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&& THE CHAOS ADVOCATE &&
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&& An Electronic Journal Advocating &&
&& Personal Freedom In All Things &&
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*-------------------------------------------------------------*
| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
| mailing $2.00 to |
| |
| Mack Tanner |
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
| Moscow, ID 83843 |
| |
| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
| stamped envelope. |
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
PAGE 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Letters to the Editor........................page 3
Editor's Page ...............................page 4
Chaos and Social Engineering.................page 6
The Common Good and the Voter's Paradox......page 10
Bad Citizens and Freedom.....................page 18
Getting All You Want.........................page 23
Wanted: A Few Good Writers...................page 28
PAGE 3
*---------------------------*
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
*---------------------------*
Obviously, as this is the premier issue of THE CHAOS ADVOCATE, we
don't have any letters-to-the-editor to publish. We hope that we will
have some to publish with the next issue. Letters to the editor
should be sent to one of the following E-mail addresses and marked as
letters to the editor of THE CHAOS ADVOCATE.
Compuserve: 72037,2673
Delphi: MACKTANNER
The Rational Life Bulletin Board
615-433-7869
Fidonet node number 1:116/38
Internet: Mack.Tanner@f38.n116.z1.fidonet.org
Letter writers must identify themselves with their real identity
and include a telephone number or an E-mail address which will permit
us to verify identity. We will, however, publish letters anonymously
at the request of the author.
PAGE 4
*--------------------*
| THE EDITOR'S PAGE |
*--------------------*
Freedom is the natural state of every creature. No human being,
no law, no constitution can give another human freedom. It can't be
granted, it can only be taken away.
Freedom is not necessarily beautiful nor comfortable. It is never
predictable and always chaotic. A free life can be dangerous,
unstable, and sometimes violent, but always unpredictable.
A lot of people don't like freedom very much. It scares them.
They want a predictable world in which they can trust that things will
always turn out just the way they want them to turn out. They delude
themselves into thinking that humans can create a world in which there
will be no anger, sorrow, hunger, sickness, violence, or hurt. Why
wait for heaven when they can create heaven here on earth?
But to create that wonderful, mythical world, they must first
force everyone to obey a long list of rules, laws, regulations,
morals, and ethics, all designed to insure that no one will do
anything that might upset the harmony and predictability of the world
they want to live in.
The kind of world they want isn't possible if humans remain free.
So while they are writing their morals, ethics, and laws, they also
write out a new definition of freedom. They tell us that to be free
we must be free from want, from pain, from fear, from hunger, and even
sickness. They call the slave a free man because the slave master
promises to provide for every need.
The priests, politicians, and teachers tell us that we are free
individuals while they feed us myths designed to make comfortable,
well-fed slaves think they are free. The tragedy is that the kind of
world they want also isn't possible if people are not free. So, while
they take freedom away, the brave new world they promise never
appears.
No one owns your life but you. The only way you can be happy is
by making the choices you want to make about what you do with your
mind and your body.
Because we live in a highly complex society, neither you nor I
are every going to be able to do *everything* we want to do. Life is
a constant bargain in which we give up some things we might like to
have, so that we can have other things we want even more.
The atomic basis of a happy, healthy society is the voluntary
exchange. I give someone my time and my work for eight hours a day
and he or she gives me money so I can make other voluntary exchanges
to buy my bread, drink, shelter, and entertainment. But the exchange
must be voluntary, not dictated by some priest or politician. If you
are free, you get to choose what it is that you give up in order to
get what you want to make you happy.
We are sick of listening to people telling us how our
PAGE 5
institutions of church, government, school, and medicine are going to
make us happy. We think it's time we started talking again about how
we can each maximize our own freedom in our own daily life.
We think it's time to advocate freedom now. That's why we have
started this journal and why we are distributing it through the
electronic media. We're going to take a tough minded, no nonsense
approach to freedom with no compromises. We expect to make a lot of
people mad at us. A lot of people don't want to be free.
Because they don't want to be free themselves, they don't want
you or me to be free. We think it's time we started telling those
people where they can go.
We want to talk about freedom on both the philosophical level,
and on the very practical level. How does one help his children
survive the compulsory public education system? How do you protect
your privacy from spying police thugs? How do you avoid troubles with
the child welfare authorities? What legal ways can you avoid taxes,
and how do people get away with illegal tax cheating?
We intend to challenge the very limits on the first amendments.
No subject will be taboo or forbidden, as long as it is directly
related to the concept of individual freedom. We don't want to go to
jail, so we won't advocate that anyone break any law, but we will
describe how other people have broken the law in pursuit of personal
freedom, and sometimes, how they got away with it. We will respect
the copyright laws. Anything that appears in this journal will be the
original work of the author and computer encoded with his permission,
and we do understand the difference between free speech and libel.
But with those caveats we will advocate the chaos of freedom.
Welcome to CHAOS. We are the organization that Max Smart was out to
stop.
- -------------------------------------------------------------*
| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
| mailing $2.00 to |
| |
| Mack Tanner |
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
| Moscow, ID 83843 |
| |
| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
| stamped envelope. |
- -------------------------------------------------------------*
PAGE 6
*--------------------------------*
| CHAOS AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING |
| |
| by |
| Mack Tanner |
*--------------------------------*
"Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine
beforehand which side of the bread to butter." --Anonymous
Most of you have probably heard the story about the clever young
man who offers to go to work for a businessman on a try-out basis in
which the young man will be paid only one cent on the first day, two
cents for the second day, four cent on the third day, and so on, the
salary doubling each day until the businessman decides whether or not
he wants to hire the young man on a permanent basis.
Thinking he's getting a good deal, the businessman takes on the
kid and a month slips by before the businessman decides he won't keep
the young man on. When the young man presents the bill for his wages
for thirty days, the businessman discovers it's cheaper to sign over
the company than paying the wages.
The businessman has just learned the truth of compound interest.
By doubling a single cent thirty times, you end up with $5,368,709.12
on the last doubling. The business man owes the young man over 10
million dollars for the thirty days of work.
While this common mathematical principle has long been
understood, it's only been in recent years that scientists have
examined and explored what impact compounding small sums can have on
what are called chaotic systems.
A chaotic system is any dynamic physical, biological, or
mathematical system in which a complicated set of data interact in
non-linear and non-repetitive way. (Anyone interested in a more
technical explanation of chaos theory should check out a library book
on the subject.)
Until recently, the philosophy of determinism was the basis
for much of scientific thought and direction. The concept was that if
we only knew the equations and had the precise data, the future
could be predicted. This concept is best summarized in Laplace's
famous statement:
"An intellect which at any given moment knew all the
forces that animate Nature and the mutual positions of
the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast
enough to submit its data to analysis, could condense
into a single formula the movement of the greatest
bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom:
for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and
the future just like the past would be present before
its eyes." Pierre Simon de Laplace, 1749-1827
Chaos theory now shows how naive and ridiculous this
statement is. What scientists have come to understand in only
the last few years is that in all chaotic systems, very small
variations in input data can have a profound impact on the future
development of the system. The more the variables at the
PAGE 7
initiation of the system, the greater the difficulty in
predicting what impact tiny increases or decrease in a single
variable will have on the progress of the system. In a perverse
sort of way, the longer term the prediction attempted, the
greater and more accurate the amount of initial data that is
required to make the prediction. As the thousands, or millions
of different variables act upon each other, no human, nor human
manufactured computing machine can predict what the smallest
change to any single variable will do to the future of the
system.
The most commonly cited example of a chaotic system is the
weather. Other chaotic systems include hydraulic turbulence,
biological species interaction, epidemiology, and all human societies
and economies.
Understanding chaos theory explains why scientists have such a
difficult time predicting the weather more than twenty-four hour in
advance and why they now realize that they will never be able to make
trustworthy long-term weather predictions. It is simply impossible to
collect the in-put data in the quantity and with the degree of
accuracy necessary to make a credible long term prediction. (Of
course, the government will never admit this is good reason to stop
spending billions trying to do so!)
Understanding chaos theory also explains why it will be
impossible for humans to ever control the weather to produce a desired
result with no danger of unexpected and undesirable results. Cloud
seeding may make it rain over a dry Iowa corn field, but the impact of
that intervention might result in an hurricane destroying a coastal
city in Florida six months, or six years in the future.
Given the complexity of the non-linear equations in describing
weather patterns, no scientist will ever be able to prove that it was
the cloud seeding that caused the hurricane, nor, for that matter,
that the cloud seeding didn't contribute to the hurricane's
development.
Humans can impact on or redirect a chaotic system, but we can not
prove or disprove exactly how the human intervention impacted on the
system over the long term. We will know we changed the system, but we
can never know how we changed the system, nor what the system would
have done if we had changed nothing.
All human societies and all human economic systems are chaotic
systems. They develop and progress as a result of an incredible
amount of input in which any single individual may do something that
will have an unexpected and unpredictable multiplier impact on how the
system will operate at some future point in time.
Chaos theory explains why social engineering can never produce
the expected result and why such schemes will always produce
unintended results. Chaos theory also explains why neither the social
engineers nor the critics of social engineering can ever prove what
real impact an attempt at social engineering actually had on the
economy and the society.
We have been listening to a lot of political debate about what
caused the riots in Los Angeles. The conservatives blame the
deteriorating situation of the city on social programs of the Great
Society, welfare dependency, government regulation, minimum wages
laws, high taxes, and moral decline while the liberals blame the
failure of the government to spend enough money, racism, police
brutality, illegal immigration, and the entire American corporate
cultural.
The entire debate is total bullshit!
There is absolutely no way anyone can scientifically establish
what things might have been done differently that could have prevented
the deterioration of our cities into the current social morass.
Furthermore, there is no way anyone can scientifically demonstrate
PAGE 8
what new proposals for social engineering will produce intended and
only intended future results.
The entire political debate over the domestic agenda that goes on
in connection with the current presidential election is also total
bullshit!
Nobody can explain scientifically exactly what caused the recent
recession nor place with any scientific certainty the blame on any set
of government actions. And nobody can predict what impact all of the
different proposed economic solutions will actually have on the future
world economic situation.
Yet every politician is demanding that we spend a trillion
dollars on programs that they can't demonstrate will work and they
won't ever to be able to prove that they did work once they are in
place.
The national economy and its interrelation with the world economy
is a chaotic system even more complex, unpredictable, and unmanageable
than the world weather and climate patterns. Any politician who
claims he can control it for the benefit of everyone without damaging
large groups of other people is either a fool, or a crook, or more
likely both.
The government can do lots of things that will have short term
impact on the economy. Political leaders can lower interest rates,
shift investment opportunities, legislate prices, regulate exchanges,
and all those things will alter the economic future of the economy.
But chaos theory explains why we can not predict what the long term
result of such action will be and why the unintended results may well
be much more disastrous than the original problem could have ever
become if left alone and free of government intervention.
All of this is scientific fact that can be described by
observation of prior events, the examination of mathematical formulas
and demonstrated with computer modeling.
But don't expect any political candidate, office holder, member
of congress, bureaucrat, or scientist working on a fat government
contract to admit the truth of this. For them to do so would be for
them to admit that the American federal budget is being wasted on
social engineering projects with no guarantees that they will work or
that they won't produce disasters.
Chaos theory not only explains why economic central planning
can't work, it also explains why government bureaucracy grows so fast.
Because political leaders and the bureaucrats refuse to recognize
that what they are trying to do can't be done, they work under the
delusion that they only thing preventing ultimate success is more and
better data. They excuse their repeated failures by insisting they
didn't have enough data, *which is right*, but they refuse to
understand that no matter how much data they collect, it will never be
enough to allow them to predict and control what the economy is going
to do.
Instead, they collect and quantify increasingly greater amounts
of data as the cost escalates much like the salary of the boy who
stated out at a penny for the first day's work. The more information
they collect, the more difficult the task of correlating,
interpreting, and analyzing the information they have. They hire ever
larger numbers of people who can be put to the task of collecting and
handling the information.
When things go wrong, the excuse is always a failure in
intelligence and the proposed solution is to hire more people and
gather more raw data. The more things go wrong, the more money they
spend trying to fix it. A fascinating conclusion of chaos theory is
that you cannot predict the result of the fix, even if you try to put
everything back exactly like it was! When we used DDT to kill the
PAGE 9
bugs and found out that it did more harm than good - in unexpected
ways - the decision to quit using DDT may have resulted in greater
damage than would have been the result of continuing its use.
But if the government can't control the economy for the benefit
of all, what is the government doing?
Our politician leaders and the bureaucrats they hire play exactly
the same role in the modern secular state that pagan priests and
shamans played in ancient civilizations. Except, where ancient pagan
priests and shamans promised to magically control the weather, stop
the earthquakes, and curse the enemy with disease and pestilence,
these modern wizards and magicians promise us that everyone will have
a good job, decent medical care, and a useful education while avoiding
drugs, unwanted pregnancies, and crime in the streets.
Fortunately for us all, the weather generally does treat human
populations pretty well, and despite the bungled attempts of
government interference, millions of free people, all looking out for
their own selfish interest, usually succeed in creating a chaotic, but
healthy economy that provides most of us with all the good things of
life and a few of us the chance to get rich.
Like their ancient counterparts always claimed credit for spring
rains, sunny weather, and good harvests, the modern political wizards
and magicians claim credit for the successful economy and insist that
the taxpayers contribute even more money to guarantee continued
success in the future. They are taking credit for things they didn't
do and charging us high prices for not doing it.
The amount they take for themselves and for those whom they
decide to bless with entitlement programs continues to grow. Most of
us are working five full months a year for the sole purpose of feeding
our monstrous and useless government beast. And still the wizards are
telling us they need more money.
They will keep demanding more money for as long as the taxpayer
will pay it. The debt will grow like the wages owed the clever young
man until it reaches the point where the whole government system will
collapse under the weight of it's own debt.
But don't worry. Just like the good weather stuck around for
long after humans gave up on paying pagan priests to guarantee good
harvests, the basic economy, the sum total of all human interactions
and economic exchanges, will still be around long after the collapse
of big government.
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
| THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You |
| may review and read sections of this electronic publication |
| to determine whether or not you would like to read the |
| entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or |
| if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use|
| or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by |
| mailing $2.00 to |
| |
| Mack Tanner |
| 1234 Nearing Rd. |
| Moscow, ID 83843 |
| |
| If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and |
| stamped envelope. |
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
PAGE 10
*----------------------------------------------*
| THE COMMON GOOD AND THE VOTER'S PARADOX |
| |
| by |
| Leon Felkins |
*----------------------------------------------*
"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."
--Graffiti
How many times has someone told you that everyone would be happy,
healthy and content *if only* people would forget their selfish
desires and work for the common good? By serving the common good,
don't we also serve our own enlightened self interests because the
common good guarantees the maximum benefit for every individual?
Wasn't the *me* generation a tragic mistake? Isn't it time we
returned to the ideal that each individual puts the community
interests above his own selfish interest?
Does working for the common good give a person greater benefits
than working for one's own selfish behavior?
If the answer is *yes*, then we should to be able to demonstrate
that an individual sacrifice has a real effect on the common good. If
my single, personal sacrifice can alter the final result, then I can
say that my sacrifice produces more in rewards than my personal costs.
But if my sacrifice makes no difference to the final result, why
should I make it, especially if I receive the benefits of the
sacrifice of others even if I make no personal sacrifice?
The truth is that an individual sacrifice for the common good
never produces a personal reward equal to the cost of the sacrifice.
Let's look at some examples to demonstrate what we are talking about.
Almost everyone will agree that voting is an important civil
duty. Moreover, it's a duty that requires little personal sacrifice
in our society. For most of us, it takes no more than a few minutes
of time. Polling places are easy to find, almost always near the
place where we live, registration is simple, the process is painless
and most of us have pretty definite opinions about whom we want to
elect. So how come only about half the eligible voters actually get
to the polls?
Let's say that on election day you find yourself 150 miles away
from home on a two day meeting. (The meeting was scheduled after the
final date for requesting an absentee ballot.) Your have a choice:
you could do your duty, drive home, vote and drive back. Or, you could
just forget the whole thing.
Most likely you will chose the option of forgetting about it--
this time. Your reasoning is sound. The cost for you to vote is
substantial while the return is, for all practical purposes, zero.
Why is that so? Because your vote will not actually make a difference
in the results of the election! While you may have other reasons for
voting or not voting, as far as the election process itself is
altered, your vote is just not significant.
PAGE 11
You won't be alone in deciding not to bother to vote. As many as
half the voters will not only decide voting is not worth the sacrifice
of driving two hundred miles, they'll decide it's not worth the
sacrifice of the risk of getting rained on, missing a favorite TV
show, being late for dinner, or driving six blocks out of the way on
the way home from work.
Let us look at the voting situation more carefully and examine
some of the counter arguments often made for why you should vote.
*What if the election resulted in a tie? Would not my vote count*
Sure, if that ever happened. But ties don't ever occur in large
elections and if they did there would be a re-count. Your vote would
still get obliterated!
*But I like to vote. I really don't care whether my vote does*
- any good or not - I get an internal feeling of having done my duty.*
- And, if the candidate I vote for wins, I can brag about how I help him*
- get elected.*
This is the real reason why most people do vote. They have
bought into a group of myths that make them think that their single
vote really does count. Because they believe those myths, voting
makes them feel good. If voting gives you a good feeling, by all
means do it, if it doesn't cost you a lot of time or money. But what
if you don't like any of the candidates, you know they are all crooks
and that not one of them will do what he or she is promising they will
do? Do you really feel good when you are forced to choose between
Slick Willy, Read My Lips, or a rich Texas shrimp?
*What about the possibility that my employer may reward me for*
- voting and/or there are other rewards for being a registered voter?*
If the reward exceeds the cost of voting, then vote. That is
rational. But how often does that actually happen?
The question is not why do so few people vote, but why does
anyone bothers to vote at all. Voting may be a fun and pleasurable
experience but it doesn't make rational sense as a way of getting a
payoff for the effort and sacrifice.
*If my voting will do nothing, what can I do to help get my*
Simple: get other people to vote, lots of them. If you can get
10,000 people to vote the way you want and your personal reward for
doing that exceeds the cost of your doing it then, rationally, you
should do it. It doesn't pay to vote, but it does pay to donate a
great deal of money to a political candidate which is then used to con
less intelligent and less rational people into voting for the
candidate who will promptly ignore the desires of those who voted from
him but do everything he can to serve the desires of those who made
big contributions to his campaign.
That is why it's so easy to buy elections. The thinking voter
gets no real, tangible rewards for voting; the bought voter gets
whatever pay-off he/she is offered.
PAGE 12
But if a single vote makes no difference to the outcome, what
about the other things our leaders ask us to do as a civic duty?
Let's look at another example of civic duty, one in which we
could argue that the personal sacrifice has a much greater impact on
the public good than the simple act of voting. Suppose you live in a
California city that happens to be running out of water. The mayor
declares - among other things - that the residents are to take baths
only two days a week. Although this is not your day to bathe, you
have just finished making a plumbing repair in the basement and you
are feeling really grungy. The desire to take a bath weighs heavy on
your mind.
You consider the options. They can best be stated by the
following "payoff matrix".
| Direct |Member of Community |
| Impact | Impact
----------------------------------------------------------
Take Bath | Great | - negligible |
----------------------------------------------------------
Don't Take Bath | Awful | + negligible |
----------------------------------------------------------
(The '-' means slightly negative; the '+' means slightly
positive)
When I take any action that uses community resources, it impacts
me in two ways. I am impacted directly by my action and I am impacted
as a member of the community.
With regard to the bath water example, the pay off matrix would
provide enough evidence to a rational person to conclude that the net
pay off is heavily in favor of taking a bath. The loss that he/she
would get from cheating as a member of the community is
insignificantly small.
Both of these scenarios present examples of a situation sometime
referred to as "The Voter's Paradox". Basically that paradox states
that the return to an individual from a group contribution that is
beneficial to the group will be less than the direct cost to the
individual. The paradox results from the fact that while the
individual may have a positive personal gain in not voting, if
everyone declines to vote, or to conserve water resources, we have a
disaster on our hands.
The two scenarios actually present two classes of the problem.
With regard to the voting dilemma, the problem is that there is
no return *at all* to balance the voter's cost of voting. The reason
why this is so is because elections are a binary (to use a term from
the computer world) event. Your candidate is either elected or not.
We do not put 55% of candidate A in office and 45% of candidate B. It
is all or nothing, which means that one less vote simply has no impact
on the final result. The very improbable case of a tie vote is
statistically insignificant.
The second example of a water shortage is not binary in that
every little bit of water in the reservoir does help, even if the
actual difference one bath may make is down in the noise ( to borrow
PAGE 13
another term from electronics). But one always gets a significant
reward for cheating, i.e. instant cleanliness. Yet, if half the
population does as I do, the impact is disastrous.
*What if everyone did that?*
Experience tells us that everyone won't. We can be pretty sure
that a significant segment of any human population will believe the
myths and do their duty. Like the sheep they are, they will vote,
conserve water, and offer every sacrifice for the common good that the
preacher, teacher, or politician tells them to make.
But we are not writing this for the sheep who do what they are
told to do. We're addressing this to those who think and act
rationally in their own self interests. The rational individual is
first concerned with the results of his/her actions as it impacts on
his/her own happiness and well being. Such a person may decide to
make a sacrifice in the common good, but will do so only if he or she
is certain that the personal sacrifice will produce a common good
result that is at least equal to or, hopefully, greater than the value
of the personal sacrifice.
What we are arguing is that such a situation almost never occurs.
Most of the time, a personal sacrifice never produces an impact on the
common good that would justify the personal cost.
The final paradox is that if everybody did as I contemplate
doing, then it would me even less sense for me not to cheat. The more
people who cheat, the less rational it becomes to be one of those
sacrificing personal good for the common good. The more rational,
self directed, selfish people there are in a community, the less
likely that appeals that everyone should work for the common good will
produce results.
This dilemma is sometimes called *The Tragedy of the Commons*
which refers to the early New England practice of establishing a
grazing commons used by everyone in the village. The commons pasture
was a limited resource which all members of the village could use for
grazing their milk cows and horses. The assumption was that the good
citizens of the community will each limit their use of the commons to
a fair share that would insure that the grass was not overgrazed. It
never happened that way. In every case the commons was overgrazed
into a dust patch. The reason was simple. Too many people recognized
that as the grass was a limited resource, they had to get the maximum
amount into their cows before some one else did. The expectation was
always that if one didn't take more than his or her fair share, the
next fellow would.
The *Tragedy of the Commons* poses an extremely serious dilemma
to those who would try to design a society based on the assumption
that individuals will contribute to the group's well being rather than
looking out for their own selfish interests. If we recognize that
individuals are driven by selfish desires and we are looking for a
rational basis for voluntarily contributing to community welfare, we
are in serious trouble.
Faced with the reality of the tragedy of the commons, society
usually opts for one of two different methods for insuring the common
good as well as the preservation of community resources. These two
methods are not complimentary, but contradictory.
PAGE 14
One of these is the pay-as-you go method, that is, the free
market. In the free market approach, every common resource, whether
managed by private owners or by a community government, is sold to the
public at a price high enough to insure that the resource is not
depleted. If there is a water shortage, then the price of water is
jacked up until people have no choice but to limit the amount of water
they use for bathing. This not only has the advantage of insuring
that water consumption goes down, it also gathers capital that can be
used to increase the supply of water through the creation of new
sources.
But the modern advocate of *socially responsible* government
objects to the market place approach because it results in an *unfair*
situation in which the rich wash their cars while the poor can't take
a bath at all. Such advocates of the common good claim that the only
way to fairly distribute a common necessity is by regulation. That
means that you jail people who take baths on the wrong day and the
only fair way to gather capital to finance new public projects is by
taxation. You not only have to collect enough tax to pay for the
water system, but you must also collect enough to hire the water cops,
pay the judges, and to build the jails where you will put both water
and tax cheats.
But does such government action really solve the voter's paradox
or the tragedy of the commons, or does it simple create a new commons,
a public treasury, that then becomes the target of plunder for selfish
people who will always put their own selfish interest above the common
good?
If we look at recent political history, it is obvious that the
tragedy of the commons could also be called the tragedy of the public
treasury. No matter how much we collect for the public treasury, it
will never be enough to meet the demands of those who claim a right to
use the money from the treasury.
It is not remarkable that each individual describes the public
good as those things that are in his own best interest. The elderly
want more social security and medical benefits, the trucker better
roads, the farmer crop subsidies, the investor bank guarantees, and
the politician every single benefit that will result in more votes for
him at election time. The inevitable result is that the government
never spends the revenue in the public good, but only for the benefit
of those clever enough to manipulate the system to their own benefit.
We can see the result in America today. The entire political
process has degenerated into a mad scramble over what should be
financed with public funds as our politicians spend us into national
bankruptcy.
This paradox affects our lives in a variety of ways every day. A
few more examples are provided for your amusement and to further
illustrate the general nature of the problem:
-- The congressman votes for more spending and higher taxes
because his direct reward is greater than the small loss to himself
of having to pay higher taxes. Further, the electorate of each
district continues to encourage the congressman to spend for the
benefit of their area, while complaining about the ever increasing
national debt!
PAGE 15
-- Even though free trade would benefit all nations and most
consumers, I, as an auto worker or textile mill owner, will
personally benefit more if I can elect politicians who will set
high tariffs and limit competitive imports.
-- The ecology of the earth will not be measurably affected by
my actions. The destruction of the mahogany forests does not really
depend on whether I buy this mahogany table or not. In any case,
not much is likely to happen in my lifetime.
-- If I somehow know that a chemical company stock is about to
gain $5, and I decide not to buy because the company makes
chemicals that end up in toxic dumps, two things happen: I lose a
chance to make $5 for every share I could afford to purchase and
the chemical company will feel absolutely no additional pressure to
abandon the production of these chemicals. In fact there will be
no impact on the company, nor their policies, whatever I decide to
do.
-- Currently the government is encouraging all of us to buy all
we can in order to stimulate the economy. It makes much more sense
for me to cut my spending and pay off my credit bills. If everyone
does that, the recession becomes a depression.
-- Young people who want to use their credit cards demand that
the government lower interest rates even though that cuts the
income of the elderly who are living on the interest off their
savings.
-- Should I contribute to Public Television? Not only will my
$25 contribution not impact whether the station stays on the air or
not, but my use of their service costs them nothing more than what
they already spend. Rationally, I use but don't pay.
--Consider the situation of a bank near possible failure.
Suppose that you know that the bank's situation is precarious and
that if several people suddenly withdraw their deposits, it will
have to close. You have $5000 in deposit. What should you do?
The bank will not close because of your individual action so your
withdrawal will not hurt other people. But if there is a "run" on
the bank, you lose $5000.
If the above arguments are correct, we can only conclude that a
rational and selfish individual will not voluntarily contribute to
community welfare even though he/she would share in that welfare. We
could even suggest that the only people who do voluntarily sacrifice
personal rewards for the public good are nothing but patsies. The
person who refuses to contribute to the common good gets a double
reward. He or she gets the immediate reward of the money or effort
saved, and the long term reward of collecting whatever public good the
patsies created.
*But doesn't altruism have it's own rewards?*
There are very convincing arguments that living human beings are
rarely altruistic. It is easier to believe that positive civic
actions by individuals result from stupidity, intimidation, bribes, or
the success of propaganda campaigns rather than true altruism!
PAGE 16
But can't we educate our children through the school system about
the importance of working toward the common good?
We have been trying to do that ever since the beginning of this
century. Education hasn't converted children into altruistic adults
in this country and it certainly didn't work in the Soviet Union where
the school system tried desperately to create the new socialist man
who would always work for the common good. Indeed, it seems that just
the opposite happens, the more educated a person is, the more he/she
is likely to take rational actions and less likely to be easily
convinced to sacrifice his own good for the common good.
What is the solution to this dilemma? Do those of us wise enough
to recognize the mythologies and the bull shit that priest and
politicians hand out decide that we have no choice but to go along
with the program of inducing guilt, intimidating the ignorant,
propagandizing the uneducated, and bribing the electorate as it has
been practiced by the churches, governments, and teachers for
thousands of years?
Or, do we shout out the truth? Do we admit to ourselves, and
tell anyone who wants to listen that sacrificing for the common good
makes no rational sense, that the only way to achieve the common good
is to make every thing a pay-as-you-go proposition with the free
market place determining what the price of every commodity and benefit
will be? Moreover, do we make a rational decision to take every legal
advantage of the common good and the common treasure for as long as
others are willing to believe in the myths that teach it is better to
serve the common good rather than look out for one's own selfish
interests?
Indeed, do we dare examine the very concept that there even is
such a thing as the common good? Or is that idea as mythical as the
morality that claims humans must put aside their own interest in order
to serve the interest of the community?
In reality, society is always a chaotic mixture of competing
needs in which the needs and wants of no two individuals ever match.
No matter how much you may want tax supported public schools, I'll
remain convinced that public schools are a failed social experiment
that should be junked. Some argue that the war on drugs does more
damage to society than drug addiction could ever do. Do agricultural
subsidies really serve the common good of the consumer who must pay
higher prices at the food counter?
There is not a single major political issue in modern America in
which there is anything approaching a consensus agreement about what
action must be taken in the common good.
*Would a society in which no one gave a damn about the common*
- good, be such a bad place to live?*
Such a society would not put the butcher, the baker, or the
farmer out of business. We all must count on other people, but the
best way to make sure that someone does what we want them to do is to
return the favor by performing for them what they perceive to be an
equal favor. That's what the free market is all about.
If you really think about it, we already live in a society in
which every individual is really looking out for their own self
PAGE 17
interest. It's just that we've allowed too many people to glibly lie
that they were supporting the common good when all they are really
interested in is their own selfish rewards. They lie about their love
for the common good because they want to take advantage of our
gullibility to get what they want out of the system. That includes
every person who now holds political office and every person who is
trying to get elected. Throwing the current bunch out and replacing
them is not going to solve the problem.
But what about the voter's paradox? How do we solve that
problem?
Why bother? If we give up the idea that people should sacrifice
for the common good, we take away most of the justification for the
politician. In a free society, voting shouldn't count for much. If
people take full responsibility for their own lives, that leaves
nothing for politicians to do. It's only when we allow the politician
to make us slaves of the common good that we have to worry about whom
we elect.
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
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*-------------------------------------------------------------*
PAGE 18
*-----------------------------------*
| BAD CITIZENS AND GOOD FREEDOM |
| |
| by |
| Jefferson Mack |
*-----------------------------------*
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every
class is unfit to govern." --Lord Acton
If every class is unfit to govern, then who will lead us? The
answer is obvious. No one!
Free, independent, competent people don't need leaders. A truly
free society is disorganized. Nobody is in charge. Nobody takes
orders. Everyone does exactly what he or she wants to do, taking
orders from nobody else. If you want something from someone else, you
make a voluntary trade or exchange in which both of you are happy with
the deal.
The people who preach the need to organize don't want you to be
free. What they want is for you to pay their bills and do their dirty
work so they can be free to do what they want to do.
The last thing someone who wants to boss others wants around are
independent, competent people who want to left alone to live their own
lives. Such people never make good citizens, not the way a politician
talks about good citizens.
A political leader will tell you a good citizen obeys the law--
every law. A good citizen works hard--at whatever job the government
tells him he is suppose to work at. A good citizen pays his taxes--
even if he doesn't have enough left over to feed his kids. A good
citizen volunteers his or her time to work on civic projects the
leader designs. A good citizen goes off to fight and die in wars with
people he doesn't know so that the leader can win a place in the
history books. The good citizen never complains--no matter how stupid
or crude a government official treats him nor how much a leader asks
him to sacrifice.
Give a politician enough good citizens and he will rule forever,
fat and happy, while the good citizens sweat and suffer and die to
make sure the political leader keeps the good life.
Politicians and bureaucrats spend a great deal of time and effort
trying to convince the people they rule that a moral person must be a
good citizen. Back in the dark ages they called it the "Divine Right
of Kings". Now days it's called patriotic duty, or civic
responsibility, but it all adds up to the argument that every decent,
honorable person must put the interests of the state and the
government above their own personal interests.
BAD CITIZENS HAVE MORE FUN BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE FREE.
A free society is supposed to have free citizens, not good
citizens. The day you wake up and realize you don't have all the
freedom you want, the first thing you want to do is bad citizen.
A bad citizen may love the place where he lives. He may love his
country and respect his neighbors. But a bad citizen won't love or
respect the people who run the government. A bad citizen will always
put his own interest and the interest of his family and friends above
PAGE 19
the interest of some common good as described by the people who hold
political power.
We are not talking here about violent criminals or rebels.
Political leaders love those kinds of people. They love pulling their
guns, arresting people and putting down riots. If you don't think the
politicians loved the recent events in Los Angeles, you haven't been
watching the TV news. Every single politician in the country has
jumped on the band wagon by promising us they'll solve the problem if
we'll just give them some more of our money and a little more of our
freedom.
Political leaders love big trials with lots of newspaper space.
It gives them a chance to show how powerful they can really be. They
are expecting open confrontation and they will be prepared to deal
with it. They have detention camps, secret police, riot control
equipment, and the army ready to go after all those who dare openly
confront the government.
But any political leader who's got a country full of peaceful bad
citizens has got a serious problem. Bad citizens work hard to support
themselves, they treat their neighbors with respect, they won't cheat
others for their own gain, and they don't do violent acts that hurt
innocent people.
What bad citizens won't do is help the government make his or her
life miserable. They continually try to maximize the freedom they
have, even if they have to break or ignore a few laws to do it.
Too many bad citizens make government almost impossible. That's
one big reason why the Soviet Union didn't work. Too many Soviet
citizens realized they were never going to get a fair share out of
socialism and they stopped being good citizens. They looked out for
themselves rather than the good of the State.
GOOD CITIZENS MAKE TYRANTS POSSIBLE.
Nazi Germany wasn't filled with people who wanted to throw Jews
into bonfires, make slaves of eastern Europeans, or rule the world
from Berlin. Nazi Germany was filled with good citizens and Hitler
did everything he could to make all those good citizens think they
were better off with him in charge, even if they did have to give up a
few freedoms. Hitler was more frightened that all those good citizens
might stop being good citizens than he was of the allied armies.
North Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq are filled with good
citizens, all of them hoping that by being good citizens, they will
help things get better. Only things keep getting worse. The good
citizen works harder but gets less to eat, has less fun, enjoys life
less, and has less hope for a better future.
BAD CITIZENS HAVE KEPT THE UNITED STATES FREE.
Back in 1917 a majority of the voters in the United States
decided they knew what was best for everyone and passed the Eighteenth
Amendment, taking away the freedom of a man to relax with a beer after
an honest day's work. Hundred of thousands in this great country
suddenly turned into bad citizens. They didn't organize into a let's-
bring-back-the- booze political party or start blowing up police
stations. All they did was to keep on drinking. Some bad citizens
were more than willing to smuggle, distill, or brew the booze and sell
it for a profit.
In 1933, the social manipulators and the do-gooders finally gave
up, agreed to throw out the great experiment and a tens of thousands
of people went back to being good citizens.
These kind of things keep happening all over this country. Have
PAGE 20
you tried driving a fixed fifty-five along our highways? A whole
industry has gotten rich selling us radar detectors to give us a
chance against the modern technology of the Highway Patrol.
Eventually, the wizards in Washington had no choice but to up the
speed limit to 65, at least in a few places.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, and every State and local
police department spend billions each year to try and stamp out the
use of recreational drugs. Yet every year, the price of the drugs go
down, while availability go up. Anybody who wants to smoke pot, can,
any place in the United States.
Other freedoms are under constant attack. Take the issue of gun
control. The people who tout this totalitarian principle keep telling
us that the majority of Americans want some kind of gun control. So
what? No majority in a free country has the right to take away the
freedoms of any minority. That's what freedom is all about, and
owning a gun is a damn good way to help make sure nobody starts
interfering with your personal freedom. As long as the people who
understand and believe that principle insist on keeping their guns, we
are going to be able to keep them.
In California the state government outlawed a whole collection of
different kinds of semi-automatic weapons and demanded that every
citizen register those weapons and turn them in. Non-compliance has
been almost total.
Americans used to be pretty good tax payers, way back in the
forties and fifties. But one day we woke up and realized that the fat
cat friends of Congress had all been given special privileges and were
paying less than their fair share.
So a whole lot of good taxpayers have turned into bad citizens.
We are now a nation of tax evaders. We figure every angle, both legal
and illegal to bring down our own taxes. Every increase in the tax
structure is matched or exceeded by losses as more ordinary middle
class citizens figure out ways to cheat on their taxes or join the
underground economy. We've now got the politicians against the ropes.
They are bankrupting the treasury, but they can't raise taxes any
farther because the know all us bad citizens aren't going to take it
any more.
If we keep protesting and evading new tax increases, eventually
the politicians will have no choice but to start cutting the waste if
they want to leave enough money in the treasury to keep paying them
their fat salaries.
Each of the above examples shows just how much we are a nation of
bad citizens. That's why we have as much freedom as we do. That's
why in recent years, this country has been moving in the direction of
more freedom, not less. The politicians are finally beginning to
understand that you can't take an American's freedom away and make it
stick. There are two many bad citizens in this country.
HOW TO SURVIVE AS A BAD CITIZEN
Once you realize that you are not living in a free country and
that there is no go reason why you should be a good citizen, there are
a few rules you need to learn so you can get the most benefit out of
being a bad citizen without suffering more loss of personal freedom or
even going to jail.
A smart bad citizen won't let himself get caught being bad. He
won't brag to his friends and neighbors about what a bad citizen he
is. He won't tell the local newspaper how proud he is of being a bad
citizen. He will not deliberately confront the government, and he
will avoid doing anything in public that will warn any government
official he is not a good citizen.
PAGE 21
The bad citizen tries to be the invisible man or woman, the
person the government official would never expect is denying the
government his help and cooperation.
That means if you want to be a bad citizen, you don't want to
stand on any street corners making speeches demanding revolution and
you don't want to run with a mob throwing rocks at police vehicles.
You just want to live your own life, doing everything in private you
want to do, exactly the way you want to do it.
You want to look like a good citizen. You will even want to do
some things that all good citizens do, like vote.
Only once you are in the voting booth, you vote against every
bond issue, every politician who's in office, and every new initiative
that will increase government power or raise your taxes. If the only
choice is between two common thieves then a bad citizen writes in
someone else's name, or even his own.
You insist on getting every possible government benefit you are
eligible for and demand every government service the law says you are
entitled to receive. If you are eligible, you'll collect social
security, unemployment benefits, use food stamps, dip into Medicare,
claim farm subsidies, and try to get the government to pay you for
drawing obscene art or writing nasty stories.
You may even decide to take a government job, if you can make
more money doing that than working for some private firm. But a bad
citizen who's got a government job takes all his sick leave, goofs off
every chance he gets, and does everything he can to minimize the
damage the government can do to other bad citizens.
But don't cooperate with the bastards when it's not to your
advantage to do so. Except when it's in your direct, economic
advantage, you ignore the government. Never voluntarily do anything
that will help the government in any way.
If bad citizens know someone who is cheating on their taxes,
violating a business license law, working in a job paying less than
the minimum wage, or selling a little dope, they don't call the
authorities.
A bad citizen files his income tax return but cheats in ways
that take advantage of IRS incompetence. Bad citizens work off the
books and don't declare the income. They'll drive one hundred and
fifty miles to buy a truck load of groceries in another state that
charges less sales tax.
A bad citizen loses his census form, or fills it in wrong. Bad
citizens don't provide the government any kind of information unless
they get an immediate benefit or there is a government official
standing there insisting that they do it.
Bad citizens don't sacrifice their own pleasures or happiness
just because the government tells them such sacrifices are in the
common good. They don't volunteer their services for anything the
government is trying to do, no matter how worthwhile the project
appears to be. If the politicians tell them there is an energy
crisis, they don't turn the heat down and the lights off if they can
afford the electricity.
Bad citizens enjoy the freedom of driving their own personal cars
instead of riding tax-subsidized mass transit systems or subjecting
their personal schedules to the demands of car pooling. Bad citizens
don't waste time sorting garbage unless there is a direct economic
benefit for doing so. They don't man a voting booth, support the
local sheriff, waste time in town meetings, donate to political
parties, report poachers, nor contribute to the Community Chest and
United Fund. They recognize that a government that steals freedom
shouldn't get any voluntary help.
PAGE 22
Of course, there is a chance that someone will show up at your
door pointing a gun to make you volunteer for some civic duty like
jury duty. When that happens, don't argue, go. But a bad citizen
won't do anything more than what is absolutely necessary. On
something like jury duty, it may even be possible to help screw up the
system even while pretending to act like a good citizen.
It the person on trial is accused of tax evasion, drug offenses,
bootlegging, pornography, non-violent sex offenses, a failure to
obtain a business license, or any other crime that shouldn't be a
crime in a free society, a bad citizen can always find some
justification for voting not guilty, even if every other member of the
jury is convinced he's guilty.
Such a bad citizen is exercising the right of jury nulification,
that is, the right to set a person free because the juror thinks the
law is not constitutional. But the bad citizen won't admit that to
the judge, the jury, nor the press. Instead, he or she will insist
that he or she was not convinced by the prosecutor's evidence.
When the government confronts a bad citizen, the bad citizen will
insist that the government official respect every right that the
Constitution and the law gives every citizen. The bad citizen makes
sure he knows what rights the law gives him, and then he demands they
be respected. The bad citizen will be polite, he will fight the urge
to get angry, he will never, ever, initiate violence against a
government official, but he will insist on his rights. Unless he is
presented with a warrant, he won't let a government official into his
house, he won't give permission to any officer of the law to search
any of his belongings, and he won't answer any questions, even
apparently innocent questions without first checking with a lawyer.
Even in the United States with all the protections against self-
incrimination, most of the people in jails are there because they
talked too much.
When questioned by a government official, the smart person in
such a situation becomes the dumbest citizen in the county. He hasn't
been reading the newspapers, doesn't listen to the radio, doesn't know
a thing about what is going on, but he loves the government, and loves
doing his civic duty, and he knows his rights.
If bad citizens are asked a direct question, they won't lie, but
they give as little information as possible. They never gives any
information that they are not required by law to give. But the do it
all courteously, never suggesting by tone or attitude that they are
being anything but totally cooperative.
All you have to do is say, "I don't want to answer that
question." If the government official insists you answer the
question, then you say, "I want to speak to my lawyer before I answer
that question."
But most of the time, the bad citizen will never be bothered by
some government thug because he will learn how to maximize his own
happiness without having to have any dealings with the politician or
the bureaucrat.
PAGE 23
EDITOR'S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING WILL NO DOUBT ANGER MANY OF OUR WOMEN
READERS AS WELL AS SOME MEN. WHEN YOU GET SO ANGRY YOU REFUSE TO READ
ANY FURTHER, PLEASE JUMP TO THE LAST PAGE AND READ OUR OFFER.
*------------------------*
| GETTING ALL YOU WANT |
| |
| By |
| Roger Victor |
*------------------------*
All you want of what? Come on! You know what I'm talking
about, the thing that most of us spend every waking hour thinking
about when we aren't getting all we want.
I'm talking about the one thing that women have a one hundred
percent monopoly on. And don't they know how to use it to get what
they want? As the old country song says, they learn it in the cradle.
They tease us, threaten us, deny us, bribe us, and get us to act like
cretins and idiots before they hand it out in small batches.
Most of us men will do almost anything to get it. We'll lie,
steal, pay, and even promise to love the little darlings.
Now unless you're rich, or so handsome that Greek Gods hide when
you walk by, there is only one way you will ever come close to getting
all you want.
You have to have a wife.
That's the deal men made for thousands of years. We brought
home the meat, fought off the wolves, plowed the fields, and held the
ladies when they were scared, all so that when the cooking fire burned
down, we'd get access to the treasure cave. The girls didn't just
furnish loving either. They cooked our food, sewed our clothes,
chewed leather to make our moccasins, and generally made themselves
handy all day long.
I've never known a bachelor who was getting all he wanted. I
certainly never did during those times in my life when I didn't have a
wife. The feminine libbers like to call it prostitution these days,
but call it what you like, most husbands paid well. Perhaps, they
paid too damn well.
Men didn't like to come home to find the creature with whom they
wanted to roll with the ground too exhausted to move because she had
spent the day scraping deer hides, stirring the mastodon stew, or
pounding the clothes on a rock to get them clean. The answer was a
credit card, a gas stove, a stainless steel pressure cooker, and
automatic washers. All the sweetheart really had to do was to push
the buttons on the dishwasher, run a vacuum cleaner across the floor,
throw the clothes in the Maytag, pop dinner in the microwave, and get
ready to make hubby's day as soon as he came home.
Leave it to Eve. She kicked herself out of paradise. She got
the idea that loverboy was having nothing but a good time all those
hours he was out making a living so she decided she wanted a career
too.
Instead of looking on men as great guys who did so much for a
woman just so he could get a bit of loving, they suddenly decided we
were oppressors, the people keeping them from discovering their true
selves.
Look what we have now, a real war between the sexes. If you are
PAGE 24
an educated American male between the ages of twenty-five and sixty,
if you went to college, and if you work with brains instead of brawn,
there is an eighty-three per cent chance you're not getting all you
want, even if you have a wife.
You're spending hours in singles bars pretending you're the
"new" male; you're changing diapers and washing the dishes after
you've cooked the meal; you're learning how to cry; and you're
watching TV reruns alone because your wife's out of town on a business
trip. You may not even be reading this in your own home because the
current woman in your life won't let you keep "sexist trash and
pornography" in the place. Whether you're married or single, the
- new* woman has got you jumping through hoops in so many different
directions that some of you are opting out, learning to live without
any of it at all.
Isn't it about time you stopped worrying about what women want,
and started to think about what you want?
Most men have pretty damn simple wants, a stomach full of tasty
food, a place to put our feet up in the evening, and all the loving we
can handle.
So, how do you do it, how do you get all you want?
The answer is so damn simple, it's surprising more of you
haven't figured it out.
YOU GET A HOUSEWIFE!
The word is housewife, like helpmate, a woman who accepts you as
the supplier of the good life and thanks you for being that by giving
you all you want--a woman who cooks your food, washes your clothes,
takes care of the kids, and crawls in beside you every night.
I'll bet you thought that wonderful creature didn't exist any
more. Your wrong, they are not extinct. But they don't hang around
the places the average modern American male lives.
Whether you're a twenty-two year old just drawing your first pay
check, a thirty-five year old that's about to renounce sex forever
rather than risk one more put down, or a forty-five year old with a
divorce settlement that makes the sex his wife handed out for fifteen
years the most expensive thing he ever bought, there is a woman out
there who can make you a good housewife, if you know where to look.
You are not going to find that woman in the senior class at the
local university. You won't find her in the corps of junior
executives in the corporation you work for, nor at the country club
your folks belong to. She won't be waiting for you in a bar where the
drinks start at $5.50 a shot. If you're young and you grew up in a
middle, or upper income family in the United States, there is a good
chance you have never met the kind of woman that makes a good
housewife.
If you want a housewife, you'll have to find a woman who is
living such a miserable life that she'll grab the chance of cooking
your meals, cleaning the house, spending your money, and playing
cotton tail in bed at night just to get out of the mess she hates.
For thousands of years, women gladly jumped at becoming a
housewife because that was a hell of a lot better life than anything
else they might do.
Now days, the modern, college educated, American women sees
herself as having a lot of other options that she thinks are better.
So where do you find a woman who doesn't have those options.
Here's a few suggestions where you can start looking.
PAGE 25
THE AMERICAN POOR
There are thousands of women working in jobs that pay minimum
wage with no prospects for moving up the salary scale. They are not
working because they like their career, they're working because they
will go hungry if they don't. Most of them have been working since
they were teenagers in drudge jobs that leave them dragging their ass
back home to small apartments and tasteless meals. They are the women
that never saw the inside of a disco, who read the funny papers and
romance novels, not THE SATURDAY REVIEW nor the Sunday edition of the
NEW YORK TIMES.
That's right, one way to find the perfect housewife is to slide a
few steps down the social ladder. Look for a woman who never went to
college, and maybe didn't even get a chance to finish high school. Go
hunting for a poor thing who will be only too happy to get pulled up a
ladder she never thought she could climb.
Make sure she understands what the bargain is when you find her.
You want a housewife that will stay a housewife, that will stay home
with the kids figuring out ways to make tasty but economical meals,
patching the hole in your sock instead of throwing the pair in the
wastebasket.
I'll admit that with the joys of the American education system,
the poor young ladies are much rarer than they used to be. But there
are still some of them out there. All you have to do is look. Belief
me, they will be happy you found them.
But where do you look for them?
You can't hunt deer in Central Park and you can't catch fish in
the bathtub. If you want to find a woman that will happily sign up as
a housewife, you'll have to go to the kinds of places they gather.
One place to look is the small cities and rural towns of
America. For every run-a-way from Minnesota that ends up selling it
on Times Square, there are a hundred more back home still keeping it
as a private stock and dreaming about a prince charming who doesn't
have black grime under his finger nails and won't insist that she keep
working at her job as a waitress or a construction crew flag girl so
he can afford a six pack every evening.
Save the money you would have spent on a Club Med vacation, and
drive up for a weekend to one of the rural towns of the state you live
in, not one of the places the tourist all go, but someplace where
everybody, especially the women, know that a male stranger is in town.
Take a summer vacation in the mid-west or one of the mountain
States. Forget about the girls sitting at the bar, or eating in the
fancy restaurant. Talk to the waitress, the girl checking out
groceries, the counter girl at the motel, or the meter maid putting a
parking ticket on your car.
You may not even have to go that far from your own home. Most
big cities have working class neighborhoods where parents often don't
have the money to send their children to college. Instead of sitting
at home watching the Celtics play basketball, take in a high school
game in the part of town where the fathers all carry lunch boxes off
to work every day.
The secret is making it clear from the very beginning exactly
what you are interested in--a housewife. When you meet a girl a
couple of social classes down the way, make sure you work into the
conversation early on how much you like the old fashion way, how badly
you want a wife that will be a housewife.
Making them understand that has a double advantage. First, you
weed out those girls who have read so much modern junk they think a
jump up the social ladder should mean an exciting career, not a life
PAGE 26
of luxury tending house and waiting for a man to come home for some
tender loving. The second reason is that you create a situation of
trust. Too many lower class women have been burned by the man with
money in his pocket who was looking for variety, not a lifetime diet.
You want to to convince them you're for real.
THE FOREIGN BRIDE
If you've made it in this country you wear Italian shoes and
suits from a London tailor. You use a Japanese camera and watch a
television set made in Korea. You drink German beer and French wine
and who with any money drives an American car? So why not look for a
wife in one of those countries that producing everything else that
makes life so nice to live.
You've seen the adds in the back of magazines. "Asian women
want to meet American men." It's not just the Asian women who are
jumping at the chance of becoming American housewives. There are
women waiting for someone like you in Mexico, Spain, any of the
recently communist countries, all of South America, and even Australia
and New Zealand too.
Don't just answer a magazine ad. Learn all you can about the
different foreign cultures. Pick the one that appeals to you most and
spend some vacation time visiting there. If possible, learn the
language of the country you focus your attention on.
I've spent years living overseas and I know dozens of American
men who have married foreign women, some as a first wife, and many as
a second try. It doesn't work every time, but most of the men I know
with foreign wives are a lot happier than the boys back on Madison
Avenue who are still trying to figure out what the American model
they're living with really wants.
THE NOT SO PRETTY
Every one likes a pretty girl on his arm and all cats aren't the
same in the dark, not if one weighs one hundred pounds and the second
one breaks the scale at three fifty. Still, homely women can make damn
fine lovers, and grateful ones too. There are thousands of women who
have given up the hope of ever being held, cuddled, and loved because
their parents never paid to get their teeth straightened, their
features don't quite fit together, their breast are too small, their
hips are too thick, or their hair too thin. When you meet one, make
her day and give her a smile. You might find there is a nice person
there, one that would be only too happy to play the old fashion game
of helpmate, if some man would only give her a chance. You'll be
surprised how pretty they can be in the dark.
So what if your friends smirk whenever you show up in public.
When they're home begging the stunning beauty they married for another
tiny bit of the loving she hands out once every two weeks, you'll be
sacked out and sound asleep, the dark hiding the silly smile on your
face the same way it hides your wife's crossed eyes or dumbo ears.
If you absolutely have to have a stunning blond hanging on your
arm whenever you show up in public, hire one for the occasion.
Believe me, it will be cheaper in the long run.
THE RELIGIOUS LADY
Don't forget about the woman who thinks Phyllis Shafley is
right, the girl who believes that God intended for the man to rule and
the woman to obey. However, move carefully here, unless you share
those same religious beliefs. If you don't, expect her to spend half
PAGE 27
her life trying to save your soul. Worse yet, sometime the religious
ones have been so sold on sex being evil, they never get over it being
a no-no. They'll let you, because the priest tells them they have to,
but they won't enjoy it, and neither will you.
THE DIVORCED AND THE WIDOWED
The older you get, the more of these there are going to be in an
age group that fits your needs. There will be so many of them by the
time you reach sixty, you may not even need to take a housewife to
make sure you get all you want. Way back when I was a kid I knew a
fellow named Chester who was sixty-five. He had a stable of women
hauling his ashes that would have done a Mormon patriarch proud. His
only problem was scheduling which one was putting out on what night.
Still, it's not just sex we're talking about, it's the other
goodies that go with living with a woman. If you're still healthy,
able to pay the bills that come from supporting a woman, and look like
you have a few more years, the widows and the divorcees, especially
the ones with children, will be lining up to listen to your offers.
ONCE YOU'VE GOT ONE PICKED OUT
The real problem isn't finding a helpmate, it's the hard
bargaining you have to engage in to make sure you get what you want.
No matter where you find the woman, the key point is making it clear
before she moves in exactly what the deal is. You'll be the one who
earns the salary, she'll take care of the housework, and you decide
when it's time to not make love. If you want to really be smart,
you'll put it in writing, along with some very clear understandings
about how you divide up the property and the kids if you decide she's
no longer living up to her share of the bargain.
The modern American woman working beside you at the office will
hate you for it. She'll sneer at you, call you a pig, and try to talk
your wife out of the happiness you both have. She will also spend a
lot of time wondering why she can't have what that poor, foreign,
uneducated, homely twit waiting for you at home has--a man who acts
like he wants to act, not like NOW thinks he should act.
I ought to make it clear here that I like the modern, educated,
career oriented American woman. I've always liked bright, intelligent
ladies. I agree they must be paid exactly what a man is paid if they
are doing the same kind of work, and I have absolutely no problems
taking orders from one if she happens to be the boss. At different
times, I've worked for three different women and I got along great
with all of them and promotions from two of them. I agree that they
have every right to work free of sexual harrassment with the full
respect of their co-workers.
Some modern, educated American women even make good housewives.
There are those who have figured out that being a wife and a mother
can be just as rewarding and certainly as important to society as any
job they could ever find. If you find one of those, you may have
found the best of everything.
EDITOR'S OFFER: EVERY HUMAN BEING IS ENTITLED TO FIND HIS OR HER OWN
HAPPINESS, INCLUDING HAPPINESS IN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE, THROUGH
THE BARGAINING PROCESS. WE WOULD LIKE TO PRINT A COUNTER-PIECE TO THE
ABOVE ARTICLE, WRITTEN BY A WOMAN AND SUGGESTING HOW THE MODERN
AMERICAN WOMAN CAN BEST FIND THE KIND OF MAN SHE WOULD LIKE TO SHARE
HER LIFE WITH AND WHAT KIND OF BARGAIN SHE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE WITH
SUCH A PERSON. WE PROMISE WE WILL PUBLISH IN A FUTURE ISSUE OF *THE
CHAOS ADVOCATE* THE BEST SUCH PIECE SUBMITTED TO US.
PAGE 28
*----------------------------*
| WANTED: A FEW GOOD WRITERS |
*----------------------------*
We are looking for a few good creative writers, philosophers, and
political theorists who are committed to the idea of personal freedom
in all things. If you have something to say on this subject, let us
include it in this electronic magazine. We are especially interested
in personal experiences and practical advice that explain how an
individual can maximize his or her own personal freedom in confronting
and surviving the suppressive institutions of culture, state, church,
school, and corporate business. We will also consider good fiction
that deals with the same set of problems.
For legal reasons we will not publish anything that advocates
specific criminal activity nor anything that libels or slanders a
living human being or legal person. Other than that, we will give
serious consideration to any manuscript that advocates chaos and
freedom.
We can not offer authors any recompense other than the chance to
get published in an electronic medium. We welcome articles that have
been previously printed in other medium, provided the person making
the submission has the legal right to put the manuscript into
publication.
Anyone submitting an article for publication in THE CHAOS
ADVOCATE will retain all rights to the article or story except for the
electronic publication of the article in a single issue of this
electronic magazine.
Writers wishing to submit articles and essays for publication can
upload them to any one of the following E-mail addresses.
Compuserve: 72037,2673
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The Rational Life Bulletin Board
615-433-7869
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We welcome queries and comments.