Re: In Search of Clarity, Part 1B

Madame M,

Enormous amounts of productivity potential are wasted on nonproductive things like tax accounting. Our large and ponderous tax system on the one hand tries to be so exactingly “fair” and “equitable,” but actually largely only creates slogging, twisting, complexity. On the other, it becomes a giveaway store to whatever special interest gets the ear (or purse) of our out-of-control law “makers.” Not just taxes though—all measures of laws, rules, regulations, directives, expectations, etc. (little matter, how well intended), are excessive. Complexity leads to more nonproductive time and effort and expense to first figure out or interpret the complexity (or pay someone to), and then more unproductive time to figure out what to do (compensate legally or evade illegally a la BP) about it, which leads to compensating laws, rules, adjustments, etc., which only leads to more complexity, which only leads to more…. And of course, all this leads to more economically nonproducing (or even parasitical) lawyers (although not all lawyers are those, just…many!). After all, we have more lawyers here than the rest of the world combined, and too large a majority of the key figures in government (by its very nature, a nonproducer) are lawyers.

We are gushing forth a storm of cascading propellants toward system failure. How curious a people we are, to see what and even how things can’t continue on this path, yet stay on it. I guess we are no different in that from many civilizations of the past.

I both agree and disagree on the “ever increasing taxes.” Depends on who you are and what part of the system you can command, influence, or use information on. Taxes have actually decreased for a great many (often from direct rate decreases or exemptions or loopholes), although hidden taxes certainly plague many as well. We are too similar to Rome, which increasingly found itself with people of means who did not want to support the society (for various reasons, a few of them even good ones), and the public revenue increasingly starved to the point of decay. Inward focused afflictions of affluence contributed to visionless undercutting of their civilization. The gulf between the so called elites and the otherwise productive general working population became enormous, even without factoring in slavery.

I agree with Ronald Reagan’s statement of “what you want to see less of, tax.” The tax code needs to do away with taxes on economically and environmentally sound production. It should instead switch to taxes that punish environmentally, economically, or public health harming practices and/or to taxes that support commonweal practices. For instance, the tobacco tax increase enacted relatively recently. Something like that is not really a tax in the sense that many citizens do not pay it and can avoid it. But in the zealous “anti-tax” mania, those sorts of things are included in deceptive statistics that don’t merit most reality, and furthermore, give the impression that American taxation is crushing, when it’s not (we have a long history of this exaggeration, going back to colonial times). Oppressive taxation is often more that people don’t agree with how their money is being spent, or, that they are disconnected enough to not connect how it is spent to benefit them.

Just one example of private exploitation:

Untenable (and unconsidered) precepts are accepted in teaching (especially privately and throughout the culture) without question, but when examined (although never are) seem rather absurd. Such as the fundamental precepts of capitalism: Endless accumulation, and unlimited growth in a limited space (ever notice how everything is ALWAYS about growth?).

Capitalism is considered, unthinkingly, as the ultimate system (that one is not even POSSIBLE in the future to be better) with no significant flaws, or, if there are such flaws, nothing can or should be done about them. This of course is a largely unexamined precept on most levels, except sometimes against the anti-human nature system failures of the past (empires, socialist-authoritarianisms, etc.).

In such precepts, the powerful reward themselves by excessive greed (because neither our culture nor its individuals can define “enough,” about anything) without concern for the larger society. Labor is exploited without thought, to the ultimate degree, and commoditized. Capital and inside information are made supreme. Merit and expertise become only secondary at best.

Congruent with this is an exploited work ethic. Work constantly. Live to work, not work to live. Become used up and discarded, at cost to self, family, community, society.

To continue on in a slightly different vein: The BP spill is a consequence, STILL not fully appreciated, of unexamined precepts. Here is willful addiction to a substance that is 1) toxic to humans and most life, in all phases, from extraction to refining to transport to use to “disposal,” 2) finite, it will run out, 3) is concentrated in places where people who often want to damage or destroy us control those places, and which we have to pay them large sums to purchase, and other large sums to protect, thus essentially paying to destroy ourselves in many senses of the word, 4) may be contributing to extremely harmful world-changing events, and that 5) we have NO PLAN and few committed resources or efforts to move quickly away from being addicted. Our descendents will wonder how on earth we idgit brains could be their ancestors!

Now I follow what you mean by intellectual tyranny in the public education sphere! Yet private exploitation and public overlap sometimes. For instance, isn’t the primary purpose of education for the masses, as defined in practice by the wealthy elites, to produce proficient and diligent WORKERS, not critically thinking CITIZENS?

The elements of CONTROL you so aptly describe are stifling tools that we humans keep reaching for over and over despite their ultimate failures in so many instances. ATTEMPTED control to remake the world to our liking seems our perpetual overriding obsession. When Mao said “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand thoughts flourish,” he didn’t really mean it; he only wanted to root out the thinkers who could threaten his orthodoxy and control. Although no Mao, the current crop in American education “top” circles often crush real thinking—and often in supposed service to critical thinking!

Your encounter with the haute pseudo-intellectual is unfortunately all too common in our society of credentialism (certificatism, degreeism, whatever b.s—that’s a pun!--ism); your son is largely accurate about that. While it is true the willfully ignorant, uninformed, and idiocracy crowd infuriate with their wildly inaccurate and forcibly stated “opinions,” it is also true, as you demonstrate, that much of the “educated” really…aren’t. My dad always told me, “Never fear the intelligentsia; they think. Fear the near-intelligentsia, those who think they think.” My dad never even made it a full year of college, but he was more insightful and clear-thinking than many degreed people I know.

I like the Oathkeepers’ goals and ten things, assuming they are not being used for some hidden purpose of course.