Admissions

I am afraid I'm more of a paternalistic rice and beans state capitalist than a libertarian socialist or a champagne socialist - the latter of which is the best type of socialist to be if you're lucky.  I am afraid that we have price inflation to worry about, which is a matter of demand, and not just long term inflation, which is a matter of money supply.  Once we implement ubi, I'm afraid prices are going to shoot up just because sellers know that everyone has money to spend.  Taxing rich people to put downward pressure on the money supply might not be successful at controlling inflation when the prices are related to demand.  Of course, a lot of the noise could be political - people whose comfort depends on others being enthusiastic about putting their labor on the market have an interest in us not wanting everyone to be guaranteed some spending money.  But I'm also confident that our savviness about the self interest of rich people does not negate laws of economics.  

I want a spending policy of full employment and a higher minimum wage, and yes, I do want redistributionary taxes (aka taxes on rich people) to pay for it.  But if we want to mitigate gentrification and inflation then we need to moderate demand.  That could include what I call truth in pricing policies - policies prohibiting the display of any price other than the point of commerce price which includes sales taxes and all other fees including shipping.  I believe it should include a complete redesign of how government contracts with private business and of how private banks, which are protected by the government, should capitalize borrowers.  We like to talk about gentrification being a thing that evil real estate developers do, but we don't want to admit that the engineer at an aeronautical company browsing Zillow and the lab technician ordering ramen are among the main drivers of gentrification.  Money in your pocket is a weapon that gives you power.  (And when our state capitalist system uses the printing press - its fiat wealth-creating power - to give incredibly greater amounts of money to a shrinking group of people, it is giving a much greater amount of power to those people and those close to them than it gives to others, and it places those people in a position of patronage and everyone else in a position of servitude.  The neighborhood will look like how those people spend to make it look like.  And there will be increasing amounts of class resentment between the blue collar working class and the liberal and lucky white collar class.)

I am considering compulsory savings, for example increasing workers' payments into social security, as a way to put downward pressure on demand, and also to reduce volatility.  Supposedly middle class people in big metros are putting nothing away because of how high their cost of living is, and my guess is forcing people to save more money will force them to cut back in aesthetic spending.  Yes, it's paternalist.  Yes, most people would greatly dislike it.  But these are the choices that need to be made for these people to be economically safe and for the market system to be stable.

Untitled

The following is the first draft of an untitled short story that I started writing yesterday.

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        We were told that Moses commanded it, and since Moses is the one who talks to God, Moses' words are taken as God's.  And so we all have to line up and walk out of the camp and take turns throwing rocks at a convicted Sabbath breaker until he dies.  All you heard was he was gathering sticks for his mother.

        "Thank God he was caught before he got home," says a man in front of you.  "If she was caught lighting a fire, we would be stoning her too."

        People are singing hymns.  A lot of people are crying, especially women and girls.  A lot of people are shouting Amen or Hallelujah, especially men.

        A boy who looks eight, nine, or ten hands you a rock and says "May the Lord strengthen thy hand," and you quietly laugh because he used the archaic second person singular.

        Your hope is that the man will be dead by the time it's your turn to throw your rock.  There are so many people here, that so many people must already have thrown their rock.  The man must already be dead.

        The man in front of you throws his rock onto a large pile of rocks, turns around and whispers "Lord have mercy" and walks away.

        Now it's your turn, but all you see is a big pile of rocks.  The man must certainly be dead now.  No action from you could have been the cause of death or any harm to him.

        You pause and try to think of something good to say, like something a man in the crowd would say whenever Moses or Aaron talks -- "Praise the Lord," or "Bless God," or, like the man in front of you, "Lord have mercy" -- but none of those seem to be the right thing to say.

        You toss your rock underhanded.  It falls a cubit short of the pile.  You look around and everyone except for a woman sitting on the ground is looking at you.  You walk forward, stoop, and flick your rock with your hand.  This time it falls less than a pinky's width in front of the pile.

        You're pretty sure everyone is still looking at you.  You just don't want to turn around.

        "What do you say, Miss, should my last throw count?"  You turn to face the seated woman but she's still staring forward and completely silent.  She hasn't said a word since you got to the front, and now you're thinking she's the very last woman you should have asked that question.

        You pick your rock up again, hold it out over the pile, and drop it.  It claps when it hits the pile.

        You turn to see the boy who was handing out rocks try to give a rock to the lady sitting on the ground.  She wouldn't take it, so he sets it in her lap.  She shrieks, then wails, then falls over and lies motionless.

        It's strangely quiet back at camp this evening.  You'll grow used to the weird silence, just like you'll grow used to the heat, and to stoning other Hebrews to death.  You nibble on your ration of sweetcake and you sip your ration of water, and you look out at the red mountains around you, and you see that there is bread and water in the camp and none outside it, and you decide that, at least for now, life is less cruel with your people than without them.  And over the next forty years you will make that assessment again, and again, and again.

Corpus Hermeticum

I wanted to see what, if any, systematic theology there might be behind tarot reading. And I was struck that almost as soon as Europeans started using tarot decks for cartomancy, they attributed the practice to Egypt and the Hermetic tradition - and this was before they started putting Hebrew letters and Egyptian themes on the cards. Our scholarship of ancient and medieval religious texts has greatly developed since the 1700's, and now I am peering down into a deep, dusty rabbit hole.