That creates cognitive dissonance in most people’s minds. They know, on an instinctive level, that the elites are doing wrong, but their tribal instincts require they support the elite agenda. This phenomenon can partially explain the rise in psychological pathologies we see arising in modern, especially urban society, considering the disconnection from natural reality inherent in urban life.

The replacement of the tribal meritocratic elite with the pathological elite (the “political class”) requires that the tribe support elite agendas that degrade social cohesion within the tribe. Even though tribesmen are at least subconsciously aware of that degradation, their hard-wired, instinctive impulse to support elite ideas and opinions directs them to support their own exploitation.

As long as this condition (pathological personalities as the tribal elite) persists, the productive class is doomed to be victimized by the political class.

Religions are persistent and pervasive throughout human civilizations. It always seemed strange that religions are so regional and cultural. Wherever you were born and in which culture you were born usually coincided with whatever religion you adopted. Why is that? Why wouldn’t people see other religions that appealed to their sense of spirituality more and disperse to other religions in an equilibrium like particles dispersing in water?

It makes more sense in the light of tribalism. The number one priority of an organism is to continue living. The second is to reproduce. Only one organism that we know of that is aware of its own mortality and that is the human. No human, from the tribal elite to the ostracized, wants to die, and fear of death is the strongest of all fears. All humans in the tribe want to believe they aren’t going to die and religion, along with the belief in an afterlife assuages that fear. It’s reassuring if others share your religious beliefs, and especially so if the tribal elite shares those beliefs. If the elites believe it, you should believe it!

Part of achieving acceptance and standing in the tribe is reassuring your tribesmen that they aren’t going to die, because our religion says we’ll live on in an afterlife. The elites want that, too. Once that’s established, it can be used to codify and enforce moral codes that enhance tribal harmony, unity and encourage a high-trust social hierarchy. Societies like this will tend to succeed. That success leads to selection for the genes that caused this behavior.

Tribal cohesion is essential for the tribe’s success. Though the property-based libertarian moral code is baked in to the human genome, people are still often subject to emotion overriding this instinct, creating conflict. Because people generally don’t grasp the philosophy behind moral codes, religions can be an effective way to enforce moral codes within a tribe. The tribe members won’t understand moral philosophy, bit they will understand that their all-powerful god will deny them the afterlife if they don’t behave. So, religions serve multiple purposes in helping the tribe to survive.

Pathological personalities, while they may try to manipulate the religious beliefs of their tribesmen for their own benefit, they will also be unlikely to abide by religious moral codes and be rejected by the tribe, resulting in their exile and probable death or by being directly killed by god-fearing tribesmen. Tribes in which pathological personalities were able to successfully manipulate the tribe through religious misdirection would have been less likely to survive.

This helps to explain the tribal nature of religion and why it’s so universal among humans. Like the tribal survival instinct itself, religion has become genetically selected for.

The story goes like this. Mankind evolved into what we are today over a couple of million years, depending on who you ask. Regardless of who you ask, it’s what I consider a long time. The vast majority of that time was spent in small tribes wandering around searching for food. Then, around 10 to 12 thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution began and changed the course of human history.

Genes are funny. They are what make you what you are, but they’re very complex and subject to errors, some of which can benefit the owner while most disable him to some degree. People don’t like to admit this, but it’s true; your psychology is just as much a product of genetics and your individual genes as your physiology is. Genetic errors may occur where your immune system is weak or you only have one arm or you have too many or too few chromosomes, or you’re a psychopath. Genetic errors are easier to see when they’re physiological, less so when they’re psychological. Psychological genetic errors may result in various deficiencies, including pathological personalities, like the aforementioned psychopathy, narcissism, megalomania and so forth. These types of pathological personalities can lead to antisocial behaviors. In the pre-agricultural revolution, hunter-gatherer days, the tribe was small and mobile and could easily deal with pathological personalities by ostracizing the individuals in question, where they were unlikely to survive, or by simply killing them.

In those days, ostracism was a death sentence. Humans are a social, but individualistic species. We each have different strengths and weaknesses and we tend to work together to minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths. This is the economic idea of the division of labor. If you’re good at catching fish and I’m good at collecting coconuts, we can trade with each other for fish or coconuts and both of us will have fish and both will have coconuts and by doing this, we increase our chances of survival. Those of us whose genes influenced us to engage in this type of trade tended to survive and reproduce, therefore transferring these genes to our offspring and those of us who didn’t do this tended not to survive or reproduce, and we have, therefore, become genetically hard-wired to engage in this behavior. So, anyone rejected by the tribe was unable to use the strengths of others to offset his own weaknesses and was unlikely to survive.

Being accepted by and having good standing in the tribe meant survival and passing on genes and ostracization from the tribe meant death and not passing on genes. Over time, the genes that encourage behaviors that promote good standing in the tribe have been selected for and we have become hard-wired to seek acceptance and standing in society.

Before the agricultural revolution, the tribes survived according to the strengths of their individual members. The strongest and most beneficial members of the tribe became the tribal elites. One of the best ways to secure acceptance and standing in the tribe was to support and assimilate to the ideas and beliefs of the tribal elite. Over time, genes that promoted that behavior became selected for and we became hard-wired to adopt the ideas and beliefs of the tribal elites in order to survive.

So, people sought acceptance by the tribe and its elites and people with pathological, anti-social personalities could be ostracized or killed. Good system, until…

The agricultural revolution changed all of that. While mankind was evolving all of these tribal instincts, he was also evolving a powerful intellect. It’s this intellect that has made mankind successful and is unique (in its magnitude) among the other species. We used this intellect to create tools, develop hunting strategies and learn medicine. The more we used intellect to survive, the more powerful it became due to the same genetic selection forces that led to our tribalism. Eventually, however, we learned that, instead of wandering around searching for food, we could grow it, either by farming or by animal husbandry, without moving. Even though this led to an overall decline in health, birth rates exploded and mortality rates declined. It’s this agricultural revolution that allowed for the accumulation of capital, the development of complex economies and, eventually, the industrial revolution and modern civilization as we know it.

Many, if not most, would argue that the agricultural revolution was the greatest development in the history of mankind because of the the results, above. I argue, however, that the agricultural revolution may have doomed mankind.

Mankind was a completely evolved and adapted species achieving success in nature. Life may have been more difficult, but who’s to say? We were fully adapted to that way of life. The problem is that now, men are tethered to a piece of land on which they’re farming or herding, tying the tribe to a certain geographic location. When there are genetic errors that lead to pathological personalities, they can no longer be walked away from. While the well-adjusted tribe members are growing their crops and tending their herds, the pathological personalities have the time to develop tools and strategies to dominate and exploit other tribesmen and steal the product of their labor. With these people expanding their power over the tribe, killing them becomes a much more difficult task. Ostracizing or killing the anti-social becomes impossible. As the pathological personalities gain wealth and power at the expense of their tribesmen, they emerge as the new tribal elite, supplanting the previous meritocracy.

Here’s the real problem; human beings are hard-wired to seek acceptance from the tribe by supporting the tribal elite and adopting their ideas and beliefs. After the agricultural revolution, the tribal elite were no longer the meritorious, but the pathological. Once that paradigm shifted, the pathological created governments and propaganda to prey on the tribal instincts of their victims, establishing a new political class capable of holding mankind hostage forever. It’s a distinct possibility that the political class could eventually completely enslave mankind and/or destroy civilization. Mankind may have an evolutionary flaw which will will eventually destroy us; namely, an intellect strong enough to discover agriculture and tribalism too strong to overcome.

How does this relate to or explain libertarians? Libertarians, obviously, have no tribe to follow, so where do they get their ideas and beliefs? Just like the tribalists, meaning people whose tribalism is the primary guide to their beliefs and ideas, libertarianism is a symptom of a certain genetic condition. Libertarians have a weak tribal survival instinct, which frees them from the tribalist instinct to adopt the ideas of the tribal elite and deviate from the cultural norms of the tribe. Libertarians may not even be aware of the tribalist impulse directing the behavior of virtually all others. But it isn’t just a weak tribalist instinct that makes a libertarian. Libertarians also need other personality traits, like reasonability and curiosity, which are, like anything else, determined by genetic expression. Likewise, they need certain highly-ranked values, like morality and/or social utility and the desire for knowledge. People with these characteristics are few and far between. Maybe only one t two percent of the population falls into this category and not all of them have yet discovered (and may never discover) libertarianism. So, libertarians will never have the numbers to challenge the political class and they’ll try to use logic to sway others to their point of view, unsuccessfully. They won’t understand that a libertarian political order can’t be manufactured. It can only arise temporarily from cultural circumstance. A libertarian political order doesn’t serve the interests of the political class and the small percentage of libertarians lack the numbers and personality traits to replace the political class as the tribal elite and then redirect the tribalism of the masses toward a free society.

The best libertarians can hope for is to find and identify each other, reach those who have the traits but haven’t found libertarianism yet, and help each other build the wealth and networks necessary to help them blend in with or insulate themselves from the political class. As long as we don’t draw the ire of the political class, we may be able to evade their radar.

The purpose of a manager should be to coordinate, facilitate and regulate the workforce. Coordinate by getting the workers where they need to be, when they need to be there, understanding what they need to do. Facilitate by giving them the tools, the training and the support they need to do the work. Regulate by making sure everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done, what each individual’s role is and making sure everyone understands this. A manager should track the progress of projects, make adjustments when needed and report important changes and other information up the chain of command.

A manager should allow the greatest amount of worker autonomy as is possible. Allow them to develop their own methods. This gives his company the advantage of distributed knowledge and turns the workforce into a “Best Practices” laboratory. The manager should align worker incentives with the incentives of the company. If the company is being paid piece-rate, the workers should be paid piece-rate. If the company is being paid hourly, the worker should be paid hourly.

Avoid, at all costs, micromanagement. Micromanagement is inefficient, demoralizes and disempowers the workers who drive production and the health of the company; it increases the management load, thereby increasing the need for more layers of management which decrease the profitability of the company and rob the company of the “Best Practices” laboratory.

Management is non-productive. It should be kept to a minimum. Worker incentives should encourage self-management and highlight those who can’t self-manage, so that they can be replaced by those who can.

Expenses shouldn’t be reimbursed for employees or contractors. The firm should pay enough up-front to compensate for reasonable expenses and that will incentivize the workers to make economic decisions about expenses which can allow them to profit from wise economic decisions.

However, people are people. They’re tribalists. They will tend to make decisions the way tribalists do, by picking up on subtle social queues and implementing processes and practices that are accepted by the business community, whether or not they are optimal, or if they even make sense. This is the struggle for the very small percentage of people who have a high intellect to tribal survival instinct ratio, trying to figure out ways to convince the tribal to make decisions logically.

Probably the definition of word is the most obvious misconception. Pedophilia is sexual attraction to prepubescent people. If a person has completed puberty, they are, technically, not children and sexual attraction to them is not pedophilia. There are other categories, like hebephilia and ephebophilia and you can read about those here if you want.

Pedophilia is sexual attraction to prepubescent people. One can be a pedophile and never have any sexual interaction with any child; they fit the definition if they have the attraction, whether or not they’ve acted on it.

Puberty is the beginning of sexual maturity. Throughout the animal kingdom, this marks the readiness of an animal to begin mating and reproduction. For humans, it’s complicated by the fact that children don’t go through the experiences necessary to prepare them for sexual activity by the time they complete puberty. They’re sheltered throughout childhood and youth, producing physically mature and psychologically immature young adults. That’s really where the problem lies.

It isn’t the case so much for women as they have other evolutionary priorities, but from an evolutionary perspective, men tend to be attracted, instinctually, to young women, because they are more fertile, healthy and likely to be able to bear strong offspring. They are also likely to have less sexual experience than older women, reducing the chance that a man will use his scarce resources providing for another man’s offspring that he thinks are his own. Evolutionary pressures have hard-wired this into the human species. As young women emerge from puberty, they will increasingly become attractive to men – of all ages.

Because young, sexually mature, but psychologically immature people are referred to in modern society as “children”, men feel guilt and shame about their natural attraction to young women. To assuage this guilt and shame, they tend to virtue-signal an oversized opposition to what they mistakenly believe is pedophilia. In other words, many, if not most men, recognize their sexual attraction to young women, those young women are falsely referred to as children, the men mistakenly fear that they, themselves, may be pedophiles and then lash out against pedophilia in silly ways to hide guilt. They protest too much.

To further complicate matters, there are arbitrary Age of Consent laws. These make little sense for many reasons. First, they’re different in different places. According to common parlance, you’re a “pedophile” if you have sex with someone who’s 15 years, 365 days old, one foot south of the Georgia/Florida border, but if you step across the state line and do the same thing with the same person, everything’s cool! The age of consent in Florida is 18, but in Georgia, 16. Second, these laws assume that all people are the same. Everyone’s ready for sex at 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds old, but not at 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old. Is there something about that one second that makes that huge difference? Different people become ready or remain unready for virtually anything at different ages. Are some ready for sex at 14? Probably. Are some unready at 25? Probably. Third, the difference between an upstanding citizen and rapist can be separated by trivial amounts of time. If someone 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds old has sex with someone 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old, they’re a rapist, but if the same people had waited one second later, they suddenly become consenting partners? If that’s a gray area, where does it become black and white and why? That’s important to know if there are going to be punitive consequences for being wrong.

With the recent Epstein scandal, there’s consistent rhetoric about elite “pedophile” rings. It may be true that there are groups of elites that are engaged in sexual activities with prepubescent people (I say “people” because it’s redundant to say “prepubescent children”), however, from what it seems, most of the victims were actually young adults, under the age consent in some jurisdictions. What is the age of consent on Epstein Island? If it turns out that it’s 12 years old, will people who argue that what these elites have done is a crime based on the law eschew their outrage? I doubt it. The reason is that everyone knows it’s not really about age of consent laws. It’s about maturity, manipulation and power dynamics. It’s not because these men have had sex with young women, it’s that everyone knows that these women were almost certainly raised in sheltered environments and are too naive, ignorant and inexperienced for these situations. It’s too easy to manipulate them into doing things that are clearly against their long-term interests.

Sex is going to happen. There’s no way around that, and thank goodness! However, if women are going to be done the disservice of the social blocking of psychological maturity, then we’re going to continue to have these problems. Men shouldn’t be ashamed of their natural, evolutionary attraction to young women, they should simply realize why actually pursuing those young women is questionable. If we’re going to use strong language incorrectly, like “pedophile”, the consequences are going to continue to be negative. Like so many issues, it’s about understanding the fundamentals and having the courage to be honest that will get society to a better place and the inability to do so which will likely keep us where we are.

I’ve been ’round and ’round with this and I’ve finally come to an unexpected conclusion.

Let’s say that Bob took some food from Tom and ate it without Tom’s consent. The food now no longer exists, for all practical purposes. Originally, I would have asserted that Tom now has a claim on Bob’s property because Bob had violated Tom’s property, transferring the value of Tom’s property to Bob without Tom’s consent. Bob had displayed that he rejects the moral principle that property should be respected, and that applies to his own property and, therefore, Tom would not be violating Bob’s property if he took property from Bob in order to replace the value of the food Bob took from Tom without Tom’s consent. But objective or universal moral principles can’t be based on subjective ideas. Objective morality isn’t based on “value”, it’s based on “those material objects to which no one else has an equal or greater claim, nor for which others can be assigned responsibility”. In this way, the assertion in Manual to Humanity is inconsistent with itself. Libertarians and, in particular, Austro-libertarians, should understand that value is subjective. The value of any object to any person is going to be different based on any person’s current situation and preferences. Ordinarily, a 100 oz gold bar would be more valuable to me than most other things, however, if I found myself in the desert, my values would suddenly shift away from gold and toward shade and water. But values shift in this way constantly, though less radically, for everyone in every moment. In this way, the value Tom places on the food Bob took from him can’t really be pinned down in any objective way, in any permanent sense, even by Tom himself!

The point is, for a philosopher to claim, as I previously did, that the violation of one’s property creates a claim on the property of the violator, the moral principle would need to be based on value, rather than material objects. Material objects objectively exist and value is merely subjective, so it can’t be true that the violated party, Tom, in this case, has an objective claim on the property of the violator! The property owner does, actually have a right (or an entitlement) to his own property, and, if that property is taken from him without his consent, he may recover that property by any means necessary, because he has a right to do what wants with his property and, because no one else has a right to the property of others, they may not, morally, stop him from recovering his property. However, if his property no longer exists, or the violator no longer possesses the stolen property, like Tom’s food that Bob ate without Tom’s consent, there is nothing for Tom to recover. Under no circumstance does one have a right to the property of others, even if others have violated one’s property.

That is all very unsatisfying, because it seems unjust that someone can take what’s yours, dispose of it in some way without your consent and owe you nothing. I think, however, that this is something a free market would deal with. Obviously, everyone has an interest in getting their stolen property back, in whatever form they can, even if that property no longer exists. Even consistent property violators would want this for their own property. Therefore, some arrangements could be made to mitigate these bad outcomes. For example, people could have insurance against property violation, and if property were violated, the insurance company would pay out and the property violator’s premiums would go up accordingly, effectively wiping out the long-term gain the violator may have gotten from violating the property. The violator may, in fact, find that he can’t be insured, which would make his property vulnerable to uncompensated violation.

Before wrapping this up, I want to address another issue I brought up earlier. I said, “…Bob had displayed that he rejects the moral principle that property should be respected, and that applies to his own property and, therefore, Tom would not be violating Bob’s property if he took property from Bob in order to replace the value of the food Bob took from Tom without Tom’s consent”. In the moment that property is being violated, I think (as of this writing, anyway) that this is a defensible position. I’ve written on this before in the Defense of Others post. However, people change over time. Tom demonstrates, in taking Bob’s bike without Bob’s consent, that he rejects the idea that property should be respected, including his own, since property is universal among humans, which constitutes Tom’s blanket consent to the use of Tom’s property by anyone, including Bob. But if, later, Tom has a change of heart and no longer approves of his past actions, he effectively withdraws his blanket consent. So, that concept is still applicable, but only during the act of the violation of property, which includes the time during which Tom refuses to return Bob’s bike.

The conclusion is that one does not have a claim on property that no longer exists, nor does one have a claim on the property of the violator because property is material and, therefore objective and “value” is subjective and indeterminate. An objective principle, like “By violating his victim’s property, thereby transferring value from the victim to himself, he creates a claim on his own property by which the victim may attempt to recoup the value taken from him…” can’t be based on a subjective concept. It’s ok, a free market would take care of this worrying conclusion in the real world.

I’ve come to believe that a libertarian political order isn’t possible. Libertarianism is the way that the productive class deals with each other, naturally. The libertarian social order already exists and functions at a high level. The political order, however, will always be dominated by pathological personalities who will be able to manipulate the general public’s genetic tribalism for their own gain.

Those of us who call ourselves libertarians have certain genetic characteristics like a weak tribal survival instinct, logicality, curiosity and a high value for knowledge. If people don’t have those characteristics, they won’t be able to recognize libertarianism even though it’s clearly correct and they live their own lives by it. They will believe what they perceive the tribal elite want them to believe and they can’t do anything else. It’s literally in their DNA to do so.

The question for me has become whether or not I should be a knowing victim of the political class in a dying empire, or should I get whatever I can from the government and help other libertarians do the same? Logically assess the situation at hand and figure out how to profit from it? The real difference between us and the normies is that we can see and, therefore, try to avoid our own political victimization. So should we do it?

I haven’t made up my mind., however, for the reasons described above, I don’t think anything can be done about tribally motivated social unrest and the political scams. As I’ve said before, the scams are how the political class transfers power and wealth from the productive class and that’s as permanent as modern settlements. You’re either going to get on board with the scams or be a victim of them.

That’s something we’re all going to have to figure out according to our own moral codes.

The bad news is that libertarianism can only be understood and accepted by certain people who happen to have certain characteristics, like weak tribalist instincts and talents like curiosity, reasonability, and intellect. If you don’t have those characteristics, you aren’t going to get it and that includes the vast majority of people. Additionally, since virtually everyone lives according to libertarian principle without understanding it, the few who don’t live by it have a big advantage. If I walk into a room of normal, peaceful, cooperative people who aren’t going to use violence, for the most part, but I don’t have any problem using violence, can you guess who’s going to get their way? Once I get my way with violence, I become the de facto tribal elite and, over time, I will be accepted and followed by the normies. After that, I can pretty much do whatever I want to them with their support. Libertarianism is a part of the human genome, but so is a certain amount of psychopathy. In the hunter/gatherer times, that was manageable because tribe members could simply leave the tribe or neutralize the offenders if the psychopathy became malignant. With the advent of permanent civilization, that safeguard faded.

This seems to be an unfixable problem with humanity. It may be that our species was never meant for permanent civilization, but our intellect and drive for survival uncovered agriculture, led to permanent civilization and now we’re dealing with the friction that’s caused between our current conditions and the conditions we evolved in. I think it’s unlikely to destroy us, because successful species, like mankind, tend to self-regulate (the pendulum swings), but it seems likely that humanity will continue to be dominated by the worst of us, forever.

What to do?

I’ll warn you now that I have no good solutions. I’m no political or social strategist. However, I do know a few things. One, after accepting libertarianism, most don’t realize that libertarian principle isn’t binding. You can accept and advocate for principle and still do things that are non-libertarian, or even anti-libertarian. I can prove it. Even though I’m a staunch advocate for libertarianism, I can walk over to my neighbor’s house and set it on fire. If I decided to do that right now, no one could stop me. All that libertarian principle tells me is that it’s morally wrong to do so and that behavior like that will have negative consequences for society in general. That’s it. Libertarianism is a pretty narrow philosophy. It’s almost impossible to live strictly according to principle. In real life, no compromises must be made, but life’s going to get really tough if compromises aren’t made. It’s best to live according to principle, however, we need to realize that we’re going to do things that aren’t particularly libertarian, whether we want to or not.

The point of saying that is to raise the question of whether or not we should get on board with whatever scams the political class is running and try to benefit from their violence. Basically, you’re going to be a victim or a beneficiary. I don’t think violence against the political class is a good answer, because they’re the best at violence. That’s why they’re at the top. And, even if violence could overthrow them, it would, most likely, only establish a different, violent political class. It might be a less bad political class for a while, but violence now is an awful big risk to take for a “maybe better political class” later. Controversially, participating in the scams isn’t against libertarianism, since it doesn’t actually involve violating property. Taxation isn’t theft. It really isn’t. The political class demands money and we give it to them. Under most circumstances, they don’t actually steal it. If they do, then yes, it’s theft, but that’s rare. The decision to pay taxes is like any other decision; it’s making a tradeoff to avoid something or to gain something. What’s more, being the recipient of tax money definitely isn’t objectively immoral. It doesn’t violate property when it’s collected and it certainly doesn’t violate property when it’s distributed. So, receiving tax money isn’t objectively immoral. “…but taxation is a threat and threats are aggression!” Well, you can define aggression however you want, but the Non Aggression Principle is really about property and consent. Threats don’t violate property. What about The Fed? The Fed literally takes the value of my money from me without asking. The question, however, is whether or not I’ve consented to this taking. The answer is yes. I have consented. I know that they’re going to take the value from me, yet, I willingly participate in the Dollar monetary system. What people don’t like about that is that it’s unfair. The political class has an enormous advantage over the rest of us and they tilt the tables in their favor. People don’t like the fact that they’re on the weak side and so they want to call it immoral, when, in fact, it isn’t (at least it’s not objectively immoral. Subjective morality varies.). So, receiving money printed by the Fed isn’t objectively immoral. As odd as it seems, as far as libertarianism goes, there are no moral concerns about getting involved in political scams, as long as it doesn’t require that the libertarian actually violates others’ property.

Political scams are absolutely inevitable and I’m not advocating involvement in them. I’m just trying to assess the situation realistically. If a libertarian world isn’t an option, then the question is, again, are we going to be a victims or beneficiaries? That’s something people have to decide for themselves. If your subjective morality rejects involvement in such things, then good for you. That’s probably a virtue. However, you will be a victim. Maybe, if we were to focus our energies on political scams, we could work ourselves into the elite class and, finally, have some tribal influence with the normies while gaining wealth and insulating ourselves from the otherwise inevitable victimhood. We aren’t going to be violent. It’s not in our nature, but we might be able to piggyback on the violence of the political class in order to gain the tribal sway that they maintain.

Should it be a religion?

As I mentioned, only certain people, with certain characteristics, can understand and accept libertarianism. There’s a small industry built up around libertarian awareness and persuasion. There are people out there who can be persuaded, but the number is small. That’s why, even though we win all the arguments, we aren’t a bigger constituency. The mind mine that these mind miners are mining is a lot smaller than I think they hope it is. It’s more about entertaining current libertarians than it is discovering new ones. We might be better served to just hand out a generic, libertarian essay and those who can grasp it will and those who can’t won’t and we won’t have wasted our time evangelizing to NPCs. As I pointed out in this post, normies who can’t grasp moral principles or ideas can be persuaded to follow them, through a religion. It might be worth developing a religion, like the elites did with the Covid-19 scam, or working libertarian ideas into current religions by creating a story that manipulates tribalism, provokes fear and offers security and is simple enough for average people to understand. How that might work, I have no idea, but it is a proven technique. It’s been done before to great effect, however, new religions often end up as cults. Maybe being a cult is a process that religions have to go through. Regardless, it can be done and there are people who will have a knack for it.

Are we an ethnicity? Should we act like one?

I’ve heard, anecdotally, that jews tend to be a very exclusive ethnic community who discourage marriage outside of the ethnicity and who value any jew over any non-jew. I don’t know if that’s true, but the idea is interesting. Maybe libertarians should be this way. If you are one of the few who can “get it”, then you can join the group, or maybe, more specifically, you are one of the group and we can focus on our own well-being. Some are already doing this, setting up groups of libertarians to help each other progress. That’s great, but maybe we need to be equally zealous in excluding non-libertarians from participating. I’m not suggesting only doing business with or helping/supporting libertarians, but excluding non-libertarians from our “ethnic” support groups. Ultimately, there is the violent, dominant political class, the clueless, tribalistic normies who support them and are exploited by them and us, the libertarians. Unlike the normies, we don’t have to be exploited by the political class, because we can see what the game is. The political class treats the rest of us like cattle, because that’s what we are and that’s what we’ll always be…unless you’re a libertarian and you realize that there are ways to get outside the fence that keeps the rest of the cattle in. So, if we can stick together, to the exclusion of others, maybe we can help each other avoid exploitation, or even benefit from the exploitation.

The problem with that idea is that we are, necessarily, weakly tribal. Our cohesion will be and has proven to be, tenuous, at best. I guarantee that response to this post, if there is any, will be all over the place and very contentious, maybe even nasty. I’m not sure we’re even capable of a strong ethnic affiliation. Maybe we don’t need to be organized. Maybe we should go our own ways, individually, with the goal of avoiding exploitation, teaming up when it’s beneficial.

This post has been prompted by what may be a realization that human society can never be broadly libertarian. Humans aren’t unlike any other animal in the sense that our social structures are genetically dictated and we can’t change that. The New Socialist Man can never be created, nor can the New Libertarian Man, for the same reasons. The difference is that, unlike socialism, libertarianism is in our DNA, but so is the tribalism that makes us beholden to the political class, whose personalities are pathological. The political class will always use violence against the naturally libertarian productive class, they’ll get their way and gain the support of those they’ve exploited through the tribal response. If this is true, and I’ve come to believe it is, then we need to figure out how to deal with it. We need to stop spending our time, talent and treasure on things that may be useless, like political reform and proselytizing and focus on that which will allow us to thrive – whatever that may be.

Day and Night happen because the Earth rotates on its axis, so that, at any given time, half of the Earth faces the Sun and the other half faces away from the Sun. The half that faces the Sun experiences daytime, while the half facing away from the Sun experiences nighttime. As the Earth rotates, the Sun appears to rise in the morning and set in the evening.

Additionally, the Earth travels around the Sun, more or less in a circle, while it also rotates on its axis. This revolution is called Earth’s “orbit”. One year is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to travel around the Sun one time. Because Earth’s axis is slightly tilted, parts of Earth are pointed more towards or away from the Sun at different times in its travel around the Sun. This tilt is what causes seasons. Parts of the Earth that are tilted toward the Sun experience summer and parts of the Earth that are tilted away from the Sun experience winter. The parts of the Earth that are tilted toward the Sun in the summer experience longer daytime and the parts of the Earth that are tilted away from the Sun in the winter experience shorter daytime.

That’s how day and night work. Check out this animation.

This process of the Earth’s rotation on its axis and revolution around the Sun are completely unaffected by clocks and wristwatches. In fact, the purpose of clocks and wristwatches is simply to provide reference points as this process takes place. Clocks and wristwatches don’t control the rotation or revolution of the Earth, they only observe it. Just like you only observe a football game, you don’t control it. When the quarterback throws the ball, the ball doesn’t care that you want it to go here or there. You can only watch as it does what it’s going to do. The same is true for the Earth and the Sun, clocks and wristwatches can only keep track of what they do. The Earth and Sun don’t care what anyone wants, we can only watch as they do what they’re going to do.

The point of explaining this is that, in many places in the world, people widely believe that clocks and wristwatches actually control the movement of the Earth and the Sun. They will argue that changing what their clocks and watches say that the time is will change the amount of light the Earth gets from the Sun in the morning or evening. This is a myth. It is absolutely false and I can demonstrate why in a simple experiment. Go outside on a sunny day, so that you can see the Sun. Set your watch to a different time. It doesn’t matter what time, just change it. Did the Sun change its position in the sky in accordance with the change you made? It did not. You can try this experiment over and over, but the Sun will remain on its trajectory, regardless of the changes you make to your watch. You could have a friend conduct this experiment with you if you think changing two watches will have a greater effect. They won’t. In fact, if everyone on Earth changes every clock and every wristwatch that exists, at the same time, it will have no effect on the Earth’s movement or its relationship to the the Sun.

Now that this concept is understood, there’s no need to change what our clocks say twice a year. It will have no effect on the Earth’s movement in any way. Clocks and watches do not control Earth’s movement. There will not be more or less light from the Sun in the morning or evening due to any changes made to clocks or watches.

Some people recognize that changing what our clocks say is silly, but they still do it. They believe that certain people, namely, the political class, need to tell us to stop. This is also false. It isn’t widely known, but I’ve proven that you can, of your own will, simply not change the time on your clocks and watches and continue life as normal. Everyone can do that if they understand the concepts above.

There’s a cultural component to the measurement of time related to the widespread changing of clocks: which time should we continue using and which should we discard? My preference would be to discard Standard time (the time most people change to in the winter) and only use Daylight Savings Time (DST) (the time most people change to in the summer). The reason is, from a cultural perspective, it seems more reasonable to use a time measurement that does not result in the Sun setting in what we generally recognize as the afternoon, rather than setting in the the evening or night. DST aligns with that idea. Where I live, there are times during the year, under Standard Time, when the Sun sets around 17:30 in the afternoon, and that confuses the daytime with the nighttime. Under DST, the Sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, as we would generally expect it to.

I’d be fine with losing the debate over DST or Standard Time and accept Standard Time as long as we can avoid the confusion and inconvenience of changing it twice a year, since that has no affect on the Earth or the Sun. Regardless, this is a concept that needs to be understood so that this nonsensical practice can be eliminated.

Optional Rant

I live in a rural, agricultural area of the US. People argue that changing the time helps farmers by giving them more daylight in the morning. Obviously, as pointed out above, that’s silly. Let’s assume that there are only two people on Earth; you and a farmer. The farmer doesn’t have a clock or a watch, but you do. How does you setting your watch to a different time help him? It doesn’t. He won’t even be aware that anything happened. Besides that, why can’t farmers just get up earlier as the Sun rises earlier? Why do I need to change what my watch says?

Why only change the time twice a year? Why only by an hour? The amount of daylight changes throughout the year by four hours where I live. Why not change the time by two hours (to even out the four hour gain between sunrise and sunset)? Why not change it 12 times a year? Why not 52 times? Why not 365 times? Wouldn’t that make things a lot smoother?

Thanks for nothing, George.

As I’ve said over and over, the reason for the existence of governments is to transfer wealth and power from the productive class to the political class. I think this is pretty obvious if you can filter out the propaganda and look at things for what they are. That fact changes the way societies naturally function. As the political class grows in wealth and power, the productive class become more subservient to them. There’s really no way around it and the political class does everything they can to guarantee that. I know a business owner very well who once owned a defense contracting company. Business was good until his partner, a former Navy procurement officer, was caught conspiring with a current procurement officer to secure contracts unlawfully. The partner did jail time and the company was finished.

The problem wasn’t that the partner was winning contracts illegally, the problem was that he was taking the contracts away from the established players and one of them called him out. That’s what law is for; keeping the game in order. Breaking the law is fine as long as you’re a member of the Big Club and playing by the rules. If you aren’t a club member and/or you aren’t keeping in line, the law will be used against you. Governments, especially national governments and even more especially the US federal government (“even more especially”, because it controls the world’s reserve currency and can steal more than any other), is a highly curated and internally disciplined mega-money gravy train that’s too profitable to the Club Members to allow it to be derailed by late-comers, do-gooders or savages.

It’s tempting to blame the participants in the Political Scam Machine, like Facebook and Twitter for their censorship, Google for political interference, Pfizer for its treat-the-symptoms-not-the-cause business model, Lockheed Martin for pushing for perpetual war, the SEIA for climate change lobbying and the Big Banking Cartel, or any others involved. But that’s the insidious genius of the Political Scam Machine; the more successful you get, the more you’re forced into participating in the scams. If your biggest competitor is in the Big Club, but you aren’t, they’re going to be able to use that leverage to out-perform you or maybe even to defeat and destroy you. They’ll get subsidies and you won’t. They’ll get preferential regulation and you won’t. They’ll get government contracts and you won’t. They’ll get exemptions and you won’t. You may be inclined to stand on principle and refuse to play, but you have hundreds of families, including your own, whose well-being depends on the continued success of your business, customers or clients who depend on your goods and services and vendors or suppliers whose success depends, to some extent, on your success. Think about the blood, sweat and tears that countless people paid into the success of the business, including your own. Think about how proud you are of your success and the opportunities and quality of life it’s given you, your family and so many others. How many people would be willing to risk all of that for a moral principle? That’s just the risk. I haven’t mentioned the great benefits the Big Club offers! You think you’re successful and well-respected now? Just wait until you’re in the Big Club!

The big players, whether they want to or not, are sucked into the machine. Once you’re in, and the political class says, “Let’s run a scam. We’ll tell everyone there’s this scary virus. We’ll make tens of billions of dollars, but we all have to stay in line to make it work…”, what are you going to say? No? Maybe you would, but they’d make you wish you hadn’t and you know that.

Covid-19, Climate Change, the War Machine, the Federal Reserve, virtually all of the Healthcare Industry, Big Ag/Big Pharma; all scams designed and implemented by the political class to transfer wealth and power to themselves from the productive class. The more profitable the scams become, the more attractive they are to the smartest and most ambitious of those with pathological personalities. It’s easy to understand why. We all see the mountains of money redistributed by and to terrible people and the fantastic lives they live because of it. We should all be able to see the temptation to just say to hell with principle! We won’t need principle when we’re rich!

Until recently, I think the political class has been too afraid to try these ostentatious mega-scams like Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and Isreal, Climate Change, etc., because they underestimated the effectiveness of their own propaganda, how dumbed-down and tribal the citizenry has become and how little public support matters.

The political scam machine is hardly a new phenomenon, but it’s entered a golden age of unprecedented success. Eventually, the pendulum will swing, but before that happens, many people will have gotten very wealthy and powerful from their operations. You gotta get while the gettin’s good and, right now, the gettin’s very good.