Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: whoop-de-damn-do

TB is concerned about the fact that I am being criticized:

Holy shit, Mike Enoch went off on VD on their podcast from yesterday. I came here expecting a response. Your move, Vox.

I’ll pass, thanks. Mike has a right to say whatever he thinks of me. And I’m not interested in his opinion, least of all concerning a subject I know superlatively well. I see no need to listen to his criticism much less respond to it.
RD informed us that “the TRS guys were quite unhappy that you pointed out Spencer isn’t of the Right.”

In their latest podcast, TDS185 (which is paywalled), they spent from 1h:27m – 1h:44m railing against you (and Cernovich), as they feel betrayed.  They talk about how they respected your work, but that they believe you’ve turned on them since the unfortunate events in Charlottesville.
I can’t help but kind of like those guys.  They’re funny, and they have a lot of energy and have reached a lot of people. But Mike Enoch simply refuses to accept that their cock-up in Charlottesville provided a pretext for the current wave of literal iconoclasm and grave desecration.  And they really don’t have a firm intellectual understanding of actual National Socialism and why it’s defunct.
At the same time, they say they’ve accepted your advice that Nazi flags and so forth are bad optics, and must be avoided.  But they don’t credit you with it.

The truth is what it is. This sort of “Jenny, did you hear what Billy said about Suzy” drama is of zero interest to me. I don’t know what they said. I don’t care what they said. I’m not attempting to curry favor with them or with anyone.
I’ve never been a movement guy. I don’t play particularly well with others, in part because I simply try to do what I think is right at the time. I don’t worry at all about what X is going to think about my opinion of Y. I stand by my friends, not because I agree with them or I believe their ideology to be flawless, but because they are my friends. That may not be enough for you, but it’s enough for me.
Also, I would point out that I have been the object of considerably more criticism than I have meted out. I’m not offering that as an excuse or a reason because it is neither; the criticism was merited regardless of the source. But I do think it suffices to dismiss the idea that I have betrayed anyone.

Mailvox: the Pope of the Alt-Right

WS complained about my detached and contemplative approach.

Maybe Vox figures he’s the Pope Benedict of the Alt-Right: the one who leads a contemplative life and assures us of his thoughts and prayers as we’re getting the snot beaten out of us.

I found it mildly amusing that she thought I was thinking about them at all. There is a reason why I didn’t know who Jason Kessler was until yesterday. It was because I paid absolutely no attention to the rally in Charlottesville, despite apparently having been invited to speak there, until it made the news.
Neither Clausewitz nor van Creveld ever commanded in the field. Karl Marx was considerably more influential as an author than as a labor organizer. And it seems unlikely that Alexander the Great’s astonishing military success was entirely unrelated to the fact that he happened to have the greatest thinker in Man’s history as his personal tutor.
In light of the surprising discovery that the front man for the so-called “Unite the Right” rally was a left-wing Obama voter, I’ve been giving some thought to the assertions of some of the petty self-proclaimed national socialists that they are too of the right. In this vein, I thought it would be profitable to consult Leon Trotsky on the matter. His thoughts, expressed in the dramatically titled, but perceptive essay “The Fascist Danger Looms in Germany” are thought-provoking, if less useful than one might have assumed.

In order that the social crisis may bring about the proletarian revolution, it is necessary that, besides other conditions, a decisive shift of the petty bourgeois classes occurs in the direction of the proletariat. This gives the proletariat a chance to put itself at the head of the nation as its leader.
The last election revealed — and this is where its principle symptomatic significance lies — a shift in the opposite direction. Under the blow of the crisis, the petty bourgeoisie swung, not in the direction of the proletarian revolution, but in the direction of the most extreme imperialist reaction, pulling behind it considerable sections of the proletariat.
The gigantic growth of National Socialism is an expression of two factors: a deep social crisis, throwing the petty bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolutionary party that would be regarded by the masses of the people as an acknowledged revolutionary leader. If the communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair. When revolutionary hope embraces the whole proletarian mass, it inevitably pulls behind it on the road of revolution considerable and growing sections of the petty bourgeoisie. Precisely in this sphere the election revealed the opposite picture: counter-revolutionary despair embraced the petty bourgeois mass with such a force that it drew behind it many sections of the proletariat….
Fascism in Germany has become a real danger, as an acute expression of the helpless position of the bourgeois regime, the conservative role of the social democracy in this regime, and the accumulated powerlessness of the Communist Party to abolish it. Whoever denies this is either blind or a braggart….
The danger acquires particular acuteness in connection with the question of the tempo of development, which does not depend upon us alone. The malarial character of the political curve revealed by the election speaks for the fact that the tempo of development of the national crisis may turn out to be very speedy. In other words, the course of events in the very near future may resurrect in Germany, on a new historical plane, the old tragic contradiction between the maturity of a revolutionary situation, on the one hand, and the weakness and strategical impotence of the revolutionary party, on the other.

Now, there is without question a social crisis across the West. A severe social crisis of historic proportions, arguably more serious than the one of the previous century. But in every case, the big bourgeoisie is allied with government bureaucracies and the ur-communists in revolutionary hope while both the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat are increasingly inclined towards counter-revolutionary despair. Moreover, the class metric is largely irrelevant, because the dividing lines are far more clearly identified on identity grounds than on class grounds.
In other words, from the Trotskyite perspective, we’re in new territory here, and more sophisticated philosophical tools are required for useful analysis and prediction. But it is already clear that neither simple identity metrics nor conventional ideological metrics will alone suffice.

Mailvox: IT in a converged company

It will be poisonous if the tech right feels compelled to not only hide their beliefs but also to actively pretend to believe in progressive diversity values. This pretending will embitter them, probably pushing many to the more radical alt-right
This is EXACTLY what happened to me!
One HR director in particular was hard-core SJW and good friends with one of my managers so I was stuck.  One of the things she did that still sticks in my mind was an online training/brainwashing course where 1) we HAD to pass it in order to remain employed and we were told that this was because it was the company’s responsibility to demonstrate nondiscrimination in order to meet federal requirements – which was, first of all, bullcrap, and second, a way to shift the responsibility for the nonsense onto the employees. 2) it contained questions such as “Check the boxes next to groups which are discriminated against” and “white men” was an incorrect answer.  You could select it, and it would just make you redo the question over and over until you gave the “right” answer.
I wasn’t familiar at the time with Vaclav Havel’s “Power of the Powerless” but he totally nailed what was going on: the point wasn’t to make us believe something we didn’t agree with, the point was to make us complicit.
My reaction – which SHOULD have been to quit and find another job, but I wasn’t wise enough yet – was to manipulate my own responsibilities and the work that needed doing such that I could get everything done for the week in a couple hours, then spend the rest of the time goofing off and surfing the net.  Not a good use of time on my part; a worse use of employee resources by the people in charge.  My morale basically went to zero for several years as a result of these sorts of policies, and the value they got out of me correlated.
I’m out of IT now.  I’ve gotten the impression this sort of problem is too widespread for me to want to put up with it.

Imposters at Google

CG has a theory:

Mr. Damore has managed to spark the largest inflammation of Impostor Anxiety in recorded history.
Impostor Anxiety is not Impostor Syndrome as the Syndrome is associated with failure to recognize actual achievements while those suffering from IA are aware of their diminished ability relative to those around them,
They do not suffer from Dunning–Kruger though it may appear so from the outside sometimes. They are knowingly hiding behind a futile “fake it till you make it” facade that can sometimes carry them so long as resources remain flush.
Sufferers will sometimes mask over their Impostor Anxiety by trying to claim that they suffer from Imposter Syndrome. However this is self defeating as it only amplifies their anxiety due to knowing that at least some people around them know their true skill level, even others who also suffer from Impostor Anxiety and see through the charade.

It makes sense. Just as AA beneficiaries know that they do not merit their places at the universities where they find themselves intellectually overmatched, tens of thousands of the more-recent hires at Google are perfectly aware that they would not have been good enough to get a job there just a few years ago.
James Damore has unmasked them for the inferior employees that they are, which is why they are both panicked and furious.

Mailvox: the New Puritans

BA muses on the observably religious character of the SJWs:

Is it atheism per se or is it a mindset that may or may not include atheism? Or perhaps the old time heretics didn’t quite have the nerve to go full bore atheist.  Specifically, I’m wondering if  the West’s, and in particular America’s, current political/cultural rift goes back to the Reformation and even earlier. Runciman discusses some on his Medieval Manichee.

 Adherents to the older Christian faiths accept and embrace the obligation of doing the right thing in both private and public life.  Live, stumble, sin, repent, pray, try through good works to be a better person because the final judgement is rendered at the end of life, so one had best be on the qui vive at all times.  One must also constantly examine  if what one is doing is right, and accept that all too often it will not be.

By contrast, for a certain kind of 16th and 17th century Protestant, grace, like perfect pitch, is a lucky attribute. One is born of the Elect or not, and nothing can change that.  For those with a guaranteed first class reservation to Heaven so long as they profess the faith, there is a whole lot of leeway in day to day life.  Better yet, there is a whole lot of self examination that one can dispense with.That sword of uncertainty simply does not hang over head.

 Which gets us to the modern secular True Believer.  If all is fore ordained and one’s place is secure (or non-existent, in the case of atheists), criticism (or destruction), the easier path, rather than creation, the harder, becomes the standard. Marching and emoting and punching Nazis is more fun than, say working the soup kitchen or helping building habitats for the poor or teaching the illiterate to read.*  Making errors (much less making up for errors) scarcely enters into the equation.

How  wonderful a faith is that?  No real effort involved, and if there are inconsistencies or temptations to act like a jerk, well, not really a problem because, you see – One is one of the Elect.   Too bad about the rest of you sinners.  Perhaps you should move down south with the rest of your heathen kind. Or just die.  And by the way, where’s my check?

Not surprisingly, for those few Elect who do create, the results are, shall we say, not sublime. And their jokes are terrible.

The roots for this mindset go deep and, no surprise, go deepest in states like Massachusetts. That it screws up the individual in small and society at large in any number of ways is obvious, but if one is a true believer, inconvenient facts are there to be ignored. They have to be. If acknowledged, they are shattering. I’ve seen it happen, as no doubt you have as well. Not pretty.  So rather than face up to failure, one must blame failure onto others.

Case in point – an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago gave a whole litany of LBJ’s 1960’s Great Society acts and then observed that every single one of the problems they were meant to address had all gotten worse.  Mea Culpa?  Of course not.  The writer blamed Nixon’s 1970’s law and order policies. Can’t have been anything else.  It was a question of Elect and Non-Elect.  The writer’s solution was to get Republicans to join with Democrats and double down the policies of old.

There is only one answer to the ongoing question so often asked by the Right of the Left: are they evil or are they stupid?

The answer, of course, is “yes”. As I mentioned yesterday, all of the Left’s ideologies, from Marxism to Gramscian cultural marxism to feminism to atheism to multiculturalism to neo-liberal globalism are nothing more than the various skinsuits worn by the Neo-Babelists as suits them at the time. These diverse and incoherent ideologies are nothing more than rationalizations encouraging the adherent to condemn and attack Christendom on whatever grounds happens to appeal most to him.

And Neo-Babelism is more than a superset of useful ideologies, it is a religion, indeed, one could go so far as to say that it is the first religion.

Mailvox: “May he rot in Hell”

It is being widely reported that Sen. John McCain is terminal with brain cancer. One reader is entirely unsympathetic.

John McCain is dying from the same type of brain tumor that my father is – a Glioblastoma. There is an indirect but pertinent relationship between my father and the dear senator that extends beyond their shared terminal illness.

In early to mid elementary-school ages, I remember my father deploying numerous times to Bosnia/Herzegovania/Kosovo.  At the time, I didn’t understand why it was necessary.  I’m no genius and no one really explained it to me outside of the “America is for freedom” concept.  Almost 20 years later, with a skeptics intuition, I smell bullshit.

My father is a Physician’s Assistant which requires a master’s degree in medicine.  His only health issues in the past were kinetically related because he played soccer and basketball.  We also have no family history of any cancer at all.  He took care of himself; no smoking, regular exercise, good diet.

So it came as a shock to us when we learned he had a brain tumor that was likely to be his end.  When he met with the private oncologist who operates her private practice near a military base we were stunned by what she told us.  Over 70 percent of the patients she sees with Glioblastomas were or are military members who have had exposure to burn-pits.

What’s a burn-pit?  In a base of operations overseas there is no garbage service.  No one makes you differentiate your organic vs recyclable garbage.  You throw everything into a big pit that is set on fire.  This really isn’t a big deal as long as you’re not burning anything hazardous.  Plastic and paper and shit will make you cough, but it’s not likely to give you long-time health problems.  But what if you throw in depleted Uranium casings?

That’s right.  Our military uses depleted uranium ammunition because it’s effective at peircing armor and thick walls.  And what do they do with the remaining ordinance?  They throw it into a fucking fire right next to the camp.

What does John McCain have to do with this?  He’s an acolyte for the Prince of Lies.  Here’s an excerpt of a NYT Q&A w/ McCain concerning his initial disapporval of the Bosnian intervention and his ultimate betrayal of that “belief”:

Q. You, as much as anyone in Congress, know the high costs of war, and yet you and Senator Bob Dole, in a politically unpopular move, pushed for a Senate endorsement of the Bosnia mission. Why did you consider this important?


A. I had been a long-time skeptic, if not outright opponent, of our Bosnia policy. Senator Dole and I and others were strong proponents of lifting the arms embargo. But when the president made his commitment, committing not just Bill Clinton but the United States of America, the entire situation changed. There were significant negative costs associated with repudiating such a commitment — one, the credibility of the United States, two, the lasting viability of NATO, and three, the assurances of leaders of the participants in the war that the conflict would be reignited. I have no doubt that the Congress has the authority to cut off funding, but that was not going to happen. When you vote to cut off funding, with American troops already there, whether you intend to or not you send a message to those troops that you don’t support what they’re doing.

Apparently not funding a war that you supposedly disagree with is now treasonous because you can’t have the perception that the people you’re ordering to fight the war are doing something for an immoral pretense.

John McCain was just diagnosed with the same brain tumor my father was.  I firmly believe that had my father not been exposed to that radiation he would be happy and healthy.  He’s now teetering on a knife’s edge.

The God Emperor has released a statement that asks for thoughts and prayers for Johnny on the trigger.

I will not waste my prayers for John. May he rot in Hell.

Death comes for us all in time. I wonder if the senator has any regrets about his conduct during his time on Earth, or if he is hoping to hear “well done, thou good and faithful servant”, from the Father of Lies.

Mailvox: Doctor Feelgood Fake News

CGS wonders if perhaps the Fake News is preventing an even greater incidence of psychological breakdowns among the heavily medicated SJW community:

While browsing the CNN headlines and seeing this line-up of five articles about polls negatively reflecting on Trump, I contemplated the amygdala soothing that this must provide to a substantial portion of the population. If it weren’t for the constant false reminder that they aren’t alone, there is a  substantial portion of the population that would find themselves under constant anxiety and tension of realizing just how isolated and fragile their situation really is.

Especially the middle class liberal who isn’t as well protected from the ghetto democrats as the upper class liberals are. If they were ever to realize how many people are indifferent to support of Trump they would realize just how tenuous their situation is stuck between the ghetto and flyover land… and knowing deep down the gates to upper class liberal town would be closed in the event of a civil breakdown.

In a way CNN’s lies are probably providing a tenuous glue keeping the liberal amygdala from meltdown which is indirectly helping maintain the peace we currently have. I know that working in a converged industry, city, and company… that even the slightest hint of disregard for their feelings or even outright support for Trump would be enough to bring the social condition to a standstill. I can’t imagine the amount of “sick leave” that we’d start seeing if CNN started reporting the accurate social shift.

Rabbits are incredibly fragile to feeling outgrouped, which of course is why they always run to that tactic whenever they are attacking us. SJW Law #3: SJWs Always Project. So trigger those fragile, shrunken amygdalas, my friends. TRIGGER THEM.

The Daily Meme Wars are a good place to start if you’re not sure how.

Mailvox: the very rich are different

This is a contribution from a friend of the blog.

If I Were A Rich Man …

“Dear God, you made many, many poor people.
“I realize, of course, that it’s no shame to be poor.
“But it’s no great honor either!”
-Fiddler on the Roof

There is an old – and very cynical remark – that the very rich are different from the average person – they have more money.  Which is true.  But what isn’t encompassed in that rather sardonic bon mot is just what having vast wealth can do for you.  Being wealthy offers opportunities that are, perhaps, not always understood by the poor.

If you’re a rich man, you can buy a house for cash.  You do not have to worry about taking out a mortgage, let alone paying it back.  If you’re a rich man, you can buy a car for cash and afford comprehensive insurance, as well as everything from the very latest gadgets to basic maintenance.  You do not have to worry about taking out a loan or meeting payments.  If you’re a rich man, you can afford lawyers and accountants and everything else you might need to smooth out any little problems you may encounter.  NHS waiting lists?  Go private and be assured of the best of care.  Even being accused of a terrible crime – with a slam-dunk case against you – can be mitigated with expensive lawyers and cash shovelled around like snow.

If you’re a poor man, you do not have these options.  If you want to buy a house, you have to take out a mortgage – and the bank will start talking tough if you miss a payment.  If you want to buy a car, you need another loan – and you can’t afford comprehensive insurance beyond the (legally-required) third-party insurance.  You have to struggle with tax and suchlike on your own and, if you are picked up by the police, you can’t afford to post bail, let alone hire a lawyer.

Indeed, in some ways, the paragraph above is optimistic.  If you don’t earn enough to qualify for a loan, you have to rent – and that eats up your disposable income.  A car accident, even one that wasn’t your fault, can fuck up your life … and God help you if you need medical treatment.  Even in Britain, with the NHS, waiting lists are so long that you might expire before you see a hospital.

If you’re rich, you are insulated from the world.  You can afford to live in a gated compound, with round-the-clock security patrols.  You don’t have to worry about thugs on the street or terrorists, not when you’re secure.  You can cope with almost anything just by throwing money at it.  You can even weather the consequences of your own stupidity if you try.

Imagine two people – Richie Rich and Polly Poor – who get into a car accident.  Both of them are unharmed – and it was a genuine accident, so neither of them are threatened with arrest – but their cars are beyond immediate repair.  And they both have an important engagement in an hour.

Richie Rich calls his insurance firm.  They send him a replacement car and a breakdown truck.  He takes the car and drives to his engagement.  By the time he gets home, the insurance firm has decided that the car is a write-off and offered to let him keep the loaner.  Richie Rich decides he wants to upgrade and takes the money instead, then purchases a new car.

Polly Poor doesn’t have insurance.  The remains of her car are impounded until she pays a fine, which she cannot pay.  She has no way of getting to her engagement until a passing motorist takes pity on her and drives her most of the way.  But by the time she gets there, she’s terribly late.  Her boss gives her the sack.  When she gets home, she discovers a whole series of bills she cannot even begin to pay …

Being rich, in short, offers security from the outside world.  It also offers power.  If you’re rich, people like Hillary Clinton will hunt you up for donations.  You’ll have influence, which you can turn into power.  (The song I quoted above includes a line about just that.)  People like Bill Gates and Donald Trump wouldn’t have anything like the influence they do, let alone power, if they didn’t have money.

“Sir, I’m afraid you’ve gone mad with power!
“Of course I have.  You ever tried going mad without power?  It’s boring.  No one listens to you!”
-The Simpsons Movie.

I’m sure some of you are thinking by now that I’ve turned into a raving socialist, if not a communist.  Horror of Horrors!  Trust me – there is a point to this.

Being rich also offers more options than are available to the poor.  Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to move in a hurry.  Being rich, you don’t have loans or anyone who would have to sign off on your move.  You can just buy a house somewhere else and go there, hiring movers to assist with your possessions.  Or, if you have to leave really quickly, you can just rent an AIRBNB for a couple of months while you hunt for a new place to live.

Why not?  You have the money, don’t you?

What all this tends to mean is that the very rich are insulated from the consequences of their own decisions.

I’ve noticed, when I’ve dealt with the top 10%, that they have a certain unconscious (and sometimes very conscious) arrogance.  If you happen to believe that £20’000 is small change, you’re not going to empathise with someone who doesn’t have a hope of making that in a year.  The cost of living is meaningless to someone who can afford it without batting an eyelash.  Saying that the poor should save seems to be good advice, for example, but it tends not to take into account the simple fact that the poor cannot save!  They have to spend every penny they earn just to keep their heads above water.

And move to a better area?  How?

No one in their right mind wants to live in a suburb infested with druggies, gangsters and other genuine deplorables.  No half-way decent parent would want to bring up children in such shitty surroundings.  But what happens if they cannot afford to leave?  Going somewhere a little more upmarket might be beyond them.  What happens then?

I wrote all this – in a blaze of fury – after reading an article in the Daily Mail.  George Clooney is apparently planning to move back to LA from Britain after the security situation in the UK deteriorated.  He fears for the safety of his wife and children.  How can you blame him?  If you’re a parent, your children are your first priority.  If you feel that life is unsafe where you are, you need to take them elsewhere.  What self-respecting father could do anything else?

What is maddening about this is the reason the security situation across Europe is deteriorating.  Migrants, terrorism … and spineless governments.  And Clooney was one of the very wealthy celebrities who urged Angela Merkel to throw open the doors and invite countless migrants into Germany.  Clooney and his fellows had the influence to ensure that their wish to feel good about themselves outweighed any commitment to the safety and security of the German – and European – population.  They pushed a narrative that preached helping refugees – and completely ignored the very real risks to national security.

But Clooney – and his fellows – are insulated from the consequences of their self-righteous stance.  Clooney has impressive security.  He and his family don’t have to worry about the sharp upturn in sexual assaults, murders and religious conflict in Europe.  They can – and, if this article is accurate, they will – simply move away.  How many others have the option to just leave?

Very few.  Picking up and leaving your home isn’t easy at the best of times.  Your job isn’t going to move, is it?  Nor can you get a new loan if you’re having problems paying the one you already have.  Even if you don’t have a loan or debts, moving to a new region might be tricky.  And what stops the migrants from coming after you?

The very rich are different from you and me.  It is always someone else who pays the price for their self-righteous stupidity.

Mailvox: behold, the mighty Gamma

There was something strangely familiar about Tuatha’s atheist Gamma-bragging about how he is the intellectual superior of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and everyone reading this blog:

The only thing needed to conclude lewis in nutshell, is that anyone who called himself an atheist because he hates god is a moron. Even tolkien could tell lewis was a birdbrain with his blatant and overuse of christian allegory that he regretted even trying to ‘convert’ him to christianity… Lewis was a fucking retard with no iota of a neuron in his tiny head. He was so stupid that he bought pascal’s wager-the absolute dumbest argument ever conceived-hook, line, and sinker. I know what the obese shit-for-brains said and wrote. I have read Mere Christianity beginning to end. His whole line of thinking is the worst sort of diabetic autism that I have ever seen outside of antifa and ‘brony nationalists’…. If I wanted I could easily go to oxford and get at least three positions there if I wanted without much effort.

Ah yes, it was this.

I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words.


You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands.


Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue.


But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it.


You’re fucking dead, kiddo.


Gammas. They never change. A million different variations, but always the same delusions of superiority.

The amusing thing is that, as is customary, the Gamma doesn’t even have his basic facts right. In the unlikely event he has read Mere Christianity as claimed, he has not understood it, because CS Lewis doesn’t base his apologetics on Pascal’s Wager. Even the passage that has been described as a “reflection of the basic premise of the argument” is not based on Pascal’s writings, but rather, the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
– CS Lewis

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
– 1 Corinthians 15:12-19

UPDATE: Nailed it. The Gamma is BUTTHURT beyond belief.

Mailvox: Free trade and private debt

A college student asks if there is a link between the two:

Over the years in which the US has abolished trade barriers and enacted a multitude of international free trade agreements we have experienced a massive increase in trade deficits, national debt, as well as personal debt. I can see the obvious connection between free trade trade, trade deficit’s and national debt but is there a connection between free trade and the rising PERSONAL debt? If so what is this connection? Furthermore if we had trade barriers in place would Americans not still have rising personal debt as they instead spend the same amount on domestic products rather than international? 

There is certainly a correlation between increasingly free trade and private debt, but I doubt the relationship is a causal one. For one thing, the decline in private debt which began in 2008 was neither caused nor echoed by a similar decline in free trade.

The economic logic also doesn’t support a causal link. Private debt is mostly linked to big-ticket items such as homes and cars. Free trade in goods is mostly neutral on the former and negative on the latter with regards to debt. While the free movement of peoples would tend to increase debt, more people being able to take out more loans, that’s not going to alter the debt per capita rate much, for obvious reasons.

One of the major components of private debt is education-related debt, and that has nothing to do with free trade. So, I would say there is no meaningful link between free trade and private debt.