The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod

See, what we always meant by socialism wasn’t something you forced on people, it was people organizing themselves as they pleased into co-ops, collectives, communes, unions. Now look at this place. Look at space, come to that. It’s crawling with them! And if socialism really is better, more efficient than capitalism then it can bloody well compete with capitalism. So we decided, forget all the statist shit and the violence: the best place for socialism is the closest to a free market you can get!

– Logan to Janis, in Ken MacLeod’s The Star Fraction, 1995

A real brain-twister of a book. Gotta read the rest of the series now.

Thanks to Arto Bendiken for the loan!

Why assume that the amount you’re being assessed really does represent your fair share?

And if that makes sense, why not pay it forward?

If the state is so good at doing the things it does, why not give it more of your income, your wealth and your labor?

Next time a tax reduction comes around, keep paying at the old rate.

When there’s a chance to show solidarity on your income tax or VAT returns, do so by adding a few extra percent on top.

Quit taking exemptions, deductions and credits.

When you’re going to pay for a meal at a restaurant, give the waitperson a few extra of the local currency unit and explain that it’s not a tip, but that you’d like it to be sent to the treasury.

Try those things and see how they feel.

And if you’re not willing to, you really ought to be ready to explain why not.

In fact, any kind of teleology applied to human history is, by definition, a denial of human agency. If our ultimate fate is predestined by an omnipotent God, then nothing we do in this life can make any difference. If a patriarchal society is the inevitable product of the evolution of the human brain, then any kind of feminist activism is a fruitless endeavour against nature [...]. If the inevitable end of history is all societies becoming representative democracies and members of a global free market, then no one is responsible for that state of affairs except some abstract force of historical inevitability, and any attempt to make the course of history run otherwise is hopeless. If the inevitable course of any political society is from feudalism through industrial capitalism and a proletarian revolution to socialism, then likewise. Teleology is the enemy of liberty.

YES, I am anti-American.

But let’s clarify a few things. I don’t think that the words “I” or “am” or the prefix “anti-” need any clarification. What does need to be cleared up is what is meant by the word “American”.

“American” means many different things. Let’s take them in turn.

• “America” the country — This, ultimately, is a set of lines drawn on a map, a geographical segment of the world. Do I oppose drawing lines on maps? Hardly. Marking roads, towns and rivers is useful. Even marking places where one might be subject to arbitrary violence is useful. But am I “anti-” the particular lines drawn to separate “America” from “the rest of the world”? YES. And I’m against all the other national and sub-national lines as well.

• “America” the land — Is it possible to hate a land? Perhaps, but I don’t. Mind you, there are plenty of places within those artificial map lines that I’d never recommend anyone to go, but there is nothing wrong with the land itself, the place, the landscape or its features. Do I hate the Grand Canyon, the central plains, the Adirondacks, or the Jersey shore? Not in the slightest. There are some southeastern swamp areas I wouldn’t recommend, but that doesn’t mean I hate those places any more than I could hate the moon.

• “America” the people — First of all, I don’t know these people. Sweeping generalizations about “a people” are often wrong and sometimes used to make the most horrifying collective judgements. As with any set, there are some people within the “American” boundaries who are good and some who are evil, some who are thoughtful and some who are mindless, some who are kind and some who are cruel. I can’t hate the “American people” any more than I can hate the “Congolese people” or the “Finnish people”. Mashing large numbers of human beings into collectives in order to pass judgement on them is ultimately a futile exercise.

• “America” the ideal — Ah, now we’re getting closer. America has a great mythology attached to it. A nation of migrants fleeing downtrodden lives in the old world settle a new, vast and fertile territory, bringing with them the finest ideals of liberal society and a vision of a bright tomorrow, and eventually giving birth to a society of freedom and prosperity. Gosh that sounds great, until you look at the history. The ideal is beautiful. Waving the ideal around today as some sort of excuse for what America has become is rank hypocrisy. And I really hate hypocrisy.

• “America” the historical national entity — From the extermination of native tribes through slavery, the “Civil” War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, all the other bogus wars of the 20th century, the War on (Some) Drugs, Jim Crow apartheid, the US-led global abandonment of sound money in favor of fiat currency and predatory central bankers, McCarthyism, New Deal socialism and the entire narrative of American exceptionalism up to the present three wars (Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia) and the endless bullying of the American state on the world stage, I hate America.

• “America” the system of government — “Democracy, hooray!” This one’s easy; I hate all existing systems of government.

• “America” the state, comprised of people currently running around in clown suits, their masters in the political class, the plutocrats who own the political class, plus the bureaucracy and the shareholders, employees and managers of all those corporations that exist for little reason other than to serve the aforementioned filth — Well, let’s just say I won’t miss you when you’re gone.

So, am I anti-American? Yes and no. On balance, and for the sake of argument, let’s say yes, yes I am anti-American. And I believe my heart — and my hate — are in the right place.

One Robert Lindsay, who claims an IQ of 147, responding to some comments of mine at his blog challenging his ridiculous assertion that anarchists and libertarians are racists, writes:

We Commies and socialists are the world’s greatest humanitarians. Stalin set a world record by doubling life expectancy in a country in the shortest period of time, a record that was unbroken until Mao broke it. Stalin and Mao are two of the greatest humanitarians that ever lived. They are life-savers. What kills is capitalism. [emphasis mine]

to which I reply:

Try telling that to the millions they murdered.

and

Yeah, people died under Stalin and Mao, but they both dramatically reduced the death rate. The death rate under Czarism was fully 3 times higher than under Stalin. Anyway, Stalin killed 1.6 million, not 110 million or whatever. Mao also dramatically reduced the death rate. There’s lots of ways to kill people, and the previous capitalist and feudalist regimes were killing far more than Stalin and Mao. These guys were the two greatest lifesavers that ever lived.

to which I responded:

Ah, the shades of evil. Even if we respect the anti-revisionist Stalin/Mao death counts here, to say that Stalin is somehow “better” than the Czarist monarchs for killing “only” 1.6 million people is to fall victim to false choice and forced options, or to adopt a utilitarian position which reduces human lives to mere numbers. Are we to say that Jeffrey Dahmer was “better” than Ted Bundy because he killed fewer people? Hardly. We rightly call both of them monsters. To call Stalin or Mao “humanitarians” for killing fewer millions than those who might have otherwise been in power is not only to twist words beyond all recognition of meaning but also to stand ready to defend the next tyrant intent on launching the next “great leap forward” up the side of a great mountain made of bloody, broken human corpses.

And Mr. Lindsay winds things up:

Wait a minute. You don’t get it. Stalin and Mao saved lives. They probably saved more lives than anyone in history. Lowering the death rate in your country is very important. They did this not be “killing fewer people” but by actually saving millions of lives though higher standard of living, improved diet, sanitation, health care, etc. Indian capitalism killed 170 million since 1949 by not going with the Chinese model of Communism. We’re not talking about “killing fewer people”. We’re talking about saving lives and giving the gift of life – time.

[...]

And some of those people Stalin killed got what they deserved! And a lot of those killed by Mao were the big landlords, and they were almost all horrible criminals. Mao didn’t kill them anyway, he just said that the villagers could put them on trial. The peasants hated them so much that they put many of them on trial, and in many cases, voted to convict and to execute them. Then the party carried out the peoples’ wishes. It’s pure people’s democracy – it’s not beaurocratic state murder or any of that.

Well, neat-o! I guess if the people wish it, that makes it okay, right? Yay, democracy!

For the sake of brevity, and in line with my inherent laziness, I’ll close simply with an observation that Mr. Lindsay reacted to by threatening expulsion from his blog-o-land. Politeness in the face of evil be damned.

(ignorance + flawed assumptions + ludicrous beliefs) x (your vaunted 147 IQ) = rank insanity

Slovak daily SME reports today that left-wing Prime Minister Robert Fico is proposing to make “speculative” pricing around euro adoption a crime (my translation from Slovak):

Police to Pursue Pricing

BRATISLAVA. Speculation with the prices of goods and services upon converting to the euro should be a crime. According to Justice Minister Štefan Harabin, the Ministry of Justice has responded to statements from Prime Minister Robert Fico and begun working on an amendment to the Criminal Code.

The amendment should set so-called “machinations” around the euro transition outside the law. It would concern unjustified speculation around transition to the euro currency which harms consumers. According to the Ministry, prison or fines should befall all who would wish to “enrich themselves or harm others in determining pricing for goods or services in euros.”

The Ministry did not make clear, however, what precisely is meant by machinations around the euro transition.

[...]

Socialist economics

“This is in conflict with a market economy; it is a principle of socialist economics,” said [lawyer] Gazareková at length. In her view, it is interference in the functioning of the market.

Juraj Karpiš, an analyst with the institute INESS, cautions that such regulatory activity from the government could lead to early price increases even before euro adoption. Businesses will be particularly afraid that after the euro transition they won’t be legally able to change prices so as to provide for a new situation in the market. Thus, they’ll prefer to do so in advance.

“Pricing is purely a matter for businesses, and it’s up to them alone how much they will sell their property for,” Karpiš said.

But let’s not allow reality intrude to now, Messrs. Fico and Harabin. And let’s not call out the hypocrisy of using the law as a tool to benefit the “little guy” consumers here as opposed to the “big bad” businesses when the Slovak central bank has been sticking it to importers (meaning anyone buying anything from outside the country: food, clothing, medicine, etc.) to the benefit of (a comparatively few) exporters through its own “machinations” under the ERM II exchange rate criteria in the face of a continuously strengthening local currency for years. No no, that wouldn’t do at all.

Related, and in English: Fico: Government Ready to Regulate Prices against Chisellers