Subtlety is more important than anything else, ever.

I’m pretty terrible about not posting anything on here. Pretty much this is a result of being bogged down with a mountain of homework or other academic work, which is an adequate excuse for me. I was considering implementing something to produce a daily digest of interesting links from google reader with a brief comment, but google has gotten rid of shared links. Truthfully, it wouldn’t be a huge time constraint to just sit down and write a blog post every day, but lately I’ve just felt like I don’t have anything interesting to say about much of anything, especially news-wise. But I’ll whip up a few thoughts about #OWS because I’m feeling frisky tonight.

I’ve been following the #OWS movement from twitter and fark.com, where there is at least one thread a day, if not more. Oddly enough, people in those very threads claim that nobody is paying attention or talking about #OWS. This sort of movement is exactly what I think we need right now, even if it’s not organized with a clearly identifiable goal. Because what the US needs is to recognize that something is wrong before trying to figure out exactly what it is. And I think #OWS is accomplishing one thing very well: they’re making the symptoms of the problem very, very clear. But like many alcoholics who refuse to admit they even have a problem, many Americans are refusing to admit that there is anything to protest. And some of them don’t think that protesting is the right answer, but would rather the protesters play the PAC game and attempt to work the system the same way the banks have. This is silly.

The boat needs to be rocked. I’m sorry your overpriced martini was spilled.

Matt Taibbi really nails the frustration with Wall Street. But I see Wall Street’s behavior as a symptom of a bigger problem with the US. That bigger problem is the cause of other ninety-nine percenters siding with Wall Street. I’m not even sure what it is, but there is something fundamentally wrong. And like an unexplainable rash on a patient being treated by House, M.D., we’ll find out that it is something that requires more than government intervention. I suspect it will require a reevaluation of American values, not just rules.

And unfortunately, with the recent DHS coordinated attacks on the occupy camps, Scott Olsen, and Zucotti Park, I am only seeing things get worse. The police are doubling down on their loyalty to the system, even if they know it’s corrupt. They might even care. But I doubt it. The police have been slowly turning into paramilitary thugs armed with tanks for decades. They like the system the way it is. Any given day, a visit to The Agitator shows that the state of law enforcement in this country is only getting worse. And the plutocracy loves it. They get thugs-by-proxy from wars on drugs and invisible terrorists and the serfs run around screaming injustice, too busy to worry about the secret aristocracy.

But I shouldn’t say crazy things like that. It sounds melodramatic even to me. But I do think that there is a problem with American values and that the problem with Wall Street is merely a symptom of that. I offer no solutions, but I’m not even sure what the real problem is yet. The abuses of Wall Street can be fixed, but I suspect it will just come back in a different industry, in a different guise unless we figure what is really wrong.

Americans Should Be Able to Sell Stuff Without a Permit

The normal mindset among U.S. officials is that prior permission should be required to sell legal goods to a willing buyer. Kids selling lemonade on the street are shut down. A Missouri man has been fined $90,000 for selling rabbits (he made about $200). In Illinois, an artisan ice cream maker is being shut down for lack of a dairy permit. Manuel Winn was arrested, handcuffed, and booked for selling magazines door-to-door without a permit. A Maryland mother of three was arrested for selling $2 phone cards without a license. Lots of municipalities are going after food trucks. A group of Louisiana monks had to go to court to win the right to sell simple wooden caskets to consumers.

Hey now, if papa government doesn’t get his cut then these so-called entrepreneurs are doing a disservice to America, obviously. And bigger companies/corporations are easier to get bigger cuts from. When it comes to forcing businesses to follow regulations all these little businesses become a burden on the bureaucracy. Government loves big-business, because big business funds campaigns and is willing to pay the government all sorts of regulatory fees to stay off their backs.

I just finished reading Milosz’s The Captive Mind, and I’m reminded of a frightening section of that book recounting the way the totalitarianism of Stalin’s communism couldn’t abide by even one person being in business for themselves. Only here we have the government insisting that every single business transaction be closely monitored and shut down if it doesn’t meet their exacting standards, not crushed/killed. This is what libertarians really mean when they say we need deregulation in business:

These needless, onerous regulations would be objectionable at any time. But they’re particularly problematic when many Americans find themselves unemployed, needful of income, and thrust into the position of doing what they can to get by. That may mean a series of garage sales, or selling fruit from a backyard tree, or making a craft to offer for sale on the street, or going door-to-door offering handyman skills, or any number of other informal businesses. We’re making things harder on the least advantaged among us, and some are forced to take more social welfare because laws prevent them from making a living on their own.

This isn’t a jeremiad against all government regulation. Should commercial airline pilots be required to have a license? Sure. Are zoning restrictions sometimes legitimate? Of course. But is society really going to suffer if lemonade vendors, casket makers and purveyors of $2 phone cards sell their wares without permission? The default should be that free citizens can engage in commerce with one another, sans any prior restraint by federal, state, or local governments. It’s time to deregulate.

It’s not a matter of everything being a total free-for-all, but nobody should have to ask permission to go into business for themselves if said business has no repercussions on others. This is one of the biggest ways people have confused libertarianism. That Salon publishes articles like “Why libertarians apologize for autocracy” doesn’t help. Of course, Roderick Long made a very concise and clear rebuttal of the bizarre misinterpretation of libertarianism by Lind:

One reason for Lind’s conflation is that he automatically translates being anti-democracy into being pro-autocracy — because he assumes that the only alternative to democracy is autocracy. But in fact there is a third option; rather than the many dictating to the few or the few dictating to the many, what libertarians seek is a world where nobody is in a position to dictate to anybody — or at least to get as close to that situation as possible. (It might be argued that such a system actually has a better claim to the term “democracy” than those regimes that typically receive that label.) For anarchist libertarians, this means replacing the state entirely with networks of voluntary association; for minarchist libertarians, it means structuring the machinery of government in such a way as to make it as difficult as possible to abuse.

In other words, libertarians don’t oppose democracy (in the conventional sense) because they hanker after autocracy; they oppose democracy because it is too much like autocracy.

And even this point assumes, generously, that existing democracies really are majoritarian. As many libertarians have argued, the logic of monopoly government and special-interest capture explains why real-life “democracies” tend to be plutocratic oligarchies in democratic trappings.

There you go: criticism of democracy, in a quick youtube video. Obviously, that means I favor autocracy because I don’t think that democracy works justly. I think many naysayers of libertarianism (as Roderick points out in the linked article) are simply making an either-or fallacy. There aren’t only two options, but the one advocated by the left libertarians is so mindblowingly unheard of that most people dismiss it before they even hear an explanation.

Language is fine; people are the problem

It is neither rational nor moral to suggest that words have some—let me risk lifting a word from Dr. Hart’s field—ousia or Platonic essence. Words mean only what people choose them to mean. That is precisely why nice no longer means “lewd.” Transpire came to mean something in English beyond its roots in Latin, from “giving off breath or vapor” to “coming to light.” And it is increasingly in use meaning “occur.” Over time, the vulgar, who created English in the first place, have their way.

This is essentially what Wittgenstein elucidates in his Philosophical Investigations: that words do not have any intrinsic meaning, but only gain meaning through use. Although Wittgenstein is not mentioned in the debate, the points their arguing are Wittgensteinian in nature.

To insist that words are intrinsically bound to their meaning is a referentialist argument (which some may recall is the basis for the Tractatus) and leads to paradoxes that wind up mucking up any rational explanations for anything. This is ethically unsound as it produces a situation where the word ‘ethic’ must refer to some thing that is ethical, the essence of ethics. Which, if we disregard that the word necessarily refers to some thing, but understand that the word simply means what we intend it to mean, through its use, then we arrive at a more truthful meaning of the word. That meaning, however, is fluid, not fixed.

Postmodernism is dead

I have some good news—kick back, relax, enjoy the rest of the summer, stop worrying about where your life is and isn’t heading. What news? Well, on 24th September, we can officially and definitively declare that postmodernism is dead. Finished. History. A difficult period in human thought over and done with. How do I know this? Because that is the date when the Victoria and Albert Museum opens what it calls “the first comprehensive retrospective” in the world: “Postmodernism—Style and Subversion 1970-1990.”

So… the party’s over folks. Please dispose of any empty bottles, used condoms, golden apples, skeletons, overcoats, or whatever it was you were playing with in the trash before leaving. Last one out turn the lights off.

Whatever is next ought to be fun. Let’s take a nap until then.

Taking a quick break from studying to do this reflects how much I don’t care about time management. I know it’s a crappy photoshop job: I’m no photoshop guru, and that it only took 15 minutes doesn’t help either.

First, a shameless plug: I have a poem in the new issue of Used Gravitrons. Check it out, the whole issue is quite wonderful, really.

Second, and maybe a little late, but Miracle Jones at The Fiction Circus posted a wonderful guide to writing fiction: How to be a Fiction Writer. And I’m not sure which step I’m on, but I have a rough idea and my head hurts.

Third, be on the lookout for the first issue of ILK Journal soon. I’m not in it, but it is run by at least one very good poet and I’m looking forward to it.

I realize I don’t post a whole lot about literature, writing or anything like that here very often and, honestly, I’m not about to start. This place exists for my virtual fist-shaking at the world, absurd philosophical digressions and other miscellany. All of which is without schedule or purpose. I can go months without posting a damned thing. And that won’t stop either.

So carry on, you silly gooses, stop looking at my wacky blog and do something productive.

Also, to cut down on the cynicism and inject some wholesome idealism, check this out: ALL-Left.net.

New items for August 10, 2011:

• Google Reader: Regulators Crush Another Small Business

Spain is such a wonderful country. A little rough getting used to the schedule though. Outside of Madrid, everything was seriously closed from 2-5 every afternoon. I never had an excuse not to take a nap. Those siestas were awesome. The wine is plentiful and inexpensive. The jamón is amazing. I really ought to whip up a list of places I went to while I was there:

• Museo Nacional del Prado

I went for the Goya Black Paintings. They’re fantastic. Fight with Clubs was probably my favorite.

• Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

There was an awesome Antonin Artaud exhibit. Nothing else there really sparked my interest much.

• Royal Palace of Madrid

I was so hungover that I don’t remember it. Mostly because I blew through it so I could get to the gift shop to buy a bottle of water.

• The Cathedral of Toledo

I can’t explain how mind-blowing this cathedral is. It’s worth seeing in person.

• Aqueduct of Segovia

How this thing is still standing is beyond me. It provides some nice shade and it looks cool. I’m not a history, architecture or art buff so that’s really all I can say about it. It’s an imposing structure.

• The Alcázar of Segovia

Pretty neat if a bit touristy. The view from the top is amazing.

• Museo de Art Nouveau y Art Déco – Casa Lis

I don’t like Art Nouveau or Art Deco but they have some amazing stained glass windows, including a ceiling. There is a huge exhibit of creepy dolls. No me gusta.

• Cathedral of Salamanca (Old and New)

Going up into the tower is pretty wicked. Crossing the cathedral from 150 ft. up is vertigo inducing, but beautiful.

• The Sagrada Família

Impressive structure, but a little too modern for my tastes. I’ll stick with the Cathedrals of Toledo and Salamanca.

• Casa Milà

Sure it was innovative architecturally speaking, but man, it’s fucking ugly. This seemed to be a trend in Barcelona.

• Museu Picasso de Barcelona

Notice how it’s ‘Museu’ instead of ‘Museo’? Because Barcelona is in Catalonia, and they don’t speak Spanish (well, they can, but they don’t). It’s Catalan, everywhere. Also, Picasso was great up until he got all crazy with the cubism. I loved seeing all his notebook doodles. Seriously, they have napkins that he drew on with crayons framed. You do see how his style moved from his teens until he died, so it’s really worth checking out.

• Figueres Theatre-Museum Dalí

I could have spent two more hours in the Dali museum. It was wild.

I’ll probably make a few more posts about Spain in the near future regarding the nightlife, the food and some other random junk that I found interesting but doesn’t fit with anything else.