They don’t get it

White Americans around the country are startled to discover that no amount of liberal happy talk and income redistribution is sufficient to make African-Americans want to be like them or even consider them to be part of the same tribe.

Alice Singen had always seen her home town as an integrated, harmonious place. Like many other white residents, she prided herself on staying here even when others began to leave.
But since the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a white police officer, some African Americans are calling it segregated and racist. Now Singen has found herself talking in terms of “us” and “them,” “we” and “they.”
“I didn’t have any problems with anybody or any color, and all of a sudden it feels like we are being held responsible for something that’s not our fault,” Singen, 70, said as she left Faraci Pizza, a 46-year-old Ferguson business that has become a focal point of racial tension. “I don’t get it.”

Just because you don’t have any problem with them doesn’t mean that they don’t have any problem with you…. How fortunate it is that no one but white people living in Republican states who fail to parrot the latest SJW dogma can be racist!

The State is losing

William Lind presciently anticipated which side would have the advantage back in 2006:

Among the critics and reinterpreters of Fourth Generation war, the bad is most powerfully represented by Thomas Barnett’s two books The Pentagon’s New Map and Blueprint for Action. Barnett divides the world into two parts, the Functioning Core and the Non-Integrating Gap. This is parallel to what I call centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, and I agree that this will be the fundamental fault line of the 21st Century. Barnett’s error is that he assumes the Functioning Core will be the stronger party, able to restore order in places where it has broken down. In fact, the forces of disorder will be stronger, because they are driven by a factor Barnett dismisses, the spreading crisis of legitimacy of the state. By ignoring Martin van Creveld’s work on the rise and decline of the state, Barnett’s books end up anchoring their foundations on sand.

The implications go far beyond the obvious regions of the Middle East and Ukraine. What we’re seeing in Spain, in Belgium, and in Scotland are the early phases of crises of the State which will likely result, eventually, in either a) a different, more decentralized order or b) disorder.
And the increasingly rapid growth of diversity in the USA is a distinct sign of incipient crisis of State legitimacy and eventual disorder.

Inequality and Piketty

Yesterday I was asked about Piketty’s argument that free trade reduces income equality. This requires an answer on several levels.

First, income inequality matters. The Keynesians claim that it doesn’t matter if Peter owes Paul or Paul owes Peter. This is observably false, just as it matters if there is a middle class that is economically active versus an economically dominant aristocracy that is primarily interested in conspicuous consumption. This isn’t some sort of new Levellism, merely a logical observation of fact.

Second, this is a literally Marxist perspective. It may surprise some to know that free trade is a Marxist position. Look it up. Free trade is not anticommunist, it is one aspect of communism.

Third, like most Marxist principles, this is wrong. Opening up an economy to additional outside players, most of whom have proved to be the apex predators in their native economies, means that the average individual’s income is going to go down because the outside player is not going to enter the market if it cannot extract sufficient resources to justify their capital expenses in penetrating it.

Now, I haven’t read Piketty and I see no reason to do so in the future. This is because he is attempting to sell a concept that is neither new nor true.

The truth about free trade

Free trade advocates are very often dishonest and attempt to claim that while they support the free movement of capital and goods, they do not support the free movement of people. But this is nonsense, because the free movement of people is intrinsically necessary for free trade in both labor and services. Furthermore, observe that the European Union’s “Four Freedoms” are explicit on this point:

One of the “Four Freedoms” of the Single Market is free movement of persons – along with free movement of capital, goods and services. Having a Single Market means having free movement of products (goods and services) and factors of production (capital and labour). Saying the UK wants to restrict free movement of persons but stay in the Single Market makes precisely as much/little sense (and for precisely the same reasons) as would saying “The UK wants to impose tariffs on imports from Germany and France but remain in the Single Market” or “The UK wants to impose capital controls on investment into Italy but remain in the Single Market”. Restricting free movement would, in substance, be withdrawing from the Single Market and hence in substance withdrawing from the EU. The substantive question is unambiguous. The only thing left to consider is the semantic question – whether withdrawing from free movement would be called “withdrawing from the EU” or not. Since the EU is the zone of EU citizenship and EU citizenship means free movement, the answer must be “Yes – the UK would not be in the EU”, though we might perhaps still be in some other form of “Europe”.

The second reason it is not mere word games is that many schemes for “withdrawing from the European Union” involve continuing to participate in some other form of “Europe” – e.g. the “Norway option” of continuing to be in the European Economic Area. “Out” hasn’t normally meant “no Europe”, merely “exiting the European Union”. But exiting the European Union is precisely what any form of restriction on the free movement of persons entails, by definition.

Past generations can be forgiven for not grasping that free trade meant the end of national sovereignty and the end of the very concept of “the nation”. They did not understand how inexpensive and easy travel would eventually become. But now we know better. And this is the real reason that “nationalism” has been attacked as  an intrinsic and dangerous evil; it is the strong point around which resistance to the universal pillaging of the global elite’s attempt to construct its vision of Eine Welt, Eine Art, Eine Ordnung.

Castalia audiobooks

I was very disappointed with my experience selling audiobooks through Audible. Not only did they control the prices and set them too high for a one hour forty-five minute audiobook, but whatever compression algorithm they used on the files caused the audio quality to seriously deteriorate. That was particularly annoying because I could hear what it was supposed to sound like on the original.

In any event, since we recovered the rights from Marcher Lord and we didn’t use ACX to produce the audio recordings, we are now able to make the audiobook for A MAGIC BROKEN available from the Castalia House store. We are also introducing a new policy, as the ebook is included with a purchase of the audiobook. We’ve also reduced the price and have improved the audio quality of the retail MP3 by using a variable bit rate to compress the file.

We are very interested in producing more ebooks, especially now that we’ve got more books from more authors to consider. And while we are quite happy with Nick Afka Thomas as the Official Voice of Selenoth, we are on the lookout for narrators to read stand-alone books such as AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, CITY BEYOND TIME, as well as the QUANTUM MORTIS and THE STARS CAME BACK science fiction series. If you’re interested, please send us a three-minute sample MP3 of you reading a passage from the relevant book with NARRATOR in the subject.

Advantage: good guys

One of the big advantages of concealed carry is that the bad guys have absolutely no reason who is ready and able to gun them down from behind:

Two men were fatally shot by a customer after they attempted to rob a north Harris County bar early Saturday — the latest in a fury of shootings in Houston this week. Jenny O’Donnell, owner of EJ’s Place, said four armed men came to her bar in the 16400 block of Kuykendall at Colwell, around 2:30 a.m.

O’Donnell, who was not there at the time of the incident, said a head bartender and waitress were closing up for the night when two men walked into the bar and demanded everyone get down on the floor. Two other men “lingered at the bar door,” she said.

That’s when a customer at the bar pulled his own gun and started shooting at the men, she said. The attempted robbers fired at least three rounds inside the bar, said O’Donnell.

“That man was a hero,” said O’Donnell. “We could have had some bodies.”

The men then turned around and ran out the door, O’Donnell said. One of the men died right outside the front door, while the other man died at the end of the bar’s parking lot, she said.

It’s interesting to observe that four robbers were involved and that still wasn’t enough to guarantee a safe and successful robbery.  The more that people are armed, the more dangerous and difficult it becomes for criminals to accomplish anything from basic street muggings to full-fledged home invasions.

Of course, it will also tend to highlight the relative inability of the police to do the same. Which isn’t actually a criticism of the police, it’s merely reflective of the obvious fact that the police simply cannot be everywhere at once, whereas privately armed individuals can be.

As Instapundit says, “a pack, not a herd”.

The college experience isn’t worth it

Not if you’re going to be paying for it for the rest of your life:

Stats from the Department of Education show outstanding student loans total more than $1 trillion. A report from The Institute for College Access in late 2013 revealed the average new graduate starts his or her life with $29,400 in student loan debt. College as we know it is clearly unaffordable.

So my question is: Why do people keep embarking on the “traditional college experience” when they know it’s going to put them tens — sometimes hundreds — of thousands of dollars in debt?

And while some people say these 18-year-old kids don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, let’s not pretend we don’t know better. I distinctly remember asking my friend how he would pay off the roughly $70,000 debt he would incur to obtain a major in Ancient Greek and Latin at a liberal arts college in the Midwest. His answer? A simple shrug and flippant “It’s not something I have to worry about right now — hopefully they’ll be forgiven by the government.” Now that he’s still waiting tables four years after graduation, I’d say it’s well past time to start worrying.

I can’t pretend I completely understand how these people feel after the fun is over and the repayments begin, but I can say that I really don’t feel bad for them.

Why not? Because I worked hard to avoid taking out loans. My wonderful parents and grandmother helped me pay for my education, but in the end, it was a few decisions I made that saved me the burden of borrowing money I would never have been able to pay back. Unlike the majority of my friends who went to schools less than an hour from their parents’ homes and chose to live on campus rather than commute, my college roommates were named Mom and Dad. I chose state schools that were half, sometimes one-quarter, of the cost of the schools my friends were attending and worked a part-time on-campus scholarship job in addition to full-time hours at my retail job.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that there is an entire predatory industry, aided and abetted by the federal government, the public school system, and far too many parents, encouraging graduating seniors to make stupid and short-sighted decisions.  This doesn’t excuse the terrible decisions they are making, but it does help explain them.

I’m a little curious about what I can only presume is a new editor at TIME. They’ve been running some surprisingly good columns of late.

VPFL Week 4

110 Mounds View Meerkats (3-1)
52 Boot Hill Bogs (0-4)

91 KING (1-3)
52 Clerical Errs (0-4)

79 Texas Chili Eaters (4-0)
64 Bane Cornshuckers (2-2)

57 RR Redbeards (3-1)
44 Gilbert Gamma Rays (2-2)

84 FavreDollar Footlongs (2-2)
42 Greenfield Grizzlies (3-1)

I’m of mixed emotions concerning the Vikings debacle on Thursday night. One can hardly be disappointed that a Vikings team starting Christian Ponder and playing without Adrian Peterson lost to an Aaron Rodgers-led Packers team. And since I’m starting Rodgers this week, I’m certainly not objecting to the fantasy points.

But still, losing 42-10 to the Packers is painful, even if it was a result that even a blind man could have seen coming. It’s also amazing how obvious in retrospect it is that Christian Ponder was not an NFL starter, not that I didn’t say so repeatedly at the time. At least this performance should quell any lingering notions that the Ponder die-hards might be harboring.

The grand crusade continues

Fred Reed on imputed transethnicism:

It was discovered that the Tloxyproctyls were an obscure tribe of some two dozen mostly naked Indians living in the Amazon rain forest and the Stone Age.  They ate only tree leaves and large white grubs found in rotting logs. Their language, unrelated to any other, consisted of twelve words, none of which meant anything. Their intellectual development was approximately that of a cassava root.

Clearly they were victims of discrimination by…by…well, that could be decided later. Now they needed political action.  Exactly why was not clear, but did not seem important.

On campus, the best instincts of the Improving Classes roared into action. Goodness raged. Further research showed a shocking lack of ‘Proctyls, as they came to be called by the knowing, almost everywhere. It was just…Wrong. At Wellesley, puzzled co-eds marched for Lesbian and Biramous Tloxyproctyl Rights. Universities established ‘Proctyl quotas.  A mad scramble ensued to recruit the unwitting Indians. The campaign was somewhat hampered by the fact that there weren’t any.

More were needed to keep the wheels of justice turning. At Princeton the Department of Black, Transaxle, and Amphibian Studies found a solution: Imputed Tloxyproctyls or, as some called the idea, Inferential Tloxyproctyly. Students of other oppressed categories, such as Lesbian, Gay, Vegetarian, Bicephalous and Transphylum students would be assigned as ‘Proctyls by imputation. The argument was that if one could be transsexual or transgendered, why not trans-ethcnicked?

The noted feminist professor Dr. Cecina Pocilga-Dworkin, whose academic credentials consisted of looking like an orangutan, said, “Race, gender, and ethnicity are socially constructed by white-supremacist capitalists to oppress the black and brown races, which don’t exist because they are social constructs. Since ‘Proctyls would suffer discrimination if there were any, we can appoint proxy Proctyls, and seek redress for the discrimination they would suffer if they existed.” Several upper-middle-class date-rape activists were chosen as stand-ins. They stopped bathing and began eating ersatz white grubs made of sashimi to raise public consciousness of Tloxyproctyl issues.

The most important thing, of course, is that the anti-racist SJW feels you know how deeply they care.

Wargaming reveals weaknesses

A USMC ops planner’s experience explains the key benefit of wargaming:

Back in May of 2012, I was holding an Operational Planning Team for a Major Pacific OPLAN. This was a big event. We flew in over a hundred participants for almost three weeks of work. I fought with my boss, the G5, over several key points about this OPT and I eventually was able to do things how I wanted. I spoke directly with the CG everyday during the OPT, with three formal briefs to him. Because we were a Joint Force Land Component Command for this OPT, we had players from all services and Special Forces (which is basically it’s own service.) I had interagency players, a full Red Cell, Green Cell, and Red Team. This was the biggest non-exercise event I witnessed in my three years at the MEF. And it was my FIRST OPT and first opportunity to be on the dot for a critical event. I routinely worked bast 1900 and worked past 2100 twice during the three weeks. This was BIG and IMPORTANT and we only had one chance to get it right. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I am smart enough to get help from smart people. I leaned heavily on three key personnel who had been around awhile and knew what they were doing. And they were great. We got through Problem Framing and Course of Action (COA) Development and were ready for the COA Wargaming step. The CG had settled on one COA, and we were testing it to see if it worked. COA wargaming is another area I fought with Col XXXX on and one. He agreed to let me run it my way and get out of it what I thought I needed.

So, we started the wargame. On the second (SECOND!!!) turn, the Red player took his turn and we were all face with the extremely obvious and extremely uncomfortable realization that our one and only COA was untenable. The result of 2 1/2 weeks worth of intensive work had just failed catastrophically in front of the audience. In the middle of the uncomfortable silence, broken by teeth sucking, I looked to the three officers who had been helping my so much throughout. All of them slumped their shoulders and looked away. One of them actually walked out of the back of the room. I was faced with the uncomfortable realization: “No one is going to save me.” This is the real world. There isn’t an answer in the back of the book. There is no instructor stepping in to bail you out. You are on your own and it is all on your shoulders. I looked out at the OPT and realized that my reputation, this entire event, the time and energy of over a hundred people sat on my shoulders and had no opportunity to start over and fix it. This is what it means to be a planner. It is all on you.

So, I used my favorite OPT tactic and said, “Everybody take 10!” I grabbed my two trusted agents (LtCol XXX and Maj XXX who worked closest with me, LtCol XXX will come up again in three slides) and went into the back room to discuss what we should do. They were both a little shell-shocked and no help. So, I fixed it. The problem, as it turned out, was timing. I adjusted the timing and changed the character of one force and its mission. And we recocked the wargame with the new COA. And it worked. It worked so well that, with minor modifications, it went into the plan of record. We have since referred to that wargame as the most successful COA wargame ever, because it identified a critical flaw in the COA and we were able to adjust the COA to opvercome the flaw.

The challenge, of course, is that people have to be willing to accept the information produced by the wargaming session. In vast bureaucracies like the U.S. armed forces, they are much more likely to sweep any uncomfortable information thus gathered under the carpet and pretend everything is fine, because in most cases the real world test will never come and the planning flaws will remain undetected.

It is eminently clear that the Obama administration does not have anyone advising it who is well-versed in wargaming, or rather, it is not listening to anyone who is.