Intro/Bio
Update: 2022-06-11: A minor edit to eliminate a piece of intolerable prose.
Dear Reader,
Whilst I am very eager to impose my opinions on you and have you vehemently, or partially disagree, or sometimes partially agree, or more hopefully think "That was interesting", I feel it relevant to give a little background/bio of myself.
I'm in later mid-life, have children, live in a country of which I am not a citizen, am a white male, and have a politics that defies the stupid left/right paradigm.
A brief summary of my politics (which changes!):
* The UN charter is a good guide (aggressive wars are wrong, especially when not authorized), and permanent membership of the Security Council with veto power is problematic.
* the greater issue is always state coercive force vs. individual liberty. History is littered with the repression of collective demands, often brutally, by entrenched power
* whilst small groups using things like law, markets, norms (and code; to quote Lawrence Lessig) can be used to effect gradual change, major systemic change is only possible via mass, extended, non-violent civic disobedience or war. Choose your poison.
* within any population there are conflicting demands; the skill is being able to diffuse/accommodate them. These skills are difficult for it requires being able to empathize with all sides and then find acceptable compromises. Funnily enough, regular people are quite good at this, but it seems to be largely missing at the international geopolitical level. The process of trying to understand why this is the case is a part of my geopolitical analytic journey. Some of this seems obvious (international finance), but expect to be “nuanced” into different positions along the way.
* concentration of power is generally disadvantageous to minorities in a population. It matters not if this is concentrated capital or a central communist committee; the end result is the same. The mechanisms may vary.
* to understand the world there are two primary topics of study; Philosophy and History. To understand "modern" society the study is not "politics" but "political-economics". Indeed, a study of the nature of "money" should occur at the mid high school level: "what is money?". This is philosophy tied to political-economics.
* I have a "socialist" ideology, as follows: the purpose of socialism is to create structures that provide for basic security in essential services. It should also prevent the creation of structures which concentrate power. This is to enable a plurality of concerns. While there are mechanisms which encourage this from ranked choice voting to multi-representative districts these still do not guarantee a pluralistic result. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” etc..
* While socialist I may be, I am a strong believer in entrepreneurship and free markets within a nation. Markets controlled by a monopoly or a cabal are not free.
* In the "very modern" era, the expansion of voices via the Internet, and then re-contraction via people being seduced towards centralised platforms (to which I have just succumbed), is a very interesting study of how people are controlled via narrative. This goes back to the 1920's. It is not new. The prevention of the "left" and "right" uniting on the common idea of free speech is a great example of divide and conqueror narrative control.
Oh, and "do unto others as you would have done unto yourself", the global moral principle.
So, there it is. I hope you are engaged by whatever I publish, and more importantly, I encourage you to publish YOUR VOICE wherever you wish.
Finally, I am not interested in subscribers. If you think what I have to say is interesting, use your mechanisms to further its distribution. Equivalently, criticize my commentary at will, everywhere.