, protection of our natural God-given rights from government intrusion. If the people who created this country have the will of their ancestors still, that might create a backlash, just as happened when the government attempted gun control on April 19th, 1775. If they do not, then other races do, and will speed up the already inevitable balkanization process leading to the breakup of the United States when they claim their slice of the pie.

  Mass shootings show us social breakdown brought on by the postwar order. Who wants to labor away in an office ten hours a day in order to pay taxes, get divorced, pay child support, and then retire to obscurity because our society no longer has any culture that makes people relevant beyond their participation in the financial system? No one, which is why they are breeding less. That means that our civilization is dying, and it will either perk up and overthrow its parasitic government or be dominated by those with the will to do so.

• The Craftsman in an Industrialised Age

  Ironically, the demands of industrial man’s brain and muscle are generally higher on weekends and holidays than on workdays. For then and there he undertakes deeds which no employer could persuade him to suffer, which no union could dissuade him from sustaining. He indulges freely in the sheer expansion of effort. He deploys anachronistic artisan, moral, and gastronomic activities; he preferably works manually; he climbs mountains without shying hardship; he goes on marches to support lost causes; he fancies dancing, fighting, running, and fishing without apparent gain. Regardless of whatever ecologically, aesthetically, or morally doubtful job he may be doing to earn a living, he becomes, in his leisure time, a devout ecologist, a conservationist, a samurai, a pacifist, a christian, a poet, a craftsperson, socialist, an antifascist, and what not? Instead of earning a livelihood by following his vocation, he wastes energy and savings doing just that in his leisure time. Whenever he feels free to do what he thinks right, homo industrialis turns into his own negation.

  Cultures of the past have only been great when they have educated people to become independent and earn a living by doing what they were good at. There are born hunters who are deaf to music, there are unsuccessful bankers who make excellent cooks. All great philosophers, teachers, and wise men have insisted on people choosing the profession which suits them best; they have even seen in the differing vocations a demonstration of divine providence, of nature’s harmony and miraculous equilibrium.

  Corporate jobs are death and people come alive on evenings and weekends because they are able to apply their time as fits them, instead of what fits the conformist corporate culture. Ironically, for us to be able to be individuals, we must reject individualism and instead support the type of social order that allows each person to have a place, recognizing in tradeoff that those places will be unequal. Without inequality, we have only conformity to a lowest common denominator standard. Agrarian, manorial feudalist, and traditional societies support craftsmanship and independence, where modern-style societies turn us all into a fungible herd to funnel into offices for repetitive tasks that fulfill no one (and hence, we stop breeding and die out).

• Buying Greenland isn’t a good idea — it’s a great idea

  Thanks to Thule’s deep water port and long runway, the base provides a logistics hub for operations in the Arctic. And it gives the U.S. military the means to deter and defeat prospective aggression. Russia, in particular, has been working to secure territorial control over resource-rich areas of the Arctic. America’s presence in Greenland is increasingly relevant for that reason.

  The purchase of Greenland would further strengthen these existing national security benefits. Unbound from political sensitivities in Denmark, for example, the U.S. could station missile forces in Greenland, including intermediate range missile forces. Russia’s Arctic ambitions would have to be put on ice.

  Instead of navel-gazing, maybe we should focus on becoming more powerful, prosperous, and organized in the future. That is futurism, not “progress,” and it provides a better path for all and for the intangibles like civilization, culture, heritage, and aesthetics.

• Red-light cameras undermine rule of law

  Speed and red-light cameras are the bane of many motorists. A modern idea made possible by technology, they have been installed in at least 24 states. Although these cameras are a revenue boon for governments across the nation, their intrusion into daily life is disturbing, and their constitutionality is dubious. Specifically, use of these cameras could violate the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them.

  I really disagree with this premise. Red Light Cameras, CCTVs and the like don’t undermine law, they make it too prominent. The hallmark of the enlightened and educated man is freedom from the law. “I have gained this from my philosophy.” Said Aristotle. “I do of my own free will what others only do for fear of the law.” So the Skeptical Bureaucrat rejoins, “Ok, Big Aristotle, what about the dorkmeisters who haven’t gained jack from your philosophy? Do we just let them blow through every red light in town, genius?”

  Well, no. We obviously don’t. There’s too much ticket revenue at stake. We install the Managerial State instead and forcibly correct every individual behavior that the state may find offensive. You know, like the late, great USSR. The one part of Alan Greenspan’s lugubrious tome The Age of Turbulence that I still remember involves him sitting down with a former Soviet bureaucrat in the id 1990s. This guy just didn’t get how The Soviet System had failed. He was a bigshot economist who had put every factory and every deliverable due from that factory on The Excel Spreadsheet from Hell. Every month the factories reported having dutifully delivered. The guy just couldn’t get how it all didn’t work.

  Unlike the USSR, our managerial state is way too cagey to believe its own press releases. That’s how we get the Red Light Cameras. Rule of law be damned.

• How Trump Put Netanyahu in an Untenable Position

  Be nice to (((Daniel Pipes))). He’s having a loyalty conflict w/ this one. Mr. Trump, you see, wasn’t elected to look out for Israel First. That wasn’t the slogan, Daniel. Remember that better next time.

• Nobody Understands Democracy Anymore

  Nope. Nobody falls for Democracy anymore. We understand that it is demotism. We get that it gets more and more tribal. It’s all getting down to who can mobilize enough wolves to vote some sheep for dinner. We do all understand that it’s just about bust-out time as the racket devolves into a garbage fire.

• White People and Their Achievements Are Marked for Destruction

  Such are the forces of Social Thermodynamics. Those who can’t achieve for themselves or for their group denigrate and disintegrate the achievements of others until it all approaches the zero.

  The Western world is collapsing so rapidly that I am afraid that I am going to outlive it. The Western presstitutes and politicians have demonized Putin, Maduro, Iran, and Trump to the same extent as the patriotic propagandistic Western court historians have demonized Adolf Hitler. But no one is as demonized as white people, and the curious thing is that it is self-demonization—whites demonizing whites.

  This happens when a certain critical mass no longer believes it can outswim the shark. They just try to get the shark to chase the person next to them instead. Human nature at its garbage worst.

• San Francisco doesn’t care about the stock market

  Are you smarter than the tech startup or is the tech startup smarter than you..? That’s the question to ask yourself before you sign up for a low salary with a back-loaded stock option package. This is particularly true if there is a time limit before the options vest.

  With options making up a considerable chunk of a tech employee’s compensation, it’s no surprise employees so closely track a company stock price, but it can be a distraction. One tech COO told me, “People are doing math in their head. Can they buy a house? Can they send a kid to college?”

  Hit the jackpot or end up in there. The tech billionaire wannabe has no loyalty to the boss, the boss has no loyalty to him. It’s all transactional and eventually it’s all going to go down. People like this don’t hang together in the bad times. They perhaps hang separately in the end.

• Looking Ahead After a Quarter Century Into the Digital Age

  Sixty-seven percent of respondents from the most digitized firms say that their organizations have embedded AI into standard business processes, compared with 43% for all other companies. Thirty-nine percent of the most digitized companies have adopted machine learning capabilities and a further 31% are conducting machine learning pilots, compared with 16% and 24%, respectively, for all companies. And 37% of the most digitized companies are using virtual agents while 31% are conducting pilots, compared with 15% and 26%, respectively, for all companies.

  Not surprisingly, companies are embracing new technology that reduces the cost of labor and the instability of unions. Soon the forces that have held us under the control of class warfare for generations will find themselves wholly expendable. At that point, new options for government will reveal themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYItTxqTc38

Tags: linkpost, outliers