Paradox Point

                 On Virtuous Ingratitude           Written in 2011 The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have, in common, a kind of virtuous ingratitude; rightfully biting the hand that feeds them. Consider the Tea Party; one of their complaints is government welfare. Many have pointed out that many of these people are explicitly government welfare recipients. The Tea Party is largely Southern and Western and rural; and Federal spending in those areas exceeds taxation; so in effect   those regions are net federal welfare recipients. This is not by accident; in fact it is a relic from the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The idea was for the federal government to offset the corporation’s natural tendency to extract wealth from farmers and ranchers, and move that wealth to the cities. Hence a cycle; corporations extract wealth from the country and move it to the cities; government t...

          The Self-Contradictory Second Amendment   The Second Amendment contradicts itself. On the one hand, well-regulated militia; on the other hand, uninfringed bearing of arms. But to regulate is by definition to infringe. One can make a lawyerly distinction between infringement and regulation; but the difference is relative to the observer.           Shall guns be controlled? For instance shall they be kept out of the hands of children, criminals, traitors and the insane? If not then the militia is not well-regulated; if yes then arms-bearing may be infringed. Suppose that Mr. Discord, who constantly earns his name, wants a large stockpile of powerful weapons; may he buy it or not? If yes, then the militia is self-evidently ill-regulated; if no, then bearing arms is a privilege not a right; and if it’s a judgement call, then the Second Amendment has no legal force and in effect d...

                 My Quadrennial Condolence Letter Written in 2012   Here is the text of my quadrennial letter to the Presidential candidates. In a rational reversal of convention, I send my congratulations to the losers, and my condolences to the winner.     **************   To: Barak Obama Mitt Romney           Gary Johnson           Jill Stein   Re: Congratulations and condolences               Dear Former Candidates:             Now that the election results are in, and we know which one of you won the election, and which ones lost, I send you my quadrennial letter of congratulations and condolences. Unlike the usual practice, I send my congratulations to the losers and my condol...

            On Political Security                 Teller used to say that failure to have internal circulation of information is always worse than the damage from leaks, since the enemy is going to spend as much effort as needed to find ways to get the information he want: then he knows it and vital parts of your establishment do not.                Julian Assange agrees with Teller, and has said so:                http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf                The difference is that Assange wants to maximize, not minimize, self-defeating bureaucratic self-censorship. His theory is that Wikileaks poses a Prisoner’s Dilemma to any conspiratorial institution; either open up internal communications and become vulnerable to a whistleblower, or censor away both leaks and effi...

The Federal Receipt a Modest Proposal   I propose that there be a Federal Receipt. This Receipt is to be mailed to each taxpayer soon after April 15; detailing, for each taxpayer, both taxes received, and how much of those funds went to which federal program. It would look something like this:   *** Dear Joe Blow: We got from you: Income tax:                   $ X Social Secuity:              $ X other taxes:                   $ X total:                             $ X   We will spend that on: Interest payments:        $ X Social Security:        ...