Wealth Bondage

Taxpayers, Citizens, Freedom, and Political Liberty

Posted by The Happy Tutor

David Weinberger (crediting Doug Hughes) cites Robert Herold of the Pacific Northwest Inlander  on the semantics of "taxpayers" vs. "citizens." An excerpt:

Taxpayers are just full of anxiety. Citizens seek to participate in a constructive manner. Taxpayers seek always to reduce public life to a balance sheet. Citizens seek ways of broadening and deepening public life. Taxpayers, by definition, live in a private world, and they don't much like government penetrating that world. The word "taxes" symbolizes that penetration. Citizens seek life in the polis. Citizens live in a world of values, which, when agreed upon, determine how we will live.

Taxpayers have consumption and production freedom. Citizens are free in that they are self-governed. Taxpayers defend private spaces, like Robinson Crusoe behind his Palisade. Citizens build public goods. "Getting government off the taxpayer's back" is often code for letting corporations run free. "Give me liberty of give me death" was about more than  a choice consumer goods. A good life in a crabbed and selfish society ruled by market forces is impossible. The saddest waste byproduct of consumer society is its people.

It is interesting to see David Weinberger's own thinking evolve from the market focused Cluetrain, to the more politically and morally focused World of Ends, to this citation. Given his influence, I really hope he weaves political and moral philosophy into his coming works. We need a defense not of the internet commons and net citizenship only, but also of the very concept of a commons, and a ringing justification of active citizenship in town, state, country, and globe. We have to see the internet and the market as things enclosed within a shared political system, founded on a shared moral and political beliefs -- a social contract, a constitution. Until we see the larger container clearly, we will have little control over the lives we lead within it, whether on the net or off. For those political interests exclusively concerned with money, particularly their own, will strip the commons, enrich themselves, and put us to work within command and control hierarchies, supported by brand name and political propaganda, to the extent they can.

If we were to create an "outline," and snap it back to the main folder, politics (or democracy or the polis) would contain the internet and the market as subsets, me-thinks. To pretend otherwise, to treat the market as a self-organizing mysterium tremendum above politics, something to worship rather than keep within boudns, is itself a loaded political propaganda strategy stemming from specific propaganda centers funded by specific wealthy donors. You could look it up.  

Market Freedom without Political Liberty is Wealth Bondage.

Wealth Bukkake

Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks

Listen up people! We have an issue here. Some presumptuous little twit has put up a worthless piece of crap weblog that mimics the proprietary look and feel of Wealth Bondage. They have the temerity to call it Wealth Bukkake. The look and feel of WB is our Trade Dress and is protected by force of law. Wealth Bukkake has done irreparable harm to the name, reputation, image and good will vested in Wealth Bondage. Be advised that we will prosecute Wealth Bukkake and all other imitators to the fullest extent of the law. In other words, Keep your hands off my Fucking Intellectual Property. This is Piracy! I want that little cocksucker lobbyist of ours on the phone right now. Get me Legal! Get me "Dick Minim" in PR. I want FOX News on the phone right now. Call AEI. I want a scholarly fucking White Paper. What am I paying you assholes for? Don't just stand there with your thumb up your nose. This is an Act of Terrorism on American Soil. It is a dagger poised at the heart of American Brand Culture. Don't fuck with me, Bukkake! I am the Queen of the Free Market, and I and all my fucking Submissives from here to Washington are going to stomp your face flat.

Daddy, Tell Bush to Repeal the Estate Tax!

Posted by Missy Proctor - Cool Rich Kid

Bellona Times: What we needed to resist was rebranding the estate tax as a "death tax," instead of a "lazy parasite tax" or a "crazy-assed worthless motherfucker tax." Like all taxes, the estate tax touches only the living -- in this case, only the living who are about to receive three million, ten million, a hundred million dollars that they did nothing to earn. Removal of the estate tax doesn't relieve a (dead) individual. It maintains a class. Gawd! That is so totally unfair. I mean Daddy wants me to have the money, and I need it. I tried a job and it was so boooring. I used to have all these issues about being rich. I mean how did I deserve it? But then I saw a Professional Wealth Counselor. Now, I am OK with it. Like I have totally integrated my trust fund with who I am.   

The Social Compact After Rawls

Posted by The Happy Tutor

John Rawls was one of  last great liberal thinkers. For a long time I could not understand the cogency of his central argument, that behind a veil of ignorance, where none knew their future role on earth, all would choose a society so constructed that every change had to improve the condition of those who were worst off. I could not get it. I mean why should a society not maximize culture, at the expense of helots? Why not maximize GNP, by turning consumers into desiring machines? Mightn't reasonable minds, even behind a veil of ignorance, prefer an elitist plutocracy characterized by economic growth, even if the losers were left in the muck? Mightn't a reasonable mind gamble on being born rich, or fighting its way up? Why care, even in theory, about the laggards? Nature destroys species, individuals, entire planets, galaxies and solar systems, why should we flinch, even if there is a chance that we and our children will be trampled underfoot?

It occurs to me now, though, that what is at issue is a social contract binding on all citizens, lest the social compact unravel, and we be left with only violence, whether that of mobs, revolutions, war, or the state judicial apparatus, to settle disputes. Without a social contract binding on all, reasonable to all, how can we justify, other than with violence, overt or covert, the submission of all citizens to a common set of laws?

To this problem of social social justice, of a social compact, the neocons give us only the market. That and laws backed by force. Prisons. Yet, what moral force back these laws? And how can they be binding on those who are disenfranchised? Except as "Fair Warning"? These are not arcane issues. Philosophy was born in the streets and will return the streets, as citizens talk to citizens. The market is not a social compact. The market in Charleston, SC  still stands where slaves were sold. The market and justice cannot be coterminous. For the market would sell and buy sacred things, and leave us with nothing but consumer goods. Among the things swindled from us by the market, in the absence of a just social compact, are active citizenship, and our status as children of God, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. True conservatives, committed to moral clarity, should defend the moral compact implicit in the Constitution rather than worshiping Wal-Mart.

Lest We Impose Facts upon Ignorance

Smoky Joe, JD - Legal Punk to Wealth

It is our job, though marketing and media, to flatter ignorace, not to impose our knowledge on their little minds. To be exposed to our unmediated brilliance would only dazzle and demoralize these consumer hogs. Good manners, good taste, higher education, all conspire to one end -- that we transact business from behind the curtain, while onstage the President delivers a turkey, or a homily.  

On Social Justice

Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks

What do winners owe losers, Tom? A sack dance in the end zone.

Imposing Good Manners on Others

Posted by The Happy Tutor

In his Christmas Card, the High Church priest refrains from mentioning Christ, or bestowing a blessing, lest he impose his values on others. Thus, he imposes his manners; for me a far heavier burden than his God.

Tough Love For Losers

Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks

Tom Spencer at See the Forest: Like the Cloud Minders of Stratos or the wealthy elites of the Gilded Age, Texans from W’s patrician class apparently lack empathy for the poor or anyone outside their class. No! That would be cruel. Here, Tom, you lick momma's boot, while she steps on your neck. See how good I am to you, little worm?

Imposing Values on The Damned

Posted by The Happy Tutor

If you made a list of all the ways to impose your values on other people it would comprise several shelves of psychology, parenting, military history, ethics, aesthetics, penology, marketing, religion, educational theory, business planning, economic and political theory, as well as coaching, mentoring, leading, inspiring, managing, directing, praising, blaming, conditioning, compensating, and much more. My only problem is that the better the values imposed, the harder it is to make a living at it. In the end, you have to give it away. And even then you have to hunt clients down like animals.

Where the market for values clears -- there you will find brands.

All Slackers Left Behind

Posted by Captain Blowtorch in hot pursuit

Slacktivist: Left Behind is not science fiction, but rather religious, apocalyptic fiction. Secular Humanists! Let them read, O Lord, and talk on, without understanding, until they are exterminated like vermin and burn in hell for all eternity, in thy Holy Name I pray.