linting corrections

content/post/two-routes-to-the-same-good.md

@@ -19,11 +19,11 @@ But what does Aristotle say? He thinks that our capacity to discern patterns –
 
 There is one further subtle point to be made, here. Given that we are ourselves fundamentally the same as everything else in creation (a compound of form and matter), a certain sort of symmetry exists between the human being and all other kinds of beings. It is this symmetry that makes it possible for us to recognize the particular being of other things. Our sense organs function as actualizers of the various kinds of material potential present in other beings, and the rational part of the soul (the mind) actualizes the immaterial form. This is why we can smell a clove of garlic, without our noses turning into garlic cloves, and why we can imagine the Eiffel Tower in our minds, without the Eiffel Tower arising out of the tops of our heads.
 
-Aristotle believed that the form of a being was its rational definition (quite literally, it’s ‘formula’), and that this definition was comprised of various ‘categories’ of being. The ‘substance’, we’ve already covered, and this, Aristotle considered the *essential* or *fundamental* category of each being. The substance is what makes a thing *essentialy* itself. But Aristotle also says there are nine other categories of being, known as ‘accidental’, because they rely on substance for their actuality, and because they are not inherent to the substance itself. For example, a bronze ring could be hot or cold, depending on its environment. It could be shiny or dull, depending on its condition. It could be sailing through the air, or afixed to a warrior’s wrist, depending on the circumstances.
+Aristotle believed that the form of a being was its rational definition (quite literally, it’s ‘formula’), and that this definition was comprised of various ‘categories’ of being. The ‘substance’, we’ve already covered, and this, Aristotle considered the *essential* or *fundamental* category of each being. The substance is what makes a thing *essentialy* itself. But Aristotle also says there are nine other categories of being, known as ‘accidental’, because they rely on substance for their actuality, and because they are not inherent to the substance itself. For example, a bronze ring could be hot or cold, depending on its environment. It could be shiny or dull, depending on its condition. It could be sailing through the air, or affixed to a warrior’s wrist, depending on the circumstances.
 
 Aristotle believed that all things strove toward their own completion. He called this *telos*, or purpose. This striving toward completion is the fourth kind of “cause” of a thing: the final cause. Every kind of thing has its own kind of completion, and its completion is that thing’s ultimate satisfaction, or ‘good’. In addition, each of the accidental characteristics of a thing could have its own kind of completion, or satisfaction – and as such, it’s own kind of ‘good’. So, for example, the end of an acorn is an oak tree; the end of a sword, is its utility in battle; the end of a vineyard, is a vintage; and the end of a man, is a completed life. Thus, the healthy oak in full bloom is the fully actualized acorn; the flavorful and potent wine, is the fully actualized vineyard; and the life of rational fulfillment well lived, is the fully actualized man. Given that the good is *categorically different*, relative to the *telos* of particular kinds of things, Aristotle did not believe there could be a universal and *absolute* idea of The Good, in the way that Plato did, because each good was *for* some end that was unlike the others. The good oak is alien to the good sword, and those are alien to a good color pigment or a good scent.
 
-But, Aristotle did think that there was a *heirarchy* of goods. The good for the stone was subordinate to the good for the acorn, and that was subordinate to the good for the horse, and all of those, subordinate to the good for man. Aristotle argued that this is because of the nature of man. All other beings have only the capacity to *participate* in being. But man, the *rational animal*, has the capacity to comprehend being, and understand his own participation in it. This is because he is the compound of matter and a form that has *a mind*. Which is to say, he is a being that has the power to create, and to order his creations according to his own purposes. Why is this important? What makes apprehension more of a good than participation? Well, because it means that we share something in common with whatever it is that created being itself.
+But, Aristotle did think that there was a *hierarchy* of goods. The good for the stone was subordinate to the good for the acorn, and that was subordinate to the good for the horse, and all of those, subordinate to the good for man. Aristotle argued that this is because of the nature of man. All other beings have only the capacity to *participate* in being. But man, the *rational animal*, has the capacity to comprehend being, and understand his own participation in it. This is because he is the compound of matter and a form that has *a mind*. Which is to say, he is a being that has the power to create, and to order his creations according to his own purposes. Why is this important? What makes apprehension more of a good than participation? Well, because it means that we share something in common with whatever it is that created being itself.
 
 In order to complete his ontology, Aristotle needed something that functioned as the end of all things: the permanent, unchanging reality that functioned as the first stable premise in every other explanation of the variety of beings. So, in short, a prime matter, a prime mover, a primary cause, and a primary source of formal order, that functioned as the terminus for all explanations, and as the fountain of all of existence. That prime mover, according to Aristotle, is pure actuality and pure reason itself. This being must itself exist beyond the category of being, since it gives rise to the categories themselves. It is not possible to imagine such a being, being outside the category of being itself. The best we can do is to analogize such a being in terms of the activity of contemplation. God is contemplation of the Good, and since God is the source of all that is good, God spends eternity contemplating himself, and in so doing, giving rise to creation. Aristotle regarded the contemplative life the highest kind of good human life, as a result of this conclusion.
 

content/post/where-are-all-the-old-people.md

@@ -33,6 +33,6 @@ House: Being a hospital, it's hard not to have plot lines involving elderly peop
 
 Now, look at most everything from roughly the year 2000, to now. Even shows like Game of Thrones had almost no elderly characters. There are two elderly's that stands out the loudest: Walder Frey, and the High Sparrow (Jonathan Price). Both turned out to be the most evil of the bunch, and eventually Walder had his throat slit by one of the YOUNGEST of the cast.
 
-Over the last year or so, I've watched three programs: Black Mirror (2011-2018), Tales From The Loop (2020), and The Good Place. Black Mirror never had a character in it older than 50. The Good Place (2016 - 2019), the same. Even the Ted Danson character was made to look like he was in his late 40's (stylish dress, salt-and-pepper hair, etc). The Loop has Jonathan Pryce playing the ONE elderly grandfather in the show, but he dies in the third episode of the first season, and has a questionable past. Everyone else appears to be 50 or younger. Even the asian woman's parents are barely old enough to count as her parents.
+Over the last year or so, I've watched three programs: Black Mirror (2011-2018), Tales From The Loop (2020), and The Good Place. Black Mirror never had a character in it older than 50. The Good Place (2016 - 2019), the same. Even the Ted Danson character was made to look like he was in his late 40's (stylish dress, salt-and-pepper hair, etc). The Loop has Jonathan Pryce playing the ONE elderly grandfather in the show, but he dies in the third episode of the first season, and has a questionable past. Everyone else appears to be 50 or younger. Even the Asian woman's parents are barely old enough to count as her parents.
 
 What is going on here? I tossed out a speculation at the beginning of this rant, but maybe that's too cynical. Could it be that the producers of these shows simply can't imagine what it's like to be anything other than working age? Is it that the market is so fragmented now, that shows are tailored specifically to mirror back exactly what certain people see in themselves already? Is it that the society has become so young that it simply has no notion of what its like to live around older people? Given the fact that the US is demographically *much* older than it used to be, this seems unlikely.

content/post/why-a-right-to-self-defense.md

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ draft: false
 
 I doubt there's anyone in the anglo-sphere this week, who isn't aware of the case of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Probably, a good chunk of Europe was paying attention to that trial, as well. Why? Because of the fundamental question that the trial symbolized, at its core. 
 
-The principle at the center of that case was the right of self-defense. As a matter of law, that meant demonstrating in the trial that the material facts of the event conformed to Wisconsin's own statutory definition of an action that constitutes self-defense. That's one way to interpret the question 'why'. But - apart from its importance in establishing grounds for Rittenhouse's exhoneration - that's not the interpretation that *really* matters here.
+The principle at the center of that case was the right of self-defense. As a matter of law, that meant demonstrating in the trial that the material facts of the event conformed to Wisconsin's own statutory definition of an action that constitutes self-defense. That's one way to interpret the question 'why'. But - apart from its importance in establishing grounds for Rittenhouse's exoneration - that's not the interpretation that *really* matters here.
 
 The 'why' question I'm asking might be asked as a 'what' question: what is the right of self-defense? Or more deeply, what is a right? What are they, indeed. A definition of a right is something that even experienced scholars and philosophers will tell you is next to impossible to pin down. But I think we can come at the definition indirectly by asking instead, why do you have a right to anything? Or, in this case, why do you have a right to self-defense?
 
@@ -20,19 +20,19 @@ At bottom, in other words, this is a metaphysical question. The reason why you h
 
 The animal kingdom is full of examples of beasts that aggress against each other, and animals attempting to defend themselves against predators. But we wouldn't say that the Cocker Spaniel has a right to defend itself against the Rottweiler, or that the moose has a right to defend itself against the mountain lion. In these cases, the dog fight, and the ruminant fleeing from the big cat are mere matters of fact. We might express a certain distress at the violence of the situation, but this is an emotional response, not a moral one (though, sometimes it can provoke severe moral doubts, as was the case with Darwin and the Ichneumon eumerus). Even in the case of the great apes, we are prone toward pity and horror at the brutality with which troupe hierarchies are enforced, but would not ascribe moral value to the individuals involved in the conflicts, except as a function of our own projections.
 
-What is it, exactly, that we are projecting? Some will tell you it is a veneer layer or secondary epiphenomenon of the psychological evolution of the human primate -- that the same thing we project on to 'lesser' primates, we project on to each other. But as {{< abstab title="Frans de Waal and others have discovered," url="https://www.amazon.com/Primates-Philosophers-Morality-Evolved-Princeton/dp/0691169160/">}} it is much more significant than that.  The scientists, of course, will stop short of metaphysical speculations. Though,  {{< abstab title="Brett Weinstein has recently ventured to speculate" url="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bret-weinstein-heather-heying-sex-religion-evolution/id1375568988?i=1000535820515" >}} about a 'layer' of reality 'below' the reality of matter in motion, even he can't bring himself to call that by its proper name. 
+What is it, exactly, that we are projecting? Some will tell you it is a veneer layer or secondary epiphenomenon of the psychological evolution of the human primate -- that the same thing we project on to 'lesser' primates, we project on to each other. But as {{< abstab title="Frans de Waal and others have discovered," url="https://www.amazon.com/Primates-Philosophers-Morality-Evolved-Princeton/dp/0691169160/">}} it is much more significant than that.  The scientists, of course, will stop short of metaphysical speculations. Though,  {{< abstab title="Brett Weinstein has recently ventured to speculate" url="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bret-Weinstein-heather-heying-sex-religion-evolution/id1375568988?i=1000535820515" >}} about a 'layer' of reality 'below' the reality of matter in motion, even he can't bring himself to call that by its proper name. 
 
-What am I talking about? The spirit, of course. The spirit is something more than just Aristotle's animating force, or the kinetic 'energy' of the physicists. The 'layer' of reality below matter in motion is the *immaterial*. Something religions have recognized and celebrated for ten thousand years, and which we now struggle to ignore for the sake of our 'enlightenment'. Plato and Aristotle were right to point to *nous* as the essential (aka defining) feature of the human animal - the one thing that separated it from the rest of the animal kingdom. But what they seemed to miss by only millimeters, is the fact that *nous* is not the *cause* of our uniqueness. Rather, it is the *effect* of our uniqueness. Our capacity for high reason, for deep concern about the rightness and wrongness of our actions, and for the subtle recognition of shades of beauty in the world, are not what *constitute* our value as individual souls. The capacity to grasp the transcendents is an *expression* of that value. We are the only creatures on earth that can see the *significance of creation itself*. Where does that come from? How is it that the world has not just a discernable order, but a discoverable valence, and how is it that we can indeed perceive both?
+What am I talking about? The spirit, of course. The spirit is something more than just Aristotle's animating force, or the kinetic 'energy' of the physicists. The 'layer' of reality below matter in motion is the *immaterial*. Something religions have recognized and celebrated for ten thousand years, and which we now struggle to ignore for the sake of our 'enlightenment'. Plato and Aristotle were right to point to *nous* as the essential (aka defining) feature of the human animal - the one thing that separated it from the rest of the animal kingdom. But what they seemed to miss by only millimeters, is the fact that *nous* is not the *cause* of our uniqueness. Rather, it is the *effect* of our uniqueness. Our capacity for high reason, for deep concern about the rightness and wrongness of our actions, and for the subtle recognition of shades of beauty in the world, are not what *constitute* our value as individual souls. The capacity to grasp the transcendents is an *expression* of that value. We are the only creatures on earth that can see the *significance of creation itself*. Where does that come from? How is it that the world has not just a discernible order, but a discoverable valence, and how is it that we can indeed perceive both?
 
-In the Christian tradition, there are answers to these questions. That 'layer below' as Brett Weinstein likes to call it, is the mind of God. The creative consciousness which we call consciousness only by analogy, because it must be radically different in kind from the *created* consciousness of material beings like ourselves -- and yet, a consciousness nonetheless, because we are able to intuit it from the facts I have been outlining briefly here. The facts of discernable order, of qualitative values discoverable in truth, goodness, and beauty, and of creatures present in the midst of all this order with the capacity to perceive it all. 
+In the Christian tradition, there are answers to these questions. That 'layer below' as Brett Weinstein likes to call it, is the mind of God. The creative consciousness which we call consciousness only by analogy, because it must be radically different in kind from the *created* consciousness of material beings like ourselves -- and yet, a consciousness nonetheless, because we are able to intuit it from the facts I have been outlining briefly here. The facts of discernible order, of qualitative values discoverable in truth, goodness, and beauty, and of creatures present in the midst of all this order with the capacity to perceive it all. 
 
-Beyond this point, philosophy cannot proceed. Like Moses condemned to remain in the desert, the intellect cannot pass beyond the veil of the 'layer below'. It can merely stand at the threshold and point the way. Philosophy's companion on the other side of that veil is religion. What the Christian faith will tell you, is that mankind is the highest expression of the love that is God himself; that each individual is a single ray of divine light penetrating this realm of material darkness; that the soul of each man is a reflection of God as he looks upon his creation and admires it in only the way that he can. It is beyond the scope of this post to get into the numerous apparently insoluble mysteries this idea gives rise to (not the least of which, that man is paradoxically *both* the most good, true, and beautiful thing in the universe, and the most most wicked, false, and depraved creature). The point here is simply this: that man's uniqueness is the *effect* of God's creative genius. Being the absolute source and unity of the good, the true, and the beautiful, he is the ground of all value. The fact that we are able to share the perception of these realities with the creator of them, means that we are, even as finite creatures -- indeed, animals -- yet uniquely valuable among creatures. It is that link with the absolute value of God, that is the ground of our moral value. 
+Beyond this point, philosophy cannot proceed. Like Moses condemned to remain in the desert, the intellect cannot pass beyond the veil of the 'layer below'. It can merely stand at the threshold and point the way. Philosophy's companion on the other side of that veil is religion. What the Christian faith will tell you, is that mankind is the highest expression of the love that is God himself; that each individual is a single ray of divine light penetrating this realm of material darkness; that the soul of each man is a reflection of God as he looks upon his creation and admires it in only the way that he can. It is beyond the scope of this post to get into the numerous apparently insoluble mysteries this idea gives rise to (not the least of which, that man is paradoxically *both* the most good, true, and beautiful thing in the universe, and the most wicked, false, and depraved creature). The point here is simply this: that man's uniqueness is the *effect* of God's creative genius. Being the absolute source and unity of the good, the true, and the beautiful, he is the ground of all value. The fact that we are able to share the perception of these realities with the creator of them, means that we are, even as finite creatures -- indeed, animals -- yet uniquely valuable among creatures. It is that link with the absolute value of God, that is the ground of our moral value. 
 
-Various denominations of Christianity will give you different specific explanations for the duty of care that this all implies. For example, John Locke argued from the doctrine of the Imago Dei (the latin phrase for what I have described above), in combination with Calvinist interpretations of Genesis, that each man was the property of God, in the same way that the products of a craftsman were the property of the craftsman, because of the value imputed to the product by the craftsman. Given our capacity for rational deliberation,  and the burden of original sin (in which we were tasked to work the land as punishment for our disobedience), this meant that each of us was a kind of stewart of God's creation. We are tasked with improving it in whatever way our own talents and abilities enabled. To damage or destroy what God created is thus a great sin, because it is rebellion against that duty of care and to incur a debt that could only be repaid by the grace of God himself. Since man is the greatest of the masterpeices of creation, threatening a man's life was thus the worst of sins. By reciprocal inference, therefore, each man not only had a duty of care to others, but a duty of care to himself as well. Only God had the absolute liberty to grant or to take away life, as he saw fit. Where a man faced the loss of his life at another man's hand, therefore, his first duty was to preserve his own, if he took God's charge seriously.
+Various denominations of Christianity will give you different specific explanations for the duty of care that this all implies. For example, John Locke argued from the doctrine of the Imago Dei (the Latin phrase for what I have described above), in combination with Calvinist interpretations of Genesis, that each man was the property of God, in the same way that the products of a craftsman were the property of the craftsman, because of the value imputed to the product by the craftsman. Given our capacity for rational deliberation,  and the burden of original sin (in which we were tasked to work the land as punishment for our disobedience), this meant that each of us was a kind of steward of God's creation. We are tasked with improving it in whatever way our own talents and abilities enabled. To damage or destroy what God created is thus a great sin, because it is rebellion against that duty of care and to incur a debt that could only be repaid by the grace of God himself. Since man is the greatest of the masterpieces of creation, threatening a man's life was thus the worst of sins. By reciprocal inference, therefore, each man not only had a duty of care to others, but a duty of care to himself as well. Only God had the absolute liberty to grant or to take away life, as he saw fit. Where a man faced the loss of his life at another man's hand, therefore, his first duty was to preserve his own, if he took God's charge seriously.
 
-Other explanations from theology and scripture are available. Some with very different routes from the Imago Dei, to self-defense. But Locke's happens to be the one most consonant with our own legal tradition, in America. But they all ultimately begin with the Imago Dei. This point cannot be stressed enough. If we refuse to look beyond the veil of matter-in-motion, then there can be no final answer as to whether a man has any rights at all, let alone the right of self-defense. Because they all rest in the absolute value of the creative consciousness that gave birth to the world in the first place. Absent that, we are doomed to squabble with each other perpetually, over what matters. This is because (as Ayn Rand recognized), beyond the point of sustaining life itself, all material values are instrumental and subjective. As she put it, "of value to whom, and for what?". In otherwords, individual men will have their own individual purposes, and their values will both inform and serve those ends, and finally, a Nietzschean world of men like Callicles from the Gorgias will make lesser men a means to their own ends. 
+Other explanations from theology and scripture are available. Some with very different routes from the Imago Dei, to self-defense. But Locke's happens to be the one most consonant with our own legal tradition, in America. But they all ultimately begin with the Imago Dei. This point cannot be stressed enough. If we refuse to look beyond the veil of matter-in-motion, then there can be no final answer as to whether a man has any rights at all, let alone the right of self-defense. Because they all rest in the absolute value of the creative consciousness that gave birth to the world in the first place. Absent that, we are doomed to squabble with each other perpetually, over what matters. This is because (as Ayn Rand recognized), beyond the point of sustaining life itself, all material values are instrumental and subjective. As she put it, "of value to whom, and for what?". In other words, individual men will have their own individual purposes, and their values will both inform and serve those ends, and finally, a Nietzschean world of men like Callicles from the Gorgias will make lesser men a means to their own ends. 
 
-This may seem like I'm making an argument to undesirable consequences. In one sense, it is. But there is an underlying point here. The only way we can recognize the picture I've painted as 'undesirable' in the first place, is if we recognize that there is *in fact* an order to the world that is *better* and an order to the world that is *worse*. Nietzsche famously argued precisely that he wanted a 'transvaluation of all values'. In other words, his goal was the *complete inversion* of what he already understood to be the good and the bad. He made deranged claims from a florid and fantastical reading of history, that it was the Jews, and later more effectively the Christians, who had falsely inverted the reality of good and evil, and that he alone could see this from his Hyperborian perch, and was uniquely positioned to right the ship, as it were. This disturbed German sausage churning of Plato was what led (at least in part) to the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews, and an entire nation monomaniacally obsessed with being rulers over the entire earth. 
+This may seem like I'm making an argument to undesirable consequences. In one sense, it is. But there is an underlying point here. The only way we can recognize the picture I've painted as 'undesirable' in the first place, is if we recognize that there is *in fact* an order to the world that is *better* and an order to the world that is *worse*. Nietzsche famously argued precisely that he wanted a 'transvaluation of all values'. In other words, his goal was the *complete inversion* of what he already understood to be the good and the bad. He made deranged claims from a florid and fantastical reading of history, that it was the Jews, and later more effectively the Christians, who had falsely inverted the reality of good and evil, and that he alone could see this from his Hyperborean perch, and was uniquely positioned to right the ship, as it were. This disturbed German sausage churning of Plato was what led (at least in part) to the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews, and an entire nation monomaniacally obsessed with being rulers over the entire earth. 
 
 In God's absence, men seek his power for themselves, because they crave his ordering authority, and where they cannot see his will enacting that order, they will claim it for themselves. In seeking his power, they seek the privilege that comes with that power, substituting their own ends as the new ordering authority. Thus, each of us becomes a means to each other's ends. This world full of particular, finite wills all clamoring to be the absolute, ends ironically not in a new order, but in self-annihilation. However, God is never really absent. The Nietzschean has merely gouged out his own eyes, and madly shouted that he has killed God, because the empty eye sockets cannot perceive him anymore. 
 

content/post/why-ubi-is-a-really-bad-idea.md

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ Numerous obvious (and somewhat naive) objections have been thrown at this idea.
 
 The first of my objections is a moral one (there are actually several moral objections, but I am going to focus on the one I view as the most significant). This is typically waved away as “storytelling” or “ideology”. [Federico Pistono](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2aBKnr3Ep4) does this, for example, and asserts that it doesn’t matter what your *a priori* moral objection is, if the idea actually accomplishes a goal that is particularly noble in his estimation (e.g., satisfying article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights). In other words, the only good is the good of a particular set of outcomes he and his supporters prefer.
 
-What Federico may not realize consciously (I am trying to be charitable) is that he’s smuggled in his own moral argument in an attempt to refute another moral argument, by asserting that certain desirable outcomes are more important than mere morality. He chastises his cloud of unnamed acquaintences for their archaic devotion such silliness, but then proudly argues for a form of moral Consequentialism. For those who aren’t quite sure what that means: *The Ends Justify The Means*. For the more astute viewer, you may have picked up on the muddled blend of [Mohism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism), [Utilitarianism](http://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/), and [Motive Consequentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism#Motive_consequentialism) embedded in Federico’s impassioned plea. To Federico’s credit, he admitted that he was unsure whether the goal was actually achievable by means of the UBI. But this only makes his argument much worse. It utterly defangs his excuse for a deplorable and utterly unecessary double-standard.
+What Federico may not realize consciously (I am trying to be charitable) is that he’s smuggled in his own moral argument in an attempt to refute another moral argument, by asserting that certain desirable outcomes are more important than mere morality. He chastises his cloud of unnamed acquaintances for their archaic devotion such silliness, but then proudly argues for a form of moral Consequentialism. For those who aren’t quite sure what that means: *The Ends Justify The Means*. For the more astute viewer, you may have picked up on the muddled blend of [Mohism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism), [Utilitarianism](http://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/), and [Motive Consequentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism#Motive_consequentialism) embedded in Federico’s impassioned plea. To Federico’s credit, he admitted that he was unsure whether the goal was actually achievable by means of the UBI. But this only makes his argument much worse. It utterly defangs his excuse for a deplorable and utterly unnecessary double-standard.
 
 But, let’s set aside the explicit problems with *his* moral position in particular for a moment, because what’s really at issue here is whether or not we can determine the moral implications of an idea like UBI, at all. In other words, what *is* immoral about a universal basic income, if (and that’s a big if) the outcome is something desirable?
 
@@ -65,9 +65,9 @@ How do we know this would actually “increase the efficiency” of the system (
 
 But let’s think about what it would take to implement an *actual* UBI; one that satisfies all the criteria: universal, unconditional, uniform, individual, and sufficient for “basic needs”. That last criteria is an especially tough one to define. What are “basic needs”? The list can be as sparse as [nothing but emergency essentials](http://canatx.org/basicneeds/backup/documents/1999Assessment/basicneeds99whatarebasicneeds.html): temporary food, shelter, and clothing. Or, they can [include all of the social services provided by the state today](http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/basic-human-needs-what-are-they-really): education, healthcare, transportation, and many other goods and services. Again, there’s no clear picture of what the proponents of UBI are talking about. Which should be a huge warning signal.
 
-Since the purpose of the payment is intentionally unspecified, and the disbursment is unconditional, I’m not sure why the proponents of this idea feel compelled to casually enumerate its “basic need” uses for us. Perhaps they think it makes us feel better to think of the money being used for those things, instead of on prostitutes, drugs, video games, amusement park tickets, or comic books? They often make a concerted effort in their lectures to argue that nobody would spend the money on those other things. But why? If I can spend the money in any way I wish, who cares if I spend it on a sack of staple rice, or a trip to Disneyland?
+Since the purpose of the payment is intentionally unspecified, and the disbursement is unconditional, I’m not sure why the proponents of this idea feel compelled to casually enumerate its “basic need” uses for us. Perhaps they think it makes us feel better to think of the money being used for those things, instead of on prostitutes, drugs, video games, amusement park tickets, or comic books? They often make a concerted effort in their lectures to argue that nobody would spend the money on those other things. But why? If I can spend the money in any way I wish, who cares if I spend it on a sack of staple rice, or a trip to Disneyland?
 
-In any case, if we stick with the phrase “basic needs”, then we do have a universal rubrik we could use as a real-world mechanism for determining the size of this payment: The state’s official “poverty line”, below which it argues, “basic needs” are not achievable. In the UK, there is actually something heavily promoted (though, not yet officially adopted), called a “minimum income standard”. This number is supposed to represent the minimum income necessary for the satisfaction of “basic needs”.
+In any case, if we stick with the phrase “basic needs”, then we do have a universal rubric we could use as a real-world mechanism for determining the size of this payment: The state’s official “poverty line”, below which it argues, “basic needs” are not achievable. In the UK, there is actually something heavily promoted (though, not yet officially adopted), called a “minimum income standard”. This number is supposed to represent the minimum income necessary for the satisfaction of “basic needs”.
 
 So, let’s do some math. The [JRF](https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/minimum-income-standard-uk-2015) and [minimumincome.org](http://www.minimumincome.org.uk/results) both place this number at somewhere around £17,000 per year for an individual. Since the [median income across all of Britain](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours) is roughly £25,000, I’m willing to accept the MIS at face value. But we should be aware that this sort of generalization will make some folks appear extremely comfortable, and others appear nearly destitute by comparison, [depending on exactly where they live in the UK](http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc126/). Still, for the sake of the general argument, let’s just go with the £17,000.
 
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ That’s right. In order for the entire population of the UK to take home £327
 
 However, he RSA claims [its proposal](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2015/12/in-support-of-a-universal-basic-income--introducing-the-rsa-basic-income-model/) would only come to £30 billion. This is nowhere near the naive figures we’ve been working with above. How is this possible? Well, to begin with, despite what they strenuously claim, [the RSA proposal](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2015/12/in-support-of-a-universal-basic-income--introducing-the-rsa-basic-income-model/) isn’t really universal or unconditional. It’s also not “basic”. For starters, it only comes to £71 per week (£3,692 per year). Which is nowhere near the commonly accepted definition of a “basic income”. Worse yet, even at this rather meager sum, the total cost still comes to roughly £238 billion. So, what else is going on here? Surprise, surprise, the “unconditional income” comes with LOADS of conditions:
 
-- You must be between the age of 25 and 65. Apparently, they want to let the public pension system bureaucrats know that the RSA won’t be a threat. This also means 18-25 year olds are not considered legal adults by the RSA.
+- You must be between the age of 25 and 65. Apparently, they want to let the public pension system bureaucrats know that the RSA won’t be a threat. This also means 18-25 year-olds are not considered legal adults by the RSA.
 - However, if you are 18-25, you could sign what is essentially an indentured servitude contract, whereby you would “contribute” to your “community” as a *condition* of your payment. Paradoxically, the RSA insists that the state would do no monitoring or enforcement of these contracts. So I’m not sure at all how they’d stop you from taking your payment if you simply lied about “contributing”.
 - You have to enroll in the electoral political system here (i.e., you have to be a registered voter), in order to qualify for a payment.
 - If you are an EU citizen, you would have to “pay in” to the system for a number of years, before you could begin collecting.
@@ -88,9 +88,9 @@ However, he RSA claims [its proposal](https://www.thersa.org/discover/publicatio
 
 This effectively reduces the population of “qualified recipients” to about 8 or 9 million people (less than one-fifth of the 45 million legally registered UK Citizens). Which, of course, comes out to about £30 billion in new expenditures.
 
-In otherwords, what we see being promoted heavily in the UK is not a “universal basic income” at all, but something else entirely. First and foremost, it is tool for social engineering, and for artificially constructing a new welfare constituency for the power elite. It is a thinly veiled attempt at manipulating young people into participating in a political system they instinctively recognize as corrupt and opposed to their best interests (and who express that instinct by refusing to particpate).
+In other words, what we see being promoted heavily in the UK is not a “universal basic income” at all, but something else entirely. First and foremost, it is tool for social engineering, and for artificially constructing a new welfare constituency for the power elite. It is a thinly veiled attempt at manipulating young people into participating in a political system they instinctively recognize as corrupt and opposed to their best interests (and who express that instinct by refusing to participate).
 
-It is also yet another attempt at fomenting class resentment for the sake of income redistribution. I’ve avoided covering anything in [Ms. Jacobson’s lecture](http://www.meetup.com/ConwayHall/events/229462417/) up to this point, precisely because it was nothing more than a lazy, old-world Marxist anti-wealth screed. Rather than actually making an argument *in favor* of UBI, she spent the entire 25 minute lecture railing against the abuses of “wealthy property holders”, the deriding the idea of the Protestent Work Ethic — something nobody has been seriously defending for decades. But Jacobson did this, because she knew her audience: Elderly, old-world Marxist pseudo-intellectuals. People easily manipulated by class resentment. And this is the real core of the purpose of a UBI, at least as defined here in the UK (and I’d suspect pretty much everywhere).
+It is also yet another attempt at fomenting class resentment for the sake of income redistribution. I’ve avoided covering anything in [Ms. Jacobson’s lecture](http://www.meetup.com/ConwayHall/events/229462417/) up to this point, precisely because it was nothing more than a lazy, old-world Marxist anti-wealth screed. Rather than actually making an argument *in favor* of UBI, she spent the entire 25 minute lecture railing against the abuses of “wealthy property holders”, the deriding the idea of the Protestant Work Ethic — something nobody has been seriously defending for decades. But Jacobson did this, because she knew her audience: Elderly, old-world Marxist pseudo-intellectuals. People easily manipulated by class resentment. And this is the real core of the purpose of a UBI, at least as defined here in the UK (and I’d suspect pretty much everywhere).
 
 The RSA Proposal is an attempt to convert the new, young tech economy into the same kind of easily manipulated political constituency that the public sector and the unionized working-class represented in the 20th century. When political elites have direct control over your income, you’re going to become very conscious of who those elites are. You’re going to suddenly have a stake in politics, because you’re going to be more or less controlled by it. And, given the choice, you’re going to use that involvement to choose the gentle master over the harsh one, again and again. The RSA wants to position itself as the new “good cop”, in our “good cop, bad cop” representative democracy.
 
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ Bob thought a moment, then pulled out a slip of paper and pen, and wrote on the
 
 “I see,” Sean said taking the paper from Bob, “I think that’ll work. I know you’re good for it!”
 
-“Thanks, Sean! I’ll be back at the end of the week for the shoes”, Bob responded as he exited Seans shop.
+“Thanks, Sean! I’ll be back at the end of the week for the shoes”, Bob responded as he exited Sean's shop.
 
 The next day, Sally walked into Bob’s bakery, and handed Bob the familiar slip of paper. Only, Sean’s name had been scratched out, and Sally’s had been written in above it.
 
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ So, when [Rutger Bregman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIL_Y9g7Tg0#t=2m56s) p
 
 There are three ways a state can appropriate value from its citizens:
 
-*The state can print it:* One cannot multiply the amount of value in an economy simply by multiplying the number of slips of paper representing value. So, when the state does this, the *real thing* that the slips of paper represent gets smaller in comparison. The slip of paper represents less and less of the actual product or labor it was meant to represent. This is called inflation. The real amount of value in the world now, goes down. The only way to fix this, is to increase the amount of actual *valued* products and labor being exchaged in an economy.
+*The state can print it:* One cannot multiply the amount of value in an economy simply by multiplying the number of slips of paper representing value. So, when the state does this, the *real thing* that the slips of paper represent gets smaller in comparison. The slip of paper represents less and less of the actual product or labor it was meant to represent. This is called inflation. The real amount of value in the world now, goes down. The only way to fix this, is to increase the amount of actual *valued* products and labor being exchanged in an economy.
 
 *The state can borrow it:* This is essentially the appropriation of value from other economies, or from the future, in order to use it in the present in the local economy. But what happens if the lender (or the future) is never repaid? The real amount of value in the world goes down again, only we don’t notice it right away. It is a sort of invisible inflation. One in which empty promises replace currencies that have already replaced real goods and services. Eventually someone’s descendants are rendered utterly impoverished. The Dickensian horror that the left loves to scare us with is something they are creating, with the very schemes they claim are designed to prevent such a thing.
 

content/post/your-whole-self.md

@@ -7,11 +7,11 @@ image: img/corporates.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-When I first entered the working world in the late nineteen-eighties, there were a few essential social ground rules that you had to learn, in order to be successful. The first was that my employer does not exist for my benefit. My role in the business is to provide some tangible value toward the end goal of the company: product and profit. To the extent that I benefited the firm, I would receive benefits in kind, after a bit of negotiation. The second, was that my employer's goals and my personal goals are likely to be very different. The task is to find an employer that overlaps enough that you can function effectively. The third, and perhaps most important, is that the mission of the firm and the everyday strategy and tactics of getting my job done, are the only political subjects you ought to be spending any amount of time on, in conversation. It is this third point I am addressing today.
+When I first entered the working world in the late nineteen-eighties, there were a few essential social ground rules that you had to learn, in order to be successful. The first was that my employer does not exist for my benefit. My role in the business is to provide some tangible value toward the end goal of the company: product and profit. To the extent that I benefited the firm, I would receive benefits in kind, after a bit of negotiation. The second, was that my employer's goals and my personal goals are likely to be very different. The task is to find an employer that overlaps enough that you can function effectively. The third, and perhaps most important, is that the mission of the firm and the every day strategy and tactics of getting my job done, are the only political subjects you ought to be spending any amount of time on, in conversation. It is this third point I am addressing today.
 
 The third social rule came with a number of behavioral expectations. To put it bluntly, your personal opinions on matters political and social are best expressed outside of work. The implicit understanding was that there were various independent social domains in which various kinds of concerns could be discussed and acted upon. This entailed an implicit contract between employer and employee: you're free to engage in whatever motivates you on your own time, but you will focus on your job when you are here. In exchange, we will limit our expressions of political or social preference to only those things that concern the functions of the business, and the need to cope with political change. This "live and let live" approach meant that I could participate in libertarian politics on my own time, and my employer would not be constantly hounding me to donate to the United Way. It was an arrangement that worked.
 
-This arrangement worked, because at a fundamental level, both I and my employer *shared the same basic philosophical presuppositions*, namely, those of late Enlightenment liberalism: individual liberty grounded in natural rights, the free market as the basis of commerce and social goods, and the legitimacy of government deriving from its function as a neutral arbiter and defender of natural rights. Once that groundwork is laid, then my employer and I are free to go our separate ways, in terms of which causes we believe in, which candidates we vote for, which political parties we are members of, what God to pray to, and even what moral system to subscribe to (because, whether Kantian or Millsian, they will still be anchored to individualism). But something seizmic has taken place in America (and the United Kingdom) over the last 25 years. Something so fundamental and basic that I can no longer take these presuppositions for granted.
+This arrangement worked, because at a fundamental level, both I and my employer *shared the same basic philosophical presuppositions*, namely, those of late Enlightenment liberalism: individual liberty grounded in natural rights, the free market as the basis of commerce and social goods, and the legitimacy of government deriving from its function as a neutral arbiter and defender of natural rights. Once that groundwork is laid, then my employer and I are free to go our separate ways, in terms of which causes we believe in, which candidates we vote for, which political parties we are members of, what God to pray to, and even what moral system to subscribe to (because, whether Kantian or Millsian, they will still be anchored to individualism). But something seismic has taken place in America (and the United Kingdom) over the last 25 years. Something so fundamental and basic that I can no longer take these presuppositions for granted.
 
 Six or seven years ago, a fad washed through many HR departments both in the states, and in the UK, encapsulated in the slogan, "bring your whole self to work!". Particularly in tech, the argument was that it was disingenuous and stressful to have to "hide away" essential parts of oneself, in order to keep a job. Sharing my "entire self" would improve productivity, because it would improve my quality of life, since I no longer had to cope with the psychological burden of adjusting to social contexts.