anarkiwi – Page 14

Could The Government Fund Itself With A Georgist Tax?

One of the great political problems is how to fund a government. Governments cannot realistically be funded by donations, so they have to levy taxes. No matter how you slice it, levying taxes on the people will always create discontentment, and not levying them is often no better. This essay discusses whether Georgism might work for New Zealand.

Georgism is a political philosophy named after American theorist Henry George. The essence of it is the belief that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land (often including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society. Income provided by things that are part of the natural world, and which do not depend on human activity to have value, should be the common property of the citizenry.

Georgist ideas were very popular a century ago, before the rentiers used their ownership of the apparatus of propaganda to persuade the population that government should be funded by taxes on labour and consumption. Since then, the mainstream media has normalised the idea of taxing labour and consumption, mostly by not allowing any discussion of Georgism, and by restricting discussion to a narrow range of pro-capitalist models.

Alt-centrism finds much in common with Georgist ideas. Georgism is a very alt-centrist approach to funding a Government, because it rejects the Establishment, and their focus on taxing labour. Georgism stands directly opposed to the Establishment because it is precisely the Establishment who profits the most heavily from charging rent. In taxing the Establishment the most heavily, Georgism accords with alt-centrism the most closely.

An Australian study suggested that heavy taxation of rents could provide up to 87% of the funding necessary to run the Australian Government. The remaining money could be raised according to a similar philosophy – i.e. it could tax other properties whose value did not depend on human labour inputs (such as oil and mineral royalties), or it could charge fees to use common property such as the electromagnetic spectrum and fishery stocks.

Georgism rejects the idea of levying taxes on economic activity that is the result of a direct human labour input. The idea is that tax on ground rents ought to be enough to fund the Government, and therefore that taxes on income would no longer be necessary. For a modern state like New Zealand, the numbers don’t quite add up, but a Georgist tax could be enough to slash income taxes.

According to the New Zealand Household Expenditure Statistics for 2016, rent costs comprised 31.8% of New Zealand’s total weekly housing costs, which were themselves 25.6% of the total weekly household expenditure of $1,300.

31.8% of 25.6% of $1,300 is $105, the average weekly household rent expenditure. Multiplying this by 52 weeks equals $5,460 every year per household on rent. Multiply this by the 1,500,000 households in New Zealand, and we arrive at a figure of $8,190,000,000 charged in rent money every year. This is just from household rents – it does not include commercial rent, rural rent, mineral royalties, banking license fees or fishing licenses.

The Australian study linked above found that the total resource rents of Australia were over two times the size of just the household rents – in fact, household rents are only about 40% of the total resource rents charged in Australia. $8.2 billion divided by 40% gives us a figure in the ballpark of $20 billion dollars every year.

The total operating costs of the New Zealand Government run at about $76 billion per year, so a Georgist tax of 90% on resource rents wouldn’t cover more than a quarter of this.

However, it’s notable that individual income taxes bring in about $37 billion every year to the New Zealand Treasury. A Georgist tax of 90% on all resource rents would therefore provide the leeway to slash individual income taxes by a half.

Another way to look at it is that New Zealanders pay tax of around $7,400 on income up to $48,000. So if there are 2,500,000 taxpayers in New Zealand, this suggests that a Georgist tax on resource rents in New Zealand could replace all income taxes up to $48,000 per annum.

Eco-Georgism is a variant of Georgism that gives special consideration to the environmental challenges facing humanity this century. This involves heavy emphasis on making polluters pay for the externalities that they introduce to the environment. This would combine the heavy tax on resource rents discussed above with e.g. carbon taxes.

21st century Georgism for New Zealand, then, would be the political philosophy of funding government activity through two primary means: heavy taxes on resource rents, and heavy taxes on all activities that cause environmental destruction.

In particular, ground rents on urban locations, such as city-centre shops and rental apartments, would be taxed the hardest. This is because such economic activity amounts to little more than parasitism. Shifting the burden of taxation to this kind of extortionate activity, and shifting it away from labour, will also make the economy not only more fair, but also more efficient.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

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The Cult Logic Behind Modern SJW Culture

A 1981 entry in the Harvard Mental Health Letter describes the basics of cult psychology. Describing cults as “ideological fundamentalism”, the letter by Dr. Robert J Lifton lays out the characteristic qualities of cult psychology and cult formation. As this essay will examine, there are many parallels between cult psychology and the psychology of modern Social Justice Warrior culture.

According to the Lifton paper, “milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, a cult of confession, sacred science, loading the language, doctrine over person, and dispensing of existence” are the typical ways that cults seek to control the thoughts of their acolytes. An investigation into the nature of the SJW culture shows that it tries to achieve exactly the same thing.

The desire for milieu control involves “the control of all communication within a given environment”. This is commonly referred to as ‘brainwashing’ because it features the targets being soaked in cult propaganda. Cult members must be exposed to lectures, seminars, news reports, websites and Internet forums that all say the same thing. This milieu control makes it possible to normalise any idea, no matter how crazy.

Modern SJW culture achieves this through Internet echo chambers. Websites such as Reddit commonly ban anyone who thinks differently, which creates communities of people who continually reinforce each other’s prejudices by parroting back to them everything they say – an echo chamber.

This is also achieved through the common cult tactic of excommunication. People who deviate too far from the SJW orthodoxy are shunned, their reputations smeared and their social support networks deliberately destroyed. This creates a fear of wrongthink among cult members. This fear of wrongthink prevents them from disrupting the milieu with novel thoughts.

Many SJWs are astonished to meet a person who believes, for example, in the genetic basis of intelligence. Despite the fact that the science clearly demonstrates that intelligence is mostly hereditary (i.e. genetic), the milieu control of SJW culture means that few of them have ever been exposed to the actual science. Consequently, they respond to people who talk about the science with mockery and abuse.

The demands for purity can be seen in the never-ending escalation of virtue signalling. Inside SJW culture is a constant struggle for social status, where the most pure of heart is thought to rise to the top of the hierarchy. Indeed, the great conceit is that the top of the SJW hierarchy is also the most virtuous, and not the one who most successfully lowered the social status of their competitors by shaming them into submission for wrongthink.

Because the Nazis were nationalists, purity of thought requires that SJWs be globalists. Consequently, any kind of national loyalty must be completely rejected. Open borders must be embraced, because any nationalist sentiment is impure. The strongest bonds of loyalty, in SJW culture, are with those as different to you as possible. This is as true of race and religion as it is of nation.

SJW culture has gone so far in its demands for ideological purity that they even attack people who say it’s okay to be white. Even expressing a will for the continued existence of white people is equated with supremacism and a desire to exterminate other races. This bizarre logic inevitably leads to a purity spiral, and this inevitably leads to cult members becoming unhinged from reality entirely.

Part of this drive for purity is emphasis on confession. This is the origin of the commonly expressed sentiment that “we’re all a little bit racist.” The purpose of saying this is to instigate a moral self-flagellation session. One confesses to harbouring lingering racist sentiments (or other wrongthink) as a kind of public ritual humiliation. These ritual humiliations serve to strengthen the bonds of solidarity among people who have been through them.

The irony, of course, is that the only other people who think like this are other people in the SJW cult. The demands for purity are so stringent that only those with plentiful leisure time to devote to understanding the ins and outs of the etiquette can ever meet the standard. This has led to the absurd outcome of SJWs who virtue signal all day hanging out only with other white and middle-class people.

SJW culture also has its own sacred science. This sacred science has a number of cherished truths that cannot be questioned (lest one get shamed into silence). These cherished truths often run entirely contrary to the established science, because they are determined by expedience, not by truth (here it is meant expedience to globohomo values).

Actual science, which states clearly that intelligence is mostly hereditary and therefore genetic, is rejected. The sacred science of SJW culture dictates that evolution stops as the neck. The great variety of physical environments, although they have clearly led to a great variety of physical expressions, have not led to a commensurate variety of psychological expressions. All human subgroups are precisely identical in every behavioural measure.

Likewise, the sacred science of SJW culture dictates that the mass importation of cheap labour has no impact on the wages of the native working class. Despite the fact that a high schooler could tell you that increasing the supply of cheap labour will reduce the price of said labour – in other words, it will destroy working-class wages and the ability of working-class people to have families – SJWs are happy to support it.

This suicidal masochism is perhaps the defining feature of the cult mentality that possesses the average Social Justice Warrior. In any case, it’s clear from looking at the logic that underlies religious cults that the entirety of SJW culture follows it. Not only do they practice milieu control and possess an obsession with purity, but they also have their own sacred science distinct from mainstream science.

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The Four Kinds of Tribe

Humans are tribal animals, and have been since before we were even humans. It’s very difficult for an individual to feel at peace if they do not also feel like they are part of a tribe who are watching their back. As this essay will examine, there are four major kinds of tribe, corresponding to the four feminine elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

The element of Earth corresponds to the soil, and reflects one fundamental kind of tribe: that which grows out of the soil together. This kind of tribe is that which occupies a particular geographical territory. The element of Water corresponds to blood, and reflects the other fundamental kind of tribe: that which is related by family relations. Roughly speaking, Earth can be described as neighbourhood and Water as family.

In a state of Nature, there is very little difference between the first two kinds of tribe. This is because, in a state of Nature, the overwhelming majority of people don’t move very far from where they were born. So what people usually mean by their tribe is those who they share bonds of soil and blood with. For the first 99% of human history, one’s tribe was the same thing as one’s tribe of Earth or Water.

The third kind of tribe is the tribe of ideology. This corresponds to the element of Air. This could be said to have first come into existence with the arrival of civilisation. The advent of civilisation brought with it original dilemmas, such as whether or not a person should leave their tribe of savages to join the clean and peaceful people. This opportunity would have created great tensions with the loyalties to the tribes of Earth and Water.

In this sense, religions count as ideologies, because they are also supranational and also of the mind and not the physical world. The existence of religion creates an ideological tribe that inevitably leads to tension with existing bonds of solidarity with tribes of soil and blood. This is especially true now that the Age of Imperialism has mixed things up so much.

The fourth kind of tribe is the tribe of spirit, or frequency. This corresponds to the element of Fire, and reflects a person’s soul or true nature, independent of outside influences.

The bonds of solidarity at this level are, like flames, both subtle and extremely powerful. Not everyone automatically understands what their own spiritual tribe is, which is why the bonds are subtle. When understood, however, these spiritual bonds can often override the others.

All four of these tribal affiliations can play off against each other.

The tribes of Earth and Water can come into conflict when two blood tribes come to compete for the same territory. One tribe might get pushed out of their territory by a natural disaster or by a stronger tribe, and this often leads to them fighting with the incumbent tribe in the new territory they enter.

They also conflict a lot in today’s world on account of that there has been so much immigration. A New Zealander might find himself facing a loyalty test between people of a different race but who they grew up around and people of the same race but from other countries. This conflict occurs anywhere there is mass movement of peoples.

The tribes of Air often conflict with those of Earth and Water when ideological demands cause bonds of physical solidarity to weaken. Certain religious traditions, in particular the Abrahamic ones, run across racial lines. This means that followers of a religion might have divided loyalties, where they are as loyal to a foreigner of the same religion as they are to a countryman who follows a different creed.

Luke 12:51-52 cites Jesus as saying “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.” This says explicitly that the religious ideology promoted by Jesus would threaten existing bonds of soil and blood. This is all but inevitable, unless a person’s ideology stems directly from the soil and blood themselves.

Another common conflict here is when a person from a particular family graduates into a different social class. A person from a working-class family might get an advanced education, and this might put them in conflict between their intellectual peers – who respect that person’s education and appreciate them for it – and their blood relatives who don’t appreciate it or who feel envious about it.

The tribes of Fire conflict with all of the others. A person’s spirit will see them form bonds of solidarity with others who have the same spirit, and this is true even within a family or an ideology. These spiritual bonds can cause all kinds of subtle tensions – or gross ones.

A classic conflict is when a couple’s romantic inclinations cause them to come into conflict with their tribes of Earth, Water or Air. This often happens when a person falls in love with a foreigner, because foreigners are often of different religions and races as well as different geographical areas. Some family and friends will not approve – others will think it great.

Another one is when a person’s true Nature causes them to feel bonds of solidarity with certain people – and not others – within a workplace or social club. This phenomenon could be said to be the basis of true friendship, because the solidarity involved does not necessarily confer material benefit.

These four basic kinds of tribe can be found all over the world, and so can the basic types of conflict between them. As the world continues to rapidly change and become more complex, we can predict that conflicts between the four kinds of tribe will occur with greater frequency. This is true whether the conflict occurs between or within groups, or between or within individuals.

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The Second Tenet of Anarcho-Homicidalism

The Second Tenet of Anarcho-Homicidalism is known as the Iron Tenet. It’s called this because, like the Clay Tenet, it lays down a cold law of human moral reality: you’re allowed to kill anyone trying to enslave you. This essay takes a closer look.

The Iron Tenet is the step after the Clay Tenet. Once it’s established that violence is the basis of self-defence, the next step is to determine when it’s permissible to use such violence. The Iron Tenet lays down the iron-hard law that it’s always morally permissible to kill anyone trying to enslave you – but the flipside is that you’re never allowed to kill anyone not trying to enslave you.

Enslavement is the same thing as death, because to be enslaved is for one’s life to be dependent on the whims of another. Therefore, everyone has the inherent right to take any measures necessary to avoid enslavement – up to, and including, killing the enslaver.

This means that if someone tries to assert a position of authority over you, and you have not consented to it, they are trying to make you their slave, which means that you have the right to kill them.

The beauty of anarcho-homicidalism is that, if everyone agreed to the four tenets of it, abuses of power would be minimised. Tyrants and dictators, knowing themselves to be subject to the Iron Tenet, would be extremely cautious before trying to subjugate a population of anarcho-homicidalists. They would rightly live in fear of the people they tried to rule over.

This flipside to the Iron Tenet, as mentioned above, means that you can’t kill anyone who isn’t in a position of power over you, or who is not trying to assert a position of authority over you. This means that certain actions taken by individuals in the past, although they might bear similarities with legitimate acts of anarcho-homicidalism, are not legitimate themselves.

For instance, killing immigrants simply because they are immigrants cannot be an act of anarcho-homicidalism. The Christchurch mosque shootings did not target people who were trying to assert special authority over anyone. An attempted synagogue shooting this week was also not an act of anarcho-homicidalism.

Anarcho means “without rulers”. Therefore, you cannot homicidalise a person who has not set themselves up as ruler over you. An everyday person at a mosque or synagogue, although they adhere to an evil ideology that seeks domination, is not an enslaver. Following an ideology of hate is not enough, because the correct first course of action in such an instance is to persuade a person to give that ideology up, not to attack them.

There is no doubt, however, that people who follow ideologies of hate are led by enslavers. These leaders might be legitimate targets – politicians who push ideologies of hate are legitimate targets, if anyone is. The typical pleb at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy, however, is not a legitimate target for anarcho-homicidalist action, on account of that they don’t rule anything.

The assassination of a politician like Walter Luebcke, on the other hand, may have been a legitimate act.

Luebcke was an outspokenly open-borders politician, and this led to him being killed in protest earlier this year by a German man named Stephen Ernst. The killing of Luebcke was not categorically different to the assassination of British politician Jo Cox, who was also outspoken in favour of open borders. Like Luebcke, Cox was assassinated by a working-class man who stood to lose heavily from further mass immigration.

Both of these politicians died because of their support for open borders.

Supporting open borders is to support genocide. The reason why the subject evokes so much rage is because it’s the same thing as supporting the destruction of the nation, and the identity of the people of that nation. This is a crime under UN law, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

Supporting open borders is to support genocide because, without a border, no national, ethnic, racial or religious group can maintain the necessary integrity to continue existing. It’s patently obvious that if a nation such as New Zealand would let ten million immigrants in it would no longer be New Zealand. Therefore, the support of open borders is an act committed with intent to destroy a national group.

Luebcke was trying to enslave the German people by shackling their nation to the designs of the globalist elite, who see Germany as little more than one great car factory to be populated by the cheapest labour possible. Cox was trying to enslave the British people to those same globalist elite, who also have designs for Britain, and who don’t care at all if the British people object to them.

If Brenton Tarrant and Stephan B. had targeted people trying to enslave them, as Stephan Ernst and Thomas Mair did, there would be little cause to criticise their actions. As it is, there is no reason to consider either man different to a common murderer.

The Iron Tenet has so much power because, if its adoption were widespread, it would make any putative enslaver think twice before going through with their evil actions. If politicians understood that certain actions were considered enslavement attempts by their subjects, and that those subjects believed themselves to have the right to kill in order to avoid enslavement, the abuses committed by those politicians would be minimal.

This is why it can be fairly said that anarcho-homicidalism is an ideology of peace.

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