Jeremy
08-23-2008, 08:58 AM
I'm about to respond to this essay (which was posted on Facebook), but please point out some things I should bring up so I can make my point as clear, accurate, and defensive of liberty as possible.
So I don't even know if this commercial is on television, but I've seen it countless times while watching episodes of Lost online. It's an ad for some mock Japanese game show (I know there are a few of them, but I can't remember what it's called). It's basically a rip-off of MXC, but not as funny. In this commercial it shows several people getting hurt while partaking in several different competitions. But people getting hurt in the name of entertainment is not what bothers me. Towards the end of the commercial they show a short clip of a contestant on the game show and she says something along the lines of, "I just won $50,000 and I'm not giving it to charity!" While saying this she clearly emphasizes "not" and it comes off as if she is proud of her avarice. This woman is a bitch. Rarely do I suggest that people be dragged off into the desert and shot, but I'd cap this bitch myself if someone gave me the chance (and if I gave up my non-revenge/retribution ideals (which I would not)). So all of this got me thinking about politics and I realized it's about damn time that I developed my own political theory. I mean, I know little about politics, I hold ideas that most people either don't understand or do understand but hate, and I'm a self-important philosopher. That is the perfect recipe for a sound political theory. So here we go. Get ready to yell, get ready to scream, get ready to curse the darkness. But most importantly, get ready to feel bad about yourself as a person (this is my goal, though it will almost certainly fail).
So, government...What's it's purpose? What is/should be the goal of a society? What have we done wrong in this country in order to give rise to the type of thought exhibited by that dumb bitch in that commercial? There are many answers to the goal of society/government: freedom, financial success, protecting its citizens, maintaining sovereignty, etc. But I would argue that all of these goals can be reduced to one common, overly-simplistic goal: The happiness of the members of society (remember that I define happiness as sustained physiological pleasure, not some fickle emotion that can dry up and be carried off by a slight breeze). So freedom, protection, etc are all facades that complicate our real goal of happiness. Honestly, if you had the choose of being stripped of your freedom and happy, or being free and miserable, the former is the obvious choice. Regarding maintaining life, I would say life is prerequisite for happiness, but if you want to get technical, the society should maintain the life and happiness of its members. You know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Well, get rid of liberty because that is just a means to happiness, and get rid of "the pursuit of" because pursuing happiness is counterproductive (see "Southwest Airlines' Escapism Campaign"). So there we have it, two goals. This makes things easier for designing a perfect political system (I say perfect ironically (you'll understand why when you're furrowing your brow with rage later on in this note)).
So if you're with me so far, here's where you might be derailed: I, unlike most people, am a hardcore relativist, a hardcore determinist, and a compassionate man that cares about all living things. So here's my plan, I think that competition is very much a strong contributor to human unhappiness (if you're interested I have a very long paper about Uthis that I'll gladly show you that explains why I feel that way, but I'm not getting into it here). So if we are to assume that competition, while good for the society as a whole, is bad for the individuals, let's eliminate it. How do we do this? An insane sliding tax. And when I say insane, I mean taxing the upwards of 99.999% of the very wealthy. Taxing enough so that no one makes over 150K per year (not even Bill Gates). Almost all of the money taxed goes towards eliminating poverty and eliminating hunger and other deadly ailments of want, both domestically and overseas. I feel that anyone that has a nice car in their garage while there are children starving to death by the tens of thousands in Africa, is a bad person. Valuing your own economic status over human lives is sick. And I'm not just talking about millionaires, I'm talking about anyone that lives in the slightest luxury (if you live in Harwinton or Burlington, you're probably guilty of this). If someone drives a BMW or a Mercedes or a Lexus or really any car with features beyond that necessary to get from point A to point B is valuing their own convenience over human lives. This should not be tolerated. Economic freedom looks great on paper, but people are not responsible enough to be trusted with their resources.
So what we do is, through heavy taxation (which I would spin by calling it "Charitable Income Adjustment"), create a virtual classless society and funnel off all the surplus resources toward maintaining human life in the world. This will lessen competition (making the citizens happier) and save lives (proliferate life). "But Cameron, taxing the rich so much would halt progress and cripple the economy!" You might say. "Well, good" I say. Why the hell do we need progress? We've progressed too far as it is. Studies are already showing that our modern day ease of living is destroying us psychologically and proliferating unhappiness. If progress halts, that's fine. If we take a step back as a society, all the better. People weren't depressed 50 years ago, suicide was much less common. I know this sounds crazy, but look at it from a logistical point of view with happiness as the end goal. Step outside the box for once. "But why would people work hard if the taxes will help the poor?" you might say. Because laws would force people to hold some sort of job. Not to mention, because everybody would basically be getting paid the same after taxes, people would no longer pick jobs based on pay, but on the person's desire to perform that task, and happiness would be further proliferated. (interesting side notes: There would be no law against tax evasion, instead the government would figure out how much it costs to keep a starving person alive (let's say it's $1,000). If you get caught skipping out on $100,000 in taxes, you get charged with 100 counts of negligent manslaughter. Also, the term "dead presidents" would be replaced with the term "dead Africans". As is, "Damn bro, that house must have cost you a lot of dead Africans.")
The point of this system is to create a society of people who can live with being altruistic. The people most punished by this system are the selfish, overly-capitalistic people like that bitch in that commercial, so who cares if they suffer from this. Our current system rewards the greedy, so the greedy prosper. My system would make the greedy emmigrate to other countries, leaving behind kind, good-heated, and happy people. And if you study sociology from a thermodynamic perspective, the more selfish a person is, the more harm he will do for the sum happiness of the society. So these people die out or leave and you're left with a set of people that will act to maximize group happiness.
To balance out the utter lack of economic freedom I propose we create a system with maximum civil liberties. I don't feel a moiety of society should be able to dictate the behavior of the entire society unless it is an overwhelming majority. I'm saying laws need at least a 19/20th majority in order to be passed. So, in essence, we have a government with near-absolute control of the economic sector, but that is virtually powerless in all other facets of living.
I'd like to state that I know this type of government will never come to be. Don't come at me with how illogical it is. And I know it's a far cry from utopia. I'm just saying it's a little closer to it than what we have now. And I know many of my ideas are extremest, incendiary, and borderline ridiculous but really the only point I want to emphasize is how institutionalized we all are to capitalism and selfishness. I strongly feel that if you take an objective view of things, the idea of collecting surplus wealth while people are suffering in the world is atrocious. We have our economic ideals so ingrained in us that it's difficult to see that. And if anyone says that if some starving person worked hard enough they could survive, we will no longer be friends. The people tagged in this note were born with relative silver spoons in their mouths and have lived a piece of cake life (myself included), so don't try to say that you can fault a two year old Sudanese boy for his situation. If I may throw my favorite quote out there, "If you have two coats you must share with he who has none, and if you have food you must do the same." -Luke 3:11. Jesus said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. John the baptist criticized people who had two coats. So I hope you feel bad about your XBox 360 and your parents' two car garage, you selfish, selfish bastard.
In conclusion, I propose and all out boycott of whatever that game show is until that bitch is dragged out into the desert and shot...or they remove that clip from the commercial.
Also:
-Sorry for the slight lack of comedy, but I felt it was time to write a very incendiary note.
-Sorry it's not well written and disjointed. I'm tired.
-I am not a communist
-Please don't form an argument based around your ideals. You can argue that a society built around happiness and life isn't ideal or that there is a better way to create a happy society, but don't say "I don't like this because I enjoy True Religion jeans."
-This is an incomplete version of my theory, it would be far too long to include everything (i.e. education system, defense system, etc)
So please hit me with some responses explaining how one person being able to spend $30,000+ on a car should be socially acceptable while that money could be used to keep hundreds of parents from watching their children die, or keep hundreds of children from growing up without parents, or fund the invention of reusable condoms so poor people in third world countries can stop getting aids, or fund the eradication of the cast, writers, producers, and any tapes of Mad TV so the world will no longer have to suffer such a horrifically failed attempt at comedy.
Fuck Mad TV.
After I'm done with this thread I'll remove the quote in case he Google's his own essay. I don't need "help" I just want to get the opinions of everyone else here.
So I don't even know if this commercial is on television, but I've seen it countless times while watching episodes of Lost online. It's an ad for some mock Japanese game show (I know there are a few of them, but I can't remember what it's called). It's basically a rip-off of MXC, but not as funny. In this commercial it shows several people getting hurt while partaking in several different competitions. But people getting hurt in the name of entertainment is not what bothers me. Towards the end of the commercial they show a short clip of a contestant on the game show and she says something along the lines of, "I just won $50,000 and I'm not giving it to charity!" While saying this she clearly emphasizes "not" and it comes off as if she is proud of her avarice. This woman is a bitch. Rarely do I suggest that people be dragged off into the desert and shot, but I'd cap this bitch myself if someone gave me the chance (and if I gave up my non-revenge/retribution ideals (which I would not)). So all of this got me thinking about politics and I realized it's about damn time that I developed my own political theory. I mean, I know little about politics, I hold ideas that most people either don't understand or do understand but hate, and I'm a self-important philosopher. That is the perfect recipe for a sound political theory. So here we go. Get ready to yell, get ready to scream, get ready to curse the darkness. But most importantly, get ready to feel bad about yourself as a person (this is my goal, though it will almost certainly fail).
So, government...What's it's purpose? What is/should be the goal of a society? What have we done wrong in this country in order to give rise to the type of thought exhibited by that dumb bitch in that commercial? There are many answers to the goal of society/government: freedom, financial success, protecting its citizens, maintaining sovereignty, etc. But I would argue that all of these goals can be reduced to one common, overly-simplistic goal: The happiness of the members of society (remember that I define happiness as sustained physiological pleasure, not some fickle emotion that can dry up and be carried off by a slight breeze). So freedom, protection, etc are all facades that complicate our real goal of happiness. Honestly, if you had the choose of being stripped of your freedom and happy, or being free and miserable, the former is the obvious choice. Regarding maintaining life, I would say life is prerequisite for happiness, but if you want to get technical, the society should maintain the life and happiness of its members. You know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Well, get rid of liberty because that is just a means to happiness, and get rid of "the pursuit of" because pursuing happiness is counterproductive (see "Southwest Airlines' Escapism Campaign"). So there we have it, two goals. This makes things easier for designing a perfect political system (I say perfect ironically (you'll understand why when you're furrowing your brow with rage later on in this note)).
So if you're with me so far, here's where you might be derailed: I, unlike most people, am a hardcore relativist, a hardcore determinist, and a compassionate man that cares about all living things. So here's my plan, I think that competition is very much a strong contributor to human unhappiness (if you're interested I have a very long paper about Uthis that I'll gladly show you that explains why I feel that way, but I'm not getting into it here). So if we are to assume that competition, while good for the society as a whole, is bad for the individuals, let's eliminate it. How do we do this? An insane sliding tax. And when I say insane, I mean taxing the upwards of 99.999% of the very wealthy. Taxing enough so that no one makes over 150K per year (not even Bill Gates). Almost all of the money taxed goes towards eliminating poverty and eliminating hunger and other deadly ailments of want, both domestically and overseas. I feel that anyone that has a nice car in their garage while there are children starving to death by the tens of thousands in Africa, is a bad person. Valuing your own economic status over human lives is sick. And I'm not just talking about millionaires, I'm talking about anyone that lives in the slightest luxury (if you live in Harwinton or Burlington, you're probably guilty of this). If someone drives a BMW or a Mercedes or a Lexus or really any car with features beyond that necessary to get from point A to point B is valuing their own convenience over human lives. This should not be tolerated. Economic freedom looks great on paper, but people are not responsible enough to be trusted with their resources.
So what we do is, through heavy taxation (which I would spin by calling it "Charitable Income Adjustment"), create a virtual classless society and funnel off all the surplus resources toward maintaining human life in the world. This will lessen competition (making the citizens happier) and save lives (proliferate life). "But Cameron, taxing the rich so much would halt progress and cripple the economy!" You might say. "Well, good" I say. Why the hell do we need progress? We've progressed too far as it is. Studies are already showing that our modern day ease of living is destroying us psychologically and proliferating unhappiness. If progress halts, that's fine. If we take a step back as a society, all the better. People weren't depressed 50 years ago, suicide was much less common. I know this sounds crazy, but look at it from a logistical point of view with happiness as the end goal. Step outside the box for once. "But why would people work hard if the taxes will help the poor?" you might say. Because laws would force people to hold some sort of job. Not to mention, because everybody would basically be getting paid the same after taxes, people would no longer pick jobs based on pay, but on the person's desire to perform that task, and happiness would be further proliferated. (interesting side notes: There would be no law against tax evasion, instead the government would figure out how much it costs to keep a starving person alive (let's say it's $1,000). If you get caught skipping out on $100,000 in taxes, you get charged with 100 counts of negligent manslaughter. Also, the term "dead presidents" would be replaced with the term "dead Africans". As is, "Damn bro, that house must have cost you a lot of dead Africans.")
The point of this system is to create a society of people who can live with being altruistic. The people most punished by this system are the selfish, overly-capitalistic people like that bitch in that commercial, so who cares if they suffer from this. Our current system rewards the greedy, so the greedy prosper. My system would make the greedy emmigrate to other countries, leaving behind kind, good-heated, and happy people. And if you study sociology from a thermodynamic perspective, the more selfish a person is, the more harm he will do for the sum happiness of the society. So these people die out or leave and you're left with a set of people that will act to maximize group happiness.
To balance out the utter lack of economic freedom I propose we create a system with maximum civil liberties. I don't feel a moiety of society should be able to dictate the behavior of the entire society unless it is an overwhelming majority. I'm saying laws need at least a 19/20th majority in order to be passed. So, in essence, we have a government with near-absolute control of the economic sector, but that is virtually powerless in all other facets of living.
I'd like to state that I know this type of government will never come to be. Don't come at me with how illogical it is. And I know it's a far cry from utopia. I'm just saying it's a little closer to it than what we have now. And I know many of my ideas are extremest, incendiary, and borderline ridiculous but really the only point I want to emphasize is how institutionalized we all are to capitalism and selfishness. I strongly feel that if you take an objective view of things, the idea of collecting surplus wealth while people are suffering in the world is atrocious. We have our economic ideals so ingrained in us that it's difficult to see that. And if anyone says that if some starving person worked hard enough they could survive, we will no longer be friends. The people tagged in this note were born with relative silver spoons in their mouths and have lived a piece of cake life (myself included), so don't try to say that you can fault a two year old Sudanese boy for his situation. If I may throw my favorite quote out there, "If you have two coats you must share with he who has none, and if you have food you must do the same." -Luke 3:11. Jesus said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. John the baptist criticized people who had two coats. So I hope you feel bad about your XBox 360 and your parents' two car garage, you selfish, selfish bastard.
In conclusion, I propose and all out boycott of whatever that game show is until that bitch is dragged out into the desert and shot...or they remove that clip from the commercial.
Also:
-Sorry for the slight lack of comedy, but I felt it was time to write a very incendiary note.
-Sorry it's not well written and disjointed. I'm tired.
-I am not a communist
-Please don't form an argument based around your ideals. You can argue that a society built around happiness and life isn't ideal or that there is a better way to create a happy society, but don't say "I don't like this because I enjoy True Religion jeans."
-This is an incomplete version of my theory, it would be far too long to include everything (i.e. education system, defense system, etc)
So please hit me with some responses explaining how one person being able to spend $30,000+ on a car should be socially acceptable while that money could be used to keep hundreds of parents from watching their children die, or keep hundreds of children from growing up without parents, or fund the invention of reusable condoms so poor people in third world countries can stop getting aids, or fund the eradication of the cast, writers, producers, and any tapes of Mad TV so the world will no longer have to suffer such a horrifically failed attempt at comedy.
Fuck Mad TV.
After I'm done with this thread I'll remove the quote in case he Google's his own essay. I don't need "help" I just want to get the opinions of everyone else here.