Month: April 2018

The tyranny of the many

Billy/ / Free Speech, General

There is a theory know as the Overton Window that suggests there is a finite range of political opinions which are acceptable for public discourse and any ideas which fall beyond this are the political equivalent of the “third rail” (the one carrying the fatal current on electric railways).

When Overton first suggested the idea, the Internet was in its infancy, a very different group of first adopters were engaging in online discourse in the mid-1990s than today. His theory was that societal norms policed the range of discourse and kept those opinions outside the “window” to the fringes.

This builds on observations by, among others, John Stuart Mill and De Tocqueville. In the latter’s work “On Democracy in America” he examines the risk of replacing tyranny from a despotic leader (the King of England) with a tyranny of the many. He gives the example that, in 1830s America, there was no law preventing a white man from marrying a freed African slave woman but the weight of societal pressure meant that this was prevented as surely as if there were a jail sentence.

This example is a useful compare and contrast opportunity for the present day; very few people would be willing to heap public condemnation on a mixed race marriage in the USA today. Those few that still do fall into two opposite sides of the Overton Window; white supremacists or those African Americans who condemn relationships with white partners.

This is a great example of what we instinctively know; “acceptable” opinions change over time. Mixed race relationships are now nothing to pass comment on, cross-dressers and those with gender disphoria are no longer considered as suffering from mental illness, and same sex relationships are given equal worth as traditional marriages.

We have a problem, however. The velocity of the movement of the Overton Window is leaving a large number of people with the “wrong” opinion on a subject exposed to the risk that they are on record (on social media, for example) expressing a sentiment that, just a few years later, is stranded on the windowsill outside of the Overton Window.

The change to the DSM rating of gender disphoria, for example; 10 years ago an opinion that it was a mental disorder would have been underpinned by the the work of the American Psychiatric Association. Today, you risk being subject to a social media “pile on” for exactly the same sentiment.

Why is this an issue? I offer a personal example;

I recently changed employer. Part of the pre-employment checks was the agreement that I could be subject to an Internet search for unacceptable opinions. The contract was a little more vague than that, claiming to look for information “unfavourable” to the organisation’s public reputation, but the interpretation is vague enough to prevent my hiring for “wrongthink”.

Fortunately, although it’s not difficult to identify me if the searcher was motivated, I have always kept my online discussions behind a pseudonym. In hindsight, this was a smart move as the Overton Window has moved and left me stranded in many subject areas.

Bill’s Opinion

Perhaps the Overton Window is another recipient of the Matthew Principle, “For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” or a Pareto distribution where opinions accumulate in an ever tighter space.

Regardless, teach your children the important lesson that nothing on the Internet is biodegradable and that what might seem a perfectly acceptable opinion today is unlikely to remain so tomorrow.

We screwed up. You pay.

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, General, Whither Government?

We shouldn’t be surprised by this news, after all, the modern response to a political scandal is always to make the taxpayer suffer and never for the responsible to resign or be fired;

The Northern Territory government’s response to a Royal Commission’s damning findings on juvenile criminal custody is to throw more money at the problem.

Perhaps most galling for those few suckers taxpayers who are net contributors in the Northern Territory is that this recent splurge of their cash is being pitched as an “investment”.

If that noun were truthful, perhaps it’s not unreasonable for those taxpayers to ask what the return was for previous such “investments” and whether or not they were receiving value for money?

Let’s examine the “investment” claim a little further, what will they get this time?

The money is going to buy;

  • Upgrades to two existing detention centres ($71.4m)
  • An IT system ($66.9m)
  • “Improvements” to detention operations ($22.9m)
  • “Coordination hubs” ($11.4m)
  • “Support for kinship and foster carers” ($5.4m)

I bet the NT taxpayers must be so excited, like a year full of Christmas and birthday mornings have arrived at once…..

Speaking of taxpayers, how many net contributing taxpayers (i.e. those who put in more than they receive back in benefits, childcare vouchers, medicare, etc.) are there?

Numbers are hard to ascertain but we could make an informed guess that it’s probably about 50% of the total population (supported by this article), so about 100,000 souls.

Bill’s Opinion

The press conference announcing the response to the Royal Commission’s findings could have been shortened considerably by reading out the following statement;

“Good afternoon taxpayers of the Northern Territories.

The Royal Commission has found that this government and our predecessors have consistently failed to achieve our stated results, regardless of how much of your money we threw at the problem. Therefore, we will be removing another $200 each from your wallets and will be buying more stuff with it. We haven’t made any material changes to how we measure return on investment so please do not expect any change to the outcomes.

Nobody responsible for the past mistakes will lose their job or be subject to further investigation“.

If you are a Northern Territory taxpayer, you may want to consider the possibility that you are being farmed.

When intelligence is trumped by gullibility.

Billy/ / Climate Bollocks, Cultural Marxism, General

Regular readers of this organ will have realised that our assertion is freedom to choose and follow (or not follow) a religion is a very important principle, with the only caveat that doing so doesn’t impact on others’ freedom to live.

Therefore, if one chooses to believe that your prophet visited the moon on the back of a winged horse, you are most welcome to. If, however, you also believe that you must slaughter non-believers, we’re going to disagree quite robustly.

It could be argued and has been by various parties that not believing in a creator is also an act of faith; proving a negative is a particularly difficult task after all.

There are those who feel that a belief in something for which you have little to no proof other than the word of a third party (i.e. the definition of “faith”) is a form of mental illness. There’s certainly an argument to be made there but, given that existential questions of creation are unlikely to be solved to a high degree of scientific proof and we’d need to solve the problem of infinite regression, we all live with that unresolved internal discussion. We generally function on a day to day basis however.

Some religious adherents clearly are suffering from a dangerous delusion though and are a danger to themselves and/or others. When your religious beliefs require you to act out the crucifixion on Easter weekend, self-flaggelate for Ashura, murder Cathars for having the wrong version of Christianity or fly planes into tower blocks, there’s clearly a problem of the mind that is impacting physical reality.

Consider then what mental illness might look like from an atheist regressive progressive point of view;

New York lawyer self-immolated in protest against climate change.

Full disclosure; I have no evidence of what David Buckel’s religious views were at the point of death but, given his acceptance of two of the key tenants of the Cultural Marxist agenda and the extremely rare instance of anyone only believing one or two of the dozen or so must-believe doctrines, we’re guessing he didn’t believe in a creator.

Chances are he probably said, “Oh God” or “Jesus fucking Christ” at some point quite soon after flicking the flint on the Zippo though.

Bill’s Opinion

Unless he was an extremely modest polymath, it’s a safe assumption that the gay and trans rights lawyer David Buckel did not have a full and detailed understanding behind the science of climate change.

Yet he’d fully-accepted the impending doom of climate change as a solid fact based only on the testimony of third parties, like an illiterate peasant in medieval Britain blindly following the village Priest’s encouragement to join the crusades to liberate Jerusalem from heathen rule.

Perhaps he was suffering from an underlying mental illness, but perhaps the religiosity of the climate change pantechnicon and its followers is indistinguishable from religion?

Either way, the outcome is that he’s toast.

The best women are men part 2

Billy/ / Cultural Marxism, Gender Politics, General

He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.

Ayn Rand

The above quote is often summarised as, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

Consider then, the logical and ethical knots the UK Useful Idiots Labour Party is currently tying itself into;

Hundreds of Women Plan Mass Resignation from Labour Over Trans Ruling

For decades now, the party has been running a policy of women-only shortlists to select candidates to fight parliamentary seats. This has resulted in their current ratio of MPs; 101:129 female to male.

Let’s pause for a moment to question again whether equality of outcome is really our preference compared to equality of opportunity. Exhibit A in our proposition that all women shortlists perhaps might not result in the most stunningly intellectual representative for the voters;

Unedifying viewing, isn’t it. Consider whether, in a purely merit-based system of democracy, Diane Abbott would have a) ever been elected as an MP in the first place, or b) been continuously re-elected since 1987.

But back to all “women” shortlists.

The progressive types at Labour HQ decided a few months ago that the definition of “women” included anyone who identified as a woman. Let’s just expand that a little; they don’t need to dress like a woman, have been living as a woman for any period of time, have any medical assessment to confirm their transgender status and certainly they do not have to even consider any kind of hormonal or gender reassignment procedures. Quite simply, if they say they are, they are.

What could possibly go wrong? No, seriously, what could possibly go wrong with redefining fundamental existential nouns with meanings that have been universally understood for the entire history of the species?

Bill’s Opinion

We’re back to the dilemma du jour; the desire to not hurt one group’s sensitivities is being rudely interrupted by, oh I don’t know, let’s call it reality.

The progressive view is that history will judge as dinosaurs those raising the fact that humans are dimorphic. The alternate to this future is, of course, that the progressives are illogical to the point where they can only be suffering from almost clinical levels of cognitive dissonance or are simply mendacious.

 

Who benefits? No, who *really* benefits?

Billy/ / Corporate Welfare, General

Those helpful people at the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) have released a new standard, this one is focusing on the cross-border sale of secondhand goods.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? If we can standardise the sale or donation (for charity, for example) of secondhand goods we can improve health and safety outcomes, reduce buyer disappointment and regret and bring order to an unregulated market.

To read the detail of the standard, you’ll have to buy a copy, but the summary probably tells us enough to judge whether it will be effective and/or of any use.

The standard reflects that there are going to be existing health and safety standards in individual countries which will still apply but this standard seeks to categorise the secondhand goods by their usability and condition.

An example given would be a car; it is presumably important that the starter motor works, whereas whether or not the GPS software is up to date is very much a secondary concern.

The standard is trying to assist the end buyer in making an informed decision and to set their expectations accordingly about the functionality and quality of the product they are procuring. One method the standard suggests is a categorisation of A through to D of the condition and functionality of the goods.

Will it achieve this and is there a more efficient way of delivering the same outcome?

Well…… the people at ISO may not be aware of this but there’s a website called eBay that currently enables consumers to buy secondhand goods across borders. How does eBay provide information to a consumer in, say, London who is buying a secondhand component for a marine Diesel engine from a vendor in Florida?

The answer is, of course, that eBay uses a condition grading system combined with a free text narrative field to describe the product and an option to ask detailed questions about the product before committing to buy. If the delivered product fails to live up to the description provided, eBay has a dispute process that arbitrates between buyer and seller to attempt to find a fair outcome.

Bill’s Opinion

The International Organisation for Standardisation seems to be about 15 years too late; the market has already found a solution to this.

Any country that adopts the standard and applies it at their ports of import can be certain that the prices paid by the consumer will increase.

It should also be obvious that these increased prices will result in lower volumes of sales of imported secondhand goods and a commensurate likely increase in local sales of the equivalent new items. And perhaps that’s the point of this belated push to regulate standardise the secondhand market; the main beneficiaries will be the industries who supply the new items.

Ah, vested interests seeking government intervention again…..

Logical inconsistency boomerangs

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, General, Identity Politics, Legacy Press (c)

Today’s amusement is at the expense of the regressive progressive Legacy Press (c) and their take on the Commonwealth Games, currently taking place on the Gold Coast of Australia.

For those unfamiliar with the Commonwealth Games, think of them as the Special Olympics for countries that were colonised by Great Britain with the exception of the USA and basket case countries like Zimbabwe (although Myanmar is still competing).

To underline the purpose of the games, the original name in 1930 was The British Empire Games. Basically, it’s a way for all the athletes who would normally do “a Brian Jones” (i.e. not exit the pools) in the Olympics to get a medal. Which is pretty sad really, given the fact the Olympic Games itself is just a convenient way to bundle into a single event a collection of sports nobody normally pays to watch.

If the Olympics and Commonwealth Games’ actual sporting events are relatively pathetic spectacles, the opening ceremonies are even more tedious. It’s as if the event organisers sat around the planning table and said to each other, “I know what’ll liven up the prospect of a couple of weeks of synchronised diving and rhythmic gymnastics; a West End musical-style opening ceremony! Someone get Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John on the phone, stat!“.

The problem is, of course, if you have signed up to the entire list of left-wing “correct” positions to take on everything, yesterday’s opening ceremony at the Commonwealth Games puts you into a tight spot, logically.

Why?

The Aboriginals; yesterday’s song and dance show was heavily-influenced by Australian Aboriginal dancing, music and ceremony.

On the one hand, commentators such as Phil Lutton want to underline the message that it’s time for Australia to ditch the historic links with the UK, that a constitutional monarchy is an anachronism in the 21st century, and that things were altogether better before Australia was colonised. On that theme, many of his colleagues from his newspaper have campaigned vociferously to change the date of the national day, Australia Day, from its current date of January 26th (the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet) to show solidarity with the oppressed first people.

On the other hand, many of those Aboriginal people willingly took place in the opening ceremony of an event which celebrates Australia’s history as a member of the British Empire and, latterly, the British Commonwealth, and yet there was a small group protesting outside the stadium.

What is the correct position to take without destroying one’s progressive credentials? It’s a fine line to tread and one for which Phil has our deepest sympathies, after all, he desperately wouldn’t want to express the “wrong” sentiment and incur the wrath of the Twitter pile-on crowd.

What results, of course, is an article brimming with cognitive dissonance, probably not helped by the late evening hour that he had to file his copy and the, presumably, free-flowing Aussie beer in the press room;

He starts in rambling, grammatically-clunky style, desperately trying to keep the representation of the para-athletes in parity with the able-bodied, and doesn’t improve much from there;

“Surely, this is not the time for jingoism in our fragile sporting climate.”

A statement he then quickly goes on to disprove, of course, dismissing the link to England as an anachronism whilst cheering the kilted Scots. News flash for Phil, it was called the “British Empire” for a reason; many of the more successful colonial masters weren’t actually English; Hong Kong’s Jardine (Scottish), Australia’s Macquarie (Scottish), New Zealand’s Hobson (Irish), for example. Further evidence might be found by perusing the place names of countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where there will be plenty of instances of Aberdeen, Hamilton and Perth. The monarch of the empire may have been German English, but a large proportion of their subjects probably only stepped foot in England to travel to a port of emigration.

Then we get an anthropological history lesson, which is a nice touch from the Sydney Morning Herald’s sports correspondent;

….but, if we agree that the first people to arrive in Australia landed 65,000 years ago, they’d have done very well to have settled 2,700km away within the same year. Oh well, it’s a sports journalist we’re reading here, after all.

The article continues by celebrating the beaches of the Gold Coast and a cursory nod at some local government corruption in the 1980s, which is, well, obscure and not relevant.

At least we can all agree that Prince Charles and his wife did look out of place. Well, overdressed compared to the dancers at least. Actually, overdressed compared to any resident of the Gold Coast of Australia, a place where “singlet” is considered appropriate wardrobe regardless of the social appointment; beach, bar, court appearance, state funeral, etc…..

Bill’s Opinion

Sometimes a sporting event is just a sporting event and doesn’t really need to be used as a cultural guilt weapon, especially as very few Australians are even related to anyone who has ever oppressed an Aboriginal, let alone actually been personally responsible for such oppression.

Also, regardless of how one feels about the relevance of the role of a monarch in 21st century Australia, surely the one person who looks least out of place at the British Empire Commonwealth Games is a member of the British monarchy?

Lastly, could someone also please have a word with the Aboriginal people of Australia and get them to agree on whether the Commonwealth Games are a good or a bad thing so that we can all virtue signal in the correct manner, please?

Special pleaders gonna plead specially

Billy/ / Corporate Welfare, General

In what surely must be an April Fools’ joke, the former CEO of Walmarts complained that Amazon was too big and was putting small competitors out of business.

Which small competitors?

Toys R Us and J C Penny.

No, really he said that with a straight face.

Just a reminder for those not living in a country without a Walmart or one of their subsidaries; Walmart is a retailer with $500 billion annual revenue. It’s also the largest private sector employer in the USA with 2.3 million staff.

Ask the owner of an independent local store in small town USA how they feel about the prospects of a Walmart’s outlet being built in the neighbourhood and you’ll hear opinions not dissimilar to those expressed by Bill Simon;

Let’s examine those claims, shall we?

“Destroying jobs”

If we take a narrow view of the economy, the jobs lost at Toys R Us for example, this statement seems true. However, the products purchased online at Amazon rather than at a Toys R Us outlet are still required to be manufactured (mainly in China in both cases, but let’s ignore that as applying equally), packaged and distributed to the consumer. In addition, the consumers who have saved money by purchasing the same product at a cheaper price will now have the product PLUS some extra dollars which they will spend elsewhere in the economy, thus creating employment.

“Destroying value in the sector”

This is a quite vague statement and leans very heavily on how one defines “value” and from which subjective viewpoint one is looking. From the point of view of the CFO of Walmart, yes value is being destroyed, in terms of balance sheet and share price. In terms of the consumer, value is being created with savings, convenience and increased choice.

Simon’s comments were in response to President Trump’s tweet on the subject;

….which seems to be claiming Amazon is a bad actor for using a government service (the postal service) that happens to be provided at a loss.

Bill’s Opinion

Bill Simon and President Trump should really know better than to spout these economic fallacies. Perhaps they do and are being mendacious.

Simon was perfectly at ease with using the size of the corporation he ran to undermine the business models of hundreds if not thousands of smaller competitors. In fact, what a wonderful advertisement for the creative destruction of the free market that even companies as powerful as Toys R Us, JC Penny and Walmart can have their business models disrupted to the benefit of the consumer.

If President Trump doesn’t like the way the US Postal Service is run or the rules under which it operates, he should probably write a stern letter tweet to himself describing which changes he should make.

Special pleading, especially when using unemployment as a reason, is always at the detriment of the consumer who, by the way, has already unanimously-voted with their wallets.