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The Alt Centrist Approach To Science And Technology

Thirty years on from the publication of the Unabomber Manifesto, it’s apparent that Ted Kaczynski was right about technology. It mostly enslaves rather than liberates. We were promised all of humanity’s information and learning at our fingertips; we received advertising, addiction and slop.

The difficulty is foreign relations. A technologically inferior nation will be subjugated by a technologically superior one, as history demonstrates.

Therefore, the alternative centrist state needs to find a balance between the enslaving effects of technology and the need to defend ourselves against foreign aggressors (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Defence for more on this).

Resisting the enslaving effects of technology does not mean surrendering to hysteria or propaganda. The alternative centrist opposes clumsy, anti-freedom measures like the under-16 social media ban. Such moves are egregious violations of the Second Acceptance. Research has shown that the harms of social media use for younger people are drastically overstated; opposition to social media is a moral panic.

However, despite the advantages of technology in minimising human suffering, it can also cause immense suffering, in particular through its enslaving effects. Kaczynski pointed out that the invention of the car did not make people freer, because they ended up needing cars. This is now also true of cellphones.

The alternative centrist approach divides media technology into one-way media and two-way media. One-way media is when the receiver cannot communicate with the sender or with any other receivers, such as television or radio. Two-way media is when it’s possible for the receiver to give their opinion and to discuss the merits of the broadcast with others. Two-way media is preferred, on the basis of the freedom and justice it offers compared to one-way media.

Much of the hysteria about social media is pushed by advocates of one-way media who don’t want people talking. The reality is that media did not arise organically as a way of informing people. The media has been an apparatus of propaganda since its inception. This constant propagandising has had extremely damaging effects on both social cohesion and on the mental health of the citizenry. It’s not natural to sit passively to get hectored and badgered into obeying the political establishment and consuming.

The alternative centrist state would levy massive taxes on technology that has significant deleterious effects on mental and social health. This would mean that televisions and smartphones, along with all other devices for receiving one-way media, were taxed as vices, like alcohol and tobacco. Advertising on one-way media would be heavily taxed also, to make up for the social harm caused.

The main advantage with future technology will be replacing harms caused by human error.

One area of application is self-driving cars. Human drivers currently kill over 40,000 people in America every year. The vast majority of these deaths are attributable to speeding, impaired driving, distracted driving and fatigue or drowsiness. Self-driving cars will not have these problems. Already there are video compliations demonstrating the superior ability of self-driving cars to avoid accidents.

It’s easy to predict that human drivers will soon be banned. This wouldn’t be much different to ships and planes using computers to navigate instead of humans using sextants and altimeters. The alternative centrist encourages all possibilities for reducing human misery through technology.

A similar case applies to medicine. Iatrogenic harm is believed to kill as many as 250,000 people annually in America. There are several reasons for this, but over and above the difficulties inherent to a complicated subject such as medicine, there is a lot of indifference among doctors as to the patients’ realities. Many people have had the experience of meeting an elderly doctor who checked out of learning new things 15 years ago and simply will not listen. Much like elderly drivers, elderly doctors like this do tremendous amounts of damage.

An alternative centrist state would leverage AI for potential healthcare benefits, especially in the area of preventative medicine. School students would be taught to use AI for this purpose, and also when to bypass the AI to enlist a human doctor.

Jurisprudence is a third area in which AI offers great advantages. People are regularly confused and appalled by the bizarre verdicts and sentences handed out by biased and prejudiced humans. Peaceful cannabis growers often get harsher sentences than people who beat others to death and people who sexually offend against young children. Grok recommends sentences more in line with what a decent human would.

One of the major problems with modern technology is that it is mostly controlled by corporate interests in America. The solution is government-controlled social media. The alternative centrist state would create social media platforms for domestic use. This is not hard to achieve today with many clones of existing platforms available. The state would then communicate with its citizens exclusively on these domestic platforms. This would allow for the social benefits of social media, but would prevent much of the manipulation by foreign actors.

In a related vein, foreign social media platforms that do not follow free speech laws will be heavily fined or banned. Platforms such as Reddit, which do not allow nationalists to speak, would be banned outright.

Aside from the heavy taxes on antisocial forms of technology, technological development would, like most economic issues, mostly be left to the free market (see The Alt Centrist Approach To The Economy). Close co-operation between the corporates and the military for the sake of technological development would be established, and facilitated, by the state.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

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VJMP Reads: Aristotle’s Politics III

This reading continues from here.

Much of this part is devoted to the question of who counts as a citizen. Speaking about a discussion that is still current 2,300 years later, Aristotle wrote “There is no general agreement on who is a citizen.” Citizenship cannot be a matter of residence, because aliens and slaves share in residence but not citizenship. The best definition of a citizen is one capable of sharing in the administration of justice and in holding office. A city is enough of such people for self-sufficiency.

Constitutions, Aristotle holds, primarily differ in terms of who has sovereignty. He believed that to work with one’s hands was servile, and that to include them in democracy is “extreme”. Manual labourers are not capable of reason to the same extent, and therefore must be excluded from decision making: “The best form of city will not make the mechanic a citizen.” The major difference between a manual labourer and a slave is that the latter works for individuals, the former for the community. Both are incapable of reason.

However, Aristotle was not the elitist that some portray him as. Everyone must take turns at being on top and on the bottom: “It is a good saying that ‘you cannot be ruler unless you have first been ruled'”. He also states that the common interest must come before that of individuals: “The good in the sphere of politics is justice, and justice consists in what tends to promote the common interest.” Barbarians tolerate despotism, Aristotle writes, because they are naturally servile.

Presaging modern mass immigration, Aristotle writes that a shortage of population makes cities expand citizenship to those they shouldn’t. This has consequences in damaging social cohesion. Tyrants are fond of doing this. Aristotle writes “Kings are guarded by the arms of their subjects; tyrants by a foreign force.”

Following on from the Nicomachean Ethics, in which Aristotle claims the meaning of life is happiness, he writes here “The good life is the chief end, both for the community as a whole and for each of us individually.” Happiness, not wealth or power, is the purpose of politics.

His theory of right and perverted constitutions is different to Plato’s. Constitutions that consider the general interest are right; those that only consider the ruling class are perverted. Either breaks down into rule by one, the few or the many. The right constitutions are monarchy if ruled by one, aristocracy if ruled by few, and polity if ruled by many. The perverted constitutions are tyranny if ruled by one, oligarchy if ruled by few and democracy if ruled by many. Here we can see that Plato and Aristotle both considered democracy a degenerate system. Aristotle writes that democracy is not in the interests of all, but in the interests of the poor. However, he also writes that cities are now so big that it’s hard for anything other than democracy to exist.

The best claim to contributing to political life comes from culture or goodness, not birth or wealth. In this sense, Aristotle is a true aristocrat, speaking for the higher and subtler qualities as opposed to the lower and baser ones.

Dispassionate people make better lawmakers, he contends, writing that “most people, as a rule, are bad judges where their own interests are concerned.”

The battle to find the right form of political system is, to a large extent, the battle over which form of superiority is recognised: “All forms alike recognise the claim of some sort of superiority, though the kind of superiority in question varies.” Some recognise superiority of goodness, others of wealth or birth, others still of sheer numbers.

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The Alt Centrist Approach To Work And Employment

If politics is about securing the means of a good life, work and employment are how most people primarily achieve this. Both are therefore at the core of the alternative centrist approach.

The average person in our society, not having a spiritual or religious tradition, neither any intellectual or cultural interests, nor any meaningful family connections, imposes order upon their lives primarily through their employment. Prosocial behaviour is taught through the need to cooperate with workmates and submit to the corporate hierarchy. Work gives many people purpose and keeps many bad thoughts away.

The alternative centrist proposal is that the order imposed by the workplace needs to be balanced by an equal proportion of freedom.

The alternative centrist agrees with Julius Evola that spirituality ought to be the primary focus of a life, and a person’s way of earning a living is less important. Productivity is the measure of slaves; happiness is the measure of free people. As such, the alternative centrist state would not indulge in the vulgar GDP obsession that characterises our merchant-ruled age. Although productivity would be important, this would only be as a means to a happy life. The alternative centrist state would constantly emphasise, in contradistinction to a Marxist or capitalist one, the relative unimportance of wealth (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Spirituality).

The problem with work and employment in the West is that we never came to terms with the fact that we now live in an age of abundance. Our economic model was founded in an age when anyone who didn’t labour was likely to become a major burden to their community. The unemployed were mostly left to starve until the advent of unemployment benefits near the beginning of the 20th Century. Now there is so much wealth that there is no need for the workamania of bygone times.

However, the drive of the employer class to pauperise their workers has remained. Hence a battle has ensued, between the representatives of capital and the representatives of labour. Resulting from this battle was a multitude of laws and regulations concerning work and employment. The reasoning is that these laws should provide for a fair balance between the needs of the employer and the needs of the worker, such that the employer gets his profit and the worker gets his means to subsistence.

Unfortunately for the modern Western worker, he has been driven into a state of wage slavery. Even if the job only occupies his body for 40 hours that week, chances are it occupies his mind for many more. Many people go to bed thinking about their work and wake up in a state of dread. Because the alternative is often destitution, homelessness or imprisonment, the worker puts up with his awful conditions.

This situation has come about by design.

The alternative centrist supports a universal basic income (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Welfare). This UBI would be enough for anyone to renounce the world. Thus it would act as a floor on the level of desperation the worker can be subjected to, and finally give him some leverage, for the first time since the advent of neoliberalism and mass immigration.

With a universal basic income, there would be no need for minimum wage laws. So in one stroke, all of the right-wing arguments about inefficiency of minimum wage laws would be accommodated. The right wing likes to argue that they should have the freedom to work for a pitiful wage if they should so choose (e.g. to gain work experience). Under an alternative centrist system with a UBI, you could employ someone for $1 per hour.

There would also be no need for worker protections when it came to security of employment. The concept of “unfair dismissals” relates to a situation where losing one’s job entails a significant disruption to one’s life. A UBI moderates that disruption. Hence an alternative centrist government sees little problem with the “hire and fire” method of employment.

The universal basic income would defeat the argument that agricultural interests need to import cheap labour to do seasonal work. With a UBI, workers would be free to live cheaply in urban areas for most of the year, and then work hard for a season in an agricultural enterprise, before returning to the cities. By this means, the needs of the citizen for income, the employer for labour, and the nation for cohesion can all be met with a maximum of order, freedom and justice.

Anyone who aspires to more than a student’s lifestyle, however, will probably need a job. Unless a person is born into money, a UBI will only pay for the barest essentials. It will cover cheap rent in an undesirable location, basic foods and utilities, some simple clothing and little more. Aristotle noted that desires tend towards the infinite, so there will be plenty of motivation for people to get work and stay employed. Those who argue that a UBI will turn the workforce into couch potatoes don’t understand how unpleasant the student lifestyle is in the long term, and how difficult it is to meet one’s natural social needs without work and employment. The vast majority of people will desire more and they will need to work to get it.

The alternative centrist government would not seek to expand beyond the existing size of Western governments. However, it would maintain a Ministry of Works. This would employ a considerable number of people in national infrastructure projects.

Beyond a Ministry of Works, the alternative centrist government would leave most employment to the free market. The goal would be to facilitate the creation of internationally competitive firms, so as to maximise the nation’s return on the investment in education and infrastructure that made the firms possible in the first place.

Regarding specific jobs, the various schools would seek to link up students to firms in the appropriate industry. In theory, the schools ought to prepare people for whatever employment currently existed in the various realms (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Education). So in the realm of clay, the schools would funnel students towards agricultural, labouring, retail and simple trades. In the realm of iron, towards military, police and security jobs. In the realm of copper, towards more advanced trades, entertainment and the arts. In the realm of silver, towards business and administration jobs. Those in the realm of gold will seldom be employed, other than to learn experience.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms! https://linktr.ee/vjmpublishing
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VJMP Reads: Aristotle’s Politics II

This reading continues from here.

In this book, Aristotle reviews the existing forms of political constitution. Although he is not a fan of democracy, he believes that all groups of citizens must participate in office for there to be justice. The lower classes must get something if they are to support the constitution: “If the constitution is to survive, every part of the city must have a common desire for its existence.” Here also Aristotle emphasises the importance of friendship, which he calls philia, considering it the best defence against factional disputes.

This book contains one of the oldest arguments against communism. In criticising Plato’s proposal for the guardian class of Republic to keep all property in common, Aristotle writes “What is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care.” and “those who do more work and get less of the produce will be bound to raise complaints against those who get a large reward and do little work.”

Phaleas of Chalcedon proposed the equalisation of property many centuries before Karl Marx. But equality doesn’t work, Aristotle contends, because the educated feel like they deserve more.

The best solution, according to Aristotle, is if property is private, but the owners are persuaded to share the proceeds of it through goodwill. This is primarily the job of the legislator, who achieves this by passing laws that create men disposed to sharing and not to stinginess. Correct regulation of property is also important to avoid factional conflict.

Also Aristotle only hints at this here (he assumes the reader is familiar with Nicomachean Ethics), but part of the solution to politics is spiritual: “It is more necessary to equalise people’s desires than their properties.”

The other leftist dogma to get skewered in this section is the one claiming that criminals commit crimes out of poverty and desperation. Aristotle correctly points out that many crimes are committed for fun: “The greatest crimes are committed not for the sake of necessities, but for the sake of superfluities.”

Those aren’t all of the typically right-wing arguments made herein. Aristotle also argues that changing laws in general is a tricky endeavour because people follow them out of habit. If you change the laws too much, people stop obeying the government.

As in Plato’s Republic, Aristotle agrees that selection by means is characteristic of oligarchy, whereas selection by merit is characteristic of aristocracy. There are several different ways of choosing kings and judges. In Carthage, kings were chosen by election from families that were already outstanding.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
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