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The post A Review of the Smoke Hollow 26142e: What You Need to Know appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>The smoker packs some impressive features and lets you cook different dishes simultaneously or separately. An in-depth review of the Smoke Hollow 26142E may be all it takes for you to realize that you need to add it to your cooking appliances collection.
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Char-Broil Analog Steel Electric Smoker - 18202077 | Buy on Amazon |
Choosing the right smoker is key to ensuring that you enjoy cooking convenience and all the benefits of smoking food. There are many products on the market today, and that can end up creating some confusion in selection. However, with some basic information, you will be able to sift through the options and settle on the most ideal.
There are different types of smokers, including electric, charcoal, and gas smokers. Understanding some of the advantages of the different types of smokers can help ensure you make the right choice.
Electric smokers are easy to ignite and operate, while charcoal smokers often take a longer time to cook food and may require undivided attention with regards to regulating airflow and heat output. Gas smokers are also convenient but are generally an expensive option when compared to electric or charcoal smokers.
Different dishes require specific cooking conditions, which is why you should think about the type of controls a smoker has. Integrated controls should be easy to adjust so that you can get the ideal temperature outputs.
High-end smokers sometimes feature smart temperature probes that let you monitor conditions on your laptop or smartphone.
It is always a good idea to pick a smoker that features heavy-duty construction. This often promotes durability and lets it withstand rugged use. Compact smokers are recommendable for outdoor cooking because they are easy to transport.
The amount of money you pay for the product you need should be another issue to keep in mind. High-end smokers usually have additional features that may include wheels, covers, and extra space for food prep. However, you can still get impressive smokers at a relatively cheap rate.
Image via: Pixabay
Smoking different types of foods can have a variety of benefits with a few being preservation, killing certain germs, and enhancing the appeal of food.
Image via: Pixabay
Smoking foods such as fish and meat helps prolong their shelf life. With the right handling, such food can last for up to four days in a refrigerator or three months in a freezer.
Image via: Pixabay
Many bacteria often attach to food and may cause harm to human health. Smoking food helps kill some of those bacteria and slows down the growth of others.
Image via: Pixabay
When certain foods go through a smoking process, they become more appetizing. Some examples of such foods include meat and sausages. Smoking also enhances smell and flavor.
Another advantage of smoking food is that it makes it tender enough for people to consume easily.
Image via: Amazon
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The Smoke Hollow 26142E is an electric appliance that utilizes 110-volts of power and comes across as one of the most impressive smokers in the market today. It has innovative features that simplify operation and a compact design for portability. A closer look at this smoker should help you appreciate why it is an exceptional appliance to add to your collection
The Smoke Hollow 26142E comes with two chrome-plated cooking grids to accommodate any food under preparation. The racks can adjust to variable heights for convenience and optimal results.
Integrated side handles make it possible for you to quickly move this smoker from one point to another, while a cool-touch spring wire door handle with a latch system makes for convenient access and safety when opening or closing the cooking chamber.
Another feature of the Smoke Hollow 26142E is a removable, porcelain-coated water pan that collects any fluids that drip during food preparation. The water pan simplifies cleaning after food preparation. Additionally, this smoker comes with a porcelain-coated chip tray for convenience.
Image via: Pixabay
The Smoke Hollow 26142E has an overall 1.3 cubic foot capacity, which is enough to prepare food for an entire family. You can divide the cooking chamber with the two available grids to organize food according to type, or remove one rack to accommodate bulk foods.
Image via: Pixabay
This particular smoker features heavy-duty construction, which helps enhance longevity even with frequent use. The robust, fully-welded steel cabinet can withstand heat and other elements that may otherwise cause damage.
Side handles help simplify mobility while a full-length door helps trap heat within the cabinet and guards food against getting into contact with germs during preparation. The Smoke Hollow 26142E has four legs and a compact design for convenient placement and storage. It also features a long power cord on the side for quick connectivity to a power outlet.
This smoker is available on Amazon with a customer rating of 3.7 out of 5.0 stars. Users who like it say its quite easy to set up and operate. They also claim that it is durable and can easily cook large meals. Users who give it a low rating say that the Smoke Hollow 26142E has a faulty temperature control system and that it develops rust in specific parts.
While the Smoke Hollow 26142E boasts of functional parts and sturdy construction, it is not necessarily the only smoker that can produce good cooking results. A look at other electric smokers on the market should help bring things into perspective.
Some of the best alternatives available include Masterbuilt 20071117 30-inch Digital Electric Smoker, Char-Broil Analog Electric Smoker, Southern Country Smokers 2 in 1 Electric Water Smoker, and Bradley Smoker BTDS76P 990216 Bradley Digital 4 Rack Smoker.
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This is another electric smoker you can use as a beginner or pro. It features robust steel construction which helps it withstand rugged use. It is compact in design, making it easy to position indoors or outdoors and has four legs for convenient placement.
The Masterbuilt 20071117 30-inch Digital Electric Smoker has digital panel controls for smooth operation and monitoring. An integrated thermostat temperature control lets you get the ideal settings depending on the results you want to achieve, while a fully-insulated smoker body ensures food doesn’t lose flavor through evaporation.
This product has a patented, side wood chip loading system that allows you to add chips without opening the smoker door. While the Smoke Hollow 26142E has two grids, this particular smoker comes with four chrome-coated smoking racks to organize food. Additionally, it has an adjustable air damper for smoke control.
Users on Amazon give this smoker a rating of 4.0 out of 5.0 stars. Those who love it claim that it is sturdy and withstands frequent use. Consumers with a different opinion say it works well as an oven but falls short of producing excellent results when smoking. There are also some who claim it has multiple manufacturing defects.
The Char-Broil Analog Electric Smoker is a smoker that also has a compact design for convenient storage and portability. It features sturdy steel construction to help enhance durability and has four legs for easy positioning. This smoker has a 1200-watt heating element for quick food preparation.
A door-mounted temperature gauge lets you monitor cooking conditions, while dual latches help keep the door sealed. This smoker offers up to 544 square inches of cooking area, which is enough to prepare large meals. It comes with three chrome-plated cooking grates to hold food.
Double-wall insulated construction helps trap heat within the cooking chamber, while dual-exhaust ports help control smoke and airflow. This smoker also comes with a large-capacity wood chip box that allows for prolonged smoking without the need for frequent refilling.
An aluminized steel water pan keeps meat or other dishes moist and juicy, while a removable drip tray ensures easy cleaning after food preparation. This particular smoker has an impressive Amazon rating of 4.2 out of 5.0 stars.
Users who like it say it is easy to set up and withstands the test of time. Individuals with a different opinion claim the heat output is not accurate and that it has poor quality construction.
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The Southern Country Smokers 2 in 1 Electric Water Smoker is a versatile alternative to the Smoke Hollow 26142. It features 351 square inches of cooking space, which is enough to accommodate large meals.
The smoker comes with two chrome-plated cooking grids to help organize food, a built-in temperature gauge for monitoring, and a 1500-watt heating element for heat production. It features a chimney-like design that makes it compact enough to fit in small spaces.
Its three legs let you position it on different surfaces, while the heat-resistant wooden side and hood handles ensure safety when moving. Sliding access doors on the sides simplify adding water and chips. The smoker comes with an extra-large 5.5-quart water pan to optimize the slow cooking process.
This product has a 3.3 out of 5.0-star rating on Amazon. Users who love this product say it’s easy to assemble and transport. They also say it is relatively easy to operate. Some users say it does not retain heat, making it less than ideal for cooking.
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This smoker features robust power epoxy steel construction to ensure durability. It comes with four cooking racks to organize different dishes and has a digital control panel for smooth operation. Its four short legs make it possible to position it on most surfaces, while the compact design takes up little space in storage.
This particular smoker has a rating of 3.6 out of 5.0 stars on Amazon. Users who like it say quality construction makes it an excellent option for those who want something for long term use. Individuals that dislike this smoker claim it develops numerous problems after some time of use.
The Smoke Hollow 26142E is a versatile smoker that lets you prepare your favorite dishes conveniently. It is quite easy to operate and makes light work of the cleaning process. Its compact design ensures you don’t have to worry about storage space.
It’s worth noting that this appliance features premium material construction, which makes it withstand rugged use. The Smoke Hollow 26142E does not require any special maintenance work. Instead, all you have to do is follow the instructions for use and wipe it clean with a wet piece of cloth after cooking.
Do you have any fun recipes to prepare on the Smoke Hollow 26142E or want to share your experience with smoked food? Go ahead and let us know in the comment section.
The post A Review of the Smoke Hollow 26142e: What You Need to Know appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>The post How to Smoke Salmon in an Electric Smoker to Perfection: Complete Guide appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Learning how to smoke salmon is an easy and fun weekend cooking project that is perfect for entertaining a crowd. There are also endless varieties of ways you can use your home-smoked salmon.
Try serving up Sunday breakfast with some smoked salmon, cream cheese, and bagels for a fun buffet. Or perhaps use your smoked salmon in a fun party dip to enjoy with friends.
Before we look at how to smoke salmon in an electric smoker, let’s learn a little more about this dish and smoking methods.
Smoked salmon has its roots all over the world. Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska regularly preserved their salmon by drying and smoking it over alder wood.
Smoked salmon is also an essential part of Jewish cuisine. Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe settled in Britain and began to preserve Scottish salmon. European Jews also brought smoked salmon with them to the United States.
While you may think where there is smoke, there is fire, when it comes to smoking fish, including salmon, that is not always the case.
There are two types of ways to smoke salmon: cold smoke or hot smoke.
Cold smoking uses a mixture of salt and sugar, also known as a cure, that flavors the meat and draws out much of the moisture. After curing, the salmon gets smoked at relatively low temperatures, around 80-degrees Fahrenheit or less. While this smoke imparts flavor, it does not cook the fish. When cold smoking salmon, the fish stays in the smoker for a relatively short amount of time.
In contrast, hot smoking flavors the fish with a wet brine. The smoking temperature for hot smoking is over 120-degrees Fahrenheit. The hot smoking method both flavors the fish and cooks it, allowing you to consume it safely. Hot smoking typically takes several hours.
When smoking fish like salmon, precise temperature control is essential. While you can smoke salmon using a charcoal grill or pellet smoker, learning how to smoke salmon in an electric smoker can give you a bit more control.
Electric smokers allow you to control the temperature inside the smoker precisely. To produce smoke, an electric smoker uses an electric heating element to start the woodchips. When the ambient temperature reaches its threshold, the component turns off.
However, if the ambient temperature gets too cold, the heating element turns back on. This produces a more steady smoke and heat, allowing you to get a great smoky flavor without significant temperature fluctuations.
Here is what you will need to smoke salmon in an electric smoker.
To make excellent smoked salmon, you will need to start with a great cut of salmon.
While freshly caught fish is a great option when smoking salmon, you can also use frozen salmon in your electric smoker.
In fact, according to champion angler fisherman Buzz Ramsey, the freezing process destroys the cell structure in the fish. That allows the fish to take on more flavor from the cure and the smoking process, leading to a more flavorful product.
While you can smoke any salmon, it’s essential to be aware that not all salmon is the same.
Wild salmon is salmon that is caught in the wild. Wild-caught salmon is incredibly flavorful with a distinct pink-orange hue to the flesh. Be mindful that it tends to be on the leaner side and quickly dries out.
Farm-raised salmon is salmon that is bred and raised in captivity. This salmon tends to be fattier, with a mild flavor. Farmed salmon gets its color from additives to their feed.
Smoked salmon gets the majority of its flavor from two sources: brine and wood chip smoke.
Salting is an integral part of the smoking process. When you salt your fish, you help impart flavor, and the salt helps to preserve the fish as well.
When preparing salmon for smoking, you can salt your fish using a wet brine or a dry rub.
Wet brines are typically used for hot smoking. A wet brine is a salt dissolved in water, along with any other flavorings. Wet brines may also be poured over the fish during the hot smoking process.
Dry brines are a dry combination of salt and other seasonings that you coat the fish in. Once coated, you let the fish rest in the refrigerator for a few hours or a few days, depending on the recipe. This process helps to draw out excess moisture from the fish.
The type of wood chip you use will determine the smoke flavor in your smoked salmon. Alderwood is a common choice for smoking salmon and is the wood traditionally used by the indigenous tribes of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. However, other light woods like apple, hickory, and oak can produce delicious smoked salmon.
Now onto the good stuff: learning how to smoke salmon in an electric smoker! This recipe is originally from Fine Cooking.
Be forewarned that this will take some time to brine, dry, and smoke properly. You want to give yourself about two days for this project. The good news is that most of this time is hands-off, so you do not have to worry about babysitting the salmon.
You will need the following ingredients for this recipe.
Smoked salmon takes a fair amount of time as well as equipment. Be sure to have all of this handy so that you can cut down on the overall work.
While your electric smoker can maintain the smoker’s temperature, you need a meat thermometer to monitor your salmon’s temperature.
Instant read thermometers are suitable but require you to open the smoker to test the doneness. Whenever you open your smoker, you let out heat and smoke, which may prolong the cooking time.
Alternatively, continuous read probe thermometers stay in the fish and allow you to check on fish without opening the smoker continuously.
Have a good pair of oven mitts to take your salmon in and out of the smoker. Good gloves can also protect your hands if you need to add wood chips to your smoker.
Prepare your salmon fillet by deboning and scaling, if necessary.
Fishbone tweezers could help remove any stubborn pin bones if your fishmonger missed them initially.
Prepare the brine by dissolving your sugar and salt in one quart of hot water. Add the rest of the water and cool your brine completely before using.
Submerge your salmon fillet in the brine for at least 8 hours and up to 12 hours. Be sure to keep your brine and salmon cool in the refrigerator through the brining process. Rotate at least once halfway through the brining process to ensure that the fillet is evenly brined.
After brining, remove the salmon fillet. Pat dry with paper towels and then place on a rack, skin side down. Place the salmon back in the refrigerator, uncovered.
This drying process forms a membrane, known as the pellicle. The pellicle will make the fish look slightly darker, and be somewhat tacky to the touch. The pellicle will help smoke better adhere to the fish, making it taste better. It may take a few hours or up to overnight.
Prepare your smoker with the woodchips of your choice, according to your electric smoker’s manufacturer’s directions, bringing it to an internal temperature of 200-degrees Fahrenheit.
If you are worried about your salmon drying out, you may want to include a tray of water to keep the salmon moist while it cooks.
Once you have your smoker prepared and pre-heated, add your salmon to the smoker. Close the door and smoke until your salmon reaches 145-degrees internally for at least half an hour. Cooking times will vary between electric smoker manufacturers and the size of the fillet.
Once your salmon is done smoking, remove it from the oven. While you can eat it warm, hot smoked salmon is easier to cut after it has cooled. Store any leftovers by wrapping in plastic wrap or butcher paper, and keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Whether you are a fisherman who wants to preserve your catch or an amateur gourmand looking to add to your repertoire, learning how to smoke salmon in an electric smoker is a great weekend project. By using an electric smoker, you can cut down on some of the guesswork that comes with using manual smoking methods.
Do you love smoked salmon? What’s your favorite way to serve it? Are you interested in learning how to smoke salmon in an electric smoker? Let us know in the comments!
The post How to Smoke Salmon in an Electric Smoker to Perfection: Complete Guide appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>The post Everything You Need To Know About The Little Chief Electric Smoker appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Smoking both dries out food and introduces natural preservatives from burning wood. This makes food last longer, which everyone, from early hunters to farmers to fishers, all appreciated.
Eventually, fishers in Northwest America mastered this technique. They discovered that not only does smoking fish make it last longer, but it also makes them more delectable.
By figuring out the perfect wood and temperatures to cook with, fishers made smoking meat an art. One that we all can cherish today.
Comparison Table
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Masterbuilt® Digital Electric Vertical BBQ Smoker with 710 Cooking... | Buy on Amazon |
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Char-Broil Offset Smoker, 30" | Buy on Amazon |
The first thing you need to know about the Little Chief electric smoker is that it’s not for cooking food. It’s a true-to-heart smoker.
If you plan on cooking something with the Little Chief electric smoker, it’ll have to be small. That’s because the Little Chief runs at a low temperature, and you can’t change it.
That’s also the charm of the Little Chief electric smoker. You don’t have to mess with any controls, because there aren’t any. Furthermore, the Little Chief doesn’t require any assembly.
Simply place your food in the smoker, set a timer, and you’ll have delicious smoked food to enjoy.
Image via: Pixabay
For as low as it costs, the Little Chief electric smoker has a healthy number of features. Despite how simple it looks, the Little Chief’s much more than a large aluminum box.
You don’t have to be a professional pit boss to use the Little Chief electric smoker. Right out of the box, the Little Chief is ready to go.
The wood pan’s easy to fill up, and to start smoking, you just turn the Little Chief on.
After your food’s ready, clean up’s just as easy.
The racks and drip pan in the Little Chief are removable, so you don’t have to hunch and toil to clean the smoker. The drip pan’s even dishwasher safe, keeping you from having to do any scrubbing.
Image via: Pexels
Buyers adore how easy the Little Chief electric smoker is to use and assemble. They rave about how they’re able to make amazing smoked food with barely any effort.
Beginners to smoking food love that they can have unbeatable jerky without having to undergo complicated steps. Not having to choose a temperature takes out half of the guesswork of cooking for them. With its front-loading design, adding meat to the Little Chief is as easy as grabbing food from the fridge.
The Little Chief electric smoker’s simplicity also makes it long lasting. The Little Chief electric smoker lacks complex parts that could break, leading reviewers to praise how their smoker has been running for years on end without issues.
Buyers also found the Little Chief’s aluminum construction kept it lightweight and portable. A few reviewers said the downside of this is that it’s easy to dent the Little Chief.
The only problem with this simplicity is that some reviewers got caught off guard. Some buyers didn’t know you couldn’t cook with this smoker and were dismayed at the lack of temperature control.
Image via: Pixabay
Many Amazon reviewers are in love with their Little Chief electric smoker despite its 3.6 out of 5-star rating.
Image via: pexels
Buyers adore how easy the Little Chief electric smoker is to use and assemble. They rave about how they’re able to make amazing smoked food with barely any effort.
Beginners to smoking food love that they can have unbeatable jerky without having to undergo complicated steps. Not having to choose a temperature takes out half of the guesswork of cooking for them. With its front-loading design, adding meat to the Little Chief is as easy as grabbing food from the fridge.
The Little Chief electric smoker’s simplicity also makes it long lasting. The Little Chief electric smoker lacks complex parts that could break, leading reviewers to praise how their smoker has been running for years on end without issues.
Buyers also found the Little Chief’s aluminum construction kept it lightweight and portable. A few reviewers said the downside of this is that it’s easy to dent the Little Chief.
The only problem with this simplicity is that some reviewers got caught off guard. Some buyers didn’t know you couldn’t cook with this smoker and were dismayed at the lack of temperature control.
Image via: Pixabay
Although the Little Chief lacks many features, buyers appreciated the meals they could make with it.
For the low cost, reviewers were able to smoke fish, venison jerky, trout, nuts, cheese, and they loved all of it. Reviewers consistently mentioned how the Little Chief electric smoker gave their food delicious flavor.
Reviewers were even able to make juicy chicken and hamburgers using the Little Chief.
Although you can’t thoroughly cook these meals in the Little Chief electric smoker, you can incorporate the Little Chief into their cooking process. This adds a whole new layer of flavor to any of your Saturday afternoon grilling sessions.
The major flaw to smoking with the Little Chief smoker is its poor insulation. If you try using the Little Chief in windy or cold weather, the internal temperature will drop drastically. To make up for this, you’ll either have to use an insulating blanket or use the Little Chief like it’s a cold smoker.
Image via: Pixabay
In making our review, we’ve aimed to lay out all of the Little Chief electric smoker’s features. Rather than speaking strictly of the smoker’s components, we also focused on how its features will apply to your method of smoking.
To get a good idea of whether the smoker would be right for you or not, we also looked at reviews by publishers and buyers. Reviewers helped us find applicable information for the best ways to use the smoker.
Amazon reviews furthered this investigation. We used Amazon review to get a glimpse into what everyday buyers enjoyed and disliked about the Little Chief smoker. By bringing this information together, we hoped to present a complete look at the Little Chief electric smoker.
If you want to smoke meat, you’ll appreciate the Masterbuilt 30-inch digital electric smoker. Amazon reviewers rated the smoker 4.0 out of 5 stars, enjoying the variety and ease of use the smoker offers.
The smoker reaches between 200 to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing you to cook more than just jerky. Reviewers said they were able to cook whole chickens, ribs, and more with the Masterbuilt.
What’s unique about this smoker is its control panel. All you have to do is set the temperature and the timer, and it will do the rest. The main problem with the panel is that it’s hard to read in direct sunlight.
The smoker has four racks, giving you plenty of room to cook food. The entire smoker is 20 inches long by 20.5 inches wide by 33.3 inches tall, giving it more space than the Little Chief.
Another special feature is the unique side panel the Masterbuilt has. You’re able to add chips through the panel while cooking, rather than opening the entire front door.
As for the negatives, buyers said the chip holder itself doesn’t hold many woodchips. Reviewers also felt the smoker didn’t put out enough smoke unless cooking higher than 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Finally, there were some various defects reviewers came across, such as paint peeling inside the smoker’s doors.
The Masterbuilt 30-inch digital electric smoker does its job well. It’s more expensive than the Little Chief, but if you want to smoke a variety of meat, this will be a better bet.
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Camp Chef is a well-known brand in the realm of smokers. They provide high-quality smokers that tend to run on the expensive side.
The Smoke Vault is a propane smoker that follows this trend, earning 4.2 out of 5 stars by Amazon buyers. The higher price pays off in build quality and versatility.
It has two racks compared to the Little Chief’s four and has dimensions of 18 inches wide by 16 inches long by 30 inches tall.
It also has three damper valves, helping regulate temperature, unlike the Little Chief. The Smoke Vault also has a thermometer on the front door, increasing your control over temperature.
Although the Smoke Vault isn’t an electric smoker, it’s in this list because it’s ideal for those who want more out of the Little Chief.
The Smoke Vault cooks from 215 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This gives you variety in what you wish to cook or smoke.
If you want to smoke meat like briskets, chicken, and ribs, the Smoke Vault will serve you better than the Little Chief.
If you want to stick to small items, though, you might prefer the Little Chief. The Little Chief’s more affordable than the Smoke Vault. Also, the Smoke Vault requires refilling propane tanks, which can be a hassle.
When it comes to price, the Char-Broil Analog electric smoker is closest to competing with the Little Chief. For a reasonable price, the Char-Broil Smoker is very well built.
Earning 4.2 out of 5 stars by Amazon reviewers, the Char-Broil smoker is praised for being a great all around smoker. The Char-Broil smoker reaches up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, letting you smoke meat such as ribs and pork butt.
With three grates and 544 square inches of cooking space, there’s plenty of room to get creative with. At 20.7 inches wide by 15 inches long by 33.5 inches high, this smoker model is slightly larger than the Little Chief.
Reviewers consistently applaud the smoker’s build quality. It’s insulated fairly well and any issues reported are usually cosmetic.
When it comes to smoking, the Char-Broil electric smoker comes with a water pan, keeping your meat juicy and tender. Reviewers felt the wood chip tray was a little small, but nothing terrible.
As for setting the temperature, the smoker has a dial that you use to set the smoker’s heat. There’s a thermometer on the front door, which helps you get that perfect temperature.
It takes a little effort to get the hang of but is worth the savings when compared to the Masterbuilt smoker’s price.
The Char-Broil analog electric smoker gives the Little Chief and the Masterbuilt smoker a run for their money. It’s an all-around reliable electric smoker with minor drawbacks.
PROS
CONS
Wrapping things up, the Little Chief electric smoker has a specific type of buyer in mind. The smoker has one, moderately low temperature, restricting your options for smoking.
You can’t cook slabs of meat like you can in the other smokers mentioned. Instead, you have to use the Little Chief Electric Smoker for small items like jerky, sausage, and bacon.
If you want to use the Little Chief with food like chicken and ribs, you can only use it as a final touch after cooking the food elsewhere. The low cost makes the Little Chief perfect for this method of smoking, but unusable for those who only want to barbeque.
When deciding whether you want to buy the Little Chief electric smoker or not, you need to know what you want.
Image via: Pixabay
If you’re happy with smoking nuts, bacon, and fish, you’ll love this smoker and save a lot of money.
If you want something to cook full racks of ribs and chicken in, you’ll be better off with models such as the Char-Broil analog electric smoker.
Let us know in the comments if you have any other favorite electric smokers we’ve left out!
The post Everything You Need To Know About The Little Chief Electric Smoker appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>The post Electric Smoker Chicken Breast: Healthy And Full Of Flavor appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Smoked chicken can add a rustic flavor to just about any healthy dish. Using your electric smoker to smoke chicken breast is just another fantastic way to experiment with flavor. Smoking chicken is an excellent way to both cook and flavor your meat for a unique taste experience.
Is chicken breast meat you want to smoke? Of course! It’s healthy and delicious.
But is it really worth the time and effort?
In a word: yes.
While you could easily eat smoked chicken breast on its own, consider some of the other things you can make with it. The smoked chicken breast would add some great flavor to your lunchtime salad or sandwich.
Try a unique spin on chicken soup by using smoked chicken. Or how about a fusion mashup with smoked chicken tacos?
The possibilities are endless!
Image by pixabay
The trouble with chicken breast is that it is very easy to screw up. Chicken breast has very little to no fat. While this makes it a great source of lean protein, this leanness makes it not as flavorful as more fatty cuts of chicken.
Fat also melts to lubricate the meat while it cooks. Without fat, lean cuts like chicken breast tend to get dry when cooked.
This dry meat problem can get even worse the longer you cook your meat. To safely cook at low temperatures as you would with electric smoker chicken breast, you need hours.
Not adequately preparing your electric smoker, chicken breast can leave you with a tasteless, dry piece of meat.
Image by pixabay
Before you start researching electric smoker chicken breast recipes, let’s go over what you need to know about smoking chicken breast in an electric smoker.
Image by pixabay
When it comes to chicken breast, you have several options to choose from. Depending on what type of chicken breast you select will help determine what kind of preparation you need for your electric smoker chicken breast.
Chicken breasts typically come in two forms: bone-in or boneless. The bone-in version usually comes with the rib bones attached. The boneless version has the ribs removed.
When cooking chicken breast, the rib bones in a bone-in chicken breast act as insulation. It can help keep the chicken moister over extended periods of cooking.
However, since the boneless chicken breasts do not have this insulation, these chicken breasts are more prone to drying out.
Prepared chicken breasts at the meat counter may or may not have skin. Bone-in chicken breasts are more likely to have the skin intact. Meanwhile, boneless chicken breasts typically have the skin removed.
Just like with chicken bones, chicken skin adds a layer of protection. During cooking the fat in the skin melts, basting the meat underneath and helping to keep it moist.
The skinless chicken breast does not have this type of protection and can get tough during the cooking process, if not prepared correctly.
Image by pexels
While we’re talking mostly about electric smoker chicken breast here, remember that most of the techniques we cover will work for just about any kind of smoked chicken recipe.
If you’re not a fan of breast meat, try smoking dark meat. Like chicken breast, you can choose to smoke dark meat either bone-in or boneless, with the skin on or off.
For a real treat, try smoking a whole chicken! You can try smoking it intact or use a technique called spatchcocking. Spatchcocking takes out the backbone to let the bird lay flat. That results in a chicken that cooks evenly with lots of skin exposed.
Brining is an integral part of preparing any meat for smoking. However, it’s even more critical for chicken breast due to how lean the meat is.
Brining does two important things for smoked chicken breast. The first thing it does is add moisture. With little to no fat on the meat, chicken breast can get dry during cooking.
The brining process helps the meat retain moisture during the cooking process. The salt in the brine denatures some of the protein in the meat, allowing it to hold onto more moisture. If the meat were not salted, the moisture would escape during cooking.
Of course, the salt in the brine also adds flavor. Not only can salt add its own flavor to the chicken, but it can also help deliver other flavorings in the brine.
There are two main types of brine you can use for electric smoker chicken breast. A wet brine is a salt and other flavorings dissolved in water. A dry brine is salt with other dry seasonings, sprinkled heavily onto the chicken.
Whether you choose a wet or a dry brine is up to you. Both methods can deliver excellent results.
Wet brines typically take longer, several hours and up to a day or so, to work its magic. Conversely, dry brines are easy to put together and take only a few hours in the refrigerator to work.
Chicken breast is popular as a lean source of protein. But when you’re making electric smoker chicken breast, a little bit of fat can go a long way toward keeping your chicken breast moist and tasty.
There are two easy ways to add some fat to your electric smoker chicken breast: bard and inject.
The first is to bard, or wrap, your chicken breast in a slice of flavorful fatty meat, like bacon, as in this maple smoked bacon-wrapped chicken breast recipe.
As the chicken smokes, the fat from the bacon melts and bastes the chicken, much in the same way chicken skin would, but even tastier.
Another way to add fat to a chicken breast is to inject it with flavor, literally. Using a meat injector marinates the meat from the inside out.
Using a flavorful fat, like infused olive oil or even butter, can help amp up the fat and flavor in your electric smoker chicken breast recipe.
With an electric smoker chicken breast, smoke is also a flavoring agent as it’s a cooking method. Choosing what type of wood you use is essential when you’re making an electric smoker chicken breast.
Image by pixabay
Fruit woods are a popular choice for using with smoked chicken as they impart a sweet, fruity flavor to the meat. Cherry and apple are two very popular kinds of wood.
If you want to go beyond fruity flavors, there are other smoking woods to choose from. Maple is a sweet wood and pairs well with chicken breast. Hickory and mesquite are also popular, and pair well with Southern and Southwestern-inspired brines and marinades.
Image by pexels
Now that we know what goes into an excellent smoked chicken breast recipe, it’s time to try our hand at it! This recipe is adapted from Fox Valley Foodie’s bacon wrapped smoked chicken breast recipe.
For this recipe, you will need:
First, you need to brine your chicken. Prepare your brine by heating one cup of water and thoroughly dissolving the salt and sugar.
In a large bowl, add the salt and sugar mixture, as well as the remaining cups of water, garlic, and peppercorns. Leave the brine until it reaches room temperature.
Add the chicken breasts, using a plate to weight the chicken down if necessary to ensure it is properly submerged.
Alternatively, you can place the chicken and brine in a gallon sized, zip top bag. Be sure to remove all the air to ensure proper coverage.
Put the bowl in the refrigerator. Leave the chicken to rest in the brine for two hours.
Remove the chicken from the brine, rinsing under cold water to remove any excess salt. Pat the chicken dry.
Wrap each chicken breast in bacon, securing with toothpicks.
Preheat your smoker to 275-degrees Fahrenheit and add the smoking wood, per your manufacturer’s instructions.
Once your smoker is preheated, add your chicken breasts to your electric smoker. Smoke your chicken breasts until the chicken reaches 165-degrees Fahrenheit on an instant-read thermometer.
Remove from the smoker and let rest for about 10 minutes before eating.
Image by pexels
Once rested, you can eat your electric smoker chicken breast just as you would other chicken. Try pairing it with some mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables for an awesome, healthy meal.
But that’s not all you can do!
If you love pulled pork, try using your electric smoker chicken breast in this smoked pulled chicken sandwich as a healthier alternative.
Another sandwich worth trying is this great chicken club sandwich — your electric smoker chicken breast is sure to sing as the star in this club.
For something truly one of a kind, substitute your electric smoked chicken breast for regular chicken in this southwest egg roll recipe. It’s an appetizer your guests will be sure to talk about for months to come.
Having an electric smoker opens the door to a wide array of different smoked foods. Smoking your own chicken breast on your electric smoker helps to add some added depth to this healthy, but sometimes bland, meat.
Whether you eat your electric smoker chicken breast straight from the smoker or add it to some of your recipes for a flavorful protein boost, this is a great meat to have in your smoking repertoire.
How do you smoke your chicken breast? And how do you eat it? Tell us about it in the comments!
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]]>The post Find The Best Meats To Smoke For Your Next BBQ appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Obviously, there are a few that are always on the top of the list, such as brisket or pork. But you don’t need to stop with the obvious. It’s time to branch out and find all of the best meats to smoke.
Trying a variety of meats will also allow you to try an array of flavors. When smoking different meats, your choices are endless. You can smoke anything from ham to salmon. However, there are a few that top the list as the all-time best meats to smoke, and that’s why we’re all here.
The best recipes are the key to incredible smoked meats. Once you get the hang of using a smoker and learn what you like, you can play around with flavors and timing. Before you know it, you’ll have your own list of the best meats to smoke.
But what should you consider when you are smoking meats?
Finding the best meats to smoke is one step in your quest for a delicious dinner. As we mentioned before, the right recipe, timing, and flavor combinations are crucial. All of these factors are going to depend heavily on the meat you choose.
For instance, ham is incredibly easy to smoke because they usually come pre-cooked and possibly even pre-smoked. All you’re doing when smoking a ham is adding even more flavor. Therefore, you won’t have to worry as much about internal temperature to ensure that the meat is cooked safely.
Instead, you need to focus on keeping it moist during the smoking process. That alone makes it one of the best meats to smoke for beginners.
On the other hand, brisket is more challenging to smoke and can be a little pricey if you’re shooting for perfection. You need to get the right cut and quality if you want a juicy and tender final product. Although, you won’t need to worry as much about seasoning because it has a fantastic flavor on its own.
In most cases, people choose to use a simple combination of salt, black pepper, and garlic.
In the end, finding the best meats to smoke is entirely up to your personal preference. Once you know where you want to start, you need to find a recipe. Each recipe will focus on specific flavors which you can accomplish with the right combination of woods and spices.
The best recipes will tell you everything you need to know. In turn, once you get the hang of smoking meats, feel free to play around with new flavors on your own.
Image via Pexels
Smoking meats is a relatively simple task that many people find intimidating. It can seem like an incredibly touchy process. However, if you have an electric smoker, it will be very straightforward.
An electric smoker will give you the ability to control the heat properly without any extra effort on your part. Therefore, you won’t have to worry about hot spots. All you have to do is set the temperature, prepare your meat, and replenish the wood chips on occasion.
In many cases, an electric smoker is considered one of the best smokers on the market purely because it is the easiest. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t get the same results with another smoker, but you will need to take more care in tending to the heat source.
Therefore, if you are new to the business of smoking meats, or a veteran, you might be interested in an easy method. It’s nice to learn to control temperatures and replenish heat sources in other types of smokers. But in the end, it’s nice to be able to set the temperature and let an electric smoker do the work for you.
Most of us go to our local butcher or grocery store on the hunt for the best meats to smoke. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could have them delivered right to your door?
Well, many companies can do that, but it can be pricey. Luckily, Amazon intends to make the whole process much more affordable.
Since they have acquired Whole Foods, they have expanded their business to include a wide array of fresh foods.
Nevertheless, we all know keeping food fresh as it travels can be difficult. However, in this ever-changing world we live in, having fresh food delivered to your doorstep is going to be more common than you might think. And much sooner than we all realize.
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There are so many different options on the market, and it can make choosing the best meats to smoke a little confusing.
What do you choose? What is the most important thing to look for?
We picked these meats based on popularity and flavor possibilities. Some of them will be common choices, and others may be something you never considered before.
Hopefully, we will be able to give you the fresh ideas and robust flavors you were looking for all along.
We all know that pork is at the top of the list when it comes to the best meats to smoke. There are certainly plenty of choices.
We already mentioned that ham is one of the easiest meats to smoke because it usually comes pre-cooked and even pre-smoked. It makes your job incredibly easy because it is already juicy and packed full of flavor.
Although, you can also consider a pork shoulder, ribs, and various roasts.
The best thing about pork, in general, is the fattiness of the meat. It makes it ideal for slow smoking without running the risk of drying out the meat. The richness of the fat will offer robust flavor, even without rubs, barbeque sauce, or general seasonings.
Nevertheless, the extra flavor will undoubtedly take it over the top.
Image via Pexels
Generally, people seem to get in an argument about cutting away the fat before you pop your pork into the smoker. When it comes to cooking or smoking pork I typically skip this step and get right to it. It helps keep your meat tender and juicy.
Additionally, the fat will fall away easily after cooking. So you won’t have to worry about trimming anyway.
Therefore you can pick a cut that has plenty of fat because it can be a huge help. Keeping that in mind, pork chops aren’t a great choice. They are too small and cut too thin, which can make them extremely tricky.
Chicken is incredibly simple to smoke and the type of blank slate that is ideal for practically any flavor combination. However, there are quite a few things you should keep in mind to make the best smoked chicken.
First of all, you need to remember that whole chickens are typically small. So if you’re planning on smoking a few at the same time make sure they are around the same size. It will be much easier to ensure that they cook through evenly.
Brining your chicken is another excellent idea. Most people recommend brining a chicken for about 12 hours. You can even add more ingredients to your brine to infuse flavors, such as wine, fruit juices, or spices. The point of brining your bird is breaking down the tougher parts of the meat and keeping it tender and juicy.
Additionally, “spatchcocking” your chicken is another good idea. I honestly had no idea what this was before and had to read up on it. Spatcocking is a process of removing the backbone from neck to tail. Once you do that, you can lay the chicken flat, and it will cook evenly.
If you are partial to a crispy skin on your smoked chicken, you may also want to consider patting the meat dry before popping it in the smoker. Cook the bird at 225 degrees Fahrenheit until the internal temperature reaches about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Then you can turn the smoker up to 325 degrees Fahrenheit for another half an hour. It will give you a delicious crispy skin. Talk about yummy!
Image via Pexels
Beef is one of the best meats to smoke because you can do just about anything and use any cut under the sun. You can make roasts, ribs, and briskets better than ever. It gives you the ability to slow roast the meat until it is incredibly tender.
The key to smoking beef is to cook it on a low temperature for the right amount of time. The time your meat will be in the smoker will depend on the cut and weight of the meat. The best cuts are an even thickness and beautifully marbled, such as brisket.
The marbling of the meat will help you keep it moist during the process. Other than that, the flavor will depend on the wood and the seasoning you use.
Typically, people use rubs, marinades, sauces, or even injections. It all depends on the recipe you’ve got your eye on.
One thing you should remember when smoking beef is the importance of resting the meat. It will enable you to cook the meat to the proper internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Then you should allow it to rest for about an hour.
Resting the meat gives the juices time to settle into the meat. You can lose a lot of flavor and moisture when you cut into the meat directly after pulling it from the smoker.
Image via Pixabay
Brisket is one of the best meats to smoke of all time, as long as you do it properly. It might sound intimidating, but it’s easier than you might think.
As we mentioned before, brisket is a beautifully marbled piece of meat. Although, if you want it to be flawless, you need to fork out a little money for a high-grade slab of brisket. With all of that in mind, it’s time to check out a delectable Texas-style beef brisket recipe.
Some people have inhibitions about eating lamb. Even if you aren’t a vegetarian, it can be an odd thing to wrap your head around, at least in my mother’s case.However, if you are interested in finding the best meats to smoke, many say that lamb in at the top of the list.There are plenty of different recipes and ways of preparing lamb.
Image via Pexels
The “best” lamb recipe is hard to pin down because it comes to personal preference. However, a Greek-style smoked lamb is a classic.
Therefore, we want to give you this classically delicious lamb recipe. It’s simple and straightforward, especially if you get the boneless leg of lamb that is already tied up to the size of a football. Some might say that there is a big difference in the taste when you remove the bone before smoking, but it’s not true. A boneless leg of lamb will cook evenly and give you a marvelous flavor.
So let’s get to it, shall we?
Image via Pexels
Overall, finding the best meats to smoke comes down to personal taste. We can tell you which ones are popular enough to have tons of recipes. But that isn’t to say that other options aren’t on par.
Honestly, with the right recipe, the list of the best meats to smoke is endless.
Hopefully, we gave you some great ideas and a few handy tips. The recipes in this list are fantastic and would be wonderful to try if you have the time.
But we would also love to hear about your favorite recipes in the comment section below.
After all, we are always hungry for some delicious new ideas!
Featured Image: Pexels
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]]>The post How To Smoke A Brisket In An Electric Smoker: A Hands-Free Recipe! appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>But that isn’t true because now you can achieve this healthy and delicious meal at home. Learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker is incredibly easy. Your friends are going to think you’re a pitmaster. You’ll think so too when you taste your creation.
However, there are a few simple steps you need to take when learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker. The first thing you need to do is get the right meat and a quality smoker.
You see, the right cut of meat is going to give you an extraordinary amount of flavor and you’ll hardly need any seasonings. Using an electric smoker will give you so much more freedom than basically any other smoker on the market.
Before you get started, there are a few simple steps you need to take. Before you know it, you’ll have a brisket that tastes just as good as your local barbecue.
Image via Pixabay
First of all, you might be wondering, why we are specifically focusing on an electric smoker. Well, the truth is, if you’re learning how to smoke meats, it is the most straightforward machine on the market.
Even if you have been using smokers for years, you’ll be surprised at how easy they are to control in comparison to many others. That will make learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker the most straightforward option out there.
Talk about convenient.
Propane and charcoal smokers have the risk of running out of fuel during the smoking process. Charcoal smokers are especially challenging to control because you need to refresh the coals frequently.
The more you open the smoker to restore the fuel, the more heat you will lose in the process. That can lead to temperature spikes and drops which will seriously affect the time it takes to make your brisket. It may even affect the quality of your final product.
Electric smokers have simple settings and will control the temperature for you. That will lead to a quicker dinner and more reliable final product.
Additionally, they are relatively energy efficient and use cleaner energy than both coal or propane. When using an electric smoker, you don’t have to worry about chemical contamination like you would with any other smoker.
Image via Pixabay
As we mentioned before, an electric smoker is incredibly straightforward and easy to use. Most models include an on/off switch or pushbutton start.
They also include temperature controls that range from 100 to 275 degrees, although the range will depend on the model. It might not seem like a wide range in comparison to an oven, but that’s the point. It’s the ideal way to learn how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker at a low temperature.
When smoking any meat, low and slow is the way to go. It will give you a perfectly tender and juicy meat that is to die for.
Additionally, the walls are insulated, which will maximize temperature retention. They include a side wood chip loader, removable drip tray, and adjustable dampers. All of those features will enable you to achieve a marvelous flavor.
To tell the truth, there isn’t much to the whole process. That’s the beauty behind learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker.
When it comes to learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker there are only a few things you need to keep in mind. The cut and quality of the meat are the most crucial factors of all.
Next, you will need to find the perfect flavoring method, which can be accomplished in several ways. Keep in mind that it isn’t going to take much, but the execution needs to be done flawlessly. However, you’ll be happy to know that’s easy to accomplish.
Alright, time to get to the meat of this smoking business.
Picking the right cut of meat is essential to making the perfect brisket. No matter what meat you happen to be smoking, you should pick the best on the market, whether it’s ham, sirloin, ribs, or brisket.
If you’re going to take hours upon end to make a meal, you should drop a little extra cash to get the best cut.
According to many experienced smokers, you want the “packers cut.” It’s a sizeable two-muscle cut with a generous fat cap. They typically come at about 11 pounds.
The quality is crucial as well. You need a high-grade slab of meat, which usually means getting a Waygu or Prime brisket. They have excellent marbling that will boost the flavor, moisture, and tenderness of the final product.
Image via Pixabay
The truth is, brisket is one of the most flavorful parts of a cow. It contains plenty of fat that will provide a delicious natural flavor. Plus, cows don’t have a gamey taste, so you won’t need to add much seasoning or brine the meat.
There are a lot of people who recommend injecting your meat with beef stock, bouillon, MSG, or seasonings. However, there’s no need for any of that.
Simple seasonings on the exterior of the meat are more than enough because the meat is already rich and delicious. Coarse ground salt, pepper, and finely ground garlic powder are the most common choices.
Although if you’re interested in adding a little boost to the flavor, the right wood chips are a fabulous addition. Most experienced smokers recommend oak if you are just learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker.
Texas style brisket is a wonderful recipe if you are learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker. But strap in because it’s going to take you a whopping 15-hours in total to cook this fantastic brisket.
It might seem high maintenance when you are just learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker. However, it’s going to be well worth the wait. You merely need to plan your day correctly. But you’ll have plenty of time waiting around and you can use that time to accomplish lots of other things while you wait.
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Prepping your tasty treat
Making brisket can take a bit of money and a big chunk of your time. The perk to learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker is your ability to go hands-free.
All you need to do is prepare the meat and pop it in the smoker. Beyond that, there isn’t much you have to do. It’s all about cooking the brisket low and slow until it reaches the right temperature.
It will slice like butter and only requires simple seasonings to taste amazing. However, there are a few things to remember if you’re going to learn how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker properly.
First of all, the temperature is everything.
Don’t worry about the meat when it’s in the smoker. You can check it when it gets to a certain point, but there is no need to flip the brisket continually. The more you open the smoker, the more the temperature will fluctuate. That could extend the cooking time tremendously.
Image via Pixabay
Also, remember that you can get creative. That could include experimenting with different flavors by using wood chips, seasonings, or sauces.
Although, you’d be surprised how many “purists” smoke the bare meat and roll their eyes at any other method.
However, we aren’t those people. Instead, we want to give you a delicious basic recipe while you learn to ropes. We would also love to hear any tips you have for learning how to smoke a brisket in an electric smoker in the comments!
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]]>The post Best Grilling Accessories For A Memorable Summer appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Aside from choosing the best grilling accessories to make your food taste awesome, don’t forget to consider other ways to make your guests feel welcome in your backyard.
For example, set the mood with some great lighting and music. Keep unwanted pests at bay by setting out natural pest deterrents like citronella candles and torches. Be sure to provide plenty of shade for guests during hot afternoons and maybe consider a fire pit to gather around in case the evening gets a bit chilly.
Via Pixabay
You may already have the best grill for you but accessorizing allows you to take advantage of everything your grill can do. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of grilling accessories available.
Just like you need pots and pans in a kitchen, there are a few absolute must-have essentials for your backyard grill. Tongs and spatulas are a must have for any grilling situation.
Look for tongs and spatulas made from stainless steel that have comfortable handles, as these will hold up best to the intense heat that your grill can put out. Also, when it comes to any grilling tools, you want long handles to help keep you a comfortable distance away from the heat.
While backyard grills are great for grilling food over an open flame, different cooking accessories can help you be creative with how you use that heat. Some of the best grilling accessories can help you do just that!
For example, rotisserie attachments can help you evenly roast large cuts of meat without having to turn the meat yourself laboriously. A pizza stone or cast iron pan can turn your charcoal or gas grill into a pizza oven.
Cooking accessories allow you to think outside just the grill! Try using a wok over an open flame. It can help you achieve that elusive, super hot flame that is so essential for creating that wok hei flavor present in authentic stir fry dishes.
Collecting the best grilling accessories is not just about cooking tools. There are many various grilling accessories out there that help make your summer cookouts easier though they may not be directly involved with the food.
For example, for charcoal aficionados, what type of charcoal you use is just as important as how you start your fire.
We collected a variety of the best grilling accessories from around the web, in a variety of categories. We chose items that are both top-rated on Amazon as well as good values and easy to use.
Via Pixabay
Without further ado, let’s get to cooking with the best grilling accessories out there!
Veggies taste incredible when roasted on the grill. Grilled onions and peppers pair perfectly with most meats. You can even forgo meat altogether with a beautiful grilled portabello mushroom. The problem is that it’s really easy to lose veggies through your grill gates, especially when they are cut small.
The Grillux BBQ Grill Basket can help solve these issues. This stainless steel metal basket has a 4.6 out of 5-star rating on Amazon. With four, curved metal sides, this basket sits atop your grill plates. The heat can come through, but the veggies will not fall out.
The Grillux BBQ Grill is available at various home and garden centers as well as on Amazon.
Imagine this: you’re planning the perfect BBQ party. You have all your meat and sides ready, and you’re just about to get grilling. Unfortunately, you step outside only to notice that your propane tank for your gas grill is empty!
While there are methods like the hot water trick to check how much propane is in your tank, using a tank indicator like the Dozy Ant Propane Tank Gauge lets you see how much gas you have at a glance. That is not only good for making sure you have enough propane to start the party but also enough propane to keep it going.
You can find the Dozy Ant Propane Tank Gauge on Amazon, where it as a 4.1 out of 5-star rating, as well as at your local propane store and home and garden centers.
Smart is knowing that beer and grilled chicken are the staples of many American backyard summer cookouts. Genius is putting the two together to make something easy and delicious from what you already have on hand.
The usual method for cooking the affectionately named Beer Butt Chicken involves upending a seasoned chicken onto a half drunk can of beer. Though classic, this method is a bit unwieldy.
The top-rated Beer Can Chicken Roaster Rack gives you a sturdier surface. This stainless steel roaster includes a canister to hold your beer (or any other flavorful liquid) on a deep drip tray to catch all the delicious juices that may run off.
This roaster rack also includes vegetable spikes you can use to roast vegetables right alongside your beer can chicken. Finally, the tray is dishwasher safe.
You can find the Beer Can Chicken Roaster Rack at specialty food stores as well as online at Amazon. Customers give it a 4.6 out of 5-star rating.
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Southern style pulled pork is traditionally shredded using two forks to break up the meat. While we’re not ones to mess with tradition, no one said there’s anything wrong with improving on the tried and true method.
These all-nylon meat claws give you long, sharp tines to comfortably grip and shred cooked meat. You can also use the claws to provide you with a better grip on large roasts or even watermelon.
The Original Bear Paws meat shredding claws are a hit on Amazon where they receive a 4.7 out of 5-star rating from customers. You can also find them at your local specialty BBQ store and other retailers.
Before you plan your first cookout of the season, one of the most important things you can do is to clean your grill.
After inspecting your grill to make sure that there are no leaks in the gas lines, you need to give it a good scrub down. Metal brushes are great for this but can leave bits of metal that can get transferred to your food.
A study released in 2016 noted that between 2002 and 2014, 1,700 Americans ingested bits of wire grill brush! Of these cases, one in four patients needed to be admitted to the hospital.
Sending your guests to the hospital is definitely NOT the way you want your grilling season to be remembered.
So what’s the alternative? Try using a stone brush like the EarthStone GrillStone Grill Cleaner. Unlike the wire on traditional metal grill brushes, the EarthStone GrillStone Grill Cleaner uses a pumice stone to scrape off the gunk of cookouts past.
You can find this 4.4 out of 5-star rated stone brush online at Amazon as well as other specialty BBQ stores and home and garden outlets.
Gas grills offer unparalleled convenience, with your fire ready at the push of a button. However, for some purists, there is no comparison to grilling meat over good old charcoal.
No matter what type of charcoal grill you use, you always want to start with great charcoal. Though briquettes may be a great place to start, they can be full of additives.
If you’re not ready to have mystery smoke along with your meal, try burning some hardwood lump charcoal like Kamado Jo or Fogo. Both of these charcoals received a 4.2 out of 5-star rating from Amazon customers. These charcoals are also available at your local specialty BBQ store.
Of course, even the best charcoal is not going to light itself. Using lighter fluid is a quick way to get a charcoal fire going, but it is messy, dangerous, and adds unnecessary chemicals to your fire.
Instead, use a chimney starter like the Weber Chimney Starter, the number one top seller on Amazon with an impressive 4.8 out of 5-star rating. You can also find it for sale at most home and garden stores.
Chimney starters let you get a nice, even start on your charcoal, using newspaper and convection to light your coals.
Another option is to use an electric lighter like the Looftlighter. This lighter uses superheated air to start charcoal in just a minute. You can find the 4.2 out of 5-star rated Looftlighter on Amazon and at other specialty BBQ stores.
If you want a more portable option, try using ready-made fire starters like Light-A-Fire all natural starters. These pre-portioned pods contain sawdust and food-grade wax. You can even use them in conjunction with a chimney starter on your grill or use them to start a campfire or a fire in your backyard firepit.
Light-A-Fire is available on Amazon and comes in a handy plastic container. This 4.2 out of 5-star rated product makes an ideal, portable solution for picnics and other mobile cookouts.
Every backyard cook needs a good set of tools to get their food on and off the fire. This 21-piece barbecue set from Mr. Bar-B-Q includes everything an aspiring backyard gourmand needs, in a handy carrying case.
Tools in this kit include tongs, a spatula, reusable skewers, as well as slotted spatula and corn holders. You can find this grill tool set on Amazon where it gets 4.1 out of 5-stars from customers.
Another great essential that no grill party should be without is a good set of BBQ gloves. Backyard grilling can get hot, and having the right gloves can help keep the cook safe while they are dealing with the food.
We like these Extreme Heat Grill Gloves, available on Amazon. These top-rated gloves enjoy a 4.4 out of 5-star rating from Amazon customers. The gloves can take the heat, protecting your hands up to 932-degrees Fahrenheit. Whether you are handling a hot chimney starter or moving pans around, the insulation on these gloves will keep you safe.
Even better, these gloves are 14-inches long, covering a good part of your arm. Rather than a mitt-style, these are glove style allowing you the full range of motion with all your fingers. The fingertips are covered with raised silicone tips for extra grip.
Practicing safe cooking methods helps ensure that your grill party isn’t remembered for all the wrong reasons. Always cook your meat to FDA doneness standards to help ensure that no one gets foodborne illnesses from your meat masterpieces.
Instant read thermometers are great for temping smaller pieces of meat like chicken breasts, steaks, and chops. If you need continuous temperature monitoring on a larger portion of meat like pork butt or a tri-tip roast, try investing in a wireless thermometer
Thermopro makes top-rated monitors and has both an instant-read (4.3 out of 5 stars) and a Bluetooth (4.5 out of 5 stars) thermometer available on Amazon.
While a night light probably isn’t the first thing you would think of when considering the best grilling accessories, it should be!
Everyone knows that the best grill parties are the ones that last well into the summer night. While it may be warm enough to stay outside, the night sky does make it pretty challenging to see the grill.
A grill-safe light like this LED BBQ Grill Light can help you keep the party fed into the wee hours of the night. It is an Amazon bestseller with a 4.4 out of 5-star rating.
Have you ever tried plank grilling? If not, this method should be on your to try list for your next grill party.
This grilling method owes its origins to indigenous Americans, who grilled fish on wood for ease and flavor. To cook on a plank, take your food-safe plank and soak it in water. From there, you can toss it onto a hot grill and let it smoke a little. Place your seasoned fish, or vegetable, or meat, on top and let it cook!
As it cooks, the food gets infused with the smoky wood flavor. Even better, plank cooking makes for an excellent presentation and easy cleanup!
These top-rated Cedar Grill Planks get a 4.6 out of 5-star rating on Amazon. You may also be able to find these planks at your local BBQ specialty store.
Via Pixabay
The best grilling accessories help the backyard chef with everything from food preparation to food safety. With the best grilling accessories at your fingertips, anyone can have a great summer grilling season.
What are your favorite grilling accessories? Do you have one that you think should have been on your list? Let us know in the comments below!
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]]>What should you include in your menu? How many people should you invite? Will your budget cover all the costs? These are some of the questions that may be going through your mind.
Don’t worry. We’ve all been there.
The mistake most hosts make is complicating their menu and biting off more than they can chew in terms of planning. Doing so will only make your barbecue party stressful for you and leave no room for fun — and we can’t have that!
So fear not — we have all the information you need to plan a stress-free, fun-filled backyard barbecue.
image source: unsplash.com via Vincent Keiman
If you’ve never hosted a backyard barbecue before, you might feel like a fish out of water. Especially if you’re trying to figure out what you need to make the party a success.
But the trick is not to over-think it.
The first step is determining everything you need for the party. Once this is sorted, you’ll feel more confident and ready to execute.
So without further ado, let’s find out some of the BBQ essentials you need to host the most memorable barbecue party in your neighborhood.
Meat is the star of any backyard barbecue party. Therefore, if you’re aiming for perfection, you need to invest in the right BBQ. You have two choices: gas and charcoal.
Your choice will depend on the number of people you’re planning to host and your preferred flavors.
A gas BBQ grill is more convenient because it’s easy to light, use, and clean and gets to the optimum cooking temperature faster compared to a charcoal grill. However, charcoal BBQ grills are cheaper and add a unique smoky flavor to your meat.
Size-wise, consider the amount of space you have and how many people you’ll be cooking for.
If you can’t seem to make up your mind, a gas/charcoal grill combo would also come in handy for this and future BBQ parties.
Don’t forget the fuel when buying the grill!
To do a good job, you’ll also need the right tools. Go for long-handled utensils, because these will help keep your hands away from the hot parts of the grill. Some examples of kitchen tools you’ll need include tongs, spatula, knife, and carving fork.
You’ll also need an apron, marinade brush, meat thermometer, and chopping boards.
Don’t forget the ice. It’s one of the essential items you shouldn’t miss in a backyard barbecue. And no, don’t postpone it for later. You might forget to get it, and you don’t want to be the host that keeps sending guests on an ice run. So, stock up in advance!
The other thing you should add to your checklist is decor and lighting. Lights set the mood of the party once the sun sets. So, make sure you have enough festive lights.
Your decor will depend on your preferences and the BBQ theme you are going for if you have one. If you don’t have an idea, go for simple decorations that make the area stand out without looking like you’re trying too hard.
Image via Pexels
A backyard barbecue is not complete without an assortment of drinks and food. You need to figure out what you’ll serve and then create a shopping list of everything you’ll need.
Some ideas that work for most BBQ parties include chicken, burgers, sausages, sweet corn, kebabs, ribs, salad, peppers, drinks, wine, and beer.
For desserts, you can include ice cream, cake, or fruit salad.
Another must-have item on your checklist is a drink dispenser. Topping up everyone’s drink when they’ve finished can be quite a hassle. It may take a lot of time, depending on the number of guests, and you may not enjoy the party.
Having a few dispensers at your disposal will make things easier. In this way, everyone will get to serve their drinks, and all you’ll have to do is to refill the containers.
Tiki torches will also be a great addition to your backyard BBQ. They’ll not only provide additional lighting but also keep mosquitoes at bay — your guests will truly appreciate a buzz and bite-free night.
image source: pixabay.com
It’s not enough to have your checklist ready. You also need to know how to make the party memorable for all your guests.
If you have a neighbor or friend who has set the backyard barbecue bar extremely high, it can seem like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be. You can add your unique touch to the party and make it unforgettable. These tips can help.
It’s easy to go overboard when you’re trying to impress your friends and relatives. But don’t let the pressure get to you. Instead of thinking of all the classy meals you can include in your menu, try working around your main dish and add your top dishes that people rave about.
You should also go for simple decorations that make your space stand out effortlessly. For a backyard barbecue, balloons, bright table cloths, and string lights should do the trick.
Another thing that will go a long way in helping you plan the best BBQ is understanding your guests. What do they like to eat? Will there be children? Anyone with diet restrictions?
The answer to these questions will help you provide exactly what everyone needs. Don’t complicate things by trying to create an impressive menu. An uncomplicated menu is precisely what a group of people of different ages need.
Image source: Unsplash
if you want to cut back on costs and add some elements of surprise to your menu, it may be a good idea to ask your guests to bring desserts or appetizers of their choice.
With this approach, you’ll give your guests a chance to taste each other’s favorite dishes, which will undoubtedly be a great treat for their taste buds.
It’s also essential to stick to your budget when planning a backyard barbecue. One way to do this is to utilize things you already have, like plates and cups.
Doing this will allow you to save lots of money you would have otherwise spent on paper plates and paper cups. And the best part? You get to safeguard the environment too.
Don’t wait until the last minute to start your preparations. Create a to-do list and start checking off tasks as soon as you can. Send out the invites. Determine when you’ll run errands. Also, don’t be shy about seeking assistance from a friend or two in advance to avoid last minute rush.
Image source: Unsplash
As we mentioned earlier, meat is the star at any barbecue. Therefore, you can’t afford to mess it up. Get all the meat you need and keep it refrigerated in advance. Before the barbecue party, make sure the meat is marinated well before the event to avoid any delays.
Also, make sure you prep your grill by cleaning it and placing it in an easily accessible area before the big day.
Don’t wait until the day of the backyard barbecue to set up everything. Do it a day or two before to ensure you have everything you need. Make sure you have enough chairs, tables, lighting, and everything else you need to ensure everyone’s comfortable.
Early set up will give you some time to run to the store in case there’s a shortage of something.
It’s also crucial to prioritize safety, especially if you plan to have kids at the barbecue.
For instance, if you have a pool, make sure you hire a lifeguard for the day to watch out for the kids and set some pool rules to ensure everyone stays safe.
Although meat and food are the first things you should be concerned about when planning a backyard barbecue, you also need to think about entertainment. What will your guests do once they are done eating? How will you keep the kids engaged to prevent them from messing up everything?
Consider including games like Charades, Pictionary, Never Have I Ever, and other games that make everyone participate and get to know each other better.
For the kids, consider hiring a teen to watch them as the adults relax.
Don’t stress too much about how your guests perceive your party that you forget to have fun. Take a break from running up and down and join in on the fun. A good host takes time to mingle with the quests and participate in the activities. If you end up having lots of fun, chances are your guests are having a great time too.
image source: pexels.com
As you can see, little things can go a long way in making your backyard barbecue memorable. So stop overthinking it and use the tips we’ve shared to plan a BBQ no one will forget any time soon.
What are some of the things you do to make your BBQ memorable that we haven’t included in this list? We’d love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts and views in the comments section below.
Featured image via Pexels
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]]>The post Propane Camping Grill: Make Cooking in the Great Outdoors Simple appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Camping can be a lot of work, but cooking while you’re in the great outdoors doesn’t have to be. At least, not if you have a propane camping grill. I’ve been on a lot of camping trips. It’s one of the cheapest choices when you’re looking for a budget-friendly adventure. After countless trips, I know just how difficult it is to plan a real meal while you’re on the go. The choices normally come down to eating out, if that’s even an option, or rigging up a way to cook over a fire.
Image source: Pixabay.com
If you choose the latter, you will also need to bring firewood or buy some at the campground. Plus, you’re going to need to light the fire somehow, so you need to pack additional tools for that. Overall, it isn’t exactly a task that new campers look forward to. All around, it’s more trouble than it’s worth if you’re only setting up camp for the night until you continue the journey the next day. A propane camping grill is a perfect solution for cooking on the go or in the great outdoors.
And a propane grill is perfect for everything from camping to tailgating to picnics in the park. Even if you don’t plan many camping trips, you will have plenty of uses for a propane camping grill. No matter where your adventure takes you, cooking dinner on the road is going to be easier than ever before.
When you’re picking out a propane camping grill, there are a few things that you need to consider. It isn’t a complicated decision, and it just depends on your needs. First of all, you need to consider the group you will be cooking for on your trip. I’ve been on camping trips with just my husband or in large groups of over 30 people. In almost every situation, I have been in charge of cooking the food, at least for one meal.
Depending on the group you usually go camping with, you will need to consider the size of the cooking area. No matter what, a portable propane camping grill isn’t going to be very big. They need to be small for portability. Luckily, all of the options on this list are a great size for a family. A propane camping grill will give you all the convenience of an electric skillet, but you won’t have to rely on outlets. Therefore, you can take a propane camping grill anywhere and cook at any time.
Another thing to think about is the size of the propane bottle. Many propane camping grill models will not include a propane bottle. So when you are buying one, make sure that you get enough for the duration of your trip. If you plan to get a larger 5-pound bottle, you may also need to get a new hose to adapt it to your propane camping grill.
You should pick something with a removable drip tray, a lid lock, and preferably, a removable grill top. All of those features will make it easier to clean or pack on the go. Plus, campsites usually frown upon cleaning your dishes in a bathroom sink. So you need all the convenience you can get.
You might be wondering why we are even focusing on a propane camping grill when charcoal grills are just as portable.
The thing is, charcoal grills can be more complicated to lug around. For one thing, they don’t always have a latch to keep the whole unit together.
Additionally, you’re also going to need enough charcoal to get you through your trip. You can buy it at most campgrounds or any nearby grocery store, but it’s a messy business. Furthermore, you’re going to have to light the charcoal, so you will need additional tools for that.
When it comes to a propane camping grill, you can usually start it with the push of a button. Plus, you can guarantee evenly distributed heat so that your food will cook evenly every time. When it comes to charcoal grilling, it can be difficult to ensure there won’t be a hot spot.
When it comes down to it, a propane camping grill is more convenient, but it isn’t your only option. It all comes down to personal preference.
We want to make sure to give you reviews that are based on genuine customer experiences. Therefore, we made sure to base our ratings on Amazon customer reviews.
Our goal is to let you know the features of each model so that you can pick the right one for your camping needs. For that reason, we will include what Amazon customers loved most about each product.
Our overall goal is to give you a fantastic selection so that you can find the best propane camping grill for your big adventure.
Camping is the most affordable way to travel. It will allow you to go anywhere without having to drop a ton of money on good hotel rooms.
You certainly don’t want to save money by going to a dingy two-star motel that probably has bed bugs. Remember that you get what you pay for.
At least when you’re camping, you know who has been in your tent, unlike those stained mattresses or questionable comforters in seedy hotel rooms.
Who would have thought camping is the cleaner choice?
Anyway, cooking on your journey doesn’t have to be expensive. The price range on these propane grills is between $85 and $210.
It might seem a little pricey in the beginning, but they’re sturdy and will last for a long time. So this one-time purchase will get you through years of camping trips, as long as you take care of it and store it properly.
Cooking while you're camping will finally be simple. If you get a propane camping grill, all you have to do is press a button and make sure you have enough fuel. Honestly, it will be like cooking at home.
If you’re interested in convenient camping, these lightweight and portable camping grills are perfect. They’re easy to pack or store when you aren’t on the go.
Plus, you don’t only have to use them when you’re camping. You can use it on the back porch when you’re having a fun little barbeque or in the park for a cute picnic.
The possibilities are endless. So if you’re interested in getting a propane camping grill, take a look at these fantastic options!
The Cuisinart CGG-180T Petit Gourmet Portable Tabletop Gas Grill is incredibly convenient. It’s lightweight, with foldable legs, a lid latch, and a briefcase style carrying handle for the ultimate portability.
The 145-square inch grilling surface will give you enough space to cook food for about 8 people at a time. So it is perfect for a small group or a large family.
This propane camping grill has a stainless steel burner that evenly heats the porcelain-enameled grate. That, combined with the removable drip tray, will make it easy to clean up.
You can attach this unit to a small tank, which you will need to purchase separately. If you want to use it with a large 5-pound propane tank, you will also need to get the appropriate hose.
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If you’re interested in a standing model, the Coleman RoadTrip LXE Portable Gas Grill is fantastic. It has 285-square inches of grilling surface, which is double the grilling surface of the Cuisinart CGG-180T. The slide-out side tables will be convenient when you’re getting food off the grill.
The grill has a collapsible design that will fold down until it’s the size of a small rolling suitcase. It has a lid-lock, wheels, and a convenient handle.
Plus, it has double-burners and can use interchangeable cooktops. You can switch between grills, griddles, and stovetop burners, although the additional cooktops are sold separately. This model only comes with two porcelain-coated grilling grates.
You can start grilling at the touch of a button with the insta-start ignition for matchless lighting. Keep in mind that you will need to purchase the propane bottle separately.
Another fabulous standing model is the Coleman 2000020947 Ppn Sportster Grill. It has a fully collapsible design that will fold down to the size of a suitcase. It also has convenient wheels and a handle for portability and is an excellent size for compact storage.
Setup is simple with the lift and lock system. You’ll be able to count on your collapsible grill standing steady and secure until you’ve cleaned up and packed it away.
The Coleman 2000020947 Ppn Sportster grill has a 225-square inch porcelain-coated grilling grate. The grates and drip tray are both removable. Both removable features are the perfect combination to make grilling and cleanup more efficient than ever.
Additionally, this unit does not come with a propane bottle, so you will need to purchase it separately. However, it does include an insta-start ignition, so you will not require matches or a lighter to start up your grill.
If you are on the lookout for a highly portable propane camping grill, the Giantex Stainless Steel Tabletop Gas Grill is ideal. It has foldable legs and a lockable lid. The stainless steel design makes it durable enough for any camping trip.
This propane camping grill is built for secure storage, and the stainless steel handle will make it extremely portable. Each of the double-burners has twist-and-turn ignition knobs.
Additionally, the stainless steel grate offers plenty of cooking space for the whole family. You should keep in mind that the grate is not removable, so it might not be as easy to clean as other models. However, it does have a well-concealed grease trap that is removable and easy to wash.
One thing you should know about this grill is that there is some assembly required. But it comes with everything you need to put your propane camping grill together quickly.
The Weber 50060001 Q1000 Liquid Propane Camping Grill is a fabulous choice for your great adventure. It has a single stainless steel burner and is incredibly small and portable.
This propane camping grill has a cast aluminum lid and body, and a porcelain-coated cast iron grilling grate. The grate gives your 189-square inches of cooking space.
It comes fully assembled and ready to go. Plus, the push-button ignition will make it easy to get started. Keep in mind that the directions recommend that you preheat the grill before you begin cooking.
Cooking dinner when you’re camping doesn’t have to be hard. Although, it can feel like it if the only option is rigging something up over the fire. Packing a convenient propane camping grill will make whipping up your meals so much easier.
You won’t have to rely on hot dogs and smores on your next trip! They might be classics, but trust me, they can get old pretty quickly. It will be refreshing to make well-rounded meals, no matter where you are.
So on your next big adventure, get ready to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner with ease. Not only will you be able to pack up the grill and toss it in the car, but cleanup will be a breeze.
If you have a favorite propane camping grill, we would love to hear all about it in the comment section below!
Featured Image via Pixabay
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]]>The post The Best Portable Pellet Grill Options Available appeared first on Electric Smoker Center.
]]>Forget propane. Today's most popular tailgate barbecue is the portable pellet grill.
Seriously.
People's tastes are shifting away from gas and over to the rich flavors of pellets and smoke. And that's a good thing! There's something wonderful about meat infused with smoke. A portable pellet grill provides that awesome flavor in a convenient, easy-to-transport package.
Of course, there are dozens of ways to barbecue your food. There are charcoal, gas, and woodchips. When I go camping, I usually just slap a light grill over the campfire and cook all my food on that.
One time I even discovered bacon-wrapped marshmallows. It's true! Believe it or not, they were as delicious as they sound.
That said, we here at Electric Smoke Center don't condone wasting bacon, or marshmallows, in such a callous manner. Which is why when we heard that pellet grills were gaining in popularity across the barbecuing world, we were instantly intrigued. But what is a pellet grill?
Check it out.
Picture your standard smoker. It's a drum-shaped metal barbecue with a hopper offset to the side or rear. In a similar fashion, a pellet grill has a hopper box which vents into the main cooking chamber.
That's because, at its heart, a pellet grill is a smoker. It uses heat and smoke from the pellets to cook the food. Think of it as a giant oven. That is, except for a portable pellet grill.
A portable pellet grill is a scaled-down version of a regular pellet smoker grill. It may be smaller and able to set up on a tailgate. Other versions are larger and include folding legs or wheels.
No matter how they manage it, a portable pellet grill is able to get around easily. And because it's a pellet grill and not a gas grill, there's no need to carry propane canisters with you.
Because there aren't that many grills to choose from, you would think that finding the perfect grill for you would be easy, right? If only that were true.
At the end of the day, the portable pellet grill that appeals to you will depend a lot on style, price, size, and any extra bells and whistles. Everyone is different.
For that reason, we didn't list these in any particular order. We'll let you find the perfect grill for you!
First up is the Camp Chef Pursuit 20 portable pellet grill smoker. This is one of those portable grills which are nice and big. Sturdy plastic wheels and folding legs provide the portability you need to stash the grill in your trunk easily.
But get this: it comes with a whopping 2,100 cubic inches of grilling space. You get a 500 square-inch grill, two meat probes, and a 10-pound wood pellet hopper. You'll especially love the easy ash clean out trapdoor.
One thing you'll notice is that the Camp Chef Pursuit 20 is on the pricier end of the spectrum. Expect to pay premium price. Of course, you get what you pay for. In this case, you get an awesome portable pellet grill. You also get a great three-year warranty.
On Amazon, customers gave it a whopping 4.8 out of 5 stars. This was the highest-rated portable pellet grill we found.
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What do mountains and Davy Crockett have in common? Why, cooking meat, of course! With the Green Mountain Grills Davy Crockett Pellet Grill, you get a tiny and portable pellet grill you can take anywhere.
This little barbecue is perfect if you live in an apartment or you do a lot of camping. It's 29-inches by 14-inches by 20-inches. Picture a steel lunch box with folding legs, and a big black wood pellet hopper slung on the side.
We love this portable pellet grill thanks to its digital "Sense-Mate" thermal sensor so that we can keep track of the internal temperature. You'll pay premium prices for this tiny but powerful pellet grill. In addition, you get a great 3-year warranty.
Also, customers on Amazon gave it a respectable 4.1 out of 5 stars. Almost everyone said that the Davy Crockett grill has excellent temperature controls. That thermal monitor is a real fan favorite. People also loved that this is an ultra-portable pellet grill.
Some people complained that it had the inferior build quality, and several people had their units malfunction. Thankfully Green Mountain Grills has excellent customer service and an even better warranty.
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Next up is the 3-year warranty portable tabletop wood pellet grill. Traeger is the original pellet grill inventor and producer. And while you might think that they're unhappy that they no longer enjoy patent protection, you would be wrong.
With all the new manufacturers entering the market, pellet grills have exploded in popularity, and Traeger enjoys great sales thanks to it.
But let's get back to the Traeger Scout. This little steel box resembles a safe more than a barbecue. It's designed to sit right on the table, with four little metal legs under the body.
The pellet hopper is built right into the body, so you get a uniform box. It comes with a meat probe and digital temperature control that allows you to control the cooking process.
This thing is only 13-inches high and 21-inches wide. That makes the Traeger Scout the smallest portable pellet grill we reviewed. Expect to pay premium prices for it. And like most of the grills we chose, it comes with a 3-year warranty.
Customers on the bbqguys.com website gave it 5 out of 5 stars. They loved that it is small and versatile. While it cooks food just fine, it seems to be the combination of size and function that customers loved.
Fourth on our list is the 5-year warranty Portable Pellet Grill. With 340 square-inches of cooking space, folding legs, a 5-pound hopper, and an additional flame broiler, it's perfect. It hits that sweet spot between portability and amazing function.
We also loved the stylish bronze look. It has a digital control panel with an internal temperature monitor. That means you can keep a good watch on how your food is cooking. A rear-exhaust convection system keeps hot air flowing around inside. Neat!
You'll pay premium prices for this versatile barbecue. But it gets better. That's because the Pit Boss grill comes with a fantastic 5-year warranty!
Then, at the Walmart website, customers gave the Pit Boss a healthy 4.1 out of 5 stars. They raved about how well it smokes food. One person even said that they would never go back to another barbecue.
Finally, we have Z Grills ZPG-450A wood pellet grill and smoker. With a name like the ZPG-450A, you know this is a serious piece of equipment. One look at it and you get the impression that you're dealing with a full-powered smoker and not a portable pellet grill.
That's because it has 450 square-inches of cooking space inside a metal drum, with a massive 15-pound hopper on the side. A chimney stack rises above the entire unit. Also, you can reach temperatures of over 450-degrees, making this the hottest grill we included. As we said, this is a serious machine.
In addition, expect to pay premium price for the ZPG-450A, depending on the options you choose to go with it. It comes with a 3-year warranty. Also, on Amazon, customers gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Image via Freepik
Imagine this: the mouth-watering aroma of chopped wood and the ease of gas. Except that you don't need to chop wood and you don't need gas. Does that sound too good to be true?
Don't worry, because it exists today in the form of wood pellets. These are basically little pellets made of wood and pulp materials. Because they're dry, they burn really easy. And a pellet grill is like a drum or traditional smoker with a chamber attached for the pellets.
But there's more.
The original pellet grill patent belonged to Traeger, but since the patent expired in 2009, the floodgates opened. According to the Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Association, pellet grills are fast becoming the most popular barbecue on the market. There are good reasons for this.
By now you're probably wondering if a portable pellet grill is a barbecue or a smoker? The truth is that a pellet grill is a smoker. It uses compounded wood pellets to create hot smoke instead of wood chips. But it gets better.
You see, pellet grills are super-easy to use. Inside the pellet hopper is a metallic rod. This is an electric heating element, which glows bright red when you turn it on. That ignites the wood pellets.
You can then set the temperature you want with digital controls, and the rod will control how hot the pellets burn. Then the pellets will burn, glowing red or even white depending on the temperature.
Next, a fan blows the heat and smoke from the hopper into the cook box. Metal plates under the grill heat up, providing ambient heat which cooks your food.
At any rate, you never get the choking, polluting smoke of charcoal or need to fight with pressurized gas canisters. Just load the pellets, turn it on, and forget about it.
Is using a portable pellet grill healthy? What's inside those wood pellets?
The first thing you need to know is that pellet grills use special food-grade wooden pellets. You can't just throw any wood pellets in there. That said, those wooden pellets are as safe as any other type of grilling combustible.
You see, those food-grade wood pellets consist of sawdust pressed tightly together into pellet form. Some may contain flavored vegetable oils for extra seasoning. They are as safe as charcoal or propane. However, there's always an element of risk when grilling.
Carcinogens in food burning on a grill may heighten the risk of cancer, but if you've ever wolfed down a Whopper and fries, grilled food is the least of your worries.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels
By now you think that you might check out one of these newfangled portable pellet grill contraptions. Why not?
You can pick up a portable pellet grill for affordable prices. Most places that sell barbecues carry them, including Home Depot and Amazon.
Make no mistake about it; there aren't many pellet grill manufacturers out there. We expect to see more enter the market now that they're not held back by patents. But for right now, you're looking at only a handful of pellet grills.
So we checked out the ones that we do know about, and read up on each of them. Then we checked out customer reviews, to see what real people had to say.
There were three that we dropped from our list, simply because they had overwhelmingly poor reviews. That left us with a list of the best portable pellet grill options you can buy.
Photo by Francesco Paggiaro from Pexels
The cool thing about owning a portable pellet grill is that when grilling season arrives, you can go anywhere. You're not stuck to your backyard. Surprise your friends and bring your grill to their home. Everybody will appreciate delicious smoked meat.
The only thing you need with a portable pellet grill is a power outlet, some wood pellets, and some delicious food to cook up. So what are you waiting for? It's grill season!
What kind of grill do you use? Let us know in the comment section below!
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]]>There is one simple rule for freelance rates: Never charge less money than you need to live. Simple enough – but how little is too little? To figure that out, you need to calculate your total costs (expenses, insurance, and taxes) and divide them by the number of working days.
Your business expenses as a freelancer include all costs necessary to deliver a service or product to your customers. For example, office rent, software licenses, computer hardware, training, and marketing.
Your living expenses consist, among other things, of rent, food, clothing, mobility, and (private) insurance. It’s very helpful to create lists for these costs and calculate your total expenses. You can look at your account statements from the previous year, record your expenses for a few months in a budget book, or use apps like Finanzguru or Outbank.
As a freelancer in Germany, you must pay for health and care insurance (Kranken- und Pflegeversicherung). The exact rate depends on whether you have statutory or private insurance (Gesetzliche / Private Krankensversicherung). In the case of the former, the Techniker Krankenkasse offers a simple tool to calculate your healthcare contribution. It’s based on your income, lies between 200-910€ per month, and is almost the same for all statutory insurance companies. Private insurance calculates contributions individually based on income, age, and physical condition. To get a first price indication, the Ottova calculator for their private health insurance is nice and well-designed.
As a freelancer in a “creative industry” such as UX and UI design, you can take advantage of the Künstlersozialkasse (KSK – artists’ social insurance), which takes over 50% of health and care insurance costs. When you become a member of the KSK, you’ll have to pay into German pension insurance (Rentenversicherung), which is an additional cost, but it’s still a good deal! Freie Wildbahn e.V. offers a simple tool to calculate your KSK contributions.
You’re not obligated to pay for unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung) or pension insurance. However, you should take a look at both insurances and decide for yourself, whether it makes sense in your situation. Especially saving for retirement is a very important topic and you should carefully evaluate the various options! For the sake of simplicity, the following example calculations include 1000€ per month as pension reserve and no contributions towards unemployment insurance.
Income tax in Germany ranges from 14-45%. The Germany Federal Ministry of Finance offers an online tool to calculate your income tax rate. Additionally, if you’re liable for church tax (Kirchensteuer) this costs 8% of your income tax and, if you earn a lot, you’ll have to pay the solidarity surcharge (Solidaritätsbeitrag), which is 5,5% of your income tax.
The number of 200 working days is a good approximation. It accounts for public holidays in Germany, 30 vacation days, and around 15 days of absence, e.g., due to sickness. However, this also means that you’re fully booked throughout the year and you have little to no idle time between projects.
You should never go below your minimum rate! Otherwise, you will not be able to sustainably run a profitable business. “Profitable” is even a bit of an exaggeration, since you can hardly cover your costs with this daily rate. Use one of the following two methods to calculate a market-typical and more profitable rate so you don’t sell yourself short or cause trouble for other freelancers through wage dumping.
Another method of calculating a daily rate is determining your desired annual income and dividing it by the number of working days. This is especially helpful when you move from a permanent position to being freelance because you can use your current salary as a starting point.
You can also base your calculation on statistical data, e.g., from one of the following sources (all figures are rounded and refer to yearly full-time gross salaries):
Of course, salaries vary depending on education, experience, industry, type of company, and location. If you want to dig deeper, the resources above break down the salary distribution according to various criteria.
Starting from your (desired) yearly salary, you need to add the employer’s 50% share of health and care insurance. Assuming that you don’t have unemployment insurance you can deduct the contributions since it’s mandatory insurance for employees and therefore already included in the gross salary. Finanzfluss offers a practical calculator for social security contributions that lists the various deductions.
Freelancers typically charge more than their salaried counterparts since they carry a higher entrepreneurial risk. They don’t earn anything, during any absence from work (vacation, sickness), a lack of projects, or when a customer can’t pay. It’s hard to propose a number but, I’d personally factor in a risk premium of at least 30%.
The Allianz deutscher Designer (AGD) offers a very helpful hourly rate calculator called “Kajy”. It’s based on the described method and guides you through the calculation step by step.
A third method is conducting a competitive analysis to determine market-typical rates. This method requires gathering data on what other freelance UX designers with similar skills and experience are charging for their services. Besides asking fellow freelancers, you can take a look at the following sources:
When setting your rate, it’s essential to consider your education, experience, and expertise as well as the region, industry, and type of company you’re working with. For example, freelancing for a large corporation in a major city like Munich may command a higher rate than working for a small start-up in a rural area. According to the UX Design Report 2023 by Konzepthaus, the highest-paying industries are logistics, medical technology, and energy. The worst-paying industries are telecommunication, mobility, and real estate. If you work for an agency or a recruitment company, they usually take a share of 5-20% of your daily rate as commission. It’s also important to keep in mind that once you’ve established a price with a customer, it can be hard to raise it. You will need good arguments, as to why your design work is more expensive today than it was yesterday.
As a freelancer, you have higher risks than an employee, and it’s essential to take appropriate precautions. This includes cash savings for hard times (3-6 months income), sufficient savings for retirement, and reasonable insurance.
Disclaimer: I have written this article based on my experience and to the best of my knowledge. However, I take no responsibility for the completeness and correctness of the information and sample calculations. If you spot any errors, please let me know.
]]>The d.MBA is an online business education course made specifically for designers. Its goal is to equip designers with fundamental business skills so they can incorporate business thinking into their work and ultimately help companies to be more successful.
It’s a 6-week online course that blends self-paced learning, working on practical assignments, and peer feedback with a structured schedule and clear deadlines.
In practice, this works as follows: Every Monday morning the instructors unlock new video content and the assignment for this week. Everyone can decide for themselves when to look at the new course material and work on the assignment. On Fridays, there’s a weekly call with a cohort of 30 international students to discuss the assignment and ask questions. Submissions are due on Sunday evening. After the deadline, students and mentors give feedback on the assignments and move on to the next module.
In addition, and I especially liked this, there is the #cafeteria channel on Slack. Every other week, the members of the channel are randomly paired and prompted to meet each other in a virtual coffee break. This is a great opportunity to meet fellow d.MBAers from all around the globe and get to know them on a more personal level.
The d.MBA website states that the program requires a workload of 10-12 hours per week. I started tracking my time from week two onwards and needed 11-14 hours (⌀ 12.5h). I put a bit more time into the d.MBA than necessary because I enjoyed the modules and figured that I’d also learn more. As explained above, the program adheres to a rigid schedule with little free time in between the modules. This can be stressful but at the same time holds everybody accountable and makes sure that everyone moves along at the same pace. Having said that, the d.MBA organizers know that “Life happens” and the course is not the most important thing in the world. Therefore every student has two wild cards, which they can use to submit a deliverable later.
For me, it was challenging to make time for the d.MBA during workdays and I didn’t want to spend my entire weekend at the desk. Fortunately, being a freelancer allows me a four-day workweek (which I can highly recommend!). For most modules, I took one or two evenings during the week to look at the provided material and then worked on the assignment for a few hours on Fridays and Saturdays. I usually tried to submit my work by Saturday afternoon to enjoy a free Sunday, which proved to be a good work-life balance for the 6 weeks of the course.
In the last few years that I have been working as a UX designer, I have learned that business decisions shape the user experience of a product or service more than aesthetics, usability or technology ever can. With this in mind, it only makes sense to view a business decision as a design decision. However, I just never thought of it that way. In the d.MBA program I learned that businesses are also designed and that the approach of shaping a business is not too far from the design process. It involves researching, prototyping, testing, and iterating. In which market a company competes, the position in the value chain, the business model … these are all design decisions and they need careful consideration and iteration. The understanding of business concepts empowers us, designers, to not only design better products but also help to design better companies, too.
The understanding of business concepts empowers us, designers, to not only design better products but also help to design better companies, too.
The d.MBA follows a common thread from understanding markets and trends on a high level, all the way to coming up with useful metrics to measure success. Similar to the design process there are proven tools and methods for each step along the way.
For example, we can use the Competitive Arena and competitor research to understand the bigger context in which a business is embedded. A Value Chain Analysis helps to understand who else, besides customers, a business is designing for. From there, the Business Strategy Framework supports making strategic decisions on goals, places, and activities to gain a competitive advantage. Of course, most businesses exist to make money and by using the BMI Framework and Ecosystem Map, we can design a structured business model. Similar to the double-diamond design process, it’s key to go wide before going deep. This means, coming up with many different possible business models, identifying the riskiest assumptions, and then designing a series of experiments to find the best model. This is also where numbers and mathematics come into play. We can use model calculations to test the feasibility and viability of our ideas, estimate relevancy for the business, and measure impact. This doesn’t have to be rocket science and a simple spreadsheet with basic arithmetic operations can be sufficient as a prototyping tool. Last but not least, business and design metrics help us to gain quantitative insights, align a team around a common goal, and quantify the impact of our decisions. The Metrics Canvas mitigates the risk of over-optimizing for one metric and helps to balance goals while Hypothesis Driven Design turns design into a systematic approach to solve (business) problems.
“You can’t climb two mountains at the same time. If you try to do both, you’ll be stuck in the valley.”
Alan Faljic, Founder of the d.MBA
This quote resonated with me, not only because I love to climb mountains but also because I have seen many projects lack a clear goal. This results in a lot of uncertainty, delays, mediocre results, and above all little value for the users and the business. It’s crucial to set a clear goal and then come up with a corresponding strategy that guides decisions and activities to reach it. As simple as this sounds in theory, it is difficult to put into practice. Business and product strategy requires hard choices and involves trade-offs. Doing one thing means that you can’t do another thing. Climbing one mountain peak means that you’ll miss out on the others – but at least you’re not stuck in the valley!
Successful companies know this and follow a well-thought-out strategy to reach their goal. In one of the two case studies of the d.MBA we looked at the alternative protein market and the different approaches that companies are taking to create alternative meat products. For example, the mission of Impossible Foods is to “turn back the clock on global warming and restore biodiversity by ending the need for animal agriculture”. Their strategy is to target the huge global market of flexitarians and meat lovers (as opposed to the much smaller market of vegetarians and vegans) by offering them an alternative product that they prefer over real meat, but which has a much smaller environmental footprint. As a trade-off, they make a product that is highly processed and unhealthy. They are criticized for doing this but it’s a perfectly valid strategy to reach their goal of minimizing harm to the environment – and besides it’s a good business.
As a freelance UX designer, I’m usually hired by clients to do exactly that: design the user interface and user experience of a digital product. I’ve been doing this for many years and I feel confident to answer “How can we create a great user experience?”. My feeling is that this is true for the entire industry. With many established methods, tools, and best practices the “How?” isn’t such a difficult question anymore. “What should we build?” and more importantly “Why should we build it?” move to the foreground and those questions can’t be answered with personas or wireframes. At the same time, these are the questions that I see especially bigger companies struggling with. While products are designed very thoughtfully, the business context around them is often not.
In my next projects, I want to help design the business context in addition to the product itself. Maybe this means asking lots of difficult questions or using the methods I learned in the d.MBA. As mentioned above, setting a clear goal and designing a corresponding strategy seems the most critical but also applicable to me. This includes coming up with useful metrics to measure the value of a product, feature, or idea against that goal.
Since I don’t know what my next project is going to be, I can’t be more specific than that. However, if you need a business-minded freelance UX designer in your company, you’re welcome to hire me and hold me accountable for what I wrote above.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested in the d.MBA. To learn more, and/or get a 600€ discount write me an email before (!) you apply.
]]>
Of course, you can also create an app to quit all of your work-related apps. Create a new app in Automator, select the command “Quit All Applications” and add the ones that you do NOT want to quit.
If you want to make the Automator app look nice, you can use any graphic in the ICNS, PNG or PDF format as an icon.
Apple also provides an official guide on how to change icons for files or folders on Mac.
P.S. Thanks to Michael Ognew for the original inspiration for this little “Life Hack” 
One easy way to find work is to get in touch with a recruitment service provider. They will save your profile in their database and contact you as soon as they have a suitable request. This is a good way to work for big corporations, who usually don’t hire freelancers directly. The recruitment agency will take care of most of the paperwork and serve as a middleman between you and the client. They earn money by charging the client a higher daily rate than what they pay the freelancer. Here are some recruitment agencies that place freelance designers on projects.
Konzepthaus A specialized team from Munich, who know the design scene very well and maintain close personal contact with clients and contractors.
SOLCOMOne of the big recruiting players in Germany focused on IT and engineering. It’s worth taking a look at their project portal for freelancers.
Lawrence HarveyInternational recruiting agency for IT talent.
HaysInternational company with offices all over Germany and a recruitment agency for many large corporations.
Austin Fraser Recruiting agency for the US, UK, and Germany with an office in Munich.
Avantgarde Experts A local recruiting specialist from Munich with a focus on tech and design.
Academic WorkInternational recruiting agency focused on young professionals with an office in Munich.
Paratus PeopleInternational recruiting agency operating in the fields of IoT and Broadcast Technology with an office in Munich.
Consulting and recruiting company with an office in Munich.
Darwin RecruitmentGlobal recruiting agency with a focus on tech jobs and an office in Munich. On their website, you can browse their current contract UX jobs in Germany.
Freelance networks are hybrid organizations that blur the lines between design and recruitment agencies. They either provide jobs for individuals (similar to a recruitment agency) or assemble cross-functional teams to work on a client project from start to finish (similar to an IT company or design agency). In any case, they have an extended network of specialists from all kinds of disciplines. There is a growing number of freelance networks with ties to Munich:
ekkiden European innovation consulting and recruitment company with an office in Munich.
Elsa & Co A small design agency that focuses on working together with mothers on a part-time basis.
functionalaesthetics Freelance network in Berlin with a pool of designers, developers, and consultants.
THE DEEP BENCHSmall innovation consulting agency from Munich with a large network of “expert players” to configure the perfect team for each project
Besides the professional social networks LinkedIn and Xing, there are online platforms that focus specifically on connecting companies and freelancers. For example, Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancermap, Bettertalkto, UX Remote Talent, and Freelance.de. Sometimes the matching process of these platforms is manual, sometimes aided by algorithms. In most cases, you can set up a profile and also view existing projects and requests. It’s also interesting to use those websites to do research on how other UX freelancers market themselves and what their daily rate is.
If you don’t want to look at (and sign up to) every platform, you can also try searching for “Freelance UX” on Google Job Search. The results will include jobs from some of the mentioned platforms and other websites.
malt One of the biggest platforms in Europe with a very slick website and various additional services for freelancers such as the Malt Academy.
GULP Recruitment service provider focused on IT, engineering, and finance. They list current freelance UX jobs on their project exchange (“Projektbörse”).
talent.io Europe-wide platform to find freelance jobs.
Lynchronize Matching based on detailed skill profiles with the help of AI.
Bosch Legends LabOnline platform to connect freelancers with companies in the industry.
DESIGNERDOCKLong-established recruitment agency for the design scene, mostly for permanent jobs.
FRATCHFratch calls itself “the New Work Operating System” and helps freelancers find suitable projects and companies.
9am9am not only aggregates jobs from various sources but also offers basic CRM functionality, helpful resources, and a (Slack) community.
There are over 450 companies in Munich, that design and develop digital products. They come in all shapes and sizes from small startups to international corporations. Many of them have an internal UX design team but often there is more work than they can handle. As a proactive UX freelancer, you can pick the companies that interest you the most, and approach them directly. This is a bit cumbersome, and might not lead to a project directly but it doesn’t hurt to put yourself on their radar. Who knows, maybe they will have a job opportunity in the future and remember you? You can use the interactive map of UX companies in Munich to get an overview and look for interesting firms.
Another great way to get to know people and look for jobs is to become part of the local community. There are plenty of groups, meetups, and events in Munich that revolve around topics related to user experience design. Going there and meeting people is always a good idea. If you’re up for it, you can even give a talk at a meetup and share your knowledge.
Slack Communities for designers are a nice way to network with other designers, developers, and creators all around the world. They often have #jobs and/or #freelancer channels, where you can look for your next gig.
When you have successfully acquired a project, take a look at my post on how much to charge as a UX freelancer.
]]>Please keep in mind that the statistics below are based on a public Google Doc that anyone can edit without any editorial process. For example, the document contains companies that practice UX design in the broadest sense. They might employ an army of designers or occasionally hire a freelancer. Since the data might be outdated (latest update in January 2021), incomplete, or even wrong you should take it with a grain of salt.
Munich is the city with the most DAX companies and home to many global players, especially in the tech industry. Many of these firms have realized that good design is good business and are therefore building up UX competency inhouse. However, the demand for good UX design is far greater than what they can handle themselves. This creates business opportunities for a variety of service providers such as IT companies, recruiting firms, and design agencies.
A second group that fundamentally shapes the local UX scene are the startups. According to some rankings, Munich is the second most important startup city in Germany. For many of these young companies, user experience plays a crucial role and they’re employing designers from the very start.
The chart above shows that companies of any type come in many sizes. On the one hand, it’s not a surprise that most industrial and media companies are big enterprises, while startups are comparatively small. On the other hand, IT companies, agencies, and consultancies range from a few people to many hundred employees. Please note that size, in this case, refers to the global size of a company and not only their Munich office.
As we can see from the first chart, design agencies make up the biggest portion of the local UX scene. They’re incredibly diverse in regard to their size, organization, and the work they focus on. In addition to global agencies with an office in Munich, there are also many small and independent design studios.
The ratings from kununu are an interesting data point to get an impression on what it’s like to work for a certain company. The charts above visualize two dimensions: the kununu rating on a scale from 1-5 and the count (how many people have rated the company). Most companies have between 3-5 points and fewer than 500 ratings. Bigger companies usually have more ratings but also lesser points.
What’s interesting about this list is that six of these companies are startups and most of them are small or medium size. Looking closer, the data suggests that a medium-sized startup is the best place to work for a UX designer in Munich.
It’s no secret that lots of design-related companies are being acquired, especially by management consultancies. This global trend can also be observed in Munich but the majority of design agencies remain independent. Please note that “acquired” in this case does not necessarily mean that a company is fully owned by another company. It can also mean that they sold only a smaller part of their business.
When we look at the size of acquired design agencies, we can make an interesting observation: most of them employ more than 50 people. One reason might be a fundamental problem with the agency business model that makes it especially hard for bigger agencies to sustain a profitable business.
]]>Obviously, you will need to install OwnCloud first. There is lots of good documentation on this, so I won’t cover the installation here. However, if you’re trying to install OwnCloud at the German webhoster Strato, take a look at my blog post on how to install OwnCloud 9 at Strato (German only).
In addition to the default OwnCloud installation, you need to install the apps for calendar and contacts. This can be done in the main menu (+ Apps) in the upper left part of the screen. It’s only a matter of a few clicks. Once the apps are installed, you’re already able to use the calendar and adress book via the web interface.
To sync contacts and events with your Mac you need to create a new CardDAV (contacts) and a new CalDAV (calendar) account.
If everything works fine, the accounts show up in the calendar and contacts application on your Mac. You’ll be able to sync data in the same way as with iCloud and Google.
If you’ve installed OwnCloud in a sub directory on your web server, OS X will have trouble finding the proper sync URL. In this case it displays the following error:
Accountname/Password could not be verified.
To work around this, add the following lines to your .htaccess file to redirect to the correct URL (instead of “owncloud” enter your OwnCloud subfolder):
Redirect 301 /.well-known/carddav /owncloud/remote.php/carddav Redirect 301 /.well-known/caldav /owncloud/remote.php/caldav
Then create new CardDAV and CalDAV accounts, as described above, and enter your URL without any subfolders (e.g. http://www.your-domain.com) as the server address.
Still not working?
See the bug report on Github for more details on the OS X sync issue and the OwnCloud server manual for more tips on Troubleshooting Contacts & Calendar.
To sync your Android device you need to install CardDAV and CalDAV client apps. I’m using CardDav-Sync free and CalDAV-Sync, which work very well.
Congratulations, you’re now able to sync all of your calendars and contacts between you Mac and your Android phone via OwnCloud. You’re one step closer to completely own your data!
]]>Error while trying to create admin user: Failed to connect to the database: An exception occured in driver: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2) owncloud strato
Nach einigem vergeblichen Trouble-Shooting habe ich dann mithilfe der Strato FAQs festgestellt, dass anstatt “localhost” die Server-Adresse “rdbms.strato.de” verwendet werden muss – und schon geht’s.
In einem anderen Blog-Artikel beschreibe ich, wie man OwnCloud verwendet um Kalender zu synchronisieren.
]]>In this article, I’ll explain how you can send and recieve OSC messages with your browser. We’ll use an open source app to send OSC messages from a smartphone to the browser via Wi-Fi.
Open Sound Control (OSC) is a protocol for communication among computers and other multimedia devices. It can be seen as the successor of MIDI. OSC is very simple, flexible and provides everything needed for real-time control of media. This may not sound very exciting at first but OSC is incredibly useful for connecting devices and creating rich multimedia experiences.
Unfortunately, no browser can recieve OSC messages out of the box. We’ll have to use node.js to recieve the OSC messages and forward them to the browser via WebSocket. node.js is basically a simple version of a web browser that doesn’t have any graphical interface and can (only) execute JavaScript code (it’s a “JavaScript runtime”). One of the benefits of node.js is the availability of countless open source libraries, called “modules”. In our case, we’ll use the “socket.io” module to enable the communication via WebSocket. The WebSocket protocoll is neccessary for two-way, realtime communication with the browser. Traditionally, via HTTP, a client sends a request to the server, which then sends some data back. There is no way for the server to send data to the client without beeing “asked” first. WebSockets allow for messages to be passed back and forth while keeping the connection open. This enables real-time gaming or chatting.
npm install socket.iogit clone git://github.com/automata/osc-web.git cd osc-web/ npm install cd osc-web node bridge.js You can also type in “node” and then drag an drop the “bridge.js” file directly into the terminal. This will run the file with node.js. The terminal will show “socket.io started” and a “heartbeat” from time to time.
In case you want to cancel the execution of the script, press Ctrl + C.
So, now we’re all set to receive OSC messages but still need some kind of software or device to send OSC messages. For this purpose, we’ll use Charlie Roberts Control App to send messages from our smartphone to the browser. It allows you to build custom interfaces with buttons, sliders, knobs etc and send OSC messages over Wifi. The app hasn’t been updated in a while and is not super-intuitive but it’s good enough and it’s free. If you want a more polished, easy-to-use app you can go for Touch OSC.
Congrats, you’ve successfully managed to send OSC messages from your smartphone to your browser!
Using OSC in the browser opens up a world of possibilities:
I used a combination of the following tools to create the vizualization:
Here’s the tutorial that I followed:
]]>अब संघों ने खेल मंत्री हफीजुल हसन से इसके लिए फरियाद की है. 12 मार्च को इस संबंध में उनसे मुलाकात भी की थी. इस दौरान संघ के प्रतिनिधियों ने मंत्री से खिलाड़ियों को समय पर कैश अवार्ड, स्कालरशिप के साथ साथ समय पर विभाग से अनुदान दिये जाने की भी अपील की.
झारखंड ओलंपिक संघ के मधुकांत पाठक ने कहा कि दो सालों से कोरोना के कारण खेल, खिलाड़ियों और संघों के सामने कठिन चुनौती आती रही है. ऐसे में सरकार को गंभीरता से प्रयास करते हुए सहयोग के लिए आगे आना चाहिए.
हफीजुल ने इस पर सहमति जताते कहा कि राज्य में अब फिर से खेल गतिविधियां शुरू हो गयी हैं. राज्य सरकार खेल, खिलाड़ियों और संघों के मसले पर जरूरी मदद मुहैया करायेगी.
मौके पर अलग अलग संघों के प्रतिनिधि भी उपस्थित थे.
खिलाड़ियों के लिए इंश्योरेंस
मधुकांत पाठक ने खिलाड़ियों के लिए इंश्योरेंस सुविधा उपलब्ध कराये जाने का आग्रह किया. साथ ही कहा कि स्पोर्ट्स कॉम्प्लेक्स, होटवार (रांची) में नेशनल गेम के आयोजन के समय बने सिनेमा घर और दुकानों का भी उपयोग हो. अरसे से वे सब बंद पड़े हैं.
उनके उपयोग से रख-रखाव के साथ साथ आजीविका का स्रोत भी खिलाड़ियों के लिए बन सकेगा. संतालपरगना में खेल स्टेडियम और उनमें खेल सुविधाओं के विकास पर भी चर्चा हुई.
कोचिंग में आ रहे बदलाव के मुताबिक कोचों को अपडेट करने, खिलाड़ियों के चयन में खेल संघों के एक्सपर्ट से भी सहयोग लेने के मुद्दे सहित अन्य मसलों पर भी बात हुई. मंत्री ने सकारात्मक कदम उठाने का आश्वासन संघों को दिया.
इसे भी पढ़ें : बाबुल सुप्रियो के लोकसभा क्षेत्र से बतौर टीएमसी प्रत्याशी किस्मत आजमाएंगे शत्रुघ्न सिन्हा
]]>एप्लीकेशन के साथ स्टूडेंट्स को एप्लीकेशन की हार्ड कॉपी अटेस्टेड किया हुआ. साल 2021-23(फर्स्ट इयर), साल 2020-22(सेकेंड इयर) में पंजीकृत स्टूडेंट्स की संख्या, एडमिशन (रजिस्टर की कॉपी सहित), स्टूडेंट्स का तीन माह का अटेंडेंस या ऑनलाइन क्लास चलाये जाने का प्रूफ नोटरी से एफिडेविट किया हुआ, स्ट्रीम के अनुसार कॉलेज का साल 2020 का रिजल्ट आदि जमा करना होगा.
इसे भी पढ़ें:मिस्र में मिला 4500 साल पुराना HINDU TEMPLE , भव्यता देखकर पुरातत्वविद भी हुए हैरान
जैक की ओर से सभी जिला के इंटर कॉलेजों द्वारा भेजे गये दस्तावेज के सत्यापन के लिए तारीख तय की गयी है. उसी के अनुसार उन्हें उपस्थित होने को कहा गया है. सत्यापन की प्रक्रिया कल से शुरू हो रही है जो 13 दिसंबर तक चलेगी. निश्चित तारीख के बाद सत्यापन का काम नहीं किया जायेगा.
आठ दिसंबर को पलामू, गढ़वा,लातेहार,खूंटी,सिमडेगा,लोहरदगा और गुमला जिले के इंटर कॉलेजों का सत्यापन चलेगा.
इसे भी पढ़ें:UP इलेक्शन : BJP के नारे में उर्दू शब्द होने पर जावेद अख्तर का ‘तंज’, सोशल मीडिया हुए TROLL
इसके बाद नौ दिसंबर को दुमका, देवघर,साहेबगंज,पाकुड़,गोड्डा और जामतारा जिला के कॉलेजों का सत्यापन होगा.
10 दिसंबर को हजारीबाग,रामगढ़,कोडरमा,चतरा और गिरिडीह जिले के इंटर कॉलेजों का सत्यापन किया जायेगा. 11 दिसंबर को रांची, बोकारो और धनबाद एवं 13 दिसंबर को पूर्वी सिंहभूम, पश्चिमी सिंहभूम और सरायकेला-खरसावां जिले में चल रहे स्थायी प्रस्वीकृति इंटर कॉलेजों की ओर से जमा किये गये कागजात का सत्यापन किया जायेगा.
इसे भी पढ़ें:जेबीवीएनएल ने नियामक आयोग को दिया बिजली दर बढ़ाने का प्रस्ताव
]]>उल्लेखनीय है कि झारखंड में 29,752 गांवों में रह रहे कुल 58.95 लाख परिवारों में से केवल 7.72 लाख ग्रामीण परिवारों (13 प्रतिशत) को ही नल से जल की आपूर्ति हो पा रही है. 15 अगस्त 2019 को ‘जल जीवन मिशन’ के शुभारंभ के समय राज्य में 3.45 लाख ग्रामीण घरों (5.85 प्रतिशत) में ही नल-जल कनेक्शन था.
जल संसाधन मंत्रालय के अनुसार इन 22 महीनों के दौरान झारखंड में 4.27 लाख (7.24 प्रतिशत) ग्रामीण घरों तक नए नल-जल कनेक्शन पहुंचाया गया है. तब भी 7.24 प्रतिशत की यह बढ़ोतरी राष्ट्रीय औसत 23 प्रतिशत से काफी नीचे है.
इसे भी पढ़ें :5 जुलाई को पटना आयेंगे लालू प्रसाद! होनेवाला है ये बड़ा फेरबदल
2020-21 के दौरान झारखंड में केवल 2.99 लाख घरों में ही नल कनेक्शन उपलब्ध कराया जा सका. इस गति से तो शेष बचे 51.23 लाख घरों तक नल पहुंचाने में काफी मुश्किलों का सामना करना पड़ सकता है.
2020-21 के दौरान झारखंड को ‘जल जीवन मिशन’ के तहत केन्द्रीय अनुदान के रूप में 572.24 करोड़ रुपये आवंटित किए गए थे, लेकिन कार्यान्वयन की धीमी रफ्तार के कारण राज्य केवल एक चौथाई राशि यानि 143.06 करोड़ रुपये ही निकाल पाया. जिस कारण राज्य को कुल आवंटन का तीन चौथाई हिस्सा यानि 429.18 करोड़ रुपये लौटाने पड़े.
झारखंड के प्रत्येक ग्रामीण घर में 2024 तक नल से शुद्ध पेय जल पहुंचाने के कार्य में सहयोग के लिए ही केंद्रीय जल शक्ति मंत्री गजेन्द्र सिंह शेखावत ने राज्य के 2021-22 के आवंटन में चार गुना वृद्धि कर उसका आवंटन 2,479.88 करोड़ रुपये कर दिया है.
यानि, झारखंड में ‘हर घर जल’ के लिए धन की कोई कमी नहीं है. लेकिन, राज्य सरकार ने केंद्रीय आवंटन में से पहली किस्त जारी कराने के लिए अभी तक कोई प्रस्ताव नहीं भेजा है.
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केंद्रीय जल शक्ति मंत्री गजेन्द्र सिंह शेखावत ने राज्य के मुख्यमंत्री को पत्र लिख कर आग्रह किया है कि नल-जल कनेक्शन देने का काम हर गांव में शुरू कर दिया जाय. जिससे राज्य 2024 तक ‘हर घर जल’ हो. गजेन्द्र सिंह शेखावत ने उम्मीद जताई है कि झारखंड सरकार इस विशाल धनराशि का भरपूर उपयोग कर राज्य के प्रत्येक ग्रामीणों के घर में पेयजल सुविधा सुनिश्चित कर पाएगी.
राज्य के ग्रामीण इलाकों में इस विशाल राशि के निवेश से निश्चित तौर पर रोजगार के व्यापक अवसर पैदा होंगे, तथा ग्रामीण अर्थव्यवस्था में नई तेजी और मजबूती आएगी.
इसके अलावा, 15वें वित्त आयोग के तहत ग्रामीण स्थानीय निकायों/ पंचायती राज संस्थालओं को जलापूर्ति एवं स्विच्छतता के लिए दी जाने वाली राशि के रूप में झारखंड को 2021-22 में 750 करोड़ रुपये उपलब्ध हैं. इसके फलस्वरूप राज्य को अगले पांच वर्षों यानी 2025-26 तक 3,952 करोड़ रुपये का पक्का आश्वासन है.
इसे भी पढ़ें :प्रवासी मजदूरों का डाटा तैयार करने में हो रही देरी पर सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने केंद्र को फटकारा, कहा- मजदूरों की फिक्र नहीं
झारखंड में केवल 5,867 स्कूलों (14 प्रतिशत) और मात्र 962 आंगनवाड़ी केन्द्रों (2 प्रतिशत) में ही नल से पेय जल की व्यवस्था है. इस पृष्ठभूमि में केंद्र सरकार ने राज्य से कहा है कि बच्चों के स्वास्थ्य और साफ-सफाई के महत्व को देखते हुए अगले कुछ महीनों में सभी शेष स्कूलों, आंगनवाड़ी केन्द्रों और आश्रमशालाओं में भी नल से पेय जल पहुंचाया जाए.
झारखंड के मुख्यमंत्री को लिखे पत्र में केन्द्रीय जल शक्ति मंत्री गजेन्द्र सिंह शेखावत ने पानी की कमी वाले क्षेत्रों, जल गुणवत्ता प्रभावित गांवों, आकांक्षी जिलों, अनुसूचित जाति/ अनुसूचित जनजाति बहुल गांवों, और सांसद आदर्श ग्राम योजना के सभी घरों को इस वर्ष प्राथमिकता के आधार पर नल से जल प्रदान किए जाने पर प्रधानमंत्री नरेन्द्र मोदी द्वारा विशेष बल दिए जाने का भी उल्लेख किया है.
जल गुणवत्ता परीक्षण और निगरानी गतिविधियों को सर्वोच्च प्राथमिकता दी जानी चाहिए. इसके लिए आंगनवाड़ी कार्यकर्ता, आशा कार्यकर्ता, स्वयं सहायता समूह के सदस्य, पीआरआई सदस्य, स्कूल शिक्षक आदि को प्रशिक्षित किया जा रहा है.
ताकि वे फील्ड टेस्ट किट (एफटीके) का उपयोग करके संदूषण के लिए पानी के नमूनों का परीक्षण कर सकें. झारखंड में मौजूद कुल 33 जल जांच प्रयोगशालाओं में से केवल 7 ही एन.ए.बी.एल. से प्रमाणीकृत हैं.
राज्य को प्रयोगशालाओं को भी और बेहतर बनाना होगा तथा ज्यादा से ज्यादा प्रयोगशालाओं को एन.ए.बी.एल. प्रमाणीकरण दिलाने का प्रयास करना होगा.
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]]>इसे भी पढ़ें :सिमडेगा : एनडीआरएफ की टीम ने डैम में कूदे सौरभ का शव निकाला, पीड़ित परिवार को मिलेगा मुआवजा
काठमांडू में चीन के दूतावास की ओर से हाल में कहा गया था कि चीन नेपाल को टीकों की 300,000 खुराकें देगा जिससे नेपाल के 1,50,000 लोग लाभान्वित हो सकते हैं. ‘माए रिपब्लिका’ पोर्टल के मुताबिक दोनों देशों के विदेश मंत्रियों के बीच हुई बातचीत में चीन ने नेपाल को 500,000 खुराकें देने का फैसला किया. चीन के इस फैसले को बीजिंग की टीका कूटनीति के प्रयासों के रूप में देखा जा रहा है. गौरतलब है कि 22 जनवरी को भारत ने नेपाल को कोविड-19 की दस लाख खुराकें भेंट की थीं.
]]>इसे भी पढ़ें – CoronaUpdate: देश में संक्रमितों का आंकड़ा 14 लाख के पार, 32 हजार से ज्य़ादा मौतें
मिली जानकारी के अनुसार स्थायी संबद्ध कॉलेज यानी परमानेंट एफिलिएटेड कॉलेजों को सरकार की ओर से प्रत्येक एकेडमिक इयर की अनुदान राशि दी जाती है. इसके लिए विश्वविद्यालय को पैसा भेजा जाता है. इसके बाद विश्वविद्यालय संबंधित परमानेंट एफिलिएटेड कॉलेजों के शासी निकाय से प्रस्ताव मंगा कर अनुदान की राशि कॉलेजों को देता है. नीलांबर-पीतांबर यूनिवर्सिटी में एकेडमिक इयर 2018-19 और 2019-20 की अनुदान की राशि परमानेंट एफिलिएटेड कॉलेजों को अब तक नहीं मिली है. जबकि दोनों ही शैक्षणिक सत्र के लिए विभाग की ओर से जारी अनुदान राशि पिछले करीब चार माह पूर्व विश्वविद्यालय को प्राप्त हो चुका है. इसके बाद भी कॉलेजों को अनुदान की राशि नहीं दी गयी है.
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गौरतलब है कि विवि सभी कॉलेजों के शासी निकाय से अनुदान संबंधी प्रस्ताव मंगाता है. यह प्रस्ताव कॉलेजों की ओर से महीनों पहले विवि को भेजा जा चुका है. दरअसल परमानेंट एफिलिएटेड कॉलेज की आय का स्रोत हर साल मिलनेवाले अनुदान के अलावा स्टूडेंट्स से मिलनेवाली फीस होती है. इसी पैसे से कर्मचारियों को भुगतान किया जाता है. लेकिन कोरोना की वजह से कॉलेज बंद हैं. ऐसे में छात्र-छात्राओं से मिलनेवाली फीस भी नहीं आ रही है. इस वजह से उन कॉलेजों में काम कर रहे शिक्षक-शिक्षकेतर कर्मचारियों को काफी मुश्किलों का सामना करना पड़ रहा है.
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]]>तीन को 4-4 लाख रुपये, नौ को 2-2 लाख रुपये और दो को 1-1 लाख रुपये की राशि का भुगतान पुनर्वास अनुदान के रूप में किया जाएगा. इन उग्रवादियों में 11 भाकपा माओवादी, 2 पीएलएफआई और 1 टीपीसी का सदस्य हैं.
इसे भी पढ़ेंः टैक्स कलेक्टिंग एजेंसी Sparrow को लेकर नगर विकास विभाग और रांची नगर निगम के बीच ठनी
भाकपा माओवादी के रिजनल कमिटी का सदस्य और खूंटी जिला के अड़की थाना क्षेत्र स्थित बारीगढ़ा का रहनेवाला कुंदन पाहन उर्फ आशीष उर्फ विकास और यहीं के डिम्बा पाहन उर्फ धीरज के अलावा भाकपा माओवादी का जोनल कमांडर व पलामू में सरेंडर करने वाला एनुल खां उर्फ गोविंद को प्रत्यार्पण और पुनर्वास नीति के तहत 4-4 लाख रुपये मिलेंगे.
इसे भी पढ़ेंः NewsWingImpact: धनबाद में सब्जी बेच रही नेशनल आर्चरी खिलाड़ी को उपायुक्त ने दिया 20 हजार का चेक
खूंटी जिला के अड़की थाना क्षेत्र के मदहातु का रहने वाला लादु मुंडा उर्फ सानिका मुंडा, खूंटी जिला के अड़की थाना क्षेत्र स्थित गम्हरिया की क्रिस्टोमनी कुमारी, गुमला जिला के पालकोट थाना क्षेत्र स्थित चिरोटांड का दीपक कुजूर, पूर्वी सिंहभूम जिला के गुड़ाबान्दा थाना क्षेत्र स्थित जियान बानबेड़ा का रहने वाला कान्हुराम मुंडा उर्फ अर्जुन उर्फ मंगल (सैक सदस्य), खूंटी जिला के अड़की थाना क्षेत्र स्थित इन्दीपीढ़ी की रहनेवाली व एरिया कमांडर सुनिया कुमारी उर्फ सुनिया मुंडा और दुमका जिला के शिकारीपाड़ा थाना क्षेत्र स्थित बांकीजोर का रहनेवाला देवीलाल हांसदा उर्फ छोटा साथी शामिल हैं. इन सभी को दो लाख रुपये पुनर्वास अनुदान के तहत दिए जाएंगे.
इसके अलावा पूर्वी सिंहभूम के मुसाबनी थाना क्षेत्र स्थित विक्रमपुर गुंदाटोला का रहनेवाला सुंदर मुर्मू उर्फ सुंदर सोरेन और पलामू जिला नवडीहा बाजार थाना क्षेत्र स्थित पाल्हे का रहने वाला राजेंद्र भुईयां को प्रत्यार्पण और पुनर्वास नीति के तहत एक-एक लाख रुपया मिलेगा.
पीएलएफआई का एरिया कमांडर व गुमला जिले के कामडारा थाना क्षेत्र स्थित रेड़वा बरवाटोली का रहने वाला रुबेन केरकेट्टा और सब जोनल कमांडर व गुमला जिले के गुमला थाना क्षेत्र का रहनेवाला प्रकाश उरांव उर्फ राजन को पुनर्वास अनुदान के तौर पर 2-2 लाख रुपये मिलेंगे.
वहीं उग्रवादी संगठन टीपीसी का एरिया कमांडर एवं पलामू के चैनपुर थाना क्षेत्र स्थित पचलेवा का रहनेवाला अजय प्रसाद उर्फ रौशन को भी पुनर्वास अनुदान के 2 लाख रुपये मिलेंगे.
इसे भी पढ़ेंः गढवा: उपेक्षा का दंश झेल रहा आदिम जनजाति कोरवा, टूटे फूटे घरों में रहने को विवश
]]>इसे भी पढ़ेंः अनलॉक के पहले दिन जोरदार झटका, गैस सिलेंडर हुआ महंगा, जानें नई कीमत
गत दिनों जमशेदपुर जिले के नक्सल प्रभावित गुड़ाबांदा क्षेत्र की पुलिस को बड़ी कामयाबी मिली थी. 16 फरवरी 2017 को नक्सली चुनू मुंडा ने 25 लाख रुपये के इनामी नक्सली कान्हू मुंडा समेत सात माओवादियों के साथ सरेंडर कर दिया था
. महेशपुर में आयोजित पुलिस सिविक एक्शन कार्यक्रम में गुड़ाबांदा दस्ता झारखंड, बंगाल व ओडिशा संगठन के सचिव कान्हू मुंडा समेत सात नक्सलियों ने तत्कालीन एसएसपी अनूप टी मैथ्यू के समक्ष सरेंडर किया था. सरेंडर करने वालों में फोगड़ा मुंडा, भोगलू सिंह, जितेन मुंडा, शंकर मुंडा, चुन्नू मुंडा व महिला नक्सली काजल मुंडा शामिल थी.
नक्सली कान्हू मुंडा पर 25 लाख व फोगड़ा मुंडा पर 10 लाख रुपये का ईनाम घोषित था. वहीं अन्य पांच नक्सलियों भोगलू, चुन्नू, शंकर, काजल व जितेन पर भी दो-दो लाख रुपये का ईनाम घोषित था.
इसे भी पढ़ेंः SIRD: फर्जी नियुक्ति वाले को पहले किया बर्खास्त, फिर किया निलंबित, अब किया जा रहा वेतन भुगतान
इसे भी पढ़ेंः बंदूक और कोरोना के खौफ से कैसे होगी शिक्षा?
]]>कैबिनेट सचिव एसकेजी रहाटे ने बताया कि राज्य सरकार ने 27 फरवरी 2017 को निजी सेल्फ-फाइनेंस्ड तकनीकी संस्थानों को इन्फ्रास्ट्रक्चर के लिए अधिकतम दो करोड़ रुपये और उनके एक्सटेंशन के नाम पर अधिकतम छह करोड़ रुपये देने का संकल्प निकाला था. अपने इसी पुराने सकल्प को रद्द करने के प्रस्ताव को रघुवर सरकार ने गुरुवार को हुई कैबिनेट की बैठक में स्वीकृति दे दी.
इस फैसले के पक्ष में सरकार का तर्क समझाते हुए कैबिनेट सचिव एसकेजी रहाटे ने बताया कि ऐसा फैसला लेने से पहले बाकायदा समीक्षा की गयी है. समीक्षा के दौरान पाया गया कि झारखंड के आस-पास के राज्यों में चल रहे निजी संस्थानों को वहां की सरकारें ऐसी कोई सहायता नहीं देती है, इसलिए झारखंड में भी इसे रद्द कर दिया गया है.
इसे भी पढ़ें- चार सालों में रघुवर सरकार ने अपने प्रचार-प्रसार में खर्च किए तीन अरब रुपए
इसे भी पढ़ें- पारा शिक्षकों की शिक्षा मंत्री नीरा यादव के साथ वार्ता विफल, जारी रहेगा आंदोलन
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इसे भी पढ़ें- झारखंड सरकार की आधिकारिक वेबसाइट Jhargov.In में कई खामियां
ग्राम स्वराज की प्राथमिकता रखनेवाली रघुवर सरकार की पंचायती राज व्यवस्था पूरी तरह लालफीताशाही का शिकार होती जा रही है. एक ओर पंचायतों को 14वें वित्त आयोग के वित्तीय वर्ष 2018 -19 की पंचायत की योजना के लिए प्रथम किस्त निर्गत करने का पत्र सरकार के संबंधित विभाग द्वारा जारी कर दिया जाता है, इसके बाद भी पंचायत को राशि नहीं मिल सकी है. पत्र में राज्य के कई आला अधिकारियों के हस्ताक्षर भी हैं. इनमें अवर सचिव राजीव रंजन, निदेशक सह विशेष सचिव, सरकार के सचिव शामिल हैं. पत्र की प्रति महालेखाकार झारखंड, योजना सह वित्त विभाग, अवर सचिव सह निकासी एवं व्ययन पदाधिकारी ग्रामीण विकास विभाग पंचायती राज, सभी जिला के उपविकास आयुक्त सह मुख्य कार्यपालक पदाधिकारी, सभी प्रमंडलीय आयुक्त, उपायुक्त को भेजी गयी थी. पंचायतों को 14वें वित्त अयोग (2018-19) का प्रथम किस्त जारी कर दिये जाने संबंधी पत्र भारत सरकार के पंचायती राज मंत्रालय और वित्त मंत्रालय को भी भेज दिया गया था. इसके वबाजूद अभी तक जिला में भी राशि नहीं पहुंच सकी.
इसे भी पढ़ें- उर्दू भाषा के प्रति उदासीन शिक्षा विभाग, HC के आदेश के बाद भी नहीं निकला नियुक्ति का विज्ञापन
राज्य के पास केंद्र सरकार के करीब 417 करोड़ रुपये पहले से ही पड़े हुए हैं. साथ ही पंचायतों के लिए 14वें वित्त आयोग द्वारा अनुशंसित राशि भी सरकार के पास है. अब यह राशि ट्रेजरी से रिलीज नहीं हो पा रही है. क्या सरकार ने इस राशि का उपयोग कहीं और कर दिया है, इस संबंध में भी कोई कहने को तैयार नहीं है. ऐसे में विकास कार्य के लिए पंचायतों को मिलनेवाली राशि, जो केंद्र द्वारा भेजी गयी है, वह पंचायत को नहीं मिल पा रही है. इस वजह से पंचायतों के गांवों का विकास कार्य पूरी तरह ठप हो गया है. बता दें कि यह राशि राज्य के सभी 24 जिलों की पंचायतों में विकास कार्य के लिए उपयोग में लायी जानी है, जिससे पंचायत को जलापूर्ति, सीवरेज एवं ठोस अपशिष्ट प्रबंधन, स्वच्छता, जल निकासी, समुदायिक परिसंपत्तियों के रखरखाव, सड़क, फुटपाथ एवं स्ट्रीट लाइट के रखरखाव, श्मशान-कब्रिस्तान के रखरखाव, राज्य सरकार द्वारा पंचायतों के लिए समय-समय पर निर्धारित आधारभूत कार्यों में खर्च करना है.
इसे भी पढ़ें- एनबीसीसी को मिला झारखंड में एम्स निर्माण के लिये 902 करोड़ रुपये का ठेका
पहले किस्त में से अभी तक राज्य के केवल सात जिलों को ही राशि भेजी जा सकी है. शेष 17 जिलों में अभी तक राशि नहीं भेजी गयी है. वहीं, केंद्र से दूसरे किस्त की राशि दिसंबर-जनवरी में आनी है. ऐसे में अगर पहले किस्त की राशि का उपयोगिता प्रमाणपत्र राज्य सरकार केंद्र को नहीं भेजती है, तो दूसरे किस्त की राशि 6.4 अरब रुपये रिलीज नहीं हो पायेगी. इसका दुष्प्रभाव गांव के विकास पर पड़ेगा.
पंचायती राज सचिव, झारखंड सरकार द्वारा 14 अगस्त 2018 को ही सभी जिलों को 14वें वित्त आयोग द्वारा 2018-19 का प्रथम किस्त की अनुशंसित राशि देने के लिए पत्र निर्गत गया था. प्रथम किस्त की राशि छह अरब चार करोड़ 12 लाख रुपये निर्गत किये जाने थे. इनमें से मात्र गोड्डा, चतरा, धनबाद, लातेहार, लोहरदगा, देवघर और खूंटी जिला को राशि मिली है. अन्य जिलों की राशि अब तक जिला में नहीं पहुंच सकी है.
बोकारो के डीडीसी रवि रंजन कहते हैं कि 2018-19 में 14वें वित्त आयोग द्वारा अनुशंसित पंचायत की विकास योजना की राशि बोकारो जिला को नहीं मिली है. वहीं, गिरीडीह के डीडीसी सह मुख्य कार्यपालक पदाधिकारी मुकुंद दास ने कहा कि 2018-19 में 14वें वित्त अयोग द्वारा अनुशंसित किसी भी तरह की राशि पंचायत के लिए जिला को प्राप्त नहीं हुई है. वहीं, चतरा के डीडीसी मुरली मनोहर प्रसाद कहते हैं कि पैसा तो आया है, लेकिन यह किस साल का है ध्यान नहीं, शायद पैसा आया है.
इसे भी पढ़ें- डोरंडा कॉलेज पर विभाग मेहरबान, बिना आधारभूत संरचना के कई कोर्सेज को दी गयी है मान्यता
14वें वित्त आयोग की राशि सभी जिलों को निर्गत कर दी गयी है. जब उनसे पूछा गया कि मात्र 7 जिलों को ही राशि भेजी गयी है, तो उन्होंने कहा कि जिन जिलों को राशि निर्गत नहीं हुई है, उन्हें राशि निर्गत कर दी जायेगी, अभी वह प्रोसेस में है.
मुखिया संघ झारखंड प्रदेश द्वारा पत्र लिखकर मुख्यमंत्री, ग्रामीण विकास मंत्री पंचायती राज, मुख्य सचिव झारखंड सरकार से 14वें वित्त आयोग द्वारा 2018-19 के प्रथम किस्त की आवंटित राशि को भेजने का आग्रह किया गया है. विभाग द्वारा सभी जिलों को 14वें वित्त आयोग द्वारा अनुशंसित राशि देने के लिए सिर्फ पत्र निर्गत किया गया है. लेकिन, पत्र निर्गत करने के दो महीने बीत जाने के बाद भी पंचायतों को राशि नहीं मिली है. अभी तक 24 जिलों में से केवल सात जिलों को ही राशि दी गयी है. मुखिया संघ का कहना है कि सरकार की ओर से अगर 10 दिनों में राशि पंचायतों को नहीं मिलती है, तो वह आंदोलन के लिए विवश होगा, जिसकी पूरी जिम्मेदारी राज्य सरकार की होगी.
रघुवर सरकार द्वारा पंचायत की मजबूती के कार्य की 2016 में प्रशांस हुई थी. लेकिन, हाल के महीनों में सरकार द्वारा जिन 29 अधिकारों की परिकल्पना की गयी थी, उसका अनुपालन नहीं होने से राज्य के पंचायत प्रतिनिधियों में सरकार के प्रति आक्रोश भी बढ़ता जा रहा है. पंचायत के लिए चुनकर आये प्रतिनिधियों को पंचायत, निकायों को अधिकार प्राप्त करने के लिए काफी संघर्ष करना पड़ रहा है. वहीं, गांव के विकास के लिए सरकार द्वारा आदिवासी विकास समिति और ग्राम विकास समिति का गठन किये जाने से स्थिति और भी संघर्षमय हो गयी है.
इसे भी पढ़ें- एनएच 98 पर फोरलेन सर्वे का विरोध, मुआवजा-बसाने के बाद काम शुरू करने की मांग
इसके बावजूद गांव की सरकार को सरकारी महकमा सहजता के साथ आत्मसात करता नहीं दिख रहा है. संवैधानिक प्रावधानों का हवाला देते हुए वर्षों से पंचायती राज संस्थाओं को मजबूत करने की मांग को सूबे की सरकार ने स्वीकार तो कर लिया, लेकिन हालात जस के तस हैं. कहने को तीन स्तर की पंचायती राज संस्थाएं (ग्राम पंचायत, पंचायत समिति और जिला परिषद्) को अधिकार दे दिये गये हैं, लेकिन अब भी मामला फंड, फंक्शन और फंक्शनरीज में ही लटका है. न तो उन संस्थाओं के लिए मैन पावर को लेकर कोई दिशा-निर्देश है और न ही उनसे जुड़े कामों को लेकर कोई तस्वीर सा़फ की गयी है.
झारखंड राज्य के गठन के बाद दो पंचायत चुनाव हो चुके हैं. राज्य में 24 जिलों के 263 प्रखंडों में हुए चुनाव में 4402 ग्राम पंचायतों में मुखिया पद के लिए चुनाव हुए. इसके अतिरिक्त ग्राम पंचायतों के 54330 वार्ड सदस्यों, पंचायत समिति के 5423 व जिला परिषद के 545 सदस्यों के लिए चुनाव हुए. इस बार झारखंड में पंचायती राज चुनाव में 54 प्रतिशत महिलाएं चुनकर आयी हैं, जो आरक्षण सीमा से चार प्रतिशत ज्यादा थी.
]]>इसे भी पढ़ें- जल्द ही झारखंड में कृपा बरसने की उम्मीद! सीएम और मंत्री बाबा की शरण में तो डीजीपी ने ओढ़ा बाबा का…
विशेष दत्तक गृह में आधारभूत संरचना का विशेष ख्याल रखना है और आधारभूत संरचना किशोर न्याय अधिनियम के अनुसार होना है, लेकिन राज्य में चल रहे विशेष दत्तक गृह में आधारभूत संरचना में कई कमियां हैं. विशेष दत्तक गृह में सुरक्षा व्यवस्था पर कोई ध्यान नहीं है. विशेष दत्तक गृह में अधीक्षक को दत्तक गृह में रहना होता है, लेकिन राज्य में चल रहे अधिककतर दत्तक गृहों में अधीक्षक के रहने की कोई व्यवस्था नहीं है. विशेष दत्तक गृह के संचालन के लिए कार्यरत अनुभवी कार्यकर्ताओं का होना आवश्यक है, लेकिन इन नियमों का उल्लंघन किया जा रहा है. वैसे एनजीओ विशेष दत्तक गृह का संचालन कर रहे हैं, जिनका पूर्व का कोई अनुभव ही नहीं है और कार्यरत कर्मचारी भी अनुभवहीन हैं. वहीं, कार्यरत कर्मचारी की पुलिसिया जांच आवश्यक है, लिए इसकी भी अनदेखी की जा रही है. विशेष दत्तक गृह संस्थान में मौजूद बच्चों की चिकित्सीय जांच हेतु समय-समय पर जांच कराने के लिए पारा लीगल वॉलंटियर की व्यवस्था होनी चाहिए, लेकिन दत्तक गृह में पारा लीगल वॉलंटियर नहीं हैं. वहीं, बच्चों के सोने के लिए पीडियाट्रिक बेड की व्यवस्था होनी चाहिए, लेकिन राज्य में संचालित अधिकतर दत्तक गृहों में यह व्यवस्था नहीं है.
इसे भी पढ़ें- कुछ लोगों की मौजूदगी सीएम को है नापसंद, शक्ल देखते ही उलटे पांव मंच से लौटे
राज्य बाल अधिकार संरक्षण आयोग द्वारा गठित छह जांच समितियों द्वारा जांच की गयी है. इसमें ग्रुप-ए में आयोग सदस्य रविंद्र कुमार गुप्ता, भूपन साहू द्वारा हजारीबाग, चतरा, कोडरमा, गिरिडीह, देवघर, ग्रुप-बी में सदस्य अन्हद लाल द्वारा दुमका, जामताड़ा, पाकुड़, साहेबगंज, गोड्डा, ग्रुप-सी में आयोग की अध्यक्ष आरती कुजूर द्वारा पश्चिमी सिंहभूम, सरायकेला-खरसावां, ग्रुप-डी में भूपन साहू द्वारा सिमडेगा, लोहरदगा, गुमला, खूंटी, ग्रुप-ई में आरती कुजूर द्वारा धनबाद, बोकारो, रामगढ़, रांची और पूर्वी सिंहभूम और ग्रुप-एफ में रविंद्र कुमार गुप्ता द्वारा लातेहार, गढ़वा व पलामू के बालगृह-दत्तक गृह केंद्र और वहां कार्यरत बाल कल्याण समितियों की जांच व समीक्षा की है. जांच में विशेष दत्तक गृह के संचलान में काफी कमियां उजागर हुईं. विशेष दत्तक गृह केंद्र सरकारी अनुदान से चलनेवाले इन संस्थानों को अनुदान निरस्त करने की आयोग ने अनुशंसा की है. सृजन फाउंडेशन चतरा, इसडो पलामू, सहयोग विलेज गढ़वा, सहयोग विलेज सिमडेगा एवं कुछ एनजीओ को सुधरने के लिए दो माह का समय दिया गया है.
]]>We discuss the knee-jerk society that has become the United States and how this has drastically hurt the development of children, most specifically in the education process. We engage in a discussion about how there is nobody in power being held accountable and briefly get into no-knock raids, the Chris Dorner case, and a recent jay-walking case in Austin, Texas.
]]>In this final piece of the conversation we discuss how people around the western world are finally beginning to raise their daughters so that they are first class, independent, free-thinking citizens. Jad hypothesizes that we will likely see a massive change in how women are perceived in the Western world within about two more generations.
We consider some interesting psychology that all of us are likely contributing to, albeit unknowingly. Namely the psychology of how we interact with little boys versus how we interact with little girls. For example, it’s well-documented that when interacting with a little boy, one will likely ask what toy he is playing with, what his interests are, and other similar topics related to developmental growth. Contrast that with how we commonly interact with little girls and we find that most people will instinctively comment on how pretty she looks, the clothes she is wearing, and not much more. Surely an entire childhood of this has an impact on the mind.
Finally, we discuss various topics around the idea of gender neutrality and ponder the immutable differences between males and females.
]]>In this episode we turn our attention away from how the media specifically portrays the female form and rather to how education and upbringing are applied differently to females than males. We consider how women fare in the academic world as well as how they have been historically treated in this world. We discuss maths and science programs and question whether or not women getting involved in these kinds of fields will have an impact on how men see them in the future.
And like so many of our previous episodes have tended towards, we consider the idea of inculcation. If women are treated a certain, perhaps negative way their entire lives, then scientifically speaking how would we ever expect that them to rise above antiquated stereotypes moving forward?
]]>For our third part of this series we consider whether the video is a reflection of current cultural norms, or if it is videos like this that are effectively creating the cultural norms in the first place.
We consider the possibility that perhaps the media is not necessarily responsible for convincing women that they should be allow themselves to be objectified. Perhaps the ongoing misfortunes of education and upbringing in some people’s lives are instead more likely culprits. Whatever the case may be, the question still remains as to what can be done about this? If it’s not as simple as turning away from the media, then how do we begin to change the mindset that girls are presented with from an early age?
]]>In this second of five parts we delve into the idea of objectification. We consider the qualities that society has deemed important to being a woman as well as the qualities that society has deemed important to being a man. Naturally these tend to be vastly different. One side focuses almost exclusively on appearances while the other focuses on mental abilities and status in the world.
We also consider some real-life scenarios centered around strippers and adult models. If men are willing to pay good money to see nothing more than the bare human form, is it possible to say that perhaps men are the fools and women are the one’s with real power, not the other way around? And if that is possibly true, then what are the real ramifications to objectifying women in the first place?
]]>To celebrate this occasion and to start the next 100 episodes off on the right foot, we have dedicated the next fives weeks to a discussion about the objectification of women in the media.
We’re joined in the studio by a local Austin artist and recent college graduate, Adrienne Parker. Over the next five weeks, the three of us will discuss the topic of objectification focusing on last summer’s hit music video, Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke.
If you haven’t seen it, the video essentially follows the artist on a white set while naked models dance around him. It’s not an especially complicated premise and while the video was very well-received by the general public, it was certainly not without its many criticisms.
In this first part we examine the overarching problem. How have music videos changed over the past 50 years? How is this affecting women? What influence does it have on younger women struggling to find an identify in the world? And what influence does it have on younger men who are struggling to understand women?
We want to be clear that because the JKPodcast focuses on Libertarian and Anarchist principles, we’re certainly not in any way advocating that this type of material should not be permitted or otherwise censored in any way. We would not support any kind of authoritarian action to silence such expressions. Rather our discussion is around the psychology of this material and what long-term impact it could have on our society.
So sit back and enjoy the 100th episode of the JKPodcast. We certainly look forward to bringing you 100 more episodes!
]]>Although we had intended just to record a simple teaser episode, the discussion wound up taking off a bit.
As such we discuss the notorious British Petroleum scenario, pollution that comes across the Pacific Ocean from China, and how these situations could be dealt without the use of violence.
Jad also gives us a short history lesson on why tort law changed to favor the industrial revolution way back when.
]]>Jad and Kevin discuss some of the experiences their respective coworkers and Kevin had while traveling through American and Mexican security practices.
They look at the absurd policies that Americans have been submitting themselves to for more than a decade and consider how our behavior is changing as a result of such mindless submissions to authority.
]]>While platform changes to a party are certainly a big deal, the minutia discussed at this convention was both fascinating and likely shocking to any person not intimately involved in politics. We have frequently likened Roberts Rules to a good game of Dungeons and Dragons and such was the case here.
]]>We consider just ten years ago how it would have been unheard of for the United States to align itself with a group like Al-Queda after the fall of the twin towers. Ten years later, here we are living in a world where that very thing is happening.
]]>We talk a bit about Coinbase, discuss who the Dread Pirate Roberts is, and get into the difficulties of TOR and IP management. We also discuss the types of materials available on the silk road including drug types, weapons, and other treats known only to those on the so-called dark web.
Towards the end we spend a brief amount of time discussing the great lengths that people have gone through in the past to move drugs around – including building fucking submarines. Yes, drugs are popular. We both support them fully.
]]>Besides that little bit of luck, Jad and Kevin spend some time discussing potential alternate voting methods. In particular, they examine one method used by the Texas Libertarian Party known as approval voting. They also consider why it’s so difficult to find people willing to fight for the same message of liberty.
]]>The two of them debated the age old question of intelligent design versus evolution. Jad and Kevin weigh in at a meta-level of how this kind of conversation still exists in 2014.
]]>Jad and I compare and contrast these comments and open a dialogue around the freedom of association. We discuss the civil rights movement of the 1960s and consider what the government’s role should be in forcing people to get along with one another.
]]>The race essentially came down to two candidates, Kathie Glass and Robert Bell. Jad and Kevin go into the nuanced rules that the Libertarian Party uses for voting called approval voting.
]]>Jad tells us a little bit of his family background and what it was like being raised in a military family. Although the two had fairly different upbringings, Jad and Kevin connect on the all-too-familiar human experience of sweeping problems under the rugs, something we both experienced in our respective families.
]]>The topic actually fits extremely well into the political spectrum since let’s face it, one of the largest problems we have as a society is knowing how to communicate effectively with one another. The pair spend most of the episode sharing therapy experiences and how learning to communicate more effectively has benefits far beyond romance.
This is the first of a two-part episode of which will be concluded next week.
]]>Over the next three Monday Morning episodes Jad and Kevin will walk through what that experience was like. In this first part we discuss the gun rally led by CJ Grisham (which admittedly turned a lot of non-libertarian heads in the wrong direction), introduce the candidates for various offices, and detail the various statewide positions being voted on.
]]>In the past few months there have been several very serious uprisings happening around the globe. Some of the more notable ones include Venezuela, Ukraine, and Egypt. As the proper history-geek of the JKPodcast, Jad explains what is going on and how tensions being created in otherwise unrelated countries could inadvertently become catalysts for a much larger war.
We spend the last few minutes of the show discussing Scott Horton, host of antiwar.com.
This is a super short episode, but we promise to be back next week with our usual bouts of philosophy and debate! We even have a few special guests on the horizon.
]]>We primarily examine the idea from a corporate level. Specifically, we consider how big-box retailers are more commonly attempting to search their customers as they exit the building. Admittedly this is not a search procedure like that of the TSA, but it’s a search nevertheless.
The problem isn’t necessarily with the store asking, but rather with people not immediately and instinctively understanding that they needn’t subject themselves to such a thing. Moreover, and for the sake of liberty that they shouldn’t either. Our hypothesis is that these small occurrences ultimately weaken one’s ability to be assertive when dealing with other forms of authority.
It’s then no wonder police abuses and agencies like the TSA can so easily prevail.
]]>While the low turnouts are not particularly surprising for a libertarian group, Kevin was rather surprised and frankly annoyed to see so few of the candidates even take the time to participate.
If you have any interest in the political process, hopefully you’ll find this insider scoop interesting, even if you’re not keen on the state apparatus.
]]>In the later part of the episode, Jad introduces us to an interesting anarchist by the name of Keith Preston. Keith’s view of anarchism involves the ancient proverb of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Essentially his belief is that despite their often highly conflicting ideologies, all groups interested in dismantling the state apparatus should work together to accomplish the goal before going their separate ways. It’s interesting to think of radical groups like the Black Panthers sharing a common goal with a group as notorious and racially damaging as the Ku Klux Klan, just as an example.
]]>The result of this violence was an eruption of anti-government demonstrations that have lasted almost a year (as of this post). It is estimated that almost 5% of the country’s entire population has participated in the movement since the protests first began.
Jad and Kevin tackle the idea of why protests begin and how they gain momentum. We consider what triggers them and discuss how riots characteristically differ from revolutions. We consider the Arab Spring, the IRA, the Occupy movement, and even the Los Angeles Riots.
]]>Since Kevin is experiencing this process first hand (as a candidate for the State of Texas House of Representatives in District 46), he was a little surprised to see how much personal financial disclosure there was.
It’s pretty likely the case that establishment candidates are fully aware of how to diversify their
finances as to avoid the disclosure process as best they can. Newcomers, however, have absolutely no chance in being able to do this.
If you’re paying attention, this is really just another cog in the election apparatus.
]]>To our surprise, the two individuals actually won the case. Jad and Kevin discuss what it means for the courts to make a ruling like this. Would the two of be precluded from working for free if we chose to do so? If not, what would be the alternative if payment weren’t an option? If you’re curious, the case was eventually appealed and the original decision wound up being reversed; ultimately Fox came out the victor.
]]>You’ve undoubtedly seen this methodology displayed in countless movies over the years. Whether it’s the mafia, some sort of foreign terrorist, or a state figure, threatening the safety of a person’s child is a sure-fire way to force them into compliance.
Kevin tells a story about a friend of his dealing with this and the Los Angeles Police Department (a group we’ve discussed many times in the past). Later in the episode we get into a playful discussion about New Jersey and all of its charms (or lack thereof).
]]>The short of the story is that while most of the groups seem project one message, the reality is that they’re usually after something entirely different. For example, the Texas Home School Coalition was very interested in Kevin’s position on gay marriage and abortion. Of course we remain entirely unclear how those have anything to do with home schooling or education in general.
We spend a lot of the episode talking about the Association of Texas Professional Educators, better known as ATPE. They are an education group that, to their credit, provided Kevin with a very fair platform to voice his thoughts.
]]>For this third piece, we consider the genesis of micro-government. If people were deserted on an island, à la Lost, is it really reasonable to think that people would act in an ethical manner. Jad argues against the premise of this by suggesting that survivalism is not part of the ethical construct.
From there, we go on discussing how much of a modern convenience the notion of justice really is. Specifically, we consider biological realities and attempt to determine if humans are naturally violent or naturally peaceful.
]]>After following up with a bit of our conversation from last week, Kevin introduces a lifeboat kind of scenario presented by Harvard Law professor, Michael Sandel. The scenario involves a run-away train situation and whether one would kill one person in order to spare the lives of four others.
It’s a deeply complicated philosophical question despite the rather elementary setup and one that is perfect for our blend of discussion.
]]>As an official state candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, one of the things that Kevin has to keep up with are campaign finance reports. Put simply, these financal reports describe how much money he took in via donations, how much money he contributed to his own campaign, and how much money his campaign spent.
The reports are also used to collect a host of personal financial information about me as a candidate. For example: What stocks does Kevin own? Do he own any real estate? Do he receive any funds from boards or organizations?
Jad and Kevin spend a few minutes talking about the TEC process and specifically highlight the typical technical shortcomings of government organizations. It’s probably important to note that filing this paperwork late or inaccurately results in an automatic $500 fine so despite some of the ridiculousness, it’s definitely no joke.
]]>The three of us consider differences between objective and subjective ethics and discuss how both terms apply to so-called “just” societies. Our analogies take us from ancient tribesmen sacrificing themselves to volcano gods all the way to modern instances of executing the mentally incapable.
]]>Amongst many other things, we finish talking about a new Apple plant set to open in Austin, consider the massive bonds being designed and ponder why people think cities have unlimited growth potential despite obvious warning signs to the contrary.
]]>The group grew larger and larger and eventually launched a massive lawsuit. In the end, a smaller Wal-Mart was built instead, primarily due to the economic downturn in 2008, but the neighborhood took it as a success nevertheless. Jad and I discuss what it means for a city to own land. How can a city grant itself authority to sell land to individuals, tax them on the land, and then control the governing structure of what they can and can’t do with said land?
It’s another two-parter so be sure to tune in next week to wrap it up!
]]>If you’re not familiar with the concept, as of January 1st, 2014, recreational marijuana is completely legal for adults 21 years and older in the state of Colorado. The same applies to Washington State too, but we’re only focusing on Colorado in this episode.
Kevin tells Jad about the experience and the both of us discuss legal circumstances around the drug war and the absurdity of putting people in cages in order to protect them from themselves.
]]>Jad and Kevin discuss the nuances of filing candidate paperwork with the state, how the process works, candidate eligibility, and other particulars that one learns when making a run for office. Kevin goes on to speculate that he probably will not get much help from within the Libertarian Party. He also considers how many candidates are likely to be fined for their lack of understanding the process.
Later in the episode Kevin and Jad discuss one of the first candidate polls that Kevin receives, this one for the Texas Home School Coalition.
]]>Jad and Kevin discuss what the situation was like and give some credit to Colorado for being such a positive trend-setter. We also discuss the absurdity in limiting the growth of a plant. Later in the episode Jad and Kevin discuss different types of edibles. Kevin also tells a quick anecdotal story about seeing Jerry Seinfeld on some California medicinal marijuana a few years earlier.
]]>In this final episode of a three part series, we are once again joined by our friend Tom de Lorenzo to discuss the topics of morality and ethics.
To conclude our discussion, we turn our attention to the idea of ethical symmetry.
The idea is essentially that so long as all parties decreeing a rule or regulation are willing to concede to the same set of guidelines, then the actions taking place can be considered ethical. A relatively easy way to test this is using hypocrisy as a guide.
For example, if all people on an island are willing to draw straws and ultimately sacrifice themselves to the volcano gods then so long as everyone agrees this is the rule and abides by it come their turn, then the ethics are symmetrical. If on the other hand someone was spared for any reason, perhaps because they were deemed a ruler, then the ethics are asymmetrical.
Governments are of course incredibly asymmetrical.
]]>In this second part of a three part episode we’re joined again by our friend Tom de Lorenzo to discuss objective versus subjective morality.
In this particular section we consider some of the caveats of how ethics are applied to a social system. Tom and Jad present the idea that ethics should not apply in cases of survivability. Kevin, on the other hand, disagrees and contends that we may have to choose to live unethically in certain situations.
His reasoning is derived from the idea that if survivability alone allows us to dispute what is objectively moral, then the fact that survivability can be a subjective term poisons the entire idea. With that in mind, Tom counters with the idea that perhaps ethics are really a luxury and something more appropriate for an advanced society.
]]>It always seems at first glance that separating objectivism from subjectivism should be a trivial task, but if you’ve not tried it before, you might want to think twice before jumping to that quick conclusion.
We examine what most would consider to be very cut and dry moral issues including theft, rape, and even murder. It might seem that these are inherently objective moral issues, but when you consider the broader animal kingdom, when you consider history, and when you consider how these issues have changed over time, their objectivity becomes a bit grayer.
]]>Jad and I explore the topic of building permits in local cities (specifically Austin in this case) and consider the pros and cons of such laws.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Kevin: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast, an anti-authoritarian
philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the
entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the
grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality. The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad
Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode.
If you’ve never thought about how the development regulations get handed down
from the federal government to the states, and then to the local municipalities,
here’s your chance. Jad and I explore the topic of building permits in
local cities – specifically within Austin in this case – and consider the pros and cons
of such laws.
Jad: You know, here’s my native
position is when I read the thing – so read the description of this problem, the
problem being that permits expire after what is it, five years, three years?
Kevin: It depends on –
Jad: Okay.
Kevin: – what it is, I think.
Jad: So building permits expire after some
period of time and they’re going to reverse that rule or let it lax so that
building permits will last indefinitely and the problem this brings up is that
there’s all these old permits that have expired, but they will suddenly be
unexpired, but they might be building codes from the 80s or 90s or whatever when
apparently you could make you know, skyscrapers out of mud and brick that would
collapse at the first sign of rain or something, I’m not sure what the danger is
really but apparently, there’s some awful hazards. So I don’t know,
it’s when I’m reading this thing I’m like, I don’t really have
any grounds upon which to pick a side, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I just don’t know how to reason
that sort of thing and I don’t know, that’s kinda where I get to I guess.
Kevin: Well I can give you some points of reason that I’ve
thought of over the years that I’ve definitely presented to various neighborhood
groups. One of the things that really bothers me about a lot of the laws that
they put into place are that you know, most of these things already exist to begin
with. So for example, the way that the – from what I understand I mean,
I’m definitely no developer or anything like that – but from what I
understand, the building codes and laws like that there, kind of a top bottom
structure, right? So where if there’s some federal code that says,
“You have to do this”, you know and if there’s a federal law that
says, “Your house has to have a smoke detector”, then the state obviously
has to inherit that and it kind of trickles its way down.
So by the time you actually get to the state level with this sort of thing, the
Texas State Building Code is already – you’re talking about issues of
safety and things of that, these things are already so accounted for in my
opinion. Now you could obviously make things slightly more – you can always
make things safer in a manner of speaking. You could always make things more
structurally sound by adding more material, or adding stronger material, or whatever
the case is, but of course there’s tremendous costs, and material costs, and
engineering costs that has to go into that.
So I take some initial issue with things like that because I think a lot of times,
people are like, “oh, this makes it better”, and even in some of those
emails that I saw that went out you know, there was an example where they were
suggesting that you know, as technology and science gets better, we should keep
adopting the newest technologies and I very strongly disagree with that because I feel
that ideally we should which is why the wealthier people are very likely going to use
those things because it’s always nice to have a stronger building, but to insist
the people do that under penalty of city law I think is the wrong way to go to say the
very least.
You know, more of a libertarian type of side or frankly just a sensible economic
policy, I just think it’s horrible because it forces the cost of things up in
areas where the needn’t go up in the first place, and I think Austin is largely
responsible for driving a lot of the – I think a lot of the reasons why Austin is
more expensive than a lot of the other cities in Texas has a lot to do with a lot of
the building codes that the city of Austin puts in place.
So if the city forces you to use material that are you know, 20% more expensive and
forces you to pay for all of these permits, well at the end, of course it’s no
wonder that your house costs an extra $50,000. It doesn’t make it a $50,000
better building, and so I feel that there’s kind of this artificial inflation
that exists in the building market here. So that’s why you know, with
respect to these permits expiring and things like that, none of these things are going
to be able to trump state and federal laws, you know?
Jad: Sure. So I have no problem with
that argument and that is entirely persuasive to me as far as you’re talking
about parts of the building code that just increase the safety requirements or
whatever, increase the cost and increase the quality of the building material, that
sort of thing. So that I don’t have any mental conflict there or –
the one side of the argument I don’t really buy into, the one that says you know,
everyone should have to build to a minimum standard. I think if you’re
building something to live in, then you are assuming the risks associated with building
a house out of subpar material, but that’s you know, you’re bouncing that
against what all the other things in your life that you need to pay for, and
that’s entirely reasonable.
I don’t see any problem with that, but here’s a for instance, like so
what if on the edge of Mueller[?] or whatever, 20 years ago some guy got a permit to
build a you know, a landfill, or he got a permit to build a you know, a petroleum
storage facility or something like that, right? Then by
“deregulating” or by moving backwards in time as far as things that may not
be allowed anymore now were allowed previously suddenly can be carried through again
– that wasn’t said very well but you get my point I think.
Kevin: Absolutely I get your point, yeah. So you know, I
think you had pointed that part of the potential ordinance out to me and unfortunately,
I didn’t actually follow up and see what happened at city council when they did
this, but I think the principle of the argument holds all the same so we can definitely
still talk about it. In a case like that you know again, I don’t really
know if necessarily those permits immediately just come into play. Let’s
just assume for argument’s sake that they did and from what you said, it sounds
like they would, I guess the thing I find a little – I don’t have a great
counterargument to it – but you know, as far as the actual verbatim language of
the law might be concerned.
But it seems to me that it would be pretty reasonable to find a middle ground that
says that we’re still going to examine individual cases when it’s got a
concern of some sort of environmental impact, or when it’s got a concern of some
sort of what they would call spot zoning. So for example, if there was a permit
20 years ago that said we’re gonna build an industry right here and maybe 20
years ago that would’ve been appropriate, but now all of a sudden there’s
residences all around there, it seems to me that you know, you could pretty easily say,
“well in the case of spot zoning, we’re gonna immediately flag it and see
what happens and then we’re gonna weigh at one individually”, because I
guess the thing for me is trying to say like I have no problem with people keeping up
with local regulations, I think local regulations have some good intention behind them
– I think Austin’s insane – but I think the general idea behind them
is not necessarily bad but in these cases, I guess what I don’t like about the
system is that the people who are in favor of these permitting times, they just
don’t recognize the amount of money and the length of time that’s required
to kind of crawl through these bureaucratic obstacles that the city of Austin puts up
for people, for developers.
And I think the most people who continue to argue that, they’re never gonna
know because they’re not the people who are engaged in developing stuff. In
many cases, they probably don’t have the money to try to pursue interest like
that and so they’re never actually gonna know just how challenging this is, how
challenging the city makes it for them. So I think it just wouldn’t be
unreasonable to create some sort of regulation on that that says, “Look, in these
cases, we’re still going to do an individual check.” If an industry
that was 30 years old is gonna pop up in the neighborhood, we’re still gonna
disallow that just on common sense reasoning, but just because you’ve taken six
years to build your project instead of three years, we don’t think that you
should have to spend another $60,000 getting that permitted and I think that’s a
pretty reasonable point of view.
So again, it doesn’t exactly address your question as far as like the you
know, what do you do with that actual language, but surely in a local side of
governance, there has to be a middle ground like that that could be achieved where you
could get rid of this whole stupid you know, you gotta build it in three to five years
or you’re done without actually disrupting you know, existing environmental
standards and established neighborhoods, and et cetera.
Jad: Right. Sure. Well I think
that’s the crux of the problem I believe is that the suspicion is – and I
would think it’s pretty well found in general – but the suspicion is that
there’s some group of developers who have things that would now be unwelcome were
it to be built that are pushing for this time limit to be dropped so that they can do
their development and that it is not an attempt to help people who are just honestly
developing some small project and takes six years instead of five.
My point is I guess that this is where the sticky point is, and this is why this
sort of government structure fails because there are so many instances in which things
are masked as we’re trying to be helpful to the citizens, when actually what
they’re trying to do is put things in place for some nefarious purpose by their
massive funding political backers, because that happens so frequently, nobody can move
in a deregulatory way right, because along with the deregulation that helps the little
guy as it were is always the fear of deregulating something that’s just gonna
unleash some giant nightmare of you know, corporatism.
Kevin: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s
the – if I’m understanding you right – I think that’s exactly
–
Jad: It’s kinda hard with my
–
Kevin: No, I follow it. I follow it just fine. No, but
I think that’s correct and I think that what you said, that why this type of
governance fails and I agree with that, that’s my argument all the time.
You know, I think when it comes to developmental standards and you know, neighborhood
development, and growth, and community growth, and et cetera, I think I’m pretty
reasonable about it quite frankly and maybe some other people would say otherwise, but
I think I’ve got a pretty reasonable take on it and I think it pretty much just
comes down to common sense.
But you know, as far as the property rights go I mean, I’m as in favor or
property rights as anybody could be but at the same time, I’m probably still not
going to speak entirely in favor of a guy who happens to own a piece of land next to an
elementary school and says, “now I’m gonna build a tire factory next to
it”, you know I think common sense would dictate that even though the property
right still exist that we should find a way to avoid that because clearly there’s
some downsides to that. But I think one of the problems that Austin has is that
– and you probably, I think you said this in there but I may have missed it
– is that as they pile more, and more, and more of this shit on, at some point in
time I think this is a likely consequence of the system, it’s like the blowback
if you will of this local structure where you start making things so difficult for
people there’s such a lack of reasonability to the whole process that it’s
not surprising to me that at some point, those people are gonna band together and
revolt and quite frankly, I have a lot of sympathy for them having dealt with those
issues before.
You know, I think there’s a lot of developers out there – especially in
the city of Austin – you know, one of the things I find consistently just because
a lot of developers call me up for whatever reason in fact one guy did just a few weeks
ago, I’ve spoken with him several times now and he wants my support for this
development that they’re gonna build over near your neighborhood actually, and
it’s a housing development but the thing is is that it’s very difficult to
– most developers in this city don’t wanna build stuff, they kind of
contradict the spirit of the neighborhood because they know that if they do, the
community is probably going to respond to them very poorly.
For example, like if you did buy a piece of property in Austin and it was zoned
industrial, so now you’ve got the right permit to do it, you’re in the
right zoning case. But if it turned out that there was like some neighborhood
park right next door, if you build your tire factory there, chances are that this
city’s probably gonna band itself together somehow or another and if not get you
shut down cause all sorts of grief for you – and no developer wants to deal with
that either I mean, it’s just bad for business. So I feel like the city
actually interestingly enough is pretty good at self-regulating because everybody gets
so up in arms about everything, so with that in mind, I think that’s why
it’s particularly frustrating that there’s so many additional city
regulations on the way that properties need to be built and maybe it’s a chicken
and egg thing here and maybe because the city is so strict that’s why the
neighborhood feels that they can be so in your face about it, or maybe the other way
around, I don’t really know. But I guess what I’m saying is
it’s not surprising to me that these people are trying to circumvent these
processes now if that’s indeed what’s happening because it’s so
encumbering.
Jad: Sure, yeah. No, I have no doubt
about that. I guess maybe because the other weird part is – it’s not
that weird I guess, maybe you hang out with the wrong developers – but like the
domain had no problem going in and you know, even things that were contested like the
Wal-Mart on – not north [?], is it [?] –
Kevin: It’s Anderson.
Jad: Anderson. You know, it had some
problem but despite a nearly universal neighborhood you know, opposition to it, it went
in – and I’m not saying that’s good or bad – but it seems like
I think the problem is again that people feel like they don’t have any control
over that sort of thing, over the big development things that happen. And so when
someone says something is gonna be more restrictive, it’s like a blind –
what’s the word I’m looking for, there’s an analogy here somewhere
– it’s just a blind striking out at what they perceive to be development
out of control even though what’s actually being done is things that if they ever
try to make a modification to their house, they’re going to give them you know,
hours and years of nightmarish grief by the permitting office.
They still see that as their only way to check development that they don’t
like. Whether or not they’re morally correct in feeling that they have the
power to oppose it at all, that’s the feeling and so no amount of regulation is
too much for you know large numbers of people in Austin and for certain developers,
that works out to their favor as well because their competition may not have the same
relationship with the contractors that get the expedient lines at the permitting
office.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So it may be that the more regulations
there are, the bigger the gap of their advantage, vis-a-vis development goes up over
there competitors. So it seems like it’s I guess again, I don’t
really have a strong opinion either way except that the city shouldn’t be
regulating anything at all I mean, that’s the outside the box opinion, but if
they’re going to then in what manner should they? It’s very hard for
me to get a feel for what the right answer is.
Kevin: Right.
And that’s where we’ll stop for this episode. As always, thank you
so very much for tuning in to the show. If you haven’t done so already,
please stop by our podcast website at www.JKPod.com
where you’ll find all of our episodes, show notes, links to material, and full
transcriptions. We always wanna credit the amazing work our staff does to help
breathe life into this show. Many thanks to Lee Caffey and Chris Bazon[Sp?] for
providing us with quality sound engineering and editing. Hosting services are
provided by City Core, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend,
Sayeed Mohed Badru Haseem[Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by
Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for the show, or if you just wanna say
hello, we love receiving email. You can find Jad at Jad-Davis.com, and you can
find Kevin at KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be
back with another episode soon.
Following up from last week, we consider specifically how religion is being used to influence the ongoing wars around the world. From there we discuss what defines a nation as having a specific religion? Some people suggest it is appropriate to call the United States a Christian nation simply because the majority of Americans identify with that particular religion. This is often different from Islamic states whereby the state and religion are explicitly conflated.
Finally, we consider countries with larger atheist populations and examine how most came from communism whereby the state essentially acted as the deity.
]]>We also consider if religion is the driving force behind wars around the world or just a coincidental part of it.
]]>Having never thought about it before, her response of “always” struck him as a little shocking. But the reality is that it’s completely true, the average woman can be physically dominated by the average man in virtually any situation. This is just something women are forced to live with.
We discuss a variety of situations where this applies in life. We also consider a recent situation in India whereby women anxiously want to arm themselves in order to feel protected. We’re joined this week by Tom DeLorenzo, a frequent guest to the show.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast,
an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw
our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes
focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin
Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. Jad once asked his wife how often
as a woman she felt that she could be physically dominated by a man. Having never
thought about it before, her response of, “always”, struck him as a little
shocking, but the reality is that it’s completely true; the average woman can be
physically dominated by the average man in virtually every situation. This is
just something that women are forced to live with their entire lives.
Jad and I discuss a variety of situations where this applies in life. We also
consider a recent situation in India, whereby the women there anxiously want to arm
themselves in order to feel protected. We’re joined this week by our friend
and local author, Tom DeLorenzo, a frequent guest to our show.
Tom: You know, along the feminist lane that we were
talking about, I thought of Wendy McElroy, she writes a lot about anarchy. Are
you familiar with –
Jad: Yeah.
Tom: I don’t know if she has a website specifically for
it, but she’s just an anarchist feminist.
Jad: Right.
Tom: What do you think about the necessity of having
feminism as a subject as opposed to just you know, equal human rights? Does it
warrant specific attention? What’s the – I haven’t really read
too much of her feminist specific writings, is there a need for something that’s
aimed that way as opposed to just general human rights? I mean I understand that
the balance has been the wrong way for a long time.
Jad: Right. Yeah, I think the value
for any of that stuff is that even your group of Star Trek DND pure logic emotionless
engineer droids, they have cognitive biases that they’re not – unless you
become introspective and at least get some empathy for yourself and learn how to listen
to your own inner dialogue, you’re not even aware of why you’re making the
decisions that you’re making sometimes, right? The human ability to
rationalize something – and if you’re really top notch engineering material
in our generalization here, then I can tell you if you happen to believe anything X,
you can come up with a reason for it, right?
That’s what the debate team is all about right is like I’m gonna flip a
coin, you’re gonna get one of two positions, and I want you to convincingly argue
it, right? It’s the exact same thing that we all do in our own minds to
support the decisions we make in the positions we hold and I think the best you can
really hope for as a human being – and with our limited cognitive abilities and
whatnot – you can’t really hope to make perfect decisions. The only
thing you can do I think is develop a capacity to examine why you make decisions,
right?
And so you develop a capacity to notice patterns in your decision making and be
like, “you know, I keep doing all these things that always end up badly. Am
I going to continue to blame other people and come up with elaborate justifications for
why this happens, or am I going to examine the possibility for a moment that this is
not what I want to do, this is something that I’m compelled to do by my fragile
brain hardwiring or programming”, or whatever.
So my point – to make a long point longer – is to say that I think when
you have a group that says, “okay, we’re going to specifically analyze
history, and economics, and all this with respect to women, and we’re going to
lay out a narrative or a framework that will highlight to other people that no matter
how advanced you think you are”, with a nonaggression principle, you still have
attitudes that are conservative, part of a tradition, part of what your were raised to
believe, part of what your religion believes, whatever it is with respect to women that
it’s going to put you at odds with them and you’re creating or exploiting a
power relationship, even if in your mind you’re behaving in an entirely
libertarian manner –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – if that makes sense.
Kevin: Yeah, it makes sense to me. I feel like you’re
addressing that explicitly [?] right now.
Jad: And now just as an example, this is
something that never really occurred to me until I was just talking to Elisa maybe
five, six years ago and I said something about, “when are the times that you feel
physically dominated by a man”, and she said, “well, all the
time.” Like at any time, at any instance, anywhere for your entire life,
any time that you are relating to a male, they can physically dominate you. Like
if he decides to do it no matter what the context, whatever the reason, if that is what
he decides to do, it’s done like, you can’t do anything, you are always in
that position. So just having that perspective makes it – like we were
talking about earlier with why do more men than women feel safe saying we don’t
need police around, well that’s because most males don’t have that
experience, unless you’re very, very tiny or just part of an extremely abusive
group of people. You know, I’m not afraid of anything, I’m not afraid
of anyone ever, you know?
I would have to be dropped into an extremely foreign context with lots of angry
people around or something before I would actually be physically afraid of another
person, you know what I mean? So it’s just not something we can experience
so having that perspective though allows you to kind of get some empathy and insight
for the situation like say, when a woman is approached at four in the morning in a
hotel lobby when there’s no one else around and she feels threatened. A man
might not be able to understand that and think she’s overreacting, but
that’s just because they don’t have empathy for the position of ultimate
vulnerability like that.
Kevin: Hmm, that’s a pretty wise point. We would have
to make – Tom and I or at least me – certainly revisit the potential racial
stances of the libertarian party or even the gay population being libertarian I mean, I
would say that certainly all applies.
Tom: Because unfortunately, most people in those
positions have come to kind of rely – hence my word dependence – a little
bit upon the government for protection because they perceive that society itself is the
main danger.
Kevin: Yeah, I actually have to go back on that and agree with you
that my analysis of maybe it being more of a marketing word is I think you might be
correct. I think maybe the dependence actually is a better word given that more
empathetic point of view.
Jad: Well and I’m not necessarily
sure that flips that position, it may or may not, but of course there is no actual
value, right? Having the police around does not actually prevent assault except
in maybe the most rare of cases on 6th Street or something like that, but I
mean like that’s the whole point of the police is they don’t prevent crimes
from happening and in fact, any analysis – and this is again – feminist
analysis of the justice system will show you that something crazy, like 90% of rapes
don’t go reported because the judicial process is so demeaning to the female who
is claiming that she’s been assaulted that most women won’t even pursue
it. If you look at the evidence of course, the dependence is a false
dependence. The thing that they’re depending on is not protecting them,
which is a pattern in the state to citizen relationship.
Tom: Right.
Jad: But I think that it is that
perception. It’s that perception that needs to be understood by
libertarians who are interested in reaching out to a wider community to try to convince
them of their positions.
Tom: Yeah, it’s very interesting that maybe women
in general may look to the police for protection and even though they can’t
protect except after the fact, maybe pursue whoever did it, if that’s [?] of
punishment as a protection, but they’re also – again, generalizing –
tend to be more against things like owning a gun when in reality, that would be the
best equalizer there is if someone’s physically stronger as a group than the
physically weaker people, if they have guns you’ve removed a lot of potential for
oppression right there and yet, that’s the tool that’s generally not
advocated for by women.
Kevin: Well it’s a pretty big talking point right now,
too.
Jad: Yeah. Well that’s a good
transition to our other topic, but it’s kinda funny because I realized that we
have actually talked about something very similar to this at my behest –
previously as well – and it was a woman who was basically saying that the
relationship between women and the state tends to be a little bit [?] as well because
poor women don’t typically want to call the police because they understand that
they’re not likely to be helped, they’re very likely to be abused further,
or they’re likely to have the police show up and then withdraw, and then
they’re gonna have her criminations from their community and wherever else.
So I think that group also understands the value of being armed.
I think when you’re talking about the population of women that advocate
against or advocate gun control I guess – and I have no evidence for this –
my guess is is that it is women who do not need weapons because they are in community
like you know, they’re in Steiner Ranch right, where there is security that will
prevent you from being attacked by a man and you’re in a socioeconomic class
where – and this is not as true as we’d hope it would be – but
you’re a lot less likely to be abused by your spouse, so you’re in a
situation where you don’t need to be armed. I think when you get down to
the lower socioeconomic class where there actually are those kinds of threats; I think
they do understand the value of weapons.
So the transition point, the thing in India, there’s this big huge movement
now among women – not a political movement – but they’re just
attempting to get higher gun registration, trying to get the amount of permissions or
licenses or whatever they’re giving out to be increased so that they can be armed
because they live in such a society in which they’re completely powerless in
almost all other respects.
Kevin: Yeah, I did not watch this whole interview because it just
turned me out after a while, but when Alex Jones was on Piers Morgan the other day,
that was one of his big talking points that he was bringing up with him because they
had a – I don’t know if you heard about it but it was all over the news –
but he had like this 15 minute talking sequence with Piers Morgan about the gun control
basically and that was one of the points he brought up was, he’s like, “but
you don’t wanna talk about this, this is actually happening in India right
now. These women, they want the weapons. The women want the guns because
they recognized that they’re not safe and they need a way to make themselves feel
safer and presumably to actually be safer by having the same advantages as the man,
who’s trying to assault them.”
Jad: Yeah. I mean that’s I
think the missed selling point or whatever, if you wanna go back to the marketing
thing, and it’s what you were saying, Tom, is like, there is no equalizer like
that. I mean even a stick is not – or a sword or you know, it doesn’t
– until you have a gun, that relationship is always going to go to the stronger
person.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Well once you have a firearm that
you’re entirely level unless you’re within five feet of each other you know
or whatever.
Tom: And you know, when you look for political
solutions for things like this, you’re not fixing the problem because if
society’s going to evolve to the point where people are more enlightened and
don’t take advantage of the power they have over certain people, if you just
install the government system of punishment, it’s a prohibition –
prohibition just never works in fact, it probably causes more of the problem to
happen. So if women, or a minority, or an oppressed group wants long term change,
there’s gotta be ways to get society to change that does not include government
using force to punish that activity because that doesn’t have any deterrent
effect whatsoever.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: So one good step would be if more women were armed
then I think – I’m gonna characterize people who pick on weak people as
kind of cowards and bullies and if there’s any resistance, they pretty much give
up on it. So it’s kind of using force to transform society, but it’s
yeah I don’t know, if it dulls up a certain respect because people understand well,
those people are no longer powerless, I can’t pick on them because they’re
gonna fight back and you know, it’s a lot different than I can pick on them and
then there’s somebody else who’s gonna tell me I can’t.
Jad: Right. Actually, so I don’t know
if we want to make this an all rape, all sexual assault episode, but I’m totally
for the radical arming of women, I think that’s great, so don’t mistake my
point but the interesting thing if you read anarcho-feminist literature and –
actually, this is just straight up feminist literature coverage[?] for the most part
– you know, the rapes don’t happen when some guy jumps out at you and
you’re walking home at night, they happen to women that are wasted at bars or
whatever or fall asleep you know, pass out somewhere and they’re raped by an
acquaintance or somebody who offers to take them home or whatever.
Like again, it’s something ridiculous like 80%, 90%, 95% of sexual assaults
happen in that manner and again, I’m not sure I believe this personally, I think
the evidence supports it to some degree and there is evidence that I can link to that
shows that the biggest deterrent to sexual assault in a – I think the place they
did this actually had public service announcements – but in general is those
places where when someone says, “oh yeah you know, she was totally passed out and
so you know, I took her home and slept with her”, or fucked her, whatever, then
the places where that person’s peers say, “well, you just raped that woman,
that’s rape. You’re telling the story as if it’s something
innocent but it’s not, what you did is sexually assault that person”, and
in those situations incidence goes down pretty quickly because it is the fact that
people are willing to turn a blind eye or to say, “well, she was drunk at a bar
and she was”, you know, whatever, “wearing a mini-skirt and she went home
with the guy, so how can that possibly be rape scenario?”
In those contexts, the people who want to rape don’t jump out of alleys and
attack women who might be armed; they go to bars or go to frat parties or whatever and
pick their targets there. So it’s an instance in which even though I always
advocate the defensive violence, the real solution tends to be social ostracism, a more
widespread enlightened attitude, right?
Tom: Right.
Jad: And horizontal peer-to-peer
enforcement tends to shut that stuff down pretty quick so it’s like the only
reason it happens is because people dismiss it as not a problem in their peer
groups.
Kevin: Oh, yeah. About a month ago maybe, I was driving into
work, listening to the talk radio and they were talking about the drunk driving laws
that they’re trying to pass throughout Texas and Austin in particular I think,
and there was a guy from England who brought up the point how they actually completely
eliminated it and he’s like, “you can pass all the laws you want,
you’re never gonna fix it because that’s not the problem, people
don’t care about the legal deterrent.
What they care about is the actually peer pressure of other people”, and
apparently they launched these hugely aggressive campaigns to make people aware that
it’s a terrible thing and they did it in such a way where if the general
population got behind saying if you’re like, “I’m gonna drive
home”, you just couldn’t as a social stigma all of a sudden if you’re
the guy driving drunk at a party, people are like, “dude, who the fuck is this
guy? Don’t ever come back”, and it’s the same thing to your
rape point where it shouldn’t be the comical frat guy sort of one-liner as you
pointed out, it should be a, “wait a second, you can’t do that”, and
if you have a whole group of people that are actively responsible for one another like
that then I think the problem goes away rather quickly actually.
Jad: And that’s where we leave it for
this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffee and Chris Baton [Sp?] for providing us with
quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without
them. Hosting services are provided by City Core, LLC. Our graphical
caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Hasham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and
transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we
love receiving email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning
in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
The three of us discuss how women fit into libertarianism and anarchism. We essentially consider the fact that many modern laws and regulations have been put into place to protect women and other minorities. True libertarians and anarchists contest these laws on the basis that government simply can’t dictate moral values, but others contest these laws simply because they’d prefer to continue subjugating the very people they’re designed to protect.
Jad also spends a few minutes explaining the Free State Project to Tom and Kevin.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast,
an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw
our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes
focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin
Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. This week, we’re joined by
our old friend and local Austin author, Tom DeLorenzo. The three of us discuss
how women fit into libertarianism and anarchism. We essentially consider the fact
that many modern laws and regulations have been put into place to protect women and
other minorities.
True libertarians and anarchists often contest these laws on the basis that
government simply can’t dictate moral values, but others contest these laws
simply because they prefer to continue subjugating the very people they’re
designed to protect. Jad also spends a few minutes explaining the Free State
Project to Tom and I.
Jad: It’s like a realization
that’s slowly happening that women are human beings. I think for a long
time people would be like, “isn’t it odd that” – actually what
would happen is – and I’m gonna throw all three of these groups into one
kind of super group, but actually lots of groups, comic book, video game, atheists,
skeptics, libertarians, all those categories are just constantly bemoaning the fact
that women are not part of their activities. At the same time, any woman who gets
anywhere near those activities is immediately harassed and or intellectually
bashed.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: On occasion, someone would say
something, make some note of like, “well I think probably the reason that there
is not more women is because XYZ”, but the conversation never went anywhere
because no one really cared and it just seems like about a year ago is when it happened
with the atheists and like Richard Dawkins ended up on one side, and this blogger ended
up on the other side – a female blogger – you know, where he was basically
like, “look, women all over the world are just getting burned and raped and
whatever, and all that happened to you is some guy creeped you out in the elevator at
four in the morning, so get over it”, or whatever like Richard Dawkins got
engaged at that level and then just last week, Tom Woods who is a fairly prolific
author, really good economist, and – actually maybe he’s a historian
– but you know, historian economist guy who writes tons of stuff and I like all
of the stuff he writes. But he jumped in against somebody who was basically
saying you know, “libertarians can tend to be sort of dicks and tend to make
generalizations about women that they can’t grasp these concepts intellectually,
and that’s why they’re not part of these conversations”, and then
dismiss them from the conversations because they can’t grasp these conversations
intellectually in their opinion.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So anyway, just kinda got to the level
where the sort of big wigs of the libertarian movement are getting dragged into this
conversation, which I think is just fascinating.
Kevin: I’ve not been watching that as much. I’ve
seen a bunch of comic strips pop up on the web about people kinda parodying the
situation to other topics so just getting women involved in something, and then of
course the second they get involved making sure that you tell them that you know more
than them – which I’m certain that I’m guilty of as well, so
–
Tom: I heard something from – I was in a Google
hangout and Stephanie Murphy was there talking about this subject. Are you
familiar with her?
Jad: Yeah, it’s [?] therapy?
Tom: Yeah.
Jad: Yeah.
Tom: You know, she kind of said that it’s kinda
typical that she kinda runs into problems with people and I don’t know, it’s
almost like you characterize the libertarian crowd kinda like the Dungeons and Dragons
crowd, somewhat a – if you can be stereotypical – kind of a socially inept
group of people, males who just I don’t know –
Kevin: There’s a lot of that.
Tom: I have a hard time communicating and really
haven’t interacted much with girls perhaps and I don’t know, I don’t know if
that’s just an over generalization[?] or a fair –
Kevin: Well I think one thing that does it is which is why I always
point to the engineering world when I’ve made these points before is that
it’s typically, it involves a lot more maths and sciences and things that are
intangible to the mind, so it’s philosophies and things like that which tend to
draw a person versus – that doesn’t draw the really gregarious, outspoken,
wealthy business man typically and those are the guys who are better at the social
standing and the engineering types are probably for lack of empathy because
that’s how engineers often are is because they’re basing things in reality,
so you don’t have to worry about hurting somebody’s feelings or what have
you, but incidentally are probably poor communicators – huge generalization also
– but –
Tom: Well sure, and it’s almost like the geek
stereotype. So is there some real correlation between people who are very good at
school and being socially a little less developed than some other people? You
know, I don’t know, is there a tradeoff that happens?
Kevin: I would say intuitively, for sure. I would imagine
that there are studies to back it, I don’t know but I mean for sure, the nerdy kid is
usually not the most popular kid, but the tables eventually turn because he becomes
more successful in the world as most engineers do get to enjoy at some point.
Tom: I also asked this question of someone that striked
a root – well you know, what I noticed as I looked at all the names of all the authors,
she was like the only female name there up in the top, [?], she has like fifty some
articles and I actually asked her why do you think that’s the case that
you’re the only one?
And she had the perspective that you know, women are – and see, I can lay it
on her, this is not me making this statement – women are more kind of caring and
nurturing and that’s what they’re more interested in and they kind of gloss
over maybe what the details are of how someone gets helped, they’re just looked
to help people you know, and that’s what the state loves that we all need to help
each other and that’s a real kind of nurturing idea and maybe women or many
people – maybe especially women – might tend to gloss over the how is it
really being funded part.
Jad: Sure, yeah.
Kevin: Well I mean that’s actually a pretty good point too,
Tom. I mean, there’s a natural – well I mean, that’s kinda the
basis of the anarchism libertarian side, right – is kind of a natural survival of
the fittest even though that it taken terribly out of context when people talk about
it, but it does still apply ultimately and maybe that’s what it has to do with,
maybe that’s less appealing to the female spectators of it, just seems like a
very non-nurturing sort of thing which I think biologically, women just are more
nurturing than men are typically.
Jad: Yeah. Well I guess a large part
of it too is it seems like a large part of the argument, like Tom Woods’ argument
was that there can be gender differences, right? He’s saying that you know,
women – and I think he was using the Myers Briggs or I can’t remember which
one of those it is, but the one that’s like introverted, this is extroverted,
feeling versus whatever, judging –
Kevin: Myers Briggs.
Jad: – and he was basically saying women
score here on the Myers Briggs, and men score here, so clearly men have a
predisposition towards like you were saying, fields like engineering, economics,
mathematics because they’ve got this introverted or whatever the thing was on the
Myers Briggs. It’s interesting to – I think that the interesting
divide is between people who have an idea of this immutable – sort of the
immutable nature of human beings – even people who are aware and constantly
trying to analyze the structural institutions that create human behavior,
right?
So for all of female history as they’ve basically been the property of men,
the way you teach a woman to survive – a child, a female child to survive and the
way she naturally – well, the ones that live – will tend to be continually
trying to sense the emotional state of the people who are in power right, of the
patriarch or whoever that is right, dad or whatever.
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: And then they’re passed off to a
stranger at age fourteen or sixteen or whatever, and then they’ve got to try to
gauge this person’s emotional state all the time and survival and happiness kind
of depends on their ability to tell what mood this person is in and what this person
wants to have done and that sort of thing, right? And so and that’s part of
what female socialization is even now whereas – and this is [?], obviously
something that’s been written about quite a lot.
So you know, little girls are taught to share and be nice, little boys are taught to
compete and win, and so the question is does the Myers Briggs measure something that is
innate, or is it the fact that everyone who assumes this is the national difference
between boys and girls and therefore raises their children, boys and girls differently
is the result of that and I think that’s kind of – like I said with the
Richard Dawkins and Tom [?] – it seems like the assumption is that a rational
world, a Godless world, a governmentless world will between men and women will look
pretty much the same as it does now, it just won’t have the superstition or the
you know, or the government or whatever, but otherwise, the interpersonal relationships
will be maintained the way they are, whereas I think the more radical view is that
freed women will be in a lot more pure-like relationship with men and a lot less you
know, being protected by and nurtured by men.
Tom: Well now do you think that that dynamic of being
more dependent and more oppressed – for lack of a better word – would go
away in a stateless society? How much of that is due to government and how much
of that is due to men kind of imposing their physical strength over women?
Jad: Right. Well and that’s
kind of – I’m kinda thinking the long way around – but that’s
kinda my thought and I’ve expressed this before that that’s the reason
there’s not that many women libertarians is because the message they’re
hearing is, “we’re tired of the state interfering with our relationship
with women”, you know? Like back in the – 30 years ago or whatever I
could have you clean my house, cook my food you know, bear children for me until you
died, and then I’d get another one of you that was younger you know? But
now there’s all these laws and [?] I can’t marry anyone under sixteen
anymore and – I don’t think this is a conscious thing, but I think what say
women who would otherwise be liberty minded who are say pro-choice or anti-war, or
whatever.
I think part of it is because the way it’s portrayed, but for whatever reason,
they sense that libertarianism is essentially the desire to cut them off from the part
of the patriarchy that helps them and put them entirely under the part of the patriarch
that is you know, that historical traditional tribal patriarchy of the male husband,
the whatever – that’s kinda what I – and it doesn’t really fit
though with the other things, with like you know, comic books, or with atheism or
whatever, it doesn’t quite match up, so I think it’s more than that for
sure but that’s certainly something that is a hurdle in the libertarian world, I
think.
Tom: So do you think they view the government as a kind
of a protector?
Jad: Well I think you can make a pretty
good case that historically it has been. I mean, I’m not saying that the
case is necessarily the truth, but I think you can make a pretty good case that yeah
you know, government says you can’t beat your wife, otherwise you could.
The government says you can’t have child brides or whatever, otherwise you could
putting aside all the other mechanisms by which that could be managed or whatever,
that’s I think the picture of the world that you know, somebody who’s
against libertarianism on principle is, that’s kind of what the picture
they’re painting of it.
Tom: Right, because all the significant women’s
rights that they have gained, or legal rights, the right to vote you know, well the
government did that for us in the right to work and get equal pay. I mean you
know that’s –
Kevin: I was gonna say I think the core layer is just with women by
definition of the way government is setup, they are a minority population even though I
think there’s a slight majority of them but nevertheless, you should be able to
look to other minority populations to see the exact same thing, right, f what
you’re saying holds water.
Tom: And that’s what I kinda have in mind.
I was going to bring up the subject of African American folks in the libertarian
movement and I’m gonna venture to guess from my perspective, it seems like
there’s a smaller percentage and again, you might tie that to a population that
might be more dependent on government mindset and is a little more uncomfortable about
losing it because you know again, it was slavery until the government ended it, you
know? So you know, getting put back into a society where you’re a minority
and there’s no protection, again I think the perspective is that the government
is important because it’s become more of a source of dependency, I don’t
know.
Kevin: Yeah, I don’t know if I would be as comfortable using the
word dependency as so much just as a marketing gimmick, right? I mean it appears
that A, B, and C has happened and I know you guys both know that, but making the
distinction in this case that they are the ones who have the big sign that says the
government is who freed the slaves which is it true?
I mean I guess so, but they keep that distinction, which is obviously a lot more
complicated than that if people didn’t want it to happen, it wouldn’t have
happened clearly and on and on, I think you can make that case for many of these laws
that come into play and obviously their all contrary to general libertarian philosophy
because the initial philosophy just says well you shouldn’t be able to do that to
people in the first place, so it’s unnecessary to have additional rules on top of
it.
Tom: Right and of course since we’ve always
– not always – but for time in memorial we’ve had government, and so
the fact that slavery existed means that government enforced it, which means they
created the problem, maybe more than you know, society created it and then of course
they come up with the solution.
Kevin: Yeah, that’s actually a really good point to I mean,
I’ve seen a bunch of little memes going around about that right now regarding the
whole fiscal cliff thing. You know, congress patting themselves on the back for
allegedly averting it, but you know, nobody wants to talk about – well wait a
second, you assholes created it in the first place so, add to your point Tom, you
can’t allow slavery to exist in your society and then the second somebody says,
“well that might be wrong”, then pass a law and [?] it and then say that
you’ve been the good guy all along I mean, that’s the absurdity to
government in the first place I guess.
Tom: And what about socioeconomic classes and
libertarianism? Do you think that this is skewed towards poorer middle class or
rich? Is there an absence of one of those you think in comparison to others?
Kevin: I think that’s interesting. I think in fact, I
would go so far as to say that socioeconomic class is probably a much fuzzier line to
find than minorities, or women, or whatever the case may be because I think you start
getting into level of education and things like that which clearly – the Tea
Party for example is a glaring example. The Tea Party decided that it was a
libertarian organization, and for my money I’m pretty sure it’s not,
I’d be happy to have you guys argue against that.
I know when it started and I was happy to kinda be involved with it, with the whole
Ron Paul movement in 2007, it consisted of those people but it of course very quickly
devolved into just this amalgamation of anybody that wanted something different and of
course, along those socioeconomic lines, I think you’d find that a lot of those
people were – I think they’d have a hard time classifying themselves as
libertarians, or you would have a hard time anyway.
Tom: Yeah, and when I say libertarian, and anarchist,
or voluntaryist really, you know, someone who’s taking it to the point where
they’re at Ron Paul or beyond. I mean that generally – to take a
simplistic view – you might think that rich people are not gonna be on board with
that because they’re in the system and they’re succeeding and they
don’t see the problem, and yeah, you mentioned education levels and I don’t know
if that’s a plus or minus as far as being of the mindset of being
libertarian. I mean more education just may make it harder for you to get
there.
Kevin: Well I think – I watch a lot of South Park.
South Park does a good job – it’s kind of a reoccurring joke in a few of
their seasons is the, “they’re gonna take our guns.” If
you’ve ever heard that line, they kinda do it over and over and there are all
these hicks that are saying that, but I think that’s where – going back to
the marketing again – you find people who fall prey to that, who are allegedly of
that libertarian mindset, but only for one particular reason. They take one
libertarianesque stance to say they should be able to own guns and therefore they are
now part of that club which is why it’s kind of a weird thing to have a
libertarian party in the first place right, because it’s really just kind of a
set of guiding principles, not really a – they don’t really have defined
laws and rules.
So anyway, I ‘m just saying I think a lot of people come from that, so as far
as the socioeconomic class, I think it becomes pretty mixed because I’ve heard
very wealthy people get involved, but wealthy people that I know be involved on that
side of it. But then I’ve just also seen very undereducated and probably
fairly underprivileged individuals who are the guys on the street yelling,
“they’re gonna take our guns”, and so they’re part of that same
club. So I would tend to think it’s a little bit more mixed, but I don’t
know.
Jad: Yeah, no I agree with everything you
guys have been saying pretty much as far as the breakdowns go and stuff. Like I
said, I thought it was just interesting. I think the thing that I would like to
highlight is that I think it’s great and I think it’s interesting and
wonderful the conversation is happening. I think it means that there is at least
a critical mass that’s been you know, there’s a critical awareness of the
situation I think that essentially, it can’t be rolled back. The
conversation is going to happen now and prior historically, it just kind of gets shut
down pretty quickly so I’m happy to see it occurring.
Kevin: Sure, I would too. You know, a really interesting
group – just thinking about it – would be the homosexual population.
That’d be a real interesting one for it I think because again, libertarian
movement couldn’t be any more truly supportive of that particular subgroup of
people and by some irony, obviously the republicans are strongly opposed to them, but
the democratic party – as I wrote in my book – certainly hasn’t
really done anything for their favor either so it’s interesting though. I
would think many of those people given more liberal values would tend to turn away from
libertarian ideals, but another interesting group to kind of examine in that sense.
Jad: Yeah. There’s an example
of this dynamic in New Hampshire, which – do you know about the Free State
Project, Kevin? Have you heard about that?
Kevin: I’ve heard of it, I don’t know much about
it.
Jad: The broad outline is the idea was to
get a lot of people who are all you know, “liberty minded” to move to New
Hampshire –
Kevin: Oh, [?] people mass.
Jad: Yeah, so you could have political
influence and whatnot. But so there’s a fair number of people up there and
the main thing that I think – or at least as far as people outside of New
Hampshire are aware of – they’ve just produced a tremendous amount of
media. And so there’s these two guys that have a show called Flaming
Freedom and they’re just gay, and they have this show and it’s a really
good show but there’s a person in their community that owns a church that like,
went up and bought a church and just started his own religion or something like that,
but he won’t allow gay people in the church or something along those lines.
So it’s just interesting to hear that they’re both you know, both of them
are anarchists, right?
So it’s interesting to hear how they hash those things out and they do, they
actually have dialogue and things happen in a way that they wouldn’t happen in a
political society because the political society of course, either side of that debate
or argument or whatever it is is a hook by which a politician could come in and instoke
[?] that feeling of resentment or entitlement or whatever, and by keeping the dialogue
from happening horizontally is able to gain political power.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Does that make sense?
Kevin: Yeah, and I think we’ve talked about that before
[?].
Jad: Probably. Damn my short term
memory.
Kevin: No –
Tom: It almost seems like politicians are like bookies,
you know? They wanna get that 50/50 mix going.
Jad: Yeah, no you’re totally
right.
Tom: They wanna balance it, they don’t want
everyone to think one thing or the other, they want to split everybody down the
middle.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, no I mean, that makes perfect sense from their –
for a power grab, that’s the good way to do it. Yeah, no that does make
sense what you’re saying, Jad and I ‘m trying to think what we compared
that to once before, but there was one recording that we did where we actually were
talking about those exact lines how politicians play that middle of the road thing so
they can kinda control both ends of the spectrum. I mean, but –
Jad: Right. Well and it allows there
to be an indefinite fissure, right? I mean, they can milk that thing for 30, 40
years –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and then like you said at the end,
find a majority feeling and then offer up a “solution” and I think
that’s kind of what’s happening with the LGBT community is it’s
gotten to the point now where like 60%, 70% of people are like, “I don’t
really care, I’m totally fine with it”, so now it’s time for the
political process to be like, “oh, well then we’re going to lead the way to
freedom for these people and” –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – “make them a part of our
society by passing these laws.”
Kevin: Right, nevermind the fact that it’s been illegal for
the last you know, however long.
Jad: Exactly and yeah, entire political
careers have been made on the backs of just that one single emotion from a small group
of people you know, usually by people who end up being closeted homosexual themselves,
which is the most interesting part of it.
Kevin: Quite a bit of that actually, that’s interesting.
Jad: Yeah. Oh, but anyway so I would
recommend that podcast if you ever listen to – if you ever have free time to
listen to one, Flaming Freedom and I think the guy’s name is – oh, now
I’ve forgotten it – but Flaming Freedom, it’s a really good show.
Kevin: Let’s look it up, we’ll make sure we get it in
here, The Flaming Freedom Podcast, bringing the flame to freedom. The hosts are
Dale and Neil.
Jad: Dale, that’s – and he
actually is a cartoonist and he’s got his own blog that – it really, like I
said, really good cartoon.
Tom: I think I know which Dale you’re talking
about, yeah.
Jad: That’s what’s funny about
this, again, if you – Tom and I kind of swim in this water a little bit more
probably – but like there are like nine things that each of those people do, so
there’s like 400 or 1,000 anarchists up there, but every one of them has a blog,
five radio shows, three podcasts you know, so you can’t – if you go hopping
from links to links, you’re about 50% of those sorts of sites and that sort of
media content originates from New Hampshire, it’s pretty amazing.
And that’s where we leave it for this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey and
Chris Baton [Sp?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing, we
wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by City Core,
LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril
Hisham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander
of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we
love receiving email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.Kevin-Ludlow.com. Thanks again for tuning
in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
After decades of having an at-large council, the public finally voted to allow single-member-districts in the Austin area. In November of 2014, instead of a single at-large voting area, there will be 10 districts in Austin with a council member representing each one.
Jad explains a bit about the Texans for Accountable Government and Kevin discusses the possibility of running for City Council. This is a super-short episode so sit back and enjoy.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast,
an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw
our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes
focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin
Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. Although we don’t usually
get into specific local government discussions, that’s exactly what we have in
store this week. After decades of having an at large city council, the public
finally voted to allow single member districts in the Austin area. In November of
2014, instead of a single at large voting area, there will be ten districts in Austin
with a councilmember representing each one of those districts. Jad explains a bit
about the Texans for Accountable Government, and Kevin discusses the possibility of
running for city council. This is a super short episode, so sit back and
enjoy.
The big thing that I really think is gonna happen to all of these points that
we’re talking about – and maybe I’ll be dead wrong, I really
don’t know how the whole districting thing is gonna turn out – but I think
the 10/1 council is going to have a huge effect on all of these issues that we’re
talking about because when you see a $900 million dollar bond for example, I think all
of a sudden – well first of all, I don’t know that some of those bonds would make
it to the table in the first place because I think that if you have a bunch of fringed
councilmembers who actually come from Westlake, and out in Oakhill, and you know one up
on the area kinda more where I live up north, I think you’re gonna see a lot of
those people who sit on the council say, “sorry, it’s an economic downturn
right now, this doesn’t make economic sense, we’re not voting in favor of
putting in $900 million dollar bonds on a ballot for the citizens and at very least, I
think you’ll hear a lot more public political outcry against bond measures like
that, and even against development code standards.
I mean, it’s one of the conspiracy theories I’ve had recently is to
consider that maybe the reason that they wanna get rid of the whole timeline[?] thing
is because the city council recognizes that when the 10/1 comes in, they’re gonna
start undoing shit like that anyway so at least they figure if they have an opportunity
to undo it right now, they can immediately kind of reregulate it in a slightly better
way that people might be more willing to keep to kind of preserve the goodness of the
city if you will. That’s kinda like my far left and green part conspiracy
theory at the moment that that’s one of the things that they may be trying to
do. I’m sure it’s totally incorrect, but –
Jad: That’s a good theory.
Kevin: – just because that’s the level that I think the 10/1
is actually gonna be able to affect. I think they’re gonna have
tremendously more impact on the city than any law that’s been passed in years and
years.
Jad: Interesting. And that starts
2015?
Kevin: 2014 I think, I’m not – I think 2014 is when it
actually goes into effect. Apparently, they still don’t entirely know in
fact, I’ve asked a friend of mine who’s a policy aid and legal teams are
still debating like what it actually means when it comes into effect, who’s gonna
be termed out, who’s gonna have you know, another opportunity, there’s like
some weird stuff with Chris Riley for example because he took over on a special
election and –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – you know, will he get to run at this election or –
but it doesn’t sound like he wants to anyway.
Jad: Did you ever – I don’t know if I
talked to you about this before – but have you ever heard of the Texans for
Accountable Government?
Kevin: I guess I have heard of it from you.
Jad: Yeah. Anyway, they have their
meeting up like not too far from you I don’t think, they’re on 183 where
Sherlock [?] is –
Kevin: Oh yeah, it’s right near me.
Jad: – the bar or restaurant. But
they meet there like once a month or something. I’ve never really been that
interested in going but if you wanted to go I would go with you.
Kevin: Oh, sure.
Jad: If for nothing else, they’re all
you know wonky city politics analysts, and they also run a lot of people so it would be
interesting to see what they’re planning on doing when the 10/1 comes in. I
don’t know anything about them at all except that and I know a couple of people that do
it – by reputation, a couple of them are acquaintances, but –
Kevin: It looks like I do get emails from them, so there’s
that.
Jad: Yeah. I’d say they
probably ran up your alley [?].
Kevin: Yeah, it looks like it.
Jad: Again, I’m not sure if you were
to make a – and the thing is I keep forgetting you’re – because I
think it would be a good way to sort of keep with your transparency policy, the reason
you would potentially want to [?] them would be if you were gonna take a more
non-libertarian sort of – the city council is not party based, I [?] it’s
not –
Kevin: No, they’re not.
Jad: – but if you ran as a libertarian, you
would definitely be not as a libertarian. If it was known that you were a
libertarian and you ran, it would probably be a little bit more uphill than if you were
sort of a mainline party one way or the other, but since that’s not the kinda
games you play, then the Texans for Accountable Government might not be you know too
much of a black mark on your running record.
Kevin: No, I’d be interested in it for sure in fact, I just
went through some email here and it looks like when Laura Presley ran last year, she I
guess was endorsed by the Texans for Accountable Government and was big into that and
Laura Presley – I don’t know if you remember her – but she ran against
–
Jad: Mike Martinez?
Kevin: Yeah, Mike Martinez. So it was really interesting
because he was challenging the Mexican spot –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: or the Hispanic spot I should say – and she
didn’t get crushed. She lost, but for a libertarian running in Austin, I
was really shocked.
Jad: Yeah. Well and I think
that’s kind of you know, that has got to be the largest growing political party
and well probably nationwide I guess, but whatever it may be, the anti-party, the
anti-authority party, because I think they had county guy ran for the Travis county
sheriff’s department on the platform of like, “I’m not gonna arrest
anyone for marijuana”, you know, but he was straight like libertarian
platform. “I’m not gonna send out constables for revenue raising
purposes, it’s only gonna be protecting property and investigating crimes”,
and I think he also did like 30%, 40%, you know? Again, for such a crazy position
– sane, but crazy – he did pretty well.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.
Jad: It would be kinda interesting to see
what they’re doing for this 10/1 thing anyway and it might be time to saddle up
and ride as they say.
Kevin: I’m interested, I really am. You know,
they’re doing the whole – I forget what the group is called – but
right now, they’ve put together another one of their commissions to try to draw
up where the lines are gonna be, and that’ll be interesting in itself, you
know? I mean, if you wanna talk about the whole notion of gerrymandering and
stuff like that, I mean you can bet your ass that the people who are gonna be involved
in this provided that – let’s just say the people who are on the commission
are the more traditional kinda 78704 people that I’m always talking about, I mean
if those are the people that are on it, you can be sure that they’re gonna be
knowledgeable of this and I could tell you how they would district it because
they’re gonna make sure that their group gets that any little bit of Westlake
starts including a bunch of the middle ground too so that you can balance yourself
out.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So I would think they’re gonna try to put as many
groups as they can in the core center and then have some of the larger districts on the
outsides, I don’t really know but I mean, it’s gonna play a huge role in
it. And then the question will be like for example, you’ll have single
member districts so do you have to live or do you have to follow some of the city
guidelines to actually run in that particular district, or could you still live
anywhere in the city and run in a particular district? Like could I run in the
Westlake district you know, those are the sorts of questions that are really gonna come
out and right now you know, I’ve got that property I own and then this house that
I just bought, so I probably will cross into at least one district there.
Even so, I could probably still run in two different districts, but anyway, those
are the sorts of questions that are gonna become very significant and it changes a lot
for a lot of people because hell, I’d quite frankly be interested in trying to
run in an area that is a little bit more Westlake-ey. I think I’d have a
much better shot to say, “look, I’m not republican, but so I fit into the
core of the city a lot better but at the same time, I have no interest in wasting your
money”, just as simple as that. Everybody should love gay people, you can
have your guns, let’s be environmentally friendly, and not spend people’s
money – pretty simple platform.
Jad: Well like you said, unfortunately
that’s the people that like you know, bonds for downtown libraries, and downtown
courthouses, and revitalizing Barton Springs, and all that kinda stuff.
Kevin: They’re not gonna like those bonds. Like the
Westlake people?
Jad: Oh, is Westlake too far away for
that?
Kevin: I would tend to think they would be strongly opposed to
those sorts of things I mean, I don’t know.
Jad: You know better than me.
Kevin: I mean I don’t really know, but I would assume from
the people that I talk to you know, if you just kinda talk to people around our office
about the library downtown I mean, most everybody pretty much says the same thing where
they’re just like, “yeah, we’re spending fucking $600 million dollars
to build a goddammed library in the year 2013 downtown, no less”, so –
Jad: I guess that makes it so that you
think the 78704 are people that are east of Westlake, so like closer to the downtown so
that they are benefiting from that kinda thing.
Kevin: Yeah, I don’t even know if it’s that
they’re benefiting from it, I think there’s just a perception that
they’re benefiting from it. These are the people I think who predominately
wanna see – they just wanna spend the money, it’s just cool you know, like
“oh, that’s gonna be a badass library.” It is gonna be a badass
library I mean, I’ve seen it, it looked awesome, there’s no doubt about
it. The question is you know, it’s just a matter of there’s only so
much badass money that can be spent so if we’re going to spend it on – is a
library really the best thing to be spending that on in a time when these exact same
people are probably arguing in favor of light rail and expanding light rail lines, I
would say right off the bat I’d be like, “I’d be much more interested
in exploring alternative transportation mechanisms than putting money into a fucking
library”, you know? I like books, I like libraries, their cool.
I like new architectural projects, it doesn’t mean it’s a good use of
taxpayer money. No private company is gonna come in and build a goddamn library
this day and age, it’s just not gonna happen.
Jad: Well that’s the thing too is
that I think actually – and this is a different subject altogether – but I
think actually they would if cities didn’t do that.
Kevin: If they didn’t perhaps, sure.
Jad: You know, if you had the whatever his
name is, David Booth Memorial Library, I’m sure that would happen. It would
cost like what, a tenth of a percent of his wealth to create a you know, gigantic
library named after himself, I’m sure that would [?].
Kevin: Yeah, fair enough.
Jad: So yeah, that kinda thing gets done
when people are allowed to do those kinds of things and when you know, the city
isn’t in the business of filling that niche.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean you’re probably right there. I
didn’t really think about it from that side, so –
Jad: But you don’t really wanna go
– I mean that’s making an argument for the [?], you know?
Kevin: Well, –
Jad: Back when the Carnegie’s were in
charge, shit got done.
Kevin: Well, we can always –
Jad: It did though.
Kevin: Yeah it did, for sure it did.
Jad: And that’s where we leave it for
this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey and Chris Baton[Sp?] for providing us with
quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without
them. Hosting services are provided by City Core, LLC. Our graphical
caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Hisham[Sp?] in Malaysia, and
transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative
Media.
If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we
love receiving email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning
in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
This week is the first episode of a 6-part series dedicated to the Austin Independent School District.
Jad and I had the pleasure of meeting a veteran teacher several years older than the both of us at a party. After getting a small dose of stories from her, we instantly wanted to interview her for the show. The information she shared with us, while absolutely fascinating, will provide you with a sobering tale of how a non-privileged public school operates.
We’ve opted to keep her name and personal information confidential given the nature of the material we discuss. This first episode focuses on violence within the school and how the administration fails to fix it.
]]>We conclude this week with a tragic situation not unlike the one we started with. Only instead of New York, we switch our focus back to Boston. We continue our discussion of how the state works to exploit tragedies like this one and consider the critical mass of people required to stop lawmakers from doing what they intend to do.
Thanks so much for sticking with us for an entire year!
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast,
an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw
our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes
focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin
Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. We never thought we’d get
here, but alas, 52 episodes later, the JK Podcast has survived an entire year. We
conclude this week with a tragic situation – not unlike the one we started with
– only instead of New York, we switch our focus back to Boston. We continue
our discussion of how the state works to exploit tragedies like this one, and consider
the critical mass of people required to stop lawmakers from doing what they intend to
do. Thank you so very much for sticking with us for an entire year.
Jad: That’s why, that’s one of
the components of why it’s so difficult to maintain any kind of productive
dialogue is because the story is going to be packaged and resold from now until the
anniversary’s run out of – we don’t even know what the
narrative’s gonna be – but whatever the state narrative is and it’s
not going to be one that leads to greater human freedom, it’s going to be one
that leads to a more centralized control apparatus, right?
Kevin: For sure.
Jad: I’ve got sort of as an example
of another tactic that I think is interesting that some people are probably analyzing,
but I mean it just seems so clear to me like, if you wanna talk about a community that
has a sustained effort to prevent a particular political outcome that I’m gonna
say is going to eventually lose, it’s the anti-SOPA-PIPA-SIPA[?] – sorry,
SIPSA –
Kevin: SIPSA.
Jad: – is the latest one, and they’re
just – I mean just revealing of a tactic – they’re just reintroducing
the same bill again, and again, and again. They’re reintroducing it again,
it’s like been defeated four or five times now.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: And in the last – what was the
first time, was it a year and a half maybe ago or something like that? So
it’s just like this nonstop thing and you can tell when the people are sending
out the emails and it’s like it’s up again and then can you give us money
again? We’re gonna like you know, it’s just going to keep coming back
until they you know, until like you said, until people are like, “you know what,
I’ve fucking sent 20 emails to my senator about this over the last year, two
years, I’m just not gonna do it again”, right, and then it passes at some
point.
Or you know, there is a million other things that could happen, executive order or
whatever, but it’s going to pass. They want this thing to happen and so
it’s going to happen and just even the fact that it’s been held off not by
a lobby and not by individual congresspersons, but strictly by a popular effort to
maintain pressure in this direction. That’s held it off for this long, but
even that’s not going to hold it off forever so what I’m saying is [?] when
you look back on this – kinda like when you look back on the millions of people
in the street leading up to the Iraq war – you can say well, it’s due to a
lack of diligence on the part of the people that are fighting it. And I’m
not trying to [?] your argument I mean, what you said is a lot more nuanced than that,
but essentially like just the loss is due to the lack of maintenance of focus, the lack
of organizational structure to persist and maintain a constant message and a constant
political pressure, and that may be right, but these things are slated to
happen.
Iraq was going to be invaded again at some point, it’s been sanctioned,
there’s been air patrol over it for 12 years, it was going to be invaded
again. The internet is going to be centered by the United States government in a
legal manner, it’s already probably censored or at least observed and surveilled
and whatnot secretly now, but it’s going to happen. And so in some sense, I
think looking back on it happening and saying, “well, it’s because we
didn’t fight hard enough”, is just – like I said, I’m not
really proposing anything different, but it just seems like putting the credit where
the credit’s due and saying if the state and the corporate masters[?], and the
financial leader or whatever want X to happen, then X will happen somehow.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s kind of a – maybe
it’s just an excuse or something, but it seems like it may be a better way to
think about the situation we’re in.
Kevin: I guess where I’m hoping my position of it goes right,
like if what I’m suggesting could somehow occur, ultimately what I’m hoping
the long term position is and hopefully, I’m not accused of any seditious acts,
but is some sort of actual revolution in time of actually saying – and I don’t
know when this could be – but I mean, there’s a tipping point to every
government, right? I mean, I don’t see why the United States would be any
different. And so to have some sort of a revolution, you need people who actually
feel the need to revolt against the state, and so I guess what kind of in a longer
view, or a more strategic goal of what I’m suggesting I suppose is that you need
people to be genuinely disenfranchised with their own government. So for example,
I’m on Reddit all the time and I see these people just going against this whole
thing all the time you know with the SISPA, and all the various acts they’ve been
trying to do and they’ve done a phenomenal job like organizing people and they
actually – I think the Reddit co-founder was one of the guys who organized the
first big campaign against whatever the first one was –
Jad: SOPA maybe? I’m not sure
what the very first one was, but –
Kevin: It may have been SOPA, yeah, I think it’s something
like that, sounds right. And so anyway, like he had a tremendous following and
[?] such an active community and to me though, what’s good about that is that the
more, the more, the more times that these happen, you’re just creating this
massive grouping of people – I think, I believe anyway – who are just
becoming increasingly disenfranchised with their government who are like, “this
is bullshit. It doesn’t matter what we do, nobody’s fucking listening
to us.” I think the war is another good effort. You’ve got a
lot of people who are like, “fuck this government. This is ridiculous, we
have been opposed to this for so long”, I think there’s a lot of things
like this like on the flipside for example, if you actually started to see –
well, it’s already happening as it is – but you start to see various
movements to get rid of guns and firearms in this country, right? Well it does
the exact same thing to people on the right.
I mean I think people who would see themselves as highly patriotic, et cetera, even
though they might be crazy backwoods redneck I mean, killing people – they see
themselves that way. If you start taking away some of those other rights, I think
those are the exact same sort of people who are much more likely to revolt against the
government they otherwise would’ve once cherished. And so I guess what
I’m getting at is that as this goes on, I guess my hope is that you start
disenfranchising enough people where finally you start to have a critical mass of
people who are just like, “fuck the government. Really, fuck these guys and
it doesn’t matter what we do, you guys are just gonna fucking do whatever you
want and that’s not what this is supposed to be about”, and I think it
takes those really I mean, it shouldn’t happen right, but I mean if you go back
to kind of colonial America I mean, that’s what did it, right?
I mean, these people could’ve happily lived in their little land forever I
mean, I don’t know that the so-called founders were necessarily trying to start
their own country, I’m not sure that that’s exactly what happened. I
think it was just they were infringed on for so long that eventually, you had a tipping
point of people, or a critical mass of people who are willing to say, “George,
fuck you man. We can’t do this, this is bullshit”, and I think
that’s kinda where I don’t know, I guess I see some of these things ultimately
could lead to that longer term sort of thing, which has benefits for people like you
and I as far as the way we see the country anyway, and trying to get people to actually
revolt against you know, tyranny really.
Jad: Well yeah, I mean I think the –
I mean, that’s inevitable, right? I mean, that’s just history so at
some point the government has to restructure itself and that’s – when you
talk about the revolution and this is along another topic or whatever – but
that’s just a restructuring of government, right? No powers banished, they
just got transferred from the king to a constitutional body, blah, blah,
whatever.
So the governments from time to time are forced to restructure for various reasons,
usually empires are forced to restructure because their economy collapses. So
that will happen and those people you know, wherever the disenfranchised are, will
organize and I think that’s the interesting thing is the leadership principle
that you are maybe imagining where there are people who are going to sort of dedicate
themselves to this purpose, the reason in a revolutionary context that they do that is
because they are going to be in charge of the resources of the nation state, and the
tax base, and all that sort of thing.
And so that’s usually the incentive around which that revolutionary [?]
happens, so I think what you’re saying is it will happen and I guess the
interesting question will be when that happens, when someone says you know, “we
seized a police station in Austin where we’re gonna declare Austin to be a free
city”, I’m just making this up, but obviously you know, “we are going
to take this apparatus and make it work for the people of Austin”, everybody else
has to say no to that. They have to say – unless you wanna repeat the cycle
again which is what usually happens in human history –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – it’s got to be the case that
again, the use of force to do anything other than to protect one’s self and
protect people who have consented to be protected by you – to go back to our
original conversation – has to be cast out, cast aside. First order problem
is – when you talk about guns rights people or whatever – they’re not
going to organize into those kinds of units and structures. They’re going
to organize into the traditional structures of an army or a guerilla force or whatever,
and whatever institutions they decide to put in place will be similar to the
institutions that are in place now. And so it could improve or be awful at that
place in time, but it’s going to inevitably lead to the same cycle all over
again.
Kevin: Right. Well and I think the reason for that though is
kind of to what you were I guess kind of critically analyzing that I had said earlier
is that it requires – in order for that to happen – it requires this kind
of eternal vigilance because I mean, I think we’ve spoken to the point a few
times you know, history is bound to repeat itself like that and it’s just kind of
our nature. That’s just the way that we seem to organize for whatever
reasons, so in the event that that happened – going back to your kind of
fictitious police example – you know, you need those guys who are on the street
immediately saying, “no, no, no, no, no, we don’t need to form this.
You don’t need this entity that you’re going to start referring to as a
state, we don’t need that to exist. We don’t need this control
structure”, et cetera. Again, it requires this I don’t know, I mean, I
guess if I kind of agree with your earlier point, then it kind of almost suggests to me
philosophically that I mean, it’s just a dream, right?
That it’s just – you’re never gonna get to that point because
you’re always gonna have these factions as you said, organized differently, so
it’s just gonna be the exact same sort of thing and I guess I’m envisioning
the only way that you stop that from happening is that once that revolution has kind of
almost completed you know, it’s like it’s just completed and now it’s
like starting to do that restructure that instantly you have people protesting and have
a critical mass of people protesting who don’t want that to occur and somehow or
another manage to maintain that. But again, I just think it would be so – I
mean, we’re talking some time before we get to that level of consciousness I
think.
Jad: Yeah, exactly but that’s my
point is that – the thing is I’m looking at the long view, right?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: You know, I’m not – if the
Unites States collapses in five years, it’s going to be a nightmare awful
scenario, it’s not going to be positive because people are going to be like
anybody who can give me food or a job I’ll do anything for it, I’ll support
any effort you know –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – anything you do, I’m in you
know, which is the opposite of the critical mass consciousness you have to have to go
the other direction. But yeah, I totally agree with you but the thing is
that’s why I’m saying – so in the long view, that’s the value
of the discussion because everything we say is now digitally encoded and replicated in
several places, so as they’re sifting through the ashes of our civilization,
these ideas exist and it’s the only way out. The only way out is to see
somebody get blown up in Boston and if it comes out that it’s you know, some
militia movement or that’s the story they build, there are going to be people out
there that are going to be justifying that act based on the fact that it’s a
revolutionary act and they’re not wrong I mean, historically in the scope of
human history, that is what political – outside of the system – political
action looks like. That’s what the Boston Tea Party is, that’s what
you know tarring and feathering tax people are, that’s what killing the king is,
that is the pattern by which humans have always organized themselves, like you
said. So there are you know, if things get worse and they’re more
disenfranchised and there’s more bombings, and those become freedom fighters,
right?
I mean the only way out of that cycle where the freedom fighters eventually win or
lose and then a new government forms and begins to overplay its hand and blah, blah,
blah, the only way out is to immediately identify all acts of aggressive violence
against strangers as the worst thing that can be done by one person to another person,
which is pretty straightforward. It’s not like you have to achieve some
sort of strange nirvanic state through decades of meditation, it’s a very simple
thing that every five year old can grasp, you know? That’s the plus side of
it is that it’s very simple, it’s very intuitive to human beings to see a
stranger or to see a person inflict pain on somebody who’s not related to them at
all – is this really bad?
Kevin: Absolutely.
Jad: This is going nowhere, but like I see
what you’re saying and I think again, that’s the only way out though.
That’s the only way that humanity makes it off this planet before you know, the
sun explodes or whatever. Otherwise, it’s just a cycle of building up and
destroying, and building up and destroying and there’s just no way to get any
traction until we get rid of this crazy idea that sometimes when a bomb blows up and
kills a bunch of people, it’s a great thing.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Or it’s a necessary thing.
Kevin: Well so I think that was kinda the point – I
don’t think I articulated it very well – but whatever you just said kinda
jogged my memory for it and that’s what bothers me about the Boston thing again
is that I feel that it’s a good time for people not to talk about Boston.
Sure I mean, give a shot out to them as well, but it’s an opportunity for people
to talk about peace in general. You know, obviously he’s not gonna do it
because his hands are knee deep or you know, his hands are in the war pie, but you know
for the president, for the various political heads of the country to stand up and speak
out against just violence in general, not violence in our country, not violence against
the United States, not let’s go hunt the terrorists down, but that this type of
bombing should not exist anywhere.
It shouldn’t be happening between Israel and Palestine, it shouldn’t be
happening in Pakistan or Afghanistan, it shouldn’t be happening in the London
subway, or it shouldn’t be happening at the Boston Marathon. This
shouldn’t happen and we shouldn’t be contributing to this either. You
don’t have those political heads out there using the opportunity to say,
“It’s not just Boston. This is not something we should promote
anywhere. This should always be condemned”, and of course it’s not
really the case, it’s only condemned because it happens to “us”,
which I don’t even related to Boston at all, but you know, that’s – I
think on my earlier point – that’s what bothers me about it is everybody
sees it as a tragedy for “us”, and it’s a tragedy because people died
and a terrorist act of sorts was used to kill people, innocent people, for no
particular reason and all of the things that you said earlier about that just being a
monstrous act is – I completely agree with obviously, and so I just wish people
would not be so myopic in thinking that it’s just here because it’s
everywhere that needs to be spoken out against, I guess.
Jad: Amen, brother.
Kevin: Yeah and done rant.
Jad: What a way to bring it home, way to
bring it home.
Kevin: You know, one of the things that I did see that was kinda
funny – nowhere to go with this – but people were really bashing the
religious groups yesterday which I enjoyed. There were these little memes going
around that something to the effect of – God, there was one I meant to post in
particular because it was really well written – but the meme is basically saying
when all the kids were killed in school we blame guns, but when these bombs killed kids
in a marathon, we blame the terrorists you know, like complete lack of, “why
don’t we blame the bombs?”
Jad: Right.
Kevin: You know, that sort of basic thing. And then there was
another guy who wrote something which I – let’s see if I can remember it
for you – but he basically kinda twisted the words around with regards to the
school shootings a couple months ago. You know there was the whole, “the
reason these school shootings are on the rise is because we’ve taken God out of
schools”. And so this one guy wrote this post that said something to the
effect of – he’s like, “the reason that people are dying in marathons
is because we’ve taken God out of marathons”, and then he wrote underneath
it, he’s like, “now do you realize how stupid you sounded four months
ago?”
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So I saw some clever things like that that I kind of enjoyed
just to badger the point.
Jad: Yeah. The only thing I’ve
seen is that – I guess the Westborough[?] Baptist Church is heading up there
saying that this is more evidence that – I guess actually, they’re probably
saying that we took God out of the marathon. Actually, [?] our entire country is
doomed because gays are having sex or something, I don’t really actually know
what they’re protesting against, but –
Kevin: I think they’re just doing a great job making
money.
Jad: No kidding.
Kevin: That’s really all they do.
Jad: Yeah.
And that’s where we leave it for this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey and
Chris Baton [?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing – we
wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by City Core,
LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril
Hasham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander
of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we
love receiving email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in
and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
In other words, there’s an almost unlimited source of crowds to be found across the United States and yet they manage to go on without being killed. Why is that?
Tragically the marathon was an anomaly and our hearts go out to the victims, but we consider how the state frequently uses these moments to promote wars abroad and trample civil liberties domestically.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at
all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast,
an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw
our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes
focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin
Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. In the first of a two-part series,
Jad and I discuss the many ways in which terrorism – like that of the Boston Marathon
bombings – could prevail if only people were really inclined to kill
indiscriminately. In other words, there’s an almost unlimited source of
crowds to be found across the United States and yet, they manage to go on without being
killed – why is that? Tragically, the marathon was an anomaly and our
hearts go out to the victims, but we consider how the state frequently uses these
moments to promote wars abroad, and trample civil liberties domestically.
So the more obvious one to the world right now, I don’t really know exactly what to
say about it but I’m sure there’s some thoughts that we could say.
Jad: Well, I’ve got some if you wanna
go first.
Kevin: Well, sure. It’s a sad affair, not particularly
out of the ordinary for me I don’t think – I think about these things all the
time. Actually – completely tangent to this – but I’ve had this
idea for a while, almost like this art project, and it’s like totally in my head
and I just need to do it – oddly enough, speaking about poetry and stuff.
I’ve got like this poem that I’ve been working on in my head and it’s
basically about terrorism and the way I envision my trying to create it is kind of like
a Dr. Seuss book almost where it’s like really colorful and the words are kinda
like a little zany and what have you, but it just kinda tells the story of how
ridiculous the notion of – probably wouldn’t necessarily name them –
but basically like making fun of the TSA and things like that, the idea that people
think they can be kept safe and the whole thing is just kind of like this long Dr.
Seuss-esque poem about how a terrorist could easily kill people. Now I
don’t think that I would’ve included a marathon in there, but voila.
I mean, that’s an easy enough one.
Anyway, just kind of the point about how stupid it is when you go to the airport and
what have you and every time if the guy indulges me – if he’ll ask me the
question I won’t every present it to him – but he’s like, “why
are you doing this, why are you opting out? Why do you have to go through this
whole mess”, and eventually you know, I get the opportunity to tell him.
I’m like, “well this is just fucking retarded, you know?
Wouldn’t you agree?” I mean, even if you did destroy a plane, what
are you really going to accomplish? Mainly 200 people are gonna die – they
fixed the problem; it’s a reinforced steel door. You’re not getting
in the cockpit, you’re not gonna take it over anymore – that’s
done. So a couple hundred people die, I mean you could walk into a fucking
elementary school pep rally and bam, 2,000 kids gone in an instant and nobody could
stop you from doing that so it’s just kind of like this really horrific way to
look at it, but it’s true. So tangentling[Sp?] back from this little idea
that I had, that’s the way I kinda see the Boston thing is just that it’s
you know, people are real surprised by it.
It is obviously sad and tragic and I wish that it didn’t happen, but I
don’t think it’s any more sad or any more tragic than any of the other
deaths that have been getting – or have been happening around the clock,
certainly things that the United States has been a willing participant in and in many
cases just the curator of so the fact that only three people died and another hundred
were hurt I think is pretty small compared to some of the shit that we do on a daily
basis – not a popular view right now admittedly, but I think it’s true
nevertheless.
Jad: Yeah, it is interesting – at a meta
level, it’s interesting. That argument sounds so profoundly insensitive or
empathetic or whatever. I don’t know if – this is one of those things
like I’ll talk to you about this, I’ll talk to Elisa about this, but this
is the kinda thing I’m just not going into that mine field, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You know, you give it a few days you
know, then when people are slightly more receptive to thinking about it then you know
– it is interesting how conversations are completely shut down. Like you
can’t make any other point about it other than to say it’s sad –
which is an entirely legitimate point to make about it because it’s awful, but it
can’t be the basis of any other discussion. With the one exception
possibly, that it could be the basis for discussion about going to war with somebody if
it turns out that it’s you know, a brown person that did it or whatever.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Or it could be a discussion about
arresting domestic terrorists if it turns out it’s a domestic guy.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Other than that, other than like we
should increase state power based on this, there can’t be a discussion about the
role of violence in politics because I mean – as you were pointing out, just to
paraphrase what you were saying – it’s like a person who indiscriminately
blows up 100 people and kills two, or five, or kills anybody is a monster and a
lunatic, which means the president of the United States is a monster and a
lunatic. I mean it’s just – it’s that simple, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s the worst most awful thing
you can do to just go murder strangers indiscriminately. I mean, it’s
monstrous. It’s the most depraved thing that you can do and our entire
government is organized to do that to millions of people all around the world all the
time.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So that should be a case closed you
know, or should we support this thing – no, I don’t think – again,
you can’t make that argument for some reason and I’m not saying –
it’s almost like a self-preserving feeling that you can’t think about death
and you can’t think about political violence when death and political violence
are happening in a way that moves people right, because you can have a conversation
like that a month ago right, but at the point in time when people are really
experiencing the emotions that they should be able to translate to other people who are
you know, hidden to them, that’s the time when it’s inappropriate to talk
about it. I think it’s just an interesting awful coincidence.
Kevin: No I mean, it’s you know, our very first show that we
did for our podcast here was a reflection of the 11th anniversary of
September 11th and even in the episode, I mean you open up reading that
little paper I wrote about it, that’s the exact thing – you know, in ten
paragraphs – that was what I was talking about. It’s the exact same
thing on why I hate that event so much because there’s just so many – I
mean, that was a way more atrocious act than this thing the other day I mean, penny for
penny anyway. The fact is is that it’s not getting any better at exploring
what you just said, like the flip side of it. We’re not getting any better
– from what I can tell – of talking about where our responsibility lies in
this whole mess and what the country, what we’re paying to do, what we’re
voting for people to do around the world on a regular basis, it hasn’t changed a
bit as far as I can tell.
If anything, it’s just gotten a little bit, I don’t know, a little bit easier
to get away with stuff like that. I mean shit, there’s all the stuff just
with Guantanamo in the last couple of days, you know? These guys have been on
this 40 day hunger strike or whatever, I mean shit like that you know, that shit
hasn’t changed at all. I mean, that’s just policy that the
country’s just okay with and your average person is like, “uh”.
It’s just happened for so long I mean what’s the difference now? I
mean, these guys have been there 11 years and it’s like yeah, they’ve been
there 11 fucking years – which is fine if they were actually being tried with
something and they give them a trial and all that shit – but we’ve just
ignored all senses of reality when it comes to that and then when we have this sort of
tragic event happen to unfold in the United States, it’s just – I was
pissed the other day and I kept myself reasonably quiet but this is bullshit.
There’s just hundreds of people – just in my little world, just on Facebook
and all that sort of shit, all of a sudden for like a day, they just have this
emotional outpouring towards Boston and yada, yada, yada, and sure I sympathize with
their position on it, I truly do, it’s just so frustrating that for whatever
reason, their conditions, or they’re force fed, just the information, just that
one negative information about something that kind of pertains to them but not really,
just for a day and they seem to care about it and then the next day it’s pretty
much gone anyway.
But nevermind the fact that – I mean I was referring to people just on the
fucking southern border of Texas right now I mean, there’s goddamn who knows how
many dozens of kids dying every single fucking day from the violence that we’re
helping to perpetuate through the drug trade and et cetera, and all that sort of
stuff. So I mean, I’m kinda lost in a few tangents here, but it’s a
mess, man – it’s sad. The larger tragedy to me is the fact that we
just can’t quite seem to figure out what the discussion is actually about and
make it just this very acute focus on a tragic event that occurs because we think it
affects us, meanwhile ignoring all of the other travesties that we’re actively
benefiting from and encouraging the government to partake in by virtue of not saying
anything.
Jad: Right. On the flipside, or to
make the – I’m not saying this devil’s advocate argument because
I’ve kinda been fairly convinced by it – but were you in Austin for the run
up[?] to the Iraq war?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: So did you happen to go downtown to
the capitol for that? I mean I wasn’t there, I was just gonna –
Kevin: I went to a few of them and I was actually – right
when it happened actually was when I was moving to New Zealand and I moved there in
like July or so, so we actually went to war in December, but so for the months before
that was happening, I was – I went to a few of those rallies.
Jad: Well so my point was I mean, in a week
or so I think up to the evening of the conflict – I think, I have to look up the
numbers on this – but I think it was like the largest gathering of people ever
anywhere or at any time I guess because it was global. But it was like you know,
30 million or something, I don’t really know the numbers, but it was a tremendous
number of people. I think it was like ten or fifteen thousand in Austin and it
was all the way from congress, all the way to the river.
Kevin: Oh, wow.
Jad: It was just packed with people –
and again, I wasn’t there – and everywhere was like that. I mean,
London was like that, Berlin was like that, Rome was like that, every city in the
United States was like that, it was just packed with people who were saying,
“don’t go, don’t do this, this is not a fight we wanna fight, this is
not a fight we believe in”, and it doesn’t make a difference. I think
the trick is that it’s kind of like that learned helplessness thing, right?
You are allowed to express yourself about Boston and everything you express is going to
be embraced by everything; by the media, by your friends, by everybody. But
– well, I guess the thing is – I don’t know about the making a difference
part – but like you said, the part that you’re actually actively having
your resources drained to support; you have no power to stop that.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s what you’re led to
believe and the reason you’re led to believe it is because your options are to
vote for one of these two parties and both of the parties are for continuing all those
efforts. So if you think that your only option is to engage in the existing
two-party political process, then it’s kind of more comforting just to be like,
“I’m just not gonna think about that shit”, because you know it
doesn’t make a difference. If you’re the most dedicated anti-war [?],
there’s still people still fighting it, but they know more than anybody else that
it makes zero difference.
Kevin: I’ve got some pseudo mixed thoughts on that one.
I mean, I agree with you right because I see the evidence of it, but then there’s
also I kinda have like this – it’s almost kinda like the Facebook thing a
little bit to me where you know, I see people – some tragic event occurs, right
– and you see people instantly, I mean just tons, and tons, and tons of people
getting together and organizing these little things but what are they really
organizing? I mean, they’re just sending messages back and forth and
ultimately, you’re not doing shit is the reality of it but they think
they’re doing something. So do you think that perhaps one of the
possibilities with the rally – and I wasn’t actually there for that rally,
I was out of the country at that time so definitely not that big one – but when
it was leading up to that, do you think that perhaps part of the things is is that the
people who are there, the bulk of the people who are there aren’t actually the
people who are gonna be political activists, they’re just people who you know,
they’re participating in that emotional outburst for one day and perhaps missing
the larger point that I believe very firmly that if you have these groups out there for
– if you have 15,000 people who were out at the capitol and refused to leave, I
don’t really know what would happen with that. I think you’d have a
much different outcome than this whole people following this controlled structure and
saying you know, 15,000 people show up but you have to be right here, you have to do
this and I’m not saying that they should get violent or anything, but this whole
notion of like following the protest rules and all that sort of bullshit to really
protest something as significant as invading a country, to me that’s not –
you’re just kind of sheep for the slaughter there. You’re not really
part of the revolution that I think actually could bring about change.
And so I guess what I’m getting at is I actually do think that given the right
set of circumstances, you really could bring about some change with those massive
organizations or groupings, I just don’t think that they’re structured in
such a way to have any sort of effect. I think they’re structured in a way
where they get this huge showing [?] in one [?] swoop, and then 98% of the people are
never gonna lift a finger about it again.
Jad: That’s a good point. I
mean, I guess that’s probably the case but I mean what would they have
done? So your idea is let’s just say that they’re like –
we’re just going to occupy the capitol building until the war is canceled or
whatever, right?
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: I mean, that’s kind of what
occupy Wall Street was doing and occupy various places.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It just kind of got weighted out,
right?
Kevin: Right and I had a great deal of respect for that whole
thing.
Jad: Yeah, sure.
Kevin: I mean, I was blown away how long they actually lasted and I
think we did an episode on it a few weeks ago or a couple months ago where I was
specifically saying that I was really disappointed that not more people who are
sensible right-leaning people if you will, stood up in their support after they saw
what was happening right, because – and I think I even make the quote almost
exactly to say you know, even if you would disagreed with their financial message that
they were getting at, you still should have the principal stance to stand up for their
right to protest right, and when they’re getting beaten senselessly and
incarcerated for no reason whatsoever, it was obvious as all day, I was really
frustrated that you didn’t have larger groups from the right standing up and
speaking out against that.
But in this case, I don’t really know exactly what they would purpose of doing
that would be other than I guess what I was kinda relating it to with the whole Boston
thing is it just frustrates me because for one day, maybe two days, you’ll have
all these people who just make this huge emotional outburst, but I mean already today,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, nobody’s going to continue that conversation.
Maybe the day of, you’d have some of these people say, “Well who would do
such a thing?” What you need is for a week later for that same person to
say, “Well, who wouldn’t do such a thing?” Why would somebody
do that, you know? And that’s what frustrates me is that that discussion
will never take place in any mass quantity, or it doesn’t seem to take place in
any mass quantity and I think that’s why it frustrates me, the discussion’s
never really moving forward.
You know it’s – I don’t know, shit – it’s like the school
shootings a couple months ago. For a day, a couple of days, like all these people
on one side of the coin just balls to the wall about how you gotta outlaw guns, and on,
and on, and on. Now I disagree with them, but that’s fine, I understand
where they’re coming from. But those people you know, they’re not
three, four, five days later, two weeks later, they’re certainly not out on the
streets then with that same agenda. So I think if you want to make change in the
world, you don’t get to – you can’t ride on the convenience of just
stating your cause whenever the shit hits the fan whenever there’s actually a
problem. You need to be able to keep that same point of view when it’s not
problematic to you, and I certainly think that’s what you and I and many people
similar to us, they tend to do looking at the dangers of the government getting too
much power, right?
There’s times where we will probably go after seemingly innocuous sorts of
bills and what have you because the whole thing’s just a slippery slope, you just
know where it’s actually headed to. Give the government an inch,
they’re gonna take a mile and historically forever they do. But I guess on
the flipside of this, I ‘m just saying that I feel like people get really, really
involved in it for a very short period of time, and then it just completely disappears
and I think that that’s ironically, perhaps it’s kinda like the bag banning
thing, in my opinion. You haven’t really changed anybody’s mind,
right? You’ve just kind of forced people to do something because you said
so. So one day you tell everybody, “hey, this is what we’re doing,
fucking come and help us out”, and they’re like, “alright, I’ll
do it”, and they all come out in great numbers, and everybody’s real
excited, and then it’s a big party and they’re like, “yeah,
yeah”, you know, like the whole deal.
But there’s never that conversation, why do we not want the plastic bags in
the first place? Are you trying to tell me that I just need to be more
environmentally sensitive because if that’s what you’re telling me, I can
do that. I wanna be a more environmentally sensitive person. I guess I feel
like couple days later, those people, they’re no longer interested in whatever
that rally was about, they just, they were there, they did it, they took their picture,
it’s on Facebook, you’re done, you did your part, but you didn’t do
your part because doing your part means you have to do it until the job is done
which again, to the occupy thing, kudos to them because I was impressed with how much
time they put into it.
Jad: Well it is an example, I mean I think
this is – I hear what you’re saying, I think it’s a – I
understand its sentiment, but you’re basically asking for eternal vigilance from
people who have shit to do, right?
Kevin: That’s correct.
Jad: And if I’m gonna guard against
the plastic bags and I’m gonna – or go into guard against the infringement
of my right to have plastic bags, I could spend – I could’ve quit my job
and go full time fighting that one single thing, well meanwhile you know, [?] is gonna
be passed and Homeland Security’s gonna triple in size and like that’s not
a solution.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: There’s no way you can ask [?]
to require everyone to be unemployed and even then, you could probably deal with like
1/50th of the awfulness to even stem the tide of various branches. I
mean, it’s a whole on you know, city level all the way up, or actually homeowner
or organization all the way up to federal level assault on every branch of human
agency. Look at the pinnacle, you say like Occupy Wall Street where you had tons
of people who had a lot of resources and were able to take a lot of time, and work in
shifts, and organize, while the very best you could – and they had a list of
things they were concerned about, even that, they just have to wait it out,
right?
There’s nothing they can do, it’s like you said, even that expression as
long lasted and as persistent as it was has zero real effect. It’s just a
draining of people’s resources – psychic resources to resist in a
sense. Like you said, I’d completely support anyone who does anything like
that, but I mean you’re talking about like a Cindy Sheehan or something right,
who’s you know, those people are 1/100,000 maybe – it can’t be based
on that, that’s just not going to happen, it has to be something else.
Kevin: Well yeah, I mean I’ll be the first to admit that
there’s a bit of idealism in there, but I guess what I’m really chalking it
back to more is just kind of like it’s a mental thing, it’s an educational
sort of thing, and I guess to some extent it kind of goes to the grounds of why you
feel it’s important to have that conversation , speaking about the bags just
taking it to that more extreme level because I think people just aren’t
conditioned to think that way. And so you know, you’re right, are you
actually gonna find – is it reasonable to think that you can find 15,000 people
in the city of Austin who are just gonna sit at the capitol until they – what are
they gonna do, they’re just – take shifts going to the bathroom, or
they’re not gonna eat anymore, they’re gonna forego their mortgages, not
take the kids to school right, I mean there’s just these practical things that it
can’t occur, right? Somehow or another, you’ve gotta shift that
mentality but you have to remain vigilant and maybe vigilant doesn’t mean that
you’re necessarily out protesting this every single day, or sleeping out at the
capitol lawn or whatever the case may be, but I think that there’s a certain
level of daily vigilance that’s required in order to combat this foe that
we’re referring to, which is kind of this [?] governmental state agency thing,
which is making these really, really horrible decisions to our very earlier point, not
with our consent in the least, and I think that’s shown time and again now with
most of the polls that we’re even seeing with respect to the wars and you know,
taxation, and et cetera.
I mean, it’s just going so above and beyond, I guess the bulletpoint to the
whole thing now is just what we’re always talking about, I just feel that if you
can’t get people on board, or commence people, or teach people to get on that
side of the more philosophical critical thinking when it comes to why are we here, what
is it that we’re trying to do, I mean if you have enough people, I really do feel
that you can accomplish certain things and even if maybe there’s a lot of
counterpoints against me you know, maybe I’m just too hopeful in that, but I do
feel that you actually can make some sort of progressive change with enough
people. But now people who just want to participate in it because they can say,
“ra, ra, I did my share, I’m done.” You know it’s I don’t
know, I guess it’s – to me, it’s like the guy who gives five bucks to
the starving kid fund in Africa and then feels really passionate about the fact that he
helped cure world hunger, you know? I’m like, “well, you did more
than some people did perhaps, but that’s not really gonna fix the problem, you
realize that right? There’s a bigger beast here.”
So I see your point entirely and I don’t know how to exactly respond to saying how
do you overcome that because obviously that’s – if we knew how to do that
we would’ve already toppled the government and we’d be on to something
different, but we don’t know how to do that completely.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So I guess I’m just feeling very impassionate about
the fact that that’s – I feel that that’s where one of the chinks in
the armor sits right now is just with people not really being engaged in what the
problem is and instead, just having it as like a whatever the cute event is, whatever
that – it’s just a blip on their radar. “Oh, we’re gonna
go out and protest the war today.” “Great, I’m in because
I’m against the war. 364 days of the year I haven’t even thought
about the war. Today, I’m against it.” “Domestic
terrorism, we should probably talk about this. There’s probably things that
we need to consider without giving up all the rights to the country. Today,
fucking Boston is – man, I’m with you man. I’m all over that
shit. Three days from now, I don’t even really know what that’s
about.” You know that’s – I guess that’s the mentality
that I’m kinda sarcastically barking at right now.
Jad: And yet, eleven years after 9/11 when
everyone is remembering, you’re upset by that too.
Kevin: [laughter] Well, you got me on that one. Oh, I knew my
writing would be called out, I just needed it.
Jad: And that’s where we leave it for
this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey and Chris Batton[Sp?] for providing us with
quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without them.
Hosting services are provided by City Core, LLC. Our graphical caricature was
provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Hisham[Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription
services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. If you have
any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we love receiving
email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning
in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
Consider two such examples: after people largely rejected the drafting of soldiers, the new method of raising a military has been aggressive recruiting in rural and underprivileged areas. Seems legit because as defined, nobody already cares about these people to begin with.
Another example is ensuring photos and videos of so-called conflict zones are not shown to the general public. This of course is a stark contrast from the Vietnam War.
We think you’ll find the base concept pretty easy to swallow.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast, an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. This week, Jad and I explore the ways in which government has adapted its tactics since the Vietnam War. Consider two such examples, after people largely rejected the idea of drafting soldiers, the new method of raising a military has been aggressive recruiting in rural and under-privileged areas. Seems legit because as defined, nobody really cares about these people to begin with. Another example is in sharing photos and videos of so-called conflict zones are not shown to the general public. This of course, is a start[?] contrast of the Vietnam War. We think you’ll find the base concept pretty easy to swallow.
I don’t know if I had put this on one of our recordings, but I used to say – let’s see, this would’ve been in 2001, I would’ve been 22 years old, so I guess when I was like 19, 20 years old, in college – I used to have kinda this tongue in cheek argument that I would make to people to say that a country really needed a war and the reason I said that is because I didn’t really want there to be a war, but I said that the United States has become so distorted in what the values of a governance chain are. I was looking at prison systems and looking at the “war on drugs”, and looking on the way that the United States government was trying to usurp more and more power at that time, and this was kinda the pre-9/11 thing.
And so my thought process was that you know, I had been reading a lot of Howard Zinn and things like that, and thinking back to kinda what happened during the Vietnam era and how it became so bad that you started having – one of the things I found really interesting that I guess Howard Zinn kinda opened me up to was it became so bad that you started having – juror nullification became like a really big deal where all of a sudden, you had people who were actually being accused of crimes and in this particular case draft dodging and things similarly related to the war, and they were getting tried for this and they were 100% breaking what the law was, but the populous grew to find these laws so distasteful and what was happening so outrageous that they didn’t give a shit what the law was and they would just acquit people of everything, so it basically became impossible at the time – at least in more intellectual areas – to convict people for draft dodging and other things, for skipping out on the war because nobody would convict you anymore –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – because the population recognized that, “well, fuck you, I’m not sending these kids over to die. What the fuck’s wrong with you”, right?
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: And so my thought process was that if the country had a war, if the country got to some state where it just became so bad again that that sort of thing started happening that perhaps that would finally be some sort of a trigger to wake people up to be like, “you know, what the fuck, really, we’re dealing with people getting killed on a daily basis and we’re gonna worry about fucking arresting some 17 year-old kid because he has a joint and ruining his life?” The imbalance in that is just so far from fucking reality and it kinda makes me think back to that, kinda the gist of the movie – I mean, it’s actually kind of a decent movie, so I won’t ruin it for you – but Pleasantville is what it’s called. Kinda the idea of it is that you know, they have such this utopian type of “society”, everything is so pleasant that you don’t wanna ruin that pleasantness with things that are less than pleasant.
For example, like in reality, like in real life, like marijuana, if you have a really functioning society where everybody’s happy, and everything’s perfect, and everything just runs itself perfectly, then maybe you can make the argument to say that you don’t want to introduce marijuana into that because it’s kinda dirty, some people can have mental addictions to it, you make people really lazy, it’s unproductive, everything cetera. You can draw those arguments and so again, just to kinda further draw my point out is just that my thought was that if times just were so bad, people are literally dying every single fucking day, then something like that you just wouldn’t think that anybody would care about that anymore. Even a police officer would be like, “yeah dude, I don’t really give a shit that you’re smoking a joint, just don’t hurt anybody; we’ve got bigger problems right now”, you know?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: But the exact opposite has happened.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: The war has come about and it has further empowered the state agencies and they have actually made those such laws worse and worse, and enforcement against them worse, and worse. So it’s again, kind of a conspiracy theory word that immediately gets you thrown out, but it’s just very fascist[?] driven, frankly.
Jad: Sure, for sure. Well and I think that’s – you can see where state power adapts, right, and then Vietnam is a good example of that. The draft – and don’t mistake this for a bring back the draft argument, it’s been made like that – but the draft is one of those danger signs, right, or it’s one of those things where you are at risk, you know? It’s not poor people that are taken off to go to war –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It could be anybody going to war and especially when as the war went on and they started to throw out college deferments and throw out the different ways that privileged people could get out of the draft began to go away, the anti-war movement really got going. They fixed that mistake, right? Now it’s just they find the poorest people in the country and they pay them a pittance to go get shot at and murder people, and so no one cares anymore, right? And the war on drugs – I think a fairly well established fact – they don’t arrest people who possess drugs, the arrest poor people who possess drugs even though – and again, I believe this is the case – that marijuana use is fairly even across the races and the classes, it’s poor black kids that get arrested for marijuana possession. So you do that so that you don’t wake the sleeping giant as it were, right?
You don’t have a Vietnam era thing where the people of privilege are being upset and questioning the validity of the actions of the state. You kind of come at everything from the bottom up, and that seems to be a lesson that’s been extremely well learned so that now people are starting to become upset, but already, everyone who is under the middle class is already just enslaved either in prison or completely enmeshed in the welfare state, or a criminal, like an illegal immigrant or whatever, somebody who can be picked up for a crime at any time, all these people can’t act against state power, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So now you’re beginning to see the bottom of the middle class is being picked away, you know? Police are becoming a lot more brazen, there’s a lot more inconveniences in place for people who historically have been free from having to encounter in negative ways state authority. And that’s where I think you’re seeing – that’s where the Ron Paul surge and the general surge in the enlightenment thinkers and The Constitution, and all that kind of stuff is coming from; people who are newly inconvenienced.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But the problem is that their allies are all gone, right? Their allies have already been completely neutralized in a historical sense – the revolutionary allies being the poor. Now they will be back once the austerity measures set in, you know? They will be freed from the things that keep them obedient. Anyway, that’s obviously extremely hypothetical, but anyway, I think the state is very clever about and it adapts very quickly to people becoming concerned, you know? They try to avoid that at all costs. Actually, I don’t [?] off of there, so apologies if I took your point in a different direction.
Kevin: No, you took it in exactly the direction I’m thinking about it. I mean, so we can put this on our recording, to people who I think don’t know and correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that the argument is in favor of reinstating the draft frequently do come from libertarian and anarchist type of people, even though those people would in every way, shape, and form radically oppose any type of the draft for obvious reasons. The intent behind it is that if all of a sudden random people started getting picked out of a crowd and say, “now, you’re up next to die”, then all of a sudden it sheds light on exactly the problem in the first place. Those are the arguments I’ve heard in favor [?] –
Jad: Absolutely. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah. No, I mean it makes perfect sense, what you’re saying, and I guess it’s a little bit of you know, it’s kind of like a conjectured type of argument. I mean I don’t know that you can necessarily assign definitive proof to some of the claims, but again, there seems to be a hell of a lot of evidence pointing in that direction that that’s exactly what’s happening, and God knows the state’s not working in anybody’s favor and I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can get away with saying something like that without people thinking that I’m some sort of conspiratorial type of person because I’ve always very much disliked conspiracy theory, and you’ve heard me often kind of speak against it in a sense. I just don’t feel it’s useful. I enjoy it, I find it interesting, but I don’t find it useful to make any type of conspiracy theory argument because you can – in almost all cases – immediately refute it with something else and to me that just makes a poor argument so why would I talk about it?
But when you start bringing up things like the CIA scandal, when you start bringing up things like the NSA information that’s come about, when you start bringing up things like the constant drone attacks that are occurring, the fact that – one of my favorite ones – the fact that all branches of government at this point have conceded that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, right? And yet that war, whilst it has dwindled down a bit, that war does still persist and the whole basis of that war that we’re fighting. I mean, the entire operation is the only reason that there was allegedly any evidence to go to war in the first place, or any approval of the United States populous to go to war in the first place was based upon that claim, which has been completely taken aback by every single person now, I think, even Bush and Cheney have said so, saying, “well, we went on bad intelligence”, or whatever. So even if you accept that they really were just going on bad intelligence, at very least expect them to say, “Well, yeah, we really fucked up. We gotta undo this now because we made a big mistake.” But even with that, people don’t care. They’re like, “oh, well you know, it is what it is”, and I’m like, “what do you mean it is what it is?” Where’s the rollback? Where’s the exit? Where’s the –
Jad: Rollback.
Kevin: – you know, and it just immediately transfers into another argument to say, “well alright, we fucked up but we can’t undo it now so now we just have to work within the bounds that we have now”, and it’s like you’re never gonna win the argument and it’s sad because there’s really no way to lose it. There’s no logical way that any of these dots can be connected and yet an overwhelming number of the population somehow still connects those dots in favor of the governmental side and I can’t for the life of me figure it out other than to accredit it back to things like what we started with, the George Zimmerman trial where nobody really gives a shit about anything that’s going on because they’re just more interested in hearing about some like I said, 1/15,000 case for this particular year.
Jad: Well and again, it’s that much more comfortable to do so, right?
Kevin: Well, right. Right, right.
Jad: It’s disconcerting to think that the people who have absolute power over you are a bunch of sadistic you know, the kinds of people that would travel around the world murdering strangers for money essentially, for no reason at all – not a defensive reason at least.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That’s really not a pleasant thought to have. It’s really disruptive if you really internalize that and you really think about what that means, it’s too much stuff, right? I mean everything you’ve been told is a lie, like your parents told you that stuff, and your minister told you that stuff, and all your teachers told you that the government is here to help you and, and U.S. only fights just wars, and there’s all these checks and balances to make sure bad things don’t happen or if they do happen they get fixed, and there’s apologies, and there’s you know, the whole narrative of living in a just world, in a just state is gone if you pay attention to that story and that’s a lot to ask for someone on a Thursday afternoon or something.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So that I don’t know the answer to that. Since that is the case and since people are that dead set on not thinking about something – we’ll we talk about this all the time – I think the only thing you can do is give them the other filter so that they’re aware it exists and then there will come a time when it becomes helpful for them to have that filter, you know? Like, “oh, I wonder why this bad thing happened that I actually care about because it happened to someone I love”, and like, “why were the police so awful to this person that I know even though their innocent?” Well let me take that filter of “don’t trust the government” and take a look at it and now oh, now it makes sense, they did it because they were making money off of it, or he was refusing to obey orders, or you know, whatever it is, there’s just nothing else you can do.
But that’s what I think is positive is if you look at the number of people – and you pointed this out before lots of times – but the number of people who are even aware of that filter existing now compared to 20 years ago, it’s remarkable.
Kevin: I think so.
Jad: And it’s kind of irreversible too because now it’s electronic, you can’t stop the flow of information. You can’t stop – someone who decides they want to look has all of the information at their fingertips. They don’t gotta go to the library, they don’t gotta go write freedom information acts to different parts of the government to try to get papers with redacted information and all that you know, like the classic conspiracy theorists did form J.F.K. on.
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: That’s not necessary anymore, all you gotta do is sit down at a computer and 20 minutes later, at least be headed in the direction of some sort of clarity with the nature of power and nature of the relationship between the state and you.
Kevin: Right. It appears to be a losing battle, but I agree with you that there are definitely some positive statistics weighing in the favor of you know, what we’re talking about. So while I may sound very defeated and beaten you know, at this particular crossroads – which I’m certainly not personally – but while I might be looking at it as if the country was beaten and defeated you know, I recognize [?] statistically that at the end of the day again, I look back to the Ron Paul thing all the time and then say well in just even 2008 to 2012, I mean the radical change that came from that and just kinda bringing people into that – never mind the party system – but just bringing people into that libertarian umbrella of that type of ideology, you know and just getting them to think for themselves.
And a lot of them of course are very ignorant about it still and toting all sorts of things that aren’t necessarily the case, but at least like you say, it’s getting people to think about these issues and if I go back to what I was saying about when I was younger, I kinda thought that maybe like a war would fix some of this stuff. That’s exactly the reason that I thought the war could fix these sorts of things is because it would force people to consider issues that go so much beyond themselves and to consider what those state entities are actually doing and unfortunately, I guess the one bit of that equation that I didn’t calculate or I didn’t think of at the time was that – and something you point out all the time, which I wholeheartedly agree with – is that something needs to affect them personally. It’s not enough to know that the United States is dropping bombs on these kids over in whatever. It’s not enough to know that police you know in Tennessee are pulling innocent people out of their cars and strip searching them and things like that. It’s not enough anymore and I don’t know why, but it’s not.
What you need is for – you already know this – but for one of my friends who is on the side of police and all that sort of thing, sadly, I need one of their close friends or family members to get pulled out of the car and strip searched by a police officer, you know, and completely violated in every way, shape, and form, then you’ll have another group of say, 40 to 100 people using that kind of a second and third degree matching system that are gonna get on board with that and say, “well that’s fucking wrong”, you know, “how could that possibly happen?” And at least that filter is gonna break down a little bit in them, but it’s just tragic to me that that’s the level of abuse that’s required in order for people to deal with the situation in an adult manner these days, in a responsible human manner these days.
Jad: Yeah, I agree with you. The other part – and we’ve talked about this before too and it goes back to your Vietnam point and I think Tom mentioned this one time we were talking about it, I totally agree – is that the – and it goes back to the media as well – the media being complicit in the stability of the status quo has a lot to do with it. Like during the Vietnam era, I think just as a hangover from the Second World War, they were like, “oh, we’ve got this great technology, let’s film all these soldiers being soldiers. Everyone likes that, everyone likes to watch that on TV and newsreels and stuff”, but then you know, what they were filming were these awful atrocities and that was what – people were getting that information. So even though it was someplace far away, it still was something they had to process –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – because it was presented to them every day. “Here’s how many people died in Vietnam today”, you know, and, “here’s a child covered in napalm running down the street, screaming”, and just another adaptation that the state made is that that doesn’t happen at all anymore, you know? That doesn’t happen at all with foreign occupations at all. There’s never a video of anyone dying, even if they’re the enemy they’re not showing those pictures and no one’s talking about cases where a policeman rapes or beats somebody on the side of the road. Those stories aren’t covered and if they were, you might be able to see some more clarity among the thinking of your every day person.
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: And I think that the multi-faceted nature of the system is really important to focus on because that definitely has a lot to do with it.
Kevin: Right. Right. I couldn’t agree more with all these points. I don’t really know where to go with any of them because it’s just kinda the same depressing notion over and over, but it’s I guess, if I try to tie it back to what we initially started talking about, it’s just I do agree that a lot of – you know when we were talking about Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and people being interested in watching this and why they’re watching it and I think you made some pretty good counterpoints to me – but I guess the overall picture that I always know is there is that it’s the media entities that are complicit in all of this, and they are ultimately the ones getting to control the flow of information to begin with and it used to – even when I went through college, I think I’ve told you before, I spent several years in film school.
That was actually what I did my first three years of school and even went up to NYU for a semester to study film there and everything and I was really into it and I’ve always really liked doing film, and arts, and things like that. But I had to take a lot of – not just filmmaking – but you know actually like learning about media, and film, and histories, and things like that, and one of the things that they just pounded into your head and I swear to God I still know people who have degrees in radio and television, film, and things like that who still hold this view is the notion of what media is and what they would repeat to you over, and over, and over is that the media doesn’t tell people what to think, it tells people what to think about, right?
And it becomes like this kinda very – I forget what it’s called, it’s like a reasonably important law or theory of radio, television, and film sciences – but as I’ve matured, I’ve just kinda come to find that that’s just the biggest fucking heap of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life and the fact that it’s repeated so consistently and in an academic environment just bothers me to no fucking end because it’s total horse shit to suggest that the media doesn’t tell you what to think, they tell you what to think about. I believe wholeheartedly that the media tells you exactly what to think and I think you just have to abstract that one level, maybe Fox isn’t specifically telling you that you need to think that George Zimmerman is innocent or that CNN, or MSNBC needs to convince you that George Zimmerman is guilty maybe without making that definitive claim, but to say they’re not telling you what to think I think is a really far stretch from that because what they’re telling you to think is to think in this very myopic view of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin rather than some of the much larger issues that are going on.
So I think that it’s almost kind of a cop out when they say they tell you what to think about, not what to think. There is a pretty fucking small line between that preposition and the lack of a preposition and anyway, I think the media tells people exactly what to think and I think that’s a large part of where my complaint gets lodged to begin with. Here I am complaining about people being idiots when in fact, you’re still at the mercy of the information that you’re being provided, you know?
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And if that’s the shit that’s pounded into your head literally 24 hours a day then what can you do?
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: So it’s real sad, but I guess one answer to that is you try to engage in things like what we do and maybe do your best to provide an alternative to talking points and say, “well, we don’t believe these things so here’s what we believe”, and the three people that listen to it maybe get something out of it, but –
Jad: Sure. Yeah, that’s all you can do.
Kevin: Yeah, I think so.
Jad: I mean, that’s not all you could do I suppose, but that’s all we’re gonna do. That’s the extent of our activities.
And that’s where we leave it for this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey[Sp?] and Chris Baton[Sp?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by CityCore, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Sham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we love receiving email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>“The Conversation” is a tidbit about black culture that Jad came across and unless you’re black or possibly in another minority group, you’ve probably never been taught it.
We also discuss the difference between people who identify as libertarians because of philosophical principles (as Jad and Kevin do) versus people who do so because a more limited government permits them to be freely bigoted. Throughout the episode, we remain passionate in our disgust for the entire unfortunate situation.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Kevin: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast, an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality. The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode.
This week, Jad and I conclude our discussion of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman situation, a conversation that we began last week. One part of the episode you’ll want to listen for is something called, “the conversation”. It’s a tidbit about black culture that Jad came across, and unless you’re black or possibly in another minority group, you’ve probably never been taught it.
We also discuss the differences between people who identify as libertarians because of philosophical principles, as both Jad and I do, versus people who do so because a more limited government permits them to be more freely bigoted. Throughout the episode, we remain passionate in our disgust for the entire unfortunate situation.
Jad: I totally agree with what you said. Let me throw in one other maybe slightly positive thing, inside the context of the Trayvon Martin 24 hour story is that we turn the TV on to watch something or other and – Elisa’s actually interested in the case, or was interested in the verdict when it came out.
Kevin: I was following[?] her, yeah.
Jad: And when she’s excited about something, then I’m like, “okay, well I’ll go read the Wikipedia page at least”, and it seemed like pretty quickly, we both came to figure out – which I think seems to be the objectively, the Kevin Ludlow facts of the matter as it were – is that no matter what you think about it, the current structure of justice says that the state doesn’t have enough evidence to overturn the story of the one guy who is alive, and that’s classic, right? I mean like – and not saying that this necessarily relates to George Zimmerman – but that happens all the time. That’s how the mafia operates, right? Everyone who is a witness vanishes.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And so no matter how strong your case is circumstantially, you can’t ever overcome that burden of proof to show that the mob boss is racketeering or whatever. That’s a function of the structure of the system. If all the witnesses are dead or gone then you can’t really do anything about it, and that’s just what happened, right? But we were watching TV after that and the stories, everything we saw was not really focused on the case as it was focused on police and the African American community.
So they were talking about the fear of black men and black teenagers and whatnot, and that I think, isn’t a wasted conversation because that is what is actually what people are upset about. The thing that people are projecting their own feelings about onto this blank screen is the notion or their intuition based in reality that the justice system is hugely skewed to the disadvantage of poor black men. That is a fantastic conversation to have. That should be something that everyone knows is actually factually the case.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That is an important piece of reality to have when you’re filtering information. There’s nothing particularly scary about black men and yet, they are the ones who are 40% of the prison population.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Anyway, I thought that was at least positive and [?] we were watching was somebody talking about how they had to have this conversation with their son and this is like a speaking way out of my depth here, but this is apparently called, “the conversation”. So if you have a black male son, as you would if you were a black person with a son, then you tell them at some point, “look, human beings all joke with each other, we laugh with each other, we fuck around, you’re a free spirit, you have lots of energy, all that’s great. But if you ever see a policeman, do not fuck with them at all. Don’t crack a joke, don’t talk back to them, because that guy wants to kick your ass. He wants to fuck you up, that’s kind of his job. So don’t run from them, don’t fight them, don’t argue with them.”
That’s the talk and that makes sense, right, because that’s to keep your child alive. And so they were saying essentially that now they were having to have that talk, or they were saying that George Zimmerman takes that talk to the next level where it’s not just a policeman, it’s just anybody, like, “don’t look suspicious, walk slowly, don’t walk too slowly like you’re looking at things, try to keep a regular pace”, and all that kinda stuff. I don’t think it’s a context that most Americans have a lot of empathy with, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But anyway, so that’s just a long way of saying it was interesting and I thought it was a positive conversation that would actually be very helpful to understand why people are projecting what they’re projecting onto this story, why this story resonates with them. I don’t really understand the other side of it as much, so I can’t really conjecture as to why people are really happy that George Zimmerman got off. But I think it’s important to understand the reasons why people had strong feelings about the case. How about that? Try to salvage something from the –
Kevin: Well good because I’m gonna turn right back around and try to look at some of it anyway. I agree with that. I think that in all cases right, that’s a really good thing. In any type of litigious case that could come about, I think that you see elements of that. I mean, you see elements of that in any type of high profile case like these ones where you know, moms have killed their kids after going crazy and there’s religion involved, and then there’s like an abuse of husband involved, and then there’s all sorts of postpartum and drugs play a role in this whole thing – I mean like legal drugs and pharmaceuticals – and you know, you can get into these really good talking points in virtually any one of those high profile cases, I think for the most part. Maybe the type of high profile case like O.J. type of thing, you know, where it just really is celebrity status. So at that point it’s just kind of over the top.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: But outside of that, I think that the majority of people can probably find pretty good things to talk about. But I do kind of have like a mixed feeling though on the notion of “the conversation”. I didn’t know that, first of all. I think that’s really interesting that this so-called “conversation” takes place and that’s what that is, and I think that it doesn’t surprise me to learn that. And of course, I assumed that a lot of fathers would tell children stuff like that. Now I kinda have like a double-edged point of view on it. First of all, I mean I’m in the majority in every way possible being a white educated male, right, so I concede that point. And that said though, it kinda reminds me of what we were talking about months ago with respect to the holocaust, and we were talking about standing up for – if you don’t have a society of people, you were saying like me, but just people who are willing to stand up for things, then how does that system ever change, right?
And so I guess I have kind of a mixed thought on it because I’m like well, I totally understand as a parent, last thing you’re gonna do is tell your kid something that very well may get him killed, right? You’d be a horrible parent if that’s what you’re doing. But on the other hand I can kinda see how by adding that protective layer in there, you’re really kinda perpetuating that same sort of “the Jewish” stereotype that we talked about in the holocaust. And even today it still persists in the Jewish culture where you just have this grouping of people who are taught from the get go that these people do not agree with your particular way of life. Do not fuck with them in any way, shape, or form because they are out to get you and if you put yourself in harm’s way, you’re going to lose, right? They’re going to overpower you and visa vie, that’s kinda the whole holocaust that happens right there, you know? Everybody kinda plays dead and then unfortunately, one ends up actually being dead.
But the other more important thing I think I have in this case with respect to “the conversation” is that that is kinda what I was getting at with the 1/15,000 murders, and I don’t think for a second that black people and people of color in general shouldn’t be afraid of police forces, and state agencies, and things like that. I really truly do think that there’s overwhelming evidence to suggest that that’s the case. But I actually did read quite a bit about this too you know, saying that because George Zimmerman was acquitted of these charges that now black people are gonna just have to look out for people in general, you know, almost kinda like it rolls it back to 1940 or something where a black guy just might not be able to walk down the street for fear of his life and I feel that that’s a little short-sided in the sense that this is just one particular case. It’s one fucking –
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And the weird thing is – what’s really funny about it is that it keeps getting compared to white culture, and last time I checked, George Zimmerman is a fucking Mexican anyway. So the fact that you know, it becomes kinda this black on white sort of thing and again not to denigrate in any way, shape, or form the reality of the culture that black people are forced to live in in our society – I mean, it’s terrible in so many ways, I am not at all excusing it – but I’m just saying that I feel that that’s one of the things that’s now coming from this is that it’s like you can just say that Hispanics, or white people you know are just all of a sudden out to kill blacks again, and I don’t personally think that that’s true. I could be dead wrong, but I don’t think that the bulk of our society – you know, your average white person walking down the street – wants to shoot a black teenager to death, or otherwise fuck them up in any type of way. Certainly some people do and George Zimmerman appeared to have, maybe it truly was all an accident but it certainly appears that that was his intent.
And so I guess I have a little bit of trouble with the fact that I feel like the conversation – the societal conversation for all of us now – is gonna kind of regress a little bit and it’s gonna kinda go in that direction and I guess I feel it just – I don’t know, maybe I can’t say this because I am white – but I feel like it’s almost kind of like regressing racial progress and it just makes it even harder for us to communicate on that once again because it’s like if I were speaking with a black person and I go, “you’re afraid of me”, like, “would you tell your kids to watch out for somebody like me?” I mean, I want nothing more than for people to all be on the same plane and I guess it would upset me if that were – if this trial somehow changed that conversation again where all of a sudden, all non-black people are against black people again, and I might be saying that a little to cavalierly, but I hope my point is at least recognized in it.
Jad: Oh no, I totally understand what you’re saying. So yeah, I agree with your point that this is an instance. I think the argument for the other side is not that there are suddenly an increase in the number of people who want to go out and shoot black people, but there has never been a decrease in the number of people who when they see a black person got shot are saying to themselves, “well, he was probably robbing somebody”, or whatever. When they see it – the Trayvon Martin story – say, “well, yeah, he’s a little punk kid”, I mean this is not the case, “but a punk kid in a white neighborhood, and so he was probably up to no good anyway”, because statistically, that’s not the case and that I think is the mismatch they’re trying to point out is that a black man is not more likely to hurt you than a non-black man.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I saw something that was kinda interesting the other day. They were talking about black on black crime and somebody was taking the point that – it was Lupe Fiasco actually, I think he’s a Hip Hop artist of some sort, I’m not really totally familiar with, but I’m now following him on Twitter because he’s very interesting – but he was saying, “until we stop killing each other, there’s no way that the white man is going to value our lives if we don’t value each other’s lives.” And he was saying like some 85% of African Americans are killed by other African Americans, and somebody else came in and pointed out that 82 or something percent of white people are killed by white people, and so it’s not like a black on black crime, it’s just that usually you’re killing people you know, and you’re killing people in your neighborhood, and you’re killing people that you know, that’s who you kill.
Kevin: Interesting.
Jad: So to go back to the original train of thought is that you don’t have to worry about a strange black man, if someone’s gonna kill you it’s gonna be a white person around you that you know. So it’s a misperception of the threat and then that misperception gets translated via the passiveness, because you think that’s the case then when someone says, “oh, isn’t it strange that black people are 10% of the population, but they’re 40% of the prison population” –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – that doesn’t bother you because you’re like, “oh, well black people are criminals”, right? That’s what I know to be true, you don’t necessarily have that as an explicit thought process, but that’s why you are able to not be bothered by that fact, right? So anyway it’s kind of subtle, but I think that is ultimately the argument being made by the people who are legitimately concerned and not just trying to stir up a [?] –
Kevin: Oh, sure.
Jad: – and not trying to promote their talk show or whatever, the people who are – the thoughtful people I’ve seen discussing this from that perspective – that’s kind of their position and I think that’s a valid position. I think that’s true. I mean, it’s clearly the case that – I think, I’ve never seen any evidence to the contrary – that the police, the incarceration apparatus of the United States specifically targets minorities, and specifically among minorities, black people –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and nobody cares. No one’s standing up to stop it and part of that reason is because there’s this sort of subtle narrative in media and everywhere else that that’s just the way it is because these people are criminals, that that is the criminal class. So I think you know, that’s definitely worth discussing and from a libertarian perspective or a message promotion perspective, I think watching these guys – and there’s a couple that I follow their work – that are basically saying, “look, this is the rule of law, the rule of law says this.” I understand that, I agree – I think that’s right. Like when I look at the evidence I’m like, I see why this happened the way it did. But that’s not the point, right? That’s not why people are mad.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They’re not mad because they really honestly think the rule of law was subverted in this instance. In most cases, they don’t know anything about the facts of the case to the level of detail where you’re like, “oh, well there’s just no witnesses so the burden of proof is not met and the state does not meet its demand, blah, blah, blah, and has to acquit or has to find him not guilty”, they’re not thinking about it at that level. They’re saying this is another instance of this clearly racist system and there are a large number of people who are saying this verdict is good and they’re interpreting that to mean the state of affairs as it exists is just, is right, is good, right? So it’s just a miscommunication in a huge – amalgamating large groups of people together but it’s just people not really listening to what the other side is concerned about.
They’re just saying, “well, I think you’re wrong because this, and so I’m not going to really think about what is it you’re trying to communicate”, and they’re going to pick your argument apart on the details of the argument, not taking the time to try to empathize and understand what it is you’re actually concerned about – I don’t know, –
Kevin: No, your point is really well taken. I mean, I can’t disagree with any of that at all and I think from that side, I’m very sympathetic to the situation – I mean, I am very sympathetic to the situation overall. You know, I had a number of people who immediately afterwards were like, “oh, what did you think of the whole Martin case”, and people would then follow up by saying like, “I think they did the right thing”, and I get pretty snappy with all of them because I knew them – all the people that told me this – and I said, “they probably did do the right thing.” I was like, “but you’re completely missing the point if you have any interest in discussing this whatsoever because you’re not an attorney and so to start thinking about it as if all of a sudden the law has any relevance to anything”, and I think what I was really going on telling people is that the law doesn’t mean anything. It’s an abstract notion, it means nothing.
So the law is subject to change at any moment and it does so regularly, so to suggest that all of a sudden, your whole basis of your argument now is to say, “well, they followed the rule of the law, so therefore the right decision was made”, and I was like, “you can’t say that.” I was like, “it’s fucking asinine to say that. At the end of the day, there’s still a kid who lost his life for no particular reason, so whilst Zimmerman – I don’t think he is guilty, or he wasn’t guilty clearly – but while I agree with you wholeheartedly that the burden of proof is not met, that doesn’t change the circumstantial evidence to the facts of the case and you should still be pissed off that this sort of thing happens at all. There’s just so many tragic points to it.”
So I’m very sympathetic to the situation overall and I think that if those are the talking points that are coming out of it right now, if those are the things that people are talking about, if those are the things that people are really upset about – or that the black community specifically perhaps is upset about – then I would have to wholeheartedly agree with that because I was pissed off on the exact same token when people so very nonchalantly said to me, “they made the right decision.” It’s like, there’s no fucking way you can say that. And I’m not saying that they made the wrong decision. I’m just saying you can’t say that they made the right decision. There is no right decision in this case. There’s no good answer here, it’s terrible all around. So to just all of a sudden fall back like you’re the attorney in the case and like, “thank God we won”, that’s the wrong attitude and that attitude really pissed me off just in the last two days when people were kinda spewing that off to me.
So I’m completely on the side of what you’re saying here, if that’s the case. Interestingly, one of the notes I had jotted down while you were talking was the fact that I find it very difficult to discuss this topic from a libertarian mindset and the reason is because I remember when I was a representative of the republican party in 2008 mainly because I was representing Ron Paul on the libertarian side, but I actually was a delegate to the conference and it took me a while to understand. This is the first time I had really been introduced – one of the big things of the Texas republican platform is to completely get rid of the idea of a hate crime and I remember asking some of the guys that I was with – none of whom I knew, I just met them all by doing this, but they were all cool guys, I keep in touch with some of them – and I was like, “why are they interested in removing a hate crime? Like, aren’t there times where that could be applicable?” And of course, people take the side – which I think that you would take also – is that a crime, is a crime, is a crime and it’s like is shouldn’t matter if a person’s white, black, or purple, if you murder them, you murder them, and you should suffer the consequences of having murdered somebody. You shouldn’t be more penalized because you killed somebody because they were black, or because they were white – that shouldn’t matter. And I couldn’t disagree with that logic and to this day I still, in principle, agree with that; everybody should be treated equally.
And so I feel that that’s kinda one of the things that makes this very difficult to discuss on the libertarian side is that at the end of the day, I don’t personally think – by saying this, when it’s on tape I certainly hope people would listen to the entire statement and not take this sound byte – but at the end of the day, I don’t think Trayvon Martin’s life as a black man is worth any more than Trevor Martin’s life as a white man, you know? There’s no difference to me, but at the same time I appreciate that the reality of our society is that a lot of people think just the opposite. A lot of people do think that his life is perhaps worth less than that of Trevor Martin.
And so it becomes very difficult for me – if I wanna remain principle – to say, “No, you’re right, it shouldn’t matter that the kid is black. The fact is is that it was murder and he was killed, and that’s tragic in and of itself”, but unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of people, predominantly people who are probably far right-leaning people who all of a sudden want to take this very libertarian type of stance and of course, they immediately start talking about the whole black on black violence or you know, in fact, I saw somebody today post a story about a white kid who was exactly the same age – I forget the kid’s name, he was a star football player and looked like a real handsome kid – and he was murdered by a 30-year old black man. So basically, somebody was setting up the exact same case but just the opposite, and of course there’s no media story for this kid or anything like that and again, my answer is to say, “well that is equally tragic, I 100% agree with you, but again, you’re missing the point that there is still a big racial problem in this country and that’s why it’s an issue.”
So I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m frustrated that people see half the problem. You’ve got people who are using that argument, but they’re only using it for half of the issue. I’m willing to sit here and say all day long that there is a tremendous problem with racial inequality in the first place, and that needs to disappear and we should do anything we can to make that disappear. And yes, Trayvon’s life isn’t worth any more than any white kid of his equal status, but to just take one of those two things, to just take the side that says, “I don’t think that this kid’s life is worth any more than this other kid’s life”, and to ignore the tremendous racial indifferences and injustices that exist, too – that’s a little fucked up to me – and I’m seeing a lot of that on Facebook. And Facebook really gets me because it’s people that I know, but I see it on Reddit as well and other such larger public forum.
Jad: This is what has always concerned me about even self-identifying as a libertarian / anarchist is pretty safe, but I consider myself a libertarian in the sense of classic libertarian –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – the person who believes in no government, believes in individual liberty because it’s just that unfortunate fact that libertarianism or small governmentism or whatever, just happens to also be the perfect place for people who want to assert personal authority over other people based on whatever, based on gender, based on race, based on whatever. This may be going too far, this may be too disconnected from your point, but from people who explicitly feel that way to people who just more subtly don’t fathom the race issue and get upset whenever it comes up – I will call them racists – but I’m not saying that they’re necessarily like, flaming virulent racists, I think a lot of them are – but even if they’re just a subtle like, hadn’t really thought it through sort of racist, like libertarianism really appeals to those people a lot.
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: And it really sucks because – and it’s so complicated, there’s so many ins, and outs, and what have you’s that it becomes an immediate dismissal of any idea that has to do with individual liberty is that, “oh, well those people are racist”, and a large number of them are and so it kinda sucks. But on the flip side, that’s where I kind of find myself being like, “I wish this wasn’t a discussion about race”, because that’s where I feel like racism is misused as a dismissal of related ideas, do you know what I mean? So I don’t like people playing the race card sometimes. When people are playing the race card to dismiss the idea that we should dismantle the Federal Reserve or whatever, that’s a misuse of that, right?
I think this is an accurate use of it, but it’s such a touch thing and any time this sort of thing happens it gets touchier and I think people who just want to skip it – let’s say that might be to give people the benefit of the doubt – they’re not necessarily racist themselves overtly or even in a more subtle way, but they just don’t understand to the point that they don’t want to deal with that question, right? They wanna skip that part and get to the part where we talk about getting rid of hate crimes laws.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They are correct that in a just society, all people are the same, blah, blah, blah. They’re not fathoming why this sort of law exists. They don’t understand the impotence[?] behind the law and so they don’t really wanna think about once racism comes up, they’re kind of off their footing, right? They’re in a defensive position, or they’re for whatever reason, that’s not something they want to talk about. So when someone brings it up, they get upset about it or they’re like, “this is bullshit and you’re trying to get around the point, blah, blah, blah.” So again, it’s just this really crafted thing as if it were engineered to make it impossible for us to again, like you said, see our commonality, our common humanity and see our common enemy as[?] a conundrum. And look here, we’ve spent an hour and forty-five minutes on the George Zimmerman case. Well done.
Kevin: Yeah. I know it was not the intent, but there’s a lot that comes out of it. I mean I guess it is a little bit more politically philosophical than perhaps I otherwise gave it credit, but I understand what you’re saying there and I wholeheartedly agree with you. It’s one of the things that bothers me all the fucking time about the libertarian type of crowd. And to be fair – let’s not kid ourselves – this is exactly where people like myself got out. You know, in 2007, there was this tremendous movement – I mean, this is when the tea party came about – and I fucking hate it and it upsets me to some degree when I walk around hearing people talk about the tea party and how they’re just a bunch of ignorant, racist, redneck fucks and for the most part, that’s not an inaccurate depiction of them.
But when it started – as I’m sure you well know – it started because it was one of those so-called money-bomb days – which I never really like that term either – but a big fundraising day for Ron Paul, which just happened to coincide with the Boston Tea Party anniversary in 2007, which is like December, 5th or something like that – I forget the exact day – but early December or something and so that was the day that they raised like 4.5 million dollars in a single day for a candidate through grassroots efforts and it was just – even every single media channel had to pick it up and be like, “well, we don’t know who the fuck this guy is, but he certainly has a lot of people passionate about him”, right, and thus the notion of the tea party was born. And then of course, once Obama won the following year and then at the very beginning of 2009 I guess it was, or late 2008 when all of a sudden, Sarah Palin is like the spokesperson for the tea party –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – and people were like, “what the fuck are you talking about? This woman couldn’t be any further from my views of the world and she’s somehow the spokesperson for this group that I feel that I was financially responsible for creating in the first place? What the fuck to you mean?” And that’s kinda like that whole you know, state takeover thing that we’ve talked about time and time again.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: Just on a larger point it’s just upsetting to see people identify with a particular ideology that has philosophically good intention behind it and somebody like yourself or myself certainly would use it to its fullest extent to explore that goodness. Libertarian for example, if you take libertarianism at its face[?] and say, “I don’t think that anybody should be mistreated or treated badly by anybody”, that’s like the fundamental root of the whole thing, but then you see how people abuse it be them in racial senses, or in violent senses, or by letting starving kids die because fuck them, they don’t need a safety net, that type of thing.
All of those things are just contrary to the actual principles of the philosophy, but those are the things that get surfaced and I think that’s the same thing that’s happening in this case right now where you’ve got all these people, they are not purposefully doing it, I think they just don’t understand what they do. I think they feel justified in saying that – it’s just like reverse racism. It’s like when people make the reversed-racism claims.
Jad: Yeah, sure.
Kevin: Which do exist I mean, at a logical level. That is true, it might be reversed-racism, but it’s not simple to say that. To try to make yourself the victim of it is absurd.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Anyway, I think we’re on the same page with it.
Jad: Sounds like we’re on the same damn page, as usual.
Kevin: And that’s where we’ll stop for this episode. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in to the show. If you haven’t done so already, please stop by our podcast website at www.JKPod.com where you’ll find all of our episodes, show notes, links to material, and full transcriptions. We always wanna credit the amazing work our staff does to help breathe life into this show. Many thanks to Lee Caffey[Sp?] and Chris Bazon[Sp?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing. Hosting services are provided by CityCore, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mohed Badru Haseem [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for the show or if you just wanna say hello, we love receiving email. You can find Jad at Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>We look at gun violence in the United States, police forces, and as best two white guys can do, discuss the realities of being a black man in the United States. This is a two-part episode so be sure to tune in next week to get our full take.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Kevin: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast, an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality. The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode.
With the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man accused of shooting and killing 17 year old Trayvon Martin, Jad and I dive into the philosophical sides surrounding the case. We look at gun violence in the United States, police forces, and as best two white guys can do, discuss the realities of being a black man living within the United States. This is a two-part episode, so be sure to tune in next week to get our full take.
Jad: So man, what do we have for today?
Kevin: Well, it’s funny, at the dinner, the guy Mike – he knows that we do this podcast and I’m always talking how I really look forward to Wednesday night to do our recording – and they were asking me – and Javier, the owner of the company, he was very interested. He’s like, “well, what is it that you guys talk about?” So I kinda went into the details of what we do and I think one of the guys we were with, he’s like, “so you might talk about the George Zimmerman trial”, or something. I’m like, “well, I think we could. It’s not something that we wouldn’t talk about.” I was like, “other than the fact that it’s such an unfortunate nuanced case, I don’t know that there’s necessary great political philosophy to pull from it perhaps”, but I was just saying that we typically talk about things that have this kind of over-arching philosophical side.
And then the more I thought about it, I don’t know if the whole Zimmerman trial is something that’s worth discussing. I know there’s some pretty hot heads in it right now and I’ve been pissed off about the whole thing just because to me, it’s like illustrative of the problems in the United States – not what happened, obviously that’s a travesty at every level – but the fact that it’s CNN 24-hour headline news, people talk about it, it’s kinda like, you‘ve seen the movie, The Cable Guy?
Jad: A long time ago, yeah.
Kevin: The Cable Guy makes this wonderful parody. In fact, if you’ve ever watched the movie again now, it’s funny. I’ve seen it come up in libertarian circles and things like that, but it’s really interesting how predictive it was for the way that the culture of the United States would go. And not unlike – what’s the movie that Gary’s always talking about – Idiocracy.
Jad: Oh, right.
Kevin: Not unlike that, but the whole thing is like it’s based upon this giant trial that’s going on and it’s some stupid thing. I think it’s supposed to have been modeled after O.J. because that was what was going on at the time and you know where just everybody around the world is like tuned into this one fucking thing that – it means nothing to them. However many thousands of murders in the country per day – many of them racially charged, many of them not. There’s so much of the exact same thing going on every single fucking day, but this is the one that gets picked up because it’s a sexy story – I hate that word even – but that’s what it is. Like, you can sell it, you know?
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: You can pollerize[?] people, no opinion is actually gonna be right because nobody really knows anything that happens, and you can make people get really mad at one another for it, so it’s great in the news.
Jad: Yeah. Well and it doesn’t – this is a debatable point – but it doesn’t touch on any of the real pillars of the establishment, right?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Like if it was a policeman, then you’re dealing with police brutality, but if you’re focusing on like you said, two people fighting each other in a witnessless situation, I think you’re right. I think it fits all those prerequisites for a story that the media is likely to run with.
Kevin: Yeah, I watched just on Reddit today you know, I saw somebody – I don’t know why the fuck people do this, I really don’t – but they will write like, “guest speaker on Fox destroys Sean Hannity today”, and they purposefully use the word “destroys”, and so I’m interested because I’m like, “well I fucking hate Sean Hannity, let’s see him get a beatdown here”. But it’s not, it’s never a destruction. He’s never destroyed. His arguments are never even invalidated and he’s still just a fucking horrific prick, he’s terrible. But that’s completely beside the point and so somebody just goes in there and says, “well he’s – this guest destroyed him today”, but he didn’t at all, he just – you get these two guys – and this is one of the things that I watched today – Sean Hannity had these two black guests on.
One of the guys was just saying what a tragedy the whole thing was and talking about how this has to do with race, and on, and on, and on, and then he had another black guy on there who he doesn’t even speak even in the partially excitable voice that I’m speaking in right now. I mean, he just launches into this tirade against the guy, screaming at him, saying, “this has nothing to do with race and you have no comprehension of the law whatsoever”, and he just like – it’s just puppet theater. Like none of this has any relevance and people just fucking eat it up.
Jad: Sure. Yeah.
Kevin: The two people that they had on there I mean, they’re supposed to be intelligent, articulate – they’re attorneys, you know? I mean, these are people who should be very well spoken and should have the capacity to control themselves and speak very eloquently under any type of duress or circumstantial evidence and I swear to God, they picked them of course, because they’re gonna do exactly the opposite of that because then people get all excited that two guys are yelling at each other.
Jad: Sure, yeah.
Kevin: So anyway, that’s a slash rant there for me, but –
Jad: Yeah man, that’s the point, right, is that it’s harmless theatre, right, and not that the event itself is harmless, right? But like you said, the fact that this one murder out of 30,000 or 40,000 a year is the national story and the headline for everything. That’s just theatre.
Kevin: Yeah. So the United States has – homicide rate is 4.8 out of 100,000. Oh yeah, there’s the number right there. There were 14,748 homicides in the United States in 2010 including non-negligent homicide. So I mean, why do we focus on this 1/15,000th of the problem, you know, this situation here.
Jad: Well, but to be fair, it’s not as if people are so interested in this that the news media had no choice but to cater to their fancy and play this thing 24 hours, it’s a hand delivered news story, right? That’s what is on TV. You can talk about something else –
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: – but if you wanna talk about things that the people around you are gonna know what’s going on, you have to talk about this case.
Kevin: Right. Oh, and I totally agree, [?] even remotely implied the opposite of that, I retract it fully. I mean, there’s no doubt about it, all I’m saying is that this is a sexy story, there’s elements in it that like you said, they don’t hit the mainstream topics, that you can keep them away from politicians, but at the same time they draw into all sorts of race arguments, all sorts of gun violence issues, the whole stand your ground law that looked really attractive to people because you can spin it every different way, I mean, it’s just – you can take every single component of the story, spin it out of context really without knowing any of the facts whatsoever because let’s face it, nobody really does know any of the facts, and then you could turn it into whatever the fuck you want and just be angry about the fact that – and it’s tragic, too. I mean, at the end of the day there’s no doubt about it. You have a young kid who lost his life whether he was a gangbanger, or whether he was a straight A, charming young man, he’s still dead.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Anyway, it’s just you can’t win, and I guess I’m beyond being upset by it. I mean, it’s just America for you, but it’s – what [?] started saying – it’s just one more of those illustrative points of what the United States has really degraded itself to, and that’s again, kinda how the end of that movie, The Cable Guy works is the joke is that at the very end, Jim Carrey dies on the main transmitter for the United States basically, like right when they were gonna read the verdict, and so the power goes out and nobody can see it. Then like the punchline I suppose is they like pan around the world is that nobody really cares in the first place.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: It doesn’t really affect anything.
Jad: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s just prepackaged stuff. It’s like every – there’s very few news stories that aren’t, then that’s not what they are [?] they aren’t, either something that just keeps everyone’s mind off of larger, more pressing questions.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Again, for them personally, not for the people involved on the actual case itself, or it’s some cases – and this is slightly more conspiratorial – but I think it’s a deliberate – this is not one of those because usually it’s a you know, like the old Clinton firing cruise missiles at random camps of “terrorists” at the same time, the same day that a verdict would be released about him, some other crime he’d committed.
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: That kinda thing is [?] classic. And so I mean, this is very helpful that this is going on while just come off a reasonable long season of touching the tops of a few scandal icebergs as it were with the IRS and the NSA, and drones, and the list of things that a responsible, conscientious journalist would be focusing on is so huge that it’s very convenient that this is the only story that’s being talked about by anybody –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – who has a national TV show.
Kevin: Couldn’t agree more. I mean, that’s basically what I’m getting at with it. And you’ve said it before; I mean I think for either of the two of us in our minds, it’s really just kinda child’s play at this point. I mean, it’s so obvious how the attention is diverted to this level. Like you said, I think it’s a good way to say it; the icebergs of new stories right now just with the IRS, the NSA, and drones themselves. I thought – in my world – just the NSA is enough for me to say there’s not a drop of fucking conversation about that NSA thing right now, and yet there are literal dozens of hours – and there’s gotta be at least five or six news channels – mean, there’s gotta be 130 hours a day right now of news media dedicated to Trayvon Martín and George Zimmerman.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And maybe an occasional ten minute spike towards what old Ed Snowden’s up to in Moscow. And if I take that one even further – because you’ve certainly seen this posted in various newsgroups and would’ve thought of it as well – even when they talk about Snowden, they’re talking about Snowden.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Nobody’s talking about what Snowden’s information is accusing the NSA of.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: It’s just about like, well where is the guy? Is he still in hiding? It’s like, who the fuck cares where he is, like if you wanna go arrest him and kill him, fine. He kinda threw himself on the fire for the benefit of others. We should be talking about the fucking NSA 24 hours a day right now.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And that one I feel like does get kinda conspiratorial because let’s face it, that’s a reasonably sexy story, too, right? I mean you’ve got a pretty good setup there, a guy who steals information, he’s young, he kind of is this political martyr, he’s flying around to other countries, you know, it’s like a real James Bond, Mission Impossible type of style, you know? It’s like a real interesting scenario. It’s like that kid who was – I forget what they called him, what the fuck was his name, Barefoot Bandit or something like that – it was that kid who was basically stealing –
Jad: Oh, planes and stuff, right?
Kevin: Planes, and Ferrari’s, and just crazy shit, and he evaded police for months and months. It’s the same type of story, only this one is for real and that kid was just a juvenile basically playing Grand Theft Auto in real life.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So anyway, it’s like I’ve said for the third time, it’s just so illustrative of what the United States has become, I think, which is a bunch of fucking idiots, I don’t know.
Jad: Well but again, I’m going to take the position of defending the idiots, that there’s only so much you can really count on someone to do. Like there’s only so much you can ask of someone, and if they have a half hour to explore the world by sitting down between their two jobs, and time with their family, and whatever else and turn on a TV show and I think a really good point that you made is this is a perfect blank canvas to project whatever your opinion about anything is, it can be race, guns, Florida, I mean anything you like or hate about anything can be put onto this story, and there’s no one that can contradict it because crime with no witnesses.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So I think that’s key to the story, like you were saying. But anyway, in this half hour, you can watch this and this is the only thing you’re gonna be able to find on TV that’s about the news, and that’s – unless you have the energy to read blogs, and read Reddit, and all these things that really kind of are luxury activities for people who have excess time –
Kevin: Agreed.
Jad: – there’s no way you’re going to bump into this other information. And even if you did, like you said, the analysis of it is going to be you know, Snowden is in Russia, he’s hiding, you know? And you can actually project pretty much whatever you want under that story with the coverage you’re given. Anyway, my point is I don’t really blame people for not having the time and energy to research stuff that again, honestly in the same sort of way doesn’t matter like you know, so the NSA is recording everything you do. Well, what are you gonna do about that? You can’t do anything about it. You can do just about as much as you can do to stop George Zimmerman from living a free life the rest of his days.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: It’s outside of your control entirely. I mean you know, this is the perception and I think it’s largely true, and you’ve gotta go back to work, so in many respects, there’s no point in torturing yourself. You might as well just have an opinion about this thing that the people you get to talk to on a day to day basis have an opinion about, and compare your opinions. I don’t think it’s a degraded state, I think it just is the state of things. It is not – and I’m gonna say a mutable[?] human nature – but that is just what human beings are going to do. They’re going to absorb what’s around them, and fit into the glass in which they’re [?] as it were for the most part. And there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s the way it should be, fine. The problem is that everything is shaping the glass in nefarious ways outside of their control, you know? That’s the problem is the people who are presenting this world view and making it the universal world view and taking everyone’s money to pay for it.
Kevin: Yeah I mean, I think that’s a good defense.
Jad: Yeah, it’s kind of weak.
Kevin: No, it’s not. I mean, I can’t argue with it, right? I mean it’s – you know, it comes across, I think, as very pompous, and arrogant, and you know, self-centered, and a number of other phrases that I could come up with that are fairly negative towards myself when I say stuff like that, and I think at the heart of it, I mean I don’t believe that people are idiots, I think that people do very idiotic things and I think they’re unfortunately, subjected to an environment where they’re not given the resources to learn on their own, they’re not given the analytical skills, and they’re kinda forced into this and starts to draw people away with conspiratorial claims like this. But almost kinda forced into this corporate slavery where you basically have to perform the functions that are expected of you as a United States citizen, or you’re fucked because that’s just the way that our system kind of governs itself.
And so something that’s very true to your heart and mine as well, but always coming back to the education claim that people are just not educated, and so they ultimately become ignorant of topics. So, to the defending point that you’re making though about – yes, people should be able to do these things and they should just be able to enjoy the things that they see and talk about the simple claims with one another, but I guess it makes me feel distraught when I look at the fact that you’ve got these really serious issues going on, and nobody has interest in following those more serious issues and the reason that I feel that way is because like you said, it’s – what are you gonna do? So I know that the NSA is spying on me. Well I mean, there’s one side of that that agrees with that, but it’s like well yeah, clearly just because you’re getting angry about it, it’s not just gonna change. But then it kinda goes back to every other thing that we’ve ever talked about, and I believe this very wholeheartedly that if you have a collective – you’ve said this before, kind of in flattery of me – you have a country full of people that just think the way that I do, that have that kind of outward looking view towards things and they’re just not gonna tolerate stuff like this, there’s no way that shit like this happens because the collective entity would be smart enough to get together with one another and say, “you know what, let’s put our differences to the side because we clearly have a common enemy right now”, and that in this case is the NSA, or the CIA, or the government, or whatever the case may be.
Again, it comes to the whole, does democracy work or now, or does anarchy really need to prevail, that sort of thing. But you know, if you assume that the individual does have some level to change the system from within provided that they all work together to do that, I don’t know – I don’t know where I’m going with this, but –
Jad: Yeah, I remember that point and I think that still stands that a nation of Ludlows is ungovernable, as it were, in the most positive way. With that in mind, it’s kind of one of those arguing in midstream things, saying that people should do this, it’s just not possible, right? People might’ve done that if they hadn’t had twelve years of government indoctrination camps. They might have had retained that ability to analyze things critically, to be independent, to be angry about things that are done to them without their consent. That may have been there, but somebody who comes out of public high school 8 times out of 10 is not going to have those feelings, they’re going to feel like they should do what they’re told and try to fit in and try to get along so that’s not a possibility.
Anyway, I’m definitely not trying to shame you for wishing that people would behave differently or anything, I’m just pointing out that that’s not really something that can happen. Again, there are circumstances under which those things do happen, and those circumstances are manifesting themselves, which is why every day, more and more people are like, “wait a second, I think this is all bullshit”, and they’re taking steps to rectify their world view to try to realign it with perceived reality. But again, I think the human nature is not to do that, human nature is to get by and enjoy oneself as best one can in the moment and without those tools that are giving you the early warning that shit’s about to collapse and become very damaging to your wellbeing. Without those early warning signs, people are going to stay in a relaxed state.
Anyway, so your point is extremely well taken and I think it’s impossible to suppress the part where people are comfortable when they don’t perceive danger. I think it’s not impossible to change the way that people perceive danger, and I guess that’s what “waking up” is, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And that’s what happens when people lose their houses, and lose their jobs, and you know, have an encounter with the police, and have an encounter with a city government, or have one of those moments where they’re like, “wait a second, I need to reexamine this”, and once that happens you know, it all comes unwound pretty quickly but everything is geared to keep people from having that moment.
Kevin: And that’s where we’ll stop for this episode. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in to the show. If you haven’t done so already, please stop by our podcast website at www.JKPod.com, where you will find all of our episodes, show notes, links to material, and full transcriptions. We always wanna credit the amazing work our staff does to help breathe life into this show. Many thanks to Lee Caffey[Sp?] and Chris Bazon[Sp?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing. Hosting services are provided by CityCore, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend Sayeed Mohad Batru Haseem [Sp?] in Malaysia, and Transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for the show, or if you just wanna say hello, we love receiving email. You can find Jad at Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>In other words, there’s an almost unlimited source of crowds to be found across the United States and yet they manage to go on without being killed.
Tragically the marathon was an anomaly and our hearts go out to the victims, but we consider how the state frequently uses these moments to promote wars abroad and trample civil liberties domestically.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello, welcome to the JK podcast, an anti-authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. This week, Jad and I continue our discussion about the invention of governance. We discuss state control at a philosophical level and spend some time considering what slavery actually means. We all understand the classic definition of slavery, but in a modern American sense, what does it mean to be enslaved? Presumably, if we’re all forced to live in debt our entire lives, we have no way to escape the clutches of the power class.
Jad: Why are we living under a structure that’s built to maintain power relationships that don’t exist anymore?
Kevin: I think the worst part about the whole thing that you just described is that I think that – hard to put into words – but I think we’ve actually grayified[?] the whole slavery thing even further. I think if you are to – I wasn’t alive 300 years ago – but if you were to look 300 years back, I think it was pretty clear-cut who was a slave and who was not a slave, and clearly there are different classes of people still, but even those classes I mean, I think they were pretty – I think it was a pretty discrete stepping block.
I mean I think you had your illeists[Sp?] – the people that you’re talking about who were capable of actually reading like you know, ancient Greek philosophies and things like that – and then you had your more working class, and then you had your slave class and I think the thing now though is that the reason that it would be difficult to do what you’re talking about is because we have grayed those areas so much – who’s a slave now? Is the CEO a slave or is the – I mean, is the CEO of the two million or a small company, like a two million dollar company – is he a slave, or is the janitor that works for him a slave, or perhaps the computer guy that slaves away all day like we do writing code – is he the slave because we clearly don’t have slaves per their definition anymore.
But I mean you and I would both be of the mindset that certainly slavery is alive and well in this country, it’s just it’s taken on a different form. And so I think the difficulty is even if you were to try to readjust that fundamental leaning of the Constitution as far as who’s supposed be protected, I think we’re so far gone in it that I think people don’t understand that they’re enslaved. And so if people don’t understand that they’re enslaved in the first place, I think it would be challenging to get them on board with saying well, you’ve gotta convince them first that they are in some form or fashion enslaved and then even if they are like I said, at what level are you enslaved? If you’re the CEO of a two million dollar company, you’re doing well but you’re not set for life I mean, you don’t make that much money you know, a couple hundred grand maybe, and it’s completely different from say, like a Rockefeller or you know, like a Trump or what have you, or Bill Gates – which is a completely different class altogether.
So I don’t have like a good way to wrap all that together other than to say you know, I just – I see what you’re saying and I agree with you wholeheartedly actually, it’s just a matter of logistically thinking of it like that. I think it would actually be a much more challenging puzzle than it would have 300 years ago oddly enough because I think 300 years ago it was simpler and I think people had a clear-cut understanding. I think people who were in the middle then understood that – the really wealthy governing person who could read Greek philosophy – I think they thought that that person was better than them, moreover to the point is that same working class person thought that the slave was not better than them, that they were better than slave.
But I don’t think we have those lines anymore. I mean I think that we’re just kind of on this big bubble and you’ve got people that make $25,000 a year that because they have a fancy car with a car payment behind it, they think that they are the freest person in the world. Unbeknownst to them, they are the classic definition of a slave in today’s society because they’re gonna be stuck in that life until the day they die. So I guess what I’m saying is I think it would be difficult to create a rule set that would fit those people because those people are of the mindset that things are good, when in fact you and I might look at that and say, “they’re really not, man, you’re gonna be in debt literally till the day you die, and that’ll be passed on to your family members, who continue those debts”. How is that beneficial? You can never do anything lest these people who own your debt say so.
Jad: Yeah. No, I guess you’re right. I guess that is the same, but it seems like – and I totally agree with you and that’s a very valid point that most people – again, we’ve talked about this a lot of times – if you don’t know that you are not free, then when someone says, “you need to be free”, it doesn’t really make much sense, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But there are – I don’t know, I’m gonna say thousands – but at least hundreds of people, online personalities even, right, that are having discussions with the premise that we’re not free, right? And from all sides – from the left and the right, from the middle, from you know, off the spectrum – these conversations are happening. Again, thousands of people talking about it and I guess my thought is just that it seems like this is where it kinda falls apart – when I’m not high – that it just seems like that groups should have the understanding that whatever they’re coming up with in collusion with always other people is probably a more satisfying system to the needs of human flourishing then The Constitution, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But again, it’s a practical matter and no one wants to go to jail or go to Guantanamo or whatever, so there’s a certain level of which you’ve gotta sort of back down and say, “well, we’re not trying to actually change the power structure, we’re just saying that this part of the power structure is not performing well for X,Y, and Z reasons”, without saying that this part of the power structure is not performing well because fundamentally, this entire thing was made to enslave large amounts of people to the will of the few wealthy individuals.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean I think – like I said – I think that’s perfectly valid too, so –
Jad: Yeah, yeah, which is a valid position.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean it’s a good point overall. I think there’s a lot of people who would take the side of it, but I think as you kinda go down the rabbit hole a little bit, you see that there is some intrinsic problems to it unfortunately, just given the way we’ve evolved as a society and I think there’s lots of other people who are more than happy to take advantage of that. I would call it evolution, but it’s probably more of devolution, or whatever the opposite is.
Jad: You raised an excellent –
Kevin: Because I think we’ve got a lot more slaves today than we did several hundred years ago.
Jad: Yeah. I thought about that as a challenging argument as well, but I actually was thinking -again probably under the influence – that the idea of ownership is I guess tied to slavery, so – and again this is an argument that you probably may or may not have ever seen – but in the libertarian you know, the nonpolitical libertarian world, there’s this just constant argument about a self-ownership, so the idea that no one controls my hand but me, right? No one – well I mean someone can completely overpower me and move my hand where they want – I am in constant ownership of the activity of my left hand, [?] in the extreme case. And so do I say that I own my body right, like there’s two different things, or is ownership the wrong way to think about that you know, because it’s not really an entity owning a body; the body and the entity are the same thing but point being that they argue at this for you know, millions of pages.
But the interesting part to me is the idea that there is a relationship between the subjective experience of me, and this corporeal form, right, that I have. And so if we say that’s ownership, if we say the fact that you know, if I said, “Kevin make my left index finger move and hit the F key”, like, you can’t do it, but I can do it, right? So I divested a relationship that my subjective experience has to my body and that is what it means to you know, that if we say that that’s what it means to own something, then there’s no way that one human being can own another human being, right?
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: But there is a relationship between one human being another human being, even though I can’t say to another human being – or can’t think in my head – “move your finger”, and they’ll do it. I can say to another human being, “move your finger and type the F key or I’ll kill you” –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and then they do it. And so the relationship there is – assuming a context – is that I have the power of life and death over another human being.
Kevin: Correct.
Jad: And that’s I think the fundamental aspect of slavery, right? So –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – all the rest of it follows like, “harvest this cotton or I will kill you.” It’s like if I can say, “or I will kill you”, to somebody and have it be a legitimate threat that they can’t really do anything about, then I don’t own that person in the sense that I own my body, but they are my slave. It’s a relationship that I’m gonna – let’s define that as being slavery.
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: Then that relationship exists on all kinds of levels, but fundamentally – like I said, I don’t know which is fundamental – but it definitely exists between the government of the United States and the citizens of the United States, not even as a conspiracy theory or anything, but as an actual fact where if the president writes your name on a list without any supervision or reasoning or whatever, you will die and no one will care.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So that aspect – if slavery is more than that then what’s the counterargument there? Like what is slavery aside from that power?
Kevin: Well, that’s a question. I mean, I think that’s – I think I’d have to agree with you pretty wholeheartedly. That’s probably a better definition of slavery than the more typical definition of slavery, which basically just means somebody who’s a forced laborer for you. I think you’re enslaved when you’re at the barrel of a gun – as we often use the expression – so to that extent I think you can enslave people in virtually any setting. And kinda like we’ve referenced before, the IRS, I mean, we’re all slaves to the IRS because you can try not to pay your taxes but you know damn well what’s gonna happen; two guys with a gun are gonna come over your house and they’re gonna say, “you’re gonna have to write us a check for $25,000 or we’re gonna take your house and everything inside of it. It’s up to you, the deadline is tomorrow.” They’re not gonna kill you but again, that’s the – metaphorically they’re killing you, right? I mean, they’re gonna take everything that you possibly have. They’re gonna to do whatever they can to destroy you within the confines of our legal system, so I can’t argue the point. I can’t come up with a counterpoint. I think that that’s exactly what slavery is.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: I’m on board with it.
Jad: Well to argue even that last sort of – what’s that called, the place you hide last before you are overwhelmed or surrender? Not respite – respite, refuge – redoubt, the last redoubt.
Kevin: You’ve got the English skills on me.
Jad: Well I’ll have to look this one up then because I can’t get a – but again, the last – so you said the two guys show up, they say, “we’re gonna take your house and everything in it”, at that point, you still have to obey them.
Kevin: Correct.
Jad: Right. If you choose not to obey them and you say, “no, I’m just not gonna leave”, or, “when you guys come in here, I’m going to do what I do every time anyone comes in you’re trying to steal my stuff”, and shoot them, they’ll kill you.
Kevin: Right or two other guys are gonna come and kill you after.
Jad: Yeah, a whole team of people in a helicopter, or they’ll just blow your house.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But whatever it is again, so you will obey or you will die.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So it isn’t really I mean, it’s kind of got a – some niceties around it. You know, they might even try tase you or knock you out, or do whatever, get you while you’re sleeping, but the point is that if they kill you, they’re not gonna get in trouble.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And that’s that fundamental aspect of the master slave relationship.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean I think that’s a pretty good way to describe it, like I said so – shit, I had a thought while you were saying all that but now I’ve forgotten it.
Jad: Well damn, that would’ve brought your total level of thoughts up to like three minutes out of the last hour. We gotta keep this ratio going here.
Kevin: Well at least you know where I am. It’s been consistent with my mind. Shit, what was I gonna say? I was trying to reference it to this episode that we had where we were talking about these sorts of things and because I brought up a point to you once before to say well, if that’s what it comes down to, then how do you break the cycle from that because the only way you can break the cycle is to basically is to stand up, is to be the guy who says, “you know what, I’m not gonna pay you”, right? And as you’ve interjected when we had that conversation that time, you’re like basically what you’re saying is you’re the guy who’s gonna stand up and get killed, right? And there’s truth to that, so I guess if everybody were to stand up though and everybody were to be willing to get killed, you could probably eradicate slavery and that takes us into a different episode that we had altogether where we talked about well, why does slavery still persist in the first place?
Why if you’ve got a field of 300 black slaves to a dozen white slave owners, why do the slave owners, how do they prevail? How does that happen? And of course we’ve discussed at some length and there’s some philosophies behind it and some psychology behind it, but I think to the larger point of what we’re talking about, the reason again that I think it would be difficult to refine our current system, is because of the fact that – and this proved to be a big point of contention for you a few months back with some of your friends – it’s very possible that people prefer to be enslaved and so –
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And I don’t mean that necessarily in a direct way because I know we’ve already discussed it and so we’ve become a little bit more intelligent on that. But in the shortest form of it is just that maybe people don’t want – maybe they don’t care to be enslaved, but they certainly lack the ability to rebel against their own enslavement[?] and so long as that continues – well, it doesn’t really matter what you want to do because you don’t have critical mass to actually make it happen.
Jad: Yeah. No, I totally agree and actually, I think I’ve reconciled that argument with my whatever, beliefs about the human race or whatever that yeah, that whether or not it is a biological imperative, like people just come out of the womb being like, “who can I enslave myself to in order to survive”, or if it’s something that is you know, is a function of twelve years of government schooling where you’re saying you know, “I need this person to protect me and I need to do what they say”, and “and if I do what they say I’m good and I follow the rules, then I will have good things because they’ll give me good stuff”, or “provide an environment in which I can do good things”, or whatever. Regardless of which of those two reasons for the situation is the case, that is the situation. People don’t want to be left protectorless, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So that clearly, I think you’re right. I mean, I think that argument is correct and again, given that I believe that that is an artificial construct that is part of the plan in a sense, is to teach people from age four on that it is the case that they are slaves, and it’s a good thing – there is a way out. Whereas if you said that’s just the genetic – that’s just part of what it is to be a biological being, then there’s no way out, right? That’s just the way it’s always going to be.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I mean given – except barring – in a million years maybe there’s an evolution enough to get away from that or whatever, but yeah. I mean I think that kind of is the situation. That is the position, so the question is you know, you went – actually, I don’t know this for a fact, I speak for myself – I went from a position where I was happy to be a slave through some process of self-education and introspection, to the stance I have now and you – one way or the other – are not happy being a slave. So do you think that we’re anomalous, or do you think that there is – and there is a message that will knock some people out of the slave matrixes or you know, a Ron Paul message or whatever has shaken the branches of the tree and number people have fallen out been like, “what the hell’s going on?” Like you were saying, the matrix analogy or whatever, like, “this is just totally fucked up, I had no idea this was here.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Is that possible on a larger scale? Is that kind of what you think and that’s kind of what you’re work, your writing of books, and your blog posts and whatever, is that kind of where that’s pointed?
Kevin: Well that’s always my hope and I mean we’ve talked about it a few times before. But I’ve had reasonable success in – very slowly I mean, over a multi, multi-year period – like minimum of five years – of getting people to kind of come on board with these random ideas that I have like that that I think are just hopefully further for the good of people. You know, pretty much all my ideas that I have, they’re geared at making people not enslaved by somebody else. I never think that you should have to – I don’t think anybody should have control over somebody else and I go out of my way in many situations just in my personal life to try to do things that – like I don’t ever want to manipulate a situation. And I know that sometimes I inevitably will, but I really try to make a conscious effort that I want people to make their own choices for themselves and that certainly carries on into my writing.
And so to the whole of it, I do think that in time, or it’s possible that in time, enough people learning those messages that it could become more of the norm. Unfortunately though, it does seem that the – kinda towards the idiocracy message – there’s just a lot more people that are ignorant of that message out breeding the people who are going to remain knowledgeable of it, and I don’t know what effect that has in the long-term other than the intuitive one, which seems that people are to prefer to be enslaved as a whole because there are not gonna be enough critical mass to actually tip that scale.
So that is definitely my push in life is to try to educate people on that particular fact and like I said, I’ve always had pretty good success, but that’s success amongst a peer group that you know, is already reasonably well-educated and you know, they’re willing to listen. So they may have disagreed with me five or six years ago, but now they’re starting to see some of the writing on the wall and being like, “well, it does seem that these people are definitely trying to power over us and not help us in any sort way.” And the other thing that I’ve noticed that I talk with friends about – it just happens as you get older I think in many cases – there’s a certain point when you’re really young, you tend to grasp onto whatever your parents have taught you. Then you go off to college and most intelligent people tend to become very, very left-leaning – just naturally – then you start working and a lot of people start to become very right-leaning, depending on your point of view, and then a couple years after that you kinda start to mesh in the middle and you recognize that both sides are kinda fucked up. Some have – there’s positives on both sides, but more so a lot of negatives on both sides. So you know, I guess all I’m trying to say is in that regard also is that as I get older, it’s harder for me to know what the effect of younger people actually is right now because my peer group is aging with me, so they’re – those are the people that I’m seeing learn stuff, but are they learning stuff because they’re reading a lot, or is it just because they’re getting a little older and they’re becoming a little bit more balanced in their – just in their own lives? I don’t know the answer –
Jad: Actually, that’s interesting. Yeah, you’re absolutely – I think you’re right. Do you know that Winston Churchill quote?
Kevin: I do not.
Jad: It is, “show me a young man who is a conservative, and I will show you a man without a heart. Show me an old man that is a liberal, and I’ll show you a man without a head”, or a brain or something like that. But I like – the third stage, I think that’s absolutely correct because it does seem like once you hit 50 or so you know, if you’re talking to older relatives or whatever, they’re just like, “both these sides are crooked as hell”, you know? It’s like all the idealism has gone out the window. They’ve already experienced both, you know? And plus, once you’ve witness like ten or a dozen election cycles, it becomes pretty clear that it’s all just a giant farce.
Kevin: Oh, absolutely and I think people like you and me – because we’re really interested in the topic – we’ve just kind of accelerated our learning on that particular experience.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: So I mean, you and I probably suck up more politics in a couple of weeks than most people will in several, several years of their life. And so naturally, we’re just becoming cynical at a much faster rate than other people.
Jad: Yeah. I think you’re right.
Kevin: My thought anyway.
Jad: And that’s where we leave it for this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey[Sp?] and Chris Baton for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by CityCore, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Sham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we love receiving email. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>We relaize this premise is amazingly absurd, but it’s really happening nevertheless.
We also discuss GMOs and specifically patented seeds and how lawmakers have spent years attempting to gain traction in this area. Philosophically though, we wonder how these bills ever make it on the docket in the first place.
Jad eventually takes us down the rabbit hole of discussing how the American form of government came to be.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello and welcome to the JK podcast, an anti- authoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with sinful connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity and equality.
Kevin: The JK podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. We start this episode by considering a recent Supreme Court case questioning whether remaining silent could potentially be used as an admission of guilt. We realize that this premise is amazingly absurd, but it’s really happening nevertheless. We also discuss GMO’s and specifically patented seeds and how lawmakers in spent years attempting to gain traction in this area. Philosophically though, we wonder how these bills ever make it onto the docket in the first place. Jad eventually takes us down the rabbit hole of discussing how the American form of government came to be.
Jad: Here’s something, again, this is one of those things where it’s so easily discountable because nothing’s really happened yet, but do you see the Supreme Court – you’ve commented on my post on Facebook – the Supreme Court is considering whether remaining silent at the time of your arrest can be used as a –
Kevin: Admission of guilt.
Jad: Evidence of your guilt.
Kevin: That’s fucking crazy.
Jad: I love it.
Kevin: I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but the first Miranda right is you have the right to remain silent, like that’s how it starts.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah man, I did see that there read about it. You know, it’s like how is that even get to the Supreme Court.
Jad: I guess that’s the question because when I posted it, somebody you know – all my friends are like reasonable progresses right, so they are always just like – and you know, I don’t mean this in nefarious way, but they’re just always like ready to excuse the system or you know, or explain how the system works.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Like I don’t understand how this is – so it’s like, oh well, this is just – it’s gotten to the Supreme Court. But that’s my question is like how the fuck does nine levels of courts or however the fuck many there are be like, “hmm, this is at the something worth considering.”
Kevin: Yeah. It takes a lot to get a case heard in front of the Supreme Court. There’s not very many Supreme Court cases every year.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So yeah, that’s just fucked up. I mean, you’d think that wouldn’t – that one should get shot down at a local court, never mind getting appealed to circuits, and counties, and et cetera.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: That just doesn’t make sense.
Jad: No I mean that’s – exactly. In a system that – I would imagine I would be willing to live under – the first time that the local police or whatever are like, “well here’s what we did. We’re going to use this evidence, the fact that he didn’t say anything when we arrested him.” Those guys would immediately go to jail and never be allowed to be police or the entire unit would be disbanded. Whatever homicide group, whatever city would just not exist anymore and be – like this is the worst I guess – it’s pretty minor on the long list of things that happen and you know, in police stations or whatever, but it’s just crazy.
Kevin: And deaf people are just – they’re just fucked – I mean the deaf and the mute I mean, they’re – they can go nowhere with this. They’re like, “well, he didn’t say anything the whole time.” Well he had his tongue cut out eighteen years ago, but –
Jad: Well then he must be guilty of everything.
Kevin: I don’t what to say.
Jad: Good point. Good point. Let’s say that there’s a – I really like this, this is one of my touchstones for a morality or whatever it is – that you can’t claim good moral behavior for anything that a person in a coma can’t do. You can’t claim bad moral behavior for anything that a person in a coma fails to do so like you know essentially, if you were like, “oh it’s good that people do X”, or whatever then you [?] past the coma test – is the new touchstone or whatever. Whether or not it’s actually morally good or if it’s just you kind of prefer people to do or not do X.
Kevin: Right. Right. That’s interesting – an interesting way to look at that.
Jad: Yeah. It’s not possible [?] passively evil I guess maybe is the larger thing, I don’t know.
Kevin: Yeah. Do you know when that case is to be heard by the Supreme Court?
Jad: No, I don’t know and I’m probably not even gonna follow it. There’s just too much shit like that, but I don’t know when they’re gonna hear it.
Kevin: You’d like to think that they’re gonna just immediately shoot down, but in this day and age who the fuck knows.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: In some cases, the police do have a right to assume that you are guilty based upon your silence.
Jad: It’s important for a fully informed jury to understand.
Kevin: Is it my – now I’ve gotta look up what the amendment is here in the Bill of Rights because I’m pretty sure –
Jad: Yeah, we cannot be compelled to testify – well I mean, I guess [?] the exact wording. The thing is too, I had this – so did you see the – I blinked[?] the thing to it last week where it was like, house bill 105, or 185 or whatever – a fairly low number because I guess it’s a new year – where they’re like saying that if you have patented seeds and you grow the crop and you collect the seeds from the crop you have to register that fact with you know, whatever US – what is it, USDA or whoever the agriculture people are –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – you’ve gotta register and it can be the case that you have to pay the original seller an ongoing fee to continue to collect and resell the – collect the seeds from the plants that you’ve grown so yeah, obviously like every place where people are like GMO activists, people are just fucking up in arms right – and rightfully so. But the bill has – the website I found it on, which I should try to find that again because it was kind of cool – it had the percentage chance that it was going to pass, and that percentage is like 3 or something. It was like nobody supports this, nobody blah, blah. This comes up every three months. They propose this, and nothing happens with it. And I’m like well why the fuck do they do that? Is the point to like get everyone upset about shit that’s never going to happen so that they can also at the same time be doing actual real shift, awful, and no one’s paying attention because everyone is worried about gun restrictions and GMO’s, and all the things that don’t actually do anything ever –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – but they’re just kind of the you know, sound and fury around bank bailouts all these other things that are actually really critical – maybe, who knows – but they like get zero attention.
Kevin: Well I mean, all I can guess is that it has to do with the lobbying and things like that, just that you get some lobbyists that are like, “no, let’s go ahead and try to push that through again. I mean many of the judges are elected officials also, so they fall under that same political system, obviously, so –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: I guess.
Jad: So in 12 or 15 years it finally passes after the five thousandth time they’ve opposed it – that kind of thing?
Kevin: We spend a million dollars a year to get it on the docket so at least it’s talked[?] about. Started off at 1%, went to 3, now we’re at 7, couple more years we’re gonna be at 14%, before long we have a tipping point of 25% and now people are actually paying attention to it and we’re gonna get some motivation. I mean, I have no idea; it’s fucked up to think about. The fact that that may very well be accurate – what I just described – but I wouldn’t put it past our system.
Jad: No, that’s actually a very reasonable explanation. I think that’s probably more likely than the cloak of noise theory that I have.
Kevin: Well, I like your cloak of noise theory also.
Jad: I’m sure I’ll have reinvented it in 5 or 6 days you know, like, “this is a cloak of noise”, and totally have forgotten the –
Kevin: They’re like, “wait a second.”
Jad: – the reasonable alternate.
Kevin: That was a completely different cloak last time we spoke about this
Jad: So that brings me to another excellent rant I had a day when I was a pre- high and I was like I’m gonna – so way back when, when I first was experiencing with marijuana and other experience altering drugs, I really was convinced, like so many – I think it’s pretty – a fairly common experience – that I was having some profound novel experiences, and so I was trying to write them down and you know and record them blah, blah, blah. And of course they are not that profound. They are profound subjectively, but for some reason the objective artifacts are ever as profound as the subjective experience. Even though I’ll say that there is a lot of value and I think I had some fairly large shifts of perspective, but nothing I ever wrote documented the magnitude of that experience. But every now and then I will smoke something especially great and I’m like, “oh, I gotta [?] this stuff”.
So the other day I was having a thought and it goes like this, we are governed by a system which is largely the – what do I wanna call it – the invention of like two or three hundred – to give as much credit as we can – very intelligent people, 300 years ago, right? I mean, you talk about like the people who sat down or like wrote the articles of Confederation and later the Constitution. They’re – let’s just say they’re just mind-bending human geniuses, right? But there’s like 200 of them, all things told – maybe not even that many, I don’t really know, but maybe it’s less than 100 – and really what they did was to sort of take all the writings about governance, and justice, and ethics and all that from the Greeks and the Romans that wrote down essentially what they were thinking about when they were setting up their systems of government, and just kind of transcribed them really.
I mean there’s not that much difference between the other Roman Republic, structurally and the American Republic. So they saw some lessons and they were like, “oh well you know, Roman Republic had problems because the executive had too much power, so will put this check and make sure”, blah, blah, blah. But like that’s kind of the system we’re living under was devised under those circumstances. So now we’re 300 years on, there are millions and millions of people that have read everything that those hundred or two hundred people ever read, and read everything that those people have ever written, and read everything that every leader since then has written as far as like their reasoning for why their building system asked it to maintain social cohesion or whatever.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And the 80 people or so – I should look this up – how many people fucking wrote the Constitution? Like a hundred and something?
Kevin: Well, there weren’t too many colonies at the time, so yeah I mean, probably a hundred and some odd.
Jad: Right. So whenever one of them was like, “hey, I have an” – you know, “it occurs to me that giving the military the right to barracks soldiers in people ‘s houses leads to know unhappy people, and it’s an unnecessary burden on the person whose house is being occupied, and also it allows for a large standing army to the barracked inside a civilian population and so we should not allow people to – we should not allow the government that we’re going to build to force people to barracks soldiers and their house”, right? And he writes a letter to Benjamin Franklin, “here’s the thought I had about blah, blah, blah”, and then he gives it to some guy who rides a horse or I don’t know, gives it to a bird or whatever the hell that happens, and months later, Benjamin Franklin gets the thing and was like, “oh, that’s a great idea. Here’s what I think about that”, and he writes something back.
Like everything about that time was slow and ponderous and you know, and so there’s limitations on how – on the artifacts that are going to come out of that. The point of this whole setup is can’t we imagine that there’s got to be a way to do things better than that and taking the same process of like, let’s discuss the ground rules for our civilization. Let’s do an analysis of what principles work best for human flourishing. Like we have all of this, we’ve got 300 years later of communication, and science, and thinking, and reasoning, and yet we’re running under the same system that was essentially designed to keep slaves pacified and keep indentured servants working for their masters, and pay back banks for loans taken out by the revolutionary army. I just seems like it’s a preposterous position to say that the governing structure generated in that time and era is going to be at all adequate to the modern purpose.
Kevin: Well I think you get a lot of people that share that sentiment of yours there. The problem with it I guess is that there’s an upside and a downside to it, right? Basically what I mean is that if you consider – well, classic example relevant to exactly today is the whole 2nd Amendment debate, right? There’s a philosophical notion behind the 2nd Amendment and if you look at that, philosophically, it does make sense. It makes sense to somebody like you I assume, and it makes sense to somebody like me, but to a lot of people doesn’t make any sense at all and their take is to say, “Wait a second; we’re in a completely different time period”. Even if there are nefarious government leaders, the fact the matter is that the world as a whole has gotten better. People live much longer, they have access to things.
There are different poor people, are definitely enslaved people, but as a whole, there are far more people now who are in a better position than, say they would have been in say, the 1700s or whatever you wanna take as a time period. And so their argument, of course, is to say well, “this is specifically why we don’t need to have the same type of a self-protectionism that we had, say 300 years ago and you can make for and against that all day long as people have been doing of course. There are some reasons to say the 2nd Amendment should be held up unquestionably, and there other reasons to say well, maybe it should be held up, but with restrictions, and then there’s other people who say it should just be gone – that we shouldn’t have guns. And so I think that the counterpoint perhaps is just that those things in themselves become rather subjective as far as what needs to be updated, what needs to changed, what needs to be restructured to fit our current society and I guess the arguments are that what we should be holding onto – and I agree with this, in theory anyway – what we should be holding onto are the philosophies of a governing structure, and of course we’ve gotten pretty far from that now. We’re really litigating really granular specific sorts of things.
So I guess all I’m saying is just that I don’t disagree with you I. I think of that could be very beneficial, but I guess it also depends who was the person or who were the group of people who were actually trying to be the ones to quote on quote, modernize the governing document, right?
Jad: Yeah, dude. What you said – that’s exactly why when I’m high as hell, the arguments I come up with aren’t all that powerful because yeah, to go ahead and carry it as far as I can, it’s not a – and it’s funny when you said the 2nd amendment, you’re totally right. Like it totally fits that argument in the, “we need to rethink the 2nd Amendment”. It’s no longer a – what everyone would say – frontier Indian fighting British fighting society, and so we don’t need this provision for weapon you know, for the protection of individual freedom to have weapons anymore. I never – I think the fact that my argument supports that position is pretty revealing of the possible side effects or the possible whatever you wanna call it – the downside of that position. But what I’m thinking of is something sort of more visceral and fundamental, right? Beyond the 2nd Amendment, beyond the Constitution, what so – what are the rules by which we’re going to win – and everyone is in this discussion, right? Everyone who has access to a keyboard or can record their voice, what are the essential principles that we can draw out of the human experience by which people should be governed, or by which we would want to build institutions that provide direction for her for how we behave, or however you wanna say it, but the point being that the government as they exist now, the 17 whatever, 86 Constitutional thing and the models of governance that it was based on one of the principals is – and this is what I think the great trick of the 1786 thing is that the principle is that all men are created equal, right, theoretically.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But it’s genuinely not.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Like I said, there’s an entire category of people, both slaves and people that we would consider to be slaves, people who were like travel across the ocean and then work for 7, or 10, or 12 years or whatever it is, in order to not be someone’s slave anymore, all those categories of things, The Constitution is constructed to stop them from leaving, right? The Constitution is built – the purpose of it is to maintain a slave state.
Kevin: Okay. Yeah. I mean I think to some degree, I think that’s probably correct.
Jad: Right. At least and so far as we need to maintain, we can’t structure government in such a way that all the people that are either slaves, or indentured servants or whatever walk away from their obligations. There are people who are in debt, they have to pay what they owe you know, to the people who that money is owed to, and the people that money is owed to are the people who are making up the government at different levels. So point being, that sort of governance, now we have abandoned all of the things that made that government necessary, right? That level of slavery we do not consider to be something that should be legitimately protected anymore.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Oh, the second part of it – which I think is kind of interesting – is that the other purpose of the Constitution, especially vis-à-vis the articles of Confederation, is that while the war is going on, while the war for independence is happening, there’s this same small group of people – the ones that write the Constitution – that are essentially saying, “loan us money so we can build an army, so we can get rid of the British and then we will assume the power of taxation and get you your money back, and so it’s a good – if you think we’re going to win, it’s a good investment because if we win we can take whatever we want from anybody we want, wherever we want, and so you know you’re going to get your money back.
Kevin: Right. Yeah.
Jad: So the purposes of that state, to maintain the power relation – which is the purpose of every state – to maintain the power relationships and to extract resources from the population to usually pay back the people who bankrolled the revolution or the takeover in the first place. So the idea that that structure is what is reasonable for us to live under today, not like this – and I totally appreciate the 2nd Amendment thing is a great example – but bigger than that, the whole thing, rethinking the very foundation of how we relate to each other as human beings, it seems like where you know, 300 years ago I think it’s not unreasonable to be like, “well, take the top thousand literate people that can read Greek, and can read Aristotle, and Plato, and Cicero, and all those guys, and let them get together and figure this out because it’s a problem we never saw – it’s not like that anymore. The answers are clear now. The fact that all people – including slaves and women or whatever – are human beings and should be a pure relationship with you know, with white Western men or whatever, is not a mystery. It’s not like – that’s not a controversial statement.
And that’s where we leave it for this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey [Sp?] and Chris Baton for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing. We wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by CityCore, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Sham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just want to say hello, we love receiving e-mail. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>We discuss the voting process and specifically focus on the lack of paper trails or other methods for accountability. We eventually shift our discussion into police abuses and ponder whether people are becoming more aware of the problem, or more apathetic of it.
This episode we’re also joined by our good friend and local Austin author, Tom de Lorenzo. As a side note, Tom’s mic was experiencing some technical maladies and so we apologize for some of the less-than-ideal recording quality.
Music
Kevin: Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the JK Podcast, an antiauthoritarian free-speech zone, passionately pursuing liberty, humanity, and equality for all people. As a continuation of our “Throwback Thursday” series, we bring you back to November 7th, 2012 – just one day after the general presidential election whereby Barack Obama secured his 2nd term in office. We discussed the voting process and specifically focused on the lack of paper trails or other methods for accountability.
We eventually shift our discussion into police abuses, and ponder whether people are becoming more aware of the problem, or more apathetic to it. We’re joined by our friend and local Austin author, Tom DeLorenzo. As a side note, Tom’s mic was experiencing some technical [?], and so we apologize for some of the less than ideal recording quality. As always, I’m joined by the co-creator of the show, Jad Davis, I’m Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to the JK Podcast.
Kevin: Well Mr. Jad, what’s on the docket for this evening?
Jad: Tom, what’s on the docket for this evening?
Tom: I think they’re still voting in Alaska, aren’t they?
Jad: Because it’s still yesterday out there?
Tom: Something like that, yeah.
Kevin: What, the county of Wasilla is trying to change the election outcome?
Jad: “We have 30 trillion votes.”
Kevin: Yeah. “We’ve got Russia, I can see it.”
Jad: Right. They’re not going anywhere with this, but it is kinda funny that New Jersey will vote Friday.
Kevin: Oh, they haven’t voted?
Jad: No, I guess they’re still storm wrecked or whatever that they’re not gonna vote until Friday. It’s irrelevant – the potential election – but I guess most of the country deals with that I mean you know, most of the western states are starting to get the polls to close before it’s all over.
Kevin: Yeah, exactly I didn’t know that Jersey hadn’t voted.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Crazy. Well that’s interesting. We said we would try to avoid it to some degree, but Jad and I have been randomly discussing the election for most of the day I guess, so if there’s any thoughts that you found unique to the day, I’d certainly be interested to hear them.
Tom: Well I was going to my Google Plus page here and posted a few things up today because I was on an election roll there.
Jad: Nice. Maybe the election is a great topic and I wasn’t really actually sure if you were an election watcher or not even an election –
Tom: No, not at all, but –
Jad: Oh, okay.
Tom: – I was coming up with you know, little clips to put up on G Plus to kinda poke at the people who are taking it very seriously.
Jad: Very nice.
Kevin: And there was plenty of them.
Tom: I [?] like when you vote for president, you aren’t making a choice as to who you want for the office, you are choosing one of two people someone else chose for you.
Jad: Right. Actually, I quoted [?], and now remembering that.
Tom: I think the one you stole is, “non-voting is voting. I’m demanding that you be free to perform whatever non-aggressive actions you’d like without any interference on my part, or anyone else’s part.”
Kevin: Good.
Tom: And it’s interesting to think that all the good citizens who went out to vote, not one of them has any proof that they did, if they did, and they also have no way of knowing if the holes they punch actually got counted in the way they intended. That’s some kind of joke, right? Talk about no transparency, secret votes and trusting people to count them.
Jad: Yeah, it’s funny – I always mean to do this, I’ve never gotten around to it – just the accumulation of reasons why your vote doesn’t matter, like the statistical insignificance, the corruption, the fact that on one ever guarantees, or there’s no way to correlate your decision with total [?] when they’re finally collected. There’s a million different places – well, there’s like 8 different places – where essentially it doesn’t matter at all what you do.
Tom: And that’s assuming that there’s actual difference, and the vote counts for something because one candidate is better than the other.
Jad: Yeah, absolutely.
Kevin: Yeah, we actually Tom, were talking about that today. I take a picture of all the votes that are cast and of course, what I found disturbing – and I make this point to Jad often – is that it doesn’t bother me that the government – Texas being one of the 7 or 8 states that has done this – it doesn’t bother me so much that the government has passed laws saying that it’s illegal to take pictures of your vote. That I would expect. That’s the behavior that I expect from a state agency.
It’s kinda they’re vantage point in the world is to do whatever they can to fuck my life up, but what frightens me is – or what really bothers me – is how many people I had on Facebook when I posted it who started chiming in and telling me, “don’t you know that that’s illegal?” Rather than saying one thing or another about my candidate of choice or, “I’m glad that you voted”, or whatever, people just point out how that’s illegal to do and I think it’s just kind of an ongoing illustration of how authoritarianism is really taking over more and more in this country and how people are just learning to accept that they need to listen to somebody else.
Tom: Yeah I don’t know, I don’t know how to feel about – I mean it looks [?] the direction it’s going, but I don’t know if people are for the most part going down with the ship, or more people are starting to wake up and oppose; I don’t know how to measure the two parts.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Yeah. Elisa always says – and I think this is true – that illusion that basically what is allowed is also what is right, and what is not allowed is what is wrong, holds up pretty much until you have your first encounter with a police officer, like your first real life one where you know, he is an opponent and not your buddy.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Or people who work within the system and get sort of a real life flavor of how it works as opposed to the sanitized story of how all these people are just working together in all these buildings to help you out and give you a hand.
Kevin: Oh yeah. The story of it’s great. I mean, on paper you’re like, “wow, that’s a fucking phenomenal idea”, but it just doesn’t work like that.
Tom: It’s almost like the guys who get cancer from smoking and then they get on TV and say, “don’t do what I did. Don’t smoke.”
Jad: Right.
Tom: Just like people support the government until maybe the police pull them over and do something bad to them, and then all of a sudden they’re like, “hey, now everybody has to wake up because it happened to me.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Oh, exactly. I think that’s exactly how it happens and I think that you’re seeing the acceleration because now every police abuse video is online you know, [?] some sorts of information that’s indicating it to anyone who will watch it long enough that this is not as it is advertised to be.
Kevin: Right. To the statement that Jad was making really about the cops and it just becoming more and more available online, I think the unfortunate reality – and something that we covered a couple of weeks ago with the authoritarianism issue – is that market force or whatever it is, the force in nature right now seems to be that people are coming woodwork and saying – they’re developing that mindset to say, “well, they guy probably deserved it”, that sort of thing that we talked about, and I think it’s an interesting byproduct of what’s happening.
So sure it’s available to you everywhere. Any type of media source will show you some sort of police abuse, but there’s the two very distinct groups and unfortunately – I think from just my observation – that we fall into definitely a minority group of people saying, “this is really wrong”, and I think the majority of people – just from observation again – are out there saying, “well, maybe the cops shouldn’t do that, but maybe that guy shouldn’t be watering his lawn on a Thursday”, you know?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And it’s just unfortunate I think. Basically Tom, we were just talking about how people are not only complacent to the abuse, but they’re actually in agreeance that you shouldn’t be breaking these negligible violations in the first place.
Tom: Right. They are quite obeying the laws, being good, and breaking them is bad.
Kevin: Exactly, but I think even though we’re seeing a lot more of the abuse because of technology, I think the interesting market force behind that, or humanitarian force behind that – whatever you want to call it – is that people seem to be coming out more and saying, “That’s okay that that’s happening.”
Tom: Yeah, but it may just take a little time. It is relatively new that people are paying attention more to police abuse videos. They’re becoming more available and it might take a year or two, I don’t know. It seems to me like people are hopping on the drone bandwagon a little more now than before. The numbers seem to pick up on the drones in Pakistan over a year ago and kept kinda harping on that and now I see more and more people being aware of it. I mean I think it just takes some time. We might be the early birds who pick up on the important stuff and then it takes another year or two for other people – or for a lot of people – to kinda start taking notice and understanding what’s going on.
Jad: Sure. Yeah, I agree. I think that we talked about that – I think we actually – that made it into the recording previously – but it’s the idea too that repeated exposure, right? So the first time you see a police abuse video or you know, everyone used to watch Cops, right?
So you watch Cops and you’re just like, “that idiot was driving badly”, or whatever, “you shouldn’t talk back to the cop”, or whatever the rationale is the apologist makes, but then once you hear somebody say, “that’s totally messed up what happened there and no one did anything that could possibly justify getting hit with a stick or having pepper spray sprayed in their eyes”, or whatever, and even if at that point you say, “well no, people deserve it – some people are idiots and they deserve it”, or whatever, you have the alternate perspective in your head and then every time you see something similar, that perspective is there sort of like you know, entering into your consciousness and I think that’s how that sort of thing happens is after a few repetitions, someone’s like, “you know, that guy was right”, you know, a year ago or whatever – he’s talking about the drones. And I made fun of them but now after a year of having that perspective in my mind as I’m filtering all this information that’s going by me, I’ve come to the conclusion that he was correct.
Tom: It’s almost like when you hear a new word for the first time and then all of a sudden you hear it 3 more times that day.
Jad: That’s exactly it. Yeah.
Tom: Yeah, it’s always been there but finally you’re kind of tuned [?] to it, so you see it.
Kevin: Yeah, I’ll give you that, although I don’t know if I have to play devil’s advocate so much as maybe just say I think you guys might be strangely quite a bit more optimistic on it than I am at the moment. I see it more like maybe the war situation – same sort of thing. I mean, there’s definitely a greater, and greater, and greater escalation of it and you definitely have people oppose to the quote on quote war overall, but I don’t think that there’s any slowing of it; in fact, we’ve been expanding it pretty rapidly overall as far as the amount of countries and what we’re doing, and I mean as far as I know, it wasn’t even discussed in any of the presidential debates and people seem to be pretty happy about it across the board.
They might say they’re unhappy about it just like I think they might say they’re unhappy with police abuse, but at the same time it seems to me that there’s very little being done about it and that’s causing an escalation of the problem, and I guess – again, being very pessimistic about it – I kinda feel like it’s interestingly creating this divide between people like us and people like them so to speak, where maybe 5 years ago we would’ve disagreed more, but now I’ve even got friends who tell me all the time who probably don’t support the war, but they’re tired of hearing me say something negative about it – they just don’t give a shit anymore it seems like – and to me, I think it’s just as important as it was 10 years ago, if not that much more important now.
Tom: Well, you’re paying attention and they’re keeping it abstract, so they only hear it when you bring it up maybe, and –
Kevin: It might be.
Tom: – they’re kinda tired of hearing the idea because it’s just not real – it’s not something that’s really happening.
Kevin: And so that’s my point is that I kinda feel like even in the police abuse thing, that’s kind of one of the interesting market ironies to it is that as you get more and more exposed to it, yes you do – you see it more, you’re more aware of it, but at the same time I guess it’s kinda like the argument like the Tipper Gore’s of the world would make about violence; if you keep exposing children to violence then well, they’re not worried about it when they see it in real life, and maybe there’s some truth to that – I don’t really know.
In this case, I’m saying if everybody sees the police abuse, they don’t want it to happen but on the other hand they’re like well, you get to a point where you’re like, “what can I do about it”, and, “I know it exists and I really don’t care because it doesn’t affect me”. I guess I feel that’s growing actually, but –
Tom: That could be. I think it’s interesting.
Kevin: I’d love to be wrong is all I was –
Tom: Pulled in two directions and it’s hard to tell whether you should be optimistic or pessimistic.
Jad: Well not that it needs too much debating, but I think the one thing that I would say the difference between the war coverage and the police coverage or whatever is that one is not accessible at all, and one is something that you – they can’t shut down access to it, and that’s like all the people who are being arrested for taping cops with their phones and whatnot. If you’re trying to get the police abuse to be in the same category as other kinds of human atrocities and that you don’t get to see it. It’s not you don’t have access to it as a you know, civilian.
But I think they can’t do that with the police, they totally can do it with the foreign wars. If you had 5 YouTube clips a day of some awful thing happening to Yemini, or Somalia or whatever people and that was on YouTube and being sent around, I think it would be a parallel thing to the police abuse thing. I think it would be in the public consciousness and whether or not – whichever what the opinion is going, you would at least have more access to it.
Kevin: Yeah, I’ll give you that.
Tom: Do you think the internet still is enough of an influence as compared to the TV to kind of wake up the masses of people?
Kevin: I don’t think so, personally. Well interestingly is the question that comes up all the time in our field in technology and I get it from clients frequently, and I just think the reality is is that even though I recognize a huge portion of people who get all the information from the internet. As a whole of the country, I think that’s actually still not very accurate and I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I feel like I’ve seen things before that kind of support what I’m suggesting there.
Tom: Isn’t Ron Paul a good example of that? Everybody on the internet knows who he is, or if you know who he is, you’re on the internet because the TV is not showing anything.
Kevin: Yeah, good point and certainly very few other people actually do, so maybe there’s a point to that.
Tom: I think the government probably learned a lot of lessons back in the Vietnam war because they were actually showing people dying coming back and they had body counts and people really got upset, so then[?] they’re kind of watching it and that’s probably what stopped the war, eventually. I think they figured out, “oh, we can’t do that anymore or else, we can’t have our wars”, so they’ve really done a good job of blocking out everything on TV and I guess it’d probably take a long time for the internet to catch up to that because I think there’s still a lot of people who just look to the internet like, “well, that’s not real information”.
Kevin: Yeah, I think – I’m sure, pretty irrefutable statistics to show that the vast majority of the country is still getting its feeds from mainstream media sources on one of three cable channels rather than Al Jazeera on the internet, for example.
Tom: Well they [?] for 20 years, everybody will be more or less internet knowledgeable. I think in [?] in 20, 30 years, everybody in the society is going to be familiar with the internet from a very young age and it’s not gonna be this newfangled, crazy thing anymore.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean I think that’s probably true, although I think technologically, there’s other stipulations that come with that too as far as how it’s going to be warped and changed substantially in that time period. I mean, just if you look at the internet now versus say, 10 years ago, on the one hand you’ve got tremendously more information available to you so that’s a positive, but on the flipside you’ve also got tremendously more corporate influence, you’ve got filtering – probably is the greatest single threat, in my opinion – to the internet right now and I actually wrote a paper about this years ago and now all of a sudden it’s become kind of a big thing.
There was a gig Ted[?] talk on it that was pretty famous about the Google filter bubbles, how even the information that you read when you search for something, you’re getting search results that are custom tailored to whatever your day to day leanings are and there have been all sorts of studies. You could find a right-leaning friend of yours and go to Google and search for Libya for example, or Benghazi attack or whatever, and in all likeliness, there’s gonna be all these Fox news stories that come up and if you find a really liberal friend of yours, it’s gonna be just the opposite.
You know, they both searched for the exact same term and yet they’re being fed completely different results, which is actually where the other internet search engine, Duck, Duck, Go is kinda making their case from right now, to say they don’t use any filtering whatsoever, they don’t track anything, they’re just giving you raw results. My point is is that that in itself really changes the way that the internet is used. I don’t know where that’ll be in 20 more years.
Jad: Yeah.
Tom: That’s still – yeah, they’re still trying to capture people and funnel them into the [?] channel paradigm and [?], everyone uses Google, and uses the CNN, or the Cox you know, as a primary source.
Kevin: Well I think what I’m saying is that even though we’re still very early on, they’re already succeeding very well and what’s more frightening about it is that there’s kind of really no evidence of it. You have to be very technologically astute to understand how you’re actually being filtered in this case because it’s all behind the scenes otherwise. You’re not going to Fox News, you think you’re just searching for something randomly on the internet but in fact there’s nothing random about it as it turns out at this point, or very little random about it anyway.
Jad: I think that the thought that came up for me while you guys were talking about that was the importance of the saturation into the mass mindset – or at least the access to all of the sort of subversive information into the public at large – sort of depends upon how critical is that – I don’t wanna jump off on this tangent if we don’t wanna go there – but it’s like that whole like, the vanguard model of social change versus the populous model of social change, you know what I mean?
Like, what’s the tipping point before an idea like a 3rd party, or a stateless society, or whatever it is, how many people do you need to get to buy in before everyone else just kind of sees it as an option that’s at their disposal because enough people believe it’s true or are advocating it that the other whatever it is, 80, 90, 95% of people will follow along, or does it have to be in everyone’s mind? Does it have to be everyone at once transitioning to some other narrative or framework or you know, acceptance of a particular set of facts as being true, or another model of social interaction, or whatever it is. Do you have any opinions on that or is that too abstract of a topic?
Tom: I think if you use the word paradigm, I think people have done some study on that and they kind of shift quickly when shift.
Jad: Right.
Tom: It’s like they’re not getting anywhere for a long time and then all of a sudden there’s a rapid change for some reason – something triggers it. I think I’ve seen some studies where maybe 10% of the population changes. That might be enough to flip it – probably more theory than anything else but it’s hard to know.
Jad: For sure, and I think that when you said 10%, I think I’ve seen that paper, I’m not sure if it’s a Malcolm Gladwell thing or what, but I seem to recall that that was like a number that someone came up with. But yeah, it’s interesting that it seems like in anarcho groups – and I’m guessing it’s the same in libertarian groups – that’s the one way to divide the camps into categories is there’s the one camp that’s always talking about everyone else as the sheeple[?] you know or whatever, or the masses or whatever, and it’s nothing really that important – or it’s impossible in some narratives. It’s impossible to wake up the masses. They’re just – they’re gonna watch their football and have their beer and you know, watch their cable TV and go to bed, but you don’t have to worry about that.
And then the other camp is more like you know, “no, we’re all in this together, bring everybody up at once”, and if you have a vanguard or whatever then that always leads to some awful socialist nightmare or something. Anyway, just kind of a – the person I was reading when I became aware of this is a guy named Keith Preston, who has a website called Attack the System. He’s probably the most fringy guy that I find myself agreeing with a lot, but he associates with anybody, essentially anyone who is against the current system, so like Black Panthers, and Neo-Nazis, and like anybody. If you say you want to get away from the current model of governance to anything else, then you’re on his side.
But he has that vanguard thing where it’s like [?] where he disbelieves that there’s a very small number of people are going to kind of just change everything out from underneath everyone else without them noticing, sort of. Anyway, just a mental masturbation, I guess as far as the topic goes, but it’s kinda interesting to me.
Kevin: And the vanguard is where we’ll leave this week’s “Throwback Thursday” episode. Thank you so very much for listening and we hope you’ve enjoyed the content. As a side note, next Thursday will be the last “Throwback Thursday” episode we have for 2012 episodes. After that, we’re all caught up and looking forward to rounding our first years’ worth of episodes. As always, we’d love to hear from you. If you have anything you’d like to share with us, you can reach us through the podcast website at www.JKPod.com or either of us individually. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com. Transcription services for the JK Podcast have been provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. Thanks again, and we’ll catch you next week.
]]>We consider how people have been conditioned, even in the most unlikely of situations, to fearfully obey others their entire lives.
The situation has become such an epidemic that most of us find ourselves fearful of machines accusing us of wrongdoing, even when we should know we’ve done nothing wrong. This idea will become clear as we venture into the topic.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello and welcome to the JK Podcast, an antiauthoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, TX. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to another episode. This week, Jad and I discuss the age old idea of civil disobedience. Think Gandhi, think Martin Luther King, and if you happen to be religious – which we’re certainly not – you can even think of Jesus.
We consider how people have been conditioned, even in the most unlikely of situations to fearfully obey others their entire lives. The situation has become such an epidemic that most of us find ourselves fearful of machines accusing us of wrongdoing, even when we should know we’ve done nothing wrong. This idea will become clear as we venture into the topic.
Jad: There’s a guy – I may have told you about this guy already – but he’s kind of my new favorite guy and his name’s Larken Rose.
Kevin: I don’t know him.
Jad: It’s really – I’ll send you some of the stuff. He actually does this things – I’m gonna link it to that episode where we talked about the – I can’t remember if it’s the “Do people wanna be slaves”, or whatever, but that one where it’s like there’s 1,000 people controlling a million people sort of thing. He does this with dots, so he has like 300 million dots on the screen and then he’s got this one little dot and he was like, “you will have to give me all of your [?]”, then it zooms out to all of the dots and they’re all like, “well, what happens if you don’t”, and he’s like, “I will send in my team of enforcers”, and then it zooms in on these hundred dots or whatever, and it’s supposed to be representative of the number of people in the IRS, the number of people in the country, and the number of people in the you know, Congress or something like that, so it’s pretty good.
But his main thing that I think is just mind blowing – I’m not gonna do this point justice – when he writes it or speaks it it’s like so succinct and is so clear. But basically, his point is that the government is strictly an illusion. It’s just a mistaken belief. It’s tied to points that I make all the time, but he just says it very clearly. There’s nothing that makes the people special who claim that they have the authority to do things.
The only difference between them and anyone else is when they say something, everyone believes that it means something special, that when they have an order that you’re supposed to do it you know, as opposed to when anyone else gives you an order, you’re like, “who the fuck are you”, you know, “get out of my house”, or whatever, and his point is – this is exactly what we say all the time – is that if everyone woke up – to exactly your point, this is an example he gives – if everyone woke up and just didn’t know what the IRS was, like somehow everyone just had forgotten what it was, it would just be over; it would be done where everyone would get a letter that says, “you owe us money”, and like you always do when you get a letter from some person you’ve never heard of that says you owe them money is throw it away, you know? And that would just be it, it would be over.
It’s just the belief that everyone has that there’s some kind of magical aura, or power, or otherness that this body has that you have to do what they say. Anyway like I said, he presents it in a very compelling way that every time I hear it I’m like, “oh, fuck yeah, he’s totally right.” But then you turn around and like you say, get in the car and MPR is like, “well, you know it’s probably a really good thing that the NSA has complete records”, and you’re like, “oh, fuck, we’re so far away from this”. Not just that we believe that these people have the ability to tell us what to do, but to believe that these awful, awful people that are just doing awful things all the time, just Godforsaken evil, they have the power to tell us what to do. It’s like, it’s not even a low hurdle, it’s a very high hurdle. People are like, “yeah, they’re still in charge.” What? Anyway.
Kevin: The best I have for examples of things like this are just – I am just observant in day to day life and one of the ones that gets me all the time, I was at ATB[?] the other day and I don’t even remember if the alarm went off or not – I don’t think it did – but when you walk out and there’s like the little alarm thing going on that they have right there sometimes. I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but it really does, but when people walk out of the thing and it does the little beep, beep, beep, and they stop like a deer in fucking headlights and they look around and they’re like, “you know, oh my God, did I steal”, and I think they get to the point in their head where they actually think maybe they did steal something and you’re just like, “well, did you take like 2 things and then you went to the checkout, right, and you swiped your credit card and right, you got a bag, so you didn’t actually fucking steal anything, just keep walking, you’re okay. You didn’t do anything.” But they’re so conditioned to stop for any fucking reason anytime somebody says, “you’ve done something wrong”, it’s engrained to just, “I must’ve done something wrong.
There’s a little buzzer going off suggesting I did something wrong, and evidently I did”, and of course I mean anytime it happens to me I just keep walking and never once has anybody flagged me down and I doubt they ever will because I don’t steal anything, so but anyway, just kind of as a metaphor to the whole thing, I guess. It’s sad is what it is.
Jad: It’s so true, but I always stop. I absolutely do. Like, “oh shit, am I good? Can I go”, just to show my fundamental nature is still [?] slave.
Kevin: Well we’re gonna get that one out of you. I’m gonna –
Jad: I’ll make a point next time when I get bludgeoned by the Home Depot security guards, I’ll complain to you.
Kevin: I wanna go shopping with you. I wanna put one of the little sensors on the bag or something and say, “Alright, here we go. You’ve already paid for everything.”
Jad: Yeah, I do need lessons in disobedience. The Larken Rose Point – and the point of just general disobedience – is so compelling as we’ve hit on a number of times, but at the same time I’m gonna pay my taxes next year. You know, really I started to think this through. I was thinking about this with respect to the march on DC thing because I was thinking about like, I can’t show up armed at a state capitol. I mean first of all, I have an obligation to my wife and child not to be in jail forever and not to be shot, but at the same time I would like to support people who do that.
As you’re a layer away from things, you become less endangered, right? So like you can say if somebody who is put in prison, I will vigil outside the prison with everybody else who is also agreeing to take this – to be this sort of 2nd tier support – we feel that that is safe enough, right? Or if the people who are outside protesting are arrested, at some point it becomes ridiculous enough that you’re like this is no longer a safe society and I have to, but if this happens I’m going to say ahead of time, I really – that’s too much and I’m going to have to risk more than I would otherwise risk by protesting, making my voice heard one way or the other that this is lunacy and needs to stop sort of thing. I’m not presenting this very well at all [?] I’m like you know if we couldn’t go to DC –
Kevin: I can give you a thought to jump off of what I think you’re getting at here because I actually believe very firmly what you’re saying, right? There’s a level of practicality that needs to exist in any type of civil disobedience or protesting and of course you know, if I refer back to kind of the Gandhi things as I do with some frequency just because I’ve always been really enamored with how that whole thing went down you know, that guy convinced people to really stand up to things that they – I mean I’m sure a lot of people had went through a lot of really rough shit and I mean there were some pretty horrible massacres that occurred and things of that nature, and so I mean that’s kind of like the far spectrum of it. But I really, really am a firm believer that it’s the little things that you kind of get accustomed to are the things that matter the most because there’s hundreds of little things that happen to us all the time, and I really think that those hundreds of little things are what plant the seeds to determine how we’re actually going to function when the larger thing actually happens.
So when I refer to something like the grocery store you know, just something as silly as that, like the alarm system there, it’s just – to me – I believe that that’s kind of one of these things that you can kind of teach yourself to do is to say, “well, I didn’t actually do anything wrong, so I’m not gonna worry about this because I shouldn’t have to be falsely accused for something.” If I did something wrong, I should start running right now because I’m committing a crime. But if I’m not committing a crime then this is stupid and I describe this in Economics a lot. You know, you’ve actually heard me talk about gift cards before, how horrible I think gift cards are because what the idea of a gift card is that you’re actually giving money to a corporation.
You don’t get anything in return; you get a piece of plastic that says, “In the future, you can spend your money here again”, even though you’ve already spent the money. So you let somebody float your money, you get no sort of benefit for it, and there’s all sorts of risks that come with it – the company could close, you might not use the thing you know. I mean, they’ve changed the laws on all this stuff, but it used to have expirations and fees and all that sort of shit and meanwhile, you could just hang onto the cash and it would be just as valuable, so what the fuck are you doing? Why would you actually give the money to this person? I use that as an illustrator to say that if you can be convinced of that, if you can be convinced that it’s okay to give money to a company and get nothing in return, then it’s no fucking wonder that we’ve got these giant bail out programs and stuff like that going on.
Now I realize that that’s kind of a large jump between a little gift card and then a multi-trillion dollar bail out, but again it’s aggregate. You know, you’ve got 300 million people that are buying into this one type of system, the dollars and cents really aren’t all that different, and so I guess when getting it from the disobedient side is that I think if you can just encourage people to do these little acts of – they’re not even disobedience – but just kind of standing up for themselves where they need to be stood up for. Like we’ve talked about this before, like if a police officer says, “can I see your license and registration”, you have the right – in Texas anyway – to say, “well you need to accuse me of a crime first”, and of course the cop’s gonna say, “give me your license”, and you say, “look, I’m really sorry, the law’s real clear about this. You need to accuse me of something before I show you my license”, and maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t and I don’t really know what happens in that situation – maybe you wind up getting more fucked than you want to, but the point is is that I think if we could encourage people to constantly take on just these little tasks, the little things, then I think the collective society actually can learn from that and I think some of these bigger things will – sounds maybe a little farfetched to some people – but I really think that they would just kind of magically start to work themselves out because I think you have a fundamental basis for understanding that it’s okay to say no to things.
It’s okay to say no to people who are in positions of authority. And if you can understand that you can say no to the grocery store guy when he says my alarm’s going off, and you can say no to the police officer because he doesn’t follow protocol right, then maybe we can start saying no to larger government agencies for equally absurd claims against you.
Jad: I think that’s – that makes sense to me.
Kevin: Yeah, I know and I know that it’s kind of a lengthy rant, but I really do believe that wholeheartedly.
Jad: Well I think for sure that practicing disobedience is kind of essential since again, we weren’t raised to be disobedient unfortunately –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That most of us at least have to figure out that it’s not the end of the world. I think I’ve told you this before, but that’s a classic psychology thing, is to understand that you are now no longer in a position where – at one point in time, you had to obey everything because you were at home, or you were in school, or you were wherever you were and you really did have zero power and zero ability to escape and you were ruled absolutely – well there was no – and plenty of kids do disobey – but like it just gets worse and worse for you until you are I don’t know, I actually don’t know what happens.
But very few people have the stamina to outlast that system for 18 years. So you let that follow that pattern of what it means to disobey authority go with you through the rest of your life. The only way to unlearn it is to start to disobey and see that actually, nothing happens at all. In fact, lots of times, things turn out really great by saying no to things that are in position upon you, and after you do it enough times then it becomes you lose that old matching of like, this is bad, this is danger, this is you know, despair, and you gain the knowledge that this is actually empowering, and good, and healthy, and beneficial, and then it becomes less of a challenge to do – it becomes more of a habit. That takes an awful lot of unlearning, I think.
Kevin: No, I totally agree, but I mean that’s the – it’s a level of confidence that you start getting and when we first started doing this I mean, I think we had a conversation once where we talked about the fact that it’s really difficult, it’s really frightening frankly, the first couple of times you try to stand up to what are really deemed to be high authority figures in the country – a police officer being one of them. We were talking specifically about TSA agents and what it’s like to actually tell those guys like, “hey man, I’m gonna do what you say because I can’t get to my destination otherwise, but otherwise, go fuck yourself in the face because you suck”, you know? It’s hard to tell those guys that you’re not gonna do certain things and that you’re not okay with this and just even saying no to the fucking scanners I mean, people have a hard time with. I understand people really get anxious about it and I remember that I used to get anxious about it, and now I don’t anymore – it’s interesting – but I’ve noticed a big change like when I go through now, I really just don’t give a shit at all – [?] story about that.
When I was coming back from France a couple weeks ago, I got routed through Montreal and it was a pain in the ass because they kind of put you in this transit holding area – oddly enough, the same area where Snowden’s been in Russia – so I’m not technically inside of the country, but I’m in the country because I’m in the airport, you know? And anyway like when I was going through the transfer station, the Canadian officials are like, “well, we’ve gotta do this extra security on you”, and they’re doing a pat down and as they’re doing it,
I’m talking to the guy and I was kind of a – I was real tired – but I was kind of a dick, you know? But not at him – none of this was directed at him – but I was telling him, I was like, “man, do you think that this is every bit as stupid as I do?” And he’s like, “sir, you just have to do this”, and I’m like, “no, no, no, I understand, man. It’s not your fault.” I was like, “but I mean you’ve got to admit, my country is just fucking horrible, isn’t it? I mean, you guys have to agree with this, don’t you?” And he did, I mean they really did agree and I had a water bottle and the woman was like, “I’ve gotta pour this out.” I’m like, “I’m still in a secure area”, and normally you wouldn’t have to do that and she’s like, “I know, it’s an American law”, and I’m like, “Goddammit”, I was like, “I hate – I really hate my country so much.” I was like, “I feel so bad that you guys have to tolerate anything we do”, and she was real sympathetic to me, but just the fact that I really feel comfortable doing this now.
These are just people and I refuse to look at them in any way other than the fact that they are people. So I mean there’s a limit to that you know, just like there’s a limit to anybody – they don’t need to be stupid about it and you know, I’m not gonna be violent, just like I wouldn’t be violent to anybody else. But I feel very comfortable speaking my thoughts.
Jad: Yeah, no, I think that’s the right way to be. The TSA one is a very safe one, too. That’s a perfect training ground sort of thing. Elisa and I always jump out at that and again, it’s the first time I did it – it’s scary – but now it’s not even a big deal at all. In fact now I know exactly what to do, you know – step off to the side and be like, “I’m opting out”, and they’re like, “cool”, and it’s not a big deal, you can totally do it. Nothing bad happens to you. No one spits on you, or calls you out for being a jerk, or anything, it’s just a choice you make. There’s no danger at all, so it’s the perfect place.
I think the other one, the buzzing thing, is another perfect example. There’s no risk at all of not obeying the buzzer, you know? If someone really actually thinks something’s wrong, they’ll chase you down, you can show them the receipt, and then you can be on your way, but there’s no reason to stop, it’s perfect practice to not pay attention to it because then you get to the point where it’s like on the flip side, you get to – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen clips of like, Antonio Buehler, and he’ll go up and just harass the shit out of cops –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – and frankly I’m all for it. I think I support his right to do it 100%. I think it’s brave as hell, but I’m frankly surprised he hasn’t had the shit beat out of him just because those guys, they feel like they can do that. They feel like if they’re pissed and they decide to wail on you with the stick that – and they’re probably right – that they’re not gonna get in trouble –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And that’s a fine thing for them to do. A good example, you wouldn’t go to the Southside of Chicago and start you know, find a guy on a street corner who’s clearly armed and start pushing him in the chest or making fun – that would be actually violent – but you wouldn’t start making fun of him and talking about his mom and stuff because you’re probably gonna get hurt –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – you know? And there’s a category of situation that’s like that, but there’s a whole world of situation that’s the safe side of that in which this exploring disobedience is I think an extremely healthy thing.
Kevin: Yeah, I agree and maybe one of these days I’ll sit down and actually try to write a list of things I can come up with because I’m sure it’ll sound really dumb when I do it, you know – some of them – kind of like the grocery store one. I mean, it just sounds absurd and I think when I say that to a lot of people, hell, when I make the economic one to a lot of people like with respect to the gift card thing, I know that people just dismiss it as ridiculous and their like, there’s just not a jump between – you can’t see the 40 steps that it takes to get from there to a big banking bailout, but rest assured, it’s the little things in life that define the way that we think in the grander scheme of things, and I’m not saying that there’s not 20 other levels that we have to get to first that are in between there, but one influences the next, influences the next, influences the next and eventually, you’re at the top tier.
Jad: And that’s where we leave this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey [?] and Chris Batton[?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing; we wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by CityCore, LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Hisham[?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just wanna say hello, we love receiving e-mail. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>Jad and his wife are preparing for the birth of their first child and Jad is especially interested in avoiding a life of corporate slavery in hopes that he can provide a thorough education to his soon-to-be daughter. As a trained educator and former teacher, he’s especially excited about the opportunity.
The conversation is a little shorter and lighter than usual, but hopefully inspires one to consider what their child might be learning in these formidable years.
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome back to the JK Podcast, an antiauthoritarian free speech podcast dedicated to liberty, humanity, and equality. This week, Jad and I get into a short discussion about children. Jad and his wife are preparing for the birth of their first child, and Jad is especially interested in avoiding a life of corporate slavery in hopes that he can provide a thorough education to his soon to be daughter. As a trained educator and former teacher, he’s especially excited about the opportunity.
The conversation is a little shorter and lighter than usual, but hopefully inspires one to consider what their child might be learning in these formidable years. I’m Kevin Ludlow and as always, joined by the co-host of the show, Jad Davis. Welcome back to the JK Podcast.
Jad: I could start a new topic.
Kevin: Hit it.
Jad: So we were talking about education and you know, whatever, so I really don’t want to work full time and hand off care of my child to a stranger, so and this is one of those things I had meant to do forever and I’ve done nothing about it, but I never really do things until the time comes to do them you know, until it’s like now I have to start now if I ever want to finish it in time, so I’m trying to think if I can do contracting work.
I mean, I can’t possibly imagine making the same amount of money I am now, but all I would have to make is like 20, 30, $40K to supplement Elisa if she goes back to work. Then I could just do 20, 30 hours a week on my own schedule, and then the rest of the time I could be facilitating the development of my child. And my only touchstone for that kind of thing is you, so I’m probably going to bother you about it a lot.
Kevin: Well fucking bother away. It will be no bother at all. I mean I think one way [?] to do it besides the contract thing is – well not besides the contract thing – but rather than do all the take home work, which you can make a shit ton of money still doing that, you just gotta market it a little bit, but I’m pretty confident that you could do it. I actually got offered a job a couple of weeks ago and the job paid $130 an hour, so that annualizes to about $282,000 –
Jad: That’s pretty good.
Kevin: – and it was only a 3 month gig. I mean if they had said it’s a one year gig I would’ve walked right up to Chris and said, “I’m real sorry, man.”
Jad: But I gotta go.
Kevin: I am not turning that down. So it’s like a 3 month gig right, but the thing is you do something like that, you could work for 3 months, take the next 9 off because in 3 months out of $280,000 salary, you’re still going to pull in – you’re going to make like $90,000 –
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Which is crazy to people, but you make $90K to work 3 months of the year and then you’re fucking done.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Opportunities like that come up quite a bit. Now that was a particularly high one which is why it really caught me off guard, but there’s a lot of opportunities that come up like that a lot that’ll be for shorter term contracts. Usually they pay pretty well because you’ve gotta pay for the brevity of the contract.
Jad: Sure. Right. Right.
Kevin: So that’s typical.
Jad: Yeah. Part of what I want to model – I’ve told you this before I think – but pretty much the only thing you can do for someone – especially a child or whatever – if you want them to be interested in X as an adult is to do X, and then they’re gonna want to do what you’re doing and that kind of thing. So I definitely want to model not what I’ve always done like wage slavery and you know, reluctant working.
I want to model entrepreneurship, like you said, self-marketing, all that sort of stuff is kind of the you know, “I know you can’t take your kid to work every day” sort of thing, but that’s kind of like the model of child rearing that I have in mind is kind of the you know, pre-19th century one where they’re learning how to do whatever it is you’re doing because they’re there and you’re doing it and they’re watching you, and then eventually they –
Kevin: It’s more of a trade at that point, right?
Jad: Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
Kevin: No, I mean I think it’s totally cool. I’m very much in favor of that and I often question – because I really would like to have kids sooner than later, which is an obstacle for me at the moment for obvious reasons – but I do often think about what I would do in that situation as far as specifically what you’re talking about. Not just with the education but with what type of job I would work, how it would work, because I kind of feel like I would do something very similar to what you’re talking about and my sister tells me that she thinks it would be very difficult because she always tells me – I’ve seen it when I go and visit her – she’s like, “you really don’t understand how time consuming a child is.”
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And [?] it is, but she’s like, “you can’t just put a kid on the floor. It’s not like a dog where you can just let it roam around and it’ll just have fun, it is going to seek your affection.”
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: And she’s like, “it’s unreasonable for you to think that you can sit there and program your computer and the kid’s just gonna hang out, that’s not gonna happen.”
Jad: Right. No, I totally – that totally makes sense. And I think there’s an age component there too, but yeah I mean I guess the 20 or $30,000 I was planning on making in the first 3, or 4, or 5 years of life would be you know, when Elisa comes home and is able to provide child care, then I would go do my 4 hours a day of programming or whatever – more that sort of thing. The other part when they’re actually know – if they’re going to do anything with computers, they’re gonna have to be literate in things, so it’s a much later in life component.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But man, the first time I can get them to be programming and making money so that I can take a breather, that’s gonna be great – just kidding. The other thing I always think about is trying to do education, you know? Again, as long as my goals are limited to a very small amount of money, like trying to do like education for multiple kids or whatever, in an informal, blackmarket environment.
Kevin: Didn’t you teach? Were you teaching somewhere?
Jad: Yeah, I’ve got – I’m a fairly well-credentialed educator. I taught high school in Austin.
Kevin: Yeah, I thought you did.
Jad: I taught college for years – college courses – and you know I’m pretty good at that kind of thing.
Kevin: Yeah, I think you are.
Jad: And then I spent a lot of time reading about un-schooling, and home schooling, and different methodologies of pedagogy or whatever, but that’s more of a fantasy than anything else, but something I always – I’ve been thinking about too.
Kevin: Well so is home schooling a big you know, is that something that you guys would think about or –
Jad: Oh, for sure. The model I had in mind is beyond home schooling. I think I’ve told you what these guys are for, but there’s a guy named John Holt, and then there’s a bunch of educators from the 50s came up with this point that you don’t need to teach kids much of anything, the child’s native state is to be voraciously curious about everything –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and so all you really need to do is to provide them with answers to questions, provide them with resources to do what they wanna do, and they’re going to learn to read and learn to do math, and learn – as they wish to accomplish a task, they’re going to very rapidly learn all of things they need to accomplish that task –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and in a much quicker time than if you just start teaching them things in some sort of random order that they may or may not care about at that moment.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That model is kind of wasteful of time, really.
Kevin: Yeah, we did speak about John Holt. In fact, he’s in one of our recordings, the one where we talk about education and upbringing, and you were really championing those ideas. No, I’m a big supporter of that. I mean, just intuitively, having seen it and having experienced it and I think a lot of the things that I’m capable of doing, I got from the exact same sort of upbringing – not history and things like that, but more practical hands on sort of things. I mean, I just think – I fully believe the cliché of kids being sponges and I’m a big fan of anything like that, and I think it’s pretty simple.
I mean you know you surround yourself with people who are highly intelligent, highly worldly, and capable of providing answers to things which I think it’s highly rewarding, providing answers to children. A lot of people probably see me sometimes as a somewhat impatient person – I don’t really think I am but I think other people might – and when it comes to children, I find that I have an exceptional patience and particularly because they’re learning –
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: – and who the hell wants to deny somebody the ability to learn something?
Jad: Sure. Yeah I know, totally. I find myself in that same spot all the time. My peer group, their kids are usually like mostly under 3 –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: but there’s occasionally like you know, kids older than that, but like yeah, and they wanna know answers to questions and their parents are like, “don’t worry about it, we’ll talk about it”, or whatever because they’re trying to have a conversation with another adult or whatever.
Kevin: It drives me crazy.
Jad: It’s like yeah, why are you wasting your time talking to a stupid adult when there’s like – this kid’s gonna take everything you say and it’s just going to become a part of their world view and their belief structure and that’s where [?] that, “why? Because I said so” – that kind of shit, just drives me nuts. I’m like – that’s wrong. You’re doing something wrong there.
Kevin: Yeah, I agree. There was a girl I dated about 4 or 5 years ago and she had a niece, and after we broke up it was one of the things that she told me, she’s like, “you know, you’re not a very patient” – in fact, she even wrote this somewhere online where other people saw it and it was very endearing to me – but she’s like, “you know, Kevin is definitely not a patient person, however, he is amazingly patient with children”, and I took it as a huge compliment because she was a teacher herself and I thought a very good teacher, and she really praised me a lot when I was around her niece because you know, when I would see her I mean, I could – she could ask me 12 straight hours of questions and I’m not gonna tire out. Now, I get to go home and so that’s perhaps why.
But you know the fact is is that I just really enjoy it and it was just the most trivial of things. The one that always stands out in my mind – which I love telling people – is that we – this one time, we took her to the Children’s Museum downtown and God knows, there’s a million different little things to explain to a kid at the Children’s Museum, and they’re just running around having a grand ole time and the thing that she liked the most was the train room. They’ve got this train and it goes all around. And so two things that happened that day is that after this whole experience, we went outside and she saw a parking meter and for whatever reason I had a bunch of change on me, and she asked me what the parking meter was. Well try explaining what a parking meter is to a 3 year old.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: It’s really fucking hard, but so I let her start playing with the thing and swear to God I think she was far more mesmerized with this thing, then the hours we’d just spent in the Children’s Museum – just the nature of it you know is just a curiosity to her is like, what is going on here? But then because of her interest in the little trains I was like, “you know what? Fuck that; let’s take this to the next level.” So we drove over to the train yard and just stood out there until a train came and when she saw the thing she was like, “oh my God, this is insane.” And shit man, I could do that all the time.
Jad: Yeah man.
Kevin: It was highly rewarding.
Jad: So you’d have to multiply the number of children by some number, I think that’s ideal educational experience, just like traipsing around like, where do you guys wanna go?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Let’s go to wherever, “okay”, jump in the van, let’s all go there.
Kevin: Well there’s the little things that come out of it too, right? I mean like, I think I have a fair amount of knowledge about things in the world, and so what’s fun about that is you’re sitting there in front of this giant train which I mean to her is I mean, fuck, I think it’s cool as shit to see trains go by – their huge. But for this little kid to see it I mean, just blowing her mind. And it was right over by the power plants, so I mean it’s going real slow. It’s like where that whole exchange is by the Amtrak station.
Jad: Oh right, yeah.
Kevin: And anyway, but you can just start explaining all sorts of little things about it. You just don’t – I mean I just never really realized until that point in my life I think, just how many questions you’re able to answer, like, the level of education you’re able to give a kid in those brief little interactions –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – because why is there smoke, why does it sound like that, why is it so loud, why are the wheels turning like that, why do they have to be a metal – what is that metal, the questions that come from it you would never think of, but you would have a really good answer for every single one of those things, and you can explain real easily how steel works and the nature of shit like that. So it’s just cool.
Jad: Yeah, I agree.
Kevin: And that’s about where we left it. Thank you so very much for tuning in to the show and as always, we would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please contact us at www.JKPod.com. You could also contact either of us through our personal websites. Jad and I are at Jad-Davis.com, and KevinLudlow.com, respectively. Thanks again, and we’ll be back next week.
]]>So kick back, relax and enjoy this trip down memory lane, to a simpler time when kevin was still ranting about 9/11, Barack Obama was in a neck-and-neck presidential race with . . . somebody, McCain? and Alex Jones still sounded crazy when he said the NSA was recording every piece of electronic communication in the United States
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Kevin: You can’t have a party and expect that something good is going to come from this because the second you have a party, now you’ve involved the establishment, and the establishment is in fact the problem.
Jad: Hey JK Podcast fans, it’s time for another Throwback Thursday. This time we travel back, way back to one of our earliest conversations. The date was September 19th, 2012 – I remember it like it was yesterday. Actually, I’ve forgotten most of this of this conversation and very much enjoyed bumping into it again. I was especially amused that in our second recording I mentioned how often Kevin and I come to the same conversational crossroads. You’ll know it when you hear it, it’s the same one we’ve encountered like a million times since then – or using the Kevin Ludlow no hyperbole filter, like 38 times since then.
So kick back, relax, and enjoy this trip down memory lane to a simpler time when Kevin was still ranting about 9/11, Barack Obama was in a neck and neck presidential race with somebody – McCain? And Alex Jones still sounded crazy when he said the NSA was recording every piece of electronic communication in the United States. Let’s get that sound effect again [sound effect].
Well and that’s the thing, this kinda goes back to something that we were talking about before and I don’t want to derail this conversation, but I really, honestly think that when you’re talking about the two groups of people that are shouting at each other you know, just the making – that’s like really, literally 10% or 20% of the population.
I mean really, almost everyone I know – even if they’re going to vote for Obama – they’re totally unhappy with the entire state of affairs, so I find not that much of a cognitive dissonance, I find it’s more the thing where they’re like, “well, I hope Obama wins so this happens”, and then you’re like, “well, how do you feel about all these things?” And they’ll be like, “well yeah, it’s actually terrible but you know, what other choices do we have?”
Kevin: Right, and that gets me into a topic that I talk about all the time and it’s the whole notion that everybody’s so goddamn interested in federal politics, national politics – and I’m perhaps no exception – and really, we all need to be acting in a local level and I dare say that people who are you know, libertarian in nature really need to be acting at a local level because that’s exactly what they’re advocating for in the first place. So I guess to be fair, I’d have to pick on them a little bit more than perhaps the other two groups, but I think some of the concern – at least from my experience is in some local politics – is that you’re right, you’ve got out of the two large groups, maybe you’re only looking again say, 20% of the population – let’s just use that number.
The problem is though is that that 20%, those are the people that are participating in all of the elections all the way down to your local level, screaming at the rooftops and you know, Austin city council and mayoral elections for example, think they garner like 8% of the population, I mean something just obscene.
Jad: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Kevin: And so if that doesn’t change at that level you know, for the way that our government’s designed to work where you have to have the local influence, the state influence, the federal – if you can’t get that system to work you know, what do you do because you need those people, and unfortunately, it really only seems to be the loud mouthed radical people – be it left or right – that are participating at that level and it’s much to our detriment, in my opinion.
Jad: I think local government is just – it’s incredibly the amount of power and evil it commits is just way under stated and misunderstood. You ever seen that thing where all Wikipedia pages ground out in philosophy? If you pick any Wikipedia topic and click on the first link –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – after like five links, you’ll always be at philosophy.
Kevin: Really?
Jad: Yeah, it’s just because you know, things are stated in a very general way, so like you know, what is adding – it’s part of mathematics. What is mathematics – mathematics is some kind of learning. What is learning – well, the philosophy of learning is blah, blah, blah. Anyway, point being, I wonder if all our conversations are going to go back to this rift between you and I – which is not a big rift at all and doesn’t really bother me one bit – but the city council like you said, you were telling me the other day that it’s made up of like – half of it – is made up of like one neighborhood association and it’s got a total lock on everything.
Kevin: That’s a little overstated, but yes.
Jad: Alright. And then there’s a handful of people that are trying to you know – I’m just making this up – let’s say no to bond issues or something, no to further government debt, some libertarian-ish issue –
Kevin: OK.
Jad: – it’s always going to be overwhelmed. And if it’s not overwhelmed then the bond issue’s going to be brought back up the next year, or they’re going to pass it as an emergency something at the city council – and I’m sure there are counterexamples and I’m entirely willing to accept that. But if you look at 100 issues that have been fought and fought hard, say smoking ban, the domain, Wal-Mart on whatever –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – they always lose. And the reason is because you can engage some, but it turns out that the opposition is only engaging as much as they need to. Like their loud mouth people, if 10% is enough to win an election, they’ll muster 10%. If they sense in any way that there’s any public opposition to what they’re doing, they’ll dump a few million dollars and muster 20%, and they have unlimited resources in that respect.
Kevin: And it’s happened time and again and it’s – Austin’s an interesting place and why I talk about it all the time with you and other people I mean, I’ve experienced a lot of it from having spent money in the building process, the development process, and you know, I sat on a [?] a couple of years back so I saw how that worked and I’ve just spent a lot of time in the council chambers and meeting with council members.
But yeah, you’re absolutely right and there’s small, small factions of people – and they’re the same people unfortunately – can do whatever they want essentially, and you know, somebody told me, “so you know, ACL[?] next year is going to be two weekends in a row” –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: You’ve heard this – well there was a friend of mine, big into ACL and all that, and you know, he knows I participate in some local governance here. When it first started getting talked about, he’s the one who pointed it out to me. He said, “hey, did you know that this was a discussion of city council”, and et cetera, et cetera, really hoping that they do that, I’d love to see it twice in a row. And I said to him I’m like, “oh, that’s a done deal”, and he’s like, “well how do you know?” He’s like, “did you hear something?” I’m like, “no, you literally just pointed it out to me.” I had never heard it before, but I can tell you as a guaranteed fact, if it’s already been discussed, there are just a few entities in this city that the second they come up, it’s just for show – and I hate to say that, but it’s true.
That’s the sort of thing that the politicians and the powers that be in this city, that’s something that they want because it’s a huge revenue generator for them, so there’s not actually going to be any real discussion about it in my opinion. There’s just going to be a showy sort of theme to say they discussed it in public forum, but the second that that came up as an option, it was already a done deal, they just needed to play the game to show everybody that there was public involvement in the process.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And I just don’t believe there really is because I just think Austin’s very skewed in that way.
Jad: Yeah, yeah.
Kevin: Definitely an opinion there because I mean, I don’t have any facts to back that, but I’ve just seen it a number of times, so –
Jad: Sure. Well the recent one being – and I don’t know how much we’re going to do with local politics – but the racetrack thing – the Formula One thing – I mean like, everything was against it, every popular anything was against that.
Kevin: Yep.
Jad: Kevin will explain this racetrack issue that I’m babbling about shortly.
And it still got – it required like four levels, four agencies jumping in and overriding you know, concerns, and dissents, and environmental studies and all that, so just everything got put by the wayside.
Kevin: Oh, right.
Jad: I mean, it’s just a show. Any democratic aspect of it is just a smoking mirrors so stuff can happen and people can be like, “well you know, you chose this.”
Kevin: You know, I don’t want to get too caught up on local politics either, but I do think that there’s a bigger topic there to be made with the racetrack. So you know, if we want to use this as a topic, for people I suppose who don’t know, in Austin there’s going to be a you know, F1 racetrack. Apparently it’s going to be kinda the crown jewel racetrack in the united states all of a sudden, so it will be a pretty big deal. I’m sure the economic impact is going to be pretty substantial. I haven’t seen the actual numbers, but I’m sure it won’t be a terrible thing in the long run.
But that’s not really the point when it comes to governance right, because governance isn’t supposed to just be able to do whatever it wants with other people’s money, that’s the problem. And I often make the point to say you know, it’s no wonder we can’t fix anything at the federal level because we can’t even fix or control things at the smallest form of government, and I think that one of the good examples that the racetrack poses with just how encourageable, and how corrupt the government has become just all over the country is to look at their whole explanation for this is that they’re talking about it making jobs, and that’s one of the big reasons that this is a good thing for the city is it’s supposed to create X thousands of jobs and et cetera.
But nobody will talk about the fact that you’re not creating jobs, you’re creating the most deplorable of a position for somebody who is never going to escalate anywhere beyond you know, the $6 dollars an hour that you’re going to pay them to shuffle hot dogs around a place a couple of times a year, and that’s a far cry from a company that actually comes in and is going to create legitimate middle class jobs that sustain growth and life, and help people. So I’m truly bothered by the way the government in Austin just kind of cavalierly went about this whole thing with the racetrack.
Jad: Right. And I guess – to push it – I guess it links back to the second half of episode two, when I think of the voting versus – and I guess this is the downside is I don’t do anything else per se – but like this, I think when I imagine a hopeful future – like you say – like with that spark of hope that you just – you know something has to get better or you’re not willing to give up on looking for things that make it better, it seems like it’s got to be outside of that state structure. I don’t know what it’s going to be and I don’t know how it will gain a sendency, but given that there is a widespread – whatever you want to call it – austerity measures and budget overruns, and the state itself is kind of disintegrating in many places, I mean like Detroit for example is leading the way.
But I think the things that need to grow up out of those places, the communities and the social structures that need to grow up need to not be on the state model, need to not have a hierarchy in violence built into them at the very fabric, and I think to a degree that they do, we’ll have sort of a repeat of history. To the degree that they don’t, we’ll have a fundamentally new social structure to build on.
Kevin: Right. Well and if we go back to using – we talked a little bit about Ron Paul last timeas well – if we use Ron Paul as an example for that, one of the things that I like that he did after the fact is that he talked in some depth about how he – he didn’t go against his constituency of the liberty movement, but he certainly was clear to say, “you can’t have a party.” You can’t have a party and expect that something good is going to come from this because the second you have a party, now you’ve involved the establishment and the establishment is in fact the establishment – that is the problem. So he said, “you need collective intelligence, you need individuals who are interested in talking about it or discussing it, who are interested in understanding it”, and if you have enough people like that, if you’re able to somehow reach that group of people without trying to form some sort of entity around it, then you’ll have something that actually changes for the positive.
And I think that’s very similar to the position that you take – you pose the question well, let’s just say that we were somehow able to overcome this anti-authoritarianism, wouldn’t it just repeat itself? And I don’t disagree with you – I don’t know what the good solution is, but using kind of Ron Paul’s own words there, that was his take as well I think and at least in a nutshell is to say, you’re right – if you actually do fix anything – or let’s say you fix everything – if you go right back into trying to create the structure around it, you’ve just lost again, it’s just a matter of time before you lose.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: That’s not the way to freedom.
Jad: Then to go the conspiracy step further, it’s almost as if if you look at like – and I’m not saying that the Ron Paul thing is a total loss because I mean like you said, he has led probably more people into the sort of, down the labyrinth of you know, or down the rabbit hole I guess, right?
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: Of libertarian thinking than anybody else in the last you know, 50 years or something like that – well let’s say 30 years, I really don’t know what happened. But the time, and effort, and energy of electoral politics that were all tied up in that campaign, the hours that people spent in that political process rather than taking that same energy and those same resources and doing what Ron Paul essentially said right, which is you know, to ignore the party, to carry out the ideas of liberty, to participate in free marketplaces, to outreach to your neighbors and the people around you to create these sorts of pockets of freedom – all of that, all those resources were hoovered up into this national thing that just kind of you know, vanishes in a puff of smoke.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And at the end it doesn’t have an effect besides having a bunch of dispirited people who think that it’s not worth the time to do that again.
Kevin: You might be right.
Jad: I think on the other side, like the Ralph Naders, is that kind of guy for the left you know, and Obama to some degree. You know, all the talk about community, and solidarity, and good working conditions and all those sorts of things, all of that time, and attention, and effort is spent on this ephemeral conversation at a federal level, and then it just goes away – it’s just gone and nothing has happened.
And I know that’s sort of a – I understand I’m overstating it to some degree or at least I’m presenting the case as bleakly as possible – but it does seem kinda strange that like all of this energy has been spent over the course of you know, the history of the United States fighting for liberty, fighting to grab the control of the government to bring about liberty while for the same amount of time, there are people you know, Throeau’s and Emerson’s, and Benjamin Tuckers and all those guys who are saying, “you gotta leave that shit alone, it’s awful.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Just do it, just ignore the state and do what you’re going to do, and eventually it will fall and you’ll be there with a sustainable model.
Kevin: You know, I don’t get angry very often and the reason I don’t get angry very often is because I just – I don’t really see much of a purpose to it, and sometimes there’s a certain type of person who will do something to me – whatever it is – and when they do that thing, I tell them I don’t like that, and they’ll apologize for it. But then ultimately they’ll do it again –
Jad: No shit.
Kevin: – and they’ll apologize for it. And then they’ll do it again and they’ll apologize, and eventually I have to tell them, “at this point, I am getting angry and I’m getting frustrated”, and they always ask, they’re like, “why are you” – “well I’m sorry, like, I apologize for you”, and I have to explain to them like, “I don’t give a shit, you don’t ever have to apologize to me. In fact, don’t apologize to me, just don’t fucking do the thing that breaks what you did again”, and I guess I kinda see it as parallel and again, going back to your point, you’re right – everybody wants to create a structure. Everybody wants to get involved in creating the law, in creating the system rather than just saying, “you don’t need the fucking system in the first place”, just be good to other people and help other people emulate that, and the society just works magically – that’s actually what a free society is all about.
Jad: No yeah, yeah. I totally agree, and I think that there’s another example of something that – and this is actually a joke somebody made that I really thought kinda hit the nail on the head and don’t a personal offense to this, but people were talking about the model of the Ron Paul blogger being you know, living in his parents’ basement or whatever, you’re not worried about the tyranny, the federal government, you’re worried about the tyranny of like, your overbearing mother, you know? If you’re investing all this energy in this external thing and you’re ignoring the fact that you’re like a slave, and you’re you know, to your job or to you know, your awful friends who keep torturing you, or your you know, whatever it is –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – then you’re fundamentally missing an opportunity at freedom.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I think though the step beyond that is if you don’t know your – and I’m in this boat entirely – if you don’t know your neighbors and you’re not engaged in a way that we imagine people should be engaged horizontally, not authoritatively or in a position of authority with the people around you then you’re missing an opportunity. You’re missing – that’s what freedom should be, that’s what free markets are is exchange in that group, that’s with all these sorts of things. So anyway, I totally agree with your point.
Kevin: And I agree with that too, I think that’s the problem with big governance in general is that it actually dissuades people from being a part of those day to day systems that we should be a part of, and another one of them of course is the corporate structure. I mean beyond belief, and it took me a few years to figure it out, but I hold that one very dear to myself, and that’s specifically why you know, I remain my contractor status and frankly, I’m just kind of an asshole when it comes to the interviewing process because – I mean I’m not disrespectful – but just the last thing I’m going to do is concede that I’m going to spend my life in some sort of debt to a corporation, that’s just completely antithetical to the notions of liberty that I’m going with in the first place.
I’m not saying being employed is a bad thing – that’s perfectly fine and I’m not making a case against corporations even, just saying to blindly accept that the corporation or this entity somehow has control over my life for no particular reason, that’s just not something I’m willing to tolerate.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And I guess for the right amount of money, perhaps I would. But as a general structure, I’m just not and it saddens me how many people you know, really are.
Jad: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.
Kevin: I think they just don’t know that there’s other options.
Jad: That’s true, and that’s part of something else we should talk about sometime, education and the structure of the way a child is brought from kindergarten on to obey, look to somebody else for direction, and so forth because I think it has a lot to do with that.
Kevin: Oh, absolutely. And it’s been talked about God knows by how many people in this country.
Jad: Yes. [?]
Kevin: That’s a big deal.
Jad: And yes, some day we did talk about education and more about local politics, and a million or 57 other things that you can download, listen to, and ponder, and get back to us about. You’ll find our new episodes, entire archive, and contact information at www.JKPod.com, or you can reach either of us individually at our personal websites – Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com. What can I say, we are creative[?] motherfuckers.
I want to give a special thanks to our brave and fearless transcriptionist. I had no idea just how incoherent my speech patterns were until I tried to follow the written text of what I’m saying, so a very impressed kudos to Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media – I will try to speak more clearly in the future so that you don’t hate me. Seriously, we appreciate all your hard work. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, take care.
]]>Contrary to what we’re taught in school, the joke of Americans having any real power in the legislative process couldn’t be illustrated any better than examining how political rules work. Or more to the point, how they don’t.
In other words, any time the rules aren’t adhering to the favored outcome, they’re simply changed or discarded altogether. Ron Paul’s fans learned it, and now Wendy’s have too.
]]>Despite her best efforts, the bill was eventually still passed.
We spend roughly half the episode talking about the events in the Texas Capitol dome that night, but not before examining another powerful topic, the Defense of Marriage Act, better known as DOMA.
Our discussion examines how politicians change their story to fit their current audience, moral implications be damned.
]]>The basic idea is considering whether it makes more sense to present an argument that appeals to a moral objective or a practical one. For example, if one’s intent is to dissuade another from starting a war, the philosophical argument might be to illustrate the deaths likely to result from said war and to otherwise discuss the immorality of the act. The pragmatic argument might be to illustrate the high costs of the war. While both arguments may be aimed at preventing said war, only the philosophical argument will hold up indefinitely (as least from a pacifist’s point of view). But on the other hand, what’s the point of the philosophical argument if we live in a society unwilling to think philosophically?
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Kevin: Hello and welcome back to yet another Throwback Thursday episode of the JK Podcast, and anti-authoritarian free speech podcast dedicated to liberty, humanity, and equality for all people. This episode takes us – for the second time – back to November 14th, 2012. After a discussion Jad and I had regarding abstract arguments, we diverged even further into the realm of pragmatic versus philosophical arguments. The basic ideas considering whether it makes more sense to present an argument that appeals to a moral objective, or to a practical one.
For example, if one’s intent is to dissuade another from starting a war, the philosophical argument might be to illustrate the deaths likely to result from said war, and otherwise discuss the immorality of the act. The pragmatic argument might be to illustrate the high costs associated with the war. While both arguments may be aimed at preventing said war, only the philosophical argument will hold up indefinitely – at least from a pacifist’s point of view.
But on the other hand, what’s the point of the philosophical argument if we live in a society unwilling to think philosophically in the first place? It’s an old episode and it’s a short episode, so grab a beer, sit back, and relax. I’m Kevin Ludlow, co-creator Jad Davis is the other voice in the episode – welcome back to the JK Podcast.
Jad: I was listening to our – I think it was the 10/24[?], the first time we had Tom on –
Kevin: OK.
Jad: And I listened to it a few times and I started to come up with like a you know, sort of a pattern, more of a pattern of our interaction where it’s funny, we’re talking about things – I’m hitting the philosophy side and you’re pointing out like – well that’s you know, I totally agree with you you know, your points are sound and their philosophically correct. Most people don’t like to think about that, or don’t talk about – so here’s the same thing that is convincing to people who are – they’re going to get caught by the ethical argument, but they will get caught by this argument and that’s why you know, I was thinking about – you were saying as for that recording – you were talking about how much success you have and how you know, people just are really complimentary and constantly giving you feedback about how revolutionary your ideas are –
Kevin: To keep my head from overly inflating here, revolutionary is certainly rather exaggerated. But on the other hand, I have enjoyed many compliments regarding my general willingness to publicly present unpopular views. In general, I’ve found that while many people may hold the ideal of self governance, few seem willing to proselytize those positions.
Jad: – whereas the experience from my side and Tom’s side is pretty much like just blank stares and anger, and I was thinking that that’s probably – that probably has a lot to do with it. I mean I think you know, it’s kind of obvious, but it never really occurred to me that I guess the parallel tracks of the pragmatic argument with the knowledge that it’s going to hopefully bloom into a full blown case of ethics –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – but not via the conversation, that’s part of an incubation and processing you know – people integrate the practical lessons into their you know, kindergarten morality – I mean not in a bad way, kindergarten – but like, “oh that’s right, and this also has a side effect of not hurting people”, and you know –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and not being evil, and being nice, and building a you know, a consensus and all that sort of thing when they wrap that rationale around the practical side then you’ve got the whole package – it’s kinda interesting.
Kevin: Yeah, I think well, that’s I mean, flattering to hear you say it that way I guess, but I mean for what it’s worth, that’s really been my adoration of Ron Paul over all these years, right?
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: Because that’s exactly what he does and in fact, today was his very last day in congress. He gave his speech at 3pm, it was about an hour long, and I actually did watch it on C-Span, and I mean it was interesting because that was one of the things he talked about is exactly what you just said right there is he’s like you know, by any measure, he’s like you know, “by any measure”, he’s like, “I’ve been in and out of congress for a 33 year period, about 28 years of those years I sat in congress” – or 23 years, whatever it was – “and it doesn’t look like I actually accomplished anything. It’s like I have no roads named after me, no structures named after me thankfully”, and he’s like, “I don’t have my name on very many bills, but on the other hand if we look at what has been the result of this educational movement for the last 30 years”, he’s like, “I feel that I’ve actually made great strides”, and for what it’s worth, I see him as like a – man people would crucify me for saying this – but I see him as like a very modern day type of Gandhi where it’s just like you’ve got this idea, you can agree with it or disagree with it, but you take this idea, you don’t force it upon somebody, and you just keep repeating the same principle over, and over, and try to put a pragmatic side to it and some people jump on, some people don’t.
It took a really long time in his case for people to jump on, but I feel that now he’ll be dead in I mean – sadly – not too many more years, and when he is I have a feeling that idea will live on for some time now, so –
Jad: Sure, right, right. That’s the interesting thing that I think that sort of reflects I guess the education system in general, but you know, just our social status is that all those ideas are old ideas you know, that –
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jad: – Ron Paul is the modern day you know, I don’t know, Barry Goldwater or something who was the modern day – I don’t even know what [?] back before that, I’m not sure even who there is – but –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – back to like a Thomas Jefferson or whatever, a decentralized paradigm of social organization. So yeah – but I totally agree with you. I think there’s really nothing – there is no other political leader in that category and no – I really don’t know when the last one was.
Kevin: I agree.
Jad: And it sounds like – oh, I heard today something awful, Rand Paul is trying to steer the tea party into more moderate waters apparently.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I mean which is you know that’s fine for some categories and things I guess, but this is you know, to do with the you know, the financial side. So it sounds like he’s going to be a politician’s politician.
Kevin: Interesting. Yeah well, no real surprise there, kinda goes back to our previous conversations. But right, then it takes you to this whole other conversation in itself and again, that’s why for the reasons of not doing that or why I really like Ron Paul and I guess to your point about you and Tom receiving blank stares is I mean, I certainly get plenty of people, but give me a really negative feedback you know, per the L.A. article for example that you did, or my time out in Los Angeles I mean, I had horrible feedback from people on a pretty recurrent basis.
Maybe some of those people took something away from that in the long run – I don’t really know – but for the most part, probably not, but in the case of Rand Paul, there’s – I assume anyways – he has an interest in accelerating, and I believe that he probably does have a lot of his father’s ideals, it’s just my guess is he doesn’t want to sit on his hands for say 40 years trying to tout the same message to end up in the same sort of positing where you know, a few million younger people jump on board with it.
And that’s the unfortunate part of politics is that people come into that rationalization at some point in their life where they are able to justify that the means justify the ends I mean, that sort of thing where he could take the attitude to say, “well, yes, I’m going to be slightly more of a statesman then I otherwise set out to be, but on the flipside, once people believe me, once people are on my side, once I have the masses working with me, then I can start injecting some of those original ideals that I had you know, from the teachings of my father for example, and I think the question always just remains is if you get to that point, do you actually – do you do that thing or not, and I think in many cases it’s not what happens.
Jad: Sure, I think that’s the classic goalpost shifting too because it’s always – there’s always something else that’s pressing that needs to be done, so you’re always putting off your end of the bargain you know, further and further until it’s either forgotten or lost, or you die, or whatever.
Kevin: Right. Well and that kind of speaks to the point – going back to the rich people that are here right now – and me saying, “man, I’d love to be part of that”, because I’d love to be the multi-hundred millionaire where I could inject what many people would see as a much more radical philosophy into the political sphere, and by virtue of me being rich beyond belief and being part of that elitist class, even if they didn’t want to listen to me, they’d be forced to listen to me because I could afford to make them listen to me, right? So the question becomes you know, if you actually get to that sustainable level of wealth, is that really what your focus in life becomes at that point? And I don’t really know because I’m not wealthy.
Jad: Right. Well I think that the big trick there is how did you get to be wealthy, right? Because almost everybody who’s going to be flying in to Austin this week got wealthy because of a big government somewhere –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: You know helping them in some means is giving them an oil monopoly or whatever, so if you say I’m going to make my $500 million, then I’m going to go talk about liberty. If you’ve got that $500 million by you know, running oil down from Alaska via the Keystone XL pipeline or whatever then you’re kind of compromised, and you may not even have the opportunity to do it. But yeah not the way you make money though is you know, seems pretty legit to me – software development.
Kevin: So far. It’s all I got right now.
And with that we end this week’s Throwback Thursday episode. Thanks as always for tuning in to the show. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for the show, we’d certainly love for you to reach out to us. You can reach us both through our podcast website of www.JKPod.com, or either of us individually – Jad as always is at www.Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com. Our transcription services for the podcasts are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. Thank you so much again, and we’ll catch you next week.
]]>Once a government gets up and running, we go on to consider how people are convinced to accept the various ills that any government in existence is known to partake in (of course we consider this from the point of the United States). We consider various outlets of marketing and how governments amplify the rampant violence around the world.
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Kevin: Hello and welcome to another installment of the JK Podcast, an antiauthoritarian free speech zone dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. This week, Jad and I consider the idea of how a government forms essentially out of thin air.
To go back to our story, if you had 20 people on an island or whatever the case may be, what happens? How does a government form? How does a leader come about from that?
Once a government gets up and running, we go on to consider how people are convinced to accept the various ills that any government in existence is known to partake in. Of course we consider this from the point of view of the United States. We also consider various outlets of marketing and how governments amplify their rampant violence around the world. I’m Kevin Ludlow and as always, joined by my co-host, Jad Davis. Welcome back to the JK Podcast.
To go back to our story, if you had 20 people on an island or whatever the case may be, what happens? How does a government form? How does a leader come about from that? And I think we poignantly and I would assume accurately conclude that what happens is is that you’ve got a guy who’s able to perform whatever the responsibility of defense or offense is for the group and you need that guy and if it were you and me and a bunch of other guys and one of those guys is well armed and a real good shot, I have a feeling that we’d have to pair up with him a little bit and say, “well, I’ll go fetch apples for you, just keep killing the bad guys because you’re the leader”, and I think that’s kind of a parallel or really kind of just a metaphor for exactly what we’re talking about in these types of situations.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: I think.
Jad: Well I think the interesting thing – and I’m not just trying to say that that’s not how it happens or whatever – but that is the story, right, of how it happens. So the question then is is that a story that you’re told so that whoever is in charge now is like, “oh yeah, well back then, what happened was my ancestors protected your ancestors and now you owe me”. Like I mean, it’s not quite that simple. But the story is that we have to have those guys there –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: [?] the key part of the story is that in some weird magical way we have asked for them to do what they do, right?
Kevin: Right. Right. Right.
Jad: It implicitly – either God put them above us, or we have a social contract, or whatever it is, but somehow – and this is interesting, I was gonna write an article to do with that crazy sniper who got shot in Texas, his narrative that he tells is about how horrible it is that he had to take this burden of butchering women and children upon himself so that the rest of us could be free. So it’s a complete immersion in that story whereas what actually happens is the guy gets on a plane, travels 10,000 miles, and kills a bunch of people that are defending their homes. The story is that he’s protecting us, right?
And even the story that most Americans believe is that that guy’s protecting us, which kind of makes me wonder if that whole narrative of the reason that these people are in charge is because this is just the natural way that things evolve is real or just part of that same story.
Kevin: Yeah. I don’t even have a good response to that. I completely agree with that, I mean we’ve discussed it countless times as well, but of course I always just bring it back to marketing because I guess it’s been around a lot longer than I give it credit for, obviously, but I think if I could inject it again I think we’re just becoming increasingly good at the manipulation and marketing of people and I think that’s really all you’re doing there is that you’re just selling this narrative in such a way by using modern psychology, varying tricks, emotional tricks, we just know how to play to people’s emotions so well now and so much better than we did before and we shouldn’t be ignorant.
I mean there’s a lot of information that we have available to us, we shouldn’t be ignorant people and yet I think the majority of people absolutely still very much are. And so you sell that type of story that you’re talking about like the sniper, why is it that that story is able to permeate the minds of people so successfully? Why is it that when you hear something like that that this guy – when you’re told, “well he’s doing what he does because it protects you, you wouldn’t be safe if he didn’t do the things that he’s doing”, and I think unfortunately, most people are happy to accept that and I don’t understand why. I don’t know where the compulsion is to just not even say, “How does that protect me? How was I endangered to begin with?”
Jad: Right. I mean I don’t know the source of it either and it’s one of those art imitating life or life imitating art things or whatever, but can you tell me a story that involves violence that doesn’t have that same pattern to it, any story from childhood on? Like you said, Robin Hood, right, a classic tale. It’s somebody who’s outside the bounds of morality for the greater good, I guess is the shorthand of it, and like every story to do with violence, every superhero, every narrative that has violence in it has that component to it.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: The underdog trying to do things peacefully, trying to do things the right way, but the evil is just too much and takes them too far and takes too much from him, or kills a loved one or whatever, and finally he’s had enough and now he just fucks everything up, you know what I mean? Like [?] wasted evil, you know? Karate Kid even, you know, like that whole thing is like – every story has that element to it. I mean, that’s what a hero is, you know?
We’re very, very primed I think, to try to fit that template over whatever’s going on, and that’s why you see people, immediately they’re just applying that template there like you know, carrying that lens and they’re scanning the news and here’s Chris Dorn and here’s the LAPD and because of the way they feel about those two entities, it fits the narrative, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And there’s other people I’m sure who look at the exact same things going on, they look with their lens and they’re like, “oh, there’s this ultimate evil guy. Good thing the heroes of the LAPD will shoot the shit out of everything in order to get rid of them.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You know, objectively the exact same story, exact same set of facts, but just that there’s coming up with the counter-narrative, or the opposite narrative or whatever.
Kevin: Well you have no doubt that’s happening. I’d be really interested to know if they did a poll right now – a real poll – how many people would really support his position versus how many people would support LAPD. I’d just be curious to see 20 interesting polled questions there. Is it wrong – pick your word, I don’t know what the word is – but is it wrong that the Los Angeles Police Department is doing what they’re doing to capture this person, for example.
I would be curious to see what public sentiment on that is. I tend to think that the majority of people would say, “No, they’re doing what they need to do.” Obviously people like us would say, “well yeah, it’s fucked up beyond belief”, but I just don’t know how large of a market that actually is in this case. I think it’s bigger than it normally would be. I think it goes well beyond your conspiracy theory group and your alternate media sources sort of groups, but I doubt it’s very large still.
Jad: Yeah I think you’re right. I was reading an article today that was saying that, I mean it something ridiculous, like 85% of Americans are happy with the drone thing.
Kevin: Holy shit.
Jad: Yeah. And like 60% support the use of drones domestically to kill domestic terrorists or whatever. So yeah, it’s still pretty epically stacked against sanity.
Kevin: Well then let me go right back into my marketing lines because I mean, I don’t know how the fuck else you do that other than you market the shit out of something. You convince people – you don’t convince people that something’s good, you let people convince themselves that something’s good. That’s the only way you’re able to accomplish that, I think, and I just think that that’s what’s been done.
Jad: Yeah, sure.
Kevin: I don’t know – I wanna sit down with the guy who says, “I think it’s a great idea that we have militarized planes flying around, targeting people who do bad things.” I don’t know if I could have the conversation with him. It’s not that I’d lose patience, I just feel like he wouldn’t be interested in discussing it rationally because I feel that the premise is just so irrational to begin with that I can’t imagine what the narrative in his head might be.
Jad: Yeah. Well I think that the thing that may be waving you off from that is you’re talking about having a conversation with people – with a person, a hypothetical person who I’m sure is instantiated a few million times in the country that wants to kill someone because they disagree with them, fundamentally – they’re totally cool with that – so having a conversation with someone you disagree with under those circumstances becomes a lot more whatever. I mean that guy would probably be okay with you being killed, which is not really the most pleasant conversation to have.
Kevin: Yeah. No, it’s true. That takes us right back in to that – a couple of conversations we’ve had about therapy and the human experience, and people unable to communicate with one another. I mean, that’s really what it is, right?
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: I feel that you or I could sit down with somebody who felt that way and probably have a very meaningful – I think we could have as meaningful and rational of a conversation as could be had with that particular person, but it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day that person probably doesn’t feel that way, and so it’s still kind of fruitless. So it’s just interesting to think – just interesting to tie it in to the actual psychology behind them – why is that? Why is it that people are unable to communicate at that particular level because if you can’t discuss the problem, I think it’s gonna be very difficult to correct the problem.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And I think most people would agree that’s probably true, so even that guy would probably agree that’s true.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: But his notion of communication is just that I tend towards his side and that’s obviously not what communication is.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Anyway, a little tangent.
Jad: Yeah, yeah, but I think the other thing is that there’s – a lot of people don’t think there is a problem and that’s part of the issue, too. You know, the problem is people who say there’s a problem, because otherwise they’re fine, you know? Otherwise they’ve got their story in their head and like I said, they’ve got a lens through which they’re filtering the news and somehow they’re fine with the way things are, except for the fact that there’s these people out there who keep bitching about it all the time, and I think that’s you know, the psychology of it is very interesting.
But the defense of one’s world view by smashing people who challenge their world view or by discounting them one way or the other as the enemy of everything that’s good or what have you [?]. I’m not really sure what level you have to be at to be like, “yeah, I’d like to see people who disagree with the government have missiles come to their windows and blow up their entire family.”
Kevin: Well the easiest one I guess – it just occurred to me when you were saying that – I mean it’s a religious argument, right? I mean it’s the exact same thing, so I mean it’s sitting in a room with a guy who says, “well, if you do this, you’re gonna be tortured for all of eternity”, and he’s okay with that.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: I mean, do you think that’s a good thing? I don’t believe it’s true to begin with, but do you think it’s a good thing? He’s like, “well, you’re the one who’s not obeying the law that’s written down right there and”, it’s that conversation I mean I don’t need to play it out.
Jad: No, you’re right. You’re totally right. I think you’re absolutely correct, that is that conversation. Actually we talked about this before too, but after Waco, you had that same dialogue – it was an actual dialogue or whatever. The consensus was if you don’t wanna get burned then don’t be a crazy anti-government lunatic – that was the answer, not due process or any of the quaint legal formalities that the Constitution guarantees you, and that was 20 years ago and now we’re 20 years on and I think it’s just worse.
Kevin: I think it’s worse, too.
Jad: The same mentality is here, it’s just amplified.
Kevin: But I think the problems are large though, and I think it speaks to some of the stuff that I’ve said before. I think as the problem gets larger just like when I say the death toll gets larger, I think it becomes more difficult for your average person or even your intelligent person to wrap their head around that and it just – I think – it’s easier to throw your hands up and just say, “to hell with it, what can I do?” A case like this I think we’re actually – I think there’s probably more people on the side of it because I think most people can relate to driving down the street and seeing police and the notion that there’s just one guy who’s committed a few murders which we’re fairly immune to in our brains in this culture.
There’s murders that happen every single day all over the place, hundreds and hundreds of them, and we don’t think twice about it. But for some reason this particular one draws a little bit more attention and I think it has to do with the fact that it’s such a smaller, it’s something that we can all wrap our head around. I think anybody can imagine driving down the street, having their car shot to pieces, and we think that that’s wrong. You take a more extreme example – I don’t know, like flying planes into buildings – and I don’t think your average person is able to sit there and say, “okay, where’s the pros and the cons in what we’re about to do here? Is it really the right response that we launch a full global invasion to 15 different countries using that as the pretense for the whole thing?” I don’t think people want to try to think about that, it’s not relatable to them in any way, shape, or form.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And you just – something bad happened, we have to do something bad in return, ra, ra, ra, America go – whatever you think is best, do it, you know?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: I really don’t think people form opinions, I think they – at that point – just go with whatever the message is.
Jad: Sure. Well that’s fundamentally why you can’t have peaceful institutions like a government, right? Because they amplify that there are people that have an agenda, and then when something like 9/11 happens they’re just like, “oh, what we need to do is – all these 10 awful things that I would never be able to convince people to do except that we’re in this particular state and we have this particular political system where I can take your money and go do it if I can whip you into enough of a frenzy.” I mean that’s just an awful – that’s just not a sane way to have – you can’t do that.
Kevin: And that’s where we leave the conversation this week. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for the show, please contact us at www.JKPod.com. You can also contact either of us through our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, and I am at KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again, and we’ll be back next week.
]]>Thanks to the heroic efforts of Edward Snowden, now we know if that paranoia was unfounded. Hint: it was not. A number of people had asked us to do an episode on the topic of the NSA and so we did – albeit reluctantly.
Despite the smoking gun being hand-delivered to each and every American, Jad and Kevin discuss the likeliness of anything actually changing domestically.
[Recorded Audio]
Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Jad: Hello and welcome to the JK Podcast, an antiauthoritarian philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas. We draw our topics from the entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.
Kevin: The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to another episode. There’s no doubt that millions of Americans have long since suspected their government was spying on them regularly. Of course, these people have long been referred to as paranoid conspiracy theorists, however, and thanks to the heroic efforts of Edward Snowden, now we know.
A number of people had asked Jad and I to do an episode on the topic, and so we did – albeit reluctantly. Despite the smoking gun being hand delivered to each and every American, we discussed the likeliness of anything actually changing domestically.
While we’ve got a little bit of time here –
Jad: Yeah, man.
Kevin: Just to go ahead and –
Jad: Just to do it?
Kevin: There’s people who are expecting an episode out of this. I actually had many of them write to me today and say, “Wow, I can’t wait to hear the NSA JK Podcast because I assume it’s coming.” But I don’t even know what to say about it, I mean it’s just, I mean I’m just kind of beside myself. It was actually one of the things that was talked about – you were basically talking about how you know, we know that the NSA is listening to all of our phone calls despite the fact that they say over and over and over that they don’t, but there’s enough information that suggests very clearly that they are, and of course that recording was before any of these stories had been fully blown, so I thought it was kind of interesting that not an hour ago I just happened to listen to you say this from a few months ago.
Jad: Interesting.
Kevin: I don’t even give a shit about the government, it’s the people. The story just makes me angry at people. I was just thinking about all the things that I’ve posted before – in a real non-threatening and real non-aggressive manner – the Facebook or wherever else, and I was just thinking of all those people who write back and they’re just like, “you libertarian type of people are fucking nuts. You think that people are just spying on you, you’re paranoid, you’re crazy”, and I’m like, “listen, I’m not paranoid because A, I know it’s happening, and B, I don’t really give a shit about it because I’m just doing the shit that I always do anyway. But the fact is that it is happening, right? And you know people don’t wanna hear it. Look, this is obviously as picture perfect fucking clear as could be at this point.
I think it’s impossible to deny at this point that the NSA and God knows how many other you know, governmental bodies are doing all sorts of horribly nefarious things with information, and my question – or my big question – is going to be you know, coming up in let’s just say a few months’ time but certainly the next election cycle, does anybody really give a shit about it at all, and my guess is no, but –
Jad: Good guess.
Kevin: Yeah. I wish it weren’t, I think there will be a lot of cries about it and then people make a big deal and then they just kind of – it’s incredible how – and again, this is speculative but pretty sure I can look back at this recording and turn out to be right – I just think it’ll be incredible how quickly the complacency will start to set in.
Jad: Sure. Well I mean it’s not even quickly, right? Like, who would you vote for –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I guess hypothetically, like a Rand Paul could run and give some – it would be like Obama with war, Rand Paul with privacy would be the same thing where he could possibly run and say, “look, we’re going to – this is going off the rails and we’ve gotta drop back in and then not do anything.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But I mean, if it’s anybody else then I don’t think it’s even mentioned. I think it’s kind of like the war in 2012 – was it just last year? Yeah. This wouldn’t even come up because both sides were planning on engaging in lots of war, so it was not on the table as a topic of discussion. So I mean, I don’t think – again, barring a Rand Paul – I don’t think it’s even talked about, I bet.
Kevin: Well I guess I’ll find a curious you know – I mean one of the things that I’ve of course brought up time and time again, and to the point where I guess it just pissed people off when I would refer to President Obama and I would – in 2012 and in 2008 as well because I was pretty goddammed sure that he was gonna do exactly what I thought he was gonna do and of course, he did exactly that and then worse.
I didn’t think he’d be quite as bad as Bush, it turned out he is probably far worse but none the less, I’m just curious to see what the conversation is like between just people that I engage in dialogue with – be it online or wherever else – and with respect to you know, with the wars, people came up with these various rationalization justifications for why we’re doing what it was that we were doing, right? And that’s something that you and I speak about with some frequency, you know? How people just come up with these, just those bullshit fabrications, or bullshit justifications for what it is that – to fit the narrative that they need to tell themselves, and with respect to the privacy one though, I’m just very curious to see how that one gets spun because I mean, is it just gonna be in a six month time period that all these people I know who otherwise would’ve – who certainly would’ve been – well I’m sure they were outraged when you know, the Bush administration was starting to you know, go through all sorts of wiretapping laws and things like that or just circumvent them.
I mean this is just as blatantly horrible as could be. Are these people just gonna start speaking very passively about this now and say, “well, it needs to happen for this, and this, and this” you know, “yeah, it’s not the best thing in the world, but at the same time like, we do need to be safe.” I don’t know if that type of systemic response is just gonna kick in with these people on a matter of privacy and if it does, I don’t know, I actually don’t know how I’m gonna feel about it. I’m a little worried about my mental state because it’s took me a long time to tolerate – not even tolerate, but to just like, accept that’s just how people were with the war. It didn’t matter that you opposed the war when Bush was launching it. Then the next year when we killed another hundred thousand people under Obama, you’re just like, “oh, it’s okay now. That’s not a big deal I mean, Obama had to do it. What are you gonna do”, right?
And of course I’m just sitting there spinning my head like, no, a lot of fucking people still died, that’s still wrong. Can’t we agree on that? And in this case you know, if all of a sudden people are just like, “oh you know, it’s not the worst thing”. I mean, they probably need to listen to what we’re doing a little bit. I don’t know that I’m gonna be able to take it.
Jad: Well, hang onto your hat then, sir because that’s exactly what’s gonna happen.
Kevin: Yeah I think I know that you’re right; I’m just trying to –
Jad: Well the thing is now I think I could see an argument happening which is it’s kind of the same argument, the argument that the other side will be worse or whatever, but now, think about the argument you can make, like if the President can kill you without a trial or indefinitely detain you –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – if again, by some secret process they decide that you are a threat to the nation and they can surveil anybody they want anytime they want, even in the past, then you really can’t have a republican in charge of that, or a democrat depending upon which side you’re on, right? So basically you’ve built up this just murderous awful apparatus, and now you have to decide who’s in charge of it –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – as if you’re actually deciding something, but that’s the – again, that could be the great narrative that people be like, “we’ve got to have somebody on our side in charge, otherwise” –
Kevin: I see what you’re saying. I see what you’re saying.
Jad: I don’t know, like I said it’s – go ahead.
Kevin: No, you’re right that you’re instilling your own dictator, essentially.
Jad: Exactly. You’ve got to have – you’ve built such a monstrous state, or these people have built such an awful apparatus that you have to keep your people in charge of it [?] just for safety’s sake, for the preservation of human kind even though it switches back and forth every four years and no one seems to notice, but yeah I don’t know, it is pretty amazing. But that’s kind of what I was – I kind of – maybe it’s just a rationalization on my part – but that’s kind of what I think of when I see the thing where it says like you know, some majority of Americans say it’s totally cool that the surveillance state is being built.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I have to think that there’s got to be a way to – again, I don’t think anyone gives a shit. I just think they just – if there was no surveillance state, they would say, “we have to maintain our freedom and not have the surveillance state”, right? If there is a surveillance state, they’re gonna say, “We need to maintain our security and have a surveillance state.” They just want whatever is to be the thing that should be, right?
So you don’t – I guess what I was saying earlier in our conversation is that maybe it’s the case that if there was some way to circumvent the surveillance state or dismantle it, or I mean let it fall of its own accord then people would be like, “oh, this very nice not having a surveillance state, it is the way it should be”, and you don’t have to actually interrupt their football game to convince them that it’s a good idea to actively oppose it, do you know what I mean?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Again, it’s just a thought, I really don’t – maybe I’m just trying to keep myself sane.
Kevin: Well, you gotta send some of the shit my way because I’m telling you, I really think this one’s gonna take me over the top.
Jad: Did you see – I posted a something the other day, it wasn’t specifically about the NSA, but it was just about the – because I guess the NSA’s building a giant data center, right?
Kevin: [?] like an [?] thing?
Jad: I don’t know if it’s part of prison or if it’s a different thing altogether, but in Utah they’re building a 4 billion dollar complex with just like ridiculous amounts of memory because they are storing everything.
Kevin: Nice.
Jad: Yeah. And the Homeland Security people are building a new headquarters for 5 billion dollars, and so I was just saying all of this – and Bruce Schneier, I don’t know how you say his last name, but he’s a security guru guy – a computer security guy – and he was basically just doing an analysis where he’s like, “there’s a one in a million chance that you’re gonna get killed in a terrorist attack, and anything that’s above a one in” – I can’t remember the exact numbers, but if it’s above 1 and 800,000 chance, it’s something that you shouldn’t even worry about.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Something that you can’t do anything about anyway, so just let it go. So all of this extraordinary amount of wealth is being spent to do nothing, I mean it’s not doing anything, right?
Kevin: Right. Well, it’s doing something, but definitely –
Jad: Sure, maybe doing negative things.
Kevin: Yeah, it’s definitely not helping –
Jad: It’s certainly not helping you out. Right.
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: It’s trillions of dollars when you include military invasions and global empire in the name of keeping you safe, which is obviously doing other things, but certainly not keeping you safe. All of that wealth has just vanished for nothing and at the end of the thing I kind of go rant on it a little bit where I’m just like, “this is an awful thing and” – I don’t know.
Kevin: Oh, was this the thing that you wrote and you sent me?
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Oh yeah, you know I got the link on my phone and then I haven’t looked at it yet, I apologize, I will.
Jad: Oh don’t worry about it, yeah.
Kevin: I definitely will look at that, I meant to.
Jad: It’s not super exciting, but I express my frustration in the last paragraph.
Kevin: Well no, I’d love to read it. I haven’t been able to put pen to paper with it. I mean I’m like genuinely having a difficult time just looking at this, and not from the government side, I know – like I say all the time – I know the government’s trying to do bad shit.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: It’s just – it’s the fucking people that you know, I don’t know what to say about it. There are ways to solve privacy issues like this pretty easily, you know? They’re not gonna happen because people are gonna keep using the same things that the always use and it’s just kind of one of those things. Like, if you wanted to stop I don’t know, child labor from existing, rather than passing all these laws about it you know, just stop fucking shopping at Wal-Mart for example and that will fix it real quick. And then when Wal-Mart says, “why are our sales down 100%?” And you say, “well, we don’t think that you should be able to use children”, and then they’ll say very quickly like, “okay, we assure you at this point we are not using any children for any of our manufacturing”, and miraculously, their shopping will start to continue again. I mean, that’s kind of the inherent magic behind capitalism except it doesn’t work because people don’t give a flying fuck.
Jad: Well kind of. I mean that’s kind of true, but it’s a pretty high hurdle.
Kevin: Oh it is. It is.
Jad: To be like I mean, is there even – can you have – is there a cell phone company that’s not Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T? I mean –
Kevin: There is an interesting story about one – I have to look it up – but I read a big article about this and it broke on Wired Magazine about 2 years ago maybe, but maybe like 5 or 6 years ago, there was a guy who started a private cell phone company up in I think New York or possible even New Jersey – since we were speaking about it – who every single thing that went back and forth through it was encrypted, and anyway as the story goes, the guy immediately got into – it was the NSA or one of the big agencies, I assume the NSA – that basically like filed an injunction against the guy and said, “you can’t have this.” Well then the question became, “well why can’t I have this”, because if you’re not allowed to tap the phones without information in the first place then why does it matter that you can’t actually tap this phone?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: In the event that you actually needed to get to it, we could turn the subscriber’s phone off, or we could do any number of things. Well I forget exactly what happened, but it was this multi-year court case and they had all sorts of crazy gag orders on the guy until it finished, and then it eventually did conclude and I mean, of course he just tried to bankrupt him entirely, but somehow the guy prevailed and I guess the circuit judge ruled that they weren’t in violation, that you couldn’t do that, that the guy had done nothing wrong because you didn’t have permission to tap into that in the first place, so there’s nothing wrong with it.
So anyway the point is that there actually is this guy from what I understand who has successfully created a small private cell phone network that is exclusively run on an encrypted or some sort of encrypted protocol.
Jad: Right. So again, it’s just a high hurdle.
Kevin: Yeah, sorry, long story –
Jad: No, no, no –
Kevin: – to say the exact same thing, but –
Jad: – it’s a fascinating story. I’m surprised it came out and [?] not in jail, it’s pretty remarkable actually. But yea, no that’s a – it’s one of those chicken in the egg things because clearly if it was the case that nobody would send you to court for a years and years if you try to start a cell phone network, then there would be lots of encryptable options and then you would have lots of people choosing the easily available encryptable option, and same thing with everything else. But if there are no other options or if they are 10 times more expensive, or more time consuming, or more difficult to research, then again, I just fall on the position – my default position – is not to blame people for following incentive curves, you know? That’s why they’re built the way they are.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And it’s really too bad, but I don’t – it’s kind of too much to ask that everyone pay attention to everything they buy so they don’t accidentally encourage slave labor across the globe and pay attention to service they consume, to make sure that it doesn’t have a tie into the government – everything has a tie into the government – so it’s very – I mean it’s – anyway. Your point is extremely well taken and I think what I go for is you know, even if you can’t take the time out of your schedule – which is totally fine – to subvert undermine these systems with your day to day actions – I can’t, I don’t – then at least don’t call them good or necessary, at least understand what they are.
Like I have a shitty service that is monitored forever, keeping me entirely powerless because that’s all there is for me to purchase, you know? Not I am so happy that the government is tracking my calls so that we can be safe from terrorists – that doesn’t require much, that just requires not being stupid.
Kevin: That is true.
Jad: But yeah and like I said in my post at the end, I’m like, “I understand people are in difficult psychological situations as well where their thinking has been confounded by 12 years of public education and a society that is all an amassed illusion of religious proportions and so I get that, but sometimes like you said, it’s just hard not to be like, “how are you this fucking stupid?” So sometimes I have to say it, even just between us.
Kevin: Well say away because I’m on page with you right now, for sure. I mean I always am but in this case it’s just – I guess to be fair, like I haven’t seen a lot of people – I mean even people that I would’ve expected to be a little bit more I don’t know, obtuse about the whole thing. I mean some of them have even come out on Facebook and you know, just started posting like, “well, not really surprised that this is the case”.
I mean there definitely seems to be quite a bit of outrage about the situation both from people on the left and the right that I’m friends with anyway – not that that really matters because unfortunately, those people are of a small, considerably more educated class of people I’m sure, and while their outrage will be expressed, it’s not really gonna amount to anything and unfortunately they’re in too small of a minority of people to really assemble and have any impact at anything, so that doesn’t really matter anyway. There is a lawsuit that was filed I think – I forget who it was, Rand Paul was involved in part of it – but anyway there was somebody, they filed a lawsuit against Eric Holder, and NSA, and President Obama, and all sorts of stuff and it’d kind of be interesting to see if that goes somewhere.
I assume at this point that this whole thing’s gonna have to go the direction of the Supreme Court at this point in time. To your points, this is all gonna remain within you know, within the collective system, right? Like even if it goes to the Supreme Court, does it really change anything? I mean I guess it kind of defines what the law may or may not be but the fact that this is the sort of thing that could go to the Supreme Court is just – there’s a level of absurdity with it that’s I don’t know, it’s just – you know, actually who gave a really good interview – I thought today, I mean I know I like him obviously but I saw Ron Paul – did you see this interview?
Jad: No.
Kevin: It’s pretty good actually. He was interviewed by Piers Morgan.
Jad: Oh, God.
Kevin: Yeah, and I – fucking Piers Morgan, I just – Jesus Christ. But anyway, Piers Morgan was asking him about it and Ron Paul – towards the end of it – he goes off on some of his regular tangents that he does, you know, how the government does this in basically every regard. But he speaks pretty poignantly about the whole NSA thing and he actually makes a pretty good slight against Obama and he says specifically with respect to Edward Snowden, he’s like, “well frankly I think that President Obama needs to send Edward Snowden a thank you note”, and Piers is like, “well, what are you talking about?” He’s like, “well I mean, President Obama was the one who campaigned endlessly and tirelessly on this notion of transparency and I mean Edward Snowden just handed it right to him.”
So he’s like, “finally, we’ve got a little bit of transparency in the government. I’m glad somebody was able to do it”, and he was saying how he liked him so much. But anyway, he started speaking specifically about the NSA and just the egregiousness of this and Ron Paul, he’s like, “never mind the Constitution at this point”, he’s like, “this undermines – they’re trying to roll back the Magna Carter for God’s sakes.” You know, he’s like, “I mean, you’re taking this to a whole different level of anti-diplomacy, and I mean, just completely undermining the entire Western notion of any type of democratic process or due process whatsoever”, and I mean obviously I agree with these statements, but you know, unfortunately there’s him and well I think as you said on one of our episodes a long time ago, you’re like, “and so long as Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich were the only two talking about it, it doesn’t really matter, does it”, you know?
Jad: Yeah. It’s really in the abstract to me because I haven’t really heard any public opinion that makes me think people are that happy about it. It’s all – like I said – it’s all been abstracted, so nobody I know – like you said, Facebook wise and all that – is saying that it’s a good idea, which that does make me happy.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: But just the idea that the majority of Americans are happy with it is disturbing. But I was actually thinking that it could be, I mean at some point we’re gonna slip into [?] time where the polls are just bullshit numbers too, right? And I mean I’m not saying that’s the case now, I mean I’m totally willing to accept that a majority of Americans are happy that everything is being surveilled, but historically speaking, if at some point in the downslide and the tyranny, there’s always some point at which the President wins by 99% of the vote, you know?
It’s like where the public opinion is so far skewed from the reality that they just have to start making things up. And like I said, I’m not saying we’re there yet or anything, but I guess it makes you feel a little bit better, that’s a possibility at least because again, I haven’t – other than the fact that every politician except for Ron Paul is calling – what’s that guy’s name, what’s his first name?
Kevin: Edward Snowden.
Jad: Edward is calling that guy like – you know, charging him with treason.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I don’t know if you saw, but some insane psychopath who’s a senator in New York or something is calling for Glenn Greenwald to be arrested.
Kevin: What?
Jad: Yeah because he interviewed a traitor, right? So he wants –
Kevin: What?
Jad: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin: That’s crazy.
Jad: [?] find that, something King, maybe? New York?
Kevin: Let’s see, [reading] Glenn Greenwald to Pete King, is it Pete King?
Jad: Yeah, I’m not sure. I think it might – his last name might be King.
Kevin: Yeah it is, [reading] GOP’s Peter King wants Glenn Greenwald arrested.
Jad: Yeah. Read the thing, he’s really just genuinely saying that they should prosecute him.
Kevin: [reading] [?] Greenwald, the Guardian journalist should be subject to criminal prosecution. Jesus fucking Christ.
Jad: It could just be smoking mirrors, but that’s what just makes my head spin, like you said. Just makes me want to like, what the fuck is going on? Is everyone crazy? You’re gonna arrest a journalist for interviewing a guy that did a tremendous public service to all of humanity? And in the meantime you know, what’s his name, I can’t believe I can’t remember his name – I started drinking again during episodes.
Kevin: Well this explains a lot of –
Jad: Bradley Manning –
Kevin: Oh, Bradley Manning, yeah.
Jad: – is like, on trial now. And you know, there’s a reasonable public response to that, but it’s just not covered in the news at all, like it’s zero coverage.
And that’s where we leave this episode. Thanks to Lee Caffey[Sp?] and Chris Baton[Sp?] for providing us with quality sound engineering and editing – we wouldn’t get far without them. Hosting services are provided by CityCore LLC. Our graphical caricature was provided by our friend, Sayeed Mod Badril Sham [Sp?] in Malaysia, and transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media.
If you have any questions, comments, ideas for a show, or just want to say hello, we love receiving e-mail. You can find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you can find Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll be back with another episode soon.
]]>Our episode this week focuses on the idea of making abstract arguments to large groups of people.
Since Jad an I are especially interested in political philosophies and how they can be used to better the world, abstract topics are very familiar to us, but we also understand that they often appear very strange to others. As Jad will soon point out, abstracting an argument can often illustrate to a person how their emotions are not actually in line with their purported values.
For example, after Hurricane Sandy devastated the United States, and after seeing how emotionally distraught people were about the situation, I made the comparison that this type of destruction is happening regularly in other parts of the world, only with the backing and blessing of the United States military. In other words, if one purported to feel sympathy for someone after their house was destroyed by a hurricane, wouldn’t that same person feel sympathy for a person after their house was destroyed by a bomb? And if so, then wouldn’t that person want to prevent that destruction anyway possible?
Music
Kevin: Greetings, and welcome to another Throwback Thursday episode of the JK Podcast, and anti-authoritarian free speech zone, passionately pursuing liberty, humanity, and equality. In this episode, we travel back in time to November 14th, 2012 – just a week after president Obama was reelected. Our episode this week focuses on the idea of making abstract arguments to large groups of people. Since Jad and I are especially interested in political philosophies and how they can be used to better the world, abstract topics are very familiar to us. But we also understand that they often appear very strange to others.
As Jad will soon point out, abstracting an argument can often illustrate to a person how their emotions are not actually in line with their purported values. For example, after Hurricane Sandy devastated the United States and after seeing how emotionally distraught people were about the situation, I made the comparison that this type of destruction is happening regularly in other parts of the world, only with the backing and the blessing of the United States military.
In other words, if one purported to feel sympathy for someone after their house was destroyed by a hurricane, wouldn’t that same person have to feel sympathy for a person after their house was destroyed by a bomb and if so, then wouldn’t that person want to prevent the destruction anyway possible? I’m joined by the co-creator of the show, Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to the JK Podcast.
The one thing that I’m always trying to do and admittedly I do it very, very poorly, but this is probably the primary reason that I’m so engaged in debating and discussing with people on Facebook just because it’s a huge mesh of people that I can immediately have conversations with and people that I would never otherwise be able to converse with at this level, and every argument I’m going to give is going to be a reasonably wholesome – like, I never get into any sort of personal attack – and it took a while just to you know, to accomplish that in itself.
But having done it for so long now, the point is is that in every one of the situations and in every one of the debates I get into, I always try to find something that I can make the principal analogous to, so when somebody takes a really radical stance to say – or maybe not a radical stance per our country right now but what I would deem as a radical stance – say that a drone attack is actually beneficial. I mean I see that as radical, a lot of the country sees that as just daily life at this point. But there’s just so many parallels that can be drawn from that and people don’t like making those parallels, but every single time I try to invoke those parallels the very best that I can and like I said, most of the time I fail at that, but I’m getting a little better at it as I go on and I’m learning what works and what doesn’t work.
Just a couple of weeks ago with the whole hurricane thing, I did the very best that I could to make that analogous to what I was seeing going on in the Middle East because of course, I see the whole thing as being just awful and the point I was trying to compare, there are all these aerial shots of New Jersey and Southern New York just devastated, and I mean, having seen even more of it now, it really is just fascinating how I mean, that hurricane was way more devastating than I really imagined it was. But in any case, of course I immediately try to compare this to something that’s going on in the Middle East and I try to show you know, a village or whatever that has been equally desimated and to try to show people that this is happening on a regular basis.
Hurricane Sandy is striking voluntarily on very regular basis, and you’re the one contributing to all of this. And it’s not a philosophy that’s taken very well from people because of course, they see one of them as an act of God, and the other one as an act of humanity and of course, I use that to an even stronger degree to say that you’re right, one of them we can actually control, the other one we can’t. And the point is at the end of the day, this causes the same destruction, and devastation, and heartache, and every single emotion that you’re experiencing here, those people over there are experiencing as well – the only difference is is that you can only blame God; they are blaming the United States and its allies for this type of destruction.
And there’s no better thing that’s going to come out of this at the end of the day, so all this is trying to really get at there was that I want to tie that main argument into people’s minds wherever I can. I want to try to find an analogous argument or philosophy to try to get into people’s head and say this is the exact same circumstance – even if it’s a completely different act that’s occurring, the end result is exactly the same. And if that’s the case, if you can see in your head how terrible this destruction is – or whatever it is – how terrible this act is now apply that to another method, and try to figure out why inside of your head that doesn’t resonate as strongly with you.
Why are you so upset about this, but you’re not upset about that? And I think it’s just a really important philosophy that people need to consider for themselves and of course, very few people do and I don’t know that I’m – I don’t know that I’ve done much good in promoting that cause, but I am trying.
Jad: Yeah, well when you do that what you’re doing – I think that’s a great argument – honestly, sadly – not sadly – it didn’t even occur to me to make that argument, it’s pretty spot on perfect. And the thing is when I think, when you make that argument, you’re no longer appealing to people’s self interest, you’re not making the utilitarian argument. I mean I guess there’s some utilitarianism in there somewhere, but what you’re saying is like, this is just obviously awful and you’re emotions are not in line with your purported values. If you claim that all people are equal and you claim that watching people suffer is awful, but in reality one you dismiss and one you allow yourself to feel emotions for.
You’re driving into the territory of the anarchist argument which is – gets much worse responses, or at least risks worse responses because I still haven’t pieced this together yet. I was thinking about this – we were talking about this a couple weeks ago with Tom – I think it might be because it becomes a moral argument, right? When you say we have the – like your infrastructure argument – we need education at home, we need jobs at home, we need all that and we’re spending trillions of dollars doing nothing in a global empire, right? People are like, “yeah, that’s stupid you know, I [?] lost my job. Why’d I lose my job? Well, maybe because all this wealth is being drained off to go make some oil men you know, some money somewhere” – that’s not right and so I’m against it.
When you bring up the argument of you are not feeling appropriately remorseful for the deaths of these people over here, then you’re making a moral argument, you see what I’m saying? And I’m still piecing this together myself, I really haven’t figured out exactly how it all fits together, but there’s one argument that will really make people angry, or has the potential to –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and the other one is sort of a take it or leave it thing. I mean you could even imagine someone being like, “oh, I don’t mind you know, paying $5,000 dollars a year to kill some rag heads”, or whatever. Like you know, it’s a – basically it’s a value proposition, right? On the one side it’s a value proposition, on the other side it seems like it may be it’s a moral argument of some sort and that’s why I think people react more strongly to it. I don’t really know, like I said it’s just something I was thinking through. But it seems like that argument you just unleashed – your hurricane argument – is the kind of thing Tom would drop you know, and I think it’s different than your other argument somehow.
Kevin: Well I mean I guess I’ll definitely take that as some sort of different progress. The thing that’s been pointed out to me before by numerous, numerous people – and this is I guess kinda where I’m at in my own philosophical thoughts is that there is a discernable difference between your own community versus somebody else’s community, and as much as I don’t think that that should be the case – I don’t have any facts to back this – but apparently, the majority of people – or at least intuitively it seems – the majority of people are of that mindset that what happens to your local community is more important than what happens to your global community, and that’s just the way that people think.
People don’t think on a very large scale you know, and of course that’s what you hear from people all the time that are on the libertarian side and assume the anarchist as well is to say there’s no such thing as over there. Over here, over there, it’s the exact same thing – we’re the same people – but that’s not necessarily true. That’s true in a philosophical sense, it’s true in our minds – or it’s definitely true in my mind, I assume it’s true in your mind as well – but many people don’t share that sentiment and that’s where the argument fails, that’s where the philosophy fails is to say, “this group is not the same as my group. The people that got hurt in New York or in New Jersey as a result of this hurricane, those people mean more to me than those people do over in Iraq.”
“I don’t care if those people die, I do care if these people die”, my point being that internally, I think the internal mechanism – and it’s probably a nurture over a nature sort of thing – but internally I think people are more of the mindset to say that they want to spare their people over other people, and that’s why people pay less attention to us killing people over there frankly.
Jad: I think you’re 100% correct; I don’t disagree with your analysis at all. But to your original point about people’s reaction to your argument, I think if I had that opinion then you’re not challenging me on a moral basis, right? If you said, “Hurricane Sandy did this, but there is a Hurricane Sandy every week in Afghanistan”, they’d be like, “well fuck it, I don’t care about those people”, right?
You’re not calling them out, you’re not challenging them on a moral basis, but I think – and I could be totally wrong, I don’t know what your experience is with this – I find that the stickiest situations I get in rhetorically are when you say it to somebody who believes or purports to believe that all people are equal, that humans are humans, and it doesn’t matter how far away you are, et cetera, et cetera, and then you say, “well then how is it that you claim to believe X, but your reaction to these two situations demonstrates you don’t really believe that’s true.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So you’re – at that point you’re like basically calling them a hypocrite in a you know, not necessarily directly, but that can be interpreted that way, you see what I’m saying? I think that’s where you get the people who are like, “well fuck you”, you know?
Kevin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jad: Anyway.
Kevin: Well through [?] no, and that’s the perfect part of it so I mean that’s my other kind of – I don’t really have any philosophies around it – but I mean if there’s a single pet peeve that I have as far as being a human being and I think it ties into all philosophy and it just comes back to the notion of hypocrisy and I think that my philosophy of what philosophy should entail is to avoid hypocrisy at all points and in the sense of what we’re talking about right now, that’s what I try to do and on one side, of course I try to do it against the religious arguments, and on the other side I try to do it against the welfare arguments.
One that I’ve written extensively about – and I think I even brought this up with us once, I can’t remember – is I often equate the starving kids in Africa to Apple and Apple sales, and it’s such a completely farfetched type of analogy on one hand, but what I’ve told people before is you know, you’re aware of this problem, you all are aware of this problem and if you’re on the left hand side of the equation, you’re the people who want to intervene all around the world on the notion of humanitarianism – you’re the ones who want to do this – and that’s just what you purport as an individual to be a part of and I don’t care if you’re in that group or not.
But if you are in that group you have to own up to what that group purports to be a part of and yet on the other hand, what’s more important to you, giving $400 dollars to starving children in Africa – which $400 dollars in Africa I mean, that’ll probably help 20 kids survive 2 years – or is it getting the next iPad because that’s the cool thing to have? And in 10 out of 10 cases, or in 100 in 100 cases, or 1,000 in 1,000 cases, the answer is indisputably, “I’d rather get my new iPad because I need it”, and maybe somebody even makes that stupid rationalization that we were talking about earlier to say, “well with this iPad, I can tell people all about the rest of the world”, but that’s just some bullshit political argument.
At the end of the day, you’re the same sort of hypocrite that somebody on the right is who’s purporting religion and also not helping people – it’s the same bullshit. And those are the types of arguments that I try to bring up with those people as well. I don’t know how farfetched you find it, but –
Jad: Oh hell no. No, I actually was listening to whatever conversation you brought up the first time, and it’s totally legit, you know? I almost quit my job and went to Africa that day. I mean, I think that is a profound argument. I mean, I guess it’s used by bullies – not in your case – but I think that’s people who try to guilt other people into doing X because of their status as a person that has money or whatever. I think it’s a great argument the same way the Hurricane Sandy thing is. It’s the kind of thing that’s going to get people upset, you know, at least – just because they’re going to be flustered.
They don’t think about that on a day to day basis, you know? And it’s not that they don’t care, that’s the thing, I can’t quite pull it apart in my head because I don’t believe that they don’t care, it’s just that they think they care more than they do, or something like that – I really don’t, I can’t quite pull it apart but there’s something interesting there.
Kevin: It’s hard to figure it out, right? I mean that’s what makes it interesting to me as well and you know, it wasn’t that long ago one of my friends’ cousins – who is about five years younger than me probably, so a bit younger than you as well. He just likes listening to me online and he listens to the podcast and all that sort of jazz and he’s a real good kid. But anyways, like he’s recently kind of learned about politics and I mean he’s just over – I don’t want to say over the top – but he’s definitely over the top with respect to how engaged he is all of a sudden.
I mean it’s just – that’s the only thing that’s interesting to him all of a sudden. And he actually – he seeks out my advice a lot, which I’m really flattered that he even comes to me for that, and he’s just really trying to wrap his head around you know, “well why do all these people say this and then they do this”, or, “why do all these people – you know, they claim that they don’t want these wars to exist, but then they’re voting for Obama”, and he’s like, “you know, they claim that they want to have a stable country but then they’re dismissive of some of Romney’s policies that maybe he brought up”, and just back and forth.
And I told him I guess the same sort of thing that I told you earlier in this conversation is that I said, “Look, if you want to try to engage people in politics, it’s just like trying to engage people in religion, I suppose. You can’t go into the conversation and think that you’re going to change anybody’s minds. You have to get yourself to the point of understanding that what you’re about to say has no intention of changing somebody’s mind because if you do, then you’re the same as the person that you despise, you’re just trying to use a forceful argument to get your way. Instead what you have to do is you have to approach it from a point of view to say, ‘look, this is what I really believe, and I believe it enough to tell you about it, and take it as you will’, and you just have to get smart enough to sell that to somebody and hopefully plant the seed.”
And so my hope of making that African to Apple argument is the exact same sort of thing. I don’t think that at the end of the day when I describe that to somebody – which I have in a number of occasions when welfare arguments have come about – I don’t ever think that somebody take it and is like, “oh, that’s a good point. I’m going to sell all my Apple products and donate them to charity organizations in Africa”, but I like to think that there’s some seed planted somewhere that in time can maybe grow and blossom into something that has a meaningful mindset in their head, which inevitably takes me back to the evil argument to say it’s not a bad thing that you’re going to do that. What you need to do though is accept the fact that at the end of the day, it is more important to you to have that Apple product than it is to give that money to those starving African children. That’s OK, that’s humanity, that’s the “Everyone is Evil” encompassing idea to say everybody is that way.
Everybody is just as evil – that’ san evil act, it’s a selfish act. You’d rather have your own little device that prevents starving children from dying, but we’re all programmed that way. My goal is to say just admit that to yourself so that we can progress as a society rather than trying to live behind this blanket that you’re somehow doing better than somebody else, or doing better for the world than somebody else – because you’re not. We’re all guilty of the same crimes against one another.
Jad: Right. No, I think it’s brilliant – the add on being that if someone else tells you that they care that much but they’re not doing anything different then they’re not telling you the truth, and if a politician tells you that they care but they’re not doing anything different, then they’re also not telling the truth. Everyone is – like you said – everyone is making the exact same choice, which is, “I would rather have this for myself than that for some stranger.”
Kevin: Right. Well that’s [?] the end game for me I guess, is to say – at least I believe this – is that if we were capable of coming to that realization ourselves, then I believe that systematically we would come to that realization about politicians. But instead, because we can so easily lie to ourselves I mean, we can easily accept the lies of one another because you want to believe shit, and I mean I haven’t gone to therapies, or a psychologist, or psychiatrist, or things like that before, but it’s my understanding that every single one of them says the exact same sort of thing – or like AA groups, all that sort of shit.
If you can’t admit the problem to yourself, you can’t solve the problem, and I think that problem is that we just lie to ourselves about the way the world really is, and this is a little deeper than I intended to get with it, but I think if we could resolve that, if we could just get to that point where we accept who we are and accept that I’m just as selfish as the next guy, but that tells me that that politician is too, so maybe I shouldn’t believe the bullshit that he’s selling. Let’s try to actually have a progressive ideal rather than me believing this nonsense that the guy’s selling, then I think we could actually make some progress politically in a structured society.
And we’ll leave you on that note this week. If you’re not able to follow such abstract arguments, we hope that you’ll at least consider drawing some parallels for yourself at somewhat of a philosophical exercise in humanity. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in to the show. We sure do love hearing from our listeners and we’ll leave you with some instructions for how to contact us. Both Jad and I can be reached through our podcast website at www.JKPod.com, or individually if you so prefer – Jad is at www.Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com. Our podcast transcription services are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. Thanks again, and we’ll catch you next week.
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On August 11th of 2012 a drunken and incapacitated high school girl in Steubenville Ohio was repeatedly sexually assaulted by some of her peers.
The incident was posted on a variety of social media outlets and eventually led to a trial. The two primary culprits were found guilty back in March of this year. We consider the complicated nature of stopping practices like this through laws versus societal pressures.
Later in the episode we discuss the abuse of both women and children in society and what it would take to change that. We’re joined this week by our old friend Tom DeLorenzo.
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This week Jad introduces us to a philosophical idea he had been twirling around in his head about giving up on the political process. He essentially concludes that once you’ve discovered without question that the deck is stacked against you no matter how perfectly you play the game, why would keep playing?
Jad articulates this point quite a bit better than I just did, but that’s the gist. Of course there are no arguments from my corner.
Although that’s the bulk of the show, we also transition into some thoughts on government formation and even discuss a favorite Harvard professor of mine by the name of Michael Sandel.
Links
Music
Kevin: Hello and welcome back to the JK Podcast, and antiauthoritarian free speech zone dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. This week, Jad introduces us to a philosophical idea he had been twirling around in his head about giving up on the political process. He essentially concludes that once you’ve discovered without question that the deck is stacked against you no matter how perfectly you play the game, why would you keep playing?
Jad articulates this point quite a bit better than I just did, that’s the gist of it. Of course, there are no arguments from my corner. Although that’s the bulk of the show, we also transition into some thoughts on government formation, and even discuss a favorite Harvard professor of mine by the name of Michael Sandel. As always, the show is hosted by Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow – that’s me. So sit back and enjoy this 20 minute ride into the JK Podcast.
Jad: [?] something else that I was thinking of while I was constructing picnic [?] tables. The argument is when do you give up on the political process? Like, when do you say, “okay, this isn’t gonna work”. So you know that Ron Paul is saying this time around if you say you’re all in, 2012 Ron Paul, you go to your local caucus or whatever, you see to win that caucus or do whatever, and in your watching the entire republican system collapse on your guy essentially and basically – in a certain way of thinking about it – the entire exercise, the entire primary season, was just a concerted effort to keep Ron Paul out.
You’ve probably followed this more closely than I did, but he was finishing essentially a third in every race, right? He was – usually it was like, whoever was the leader and then Mitt Romney or something – you know, Ron Paul, or Ron Paul was second, or sometimes he won, but the joke was always that it was like, yeah, Rick Perry was first, and Newt Gingrich was third, and so and so was fourth and fifth, and like, they didn’t even mention who was second.
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: Anyway, point being that like, if you put all of your time and effort and energy in and you go to Florida and you end up you know, getting locked out and all that sort of stuff, you could either be totally disenchanted, or you could be like, “well look, I’ve tried as hard as I possibly can inside of the system to make it work, so clearly, this can’t happen; like, there’s no amount of extra effort I can give that’s going to accomplish this task. I’ve given it all I can do, I gave it you know, my heart and soul – everyone else did too – it’s not working, and so we’re going elsewhere.”
I kind of feel like you have the potential because you know, you have infinite energy and talent, so like, you have the potential to do that on a local scale, right? You wanna run for city council, or you want to – and now we’ve got the 10/1 thing happening, so that’s gonna all be you know, city council’s gonna be up in the air. So –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: So again, that’s just a core idea, but I had THC driven insight that made it more exciting. But I guess it was just that you also have like, the grassroots appeal to you like you know, you’re sort of a populist. So anyway, I was just thinking it would be cool. If you did run, I’d be like, well, I’m gonna try one campaign and see if this works. I’m gonna buy into the system, I’m gonna go vote for somebody and maybe I’ll put up a yard sign and whatever else – which is about as much energy as I give for anything – and see how it works out.
Kevin: Well damn, I just need 5,000 more people like you because that’s a hell of a motivation speech there, appreciate that. You know, I think the easiest way to say it is – to the question that was in there – is you know, I watch a lot of movies and in fact, I went to NYU for a while and studied in film school and was doing writing and stuff like that there for arts and for film, and television just because I really enjoy that.
So I really enjoy writing and one of the things that I’ve always learned with film and arts and everything else is that the people who are successful in it, they do it because they love doing what it is that they are doing and comedy usually has the best response from people just because comedy is so very subjective. It’s pretty easy to make something dramatic. I mean, you’d make a film of somebody’s mother dying and it’s a sad story, right – I mean that’s just general human interest. But comedy is a lot more subjective and I think it’s way trickier.
And so what you’ll find is that most people who are good comedians or are good at writing comedy – which I am not at all – but they all say the same thing and it’s just they say that they’re writing what they thought was funny and if somebody else happened to find it funny as well, then so be it. But at the end of the day, they just genuinely believed that what they were doing made them laugh and so they continued with it and – I mean the South Park guys say that all the time and their humor is not for everybody, for sure.
Translating that though into a political spectrum, I think that the problem with politicians is that most politicians don’t believe what it is that they’re saying in the first place. I think that most of them just kind of get on board with this notion that you can accomplish certain things by being a politician and you can further your career. I mean just in a nutshell, that’s the metaphor – you can further your career. In my world view – much like the whole comedy writing sort of thing, I just genuinely believe the things that I say and I genuinely believe the things that I’m passionate about.
And so to our point, I mean, no matter how far I went with it, it doesn’t matter how many election I lost or how many people turned me down or whatever it is, at the end of the day I still believe those things, so I don’t feel bad – I’m spouting them out. I don’t need validation from other people. If people want to validate me, then that’s much to my benefit – I’ll certainly take it and that excites me of course, and it does fuel me way more.
If all of a sudden, thousands of people started reading my book I mean shit, I’d probably have another one churned out in a couple of weeks. But either way, I’m still gonna write that second one eventually, and either way I’m still gonna be espousing the same views because I just think that they are important – to me, at very least – and so if that appeals to somebody else then by all means, I’d be happy to try to lead that train.
But that’s not my starting point I guess, and I think that’s different from a lot of people who are in the political field. I think they genuinely seek the power train – and maybe not even for negative reasons, but that’s their endgame is to say, “I am the person in charge”, and I just don’t feel that way.
Jad: Sure. Right. Well and like you said, they are choosing to be less than authentic in order to achieve something, whatever it may be. It could be a you know, a lofty social goal, or it could be personal aggrandizement, or just a career, you know? But they are going to drain themselves essentially because their exterior personality or exterior presence is not in line with their actual
values.
Kevin: Yeah, I think so. And so if I use my same parallel argument, I don’t know if it’s a great analogy, but just like in the entertainment world, there’s actors, and comedians, and everything else that – they sell out all of the time. And why do they do it? Well they do it because you know, they make friends in the business and those guys have ideas and they want their ideas to get out there.
I mean, kind of like the Adam Sandlers of the world who are just notorious for this. I mean the guy had some great ideas 20 years ago and he wrote them and I love laughing at them, and ever since then you’re just like, “Jesus Christ man, really? You’re gonna – that’s what you’re doing now? That’s what you think is comical?” I don’t believe that for a second and I think in the political world it’s the exact same way.
So churn into the whole Rand Paul thing, I don’t know, I mean, he’s made connections in it – inside of the business now, he wants to appease some of them, some of them can further his career, some of it probably makes him money, some of it guarantees his success, some of it guarantees his longevity, and then he justifies it in his head, “well, it would be better to have longevity in this field and to maybe get to share 10% of my actual principles than to have 0% longevity in this whole thing and try to share 100% with those couple of friends who would otherwise listen”, so you know that’s that rationalization that I think people in those positions come to and frankly, takes you right back to my “everyone is evil” sort of concept, and that’s what I hope to resist at some point is that notion if I ever get to cross that bridge.
In fact, that’s what I even say about it is that everyone is evil, it’s just a fact that
very, very, very few people in this world are ever going to get the chance to cross that bridge to
something that actually matters – it just doesn’t happen. We’re not
that fortunate in those sorts of circumstances and I like to think that should I ever get to one of
those bridges, I would take the attitude that I – what I hold right now. But who
knows, because I’ve never been there, so easier said than done.
Jad: Sure apparently, because like you always say, it never happens, right? Everyone who gets the ring of power uses the ring of power to wreak havoc on everyone else.
Kevin: Seems to be the case, that’s the best I can figure.
Jad: Yeah, which actually brings me to another thing I had thought of last night which was I was gonna give you an example of the “against me” argument. I think that’s [?] setup, so I was listening to the part where we talked about – which we’ve talked about twice now – I think one time you said it as a ski trip – the ski trip story – the other time I think you had it as like, what happens if you drop 20 people on an island sort of scenario. But the idea is the same like, a small group of people are suddenly cut off from all resources and the rest of civilization somehow or other, and then your point being that leadership is a natural human trait.
Somebody will – and I think you said when you were imagining the ski trip – you know, you’ve been leading this trip, you’ve been directing people, getting them where they need to go, getting them all the stuff they need, getting them checked into their hotels, blah, blah, blah, and then the apocalypse happens and you [?] on a hill somewhere. You’re sort of the natural leader in the sense that that’s the pattern that’s been built up, and then you say – if I misstate your story, let me know – but you imagine that you might be a – or you or whoever the ski leader is – might work voluntarily with everyone for years and years or however long, but at some point in time that role, it’s transmorphed into you know, a non-voluntary role – a classic authoritarian, political leader role.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So then the question is, if I was on a ski trip with you and you said – at any point in time, whenever it was – you said, “and Jad, you have to do X”, and I said, “no, I don’t think I’m gonna do that, I’m just gonna walk away, I’m gonna leave”, would you use violence against me in that situation? I mean, you can imagine it as awful as a situation as you want, but would you be willing to exercise that supposedly natural role against your old friend Jad?
Kevin: Well I’m inclined to say definitely not, but I’m also inclined to consider my ongoing philosophy about that is to say in such a situation, you know, it’s one of those things that it’s so impossible, it’s such a hypothetical to consider, right? I mean, I can imagine the end of the world in my head right now, and I can imagine having to leave this small group of survivors in some sort of survivalist type of situation, but whatever’s in my head is so far removed from what that situation would actually be like. I mean, when genuinely every single person you’ve ever known has been obliterated somehow or another, the psychological toll that that would take on people I just think is so much different – or even just being stranded.
I mean, the same sort of thing like the whole Castaway type of movie, but a group of 10 of us or whatever, when you really get to a point of thinking, “this is it, this is where we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives, completely secluded, nobody will ever know about it.” So I think that the answer is no, and I mean, I guess I’ve had certain situations where that has come about, obviously not with any severity. I think in my case, what I would certainly try to do is to apply various forms of diplomacy and at a certain point, I think what the aggressive moment would be for a rational – let’s just say it’s a monarch or like an authoritarian type of regime but it’s a good one, like it’s a wholesome one – you know, I’ve genuinely worked to your interest. I’ve tried to help you in any way possible and to make sure that we’re all progressing and safe, and we have shelter, we have the basic human needs that we’re looking for.
I think probably the consequence that at some point I guess I would invoke would be to say, “okay well look, we need to work as a team and if you’re unwilling to work as a teammate, then at a certain point, you’re just a drain on this group and if that’s the case then you probably need to go about your own way.” And it just kind of takes you into like, the whole welfare mentality but just at a really small group. If you’re just gonna take from our resources, if you’re gonna live under our roof and you’re gonna take the food that we’re getting and the warmth that we have, and the clothing that we’d been working so hard to prepare, then you’ve gotta put in to get that back and I guess the only thing I could say is I wouldn’t think that I should have to put in any less than you just because I was the leader in that particular case.
But if you’re completely unwilling to do that then I guess at the end of the day, you have to leave. And so if you take that analogy even further as far as how those tribal groups come about, I could see that happening as well where in time you kind of put the rebel forces together because you’re pissed off, and eventually wage war on us.
Jad: You mean the person you vote off the island comes back with a vengeance?
Kevin: Yeah, exactly. I mean, well just as another completely hypothetical type of situation, but yeah. So in this point, you feel it’s unjust, I feel that you know, the group – there’s 10 of us, whatever – 9 out of 10 of us feel like, “look, nobody wants you to leave, but you need to contribute”, and you say, “look, I don’t need to contribute to this group, you guys are doing fine without me and frankly I just – I’m not really cut out for this work.”
And so we say, “you have to leave”, and you feel that that’s unjust, whether it is or not is subjective so it doesn’t matter – no need to debate it – but you feel it’s unjust and you ban together with other people over time and eventually you come back and say, “well, I know where there’s a group of people who’ve got a whole bunch of stuff and I don’t like them to begin with, so let’s just go take them over” – I could see that as being –
Jad: That’s very interesting.
Kevin: – see that as being a plausible scenario.
Jad: And so in that case, you have to keep that person around even though they don’t do anything because they’re a threat to your regime in the long term.
Kevin: Yeah, so –
Jad: I’m kind of getting – that’s crazy hypothetical at that point, but carry on, you sound like you had a follow up so I didn’t mean to step on it.
Kevin: No, that’s fine. I mean that could be the situation too, right? Like you could you know, I think knowing what we know now about human civilization, psychology, applying the intelligence that we have gathered through thousands of years of research, and books, and passing on information, it’s easier to make that decision now.
It’s easier in a modern day sense but if this were to happen, for me to say you know, to consult the elders so to speak, and be like, “well, we can kick him out but if we do, he’s probably gonna die. If he doesn’t die, we risk him avenging us somehow, he knows where we are. Wouldn’t it be better just to take this as a loss?” The problem then becomes though if in doing so, you become the poison for the group and now other people are like, “well wait a second, he doesn’t do shit, so I’m not gonna do shit either”, and eventually you have a complete system breakdown, so I think that’s where some of these authoritarianesque questions come into play. You know, the doing something for the greater good, which I know is a very distasteful notion – certainly to you but to me as well – but I think that’s where some of those fundamentally start getting their roots at least.
Jad: Well we can imagine that scenario anyway, where 9 out of 10 people would agree it as a greater good question, right? But then again, I mean, now I’m really going down the hypothetical path, but then again like you – you’re still not proposing violence against the person, you’re proposing ostracism, right – which is an entirely legitimate – I mean, you don’t have to associate with anyone you don’t want to associate with.
The usual authoritarian model is the inverse though, right? You have to associate with us. Like, you can you know – like in your scenario or whatever – you don’t have to be part of the food gathering sort of stuff, but you have to travel 500 miles from us or something. Then you’re getting to the point – and if we catch you within that 500 mile radius then we’ll kill you –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – or whatever. Then you tread into the non-political model as opposed to a leadership model.
Kevin: Right. And I think that this is – I mean I have actually philosophized [?] about these ideas before to some degree at least – and I’ve always kind of envisioned that this is probably taking it taking it a step further, this is probably where the basis of laws start coming into play. So maybe we determine that we don’t wanna kick you out of our group for whatever reason, any number of those rational ideals that we had you know, you know where we are and maybe you’ll come back and try to hurt us, maybe the humanitarian, we don’t want you to die, we like you otherwise but clearly you’re not contributing.
And so now I think that’s where laws come from is where you know, you start saying, “okay, well here’s where the group decides, the amount of food that you get is…”, and immediately you introduce these ridiculous – because you try to quantify the problem – so you introduce these ridiculous notions of saying, “okay, well people who work, people who gather food, they’re able to have 60% of the bounty, and the other people who don’t actually gather the food, they’re only entitled to 40% of the bounty. People who make the clothing, they’re entitled to 80% of the clothing, whereas the other 20% are able to then get that”, and then this whole system of trading comes about. Now you’re saying, “Well goddammit, I don’t have as much but I also don’t eat as much so I’ve got all this extra food. Will you give the food that I have saved”, and vis a vis this entire – the whole system starts itself back up.
Jad: Black market.
Kevin: There it is.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: So I don't know, I mean obviously that’s all kind of far-fetched and it’s I mean, you could create any number of dystopian philosophies behind it, but if I were writing the book that’s [?] mine.
Jad: Right. Right. Well and I think that’s the life boat – it’s a [?] life boat problem, right? Have you heard that phrase?
Kevin: I’ve not.
Jad: Some people don’t like these debates and I think they’re entertaining and I think they have value, but the idea that because under the circumstances of your surviving on an island and some guy is gonna leave and raise rebel force to destroy you because in that case you have to use force, that’s how we have to be in Iraq.
The life boat scenario being the one where you have to kill somebody or – the life boat scenario, the classic one is you know, there’s 20 people in a boat that can hold 19 people. Here’s the list of people and you know, here’s there kids, their parents, or their Nobel Prize winners, or whoever they are, so who do you throw overboard, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So the classic is thing is where you’re already in a situation where there’s no option, it’s either one person dies or everyone dies, you know? Or like the other one with the train tracks, there’s like one person tied up on a train track, but if you – and there’s a train load of people coming at them – you know, if you save the person on the track, the train load of people will drive off a cliff or whatever.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Anyway, so it’s just that situation in which you’re going to have to be a murderer, now how do you do it and what argument do you make to justify the way you chose to act? It kind of is used to derail otherwise reasonable conversations – not that you’ve ever done it like that, but it does happen.
Kevin: Sure. I think I sent you this a while back, but there’s a guy by the name of Michel Sandel who is a Harvard political science professor and I guess, law professor also, and at least one semester that they did, they put the entire semester online and it’s basically a way to take a poly sci course from Harvard online, and it’s absolutely fascinating I mean, I love it. I’ve watched the entire thing and I think there’s 16 one hour episodes, or technically 32 half an hour episodes, but there’s two at a time, and anyway, that’s actually the very first opening conversation that he gives the class because many of these people have never been exposed to philosophy before and it’s certainly not any type of political philosophy and he actually does the railroad example.
He said, “So there’s a train and the train is loaded with people and you’re the engineer, and there’s a wheel that you can steer. And to one side of the train is a group of five people and they’re on the tracks, and on the other side is just a man. He’s a worker on the track, but he’s all by himself and you have the ability to change the track where you can steer that direction. What’s your decision that you make?” And of course it’s to get everybody to say that you know, you’re ultimately going to strive to only kill the one person if you can spare the five right, because it’s a quantifiable sort of action.
But then he immediately sets the story up right after that and of course again, the overwhelming majority of the class has chosen to kill the one person instead of the five because there’s nothing that you can do about it, but now he makes up this fictitious story where he says, “okay, well here’s a slightly different story. At this point”, he’s like, “you’ve got the same five people, but now the worker’s not there anymore and there’s only one track. But standing over the track is a really fat man and you can push the fat man onto the track. If you do this, he’ll stop the train, but the man will die, but the other five people will survive. What do you do?” And of course in this case, almost everybody says that they would not push the fat man onto the tracks and of course his immediate response is to say, “Well what became of the principle of quantifying the deaths of people? Why is this no longer important?”
In this scenario, it seems that they’re identical and yet for some reason, for some intrinsic reason they’re not and I just think it’s a wonderful introduction to political science and philosophy in general. But anyway, my – the only reason I brought that up is to say that I actually really love those arguments and can discuss them all day.
Jad: Sure, sure. That’s a good one. I remember seeing that, it was something to do with the agency was the only thing that you could really say is different.
Kevin: Well yeah, and there’s the interesting – you know, it brings up interesting thoughts as far as well, who’s actually involved in the situation. In one case, one of the two has to die, right? It’s an either or in the first case, and in the second case technically the one man doesn’t have to die. Those other people, they’re already on a track to die, this guy doesn’t have to die so he has a 0% chance of dying – you’re gonna have to invoke that. And in the first case, the group of five has a 50% chance of dying, and the person of 1 has a 50% chance of dying. So you know, there’s some interesting philosophies that you can take out of it.
Jad: Sure. Sure. Yeah, the interesting thing about that in the context of ethics or political science is again, because the interesting aspect of the life boat scenario is 100% knowledge, right – you have absolute knowledge. The problem is that that sort of decision making doesn’t scale at all, it doesn’t even scale the problem itself, right? I mean, you push the fat man in front of the train and somehow it doesn’t derail the train and then everyone dies, you know? So –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – but it scales even less to be like, “you know, we’re gonna have to starve or bomb 30,000 people to death, but probably in 30 or 40 years that will turn our better for everyone else around them”, you know? The rationale – the logic of it – goes back to the life boat scenarios.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Yeah, I don’t think they’re dangerous or bad or anything, and they’re very interesting, but they’re not particularly productive in the context of trying to philosophize again about social organization.
Kevin: So we leave you with some thoughts on fat men and trains – just some of the interesting tidbits from Michael Sandel’s political science class, which incidentally can be found online and we’ll post a link on the site to get you there. Thanks as always for tuning in to the show. It’s listeners like you that make the podcast worth the while in the first place. If you’d like to get in touch with us, please stop by either of our websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com. You can also find all of our podcast episodes at our website at www.JKPod.com. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you really soon.
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This week we bring you another of our Throwback Thursday episodes. If you’re just now joining us, our Throwback Thursday series is comprised of earlier recordings that never made the final cut. Essentially podcast b-sides.
This particular episode takes us back to November 7th, 2012, just a day after the 2012 general election. In addition to the presidential election, statewide elections also took place and we draw our focus to two of those particular elections. The great states of Colorado and Washington both legalized marijuana. In doing so, both states took a huge step forward in eradicating the absolutely absurd idea of protecting people from themselves through the even more absurd moniker of “The War on Drugs”.
Perhaps even more important is that this action pointed a giant middle finger towards the federal government. Now 8 months later, both states seem to be doing just fine though we’re always curious to see what kind of threats federal agents have planned next.
We discuss the changing times, states rights, and Jad even provides us with some background on the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. This begins a larger discussion on how the IRS may be used to control state’s rights in the future of drug prohibition.
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Kevin: Hello and welcome to another installment of the JK Podcast, an anti-authoritarian free speech zone passionately pursuing liberty, humanity, and equality for all people. This week we bring you another of our Throwback Thursday episodes. If you’re just now joining us, our Throwback Thursday episodes are comprised of earlier recordings that never made the final cut – essentially, they’re podcast B sides.
This particular episode takes us back to November 7th, 2012, just a day after the 2012 general election. In addition to the presidential election, statewide elections also took place and we draw our focus to two of those particular elections. The great states of Colorado and Washington both legalized marijuana. In doing so, both states took a huge step towards eradicating the absolutely absurd idea of protecting people from themselves through the even more absurd moniker of the “war on drugs”. Perhaps even more important is that this action pointed a giant middle finger towards the federal government.
Now eight months later, both states still seem to be doing just fine, though we’re always curious to see what kind of threats federal agents have planned next. In this episode we discuss the changing times, state’s rights, and Jad even provides us with some background on the marijuana tax act of 1937. This begins a large discussion on how the IRS may be used to control state’s rights in the future of drug prohibition.
Joining us for this episode is our friend, Tom DeLorenzo, who incidentally was having some mic problems, and we apologize for the poor quality. As always, I’m joined by the co-creator, Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to our show.
Well I think that was a practical example that just came about yesterday, right? Colorado – the marijuana passing – and I really think an application in our society anyways you know – may have to put some real terms to it – but I think that’s I mean, it’s going to expose all sorts of questions because I think the reality is is that probably a lot of people in this country really do disagree with the way that the drug war works. I think most people are fairly rational about it, but at the same time nobody really seems willing to take the rational, scientific, statistical side of it – for whatever reason – it’s just a you know, it’s 100 years embedded into the culture, and all sorts of negative things, probably Judeo-Christian[?] things behind it, et cetera.
So I’m really curious to see what happens here now that we’ve got one state challenging – or two states in this case – challenging it. I think it would be really interesting as a social experiment to see exactly what that means because the rest of the country is just going to start kinda dogging on those two states and saying that this is horrible, they shouldn’t do this, this is socially unacceptable, this is terrible for children, it’s a poor influence, et cetera – like all those sorts of things. Or is the rest of the country going to very quickly kinda start realizing like, this is absolutely absurd that we’re even debating this. Of course we should change this law, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and from a statist point of view I mean, there’s tax money to be made from this, it’s safer, we can regulate it, we can end this dependency on whatever else – just fill in the blanks. So –
Tom: Well annoyingly for you enough I tend to be optimistic along those lines because yeah, I think maybe when new ideas, when new paradigms come along, people hear about them and they think about them and they might think they’re a good idea, but they look around and they see everybody else outwardly doesn’t support it, so they don’t.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: But it’s in their head and if you only see one or two people standing up with their protest signs or doing something it’s like man, you know, they’re on their own over there. Yeah, if a whole state changes a law like that you know, then the state next to it then goes, “well, we can do that.” I think it’s in people’s minds and they’re aware of it and they think it’s a good idea, and maybe one state, a state or two starts [?] then that might be enough for everybody to just say, “look, there’s enough people doing that. They’re allowed to, we should be able to do it because it’s a stupid idea, it was always a stupid idea, let’s just change it.”
So yeah, I can see how a small number, but large enough to kinda be perceived as a stable [?] is enough for people to jump in and say, “yep, good idea”, especially if they’ve been kinda marinating in that idea for a number of years. I think – especially with drugs – I think a lot of people are kinda relate[?] to the fact that it’s a little bit ridiculous, the technicalities that are –
Kevin: Sure.
Tom: – [?] marijuana, for example.
Kevin: Well I think it goes to a larger point and one that I’m very passionate about is the you know, state’s rights, 10th amendment sort of thing, at least from a constitutional point of view because I mean we’ve all but removed state’s rights from the country at this point, so I’d be very curious to see how this plays out and to see if that has any effect on the state rights debate overall because really, this is the sort of thing that should’ve happened a long time ago because any one of the states should’ve been able to say unilaterally that they are going to do this, and if it’s a good idea then other states can follow, and if it turns out to be a bad idea then other states should you know, tend away from it. It’s the whole idea of the smaller states making up the larger government, I think in principle is a good idea.
Tom: I think you guys are more knowledgeable about it than I am, but what about California? I mean, they have some medical marijuana legislation that it’s legal to get it certain spots but then the federal government’s jumping in there and closing down places.
Kevin: That’s right. Colorado’s also had – or at least Ember – has had medical marijuana for some time also, and I think California’s just the biggest example because the entire state passed it and I think I read an article today that was saying that when that happened in California – at the peak of it anyways – there were more medical marijuana dispensaries than liquor stores in the state, which is pretty fascinating if you think about it seeing on how they would’ve had to open up essentially overnight and for them just to be propped up like that. But yeah absolutely, the Obama administration has really cracked down on it very hard. It’s a pretty negative talking point against the Obama administration at the moment.
Tom: Yeah and [?] it seems the federal [?] and stuff – the trump card.
Kevin: Well right, you’ve actually got two states that have done it, so Washington state did it, and then Colorado did it, and then you’ve got these few other states who are still allowing medical marijuana to exist. I think I was reading, I think it’s like 23 states right now actually that have some type of medical marijuana law, so it’s quite a bit more significant than I thought.
Jad: I had no idea it was that many.
Kevin: Yeah, I think that’s what I read today – maybe it was a little less, but – sorry, according to this medical marijuana page I just found, apparently it’s 19 states right now that have a medical marijuana law of some sort.
Jad: I had no idea. I was wondering, I guess it all depends upon how the federal government decides it wants to handle it, but I was thinking that they could do some of the same mildly coercive tactics that they did with like, the drinking age or whatever like they could say, “you can have you know, medical marijuana, but we’re not going to give you inner-state funds if you you know, if you have recreational marijuana”, or whatever, just that kinda like, stupid, petty exercise of control.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: I guess I don’t have to worry about that too much since they can right now send in storm troopers with machine guns and they can just kick down the store and take everything and arrest everybody, so they don’t have to worry about the soft, soft tactics yet.
Kevin: Yeah but that’s a really good point though. You know, Jim said to me today that he thought would be interesting is if they use the IRS for this, which apparently they have done in other cases before.
Since Jim has otherwise never been introduced into our show, here’s a little back story. Jim is a former co-worker of mine and a current co-worker of Jad’s. Like Jad and I, he is a software engineer, but he also happens to have family ties into the U.S. military. He has a passion for history, and on occasion provides Jad and I with pretty interesting talking points – in this case how the IRS could be used to thwart marijuana state distributors.
He felt that the IRS would actually become one of their most powerful agents in this. It kind of introduces this catch 22, right? So if you don’t admit to it – like if you’re selling marijuana legally per your state law, but if you’re selling the marijuana, you still owe a federal tax on that. So now you haven’t declared it and so now what they do is they set up sting operations and they start busting people for racketeering. Instead, the catch 22 is that if you do declare that you’re running a marijuana shop then the federal government charges you with you know, some sort of drug case, so I thought that was kind of an interesting way to consider it.
Jad: Yeah, the weird thing about – to kinda go with the IRS thing – the way they shut it down was just totally weird, it was like – I think it might even still be the case technically that you can buy and sell marijuana, you just have to have a stamp –
Kevin: In like, California you mean?
Jad: No, no, I’m sorry, like in the – this started in the 40s and 50s, like whenever they first started it in Arizona and New Mexico, like down by the border, the state of New Mexico and the state of Arizona said, “carry on as normal, marijuana’s still entirely legal just like it always has been, but if you’re going to buy or sell it, you need to get this stamp that you affix to the package that you sell it with”, you know, and that’s how it’s taxed or whatever, and then they just didn’t make any stamps – and that was it. So it was like what you were saying with the IRS thing, nobody was – nobody was selling something that was illegal to sell, they were just selling something without the appropriate paperwork or without the appropriate sanction.
And then again, that sort of thing seems so weird to me. I guess it’s just the breaking in of something, like if they were to say it’s illegal and we’re going to arrest you for doing it then people might get upset, but if they were like, “all you need to do is acquire one of these stamps to affix to the product to sell, and then just don’t give the stamps out” –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – as a soft way of accomplishing the same goal.
Kevin: Well I think to the point of it – at least in my conspiratorial mind a little bit – you know, if you recall what I was saying at lunch about the banks, and just corporations and finances in general, the real short of it is just that I think the underlying goal that people have to keep in mind about any type of a business – but let’s just limit it to banks in this case – is that their sole goal is to make money, so no matter what you impose upon them, if all of a sudden you say, “OK, you can’t charge customers higher than a $15 chargeback on a bounced check”, then the bank says, “well, fine. We don’t want to comply with this but we will.”
So what are they going to do, are they just going to start losing the money that they were previously making – no, they’re just going to impose another rules that says, “OK well now we have a minimum that you have to hold in your account”, so they’re going to balance it to make the money and then maybe five years later the government says, “well you can’t have that minimum anymore”, and so they say, “OK, well now we’re going to charge a plastic fee for all of our debit cards, so you have to pay $5 a month just for the privilege to hold the card”, or whatever – it never ends.
And I think on the side of government, again, you have to look at what the end goal is, right? I think people want to believe that the end goal is to protect you, but in reality the end goal is to inhibit you from doing things and so if we recognize that that’s the goal, the government’s never going to lose. So no matter what they do – in my mind – there’s always going to be some caveat that exists where they say, “oh, marijuana’s completely legal, you just have to affix this stamp to it – we’re all out of the stamps, we’re really sorry.” So at the end of the day they’re always getting to still get their way – similar to the bank. They’re complying with everything, but in reality, the customer’s still getting just as screwed.
It helps – in my mind anyways – to present that illusion that there’s forward progress happening and the majority of people I think wind up being very complacent to it – never mind the 4%, 5%, even maybe 10% of the population that says, “Well wait a second, nothing has actually changed, you’ve just pushed the problem over to this issue so I still can’t get the marijuana”, that’s the end goal in that case.
Jad: Right.
Tom: You know, even if you’re [?] is your business, if nothing else the IRS can investigate your personal taxes and probably find something to mess you up with.
Jad: Sure, sure. I think that’s – I certainly subscribe to that particular dark theory that essentially the goal is to make sure everyone is breaking the law everyday so that whenever you need to, you can go pick somebody up and be like, “clearly you’re – don’t have an inspection sticker, your car is not registered, you’re driving too fast – whatever it is – you’re breaking a law and so you’ve gotta come with us.”
Kevin: Well I’m on that page for sure, that’s definitely what I was saying as far as the conspiracy theory. I think that’s the goal of the government, just like I always say what the goal of the business is.
Tom: Well you know, you can’t look at people who try and sell [?] you know, they get raided for some reason, I don’t know why. If it’s illegal, the guy who’s selling silver coins who got arrested, he was checking with the treasury for years before that to make sure that everything was cool and everything was fine until they arrest him.
Jad: Until it wasn’t. Yeah that’s the – another story that reminds me of in the category of just don’t ask, is the one where the – some family found like – I can’t remember what they’re called – but they were some particular kind of coin that was minted in the early 30s right before the gold seizure, and so all these coins were supposed to have been melted down. So they had this cash of coins, like 20 gold coins and like I said, it was inherited or you know, passed down, it was in a box in an attic or whatever it was, so they took them to the treasury to get them verified – I can’t remember if it was the mint or – I’m not sure what agency it was. But they took it to the federal agency to see like, are these real actual coins, and they seized them.
Kevin: Oh wow.
Jad: And so they had like – yeah, there were like 20 coins and they were worth $20,000 each or something like that, so – and yeah, they took them from them. So it’s also – and this is a tangent I think – but like they don’t call the police, if you’re – need someone to be shot to death – which you know, sometimes I guess maybe you do, you’re being attacked, whatever – that’s when you call the police. Like, noise violation, that sort of thing, you’re just waving around a loaded gun you know, and it seems like there’s an entire category of things where it’s best just not to ask the authorities because it’s probably going to end up badly for you.
Kevin: Yep.
Jad: Or those immediately around you.
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s very true, unfortunately. A few times I’ve to call 911 around here for various things. I definitely never give them my address because they’ll ask you at the end, they’re like, “do you want an officer to stop by and talk to you? Can we call you back”, and I don’t know that it makes a difference but I definitely say no on every single thing because I don’t want to have anything to do with whatever’s about to happen just in some random cases there’s some serious violence that I’ll see happening and pretty rare I get involved in that otherwise because the last thing I want is to have a run in with the police, even though I’m sure I’d be on the right side of it.
Jad: Well don’t be too sure.
Kevin: I say that, but at tongue and cheek, I mean it’s specifically why I don’t tell them. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Just too many stories.
And so we conclude this week’s Throwback Thursday episode with our own personal PSA about calling your local police department. Thank you so very much for tuning in to the show and w e certainly hope you enjoyed the content. We do love hearing from our listeners, and so if you have any questions, comment, or ideas for the show, please contact us. You can reach us both through the podcast website at www.JKPod.com, or you can reach either of us individually – Jad is at www.Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com. Transcription services for the JK Podcast are provided by Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. Thanks again, and we’ll catch you next week.
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Austin, Texas mayor, Lee Leffingwell looking “hipstery” for a parody of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
In the first part of this discussion, Jad, Tom and I discuss varying methods, strategies, and pitfalls for finding common ground in which to discuss politics with people. In this second installment we focus more on the belief of whether or not common ground could actually change anything.
Also in this episode, Jad and I find ourselves at an exceptionally rare crossroads of a disagreement regarding whether or not it’s possible to “roll back” laws from within the political institution or if that’s just false hope.
We continue to discuss a number of topics specific to local government in Austin, Texas, but do so in such a way that should make the philosophical points applicable to most any governing structure. This opens up a discussion regarding the unlikeliness of changing the political establishment from within. Essentially the idea is that in order to get elected within the American framework, it’s necessary to bow to the interests of social groups thus compromising or even negating the very political ideology one stands for (speaking as an anarchist or libertarian).
We think you’ll like the conclusion.
Politics is not about responding to those forces. Politics is about applying force to move money into privileged hands.
-Jad Davis
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Jad: Politics is not about responding to those forces. Politics is about applying force to move money into privileged hands.
Kevin: Hello and welcome to the JK Podcast, an anti-authority, pro-free speech, political haven in pursuit in liberty, humanity, and equality for all people. This week we conclude our two-part episode on finding common ground. In the first part of this discussion, Jad, Tom, and I discussed varying methods, strategies, and pitfalls for finding common ground in which to discuss politics with people.
In the second installment, we focus more on the belief of whether or not common ground could actually change anything. Also in this episode, Jad and I find ourselves at an exceptionally rare crossroads of a disagreement regarding whether or not it’s possible to “roll back laws” from within the political institution, or if that’s just false hope.
Jad: [?], is that maybe, is that maybe it then?
Kevin: What’s that?
Jad: You’re saying that if you believe what I said then you would feel politically powerless.
Kevin: This opens up a discussion regarding the unlikeliness of changing the political establishment from within. Essentially the idea that in order to get elected within the American framework, it’s necessary to bow to interest of social groups, thus compromising or even negating the very political ideology one stands for – speaking as anarchist or a libertarian.
We continue to discuss a number of topics specific to Austin, Texas, but do so in such a way that should make the philosophical points applicable to all sorts of governing structures – we think you’ll like it. As always, I’m joined by the co-creator of the show, Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to the JK Podcast.
Kevin: And then to turn and to say well why would we put up additional roadblocks for that to happen? I mean what if this were an elderly couple in this particular case that doesn’t have very much money? How are they supposed to deal with this type of situation – this is insane. I feel that if you kinda go through that channel, you can eventually arrive at the exact same conclusion to get people on board to say, “Yeah, maybe we should get rid of that law, maybe that is a bad law to have.”
Now I’m not saying it’s that easy, but I’m just kind of playing devil’s advocate to say if you can’t find that common ground, I don’t know how you’d go in – to use a poor metaphor – guns blazing to convince people that those authoritative figures shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Jad: Sure. And I’m not arguing with the common ground issue at all – I’m not saying that that’s a bad tactic. What I’m saying is though that I think probably in the Austin city council sometime in the 1970s, someone made that argument. They said it’s ridiculous that you know, a power company owned by the city, you’re proposing this law and it’s stupid because it’s just going to get in the people’s way, and then the people who were against that law being put in place you know were like, “well, the best thing we can do is to support guy X who wants to stop this silly thing from being in place and making this delay longer.”
But now 30 years later, it’s just the way it is because at that point in time instead of saying the city council shouldn’t be involved in you know, what my utility company and I decide – how we decide to relate to each other.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They said let’s try to keep everything sane and make sure however it turns out, there’s an emergency level for old people and if the weather’s hot then they’ll bring on more guys to make sure everyone has their power hooked up, and all that sort of stuff. And then the argument against it probably happened about like you said, a long time ago and now that argument’s done, and now we have the system that we have now.
You’re not going to repeal it ever I mean, that’s not even an option. You’re never going to get it to be the case where the city doesn’t permit you know, electrical work, [?] the same city by a different entity comes out and turns the power on.
Kevin: Well I don’t know, I don’t – I mean, I obviously understand the cynicism in that and would agree with it at most levels except that if I truly believe that, then it becomes very difficult for me to follow any of those libertarian-esque ideas in the first place because I mean, you know, until the entire system collapses like Mad Max style, there’s no hope for my mentality to prevail at all, right?
I mean because if I can’t think that I could actually speak to a group of people, if I don’t have the common intelligence to find that ground with people and slowly work them back, slowly roll that system back through just a complete different way of political thinking, then there’s really nowhere I can go at all because if I were able –
Jad: [?], is that maybe, is that maybe it then?
Kevin: What’s that?
Jad: You’re saying that if you believe what I said then you would feel politically powerless. You would feel like there was no hope in making the system a better – pushing it towards a better outcome through your own – through your own activity and your own will.
Kevin: Well and that could be – yeah, and not necessarily for you know, for any self righteous purposes, but I just mean like –
Jad: You would be psychically shaken, or –
Kevin: Yeah I mean, I feel that –
Jad: – anxiety and –
Kevin: – [?] level, there’s just nothing that – there’s nothing that could be done. I’ve gotta believe somewhere that there actually is a way to roll that back.
Jad: Right, so you have to believe it, is my point.
Kevin: Correct.
Jad: Not you believe it because it makes sense, or you believe it because it coincides with fact, but because you have to believe it.
Kevin: Well no I mean – no, I think you do have to believe it, right. I mean, I guess I am speaking a little religiously in that particular sense for lack of a better expression, but no, I mean just you know, from some limited [?] success I’ve had of being that person to stand in that corner with you know, 20 other eyes against you because it’s just not the way the people – as you always say – were raised to think, and I totally agree with you. So to be the one guy in that room who’s willing to voice that opinion, which is – it’s not really a counter-opinion, I’m not really disagreeing with anything that anybody’s saying.
For example, saving the environment, I’m as in favor of that as everybody else is, but what I’m saying is the methodology that the people are trying to implore to do it is counter to their own goal, and for me to have stood in front of groups before and articulated that in some way and to find some success with that, I guess that leads me to believe that there might actually be that way to do that and you’re right, at the end of the day I still do want to believe it because if I don’t, then it does take away a little bit of the energy that goes into that.
But I have also seen it work, I’ve definitely seen people change their opinions a little bit to say, “well, maybe we don’t need to do it exactly that way”, and you know, maybe you don’t need this thorough level of intervention in order to get the exact same outcome at the end of the day, and usually it ties back to finances is the thing I’ve always done is to say all you’re doing is making life harder for the poor people, and isn’t your fundamental goal to help the poor people? OK, then we should probably explore a different way to accomplish this; maybe let’s not put additional laws and burdens on the individual.
Jad: Well so – and again, I think we’re kind of conflating two things, and one I am completely on your side 100%, which is the one where you’re talking to 20 people who disagree with you.
Kevin: OK.
Jad: Right? The other is how effective is that at changing policy at the city level, say?
Kevin: I think that if I use the localization of government kind of analogy I’ve been running with here to say that I think there’s an identical philosophical methodology or – I’m using too many big words here – at the local level as there would be to the federal level, or any level in between. I guess what I’m saying is in these particular groups, I mean, this is like local of local I mean, this is like the sub-local group.
Jad: Right, local but also powerless, right?
Kevin: And powerless, right.
Jad: Without moneyed interests trying to persuade them of the opposite opinion. That’s correct, and so – for the most part anyways – but in those like, I think there has been some success, and so I guess what I’m saying is I’ve not seen a city council member in Austin – or there have been some that have been you know, reasonably more on this particular side – but I’ve not seen the city council person actually you know, stand in front of the crowd and say, “look, I appreciate that we want to accomplish this goal, I also want to accomplish this goal, but I don’t think that the way to accomplish this goal is to further burden people by creating more laws that they’re ultimately going to have to spend money to jump through.
So instead, I’m going to propose the following, I’m going to propose X” – I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t involve creating some sort of law, or additional tax space, or whatever the case may be, it involves some sort of line of thinking. But the water treatment plant, the big counter-argument that was out there for that which did lose, was to say look, if you’re going to spend money on anything like this, spend a fraction of that cost and find ways to incentivize people to reduce the amounts of water consumption that they’re going through right now rather than spend hundreds of millions of dollars and probably billions of dollars in the end to create this whole new water treatment center.
I didn’t really have a strong opinion in that particular case because I didn’t get into it quite enough, but I appreciated that group that actually took that counter-side and maybe to your point, they did lose so maybe it doesn’t work. But I don’t know, I think that you can do that. I think that you can get people to follow it.
I’ve never been in a position to have any type of critical mass behind me where I could speak those messages, but this is when I generally fall back to the whole Ron Paul thing to say as the center figure for exciting this type of libertarian-esque push into local politics, I mean I think he’s clearly the poster person for that to say these are not popular thoughts, but I believe it so I’m going to keep telling you it and all of a sudden you’ve got way more people I think all of a sudden who are – they’re at least open to it. I’m not saying that they’re on board with it, but they’re open to it and that’s a hell of a lot more than existed I don’t know, in let’s say six or seven years ago, I think.
Jad: Oh, I don’t disagree. But I mean that’s also because you know six or seven years ago, robots couldn’t kill you while you drink your coffee in a coffee shop.
Kevin: True, true, but –
Jad: But I mean, your point is well taken and I’m not trying to – I feel like I’m coming off too harsh here as far as like, the Ron Paul and even Rand Paul to a much, much lesser degree you know, whenever they say we shouldn’t you know, murder foreigners or whatever – whatever bold statement they make – like, that does have an effect. I do believe individual people who are not part of the power structure are swayed by that position. When Ron Paul turns to the senate and says that, nobody is swayed because they can’t be.
The institution is not about dialog and conversation, and rational arguments, and coming up with the best plan for the people. It’s about shoveling huge amounts of money back and forth and making people wealthy and not disobeying those people. And the same thing is true at the city level too, like you said, it’s a microcosm right – it’s a much, much smaller thing – but the main components of it are in play. I mean this government that is in the city that is you know, is huge, and violent, and you know, in many cases of presses, even though it is you know, like I said, it is hippyfied – like the mayor wears his you know, tie dye shirt to South by Southwest events and all that. So it has a soft face to it in many cases, but it grew up despite people saying, “look, what you’re doing is hurting poor people.”
When you disregard half of your city where all the you know, Blacks and Latinos live and put all of the wealth into the other part of the city where all the rich White people live, you’re not creating a vibrant, integrated, dynamic city life – that message had no resonance. It may have had resonance on an individual level – I’m sure I could’ve gone back in time in 1960 and gone into a you know, a restaurant and had a conversation with somebody who disagreed with me and convinced them that what their interest was really you know, an integrated place with even distribution of wealth and access to jobs and for everybody that they probably shouldn’t build I-35 right through you know, between the two sides of town. I could probably convince that guy, but I’m not going to convince the city council.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? So what I’m saying is I think the education aspect of what you do when you’re talking to people and the education aspect of what Ron Paul does when he talks to people – turning people on, getting people thinking about it – that is a 100% invaluable. I’m not saying it has no power – that’s tremendously powerful. Politically it doesn’t do anything because politics is not about responding to those forces. Politics is about applying force to move money into privileged hands.
Kevin: Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean but – I mean if I could say it softly – I mean that’s not what it’s supposed to be about, right?
Jad: That’s what we’re told it’s about. We’re educated to believe that it’s about responding to the needs of the people that it’s serving us, but that’s just made up. That’s just something they teach you in school that’s not actually true. Going back to what I was saying earlier, the enlightenment thinkers knew that that wasn’t true.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? Thomas Payne did not think that government was helping people.
Kevin: And that’s what brings you back obviously, in favor of the anarchist side – which I’m clearly in favor of as well – it’s just a matter of I guess I believe – naively perhaps – that there’s a stepping stone involved in there, or a stepping stone that sits inside of that transition if you will, and I guess that whilst I completely agree with what you say, I mean there’s no doubt about it, that is what politics is all about. Politics is all about big corporations moving money between other big corporations with the help of a bunch of people in power that turn a blind eye to it and make it easier for them. Meanwhile making it appear that they’re actually protecting the people somehow in the protecting the people somehow in the process, but that’s not supposed to be the way it is and that’s clearly not what we’re taught is actually going on.
But I think you’ve got those people like Ron Paul who in principal – for whatever particular reason – reject that notion and clearly have a record to show for that. Now you’re right, he’s one of whatever 400 people that are sitting in that chamber and you’re right, the vast majority of the other ones are not listening to him anytime he says something, but he does have a small group of people now that have been elected as a result specifically of him. I guess what I’m saying is imagine if I actually did sit upon the Austin city council, I mean, I like to think that I would hold to the same convictions that I’ve held to for my entire adult life – I don’t think I would change. In fact I think I would take great pride in knowing that I was the black sheep of the council who probably voted no to every single yes vote that they had.
But you get one person – I mean, that would be a tremendous improvement from what it’s at right now – who actually is willing to do that. If you could somehow find a way to get just one more person like that, well now all of a sudden you’ve got a pretty substantial size that has infiltrated the city chambers all of a sudden. So I don’t know, like in that particular example I mean like, what would you say in a very fictitious and kinda narcissistic view that I’m having right now? Like imagine if I did sit on that, like what would be your attitude of that at that point? I mean is there not somebody at very least who would be trying to say this shouldn’t happen, we’re going to do whatever we can to reveal these because you shouldn’t have these laws in the first place.
Jad: Sure, so I guess what I would say is to take the hypothetical and concretize it, there’s no way you would get to the city council, if that’s actually what you said you were going to do.
Kevin: Yeah, fair enough.
Jad: Right. What you might be able to do – what Ron Paul did to a degree – is like, “I believe in human freedom except for immigrants and except for women”, and that got enough of a coalition together that he could go congress you know, with a sort of a bastardized[?] freedom message, right? Out of one district in Texas, he was able to get enough people together who said that.
Now with that said, I think it’s possible to take the hypothetical different direction, let’s just say that things in Austin got very, very bad for whatever reason right, then you might be able to get a place at the city council, you know? You might be able to overwhelm their voting machine, their political machine and you know, the government beaurocracy, which constitutes like pretty much the entire 11% of Autsonians that vote at all, and step by step-by-step you might be able to overwhelm all those things just by sheer popular revolt against more taxes, say more bond issues or something –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? But you’re not going to be able to get two people to do that.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? They’re going to continue, and the idea though – what I would imagine if what I say is 100% correct, or in my fantasy world or whatever – what would happen is they would take all of the political anger, all of the grassroots movements in Austin, all the different community groups and all that that could be doing things like starting their own infrastructure, policing their own streets, starting their own schools – they’re going to take all that energy and effort and put it in its year[?] campaign, or into the campaign of the next person – the second person who’s supposed to go in. All of the time, and energy, and effort, and organizing, and politicizing is going to be put into the belief that this political system is what is trying to help you, it can be used to help you.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And all of that energy will be drawn up, and drawn up, and drawn up until the election comes and the loss happens and everything collapses – the political energy collapses –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and you end up with some degree of despair, right – I mean, that’s like the Ron Paul thing. So anyways, turning the system into something it’s intentionally and fundamentally not is I mean, it’s not possible is my belief. But again, if you were able to do the city council thing and you were – you might be able to educate a lot of individuals about your libertarian principles, but you’re not going to be able to change the political apparatus into something that is helping Austonians by leaving them alone, by withdrawing from them – that’s not possible.
Kevin: Yeah I mean, I agree with that. I think the biggest part of it is the education that it allows you to bring out. I mean it’s going to change, we’re going to have ten people and then the mayor but you know, at the moment there’s six and the mayor, so seven people. So each one of the council votes is a pretty substantial voice on the council at the moment, right? It’s a pretty big city and I think statistically [?] – I’m pretty sure we’ve got the smallest city council in the entire United States with respect to the population – it should be considerably larger for what our current population is – but regardless I guess all I’m saying is it would be really interesting in my opinion to have a person of this type of mindset – your mindset or my mindset – never mind the votes that they actually took on the pulpit, or the [?], that’s one thing, but the press releases and such and the interviews that they did, and things like that – I think it would be very powerful in a city like this. You know, I could be naïve, I could be mistaken, it’s –
Jad: Well no, I think you’re totally right. And there’s an anarchist sheriff in Travis county that ran – you know about the whatever, Texas for a responsible government or [?], tag – there are groups doing that thing –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So I mean, if you thought that would work then you haven’t – there are avenues to try that out, I mean I would be all for it. I might even be persuaded to vote, although unlikely. But I mean I’m just, my point is that my belief doesn’t come from what I think you’re capable of doing, I think you’re capable of doing just about anything you set your mind to – just from what I know of you – but my knowledge that the system does not bend to individual will. The system has a purpose and if an individual will is to thwart that purpose then it’s not a possibility.
Anyway, it can’t be done – now if your will was to take power and you were willing to compromise and be like, “well, I really have a strong libertarian message, but you know, I’m going to have to work with the fire department because I need to get their votes in order to get my 10% together you know”, blah, blah, blah, or, “need to you know, protect teachers unions, or I need to like I said, I want to improve things on the east side, so I’m going to support a community center that gets built over there.” Like you could cobble together a coalition like that because the system accepts that – that’s fine.
But you can’t run on, “I’m going to vote no to everything that costs the people of Austin more money, I’m going to vote against the police funding, I’m going to vote for liberalization of all of the money making laws that we have”, but you’re going to find huge forces [?] against you that no one person could overcome.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean I sadly tend to agree with that line of thinking.
Jad: One more thing, if you are very, very successful, you would probably have a car accident or be shot in the head or something.
Kevin: Yeah and that’s the way I want to go, it really is. I’d love to be a political martyr.
Jad: Are you serious? I can kinda believe that about you.
Kevin: I’m actually serious for real.
Jad: OK.
Kevin: No, I’m for real I totally would. I mean, if there’s any way that I would want to go, I mean I could think of nothing better than you know, you finally get to a – well I mean it’s like, it’s the Kennedy thing, right? Like I don’t know a lot about him, but that’s the way that people see it is that he was doing stuff that was against the grain of the political machine and so therefore he’s dead, and I don’t really follow much into the whole Kennedy assassination, but I don’t know.
Actually I think it’s probably like an incredibly narcissistic view to be honest, but I guess to me, for some strange reason, it means that you actually accomplished what it was that you were trying to accomplish – even though you got killed, so you didn’t accomplish anything – but you beat the system, so to speak.
Jad: Well you got as far as the system allows anyone to go.
Kevin: Right, like you’ve got past that line instead of lying there, and you managed to somehow skirt – nobody knows how to fucking get past that line, you did it, congratulations, we’ve gotta kill you now.
Jad: Boom, right.
Kevin: Right. But that to me is an immeasurable level of success in order to have gotten past that.
And so we end on the topic of political martyrdom within the United States. It would actually be interesting to take that one on as a future topic, and consider whether the agendas of the Lincolns and Kennedys would have been successful had they not been killed. Thanks so very much for tuning in to the show. We’d like to remind our audience every week that we love receiving mail, especially when it’s political in nature. If you have any comments or questions for us or just want to give us an idea for the show, we’d certainly love to hear from you.
You can reach us through the podcast website at www.JKPod.com, or you can reach either of us individually. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, and I am at KevinLudlow.com. We’d also like to thank Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media for continuing to provide wonderful transcription services to the podcast. Thanks again, and we’ll be back next week with another episode.
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This week we begin the first of a two-part episode primarily focused on the idea of finding common ground in political discourse. In a round-about way we’ve actually discussed the topic many times before, but it’s always been ancillary to our main focus. This week it’s for reals.
We discuss the topic at length switching between local and federal governance a few different times. One ongoing theme of the night is how people all too frequently pursue legislation that is blatantly contrary to their stated goal.
Towards the end of this first half, Jad advances the anarchist position by asserting that sometimes common ground is deceptively used by politicians to advance already bad agendas. We continue with that thought in part two.
Music
Kevin: Hello and welcome back to the JK Podcast, a free speech haven dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality. This week we begin with the first of a two-part episode, primarily focused on the idea of finding common ground in political discourse. In a roundabout way, we’ve actually discussed this topic many times before, but it’s always been ancillary to our main focus. This week, it’s for reals[?].
We discuss the topic at length, switching between local and federal governance a few times. One ongoing theme of the night is how people all too frequently pursue legislation that is blatantly contrary to their stated goals. Towards the end of the first half, Jad advances the anarchist position by asserting that sometimes common ground is deceptively used by politicians to advance already bad agendas. We continue with that thought in part two.
Joining us for the episode is our good friend and author, Tom DeLorenzo. I’m Kevin Ludlow, the other voice is co-creator, Jad Davis. Welcome back to the JK Podcast.
What I’m saying is I think if you can look at the smallest form of government and see how dysfunctional it is, it always makes sense to me why the larger government is just beyond inept, right, because it’s the exact same dysfunction that exists at a very small level. And so I guess maybe one of the things that I always find interesting about Austin’s government – and it could just be because I’ve misled myself – is that I believe that the culture of Austin has so much – for lack of a better word – like, hippyness to it, that it surprises me that the people are still so complicit in that type of just over burdening government oversight.
I mean, I think there’s a level of government interference that you’re going to have to expect, and people even come to like it, I mean I get that. But it just surprises me how wide and far stretching it has become here. I wouldn’t expect this population to be quite as complicit with some of those laws that exist – and yet they are. I have no knowledge of this statistically, but I would have to assume then if you cast a big shadow over Austin, your atheist group has to be substantially larger in Austin than it would be in – as a percentage anyways – than it would be in say, a city like Dallas or Houston – I would think, I don’t really know.
I feel that you’d have way more people who would define themselves as like, spiritual agnostics rather than part of a theistic group or what have you. So the reason I say that and bring attention to that is because I feel that the general culture of Austin are people who are less inclined to be supportive of an authoritarianist type of system, and yet at the same time they clearly are. They support it much greater than the people of Houston or Dallas do from what I can tell, given the law structure that we have here.
And so I guess my question gravitates towards why is that. I don’t think it’s an uneducated group of people in the city, there’s a lot of data on this I mean, the education level of Austin is actually substantially higher than that of Houston or Dallas as a whole.
Jad: Well maybe that answered the question then, right?
Kevin: Well maybe so, right? And that’s – I guess that’s what I’m always trying to figure out.
Tom: Yeah when you say kind of spiritual hippy, free thinking that just puts the word liberal into my head.
Jad: And how highly state educated.
Tom: Yeah. So you end up with the touchy-feely, collectivistic type of authoritarian system which maybe that’s what Austin is, you know? You can’t use plastic bags because we’re saving the planet. See, that’s a nice liberal tyranny.
Kevin: Oh, sure. Sure. And so I guess that’s always kinda my goal or my objective to try to find those points to talk to people on to sell them the better counterpoint, right? Like when we talk about religion I mean, you know, you talk to the person who’s basing their decision on religion, right? You try to have a gay marriage discussion with somebody who’s just a diehard fundamentalist Christian, you can’t have the discussion, right – we can agree with that because there’s nothing you can say that sways that opinion because that’s based upon an irrational view to begin with.
None of the three of us or anybody else that we know is smart enough to convince that person – it’s just not going to happen. You can trick them perhaps, but not convince them. But I feel that the person who is well educated and the person who is spiritual and et cetera, so they’re conscious of things but they’re not blindly accepting of this top down authority model I wouldn’t think as much. I feel that there’s ways to logically and argumentatively convince them that there’s a different way to do this, and not only that but that their own system is kind of imploding on itself – it’s kind of counterproductive to what their end goal is. And I guess that’s what I always try to do to local groups here and with mixed success, but I’m just interested in it I guess.
Jad: Yeah, there’s an interesting thing that’s kind of related – I can find this if you guys are interested – but it was a blog post, a really long, long, blog post by a person who was adamantly pro-life because the thought that there was too many aborted babies, and so they [?] through their high school years coming out of a religious background were pro-life, and then they read some New York Times article that very clearly and in a detailed manner explain that access to birth control, and contraception, and education about sex radically decreased the abortion rate and she was like, “oh shit, this is you know, this is crazy”.
No one you know, all the people that I hang out with an all the people in the organizations that I know of are all against contraception and education about contraception and blah, blah, blah, and availability of it and so anyways so she was like, “oh, well I’ll just go tell them and then we can just all start this other you know, start in this new direction of trying to support these things and we can drive the abortion rate down to nearly zero or whatever. You know, and then she bumped into the reality that they don’t really care about what they say they care about for whatever reason – for a million different reasons probably – they all just want to go with the agenda that supposedly has a the goal of reducing abortions rather than actually having the goal of reducing abortions.
And I think it’s the same thing I mean, you gotta be fucking kidding me if you can’t look around and see that the poor are not being helped, or the Blacks and the Latinos are not being lifted up, you know, it’s obvious. It’s just rampantly, totally obvious. If your goal is – if you state a goal, it is clear that that goal is being driven to hell by various levels of government, or even just say through you know, a course of social institutions in general.
And so if you care about the goal, then you’ll immediately say, “oh shit, I was mistaken and now I will set new goals, or I will find new means to achieve my ends”, of whatever it may be or you’ll just dismiss that because you don’t really care about the stated goal, you care about some other – something else is being served in you psychologically, or materially, or whatever that overrides the actual goal.
Kevin: Right. I won’t have like a controversial line to throw out here, but for what it’s worth I mean, that’s the thing I’ve told you for a long time now and Tom, maybe you to a lesser degree I’ve told you, but you know that’s really the thing I’ve tried to do politically and I think sometimes it has legs – in fact, I think it generally has legs because I stay – you know, I stick to the principled view of it.
But locally here, I have sat on a lot of those organizations that oversee various property cases and what have you, and time, and time, and time again I mean, that’s my argument to people is to say, “well wait a second, like what’s our actual end goal here? Is our end goal to accomplish this, are you trying to help the environment in this particular case, are you trying to do this in this particular case? What are you trying to do here?” And in almost every single case as you would imagine, as you just said, whatever the stated goal it tends to conflict with whatever the beaurocratic message is that people are blindly supporting.
And so I just kinda make it my business to try to tell people, I’m like, “look, sure, I see what you think that by putting a $10,000 dollar fee on”, say, a driveway permit, “you think that it’s going to prevent people from”, I don’t know, doing whatever the hell they need to do with their driveway, but at the end of the day it doesn’t because whoever needs to do it is still going to do it, the only thing is is that you’ve screwed them out of $10,000 dollars and the people that have that money, they get to do it anyways because it doesn’t matter – it doesn’t affect their overall budget. They’re planning on a 20-year curve, you’re not.
So I bring up that point just to say that I have had pretty good success of convincing people of that and getting people to see that and really changing some minds on that to say like, “look, you shouldn’t support those things, they’re not to your benefit. It’s a beaurocratic institution, here’s the actual numbers on it – think about it.” And I guess why I try to give Austinites some credit is because they tend to be much more educated perhaps than some other groups might be. I feel that you can – if you’re patient with it and work hard at it – you can kinda sway people in that line.
Again, I recognize it kinda is a line of like libertarianism versus anarchism here, but that’s kinda why like, the Ron Paul think appealed to me over the years right, is because you’ve got this guy who is just sticking to these principles, he’s saying the exact same thing year, after year, after year to completely deaf ears you know, 30 years ago, and to this massive following in present time. And maybe it’s just because things are getting so bad, but in the last 30 years there have definitely been a number of times that the economic bottom has come out quite a bit – I mean, the end of the 90s, for example.
So I mean there have been other times where that should’ve taken shape and it never really did, and all of a sudden it has this now. So I guess what I’m saying is is that there’s this slow and steady process that maybe there is this way to reach people to actually get that anarcho-capitalist[?] message out there a little bit more effectively. But I think generally speaking, most of these groups, they preach to themselves, right?
I mean, that’s your general audiences, to find other people who share that similar belief – and that’s all fine and good, it makes for a fun conversation, but it doesn’t actually help to change anything because you’re just convincing somebody who already believes what you believe. So as I always say, like, take your message to the spiritual educated hippy on the street who completely disagrees with you find any common grounds to get your message across to them, and well now you start changing minds of people.
Tom: And I think what you said – the most important thing about what you said right there is finding the common ground because I think one of the low percentage success rate strategies people use is they collect up a bunch of facts and then they just throw them at people, maybe insultingly. My argument’s going to be your argument and –
Kevin: Right. It’s not –
Tom: And then if you change your mind, no matter what two human beings there are, if you somehow get the connection that you know what, we’re talking about something that we’re both interested in and we are interested in solving something together then it’s just a whole different ball game. But it’s a very difficult way to communicate, even if you’d learn some of the tricks yourself, most people don’t want to communicate that way and it usually turns adversarial pretty quickly and then it’s difficult. But yes, I kinda do believe that just by putting the ideas out there, even if you can’t break through on one day, then you know, you might leave a little bit of something in there for someone to think about.
Kevin: Well then if I come full circle with it then – going back to the Rand Paul speech – Rand Paul was not at the pulpit saying, “I don’t think we should have drums.” He’s not at the pulpit saying, “I don’t think we should have war.” He’s not at the pulpit saying, “I don’t think that we should be invading these countries.” He’s saying, “Can we at least agree that in the United States of America, you shouldn’t have a machine controlled by the president who can kill an American on American soil who poses no threat while he’s sitting at a coffee shop.” That was actually his little analogy that he brought up many times, that they guy is just sitting at the coffee shop – can we agree that that guy shouldn’t be able to get killed out of the sky, he has to have the same due process as anybody else would, and that’s unfortunate you have to get that granular, but I guess the point is why I brought up the whole straw poll thing is that it seemed to be something that both sides of the far isle at least in my sub groups of friends, they seem to be able to say, “OK, we can agree on that”.
But that’s kind of a joke for the negotiation. We’ve established at least some level of logic where we agree, that should be wrong.
Tom: That’s very important, yeah.
Jad: Well except that it’s going to happen in a couple weeks and then it’s going to happen all the time, and then we’ll be on the next thing. Can’t we at least agree that we shouldn’t incinerate thousands of people all at once with drone strikes or whatever because we had the same conversation in 2004 with – can’t we at least agree that there should be some means that the NSA should have to go through before an American phone gets tapped.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And everyone on both sides of the isles is like, yes, you know, “that is a sovereign, sacred privilege of the American people to have some due process before their phone is tapped and now everyone’s phone is tapped all the time and that’s common knowledge.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And my point is again, so if you – when you phrase the question just like you did, can’t we at least agree that – I mean, the answer to that question starting 250 years ago would be no at 100%.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? Then it would be around like, maybe 1980 there would be like, 1% of people were like, well if they’re you know, the weatherman or something, we should blow them up. And now it’s like 50/50, right? So the tactic of engaging in a conversation within the structure that says yes, they absolutely have the ability to murder people, that is totally the case – we’re not arguing with that. He absolutely has the ability to murder people who are guilty in the United States without a trial – that’s totally cool. Is he allowed to murder people who are innocent in the United States without a trial?
You’re conceding everything already, right? They totally have the ability to tell you you know, what you can do, what you can – but can’t we at least agree that there should be [?] something that stops them from doing X. That is the anti-authoritarian tactic of the last 200 and whatever, 30, 40 years – it doesn’t work. It consistently doesn’t work.
Kevin: Well I think from a government intervention point of view I would agree with you, and so maybe the problem here is that obviously, Rand Paul being the insider, being the senator, et cetera, that’s right – he’s using that exact same tactic that we’ve seen for really, hundreds of years, probably even longer than that. I guess if I apply that at a “civilian” level, I mean, I feel it’s kind of a similar sort of thing that I try to do in Austin and it’s certainly my intentions for doing so are good, so I mean I guess it’s to say, “you’re right, you shouldn’t have to argue that in the first place”, just like you shouldn’t have to argue marriage, never mind the gay marriage. Just like you shouldn’t have to argue like, the granular taxes, why are you taking my money in the first place, right? Like, that’s the fundamental question.
But it is very difficult I think you’d have to agree in a practical sense to jump that whole thing. I mean, it’s unlikely that we can convince the masses in a single [?] sweep to say, there just shouldn’t be taxes. And maybe you can, maybe that’s the best way to do it – it seems trickier. But I guess in a system like Austin for example, if I localize it – and again, maybe it’s not fair to jump in and out of the federal, all the way down to local level – but I feel the logic is kinda the same, or the principle behind the game is the same, using your recent debacle in the case of the guideline of this roof.
Should we have a law that says the government has to get involved when somebody’s power goes out? Isn’t it sufficient enough just to say that we can rely upon the electric company, which is incidentally own by the city of Austin to handle this type of thing, that we can rely upon a licensed contractor or whatever, we’ve already created this rule set. Why do we have to go through a permitting process? Why do we have to get the city of Austin involved in order to do this sort of thing? And I guess what I’m saying is that I feel that I could probably preach to a number of people in Austin and say, “look, that’s just a stupid law that we have because let’s look at the downside of it, we all can agree, I think, that when somebody has their electrical system destroyed at their house, the priority should be making sure that they get electricity back in this particular climate that we live in.
Now it’s good weather for you, so it was maybe a little bit more [?], but generally speaking, that’s the issue and so I guess what I’m saying is that yes, the question should be why does this law exist at all? Why does the local city council have the authority to enact such law to begin with – totally agree with you. But what I’m saying is I feel it’s an easier message if I go into a group of people locally and I say, hey, this is a law that shouldn’t exist in the first place, the city council has no authority to create such laws, to enact such laws, I think you’re going to fall on a lot of deaf ears in a city like this maybe because people have been – that’s just how they were raised, or that was their education, or whatever the case may be, it doesn’t matter – it’s engrained in their head that this is OK to begin with.
So I think that you kinda have to tailor that argument a little bit to say, well what is our end goal? Shouldn’t our end goal be to restore electricity to a person’s house? I mean, don’t we owe them that? And I think you probably you know, 100 out of 100 people in a group are going to say, “yes, that should definitely be our goal first”, and then to turn in to say, “well why would we put up additional road blocks for that to happen?” I mean, what if this were an elderly couple in this particular case that doesn’t have very much money, how are they supposed to deal with this type of situation, this is insane.
I feel that if you kind of go through that channel, you can eventually arrive at the exact same conclusion to get people on board to say, “Yeah, maybe we should get rid of that law. Maybe that is a bad law to have.” Now I’m not saying it’s that easy but I’m just kind of playing devil’s advocate to say if you can’t find that common ground, I don’t know how you’d go in – to use a poor metaphor – guns blazing to convince people that those authoritative figures shouldn’t exist in the first place.
And that’s where we’ll leave you this week. Remember that this is a two-part episode, and so we’ll pick up next week exactly where we just left off. If you find yourself with five minutes to spare, we’d absolutely love to hear from you. Comments, questions, concerns, ideas – their all welcome. You can contact us through the podcast website at www.JKPod.com, or individually if you prefer. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, and I am at KevinLudlow.com. Providing transcription services to our show is Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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We’ll get to the topics in just a moment, but first a little note about the podcast. This week is a little different for us. Over the past 9 months now, Jad and I have been recording every Wednesday evening; we’ve missed a few weeks, but who’s counting? The discussion unfolds, topics emerge, and we edit the show down into what you hear. But we didn’t start off that way. In the beginning we actually attempted to start with a specific topic, record at length on that topic, and then edit the show down to just the meatiest parts of the discussion. We quickly discovered two things about that method:
It didn’t take us long to correct this, but there are several recordings from our early days of experimentation that went mostly unused. Until now.
The podcast that you’re about to hear was actually recorded back on September 19th of 2012 and is just now being released. We have a handful of these so-called throwback episodes and will be releasing them as quickly as we can edit them. Thus giving birth to what we’re calling “Throwback Thursdays”, which by no coincidence we intend to release on Thursdays instead of our regular Wednesday..
In this early episode, Jad and I discuss the trials and tribulations of talking to people about politics. We explore typical reactions to polarized topics, consider what it takes to engage people in political discourse, and even consider Islamic views from an aging American population.
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Kevin: Hello and welcome to the JK Podcast, a podcast dedicated to free speech, anti-authoritarianism, and the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all people. We’ll get into the topics in just a moment, but first a little note about the podcast. This week is a little different for us. Over the past nine months now, Jad and I have been recording every Wednesday evening. We’ve missed a few weeks, but who’s counting. The discussion unfolds, topics emerge, and we edit the show down into what you hear, but we didn’t start off that way.
In the beginning we actually attempted to start with a specific topic, record that topic at length, and then edit the show down to just the meatiest parts of the discussion. We quickly discovered two things about that method. One, this made the post-production process terribly time consuming, and two, it left us with tons of really good material that was just tossed aside. So it didn’t take us long to correct this, but there are several recordings from our earlier days of experimentation that went mostly unused – until now.
The podcast that you’re about to hear was actually recorded back on September 19th of 2012 and is just now being released. We have a handful of these so called throwback episodes, and we’ll be releasing them as quickly as we can edit them thus giving birth to what we’re calling, “Throwback Thursdays” – which by no coincidence, we intend to release on Thursdays instead of our regular Wednesday.
In this early episode, Jad and I discuss the trials and tribulations of talking to people about politics. We explore typical reactions to polarized topics, consider what it takes to engage people in political discourse, and even consider Islamic views from an aging American population. This is Kevin Ludlow alongside of my co-creator, Jad Davis. Welcome back to the JK Podcast.
What are your experiences talking with people in the United States about that – or do you even try?
Jad: I try some. I mean, I like to talk to people who are – I don’t talk to people who are just radically opposed to my perspective. I’m not going to – I would be hesitant to talk to somebody who was clearly for the invasion of everywhere or something, you know? There’s no – we’re not going to find a common ground –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and so it’s just going to be – it’s just going to be me trying to you know, feel good about myself by saying someone else is an idiot or something like that – I don’t know. And I think I went through a phase where I tended to do that more, or my tendency was to do that. So but when I talk to people who are – especially I think, the progressivy[?] sort of people – it’s really funny how quickly you can get them to agree entirely with everything you say because it’s just true. Like you said, if you go in with a fire brand you know, people can defend against it easily, but if you’re just like you know, these people are dying for no reason and they’re just people like you and there’s nothing different between you and them except that you happen to be on the other side of the ocean from the army that’s stomping around killing people randomly.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And they don’t disagree with that. They don’t disagree that it’s a bad idea to have you know, a prison system with just without a court system. They don’t disagree with the idea that you should not be banished because of the books you read or whatever. I mean everyone agrees with that, I think it’s just a constant political circus and the noise and all that that people just – if I don’t talk to them for a couple weeks and then we have the same conversation all over again –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – in a sense, which is fine.
Kevin: Well so the question that comes up all the time in the media – and this is both sides have played this argument to get their agendas passed over the last, let’s say 12 years now – should the United States be involved in the Middle East at all, you know? Let’s go back to Islam, there’s all sorts of hugely negative parts of Islam, from the overbearing conservatism, to all sorts of crazy death sentences from what I can tell.
And when you see the Iranian government for example – and I’m certainly not in favor of bombing them, as many people are right now – but when you see the Iranian government carrying out public executions of people for what we would consider to be the most, most unjust social crimes – a number of homosexual have been hanged publicly by the government. Does the United States have a responsibility in that? Should we get ourselves involved in that, or do we stay entirely clear of it, which is what some of the more libertarian stance of it tends to be.
Jad: Inside the box of foreign policy, I would say you stay entirely clear of it. I mean, it’s such a difficult case to make because it requires some amount of study but not really a lot, and this goes back to the Salman Rushdie thing, that the reason those people are being hung – I mean, this is entirely true – is because the only solution to the political problem that they had – the Iranians – from 1950 to 1980 was to follow lunatics in a revolution. Every other peaceful option was closed to them, including an election in which they picked a person they wanted who was then deposed and replaced with a military dictator by the United States and Britain.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So I’m sure there are lawyers that act to be like you know, the secret police or taking people unjustly, then those lawyers get arrested, and then you’ve got all the reasonable recourses are squashed until all you’ve got is a person who’s like, screaming death to America, and issuing fatuas[?] to people who write books, and that’s the only guy who is able to you know, to oppose the government because the government is based purely on violence so the only guy who can beat it is even more violent. You know, the Ayatollah Khomeini[?] and his gang would never have been in power if it wasn’t for the meddling 50 years ago of the United States. I mean, Iran was a very reasonable place in 1950.
Kevin: Progressive, in fact.
Jad: Progressive in fact, and very western and I mean again, this is not hidden knowledge. These are true facts and those lunatic religious people were nowhere to be found.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They are a reaction to oppression.
Kevin: And I’ve tried tying that together if I consider what we asked – or what I asked you a second ago about how do you communicate this with people. When I’ve had conversations with you know, people like my father for example, or just people of that age group who are still of the mindset, it’s difficult for them to wrap their heads around it and I think it largely has to do with the fact that this has existed for their entire life. If you were born in say, the early 1950s or what have you, this was all just starting to take place when you were a child, and the point that I made the other day to somebody was to say you know look, you’re say 55 or 60 years old right now, and I said to them, I said imagine being a teenage in the United States and all of a sudden – take it back to Kennedy or what have you, but Kennedy instead he doesn’t get assassinated, instead he gets overthrown – he just gets taken out by a foreign military super power.
That super power then replaces him with somebody who’s completely oppressive, you have no more options as you just described, and you’re kind of forced to grow up in this environment that you don’t really have much of a recourse – same sort of thing that could happen in the United States obviously, and it did happen in Iran – and so the point that I make to him now is I say, “well, you’re exactly the same age, so now you’ve lived under this for 40 some odd years, what do you think your attitude against the United States might be because it seems to me it wouldn’t be very good lest as you say, you’ve kind of adopted the nationalistic principles that they’re forcing upon you in the first place, which you previously would’ve resisted.”
And I think we saw a lot of that and are still – we’re seeing it less – thank God – in the United States right now, but I think that’s largely what we saw in the United States around 2002, 2003 when you couldn’t say anything negative about the United States lest you be castigated for being a terrorist yourself.
Jad: Sure, right.
Kevin: When all of a sudden a dissenting voice was the worst thing you could possibly be, and in a country that I believe in, the dissenting voices should be the people who are honored and revered the most.
Jad: Right. Well and just to tack on the power of that external foe, even in the United States with probably the paradigm of western liberalism say – as far as speech especially goes – you still have that opinion because there was an external foe that was entirely blamed for I guess pretty much everything for a little while there in the early 2000s, you can’t speak against them – or you can’t speak in favor or against the United States no matter what it does in the name of fighting those people.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And to go back to Iran, if you – there’s a book called Persepolis that really illustrates this well – that the Iranian revolution was a broadband revolution, but the United States continued to try to influence events there, and that specifically is what got a lot of the intellectual class shut out of the conversation, killed, in exile, or whatever because all of the Ayatollah’s group of people had to do was essentially label anyone who dissented with them as a friend to the United States, and that person was a legitimate target because everyone understood that the enemy was the United States.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I’m not saying that’s true, but that’s – once the perception is there, that’s all that matters.
Kevin: Right because that’s what gets sold, and so going back to that point if I – I got a little lost in my own ranting – but what I was discovering the other day or the thing I put together in my head all of a sudden when I had this conversation with my dad in this case was he doesn’t want to acknowledge – and I found this of a lot of people of his age – they don’t seem to want to acknowledge that deeper connection that actually happened in Iran, and instead, their perception is that Iran is the bad guy – if we just use the black and white you know, good versus evil type of dichotomy and they tend to fail to see that whole period you know that just that whole example I gave to say, “well what if you just spent the last 40 years with your life entirely changed because of the super power aggressing against your entire nation, overthrowing your government for their own benefit – what would be your attitude there?”
I think that it’s too deep of a historical point for them to actually touch upon. He doesn’t want to touch it, he doesn’t think that that’s necessarily true and I guess what I find funny about it, or perhaps beneficial or good is that right now there’s events that are taking place that are too obvious that even people of that age group that I know are still saying well, clearly the United States is playing a role here. Clearly we’re doing things that are getting us this so-called blow back.
You know, I’ve heard a few people use that expression now and it – I don’t really have anywhere to go with this other than to say I couldn’t be happier to know that people who are much older than us are maybe starting to catch onto the fact that you know, some of the actions that we may have done may have consequences, they’re just long in the making, I suppose.
Jad: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don’t have much to add to that, I agree with you. I think that the difficulty for that generation, I think there’s the manifold difficulty. I guess they have the 60s going for them in a sense like that you know, it’s sort of an embracing of alternative viewpoints, but at the same time, if you’re losing relatives and whatnot to Vietnam, you kind of have to believe that there’s a point to it and you know, coming out of the generation that fought the 2nd World War, you kind of have to believe that that kind of real pure evil that just absolutely requires sacrifice of life and treasure, that that really does exist and it really is necessary.
And I think once you have that in your head, it’s – once you have the belief in your head, it’s easy to point to somebody else outside the country and say, “that guy is one of those people too”, and then it doesn’t really matter – the history doesn’t matter – the point is that guy is just straight up evil, so whatever hand you may or may not have had it’s irrelevant, whereas I think you and people younger than you – and maybe I’m on the leading edge of that – the internet generation I guess really – they’re far more cynical. I don’t think they believe in the good evil dichotomy in that way at all.
Kevin: I think much less, I certainly [?] –
Jad: I should say at all, and I’m always calling people evil, so I believe in it I guess, I just don’t believe in I don’t know, I don’t know what I believe in – pure unadulterated evil for evil’s sake.
Kevin: Well I’m happy to take that. I think all people are inherently evil myself, I’ve made the point many times. But I don’t see it as a bad thing necessarily, I think it just needs to be harnessed in such a way.
If you’ve been following along since the beginning, you may remember us eventually covering this topic in episode 4, descriptively titled, “Kevin’s ‘Everyone is Evil Theory'”.
I figured you would pretty much share the same view of that right now. I wish I had you know, more to add to it. I guess you know, my continued goal – and again, kind of going back to the one of the very first things we discussed on tape anyways was it’s an interest of mine to try to promote some of these ideas to a larger audience and I know that you know, you’ve said – and I’m not saying you don’t do it at all – but you’ve said that it doesn’t appeal to you quite as much I think to try and do that. Is that correct, or am I –
Jad: I want to – the thing that I end up doing that I think what I’ve adopted as my M.O. is less dialogue. I mean, I’ll dialogue with anyone who talks to me about it, but I don’t engage people in it. But I do put out a large volume of – I mean, everyone knows my position –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and I think it’s that seed-planting sort of thing, like as if you have the idea that that particular paradigm exists – a paradigm in which you know, there’s a narrative in which Iran’s the bad guy – you’ve scanned something where there’s somebody who’s making that claim, and then you hear some story about Iran being evil because they’re you know, whatever, doing something, then maybe you were like, “well wait, that’s kind of like what that person was saying.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You start to catch those things more – you’re just putting cognitive hooks into people in a sense. That’s kind of more what I’ve fallen back to I suppose, but I mean, your point is well – still pretty correct. I’m not a huge engager.
Kevin: No, I think that’s fine. I think you know, I don’t think there’s a way to go with it, I guess it’s just a matter of you know, what the ultimate goal is in talking about this sort of thing. I mean, philosophy’s always fun, it’s always interesting and I certainly love philosophizing.
But on the other hand, there’s a – in my opinion anyways – there’s a legitimate effort to try to really comprehend the depths of this thing because I don’t see how else we’re going to move away from it and unfortunately the powers that be in this country right now – and I mean the people of the country, not the politicians – there’s the two sides that are just shouting from the rooftops, I mean they’re just screaming, and frankly I think what both of them say is just dead wrong, and it’s just way overstated, it’s completely hyperbole driven and I guess it’s my interest to personally try to bring some balance to that and say, “well you know” – let’s use the embassy as another example, well let’s assume that the agent’s story is false in this case is to say, “OK, well left wingers I guess, it’s not right that the foreign nation killed our ambassador, shouldn’t be encouraging them and nobody should – we should hold people accountable for having killed our ambassador.”
But on the other hand, the right wingers, “we don’t necessarily need an ambassador there in the first place”, and God knows we actually have been doing all sorts of horrible things to their country, so maybe it’s not so surprising that it happened rather than it’s either a good thing, or a bad thing, or an expected thing, or a completely unexpected thing. There’s gotta be a more slightly more centrist view to that and even though some of my positions are a little radical, it’s always my hope to bring that balance to people who don’t really hold that balance.
Jad: I agree. I think – [?] the difficulties you found – but I think the difficulty is when you’re inside the same paradigm, it’s very difficult to make those arguments to either side like it’s very difficult to make the argument to the right that the United States should not be involved in Libya because they feel that it’s to their benefit, they’re part of this organization that the more places it’s at and the more wars it’s winning and the more bad guys it kills, they’re more on the winning side and their position is more justified and maybe their anti-Islamism in it or whatever the heck it is is fueled.
And I don’t personally know many leftists who would go so far as to say the ambassador should’ve been killed – well now I’m getting off on a tangent here, so we should shut this down soon – but I think the left is just as warmongery as the right at the moment. I mean, I don’t think they would advocate a re-bombing of Libya or whatever, but I don’t think there’s any sense that this was a national result of events. I think this is a tragedy of somebody who was trying to help people is probably how they would put it.
Kevin: Yeah, and I think that’s probably a pretty fair categorization of that generalization of people.
And with that, we conclude the first of our “Throw Back Thursday” episodes. Hopefully you agree that it was worth salvaging. As always, thank you so very much for listening. For all of the talking we do, we’d really love to hear from you as well. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for upcoming shows, take a minute and shoot us an email. You can reach the both of us through our podcast website at www.JKPod.com, or you can reach either of us individually at our personal websites – Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, and Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com, that’s K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com.
Before we go, we wanted to mention that you may have recently noticed full transcriptions of some of our episodes. We recently hired our first staff person for the show, as such, we’d like to mention that Deidra Alexander of Galaxy Creative Media is now our show’s transcriber. We really appreciate her hard work. Thanks again for listening to the show, and we’ll catch you next week.
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This week, an ongoing story that we’ve had our eyes on. It’s supposed to culminate on July 4th when, according to the event’s organizers, 1000+ armed persons will walk from Virginia into the District of Columbia with loaded rifles slung over their shoulders in protest of the unlawful and unconstitutional prohibition of this means of self defense in the nation’s capitol.
There is a large and interesting cast of characters related to this event. In this episode we get into the ins, outs, and what-have-yous surrounding the peaceful, armed, potentially explosive event.
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Jad: Greetings and welcome to the JK Podcast where I assume you know by now, co-host Kevin Ludlow and I chit and chat about this and that, usually centered around some aspect of our mutual interest in peace, justice, and human freedom. This week, an ongoing story that we’ve had our eyes on, it’s supposed to culminate on July 4th when – according to the event’s organizers – 1,000 plus armed persons will walk from Virginia into the District of Columbia with loaded rifles slung over their shoulders in protest of the unlawful and unconstitutional prohibition on this means of self defense in the nation’s capital.
There is a large and interesting cast of characters related to this event, and we’ll get into the ins and outs and what have you’s along the way, But rather than front load this conversation too much, let’s jump straight to it.
Kevin: Should people be concerned about the fact that you’re going to have this – or presumably going to have this massive group of people who are armed, where they probably many of them if they’re involved in this activity to begin with, they probably already are upset with the government and other people in the country as well who are just completely unwilling to even acknowledge the fact that this type of tyrannical force is maybe not prevailing, but certainly having some sort of influence over the country.
There’s the principled stance and then there’s the logical stance, and I can see people arguing both sides of them, and so I guess, I don’t know exactly what question to ask here, but I’m trying to figure out you know, do you think that this march is going to have unintended consequences?
Jad: That’s what everyone is afraid of, right – the people who maybe support it in some sense but – or think it’s a bad idea and you know in another sense – are afraid that yeah, some hothead will you know, do something stupid or –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I mean, my guess is that it’s going to be intensely horizontally policed – I’m just speaking out my ass here, I have no idea. But I would imagine that like if somebody began to take a gun off their shoulder, everyone around them is going to stop them. If there’s 1,000 people – let’s just imagine they get 1,000 people to go – I think they’ll probably be you know, 500 cameras, so there’s no real way that a mystery can ensue, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Whatever happens is going to be very clear what happened, so I don’t think anything bad is going to happen at all. My guess is they’ll get to the bridge, they’ll walk across the bridge, and the D.C. police will arrest them one by one as they come across the bridge – that’s my guess, and I think that would be a win for you know, for what they’re trying to do.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I think they have acknowledged that as a possibility, or as a probability. I the thing that there’s almost zero chance of is one of the people in the crowd – one of the people in the protest – firing or you know, setting off their gun.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I think that’s just almost entirely unlikely, and I think it’s almost equally unlikely that you know, some you know, a police officer would fire their weapon.
Kevin: Let’s certainly hope not. Right.
Jad: Well I think it’s you know, I think the conspiracy theory paranoid crowd, which I’m not you know, it’s very good to be paranoid but you know, would imagine that someone could throw like, a package of black cats somewhere right, and just you know, and cause something to happen. But again, I just think that this thing is going to be like every single angle from every part of the entire group is just going to be filmed.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And probably outside the group too –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – people who aren’t part of the actual civil disobedience but are just there to observe it you know, for whatever side. I think it’s just going to be – it’s going to be impossible like I said, for anyone to do anything underhanded because whatever happens, it’s going to be very clear what happened.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I don’t think there’s – and like I said, I don’t think there’s any chance of the people who are serious enough about this issue to take part in the protest allowing someone to their right or left to like, open fire on police – I just don’t think that’s even a possibility.
Kevin: Well I don’t think it’s a possibility either. I think the only thing that could be – I think the only thing that could I guess, alert[?] people’s concern is just if they are intending to arrest people – which I think that’s what you were saying, is you think a pretty likely scenario and I think that that’s not unlikely – if they do start arresting people, especially if there’s you know, if there actually are 1,000 people or more that show up which again, I’ve seen mixed reports on this.
I’ve seen Adam claiming that they’ve got this huge group, I’ve seen other people claiming that it’s actually a very, very small group and even some of the people who seem to be supportive of it are a little nervous or a little worried about the whole thing. They don’t know that it’s a great idea or – so there’s mixed reports on both sides.
Jad: The Adam that Kevin is referring to is Adam Kokesh, the event organizer. Adam is a veteran of the Iraq war and joined Veterans for Peace and other anti-war political movements upon his return. He has an internet show called Adam versus the Man, which he uses as a platform for his anarchist political philosophy. He frequently engages in civil disobedience, most notably a series of dance-ins at the Jefferson Memorial, where dancing is apparently illegal.
I think the odds of them having 1,000 people, that would be about the tipping point where I would be like, I would give even odds to either side, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: Because these things do typically – the numbers you know, like the Million Man March is 10,000 people, so does that mean the 1,000 person march is – or 100 people –
Kevin: [?] 100 people.
Jad: Yeah, actually that would be 10 people, so –
Kevin: We just take the assumption that say, 1,000 or thousands of people showed up, if they start arresting people one by one, first of all with that large of an amount of people, you’re going to have a hell of a time arresting people outside of using some sort of force of violence. That’s the sort of thing that we saw happening at the Occupy protests with respect to you know, there’s just so many people out there, you’re not just – you can’t have a one to one ratio of police officers to protesters just going up to people and putting cuffs on somebody, and them putting them to the side, and then putting cuffs on the next person, and putting them to the side, et cetera. At that point, all of a sudden there’s violent tactics that come out.
Of course in that case, it tended to be pepper spray, and mace, and things of that nature and varying you know, S.W.A.T. lines and stuff like that, shielded cops. So I guess that’s kind of where like, the philosophical question of this whole thing gets I guess a little entrenched you know – in my mind anyways – is that it seems to me – and kinda to what Chris Cantwell[?] is saying as well – like, the only way that this really can happen is if you use violence to begin with, right? I think you have to assume that the reason that this type of conflict ultimately can come to pass is because you – the people that they’re speaking out against are already using violence against them, and so I guess what I’m trying to figure out is what would stop that group from using violence in this case?
I mean if you’ve got thousands of people who are protesting and you don’t want them to protest, you need to arrest them, but you can’t arrest them one by one, you just don’t have that many people, what do you do? I mean, the traditional response has been like I said to use violence to stop that crowd and then you know you pick and choose people that you arrest and then everybody else kind of dissipates because there’s teargas, and mace, and et cetera going through the crowd. But if all those people are armed, again, I don’t see them firing back necessarily, but I don’t know, it poses an interesting type of question I think.
Jad: Chris Cantwell is an activist, comedian, and anarchist from New York, City. Kevin is referring here to a conversation that we’d had about him earlier, which I will be posting as a separate podcast once I can figure out how to add sufficient caveats separating the JK Podcast from Chris’ philosophy to satisfy my beloved life partner, who has informed me in no uncertain terms that she will never forgive me if I’m arrested for political speech – ironically known as terroristic threats by the heavily armed persons that live off money stolen from productive labor.
So before I begin, let’s get this straight, the JK Podcast and its hosts in no way advocate the use of violence as a political tool. Chris Cantwell has been accused of such by other activists in his political circles. He has his own caveats for his position:
(Audio Clip)
Chris: I’m definitely not saying that you, or I, or anyone else should assassinate a politician, or a cop, or blow up a building. In fact, if you go out and do that, you’re a lunatic and I want nothing to do with you.
(End Audio Clip)
Jad: His belief – which is the point of contention – is, “if alternative social structures become sufficiently threatening to state authority, violence will be used by the government to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy those structures.” “At that point”, says Chris, “targeted individuals and communities will organize physical defense, or be arrested and or killed.”
Chris advocates talking about that situation, most of his comrades and my wife would prefer that he didn’t. To be fair, my wife really only wants me and Kevin not to talk about it. Also, nothing in the preceding paragraph should be construed as advocating violence – something neither Kevin, nor myself, nor the JK Podcast is doing. To resynchronize us here with the conversation, the “they” that I’m about to refer to repeatedly are the D.C. police.
Now that you say that, it strikes me that the reason they won’t use those tactics is precisely because they could, I think they would imagine that they would end up in a fire fight, you know?
Kevin: [?] think.
Jad: So when they do that to college kids, they know they’re going to get like, rocks thrown at them, and maybe a trashcan lid or something like that.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But they feel safe doing it, and I think in this instance that’s probably something they’re going to try to avoid because of that possibility. I think they can and will do that arrest people one by one thing. There are lots of protests that have happened you know, especially in the 80s with the protest about the school, the Americas and stuff like that where it literally is 1,000 people walk up, they each you know, put their hands out, they get cuffed, they get on a bus, and they get sent off to be processed, and that is the protest. And then everyone pleads innocent, or pleads not guilty – you don’t plead innocent – pleads not guilty and they all end up trying to make the political system, try to make the legal system feel the weight of their numbers.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And the entire time they have a platform to speak about what’s going on because people are supposedly or theoretically, the media’s paying attention to that sort of thing. So I would be really surprised if they use the kind of tactics that they used against you know, Occupy Wall Street, but that would be – I would have to take back my guess that nobody would ever consider opening fire. I mean, I really don’t know you know, what their contingency plans are for that sort of thing.
Kevin: Yeah, if teargas starts flying.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Well yeah, so I mean you had brought up you know, British and India – or excuse me, England and India not that long ago, I mean, is it a similar sort of thing I mean, that’s the type of protest that you saw kind of organized under Gandhi, I mean, things of that nature where you know, you’re just trying to get people arrested just to show the numbers, the solidarity of being arrested. I mean, how does it look when you arrest say, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 people for an alleged crime even though 10,000 people participated, you know? It’s – and that’s how that whole movement started.
I just, I have a hard time – if I use the example of Gandhi under British controlled India – I just have a really hard time comparing people in the United States who are marching in an you know, an open carry sort of demonstration to the type of mindset that people had in India you know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago. I guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out you know, is – I wouldn’t see people that are walking into the Capital with a loaded weapon, with a loaded rifle – which I’m supported of – I wouldn’t see them standing up in a line and putting their hands out and saying, “arrest me”.
It strikes me as not the type of person who’s interested in kind of a passive resistance demonstration; they’re looking to do just the opposite, right? It’s not passive at all, it’s in itself kind of a show of aggression, which again, I’m very supportive of because I feel that the people that they’re trying to protest against are using exceeding excessive forces of aggression, and so they’re – these people are really just trying to protest against that, so I don’t know I mean, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I have no idea obviously, but if I had to speculate it, it just strikes me that these aren’t going to be people who are interested in that type of demonstration.
Jad: I think actually – and it’ll obviously be a mixed crowd – the people who are organizing this – and I don’t know how much of this, of the people who are enthusiastic about this are from the fringy you know, violent right, but the people who are organizing it are from – speculating a little bit here – but they strike me as being cut from the same cloth having the same vision as civil – as peaceful protesters you know, in other non-violent movements. Their point is that they’re not going to resist. They’re breaking a law, they know they’re breaking a law, and they’re going to accept the penalty for breaking that law, and they’re not – so the carrying of the gun – and I agree with you, it’s an interesting, very interesting foot in both worlds thing because what they’re saying is, “we have the right to protect ourselves. We’re not going to exercise this right in a way that will get us all killed”, and that’s kind of the Chris Cantwell position too, and I think that’s kind of that – like I said, it’s a foot in both worlds.
It’s kind of confusing to me. It definitely pushes my boundary past where I’ve ever really thought about. I agree with all the positions, I just hadn’t actually heard anyone put them together like that where it’s you know, you have – as a human being, you have the inalienable right to defend yourself, and that is what the protest is going to be demonstrating, but they’re not going to exercise that right, they’re just going to break that law – the law that says that they don’t have that right. They’re going to break that law and accept the consequences.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: In the two weeks since we had this conversation, Adam Kokesh was arrested by federal authorities at a marijuana legalization event in Philadelphia. He is currently being held without bail. Initially, the charge was rumored to be resisting arrest, leaving the question of, “arrested for what”, unanswered. It seems like he was eventually charged for felony assault on a federal official. You can find the half dozen or so recorded accounts of the event on YouTube easily enough if you’re interested, but it’s pretty clear that Adam submitted himself peacefully to arrest, though he does manage to hang on to his microphone as he’s carried away.
Whether this has anything to do with the July 4th open carry protest in D.C. is obviously speculative – I speculate that it does. In any case, it doesn’t seem to matter much. 4,700 Facebook accounts claim to be going, with 4,200 maybes, and about 90,000 invitations outstanding. We may not get back around to the topic before July 4th, but we’ll have all the links you need to stay current at JKPod.com. Additionally, I think we have all our Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram, MySpace, and Friendster feeds in case you’re really interested in our marginally informed, largely remote opinion on the matter.
And it’s a two-way street at JKPod.com, so please stop by and leave us a comment or an email at JKPod@JKPod.com. You can also come by our individual sites, Jad-Davis.com, and KevinLudlow.com. We look forward to hearing from you, and until next time, take care.
]]>Halfway through the episode we segue from risk, reward, and cost abstractions to discussing the fundamental reasons why humans are tolerant of this kind of behavior. It would be amusing to consider just how much bullshit people are taught to accept if only the practice weren’t so detrimental to our lives.
So yes, risk, reward, cost abstraction, religion, politics. All of the things you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table rolled into a single twenty-minute radio show. Of course we’re pretty certain the only reason those topics are taboo in the first place is because if we did discuss them regularly, we’d discover at a much earlier age how patently absurd our societal views of the topics really are. But that’s a future episode in the waiting.
Music
Additional Research
Jad: This is somebody else’s example – I can’t remember who so I can’t credit them – but if you know, a month after 9/11 they’re like, this guy went door to door and was like, “we’re going to fucking invade Afghanistan and take over their government, and hunt down Bin Laden and kill him”, and then the person would be like, “yeah, fuck yeah. Let’s do it.” But if they were like, “OK all we need you to do is give us $10,000 dollars”, nobody would do it – nobody cares that much.
Kevin: Hello and welcome back to the JK Podcast, and anti-authoritarian free speech zone dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all people. In this week’s episode, Jad and I discuss one of my all-time favorite political and economic topics, risk and reward. Jad started our episode off with a fictitious example of how the concept politically works, and while there is some humor in it, it’s also all too serious in that it’s entirely true.
How is it that the fabric of our modern society is woven together such that a few hundred people in power can arbitrarily steal an unlimited sum of money to do really, whatever they damn well please. Why should we allow costs to be hidden and abstracted from our view? Are we not to be entrusted with our own earnings?
Halfway through the episode, we segway from risk, reward, and cost abstractions, to discussing the fundamental reasons why humans are tolerant of this kind of behavior. It would be amusing to consider just how much bullshit people are taught to accept if only it weren’t so detrimental to our lives. This is Kevin Ludlow and Jad Davis – welcome back to our show.
Let’s go ahead and back that up.
Jad: – that if they were like, “OK, all we need you to do is give us $10,000 dollars”, nobody would do it – nobody cares that much. And maybe they do care enough to contribute $20 dollars to a bounty, and you can have like the Abraham Lincoln brigade you know, Spanish Civil War, people can get together, collectively pool their funds, go over and try to find him, but they’re not going to be able to bomb the fuck out of cities, and occupy countries, and assassinate leaders.
Those kinds of resources can’t be voluntarily raised because people aren’t stupid. When there’s a vague idea, they can be stupid. And when it’s other people’s you know, lives on the line, they can be stupid. But when you actually ask them to pay for something, suddenly they start to calculate, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They start to realize they don’t realize they don’t really fucking care that somebody in a building 2,000 miles away – the guy responsible for the murders – may be in a cave in – that whole story is like why – when there’s a price tag on it – so yeah, you’re going to find a lot less people that are really all that outraged by it.
Kevin: I mean it’s a brilliant point and my whole basis for all these laws that exist is about quantifiability. You cannot quantify something you cannot say what it is or is not worth to you, and I think that’s an excellent point to say, if people were individually fronting the bill for what it was that they were allegedly in favor of paying for, this shit would disappear in seconds because nobody could do that obviously. Nobody really gives a shit that much, hell, if I could pay a guy a couple bucks to sit on my front porch every night and defend the place, sure, that sounds great – I have the money to do that.
But you know, if I had to shell out – as you say – $10,000 grand a month for that protection, that’s probably pretty unlikely I’m going to do that. I’m going to get a dog way before I do that, right? There’s just this basic level that anybody’s able to look at with that and I just – I think it applies to so many laws that are coming about in the books in this country, and because people are – I mean partially because the government forces it this way – but they’re unwilling to look at the quantified cost of it, and if you put it in front of your face, there’s no way you take the deal ever because it’s a bad deal.
Jad: Yeah. Yep, exactly. That’s exactly it, you hit the nail on the head. People get so upset – people who believe in the system – get so upset that people are not making rational choices, but the problem is there’s no way to make a rational choice unless you understand the cost and the benefits, and the only way you’re going to understand that is when someone says, “if you want this to happen, this is what you will have to pay. Are you in or are you out?” And that’s just the foundation of – that’s the definition of voluntarism, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Solving problems that way allows rational decisions to be made. People that seem totally crazy will become very, very sane very quickly under those circumstances. But if you allow crazy debt instruments, and inflation, and all these sorts of things to be alternatives to, then people will – I mean, there’s no way for them to even comprehend what the costs are.
I mean, you can look at something very abstract like saying you know, every person owes whatever, $50,000 dollars to the national debt or something, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to vote for politician X or Y I mean, the point is is that those things are so pulled apart that anybody with any common sense at all in a position of power can manipulate things to get anything they want done, to get any amount of money sent to any person, or to any war, or whatever – it’s not a problem at all as we’ve seen. And so that cannot be the way a stable society exists, it’s just not – it’s just not a possibility.
Kevin: No, I couldn’t agree more you know? I never did finish the larger parts of my book because you know, there was other chapters as well, but the very first chapter that led into everything else in the book – I forget what I actually called the chapter – but it was risk and reward is what the basis of it was, and my arguments are just that this country has completely, completely in every way, shape, and form lost sight of the basic tenets – the most fundamental tenets – of risk and reward.
And risk and reward of course is the exact same thing as pros and cons, cost and benefit you know, however you want to say it, but it’s the exact same shoe and unfortunately, cases like this. I mean, I think most people tend to only consider the notion of risk reward when you think about finances, and that’s a huge part of it as well – there’s no doubt about that. But risk reward plays a role in everything you do.
As I described it in the book, if you skip work one day, the risk is that if you get caught, you could get fired – the reward is that you get the day off. But you know, there’s consequences to things and I think that we have zero ability to have basic analysis in this country – the most of us anyways – and it leads to just epic failures.
Jad: Well and I would challenge that with what we were saying before though, like most people will make reasonable decisions about, “will I go to work today?”
Kevin: Yeah, they will.
Jad: There are some people that won’t. It’s not that they’re incapable of making the decisions, it’s that they don’t have the decisions to make, right? So if –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – do they go to work, yes or no – they make the rational decision. Are you going to support this war, yes or no – they have no means, they don’t have the tools, they’re not allowed to make the choice, so to say they don’t make irrational decision doesn’t make any sense because they don’t have the cost and the benefit in front of them to decide what to do, you see what I’m saying?
Kevin: Well there’s truth to that, yeah absolutely.
Jad: Or like you would say, the national debt is a way in which Americans are just blind to this impossibility of maintaining this lifestyle, blah, blah, blah, well the reason they seem blind to it is because they’re not allowed to make that choice. If you said, “we’re going to put your kids’ $20,000 dollars in debt so we can pave the street”, they’re going to say no, right?
But if it’s like, “oh, there’s bond issue, blah, blah, blah”, there is no risk reward, you know? It’s just some sort of these vague abstractions of future payment to you know, something – they might even live in the city where the bond is – I mean it’s just, they’re not being stupid, they’re just not – they’re not really making real choices.
Kevin: But I mean that was a very fair characterization of that. So the point – which you said the word in there somewhere – is that you’re right, it becomes abstracted so we keep abstracting at levels, and levels, and levels, and that’s a big thing I talk about a lot is the abstraction of costs, and the abstraction of decisions because I think the government’s become increasingly wonderful. I mean I think their tactics are brilliant even though every one of them is – I couldn’t disagree with more. They are very good at abstracting the decision process from people and they’re very good at abstracting the cost structure from people, and the further you abstract something from its base root, the base root being, “will you pay me $20,000 to pave your street” – fuck no I won’t, it’s fine as it is, right? And then you take that one level out – there’s a neighborhood that’s raising money to do that, right? And would you contribute to the neighborhood, and then the neighborhood in turn is going to of course, be street paving. “No, I really don’t feel like giving to my neighborhood fund.” Now we take it to the bond measure, right?
And you can keep taking that up the level, eventually it gets to a point where, well now your property taxes are doing it, not it’s this that’s doing it, not the state’s just going to collect a tax from you, now the whole government’s just going to collect a tax from you, and we’re going to do that. “You don’t need to tell us if you want the roads paved at this point, they’re going to be paved, but we’re taking your money for it anyway”, so I completely agree with your point.
I guess it’s not a counterpoint, but the question then becomes, how do you get people to get more on board with the side that we’re looking at because for whatever level – for whatever reason, maybe we’re six levels deep of abstraction, and so to me, I feel that I can run the cost benefit analysis. I fell that I can look at the situation and say, “well I don’t want to pay taxes because this is what those taxes are going for.” “I don’t want the Los Angeles police department to be militarized because this is the actual reality, this is the actual cost or the risk to that militarization – I don’t want that to occur.”
And so I guess I’m trying to get at or trying to question how you get people to come to that level, and I guess to your point – the one that you’ve brought up many times – is it all pretty much just comes down to education upbringing, right? But I’m thinking that there’s – I’m always trying to think about other ways in which to bring that abstraction to a less abstract nature, does that make any sense?
Jad: Sure, totally, totally. And I’m not trying to denigrate any effort to do so. I think that’s – there’s no reason not to try, it’s just the deck is so radically stacked against you but you know, that only seems to make your enjoyment rise in the challenge. And I’m – you know, that’s what I do too, having a conversation like this with anyone is just an education effort, right? Like you were saying, you’re just trying to like, present a view that maybe they will ponder for some time and start to view the world in a different way and start to think about these things in a different way or whatever.
But the institutions and the status quo or whatever is I mean, they’re not even heavily sand bagged, they’re like in an underground bunker 30 miles below the surface of the earth in reinforced concrete and then it’s like it’s nearly impossible to imagine the argument that would turn anything around.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And you know, the historical trend is that people start to reconsider these ideas when they start to starve to death you know, which is something I hope I don’t live to see frankly, and yeah, I don’t know how that goes. But that seems to be – this has never been – this pattern has never been broken. The conversation has been had lots of times, but every time you know, when it comes time to figure out what to do, some group of people have a bunch of guns and they take control of everything and they reestablish the same hierarchal system and the same process of abstracting away decisions about cost and benefit – taking control of them essentially – and running things into the ground. It happens again and again every single time.
Kevin: Just tying it into it, it’s kind of the great atheist debate again. I mean, it’s convince a pious person that God doesn’t exist, you know? It’s kind of that challenge. It’s the deck is so stacked I mean, that’s basically what you’re trying to do – that’s the level of abstraction you’re trying to beat out there because it’s just so engrained.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: So I’m not saying you can’t do it – I think it happens.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: I think it happens all the time, but statistically, it does seem to be against people.
Jad: Yep, and the answer again that your religion analogy points to, what I’m always saying like, the main way to overcome that is to not lie to the child for 10 years before they’re a conscious adult about the nature of God or whatever.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s really hard to undo you know, a lifetime of propaganda. But if you don’t do it in the first place, it’s not something that normally occurs to a child – or an adult rather. There’s no way that a 23 year old has never heard of Jesus is going to make it up – they’re just not going to believe it.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They’re going to show up and be like, oh yeah, there was a Semitic[?] carpenter who you know, who turned water to wine and raised the dead and then he died so that all the evil that you do is forgiven and you’ll be in heaven. I mean like, no one’s going to believe that shit at age 30 upon first hearing it and I know the theory is – which I totally believe but it’s more speculative than that example – is that if you said to a 30 year old person who’s just growing up without violence being a part of the social relationships that he’s having with the people around him and you’re like, “no wait, really if you want to get things done, what you need to do is give all of your weapons to that guy and he’s going to do whatever he wants, and it’s going to turn out great”, you know?
Like, that sounds insane – no one’s going to believe that shit unless they’ve been told that that’s the way things are supposed to work and that’s the only way things can work, you know? If they don’t know that story then it sounds ludicrous.
Kevin: That is – I’ve never heard that analogy before, but that’s a far more interesting one than the religious one because –
Jad: I think they’re exactly parallel, frankly.
Kevin: I think they’re completely parallel, it’s just it’s a much more interesting spin on the side of it because maybe I’ve just heard the religious one so many times, or maybe religion is just actually less interesting to me than the political side of things, which is very real and very tangible. So to think that that same sort of parallel exists there – which I’d be willing to wager you’re spot on right – and it’s just interesting to consider that.
Jad: Yeah. If you sit down and you explain the social contract and imagine explaining it to an adult who’s never heard the idea – it just sounds absurd, it really sounds ludicrous. Or the divine right of kings even more so, right? But that kind of goes back to the religion thing, but I mean all of those things are just explanations for why you should be someone else’s slave, you know – which it’s really hard to make that argument to an adult, but very easy to tell a child a story again, and again, and again, and then have them think “oh, this is just – you know, you’re crazy if you don’t believe this”, or whatever.
Kevin: So kind of drawing it slightly off to the side, I don’t know if you and Elisa[?] have any intentions of pursuing the child thing in the future – I don’t know if that’s something that you’re interested in or not –
As it turns out and as you may have remembered us mentioning in another recent episode, Jad and his lovely wife Elisa actually are expecting their first child in just a few short months.
– anyways, I know a lot of your friends are you know, have kids or what have you and of course a lot of my friends have kids and all that sort of jazz, and it’s really interesting – I assume you’ve had this conversation with some friends as well as far as how your friends are going to raise the children with respect to I mean, religion and politics for the most part, but the religious one in and of itself I think is really interesting. Have you had that conversation with friends of yours with kids?
Jad: A little bit, it’s one of those ones where it gets kind of sensitive, so –
Kevin: Yeah – no, it totally does.
Jad: I think again, just kind of the way I roll is I’m just not friends with people who are going to raise their kids religiously – I just don’t talk to those people frequently. I mean I do have some friends, I have this one – not to derail your point – but I have this one acquaintance that I used to work with who was Bangladeshi Muslim you know – very intelligent woman. So she very quickly abandoned religion as an adult, then she has twins and they’re adorable and they’re brilliant, and she’s decided to raise them catholic and I’m like, “what? You’re an atheist, you don’t even believe this stuff.” It’s just that social belief that this is an important part of like, a well rounded cultural something or other is to have this component. It’s pretty deeply engrained apparently, but carry on with what you were saying.
Kevin: I don’t know that I had any huge point other than it tied into what you were talking about as far as being raised and so I agree with you wholeheartedly whether we have proof to that point or not. I guess it’s somewhat theoretical, but I think it’s pretty obvious to most people that that’s where that comes from because the stats behind it are pretty revealing. If you’re raised without religion, you’re probably not religious, in fact I think there’s an overwhelmingly strong correlation that you’re not.
It’s just kind of at a point in life now I guess where I have that conversation with people and I ask people about it and you know I’m usually pretty inquisitive with my friends, but just trying to figure out like some of the ones that I’ve seen you know, there’s varying traditions that play into it and that one always kind of – that one always kind of catches me where like maybe my friends would be like, “well, I don’t really give a shit about religion, but the grandparents are really upset if we don’t do this you know, we gotta get them baptized”, and all that sort of stuff and I’m like, “really? Why does that matter”, and they’re like, “well you know, they’re going to be upset if we don’t do it and we don’t want to have to deal with that”, and it’s just interesting to me to kind of see some of that stuff unfold and I guess I would take – I know I would take – a very stubborn point, and I certainly wouldn’t subject my kids to any of that shit.
But for a number of reasons, it’s interesting thinking to me like, where it comes from and why it happens, and what’s good intentions, what’s bad intentions, what’s just – what just happens because it happens, and then the longer term consequences of that. For example, a friend of mine whose kid actually was baptized and his wife is enough religious where she goes to church from time to time, and my buddy is flat atheist as could be, but I mean their – her family is especially religious – and I don’t think that the kid’s going to be dragged to church and all that sort of jazz, but just the fact that you know, you have kind of this religious background, it’s just interesting to me to consider in say, 18 years from now or even 15 years from now, if that kid is going to be of the mindset to believe the Jesus story, or if they’re going to have the mindset to say, “my parents like, did some of that stuff but that’s just ludicrous”, you know? I guess the level of atheism that comes from that person is of interest to me.
Jad: Sure, yeah.
Kevin: I guess the bullet point is what I’m trying to figure out or what’s an interesting puzzle to me in just the world is how much or how little marketing it actually takes of something to convince somebody to follow it blindly.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Like to your point about the 30 year old man who’s you know, never heard of the authoritative action before. If he didn’t have any exposure to it at all but then I don’t know, when he was 10 years old for 1 year, he got exposed to it and then again, it just kind of went away after that – is his brain completely susceptible to believing that all of a sudden, or does it take longer than that? That’s an interesting puzzle to me.
Jad: Sure yeah, I agree. I agree. Well I think it’s all to do also with not just the exposure, but how it’s tied to what motivates people is, “am I good”, or “am I bad”. No one wants to act badly, so in that year, if you’re able to convince someone that despite maybe their native biological discomfort with inflicting pain on somebody or forcing someone to do something, it is good to do it – it’s a good thing to do and resisting people who do that is a bad thing to do – to answer your question, I don’t know how long that takes or under what circumstances you could do that under you know, and what periods of time, but that’s what you have to achieve in order to have it stick.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Like our friend – you know, like your friend and my friend – they’re like it’s good to please your parents, or it’s good to you know, stick with social norms enough to you know, observe these rituals of baptism or whatever they are. They believe that that’s a good thing to do more than they believe that it’s a bad thing to indoctrinate their child and you know, in a Stone Age religion – and that’s why they do it. And so – and they same thing is going to be true of their kids = there’s a million other life experiences that feed into it, but essentially it’s going to be the case that you know, when that time comes for their grandchildren to be christened or whatever, does their child feel like it would bad of them to not do it.
It’s going to be to do with whatever pressure the parent’s put on them, you know? If you have a religious mom then you’ll probably do it, especially if you’re a close knit family and I’m stereotyping here, but – well let’s just say it doesn’t really matter the nationality, if you’re five generations living in the same city with a thousand cousins, and uncles, and aunts, there’s no way you’re going to be an atheist, right? That’s what a black sheep is right, it’s a family outcast because your social surroundings require that you – again, you’re going to be a really bad person if you don’t go to church every Sunday.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And no one wants to be considered that bad person. Back to what I was saying about my friends like, almost all my friends, I don’t know what the fuck their parents are doing like, they don ‘t go and hang out with their parents, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Right, right.
Jad: They’re independent 30-something year old people and that’s why – I mean, that’s part of the reason that we’re all such easy atheists I guess right, because we don’t have any family expectations to uphold really. You know, you go back home on Christmas or whatever and maybe you go to church or something like that but like, the idea that you’re going to christen your child into a religion just because somebody who’s a you know, 1,000 miles away that you see once a year would be upset with you is kinda you know, just doesn’t hold any weight.
Kevin: Yeah – no, I totally agree with that. I mean, you’re right about the family size, family values, all that. Well I guess now that you say that, to those friend groups of mine that I’m thinking of where that actually plays a role, that’s certainly – that’s certainly the make up of those families.
Jad: Larger families that are close by?
Kevin: Tend to be larger, they’re definitely going to be close by, they’re definitely going to be tighter knit – I mean they don’t have to be huge or anything but you know, definitely large enough where there’s definitely a different type of interaction I think that exists.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And a lot of it you know, comes from a lot of traditional values, a lot of conservatism obviously down here, so –
Jad: Yeah. Well and again just to – I think that the key point is like being disapproved of, being thought to be you know, going to hell or whatever once a week or three times a week, or however long – however often you’re you know, encountering those people that feel that way about you is a lot more powerful than having that same thing happen once a year, or not even that, if you can just go – you know, a lot of people will go to their parents, they just lie, you know? They’ll just be like, “yeah, we go to church”, you know, whatever, they don’t give a shit. So it’s not even what you necessarily believe is right, it’s just what you believe they believe about you, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: If you don’t go to church and you go home for Christmas you know, like I said, a thousand miles away and you know, you go to church with your parents and your kids and then you go back home and you know and back to your house with whatever, with a worldly materialistic house of you know, with swearing and you know, violent movies and whatever else you know, unchristian things are going on, if you don’t think you’re perceived as being bad and you don’t feel bad about it yourself then it’s not a problem.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So there’s a lot of influence in those and I think it’s very subtle, I don’t think – again, people aren’t making the calculation, it’s just like, that’s just the soup they swim in, you know?
Kevin: Yeah, sure.
Jad: I guess you don’t really swim in soup, but –
Kevin: Well I would if I had a big enough bowl.
And with your help, we’ll get that giant bowl of soup. Risk, reward, cost abstraction, religion, politics – all of the things you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table rolled into a single 20 minute radio show. Though I’m pretty certain the only reason those topics are taboo in the first place is because if we did discuss them regularly, we’d discover at a much earlier age how patently absurd our societal views of the topics really are – but that’s a future episode in the waiting.
As always, thank you so much for listening. We do love hearing from anyone and everyone, so if you have any questions, comments, or ideas for the show, please do contact us. You can reach us through the podcast website at www.JKPod.com, or directly through either of our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, and I am at KevinLudlow.com, that’s K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thanks again for tuning in to the show, and we’ll talk to you again next week.
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The logical fallacy cited so often, it has its own meme
Logic, its limits and a smattering of related topics are the subjects of discussion in this edition of the jkpodcast. This episode is material recorded while Tom, Kevin and I are kicking around ideas for episodes. As in not infrequently the case, the discussion of what we should look into becomes an impromptu handling of the event. More than usual, even, we hit alot of points for a couple of sentences and then move on. I think I’ve rounded up all of the bits and pieces we refer to below. Besides following the links, if anything we talk about interests you sufficiently, let us know and we can follow up on it in a future episode.
Music
References
The intro text is from a lecture series that I can’t find online. The podcast Peace Revolution excerpts it from time to time as part of their ginormous monthly episodes. Here’s the link for the episode where I found the lecture. It’s from 4h 15m – 6h 27m (yes, it’s a 6 1/2 hour podcast) and titled An Introduction to the Law of Identity and the Axioms from which one derives Freedom. I really enjoyed the lecture and Leonark Peikoff has enough of Barrack Obama’s cadence to give me the giggles the entire time I’m listening.
I make reference to the School Sucks project. If you don’t listen to their podcast, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s really well done and very interesting. In Logic Saves Lives Part 10 — the Elephant and the Rider, they talk about the use of the logical fallacies (here’s a list) as a shortcut for engaging with and processing ideas.
Here’s the paper I reference in the podcast. I do a reasonable job summarizing it during our discussion, though I make a biological claim that’s not really relevant to the paper. The main idea is that reason isn’t very useful for a solitary person attempting to assess the truth, but the function is rather to create and evaluate arguments to persuade others. I make the claim that reason was developed for the purpose of communication, but that’s not really relevant to the paper.
Here’s a New York Times summary of the findings.
Tom touches on this idea for a sentence or two. It’s a huge topic unto itself. The gist of it is to take the idea of non-aggression into the realm of communication by attempting to achieve win-win outcomes based on shared goals premised on shared humanity instead of using communication to dominate the co-communicator.
As is shockingly often the case, other podcasters are running through the same ideas. James Corbett of The Corbett Report did a related podcast titled, Logic is Not Enough.
I also stumbled across this genius piece that touches on exactly the tactic of using rudimentary rhetorical tricks to bash ideas (and, more importanly, those that hold them) instead of engaging in an authentic discussion. The author, Stephen Bond, has a number of extremely well written and though provoking articles. And good game reviews.
Jad: Logic, its limits, and the spattering of related topics are the subjects of discussion in this edition of the JK Podcast. What you’re about to hear is Tom, Kevin, and I accidentally generating material for an episode on logic, while talking about how we should do some research and put together an episode on logic. We touch on a huge number of bases, sometimes only for a sentence or two. Rather than try to fill in all the gaps with narration, I’ll put the relevant links and supplementary information in the show notes for episode 26 at JKPod.com.
We’ll probably get back around to most of the topics, but if there’s anything in particular you’re interested in hearing more about, drop us a line and we’ll get on it. We spend most of this episode talking about the limits of logic. I want to emphasize up front that the three of us agree that logic is indispensable as a tool to compare our subjective experience of reality to that which objectively exists. To reiterate the importance of logic before we get around to nitpicking its use in common discourse[?], let’s listen in on a little bit more of Leonard Peikoff, [?] logician extraordinaire, and amateur Barack Obama impersonator.
Leonard Peikoff: [?] exists, the world, reality, existence is what it is independent of the content of any conscience. That existing have metaphysical timing – they come first, they accept the terms, they are there, they are real, they are independent of any mind or consciousness, and consciousness on this[?] view, is nothing more than the faculty [?] what [?], what [?] and independently exists.
Now this however a second book[?], to understand why logic is required – that is that when human beings enter the realm of thinking, the realm of conceptual [?] cognition, they are fallible, they are capable of error, they’re not automatically correct. Out of human knowledge is essentially conception[?] and as such, it is obviously not infallible, and not automatically correct.
Now if you combine these two points of trying to [?] know [?], and learn [?] in fact are what they are independent of [?] consciousness, and the sheer fact that you believe something doesn’t show that it corresponds to those independent facts because you are fallible, and capable of [?].
While under those conditions, if you are [?] to complain, any idea of yours has knowledge, you need to have a standard by which to judge [?]. A standard to enable you to determine whether or not [?] whole [?], or not. You need some method to enable you to determine how to arrive at reliable conclusions. When you can claim that represent facts, and when they do not [?] rejected as false.
[Difficult Audio]
Jad: One thing I don’t – I don’t [?] tonight that I was interested in that I saw a couple stories ago by about – we might’ve even talked about it, we’ll we actually talked about [?] – the limitation of logic, so essentially like, my own thing that I’ve narrowed it down to is people are fairly convinced that they’re reasoning processes are sound, and people who make a practice of intentionally using logic, or piecing together logical arguments you know, they believe that because of the nature of the way their building the argument that the argument is defensible, right? They’re using the logic to say you know, to take apart another argument and put my argument in its place.
And so the intuition for what I’m trying to get at is the fact that like, that’s what you know, medieval monks did, right? That’s what the scholastics did is you know, sit for hours and come up with these perfectly reasoned arguments about did Adam and Eve have belly buttons and stuff like that, right? And so they you know, they made a very rigorous practice of you know, using Aristotelian logic to build these arguments and take apart other arguments and stuff, but their premises were so flawed that they were just talking about nonsense, right?
So I was kinda thinking like, that seems like there’s an echo of that in all kinds of latter day arguments where people are basically saying you know, “you’re not being logical, you’re not using reason you know; here’s my argument and it defeats yours”, but they’re not accepting the human limitations of logic that they’ve got all these biases and premises that they’re assuming essentially –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – that may be causing them to go up with faulty conclusions. Anyway, so I saw this paper on argumentation – on [?] argumentation theory – and somebody was saying that reason was not a means of discovering truth, but that biologically it’s a means of conveying information, so it’s a social tool to explain why I’m doing what I’m doing, or why you should do what you’re – why you should do something, or whatever – not a tool for sitting by oneself and thinking through something and coming up with the truth you know, coming up with something that matches objective reality. So anyway like I said, I think it would require some prep but I thought it was an interesting topic.
Kevin: I mean, could you give an example to one that might exist in like, a modern day sense?
Jad: Well and – actually I can’t honestly – we could probably come up with something – but it’s something that you hear a lot in the libertarian and anarchist you know, [?] you on boards and whatnot, or people are essentially using this list of logical fallacies to just kinda go around and hit people with a hammer sort of thing you know, without really connecting on the level of what are you trying to convey to me, what am I trying to convey to you – it becomes like a debating club sort of thing –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – where you’re just trying to win without actually trying to engage in a pursuit of mutual understanding, or succumbing to some greater understanding, or anything like that.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: Yeah that’s infuriating when you put forth something and then someone just goes, [?] –
Jad: Done. And [?].
Tom: Use words.
Jad: Yeah so there’s that, and there’s a podcast called The School Sucks Podcast where they were looking at another argument that someone was having where they had had you know, where it was – somebody was basically upset because somebody was basically bullying them with the list of fallacies in exactly that way like, “this is a logical fallacy so your entire argument is dismissed” – out of hands sort of thing.
And it was kind of interesting because they split pretty hard on that point and it was funny because there was one guy who was just saying like, you know, logic can’t fail, logic won’t fail – and now I’m expanding the topic – but it’s to do with our perception of binariness[?], the perception of perfect information that we have – because our brain gives it to us, right, but I make the analogy of like, perception that you’re seeing things outside of your field of vision, you know, or on the edge of your field of vision, when actually you’re not, those are just things that your brain is remembering that you saw before and putting there so you have a whole picture of what’s surrounding you and yeah, that’s why stuff hits you out of the blind spots, you know? Because even though you didn’t see it coming because you weren’t actually visually processing that area, it was actually there.
But we have this perception that we’re reasoning coherently, that we have access to full information, that we understand the state of things, but it’s just not true – the world is so you know, messy, and noisy, and non-binary that when you start being like, things are you know, A or not A – that isn’t being a poor model for a lot of measurable entities in the real world.
Kevin: No I mean, it’s an interesting topic to me because I feel that I’ve been called out on that before you know, just over the last many years. Predominantly, I want to [?] get into arguments in a much more left leaning group of people, I feel that at times, probably some of the more intellectual of the group at some point will really call me out on the logic and say, “well you know, your logic follows suit except for the fact that the originating statement, the antecedent to the entire argument is we don’t agree with.”
If I’m hearing you right, it’s kind of like making a religious argument and then eventually coming back to the fact, “well, the book says this”, and you’re like, “that’s the problem.” There’s no proof that the book is correct, so therefore to base your entire logical argument on the fact that that chapter and verse says such and such doesn’t have any bearings. Is that kind of level what we’re talking about, or –
Jad: Oh I think so, totally. I think that’s exactly what I’m talking about with the premises you know, and this has been talked about a lot which I still think it could always be talked about more because people are really, really bad at it – everyone, myself included – which is why if you’re talking about being really constructive and having a constructive conversation with somebody who you’re going to you know – who you want to have a long term positive relationship with or whatever that ironing out those premises is the critical part of the whole thing, not the process that follows –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – but ironing out like, “here are the things we have in common, here’s what we’re both trying to achieve”, you know, et cetera, et cetera. That part of the conversation is kind of the part that is required to avoid the part where you’re trying to use debating tricks to show why the other person’s wrong.
Tom: That’s kinda the gist of the non-violent communication where you know, it’s another human being, connect with them, find out what you have in common, find out what the problem is, and then get them and you on the same track to see how can we both win? How can we solve this without you causing damage to me or anybody else, or I doing the same and that’s a whole different approach then it’s not adversarial because debates create resistance and yeah you know, some people will respond to losing positively by saying, “oh you’re right”, but a lot of people will just put up a resistance and you don’t win even if you win –
Jad: Right.
Tom: – if you think you win. But I think what’s interesting about what you’re talking about here is that there’s also a group of people who take logic and parse everything down so finely, it almost seems like nothing can be said for sure.
Jad: Oh sure, that’s the other extreme right, is to be like you can’t know anything, so we can’t reason about anything at all, or –
Tom: But then – one more thing – you said something like, you can’t use reason to explain why you do something.
Jad: Oh, oh, what I was saying is – and this is just somebody’s theory that I found a paper on that I thought was interesting – was that biologically speaking, reason did not evolve as a tool for an individual to arrive at truth about the world –
Tom: OK.
Jad: That reason evolved as a way to convey what I’m seeing and experiencing to you, so that like, a group of people can come to a collective opinion about the state of the world.
Tom: But what struck me about that is then when you explain why you do something to people –
Jad: Right.
Tom: – for people, you give them an explanation – you are giving them a reason, it’s the same word. Is that a coincidence?
Jad: Oh no, no, but that’s that they say – the point is that we imagine that reason is something that an individual – the brain evolves so that you can figure out the truth about the world, but this guy – or this person, I can’t remember – is saying that that was a secondary effect, that came later. Before it was valuable as a way to reason about the world, it was valuable to a social unit to come up with a cohesive world view.
Tom: Maybe higher level of reasoning – I might agree with that – but I mean, doesn’t a – is there a certain amount of reasoning [?] animals do, like, “that’s a cliff, if I step off it, I will die”, I mean, isn’t that kind of reasoning? Isn’t that some basic, looking at the world and coming up with some conclusions and knowing how to react to it?
Jad: Yeah, I don’t know you know, is the difference between like, a Skinnerian cause and effect, understanding cause and effect and something where you’re trying to come up with a more – I guess it’s the idea right, like reasoning where it’s like, “I’m not sure what’s causing this, here’s what I think is causing it”, or whatever. I don’t know where that line is or anything.
Kevin: I mean, it’s a good topic to delve into, for sure.
Jad: Yeah, I kinda feel like we should probably look at it a little bit more. I don’t really understand all the ins and outs of the argument anyway, but that’s never stopped us before of course, we can just –
And it’s not going to stop us now.
– carry on anyway.
Tom: Don’t you think it seems that the kind of anarchist, voluntaryist platform is based kind of ethics, and trying to somehow use some kind of reason to define some ethical base that is the basis for non-aggression, blah, blah, blah, and it seems that the most common arguments against it are the type where they start chopping anything that you try and concretize into abstraction, and the end result as well, that’s the best we’re going to do as humans and laws are going to be arbitrary, and whoever’s strongest is going to impose it.
And yet they reject anything that’s close to what you might call an objective instead of ethics, and they almost reject the idea that there’s such a thing as justice and yet it’s a common basic feature I think in all humans to understand, or have a feeling of something that’s just or unjust. So it exists in everybody, but then no one wants to admit it exists at all and that everything’s arbitrary – it’s kinda hard to unravel.
Jad: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well again, it seems like that’s one of those things where you’re bumping into the edge of what logic can do for you because it’s not a preference or anything, but it does seem like that is where the emotional tools of saying like, “well you know, you don’t want to kill people, I don’t want to kill” – like you know, that sort of –
Tom: Yeah.
Jad: – that sort of discussion can take place and more productively than being like, “if everyone on the planet is bound by a set of” you know, “objective rules and” – I mean whatever, I don’t really know how that argument goes, but I’ve seemed to have had it a million times – you’d think I’d be more well versed in it.
Tom: I think most people fall back on the old, “well [?] a perfect world, you know, I don’t want to hurt anybody and I don’t want to take anything from anybody”, but in a big society you know, you just gotta pay a little bit of your taxes and that’s what you give up and the result is what we have. So no, they don’t want to hurt anybody, but they don’t view – for instance, taxation – is hurting anybody because it’s just a little thing you gotta give up in order to get more order as a result.
So it’s almost harder to use emotion that way because they really don’t have any strong emotions. You know, if you’re working around $50,000, you should pay $10,000 – that’s fair. It’s hard that I get any sympathy, nobody’s killing anybody.
Jad: Well, but lots of people are killing, lots of people. It’s the $10,000 that buys the bombs that are dropped on people.
Tom: Sure.
Jad: People have different things they care about, or that they’re – that you can connect with them about, so that’s [?] for sure.
Tom: Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah like, it kinda borders the [?] that we were talking about with respect to the subjectivity of ethics and morals again, so –
Tom: Yeah, [?]. It just keeps coming up though.
Jad: And we’re done. As mentioned before, links to the several related podcasts on logic, research articles, and blog posts will be up for your further exploration of the topic at JKPod.com. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, which you can e-mail to us at JKPod@JKPod.com, or drop into the comments on the site. You can also reach Kevin and I at our websites, KevinLudlow.com, and Jad-Davis.com. I’ll let you guess which one belongs to whom. We also have contact information for the most excellent, Tom DeLorenzo on the website. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, take care.
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This week we do a shorter segment on a topic dear to the both of us – educating children. We talk a little bit about public schooling, Catholic schooling, and religious beliefs that are taught to children. We also focus these topics around gender dynamics.
But before we get there, it just so happens that we had a reason for heading in that direction. As it happens, Jad and his lovely wife, Alisa, are expecting their first child this coming August.
Jad is extremely excited about his soon-to-be first daughter and Kevin is certainly excited to hear Jad incorporate some of his new experiences into our dialogue. Kevin was noticing that over the years that many people use their children as a way to ignore principles they may have once held dear. While he certainly understand why this may be the case, he is anxiously waiting to get Jad’s take on the matter as he begins raising his daughter.
Music
Kevin: Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of the JK Podcast, a podcast exploring the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. This week we do a shorter segment on a topic dear to the both of us, educating children. We talk a little bit about public schooling, Catholic schooling, and religious beliefs that are taught to children. We also focus these topics around gender dynamics. But before we get there, it just so happens that we had a reason for heading in that direction that all starts with a big announcement Jad had saved for the show.
Jad: – and actually, this is an awkward way to bring it up but you just mentioned it, Elisa and I are having a baby in August, so –
Kevin: Oh, are you really?
Jad: We just broke the news yesterday – or Lisa did on Facebook, so, yep.
Kevin: Holy shit. Well congratulations.
Jad: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Kevin: Way to go, man. August – August 21st?
Jad: 22nd, somewhere in the – yeah, somewhere in late, middle August there.
Kevin: So there you have it, the very first JK Podcast pregnancy. This is sure to bring about some interesting changes in the coming months. That was Jad Davis talking about his pregnant wife, Elisa; I’m Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to the JK Podcast.
Sweet man.
Jad: So we’re 13 weeks – 12 weeks in.
Kevin: So just about where they can determine the sex, huh?
Jad: Yep, it’s a girl. We already –
Kevin: Oh, you already found out?
Jad: [?], yep.
Kevin: Oh wow, congratulations, man.
Jad: Yep. The study of the gender dynamics will be interesting too because I’m planning on avoiding the stereotypical female upbringing as much as possible.
Kevin: I figured you guys might – that would be something you’d be interested in, but we’re going to have all sorts of good stuff to talk about now because those are just interesting topics.
Jad: Oh absolutely, absolutely. So that’s all the stuff I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is like well – and I’ve thought about this before, but we didn’t think about having kids. Well actually we thought about having kids the entire time we’ve been together, but we just never really got around to it until recently.
Kevin: Sounds like it.
Jad: But that’s part of the reason I’m just constantly trying to absorb information about like, how you know, humans learn, what are the conditions under which someone can be themselves the most, be their most authentic self without trying to modify their own behavior and ways of thinking in order to you know, fit some other paradigm, or fit some other directive from outside of themselves, which I just don’t know how you do that with like the public school seems like that’s the end of that.
Kevin: Yeah, I think so too. So that, you know – well I’d be really interested to see some of the things that you would do for a kid. But I think that you’re refractive in actually following suit with those principles that you hold dear, and I think that that is a fairly rare quality. I think – I know a lot of people who would espouse the views that you have, but I think when push came to shove, I think most of them would say it’s just too difficult to follow through with those.
But I kinda feel like you probably wouldn’t do that, especially because you’ve got you know, Elisa strongly on the side of those things as well. So I’d be really interested to see some of the decisions that you come to about that.
Jad: Yeah man.
Kevin: I mean down to the little things, it’s just there’s so many decisions to be made there.
Jad: Yep.
Kevin: My sister is you know, [?] a lot of them, she definitely is not outspoken in any way, shape, or form, like I might be. I think her internal politics are actually the same, even though she’s not a political type of person at all, she hates talking about politics, but I think she does kind of think in the same political sense that we do, and she’s worked real hard to try to – I mean little things like, “you know, I’m going to do the cloth diapers, I’m going to do this, we’re going to feed him this, he’s not going to eat the sugars” – really trying to go the route that doesn’t poison his mind to be the typical American, and so far so good. First year looks like its done pretty well.
Jad: Are there multiple children – I see you in pictures with children you know, not infrequently, is that mostly your nephew?
Kevin: Yeah, that’s my nephew – he’s the only one, so –
Jad: Oh okay, cool. Do you know – it’s way too early to tell, but are they – do they have thoughts about schooling?
Kevin: Well that one I haven’t actually talked with them a lot about. I know that you know, they’ve looked into – especially where they’re living in Houston right now – you definitely wouldn’t send your kid to one of the public schools over there, it’s just not going to happen – so the question is would the move before then, or do they take the alternative of private school. And then interestingly, the both of them went to Catholic schools, and they kinda give you this really weird thing there, what we’re talking about, right? Like, there’s a certain level of indoctrination, but on the other hand, Catholic schools tend to be really good schools.
They tend to provide very good educations and by some irony I suppose, I would say the vast majority of people that I know that went to Catholic school are not particularly religious. Now some of them certainly are, but I think a lot of them aren’t and the notion I’ve always taken from this, or the hypothesis I have is because they actually get a really good education and when it comes down to it, they just have analytical skills and they might be indoctrinated, but it doesn’t take them too long to break away from that and say, “wait a second”, whereas most people are never going to have that analytical introspection of questioning your own belief system.
So I guess it’s my belief anyways that the people become educated enough where they can kind of dissuade themselves from being religious just with their own skills, which I find to be somewhat ironic of course, given
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – the nature of going to a Catholic school.
Jad: I agree with you, I think that’s probably a definitely a component and I think the other thing is that I think religion comes from the parent. I mean – so it really comes from the parent and Catholicism is not a fanatical religion anymore, so most Catholics are – it’s kind of like Judaism in a sense – that they’re culturally Catholic, right, and they’re – they’ve sent their kids to Catholic school because it’s a much better school and they get a discount because they go to church there or whatever, and so it’s a convenient place to get a great education, and they themselves are not like, having morning devotionals and you know, and praying with their child, and you know, like evangelicals more typically are. So I think [?] a Catholic education probably like you said, leads to far more well educated atheists than probably anything else.
Kevin: Yeah, I think so. But yeah I mean that’s a good point that you bring up also. 99% of it comes from you know, the upbringing with the parents and all that sort of jazz, and if I apply more of the kind of, the psychotherapy that I’ve been studying, most of them would say that that’s 100% what happens because all that shit gets formulated when you’re a kid, and the influence of your parents and siblings I suppose, but mostly because you’re seeking the approval of your parents one way or another.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Or you’re afraid of whatever it is that they’re doing, but one way or another, those emotions are being set upon you, so if your parents are screaming at you because you’re not reading your bible, or doing whatever you’re supposed to be doing, that’s clearly going to have a long-term impression on you after time.
Jad: Right, right, yeah.
Kevin: Well congratulation, man. I can’t wait to follow this along and see how it all goes. I assume Elisa’s doing well at the [?].
Jad: Oh she’s doing great, yep. Everything’s going splendidly.
Kevin: And she’s your age or younger than you?
Jad: She’s like a month older than me – we’re the same age.
Kevin: Oh wow, so – I mean, I assume that she’s comfortable with everything then, I mean, I don’t have any real strong knowledge of this, but I know women get freaked out a little bit with the – what, you’re 38, right?
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, so –
Jad: Yeah – no, I think I mean it’s good it’s like you know, we waited so long like you know, we got everything in hand, so we’ve put ourselves in the best position. If it was like 8 years ago or whatever, we’d be making $30,000 and scrambling for rent, and then you add a baby then it’s just like chaos, but now we’re fat, rich, bourgeoisie –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So –
Kevin: Since we’ve never really gotten into Jad’s bio and since I failed to laugh at his joke during our recording, I felt I should clarify that he and his wife are neither fat nor rich. They are however both incredibly lovely, and financially comfortable. As for bourgeoisie, I will have to contact the French consulate to see if Jad’s beard precludes him from wearing this title. I kind of suspect it may.
Jad: – I think, I’m not totally sure, but I think all of the you know, increased rates of down syndrome and all that stuff, we like, tested for all that and it’s all negative, so –
Kevin: Cool, cool.
Jad: – I think any of the risks of waiting are all kind of passed.
Kevin: Yeah. That’s what I was talking about, I just – I hear a lot of women get really nervous about stuff like that, but just complications of pregnancy [?] –
Jad: Sure, sure. Well they – some of them say – I mean, it’s not – I think it’s played up pretty hugely for whatever reason. I don’t know if a nefarious purpose or what, but like, yeah, I think your odds go from you know, something like 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 200 for some of those things, which is a huge increase, but it’s also still a very low probability –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and you know, I think after 35 all those sloping lines start to slope more quickly, so 38’s about – it’s about as long as she felt safe waiting, but yeah.
Kevin: Yeah I – that’s what I’m saying, you’re kinda pushing the –
Jad: Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Kevin: You get to about 41 and it’s pretty much the end of the life there, so –
Jad: Yep, yep.
Kevin: Well no, that’s cool I mean obviously, I wasn’t asking if anything was wrong, really just more of, sounds like she’s real comfortable with everything and –
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: – so, that’s great.
Jad: Yeah man, it’s – like I said, it’s pretty ideal. We’re both totally psyched, so –
Kevin: Cool man, well I’m psyched for you. I’m envious in some way or another, so –
Jad: Well you’ve got plenty of time man.
Kevin: Yeah, I’m in no shortage of it, but for some reason, a little girl over a little boy sounds a lot more appealing, but –
Jad: Well you know, I was thinking like, it’s kinda selfish because you know honestly, I mean I’m fairly convinced this is true and I think I don’t have to make the case too hard to you because we’ve had this conversation a million times, but you know, it is much, much better to be a boy than a girl in life –
Kevin: Quick point of clarification here, although I doubt any of our regular listeners require this bit of background, new listeners may. Jad is a firm believer that women are significantly more disadvantaged when it comes to the social structure of the world, and although I’ve never disagreed with this, he has definitely given me much more reason to ponder why it’s true.
Examples are almost unlimited, but if it helps, think of women’s voting rights, or lack thereof them, day to day sexism, unequal pay compensation, and then all the way up the Abrahamic ladder to rape, and honor killings. In short, this comment out of context has nothing to do with swing one’s proverbial dick around, and is rather in the outright defense of women.
Jad: – but on the flipside, from the parenting perspective, if I had a little boy right, especially in a city, right? So it’s like we have very tight spaces, very constrained, and if a little boy is like, running around the playground like, yelling and screaming or whatever – just being you know, a rambunctious kid, I’m going to feel like, self conscious about that, you know what I mean?
Just because I’m going to be like you know, is he taking up too much of the social space as it were, you know, with his energy or whatever? But like, with a girl, I have no compunction like, she’s going to beat the shit out of some kid on the playground, I’m going to be like yeah, hell yeah, go for it, you know?
Kevin: Do it.
Jad: Yeah. It’s like, I don’t have to worry about any of that like, she can be as – she can take up as much space as she wants and that’s all to the good – in my mind, again, this is just me personally or whatever – just because she’s a girl.
Kevin: She’s disadvantaged going into it, so therefore –
Jad: Exactly, exactly. You don’t – you definitely don’t want to like, put the brakes on energy and enthusiasm and you know, and whatever with a girl. With a boy, it’s question in my head, I’m not really sure – you really don’t want to, but in some sense you have to –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – maybe, maybe you don’t, but certainly in an urban environment it’s much harder not to. That’s why I always thought like – and I still kinda think I might do this – but if I have a little boy and they had any signs of having the same kind of energy level as I did when I was a kid, I would totally move to like, Drifting Springs or something and buy like, 10 acres and just be like, “go to town, man. Just go run through the woods, and climb shit, and jump off of things, and go nuts.”
Kevin: Right, right. Yeah. No, that’s cool. Well like I said, I’ll be very interested to see this dialog unfold.
And unfold it will continue to do. In all seriousness though, Jad and his wife, Elisa are extremely excited about their soon to be first daughter, and I am certainly excited to hear Jad incorporate some of his new experiences into our dialog.
In particular, I’ve noticed over the years that many people use their children as a way to ignore principles they may have once held dear. While I certainly understand why this may be the case, I’ll be interested to get Jad’s take on the matter as he begins raising his daughter. But until then, we’ll keep discussing whatever else comes to mind. As always, thanks for tuning in. You can check out our website at www.JKPod.com for show notes and episode listings. If you’d like to reach either of us individually, you’ll find Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and you’ll find me at www.KevinLudlow.com. We love receiving comments and feedback – hint, hint. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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Today we talk about plastic bags . . . Wait, it’s more interesting than it sounds! We use the example of a plastic bag ban that recently went into effect in Austin to talk about an important, verily an essential premise that must be understood in order for any fruitful discussion about politics to take place.
That may not be much more exciting, but I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got–I’m kidding, naturally, it’s very exciting.
In a bizarre yet increasingly common instance of “synchronicity,” John Bush took a similar, yet far more thorough tack on the plastic bag ban (around the 10 minute mark) and–believe it or not–the foundational tactic of state statute enforcement. It’s definitely worth a listen, plus he adds like, double the content. Plus, he does the Rise Up radio show every day. Plus, he runs a farm, a dozen non-profits, a whole bunch of political action groups, etc. I swear, both he and Kevin Ludlow have a series of clones
References
Jad: Today we talk about plastic bags – wait, it does get more exciting. We use the example of a plastic bag band that recently went into effect in Austin to talk about an important verily inessential premise that must be understood in order for any fruitful discussion about politics to take place. That may not be much more exciting, but I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got – I’m kidding. Naturally, it’s very exciting – the most exciting thing in the world.
We’ll get to the essential premises later. To start off with, all you need to know is that the city of Austin has made illegal the dispensing of single-use bags by businesses in the city. My co-host is Kevin Ludlow, I’m Jad Davis, and this is the JK Podcast.
Kevin: What do you want to talk about? Fuck those plastic bags.
Jad: Those plastic bags. That’s funny.
Kevin: Yeah, it was funny because I had been – I don’t remember why that came up recently –
Jad: OK wait, I guess a little more context might be helpful. Kevin was talking to a co-worker of ours at lunch.
Kevin: – and she mentioned the plastic bags and stuff like that and how she thought it was good that they banned them and I was like, “what?” I was like, “why is that?” And we had this chat and I totally launched into some micro tirade about it.
Jad: After lunch, the co-worker approached me and asked what I thought of the plastic bag ban. I said I didn’t have much of an opinion about whether or not stores gave out free plastic bags, but that it didn’t seem important enough to me to use threats of violence to control their use. That kicked off a pretty lengthy conversation.
Kevin: Yeah I was – I didn’t know that’s what you guys were talking about when I came up, but –
Jad: Yeah man, the conversation went remarkably well. They were really actually fairly, unusually open to the idea that –
The gist of our conversation is rehashed in a couple of minutes, so hang on to your seat if you’ve never considered the fact that a plastic bag ban, and all government statutes for that matter, are ultimately backed up by the state’s claim that it can legitimately kill you for disobedience. It occurred to me that this was one of Kevin Ludlow’s famous indisputable facts.
– I thought about it – to put it in Kevin Ludlow terms – that you know, there’s a fact that’s indisputable that no one will – that not many people have thought about – which is just that even something as simple as the plastic bag thing requires a threat of violence, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: They both laughed. They were like, “no it doesn’t”. I was like, “sure it does”, took them through why is that the case, and they you know, were both like, “oh yeah, that’s a good point”, eventually. You’ve got to have that as a basis for discussing anything. If you’re pretending that it’s something else then you’re basically saying, “we shouldn’t be able to agree to not you know, have plastic bags”, right – which is not the argument. The argument is you shouldn’t use the threat of force to do things like end the use of plastic bags.
Kevin: I don’t know, I think planting those sorts of seeds for people that haven’t heard that perhaps, or just haven’t really thought about it as in depth, I mean, I think there’s a tremendous benefit to that personally, so –
Jad: Yeah – no, for sure. And again, I think that’s – it’s a good starting point I mean, if you’re going to argue about plastic bags – which I’m not going to do unless someone brings it up –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – but I mean it’s just a good starting point. Like, it may be the case that you agree that this is an instance in which you know, a threat of violence is an appropriate thing. I mean, you may want to argue for the use of violence in order to stop – discourage[?] of plastic bags. But you have to start from that point, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You both have to agree that what’s happening here is that people are being threatened you know, albeit indirectly with you know, that they will obey this law or they will obey the you know, the sanctions of a fine, or they will obey the order to go to prison, or they will be killed, eventually. At some point, they’re either going to obey the state, or they’re going to die. There’s no – there’s no third option, there’s nothing else to it. We can argue – you can argue that that is appropriate, but you can’t argue that that’s not the case.
Just a quick supplemental note to placate the skeptical, it’s quietly likely of course, even if you as the plastic bag provider refused to obey and resist to your utmost that you may be taken alive, the crucial point is should you be killed while resisting police, it will be considered legitimate by the state legal system, and probably by most citizens as well.
Kevin: I agree. I mean, it takes people a while I think – well I guess per what you said, they kinda laughed when you said the whole, you know, you’ll be killed for it. But you’re right, I mean if you take it to that level, it would take a while – I don’t think you’d be likely to get killed anytime immediately – but yeah, if people – if you continued skipping out on your arraignment for the fines and eventually, they get you and yeah, exactly what you said. I mean eventually that is the outcome, so –
Jad: It’s kinda like you always say about people who – it’s just a certain mindset, you know? It’s just a real thing, it’s not something – I mean, you basically have to – you have to bring in some defense other than a reasonable defense in order to say that’s not the case.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Like you said – and you can make an argument like, well, there’s lots of things in between you know, and that’s fair and there are lots of things in between. But you know, that’s ultimately what happens.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That is the ultimate force behind every statute, and that kinda has to be – it just has to be the baseline from what you’re discussing. So now that that’s established, tell me why you think the threat of violence is a reasonable way to deal with plastic bags, and maybe you’re like, “well, I hate plastic bags so much that you know, I think it’s great”, which is fine – that’s alright position.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s not my position, but –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But to argue anything else again like I said, I think it’s because you don’t – I don’t want to argue against stores not using plastic bags. I think it’s fine the stores don’t use plastic bags – that’s entirely reasonable to me. I think it’s a good idea for people to floss their teeth.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You know, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have you know, the threat of violence be used, fines imposed, and prison sentences threatened if you don’t floss your teeth, it’s just not a sustainable way of running a society.
Kevin: I think you can also make the case to most people – and I don’t even know where you’d sit on this, I guess I’d be curious to ask once I finish it – but the flipside of that is that there actually are certain things that you probably could argue that it is worth killing somebody for those particular things, right, where a retaliation of violence actually is a good punitive measure, and I think that’s kinda the problem that I have again with the plastic bags is that you’re right, at the end of the day you’re stepping up the exact same ramp.
I mean in the most extreme cases are you know – for violent crime right, there’s a lot of those that are going to lead to death, but a lot of people I think would be very supportive of that. I’m not necessarily saying I’m one of them, in fact I’m not one of them, but if you kill somebody for example, you are going to be hunted and it doesn’t matter how long you hide, eventually you’re going to get caught and even if you arraigned, if you don’t do the whole prison thing, et cetera, et cetera, you’re going to get killed for it. So I think suggesting that there are no times, or there are no measures, or there’s no acts that you could do that if you broke those acts that violence wouldn’t be something on the table to combat that and again, I don’t believe in the violence myself, but I at least can make the case in some of those people’s favors.
Jad: I think again just a good baseline, that that’s what the discussion of politics is, probably technically that really is what the discussion of politics is is when is that use of force appropriate, right?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: And so you could believe that that use of force is appropriate to level the economic playing field, to take from the rich and give to the poor, you can say that use of violence is appropriate for – I mean almost everyone’s going to agree that use of violence is appropriate for defense against somebody who’s trying to kill you, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I think the position that I would put forward as an ideal or as a metric, or another starting place is you can – and this is a natural law thing, too – that if there is a societal institution that has the authority to use violence to stop something from happening, or to – as retribution, or whatever, then it’s also appropriate for an individual to exercise violence in that instance, right?
So in other words, the individual can say, “because I have the right to defend myself”, say, “from theft, or assault, or murder, or whatever, then I can say that” – I’ll say you know, you as the judge or you as the sheriff or whatever – “I will assign you the right to protect me in the same way that I’m allowed to protect me.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? And so the plastic bag thing fails that because people would think it was ridiculous if you know, if I saw a guy giving another guy a plastic bag and I went up and was like, “I’m going to have to take that plastic bag and you’ve gotta give me $50 bucks”.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right? “And if you don’t give me $50 bucks, I’m going to hit you with a stick, or lock you in my basement”, or whatever. And there’s lots of things where that you know, where you would say, “that is appropriate”, like if you saw someone physically assaulting another person and if you grabbed them and confined them, then that would be an appropriate thing to do.
Kevin: Right, or physically subdued them for that matter, so I mean yeah that was –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – you much more clearly articulated what I was trying to explain. But there are times where that response is appropriate, and I think you could get people to agree with that in the case of an attack, for example.
Jad: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think – but you can go from the basis of you know, you don’t have to have an institution do this for you. If anyone stops person A from physically assaulting person B, then that we would’ve considered that appropriate – I mean given you know, that’s context dependent of course but you know, just on the face of it we would say, yeah, it’s an appropriate action for any individual to take, and therefore it’s also an appropriate action for you know, a collective security, police, or whatever to do.
Kevin: Yeah, well you’ve spoken about this – you and Tom for that matter, but I think you and I have spoken about it personally – and I’m trying to – for some reason I never really remember to bring that argument up, or that example up that you just gave a second ago about the plastic bag and you’ve done this a number of times and it’s a real good example.
It’s a real good kind of illustration of that point, and for some reason I never remember to bring it up when I’m actually having these arguments with people in person, and I don’t know why because I think it’s actually a very powerful sort of metaphor to say – again, not really metaphor, but more of an example – to say you know, if you walked up to a guy in the store and you saw him using a plastic bag and you said, “hey, I’m really sorry, I’ve gotta take that from you and by the way, you owe me $50”, you know, silly as it is, I think it really – in my mind anyways – it really illustrates exactly the – how crazy that whole use of force is for arbitrary instances like that – things that completely go outside any scope of natural law and what have you, and anyways, you’ve just done it a lot and I just – I think it’s a good line or a good tactic –
Jad: Right, right.
Kevin: – for starting the argument.
Jad: That’s where we leave it this week. If you weren’t convinced by our reasoning about the nature of government and the ultimate enforcement of its statutes, we sincerely hope you’ll drop us an email at JKPod@JKPod.com. You can also come by the website at the same name, and leave your comment there. If you have additional time on your hands, swing by Jad-Davis.com, or KevinLudlow.com to take a peek at what else we’re up to and or to send us secret messages that the other must never of. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, take care.
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An anarchist march advocating total freedom, thematic to the Freedom of Conscience.
If you didn’t get an opportunity to hear the build-up to the topics within this episode, please have a look at the previous episode: “Rand’s Filibuster, the Right Questions, and Freedom of Conscience Part I“.
In this portion we focus on the heart and soul of the libertarian and anarchist position that other people cannot make choices for you, even if they’ve convinced others that they can. The topic could theoretically be inclusive of most any subject matter in the world, but the examples we focus on are limited to security, home safety, personal diet, health care, and education.
The Backstory on Jad’s House
Jad and his wife recently experienced the bureaucracy that is Austin, Texas when a storm knocked down part of a tree in their backyard. The tree itself wasn’t the issue, but a sizable broken branch landed on the power main running into the house and essentially ripped the line right out of their rooftop.
Given that a live-wire was sitting along side their house, Jad called the power company (incidentally owned by the City of Austin) and had the power turned off. The problem was that in order to get the line repaired, the point of entry had to be brought up to newer city codes. This meant navigating a small sea of physical and metaphorical paperwork.
Unfortunately in a city like Austin, process always seems to outweigh any type of basic common sense. Consequently, Jad and his pregnant wife went without power for over a week despite the fact that any electrician could have had them fixed in a matter of hours.
We work this particular story into the episode given the relevance of governmental control.
Music
References
Kevin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the JK Podcast. This week, we conclude our previous week’s episode with a larger discussion on the freedom of conscience. If you didn’t get an opportunity to hear the build up to the topics within this episode, please visit our website at www.JKPod.com, and listen to part one of Rand’s Filibuster, the Right Questions, and Freedom of Conscience.
In this portion, we focus on the heart and soul of libertarian and anarchist position that other people cannot make choices for you, even if they’ve convinced others that they can. The topic of theoretically being inclusive of most any subject matter in the world, but the examples we focus on are limited to security, home safety, personal diet, healthcare, and education. Joining us for the second installment is our friend, Tom DeLorenzo. You’ll also hear the co-creator, Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to the JKPodcast.
Jad: I was thinking about this[?], I was thinking about[?] the fundamental argument is the phrase that you know, we all know or whatever, but like, is freedom of conscience, right? You’re saying that like, what someone thinks about, the food they consume, that that can’t be allowed – you have to override that. Their wrong about the food they consume and they don’t know what’s best for them, and somehow there is a way to tell what the best thing for them to do is, but without regard to their financial circumstances or of anything, there is some overriding categorical prerogative that is worth violently forcing them to do for their own best interest.
And that concept is just so absurd, and it used to be I think – at least among the ruling class, or among the educated class – it used to be understood that the freedom of conscience is the fundamental freedom, right – that that used to be – usually it’s in conjunction with religion like, in the old enlightenment texts. Whatever you believe about God can’t be violently overridden by other people because it’s a matter of conscience, and no one else can tell you what your experience of the divine is, right?
And no one else can tell you what your experience of soda[?] is. It’s on the same continuum, it’s the same principle as being violated, what do I need from my home defense? Do I need a pit bull on a chain? Do I need a shot gun? Do I need a you know, .50 caliber machine gun? Like, that’s something that I have to decide for myself, and something each individual has to decide for themselves with everything you know, with, “am I too far along in my pregnancy to abort it?” Well that’s a you know, no one knows the answer to that; it’s a matter of conscience.
Like, there’s no right or wrong answer, it’s something that each person has to decide for themselves and no one else can decide for another person with a degree of certainties such that they can like, pull out a gun and force them to do whatever they think is right.
Tom: Well I think that has dissolved because the government has insinuated itself into everything and so everyone in society feels that they have a vested interest in all that stuff. Like education – we need to do this in the schools, you know, you’re not allowed to not educate your kids in schools because the common good. You need to have smart people, you can’t you know, surround [?] our advanced civilization and you know, marriages are tax breaks, so you know, if the gays want to get married, they’re going to be pulling tax money out of our society and now that healthcare is going to become more and more governmentalized well you know, if you’re going to be drinking that stuff you’re going to be unhealthy and you’re going to make my premiums go up.
Everybody feels like whatever behaviors anybody takes, it’s affecting them because the government’s involved, which is tax dollars, and I’m paying my tax dollars and I don’t want to see that fat guy drinking soda because I’m going to end up paying for his heart bypass surgery and I don’t want to do that, and their oughtta be a law. So, you know –
Jad: Right, right, right.
Tom: – everybody gets involved in every detail of everything because that’s where the government is.
Jad: But I guess that’s my point. So like you know, when we were talking about asking the wrong question, that’s fundamentally the wrong question. It’s not why are tax dollars being spent on fat people who drink sodas so they can have their diabetes medicine, it’s why does someone get to steal your money to give it to somebody else? Why aren’t you allowed to follow your own conscience when it comes to how you’re going to deal with your own body, and you know, to whatever degree you want to engage personally, how you’re going to engage with overweight people who have diabetes and drink soda.
That’s a matter for each person to decide for themselves and that’s again, that’s my point I guess, is that it’s always the same fundamental question whenever as you say, that’s the wrong question, the right question is what is the fundamental question – why are people robbing you to tie you into those things and you’re only means of trying to have any control over it is to lobby for them to take your stolen money elsewhere and do something else with it – which they clearly never do I mean obviously you know, the majority of it is spent bombing people and building prisons, and that’s just the way it is.
So the evidence is all there that they’re not actually doing what you want, so why the concern over what they do with the money after they steal it and less concern with, they’re stealing your money?
Tom: Well at least they keep stealing more money for education and that’s getting better and better every year.
Jad: Another fine example.
Kevin: Yeah I mean, so that’s the paradigms, right? I mean, there’s the paradigm that you sit on, and then there’s the one that they sit on and I think one of the biggest issues that comes up time and again – and it doesn’t have to be at this global scale that it’s used at for the TSA and things like that – but is just general day to day safety, right? I mean, that’s where – that’s where the arguments come from, and I reject every single one of them in principle, but you bring up the notion of like, home defense for example. And the gun argument gets a little complicated for a number of reasons, but the pit bull argument’s a pretty good one I think. Why does it matter if I’ve got a shot gun at my house, or a baseball bat, or a pit bull chained to the fence, right?
Like, that’s your conscious decision and I obviously wholeheartedly agree with that, but that is then where the other paradigm is able to turn that around and say, “Well wait a second, there’s times where the pit bull does this, and the pit bull does that or whatever” – and I don’t believe that pit bulls are dangerous animals by any means, but using them as just kind of the poster child for this whole argument, that’s where people are swayed on, you know – time and again.
Jad: Well but to follow through with the argument, does what?
Kevin: Does what –
Tom: To get away and hurt somebody – could get away and –
Jad: Sure, sure – and that’s a crime, that’s an actual crime, right? If it gets away and hurts somebody, then I have committed a crime, and now we’re talking about not a matter of conscience, but we’re talking about the physical restitution of another person who’s own freedom of conscious says that they should not be attacked by vicious animals.
Kevin: Well but –
Tom: There are some children; we need to protect them before those things happen. It’s like driving drunk; you gotta make laws to stop the reckless behavior before it can happen, not –
Jad: So you’re asking the wrong question again.
Tom: Right.
Kevin: Well but never mind – I mean obviously I get that, right, and –
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: – again, I think – you know my position, so I’m only somewhat playing devil’s advocate to it – but I mean in the case of the pit bull I think it’s a much better example because let’s say you’ve actually got the pit bull who’s on a 6-foot fence all around the house and the house is completely incased or whatever, I don’t know, something stupid happens. You can come up with any number of examples, but the neighborhood kid accidentally throws his ball over the fence, and then he jumps into the backyard.
Now the pit bull mauls him to death, right? Like, that’s the type of gray area that people get into where they say, “well, wait a second, the homeowner didn’t do anything wrong, he had the dog inside the fence” – no, in today’s society, God knows what would happen – the homeowner would probably lose everything he ever had – but in a slightly more sane America, the kid is technically trespassing, but he’s 6 or whatever, so he’s not really trespassing, and you know, he’s just playing a game and now he’s got this 6-foot fence, the homeowner clearly was trying to make sure it was his own property – those are the types of cases where I think people really try to bring up these ridiculous gray areas to [?] these laws, frankly.
Jad: Well but that’s the perfect example of you – because I can change that story back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and each time you know, an individual person who’s listening to the story is going to be like, “oh well in that case, it’s probably the homeowner’s fault.” “Oh, he had a giant”, you know, “his fence was 10-feet high and he had a sign on it.”
“Oh well in that case it’s probably”, you know, “the liability is probably not on the homeowner.” “Well what if he”, you know, and you can go back and forth and that’s the point – these things are extremely nuanced and individuated and a law, a federal law that covers 300 million people can’t deal with that. It’s the exact wrong way to do it. It’s the opposite of the right way to do it.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So it’s actually an argument you know, in favor of something to do with something far more decentralized, far more personalized you know, maybe like, in that case – in a perfect world or whatever – but you know, something to do with insurance and the parties who are going to have to eventually pay for those sorts of things and you know, and juries and you can have a legal system – like I could potentially say I will allow person X who is somebody that you know, is generally reputable to arbitrate the situation, to listen to the facts and I’ll abide by what they say.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: There’s all kinds of possibilities, but all of them are better than, “well, we’ll make a law that says if you have a dog that we’ll show up, shoot the dog, shoot the kid, and put the homeowner in jail”, and like, that’ll be the policy for everyone. Like, it’s the opposite of what calls for that.
Kevin: So I agree with that obviously, and it’s the same sort of thing I was saying about your house in these last couple of weeks, right? I mean, that’s why I hate everything about Austin.
To fill in the missing pieces here, Jad and his wife recently experienced the beaurocracy that is Austin, Texas when a storm knocked down part of a tree in their backyard. The tree itself was not the issue, but a sizeable broken branch landed on the power main running into the house, and essentially ripped the line right out of the rooftop. Given that the live wire was sitting alongside their house, Jad called the power company – incidentally owned by the city of Austin – and had the power turned off.
The problem was that in order to get the line repaired, the point of entry had to be brought up to numerous city codes. This meant navigating a sea of physical and metaphorical paperwork. Unfortunately, in a city like Austin, process always seems to outweigh any type of basic common sense. Consequently, Jad and his pregnant wife went without power for over a week, despite the fact that any electrician could’ve had them fixed in a matter of hours.
It’s just a sea of beaurocracy that serves nobody’s interests but the city’s and the monetary basis behind the city. In your case, sure, I get that they want to have some sort of permit process for this, but really you’ve got a homeowner who is a taxpaying citizen with a pregnant wife, and for 10 days in the sun he’s you know, he’s without power because somebody needs to sign the right paper in order to do that – that’s just absurd at every single level.
There’s just no way around that, and so I guess what I’m saying is though, when you look at Austin’s government for example, just as a microcosm of the federal system, people want that. People think it’s good that that exists, and so that’s what I’m trying to – well I’m always trying to explore this – why is it that people think that that’s good? Are people that much different than you and I? Were they raised that much differently than you and I? Do they just think that much differently, or is there something that’s influencing that particular decision?
Because I just – I know some pretty smart people who still think that that’s probably a good thing because in almost all cases they’re going to fall back, they think that the general case solution is the better solution, which of course I don’t think so at all, but they always fall back on the case. It’s like, “yeah, you know, there’s going to be people like Jad who get screwed in a case through no fault of his own you know, a big windstorm knocks this thing out, yeah he’s gotta suffer through that for a little while”, but what about all those other people who are doing this, and doing that, and doing that, we want to stop the [?] doing that.
That’s the mentality, that’s the prevailing attitude that seems to be winning and allowing the government to keep doing what it’s doing because they’re not entirely doing it of their own accord, right? I mean like, people have to support it if there was a full revolt against it. If everybody in Austin said, “Fuck you, we’re not going through this permit process ever again”, and the city said in unison, “I’m sorry, you’re not getting a tax base[?] until you change these laws”, it would change instantly, right – I mean, that’s the nature of a democracy. But it’s not going to happen, and so I guess I’m just trying to explore as I always do like, why is that?
Jad: So what do you think my answer is, because I – we’ve hit this a few times – what do you think I would say to that?
Kevin: Oh I mean, the one I’m going to always default with you is going to be upbringing and education and I mean, it’s just even [?] to think that this is what you need, you’ve gotta be told what to do and you’re going to follow suit with it. I mean, I think that’s a big portion of it anyways.
Tom: Well yeah, it’s been pounded into everybody. We have rules, you have to have rules, you can’t not have rules, and if there’s rules, everybody has to follow the rules. You can’t be an exception to the rules because then we’d have to accept everybody, and then there wouldn’t be rules.
Kevin: I’m waiting for the punch line now.
Jad: Oh no, no, that’s totally it. That’s totally it. But I was just thinking like – because that was what I started with, and what I was saying previously and this is another thing that’s been bouncing around in my head, and we’ve talked about something like this – I think we’ve even mentioned this before – but like, there’s always a group of people who understand that there’s a need for a peer to peer equality, like, a symmetrical respect for each other’s beliefs about what’s best for them, so that’s like you know, you’re talking about the enlightenment generation and the founding fathers and all that, like with respect to each other, they completely agree that there should not be the power to you know, violently overwhelm and take something from somebody, or to say yeah like, I don’t think you’re you know, running your farm right, so I’m going to seize it and run I the way it should be run.
Like, with respect to each other, they had that belief. Then they also believed women and slaves weren’t people – they weren’t rational, they didn’t have the ability –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – to have freedom of conscience, so they weren’t – so that was OK that they had to be kept in a different state of things, and I think the difference between then and in now is now everyone is a slave like, everyone is in the position where they’re like, “well, everyone else around me is too stupid to be trusted, so there needs to be someone above everyone who can tell us what to do” – it’s just magical thinking.
Tom: And I think they consciously or unconsciously put themselves in the slave category and want someone to tell them what to do because it’s kinda scary to think they might have to figure it out for themselves.
Jad: There might be some people like that, but I think almost everybody once they’re in a position where like, they’re face down on the gravel with their hands cuffed behind their back, that’s usually the come to Jesus moment for most anti-government people as they’re like, “holy fuck, I didn’t realize that this was the implication, that I really had zero power”, you know, “that there really was a ruling class, and that I’m not part of it”, you know?
And then most people you know, if you live in Steiner[?] Ranch or whatever, you might never have that moment. You might always you know, have a respectful law officer and you might always have a reasonably responsive city council and you know, it’s possible that that’s the case. I think that’s less and less the case these days, and that’s what you know, the way that police have treated blacks forever, now they’re starting to be you know – cases where somebody who is in a relatively privileged position gets pulled over and gets the shit beat out of him or whatever, you know?
And then they’re like, “holy crap, there’s a police state”, and it’s like, well, there’s always a police state for the slaves, right? It’s just now –
Kevin: There’s more slaves.
Jad: There’s more slaves. And so I think that the story that everyone is told though is that you have to have the slave owners because everyone else is stupid and dangerous you know, and somehow in the storytelling, they’re the ones who are being kept safe, you know? So anyway, but I think it’s like I said, you were absolutely correct when you said I mean, it’s all just to do with like, the way reality was explained to human beings previously is different than the way reality has been explained to human beings for the last 100 years or so in the west and you know, it’s kinda funny, it’s one of those things where – I don’t know if you have these – but sometimes those things that have been sort of catch phrases forever, and ever, and ever.
Like, I remember the first time when someone said – the first time I figured out what people meant when they were like, “well it’s not a democracy, it’s a constitutional republic”, or whatever. I heard that like, forever and ever, and then finally like you know, it was like, “oh, I see what you’re saying now. I see what your point is or whatever.
Kevin: And that concludes our two-part episode on the topic. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in to the show, and we truly hope you enjoyed the content. If you’d like to find other episodes, show notes, and contact information, please visit our podcast website at www.JKPod.com. You can also reach Jad on his website at www.Jad-Davis.com, or Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. We’ve also got contact information for Tom DeLorenzo on our podcast website. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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Senator Rand Paul during his filibuster on March 6th, 2013.
Here’s the back story that led us to the topic:
On March 6th of 2013, Senator Rand Paul filibustered President Obama’s nominee for the director of the CIA, John Brennan. His claim for filibustering was due to the ambiguity in the administration’s policy regarding domestic drone strikes. Essentially he was arguing that the President does not, and should not ever have the ability to kill a citizen of the United States in the United States on mere suspicion of a crime.
Senator Paul appeared to have support from both the left and the right on the issue. He managed to stand for about 12 hours and essentially concluded with the message that President Obama must assure due process in the country. Brennan assumed office 2 days later on March the 8th. As far as we know, nothing really changed.
The problem as we saw it is with respect to the question. The rationale behind Rand’s filibuster was phrased with such granularity that the illegality of the President’s new policy should be overwhelmingly obvious to every American, and really every person in the western world. But sadly it is not. This is what prompts us to explore “The Right Questions” and ultimately what it means to have others make choices for you.
Music
References
Kevin: Hello and welcome once again to the JK Podcast. This week we’re presenting the 1st of a two-part episode, primarily focusing on the freedom of conscience. Our conversation on the topic was actually a spinoff from two other topics also included in this episode. Here’s the back story that led us to the topic.
On March 6th of 2013, Senator Rand Paul filibustered President Obama’s nominee for the director of the CIA, John Brennan. His claim for filibustering was due to the ambiguity in the administration’s policy regarding domestic drone strikes. Essentially, he was arguing that the president does not, and should never have the ability to kill a citizen of the United States, in the United States, on mere suspicion of a crime.
Senator Paul appeared to have support from both the left and the right on the issue. He managed to stay in for about 12 hours and essentially concluded with the message that President Obama must assure due process in the country. Brennan assumed office two days later on March, 8th. As far as we know, nothing really changed. Here’s a clip of Rand Paul delivering part of this filibuster:
Rand Paul: So when we ask the president, “can you kill Americans on American soil with your drone strikes – which is part of the military?” It should be an easy answer. Can the military operate in the United States? Well, no – the law says the military can’t operate in the United States. It’s on the books, and he should simply do the honorable thing and say he will obey the law – it’s simple. But I don’t get why they refuse to answer it. It worries me that they refuse to answer the question because by refusing to answer it, I believe that they believe they have expansive power, unlimited power.
The problem as we saw it is with respect to the question. The rationale behind Rand’s filibuster was so granularly stated that the illegality of the president’s new policy should be overwhelmingly obvious to every American, and really, every person in the western world – but sadly, it is not. This is what prompts us to explore the rights questions, and ultimately what it means to have others make choices for you.
Joining us again this week is our friend, Tom DeLorenzo. The other voice is the co-creator, Jad Davis; I’m Kevin Ludlow – welcome back to our show.
My favorite thing that happened in the last week – not that it had any impact on anything but for the sake of the libertarian type of movement in this country – I was very happy to see Rand Paul’s little filibuster. Now I get it’s a little bit of showmanship, I get that it’s – maybe doesn’t have a tremendous wing in the actual policy, but I think the fact that it happens and from what I could tell at least, it seemed to me that both sides of the aisle were actually pretty supportive of it – at least in my group of people which are generally pretty polarized from one another as pretty strong leftists, and pretty strong rightists, and so I was kinda happy to see a lot of people agreeing that this was good to talk about this because it was a pretty significant issue – or it is a pretty significant issue.
Tom: Yeah, but what do you think? Has it just come and gone? It happened, now it’s gone and now did it do anything? Did it put anything in people’s mind that’s going to stay?
Kevin: I don’t know – I’m torn. I guess for me, what I saw it as was kind of like a straw poll if you will, you know? If you put a real straw poll out it’s a bunch of bullshit because you’re only putting a straw poll out to the .001% of people who care about it in the first place, so it’s not a good sample size. But I thought with this what was interesting is just that a lot of people that I wouldn’t have thought would take notice actually did take notice, and a lot of people have just used Facebook or various social networking channels to voice that opinion. And so it was interesting reading the opinions that people were reading.
For the most part I think pretty much every single person that I saw was speaking favorably about it, just saying, “Well this is a really serious issue, it should definitely be discussed. It shouldn’t be getting overlooked.” So I guess I kind of take in the straw poll of reading the way that people in my peer group were actually seeing the whole thing, which led me to believe that people are actually being a little bit more open to it.
Tom: Yeah.
Jad: Yeah, it’s one of those things I’m just keeping my head down like, I don’t know. I don’t know. It just seems like to me that if the best we can do is think about having a discussion about whether or now robots can murder Americans in this country without due process, if that’s the thing that rises to the level of warranting a some kind of discussion, then that’s just – I mean again, that kinda makes me feel the same way I guess you feel when there’s like, a million throning[?] –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – Catholics or whatever and it’s like, oh man, this can’t turn out well.
Tom: Yeah, it’s almost like no one really cares about the drones falling on other places outside of the country, but then when there’s the threat of it happening here, all of a sudden it’s an injustice because it’s an injustice against Americans –
Jad: Well Tom, it’s not an injustice necessarily, it’s just something that warrants thinking about, that’s all.
Tom: End[?] of discussions on filibusters, yeah.
Kevin: I mean – I think everybody is aware that I’m equally a cynic of these things – that said, I mean, the alternative is not discussing at all I suppose.
Jad: Some part of me thinks that that might actually be – and it sounds weird, so I’m going to couch this in a [?] caveats, it’s almost worse that this – every now and then – somebody’s like, “hey, maybe we should think about trying something else”, because if everyone and the government was just like, “no, we’re going to throw you in prison and kill you”, then maybe something else could happen, you know? Right now, things like the Rand Paul thing just suck the life out of everything else because people are like, “well, maybe we should get Rand Paul in office in 2016”, and like you know, that’s 4 years of doing nothing then, you know what I mean?
It’s just you know – not that nothing is going to happen anyway, I don’t really know you know, what the alternative would even be – but it’s just, the Rand Paul thing is not an actually discussion about should we consider the possibility of not having robots murder Americans, it’s just a way to like, lure everyone along who wants to believe that there’s got to be some sane way to deal with this apparatus that we’re supposed to use to get justice done and to get you know, things improved. It’s just a way to keep people believing that that’s still possible, and until everyone believes it’s not possible, it’s going to be the same show over and over again.
Tom: Yeah, I kinda go along with that because it’s almost like there’s these threats that people might perceive as being serious against them, or people they know, or the country, or human beings in general – whatever – and they have to feel like there’s something they can do about it. And then there’s this process that makes them feel like they’re participating and having their voices heard and are actually putting some effort in doing something to stop this bad stuff from happening.
And of course, I don’t think it has any positive effect like that and like you and like you say, Jad, maybe the best thing is for it just to get bad enough that more people don’t feel like, “well, if I go push a button on a piece of paper 4 years from now, that’ll fix it.”
Jad: Yeah. You know the analogy, Kevin, I think that you’ve actually gone with this part of the theory that you know, you kinda wish the fed would stop printing dollars right, because at some point their constant quantitative easing is going to lead to an economic collapse, and if it happens now you know – if they stop printing dollars tomorrow for whatever reason – then we have that economic reconciliation now when things are as bad as they are now.
But if it goes on for another 15 years, then you have the economic reconciliation with 15 more years of market distortion and you know, misallocation of resources, and everything is far worse off when they finally – when it finally ends, you know?
Kevin: Right. So basically, taking the side which I have taken with the fed before that if we just go ahead and let it destroy itself so much, at that point once the destruction hits, people effectively have to do something about it or they’ll be – I mean, it’ll just happen, right?
Jad: [?] – yeah, something else besides relying on bankers to print money and solve problems will have to happen.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And that’s eventually going to have to be what happens. At some point, that’s going to have to be – and the same thing is true with you know, government. At some point, something else besides this group of people in Washington supposedly protecting us you know, protecting our liberties, something else is going to have to take the place of that.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And the sooner that happens, the clearer – the faster people are clear about what those people are actually doing, then the sooner we can come up with something else, and the more resources we’ll have at our disposal to do so.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I mean, another 50 years of public education, and quantitative easing, and constant warfare, and you know, an increase in the size and strength of domestic police and surveillance, and you know, tracking and all that is just going to make it that much more awful. Whenever austerity hits and you know, all of a sudden they can’t send out social security checks you know, and people go in the street and start rioting, and then who shows up? Is it going to be guys with sticks, or is it going to be you know, robot helicopters with hellfire missiles. So, anyway –
Kevin: Well if that’s the case then, I mean – if I can play not so much devil’s advocate, but just illustrate the counter side of that then – I guess it’s kind of a – almost a mood point, or perhaps even there’s still some positive in seeing Rand do what he’s doing. For the reason that I was saying earlier is that if we go on that assumption that that’s the direction it’s going to go anyways like, he didn’t accomplish anything, right – nothing changed.
Jad: Well it did accomplish something, I mean – but go ahead.
Kevin: OK. So maybe he accomplished something, I don’t think he necessarily changed direction of anything, and if anything it’s going to make people just that much more passive that this particular guy is just doing something about it so miraculously it’s fixed, but it’s not. Is that kinda –
Tom: Well, he’s still part of the system and so whenever any part of the system kinda pushes back, then people jump on that and feel like the system can police itself. There are people there who can do something and they keep investing their effort and time in that system.
Kevin: No, but see I saw it as just the opposite in this case. I saw that the positive I saw from it was the fact that this was a pretty fucking trivial question that Rand Paul had put out there, and I again, I don’t really care for Rand Paul – he’s got far too many policies and thought processes that I just don’t like. I don’t think he’s actually very much like his father at all.
But there’s a certain fervor[?] that he definitely has that’s kind of exciting – there’s wishfulness[?] to it, and then there’s some hope in it, I think. The part that I saw was that this question that he put out there, none of the senators would come in and answer the question, and to me that was really the biggest telltale for that ultimate collapse that I guess, I’m hoping is accelerated day by day is just one more bit of information to say, “look, the only thing this guy asks” – the only thing he put out there was to say – and you’re right, it was a very granular – had nothing to do with the global picture – do you think it’s OK for the United States military to have devices flying through the air that the president – at a whim – can say, “kill this person”, when they’ve done nothing wrong, and they’re an American on American soil not posing a threat.
That was essentially the question that he phrased and even with that very, very, very granular, specific wording, it still couldn’t get the senate body to come out there and say, “I agree with you, that should not be allowed”, and to me that was – that spoke volumes that we have no voice. The machine clearly doesn’t work for you; the senate is worthless as is the house is as worthless as the executive branch –
Tom: Yeah, but there’s just example, after example, after example, after year, after year of that.
Kevin: Well that might be, but that’s all I’m saying is that in this case, I mean look, the fact of the matter is when we talk about the federal reserve, I agree very strongly with the Austrian type of model if you will – and probably even more stringent than that – but there are people who can make pretty valid claims on both sides. I mean and then there our economic theory is a complicated beast and you can certainly make claims to say, “Well, it might be good to support some type of currency for some stability in this thing”, you can make those arguments, and I would reject those arguments but they do exist.
And I’m just saying in this particular case, there is no particular – there’s no argument whatsoever that you can make that justifies the question that he put out there at all – there’s just not, unless you’re just saying that, “yes, the president should have the unilateral authority to execute a person who’s done seemingly nothing wrong, and is an American on American soil.”
Tom: I don’t think that the senators have the luxury of being able to say what they think. I think they probably have their people on the telephones trying to take polls to find out what their constituents think so that they can say what they think the people would want to hear.
Kevin: Yeah.
Tom: I think that’s what a politician’s life is they’re not going to come out there and I mean, Rand Paul is maybe sitting out there talking about what he believes, and he doesn’t care how many people agree with him or not but I don’t think most of the elected officials are like that. They’re not going to come out strong on something like that one way or another until they find out which way the wind’s blowing.
Kevin: And so that’s kinda the point, right? I mean that the goal at very least is to – outside of having a true anarchist type of system, which has no centralized government whatsoever – I mean, that’s at very least the type of person that you’re looking for, right? I mean, frankly, I don’t have a problem with the politician who comes onto the pulpit and says, “Yeah, I absolutely think we should be able to do that.” Frankly, I have a great deal of respect for that person. I fervently disagree with him, but at very least, if he just believed it for whatever reason and could put out a reason, hey man, that guy’s as good as anybody else is. I don’t have a problem with one’s opinion, even if I reject it.
Tom: Well then the worst case scenario would be that senators didn’t want to come out there and agree with him, and maybe it’s true that the majority of people agree with the president. Maybe the majority of the people think that well, the president should be able to do that if he needs to to protect us – that’s a very real possibility, I think.
Kevin: Well – and on a lighter parallel topic, maybe not parallel topic, but parallel mentality to that sort of thing you know, individual rights versus what people actually think and all that – the Mayor Bloomberg issue right now with the soda law – it’s real interesting. I’ve been listening to NPR and various other channels and you know they’ve been interviewing a lot of people. I don’t know what the actual on the ground polling data suggests, but it seems to be that most people are really unhappy with that for various, “you shouldn’t be told what to eat and drink” sort of – that type of thing.
But I definitely heard a lot of counterclaims to it that they’ve recorded – people saying, “well, you know, yeah he probably shouldn’t be telling people what to eat and drink, but at the end of the day, it probably is better for us, so I think it’s probably something that we should go ahead and follow through with”, you know? And hearing shit like that is the same sort of thing.
Tom: Yep, and I think that if not a majority, there’s a whole lot of people who have that mindset. I was going to bring up this example as well because it is a slight parallel – you know, people are all happy that this judge reversed his decree or – I don’t even know too many of the details – but supposedly didn’t – some New York judge said, “no, you can’t do that”, and then people are happy about that and I was almost like, thinking the same way that you were thinking about you know, looking for the claps.
I’m like you know, when you’ve got a bunch of people who really believe that someone like a mayor has the power to make decisions about their lives, about what they eat, and drink, and all that stuff, then they deserve the worst case possible. They don’t deserve that the judge reversed it. It should go downhill as fast as possible because like you say you know, people are like, “well, he went over the line there – that was too much – but yeah you know, we shouldn’t have smoking” – you know, everyone’s got their own little lines and they’re in aggreeance[?] with the idea that someone should be able to make those decisions as long as they don’t go beyond commons sense, and then the court should be there to reverse it and that’s the great system, and that’s blah, blah, blah – you know?
So many people are still miles away from even just like you said, considering you know, why would we have a system, or are there people who have power to control what you eat?
Kevin: Right.
Tom: And what kind of money you use and you know, whether drones should – just various degrees of the same question, why [?] –
Kevin: Well –
Tom: – system or there should be someone who can legislate those things.
Kevin: Well I mean, this just goes to the whole gay marriage topic I’ve brought up on a number of occasions you know, and I love bringing it up with my gay and lesbian friends with frequencies – it’s the wrong debate, right? Why are we debating whether or not a homosexual couple should be able to get married when the debate should be, “why must I ask a governmental permission to be with somebody”, I mean, that’s [?] –
Tom: Well I think the whole point of marriage is getting the tax break I mean, that’s what it’s turned into. They want the right to be able to be married so they can deduct more taxes –
Kevin: Right.
Tom: – and that’s it, so the assumption is that it’s a state institution and it’s tied to taxes and they want to be able to take advantage of it like everybody else.
Kevin: Sure and I’m fine with that, but it’s – the point being that the – you’re asking when people debate it on the street – debate it with friends of mine – you know, I think everybody I know is probably in favor of it of course, but it’s just the point. I tell them all the time this, “You’re asking the wrong question, you should be asking why do you need to get married in the first place. Why is that the legal institution?”
Tom: Right and it’s almost like trying to draw a parallel between all these disparate cases. Do you think it’s OK that the mayor should ban large drinks like, that’s the wrong question. Why do you think anybody should be in there being involved with what someone buys, and eats, and drinks? Why should they be involved with how people decide to live together?
The questions posed in the media are always, “did they step over the line”, because we know they have the authority to do this, but where should that line be and what’s reasonable, and what’s not – instead of just saying, “Why are they there at all?” “Why are they involved?”
Kevin: Yeah I mean –
Tom: Because they shouldn’t be.
Kevin: And that’s where we’ll leave you this week. Remember that this is a two-part episode, and the next installment of the show will pick up right where we just left off. In the meantime, if you’d like to get in touch with either of us, you can reach Jad on his website at www.Jad-Davis.com, or Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. We’ve got all sorts of contact information, as well as how to reach Tom DeLorenzo on our podcast website at www.JKPod.com. Thanks again, and we’ll be back next week.
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An empty CNN broadcasting room. CNN has recently been among the worst offenders, possibly even surpassing that of Fox News.
Regardless of one’s personal political views, the topics within should be relevant to virtually every person in the world. The strategy of modern media outlets is generally nothing short of deception for the sake of engaging an audience. News strategies stretch anywhere from simple hyperbole, to scare tactics, to outright lies. The mere fact that people have accepted the notion of liberal and conservative media outlets sheds an enormous light on the problem. News is supposed to contain factual information backed by credible and well-researched sources. Unfortunately that ship has long sailed and what’s been left in the wake is heavily biased opinions scientifically tweaked to maximize media profits. I can’t personally fault the businesses for wanting to make money, unethical as their tactics may be, but I do fault the general population for blindly accepting the stories told.
Our conversation starts off with a look at North Korea. We quickly spin off into a discussion about how North Korea has been recently used to fuel the media machine. We also spend some time discussing an interesting news story taking place in Guatemala and enjoy some light conversation about the FARC of Colombia.
Music
References
Kevin: Hello and welcome to another installment of the JK Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. For those who have not yet seen our website, please take a look at www.JKPod.com for show notes, and a complete episode listing. This week we discuss the role that the media plays in global conflicts.
Regardless of one’s personal political views, the topics within should be relevant to virtually every person in the world. The strategy of modern media outlets is generally nothing short of deception for the sake of engaging an audience. New strategies stretch anywhere from simple hyperbole, to scare tactics, to outright lies. The mere fact that people have accepting the notion of liberal and conservative media outlets sheds an enormous light on the problem.
News is supposed to contain factual information backed by credible and well researched sources. Unfortunately, that ship has long sailed, and what’s been left in the wake is heavily biased opinions, scientifically tweaked to maximize media profits. I can’t personally fault the businesses for wanting to make money – unethical as their tactics may be – but I do fault the general population for blindly accepting the stories that they tell.
Our conversation starts with a look at North Korea. We quickly spin into a discussion about how North Korea has recently been used to fuel the media machine. We also spend some time discussing an interesting news story taking place in Guatemala, and enjoy some light conversation about the FARC of Columbia. Jad and I are once again joined by our good friend, Tom DeLorenzo. We certainly hope you enjoy the content. Welcome back to the JK Podcast.
So there’s the natural – the whole North Korea thing – I mean, we could surely talk about that, it’s an interesting one because it’s like, bullshit upon layers of bullshit, wrapped inside of a crazy guy’s tiny country that can basically fire a bunch of sling shots in our direction, so –
Tom: Doesn’t he – threatening often specifically?
Kevin: Yeah, I saw people talking about that. What was the deal with that, like why did he say something about Austin?
Tom: I’m not sure.
Kevin: He did – he did say something about specifically Austin, I just –
Jad: Well I think he – he gave a list of cities, so he was like Washington, D.C., Seattle, Los Angeles, and somehow Austin was on that list.
Kevin: Oh, I see.
Jad: From what I understand.
Tom: David Letterman countdown.
Kevin: Right? That’s weird, why – I mean, could get like, Houston, you know? There’s a lot of cities that you could kind of understand why they’d be there, but why the fuck would – I mean, what’s to destroy in – Austin doesn’t have anything.
Jad: I don’t know. It’s the tech capital of Texas, I guess.
Kevin: It’s the capital, but I mean if you’re going to destroy a place, destroy the place that’s got the Space Center, I mean, that would – I mean, I get Houston, right? I mean, that’s our whole ticket to NASA, but Austin’s got a bunch of pot smoking hippies. I mean –
Tom: [?] picked up a lead on the Google fiber that’s coming in here.
Kevin: Oh, well there’s that.
Jad: That’s pretty funny.
Tom: So how well is the media machine invoking fear in the general population for North Korea? They’re just as dangerous as the Taliban and everything, and they’re a threat, and I mean, are they building the old preemptive strike type of mentality, or –
Jad: It doesn’t seem like it. They really can’t with North Korea because they can’t really militarily intervene there at all, and authority’s such a shit hole and it’s already fully sanctioned, so – but then it’s kind of funny though because it’s the opposite of Iran in a sense. I think Iran is pitched as like literally something scary. Like, it’s really supposed to be a country that really actually might drop a nuclear bomb on us if they ever got a chance to get one, whereas North Korea – which has nuclear weapons – it’s more of a joke. This is [?], really – I mean in which I don’t think either of them are a threat, but –
Tom: It’s probably more like the Soviet Union, they’re putting up like this big fronts and you know, it could collapse at any time due to the ineptness of the –
Jad: Well yeah, it has collapsed and I don’t think that country really actually exists in any meaningful way, but that’s not really – it’s neither here nor there when it comes to I mean, you know, it takes 12 people to really maintain a nuclear weapon once it’s built, so –
Kevin: Yeah, you know, I had some notes on it the other day – I wish I had written them down now – but I was looking through CNN and various other you know, online agencies, and for several days, each one of them of course was just throwing out all sorts of crazy propaganda like, “North Korea reports nuclear strike could be imminent”, you know, “it could be as soon as today”, or whatever, you know? Like, basically all these things like talking about the immediacy that North Korea could launch an attack on South Korea and if they did that the attack would very likely be you know, thermo-nuclear, that sort of thing.
So I noticed that was going on for a couple of days, and then I think it was just yesterday, but I saw on CNN or what have you, they were talking about the level of fear that’s been created because of the whole thing, and of course naturally you know, you just want to grab – who is it, like, Ted Turner, or whoever the hell is in charge of all the shit – and just grab them by the throat and be like, “you gotta fucking answer for this”, you know?
For three straight weeks, you can’t be telling people that the country’s in almost dire straits for being you know, nuked essentially, and then come back a few days later and say, “so why is it that people are actually so afraid of this”, you know, “where does the threat actually reside”, when in fact it’s the media that’s hyping this up, so I agree with what you’re saying.
But I think they’ve definitely played a role and right now, I’m reading an article that says, “North Korea nears ‘dangerous line'”, and it’s like, do they really – I feel that every article I’ve read has just been sensationalized, but of course as I go through the pictures that are included inside of this, it’s exactly what you say – there’s like a bunch of poorly dressed Koreans like, marching through the woods and shit like that. I mean, it makes them look really inept. Like, there’s basically 30 guys in a raft that are somehow going to conquer the world – which is just a joke.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: But I’ve been very critical of the media recently I guess is what’s kind of the bullet point of that. Maybe it’s not quite as specific as how they’ve been with Iran in the past, or even Iraq for that matter, or fuck it, even like, Syria and things like that. But I feel there’s a lot of bullshit that the media is more than happy to be disseminating right now.
Jad: Yeah. The other purpose of this kinda thing – other than as a run up for a military conflict – is just to knock other stuff out of the news.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I don’t know what that would be exactly, maybe like Cypress, or Europe, or whatever. But so I don’t know what that would be, but that’s often times what’s going on as well. Someone said that the quantitative easing was going to be discontinued, which seems –
Kevin: Seems unlikely, but –
Jad: Yeah, very unlikely to me, but apparently the Feds said something today about that. But anyway, that’s just another purpose of this kinda nonsense.
Kevin: To the media thing like, even right now, I mean, I just went onto CNN and one of their headline articles right now says, “North Korea’s Missile Capabilities”, and I mean, you know, it’s just a map of basically the United States, Canada, and kind of Eastern Asia, and it shows like, a scud, it shows some of these other missiles – I don’t even know how to say this one – the Taepodong – the various types of that, and then it shows the UNHA III, which I guess is some sort of missile. And it basically – when you click on that one – it shows most of the United States in yellow – basically meaning like, holy shit, they’re going to fucking destroy us. I mean, it even says right here, it’s got a 10,000 kilometer range. They’ve only used this as a test missile so far, but this is well within the United States striking distance, and it’s just bullshit I mean, it’s just utter, utter nonsense that this sort of thing is being reported to people.
The opening paragraph on this map right now says, “the past few weeks, we’ve seen North Korea becoming increasingly belligerent towards the United States and South Korea with them threatening to ‘mercilessly’ strike its enemies”, and that very well may be true but you know, it’s – I don’t know, I have a hard time avoiding the sensationalism that I see on in.
Tom: And for most of this news, are any news people actually getting this news from the source, or are they just writing down reports that someone – intelligence gives them? I mean, is there any actual reporting investigating going on firsthand credible sources, or are they just you know, U.S. intelligence says that he said this, and is someone just telling stories and they’re passing it along, or is there any proof of anything being true?
Kevin: Well, I guess that’s what I’m getting at, I don’t even think it’s that much. I mean, this article which is on the cover of CNN right now says – it says, “map, missile range”, and when you click on it, it basically is like, showing everything epicentered in North Korea. But the fact of the matter is is that you’re just taking 6 different potential weapons that exist in the world and saying, “well if North Korea had any of these things, then here’s what they could possibly do”, and to me that’s just conjecturing based upon scenarios that have no basis in reality whatsoever, but – well of course they could exist, anything could exist – but there’s no basis of credibility for it.
There’s no article that says, “we know that North Korea possesses the following 6 missiles. We know that they have this many of them. Here’s how far each one of them can go, here’s the likeliness that they could actually launch them.” Like, it’s nothing like that, it’s just – I mean this thing may as well show, “here’s the bomb that we dropped in Hiroshima”. “If they have this bomb, here’s the damage it could do” – that sort of thing.
Tom: So that’s even one level of fluff beyond reality because you know, even when they quote officials as saying, “we know that they have yellow cake”, or whatever – those are basically lies too, so anything we know about North Korea – supposedly know – has to come through some kind of intelligence agency, and they rarely tell the truth. And then if you abstract that again and just get news people – like you say – conjecturing about what might be there, then they’re just telling stories.
Kevin: I don’t know if you guys ever use Reddit or any of those types of news aggregating sites that are pretty much mainstream, but still for nerdier people. A friend of mine was pointing out to me recently that I mean, there’s a lot of Koreans that use that website, and they were trying to explain what this threat actually means right now, and they’re trying to say you know, we get that, we see this all the time – there’s nothing new about this. This type of alleged threat from North Korea to South Korea is something that we’ve just grown accustomed to living with, so it’s been really interesting reading some of these comments from people our age who are – the South Koreans – the Koreans – and their point of view of course is just completely different from the point of view that we’re presented with.
Tom: And isn’t odd – and this is the case of nations in general – but I mean, in North Korea – I don’t know how many people live there – but they’re not all lunatics.
Kevin: Well, exactly.
Tom: How many people over there really are rattling the little sabers and have you know, control over the wealth and are really in control of all that, and all the poor people who live there have to worry that if someone takes them seriously, they’ll get carpet bound.
Kevin: Right. Well that I don’t know, I mean, the South Korea thing – I mean, to be fair or to be clear about it – it’s not that the people aren’t saying that there’s not a threat. I think most of the people that I’ve read, they are saying that there is a threat, and they’re saying, “no, we definitely live under the guise of a constant threat from North Korea”, but what they’re trying to point out is to say, “this isn’t new. The fact that you’re sensationalizing this in American media television all of a sudden is bullshit because whatever threat exists today, there was no more of a threat that exists today than existed say six months ago”, or six years ago for that matter, “we’ve been dealing with this for many, many, many years – decades for that matter. So to somehow suggest that all of a sudden it’s important because you’ve put it in American media is just preposterous. It’s – this is something that’s just part of our culture. We come to expect this.”
Tom: So there seems to be a real like, news cycle because you know, a few months back, Iran was the most dangerous thing in the world and Israel was going to drop a nuke on them and I don’t follow the news, so I don’t know. But it seems to me like that story’s gone away and now North Korea’s hot, and then it’ll roll into Syria in another month and you know – am I wrong? Doesn’t it seem to just kinda cycle from one place to another –
Kevin: Yeah.
Tom: – and supposedly you know, they announce it as being so dangerous and then it passes and people lose interest, they move on to something else, and then six months later it’s like, “I thought that country was dangerous”, and now it’s nothing. Is that just actually the news cycling through things because they are watching ratings and they’re trying to keep people’s attention –
Kevin: Well –
Tom: – and purposefully you know – what’s the dynamic behind how they decide what to put up and how to present it, and when to move onto something else?
Kevin: Well I mean you know, I say all that and then I actually just jumped onto Reddit real quick to see some of their political positions and there was an article that just came up saying that – I mean, from RussiaToday.com – RT.com – showing the title of it says, “North Korean Missile Launch Pad Moved Into Firing”, and the article goes on to talk about how I guess they’ve got reports that some of the North Korean missile silos are genuinely preparing to launch. Now again, I take any bit of news with a grain of salt, but as a general rule, I do tend to turn to – as I think Jad does as well – but Russia Today, or Al Jazeera, or – what the hell’s the other one – the Asia Times, and I mean, I typically look to some of those newspapers for – or those articles – for a slightly different point of view.
So when I see one of them actually taking a similar point of view, or the exact same point of view, I have to give it some credibility, but it’s kinda like the crying wolf thing, I guess. Maybe in this particular case, some of the American media reports are actually correct, but the fact is is that they’re full of shit so frequently that I really am so dismissive of them as a general rule.
Tom: And of course, the U.S. has no weapons ready to launch anywhere against anybody else.
Kevin: Yeah, well that side of it’s obviously just completely ignored because we could annihilate the remainder of the world as far as I understand it and in a matter of minutes, so –
Tom: But I mean, wouldn’t North Korea have a more legitimate claim to self defense just by loading up a weapon to aim at us, considering there’s probably a bunch aimed at them already? Isn’t it the same logic – same reason?
Kevin: I mean, I guess maybe if the North Koreans, if they’d decided that they want to live in the whole martyrdom as well, you could take out a couple of cities and in exchange for your entire country just being flattened and turned into a radioactive wastelands, you historically would go down as the guy who managed to wipe out say, three American cities.
Tom: Yeah, if it only takes one crazy guy, you can always find a crazy guy who’ll do something like that – he could be in the White House for all we know.
Kevin: He may be. Yeah well actually, I was just ripping on CNN a little while ago for having that map, but oddly enough, Russia Today has a very similar map showing the distance of the rockets that Korea has – only they’re showing it with respect to Russia and Siberia and stuff.
Jad: There’s no reason to believe the Russian state media about a third party anyway, really. I mean you know, it’s just the NPR of Russia, so their – could be taken with the same grain of salt, I reckon.
Kevin: Yeah, if it’s true I mean, we – that’s typically the case when we’re talking about something that’s happening inside of America. So if America does something, it’s genuinely a good idea to read these outside newspapers to figure out what it is that their commentary is on it. If they don’t have a dog in that race then they’ll typically report on it differently. But you’re right, with respect to them having an alleged threat against them from North Korea and presumably Russia would be in a far greater position of threat than the United States is I mean, for obvious reason of proximity, so you’re right – I’m sure they would report it just as disingenuously.
Jad: Potentially, yeah.
Kevin: Potentially sure, I mean, I don’t know but –
Tom: I haven’t read enough of their articles, but I almost get the impression yeah like you say, when Russia Today – it’s a good source when the United States – you suspect they might be doing something and the U.S. news doesn’t cover it or say anything about it, whereas they’ll kind of eagerly point out all the flaws.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: It’s almost like they do have a dog in the race and it’s to try and make the United States – I don’t want to say make it look bad – but uncover the news that the United States doesn’t want to report about itself.
Jad: Hey, speaking of which – and we don’t have to change the subject from North Korea – but here’s a story that’s not on the front page of the American press. I think the only article I found was one from Fox, but in Guatemala, they’ve got all of Regan’s and Ollie North’s henchmen that were I guess, the generally [?], and there’s a military dictatorship and all that kind of thing, mayors of cities, that you know, they actually killed like 200,000 people, and somehow some way through a clerical error or something, the attorney general of that country is charging all of them. I think the current president is one of the people who’s being charged with war crimes from the 80’s.
Kevin: Really?
Jad: Yeah, and it’s like this remarkable story and I only know a little bit about it. Apparently, it’s just this attorney general is like, really on fire and like – I think it’s a she – like, the first thing she did when she got into office was to like, get rid of the entire justice department because it was just like, corrupt. And then she started bringing up all these people on charges from this stuff from the 80’s and I mean it’s like you know, the guy who was in charge of the country is being tried, and I think – like I said – the guy who is currently in charge of the country is being tried for some you know, secondary crimes against humanity or something, but they’re going to town on. And it’s kinda funny, it’s one of those – again – just a story, it’s not in the news even though it’s pretty huge.
Tom: So do you think the news would stay away from that because of like, Guatemala – nobody knows where that is.
Jad: Well I think it was Guatemala as too many people remember where that is, and remember who is running shit down there.
Tom: That’s a possibility too, yeah.
Jad: But I can’t quite figure out how it even came to be, you know? I would still think the United States had enough sway down there to disappear a few people or whatever, to make stuff like this not happen, but I mean, it’s just kinda – like I said, I can’t quite figure out why it’s happening, but somehow it is. And you know, who knows to what degree – maybe they’re promising not to bring in the part of the story where the United States was funding, and training, and all that sort of stuff, but that would be disappointing, I guess, but I can’t quite piece together how it’s happening.
Kevin: But these are Guatemalans trying to bring charges against other Guatemalans, is that correct?
Jad: Right, so in the 80’s the U.S. backed a military dictatorship that was expropriating the Indian remnants of the Mayans I guess, that were still up in the hills and whatnot, and they formed a resistance army of some sort and then the United States took the side of the military dictatorship, and armed them, and trained them, and even you know, even had its military on the ground –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and then they basically just committed this massive genocide against the indigenous minds that were there, so that’s the aggrieved party I guess.
Tom: Did they at least give them any casinos afterwards.
Jad: I don’t think they even got casinos. I think most of them fled and a lot of them are dead –
Tom: Yeah.
Jad: But there are a lot of ex-patriots. Actually, it’s one of the more interesting stories – that’s totally a tangent – but this guy who was basically talking about the nutrition and how much of a role the nutrition plays in health. As you’re saying that the Guatemalan people are like –
Tom: They were short.
Jad: Yeah, so they were like – they were thought to be genetically short, but the average height is like 5 foot 1 for a man or something like that. But all the ones that were born in the United States after a significant number of them fled are all regular height. So all of the height difference – or most of the height difference rather than all of it – was just due to radical malnutrition.
Kevin: Yeah. I actually have read articles on that before.
Tom: And I think – if my geography’s not horribly off – that Guatemala butts up to the southern border of Mexico. I think the Mexican south border is – they don’t like people coming in from the south pretty much the same way the United States doesn’t like anybody coming in from the south. They’ve got a real tough border down there, so they have their own immigration problem, as they would call it. But coming up from Guatemala and – so you know, the United States has the problem of people from Mexico sneaking in and getting past the border and trying to militarize it, and they’ve – Mexico pretty much does the same thing on their south border. They’ve got their undesirable immigrants coming in.
Jad: I can’t remember what the corporate interest was, I think it was like United Fruit, or Dole, or one of those plantation style fruit places.
Tom: In Ecuador, that’s going on as well with like, Standard Oil, or an oil company where the Ecuadorian government pretty much gave them a whole bunch of land and they have their own police force and they were trying to just eradicate the indigenous people and a little bit of a battle going on there too.
Jad: Currently?
Tom: I think so.
Jad: That’s interesting. Yeah, in the 80’s – I don’t know what it was, I guess it was just the proxy wars or whatever – but the 80’s, like the entire Central America was just not a good place to be. Nicaragua and – well Columbia even yeah I mean, that’s the kind of [?] – but you’re right, that’s when it started, in the 70’s I guess – the FARC and all that.
Kevin: Yeah, which are still present.
Jad: Yep.
Kevin: I remember when I was in Columbia back in March, I asked some of my local Columbian friends – I was asking them about the FARC – and they told me all about it and they were like, “well, it’s not very prevalent anymore in like the central parts, but in the south it is very prevalent”, and they’re like, “yeah, you’d really have to be careful.” And I’m like, “well, what does that mean?” And they’re like, “oh, you’d really fetch a pretty penny.” They told me like, kind of all the terms of negotiation you know, it’s like, “well, you’ve got bright blue eyes and you’ve got fair skin and light hair, I mean, you would definitely would fetch a pretty penny – you’d be held captive for a long time.”
It was juts funny like, the Columbians kind of knew like, there was this monetization of certain genetic qualities I guess, and they had a whole story for it as far as just from what they know growing up you know, it’s not like any of them have ever been directly exposed to the FARC, but so who knows, maybe it’s as much of a fairytale as anything else is, but they seem pretty sincere in it – total tangent what we’re talking about, but.
Jad: [?] the 9th tangent, so we’re good. At some point we’ll make a circle.
Kevin: Yeah, eventually.
Tom: Guess it was a good thing I probably don’t have much market value and things like that around the world, so that’s good.
Jad: No one wants the Italians.
Kevin: Sorry, buddy. Nobody wants the Italians. I’m going to put that on a t-shirt for Jad.
Jad: I’ll have to stay out of Brooklyn.
Kevin: Yeah, you certainly will.
I think we were glad to end on a lighter note for a change. As always, thank you so much for tuning in to the show. Our audience has been growing steadily, and we genuinely appreciate all of the positive feedback we’ve received on the show thus far. We look forward to bringing you many more episodes in the future. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can reach Jad at www.Jad-Davis.com, and Kevin at www.KevinLudlow.com. We have links on how to reach Tom on our website at www.JKPod.com. Thanks again, and we’ll be back with another episode next week.
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Jesse Jackson Jr.
If you’re curious about this case, here are some additional details:
In February of 2013, both Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Sandi, pleased guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, mail fraud, wire fraud, and criminal forfeiture. Jackson allegedly used approximately $750,000 of campaign monies for personal expenses. According to the New York Times, he entered into a plea arrangement with prosecutors who in turn recommended he receive a prison sentence of 46 to 57 months.
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References
Kevin: Hello and welcome once again to the JK Podcast, as podcast dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. Joining us once again this week is our friend, Tom DeLorenzo, an author and regular contributor to StrikeTheRoot.com. More details about Tom and his work can be found at our website at www.JKPod.com.
This week we leave you with another of our shorter episodes. Our topic begins with Jesse Jackson, Jr. Jr. is the son of the well known Reverend Jesse Jackson, and also a former member of the United States House of Representatives for the state of Illinois. Jesse and his wife recently ran into a little trouble for spending campaign funds on personal expenses, and of course this brings about our loving title of, “Fuck That Guy”.
As the conversation goes on, I begin dreaming of a simpler time when I was ignorant of such wild corruption in the United States. Both Jad and Tom jump in to discuss what such ignorance might really feel like. So please sit back and enjoy the short ride. This is the JK Podcast.
I haven’t noticed any current events that really struck my eye recently. Oh, well there is the Jesse Jackson thing today, so there’s not really a whole lot to talk about other than fuck that guy, so –
Tom: There you go.
Kevin: My take anyways.
Jad: What was his thing? I totally missed it.
Kevin: Oh you know, typical – just America. I mean, got a bunch of campaign monies and spent them on personal artifacts for himself and his wife, committed tax fraud, et cetera. They both pleaded guilty today in court, so – apparently what he did comes with a jail sentence, so I hope they impose it because like I said, fuck him.
In February of 2013, both Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife Sandy pleaded guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, mail fraud, wire fraud, and criminal forfeiture. Jackson allegedly used approximately $750,000 of campaign monies for his own personal expenses. According to the New York Times, he entered into a plea arrangement with prosecutors who in turn recommended he receive a prison sentence of 46 to 57 months. This narrator hopes he gets every single one of those months.
I’d love to see every single one of these fucking assholes in prison, so – of course it’s as a office space [?] for us, I’m sure these are little white collar prisons, not a federal pound me in the ass prison.
Jad: So what did Jesse J – I totally missed this.
Kevin: It’s Jesse Jackson, Jr. actually, so –
Jad: Oh, right, right, right – he’s like a Senator from Illinois, or House of Representatives in Illinois or something.
Kevin: Yeah, he’s a [crosstalk], he was anyways, yeah. I don’t know if he still is or not, but –
Narrator’s point number 2, although Jesse did remain a member of the House, Jad is not remembering incorrectly either. Jesse was actually a potential candidate to replace president Obama in the Senate for the state of Illinois. Whether it would’ve happened or not is purely speculative, but it didn’t matter much, as you may remember another little financial scandal involving a guy named Rod Blagojevich.
Jackson wound up being cleared of these charges, but it’s pretty difficult to believe he had no knowledge of the scandal that landed Blagojevich in prison in the first place. In fact, the liberal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Jackson one of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress in 2009. Again, fuck this guy.
In any case yeah, he had to stand trial and I guess, I don’t really know how this level of criminal law works, but I guess if you plead guilty, you forgo the use – you know, the ability to have a trial, it just goes to a judge at that point.
Jad: OK.
Kevin: Which I guess kind of makes sense because you’re pleading guilty to begin with, but so anyways, he pleaded guilty and so there isn’t going to be any trial, so it’ll just come down to his sentencing now, and then the lawyers I guess will basically create a case for the judge to say why he should have a – basically they’re going to be arguing for zero sentence, the states or whomever will be arguing for the maximum sentence, and the judge will presumably agree somewhere in between.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So [?] wasn’t clear on my point, you know, fuck that guy, I hope he goes to jail.
Jad: So you’re pro this guy is what you’re saying.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah you know – yeah, I’d love to see more congressmen take more taxpayer money and not do shit in congress, and then spend it on themselves. I think it’s a wonderful system, personally. I look forward to running for congress so I can take advantage of the same system.
Jad: You could run on that, make it interesting.
Kevin: I probably could.
Jad: Just be like, “I want lots of shit” –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – “and the only way I can get it is” –
Kevin: There’s a good way to do it, and by the way, fuck that guy, so that was a current event, but there’s not a whole lot to say about it because obviously I think the 3 of us are not going to have a lot of disagreement on that.
Tom: Nah.
Kevin: I don’t really know what else has been going on, I mean, in current events. I’ve been not keeping up with the news as well this year as I should be.
Jad: Pish posh. Keeping up exactly as well as you should be. If you don’t know what’s going on, that’s all for the better.
Kevin: Actually I might have a – my mental health has been a little better this year, so –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – maybe there’s a correlation there, I’m not really sure. Ignore the world around you and you feel a lot better. Actually, it is a point that I make to people, friends of mine and stuff. You know, I have a pretty good memory and I’m pretty interested in following everything that goes on, and a lot of times I tell people, I was like, honestly, the ignorant lifestyle does not strike me as the worst lifestyle at this point.
I wish a lot of times that I just genuinely didn’t care at all because I feel that overall, I probably would be a much happier individual – kinda to Tom’s point earlier, you know, is shit really getting bad? I mean, we read about it getting bad all the time, is it really? I don’t know, but to me it certainly seems like it is, so I guess if I were just ignorant to all of that, I would just be the same sit at home, watch football, eat potato chips, and [?].
Tom: Well I think there’s a couple levels of being ignorant of details or the facts. I mean, to me it seems like the details become less and less important. In other words, I’m going to guess Biden’s the vice president, but I’m actually not sure and I don’t care. I’d be happier if I didn’t know who the president was because the names are not important because it’s just the same people doing the same stuff so you know, being ignorant of who did what and who is in this congressional district and all that stuff, I mean, that’s great. That’s just a waste of space in my brain to me.
Kevin: But that’s a really conscious ignorance, for sure.
Tom: It is.
Kevin: Yeah.
Tom: I mean, I’m interested in seeing things about police abuse and stuff like that, and that seems more relevant because it’s something you can try and get people to focus on a little bit more, but you know, I can’t put it in my brain at all who might be the better vice president, or what they’re doing, or who he is even – I don’t trust it at all anymore in any of that.
Kevin: Right, so there’s a level there I guess that you’re saying that you know, just tiers of what you can be enthralled with and what you cannot be enthralled with, and on the one spectrum of that you’ve got the politicos that are analyzing every single little detail of every single congressman’s word ever and just doesn’t really matter because the overall picture is still a bunch of bullshit.
Tom: Yeah like when the president does his state of the union address, I can just get onto Google and Facebook and just get a general idea.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: None of it’s a surprise and there’s no possible way I could make myself listen to him or anybody for more than the time it takes me to find the remote control because I just can’t listen to the details.
Kevin: And the level of ignorance that I’m of course referring to in this case is more like you know, Cypher on The Matrix, like, you get to the point where you’re aware – it’s almost like an overwhelming, helpless feeling where you look at it and you start kind of fantasizing about the fact that you – using the metaphor of the movie – I know The Matrix isn’t real, but I’m a happier person to be unaware of the real existence of things because the real existence of things are so beyond repair that it’s just better to leave in the bubble of ignorance, so to speak.
I’m not trying to make a case for it, just – and it’s kind of any interesting notion of philosophy in general of course that once you start getting involved in philosophy, that’s kind of like the you know, the safety warning that comes on any basic philosophical lesson, right? I mean, you can’t unlearn philosophy, that’s the one caveat to it that stands out to some people. You can’t not think about something in some weird way once you have thought about in that weird way.
Tom: Yeah. I think overall, I’m happy knowing what I know, and I wouldn’t want to be – I wouldn’t want to go backwards I guess, blissfully unaware is one thing, but once you become aware of stuff, I wouldn’t wish that I would not know about stuff.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you know, realistically I feel the same way, but there’s definitely times where I can see kind of the appeal, you know? But friends of mine that just genuinely have no knowledge of the things we’re talking about whatsoever, so like, “really, I didn’t know that a 3rd building collapsed on 9/11″ – like that sort of thing – you just genuinely have no knowledge of the things that occurred because you just – you haven’t even looked at it that deep.
You’d know that the country was attached by terrorists and we responded – that’s the level of knowledge that you have, and sometimes I look at that and there’s almost – again, facetiously speaking, but just kind of this small level of envy that I hold there for saying, “God, it must be really nice.” I mean it – and I mean in a really condescending way – it’s like looking at a child and just seeing the way that they’re so happy to look at the world and it’s because they are – because they’re unaware of all these things that are about to come and surprise them.
Unfortunately, that’s about as far as the topic went, though I’m fairly certain we’ll have more on it in a later installment. As always, thanks for tuning in. We greatly appreciate all of our regular listeners supporting our project. If you’d like to get in touch with us, please stop by our websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com, and we’ll have links to reach Tom on our website, which is incidentally at www.JKPod.com. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you soon. And remember, Jesse Jackson, Jr., go fuck yourself.
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No more Nazi pope jokes. *Sigh*
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Jad: Hello, and welcome back to the JK Podcast. This week, Tom, Kevin and I have a relatively lighthearted chat about the brand new Pope, the previous retired Pope, the Jesuit order, with a sprinkle of Alex Jones, and Catholicism in general. This conversation took place on the selection of the new Pope. There has been a fair amount of discussion since then about the role of the then Cardinal Bergoglio, and the church in Argentina’s dirty war.
As I note in the discussion, the awfulness of the Catholic church certainly does not hinge on the degree of their complicity in this one instance. So I’ve let the conversation stay in with minimum edits and caveats, though we will have the links in the show notes for anyone who’s interested in more information.
Kevin: Trying to come up with a good joke for Facebook all day about the new Pope molesting me but, they all just seemed kind of trivial when I was – when I typed them out, so –
Jad: I do have some good gossip about the Pope.
Kevin: Oh, give it to me.
Jad: Apparently, during the Pinochet regime in the late 70’s, the U.N. sent a human rights commissioner or something to go check out the whole – people being thrown out of airplanes and all that crap.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And the – whatever his name is, George, I think – hid a bunch of the people who were involved in his shallay off in the country somewhere until they left.
Kevin: Oh, sweet.
Tom: Yeah, so, let’s see – from the last – what did we do, do we give this guy more points, or less points? I mean, the last guy was a fucking Nazi, an actual Nazi.
Jad: Yeah.
Tom: This guy, accomplice to – I don’t know where this one sits.
Jad: Yeah. I mean, the Nazi thing is just – I mean that’s like, right off the bat you’re at a disadvantage there. And I guess the other guy did it as a clergyman you know, he was already a Cardinal, or a whatever – Bishop or something – so he was [?] as an adult.
Kevin: Interesting.
Jad: Yeah, which doesn’t have the same ring as Nazi, but [?] –
Kevin: It really doesn’t. Interesting how many hundreds of years it takes for that term to sound cool again.
Jad: Funny, I was just like, I guess they don’t have anybody who’s like, not something and they’re just like, “well, we went with a guy who was the Nazi because at least he wasn’t a open child rapist”, or something. I mean like, could you not find the guy who’s not a child rapist, and not a Nazi, and not a Pinochet sympathizer, and like –
Tom: So this guy’s on the list, and he’s a Nazi, and he’s not at the bottom of the list.
Jad: Right – exactly. Nazi is the winner.
Tom: In fact, he’s at the top of the list.
Jad: And actually, it’s the last time apparently this guy was right below Ratzinger, so I guess they ranked it for us. They think that child Nazi is worse than adult Pinochet, I guess.
Kevin: This is the scale of Popes.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Well you’ve gotta –
Tom: These guys are still walking around in those ridiculous outfits –
Kevin: Man, I love those things.
Tom: – it’s just amazing.
Kevin: That’s pretty funny, I did not know that. Where’d you come across that bit of information?
Jad: The internet.
Tom: Made it up.
Jad: Yeah, I made it up.
Kevin: No, but I mean is it spreading now – the Nazi thing was pretty big with what’s his face, I mean that definitely broke on pretty major news outlets, I think.
Jad: Yeah. I mean, I doubt this will be on CNN because I don’t think anyone even knows who Pinochet is, much less you know I guess, maybe where Argentina is. Where I saw it was clearly somebody who is a muckraking, Facebook style journalist. I don’t really even know the guy’s name, so I can’t even look it up. Oh yes, he’s Pope Francis – see if you can find any information on this.
Kevin: But you’re right though. Jeorge I think is his actual name, right?
Jad: I think it is, yeah – with a J.
Kevin: But yeah, so I don’t really get that whole part of it. I didn’t actually realize that they just kind of pick names? I actually only just learned that today.
Jad: Yeah. Mm Hmm. It was funny, I had one of those weird – some stuff is like this – but when the other Pope resigned, I was like, “well you was only like, Pope for like 2 or 3 years”, and someone was [?], “no, he was Pope since like 2004 or something”, he was a Pope for almost 10 years and I was like, it just seems like the other day that I heard that he was the Pope.
Kevin: Yeah. Just the other day we were talking about how he was a Nazi.
Jad: Isn’t it strange that they had a Nazi for a Pope.
Kevin: Yeah, that is really strange, although I suppose perhaps not at all, really.
Tom: The Guardian – yep, one Guardian, the extent of the church complicity and the dark deeds was excellently set out by – somebody who I can’t pronounce their name – one of Argentina’s most notable journalists. In his book El Silencio, he recounts how the Argentine Navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio – now the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires – this is in 2011 – hid from the visiting delegation of the inter-American Human Rights Commission, the dictatorship’s political prisoners.
Jad: Oh I see, so they weren’t hiding the people who did it, they were hiding the people who were vanished – the political prisoners themselves.
Tom: Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in a island called –
Jad: El Silencio.
Tom: In the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that that in such circumstance, Bergoglio’s name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to choose a successor of John Paul, II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first Pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder, and false imprisonment.
Jad: I guess we’ll find out. I remember that phrasing, so I think the thing I saw earlier was somebody must’ve been recording the Guardian article.
Jad as narrator here with one minor correction. Bergoglio wasn’t alleged to have supported Pinochet – at least not directly – but rather the parallel strong man in Argentina, Jorge Rafael Videla. Both men were part of a U.S. backed effort called Operation Condor to bring rightwing leadership to countries in the southern cone of South America.
Kevin: When we were sitting at lunch today and the TV was on, I was just seeing a sea of people waiting for this.
Jad: Yeah dude.
Kevin: I mean, it’s the same thought that would always go through my head I suppose, it’s just seeing it in real time and being a little bit older again, and observing that it’s just – I don’t even know what to think about it anymore. It just depresses me as a human being.
Jad: Can’t let it get you down.
Kevin: Yeah, I know.
Jad: It is crazy though. It is funny, like – and we’ve talked about this lots of times I think, but like the more you keep your head out of that stuff, the more it just – absurd it is when you pop back in and there’s a million people cheering because like a 76 year old war criminal hiding child rapist got picked to be the next child rapist leader, yet everyone’s like, “yay”.
Kevin: Of an imaginary world –
Jad: Of an imaginary exactly.
Kevin: Billions of dollars to feed itself. I mean, it’s
Tom: After the magical white smoke came out of the chimney.
Kevin: [?], that was the part we were watching, exactly. And I think I even turned to one of you guys at lunch today and I was just like, what – I was like, “so is that what happens, a big cloud of smoke comes out and that signifies it”, and it does.
Tom: I think that’s them burning the old Pope.
Jad: Yeah, and the same day – someone was commenting as well – that it was a convenient day for him to be elected because it was also the day when some other dude that – I think it might’ve been that Cardinal in England – was, they’re paying out like tens of millions of dollars to his victims.
Kevin: Oh, is that right?
Jad: Yeah. I could have the guy wrong, but they’re paying out tens of millions of dollars for some of these victims, and recently, that guy got sort of dismissed – or he stepped down. Actually, he might’ve been the one – there’s another guy who was like you know, sexually assaulting adult male priests that were under his jurisdiction or something. Anyway, it’s a big mess – those guys.
Kevin: Well, a buddy of mine is a Catholic priest – if you ever want to make this discussion a little bit more interesting and I can convince him to get on.
Jad: Sure man, I’m always happy to talk to priests.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a challenge, believe me.
Jad: The one thing, I used to be kind of fascinated with the Jesuits, because – I think we had this discussion before too – but in South America, they have an interesting history where they end up on the side of you know, the peasants, against –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – against the sort of military regime that the United States was putting in place in the 20th century you know, so they had this mythology loving you know – a romantic soul – they have places like some sort of fashion[?] of justice and freedom, fighting that kind of thing.
Kevin: Well you brought it up – it’s in one of our episodes about – I forget who he was, the guy who ultimately was assassinated for doing just that, right?
Jad: Oh yeah, Oscar Romero.
Kevin: Oscar Romero, right.
Jad: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. I remember talking about that.
Kevin: That’s right. How quickly we forget, except for the fact that we did record that one like 6 months ago now, so –
Jad: That’s true, I guess. It’s funny though, I can’t understand how people get tired of talking to me about this stuff because I think I – I must just say the same stories like again, and again, and again.
Kevin: Nah.
Jad: Let’s play the tape, shall we? But yeah, so anyway, that’s – this guy’s a Jesuit. So the Jesuits were actually banned – they were outlawed by the Catholic church in the – I don’t know, 16th, 17th century. This ties into the conspiracy theory thing because they had a structure, [?] was the guy who started the whole thing, was a military guy and he was like from the Spanish Crusades, and fighting the Moors – maybe even the Americas – but you know, somewhere around in there – conquistador kind of guy. So he left to become a religious guy, and their order has this structure that is you know, based on secrecy, and it was sort of the world’s – I mean this –
Tom: El Silencio.
Jad: El Silencio, you gotta have a lot of that sort of – considered the first modern western intelligence network because they would send messages to each other about what was going on and they attached themselves to all these royal courts all over the place. And then their hierarchy is – there’s a group of Jesuits, and inside of that is an inner circle of Jesuits that supposedly think that they’re all like the highest level of the circle. But inside that is another circle, and inside – so it’s kind of like that illuminati thing. Theoretically, the illuminati patterned their societal structure after the Jesuits. Then somebody else too – oh, I guess the whatever Cecil Rhodes’s organization is, the Chatham House in England, the Royal Society of Foreign Affairs or whatever, that’s also the Council on Foreign Relations in the Unites States, and blah, blah, blah. Those guys have that same organizational structure based on Wisehopp’s illuminati, based on the Jesuits. So conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day. It’s going to be great to listen to Alex Jones the next couple of weeks. [?] this guy.
Kevin: Do you listen to Alex Jones a lot?
Jad: I mean yeah, I only listen to him some – it’s fun.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Good entertaining afternoon radio.
Kevin: Tom, do you listen to him ever?
Tom: I’d say rarely now, and occasionally for a while – a year ago or somewhere around there. But now I don’t really listen to anybody actually, too much because I just don’t – can’t really fit it in, or don’t fit it in.
Jad: It gets to a point where like, you – in the conspiracy theory, the whatever – the United States government also did this evil thing, or the Catholic church also did this evil thing and you’re like, “well, so”.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: The list of crimes committed are so huge that like you know, the fact that they also have – don’t pay their parking tickets or whatever is like not – it’s a certain point it can’t be any more damning, I guess.
Kevin: Definitely a strategy for taking over the world, right? I mean, you just become so shitty that so long as you kind of repent for the top couple of things – which I’m not sure that they’re doing – but as long you repent for those, everybody else is willing to let you get away with the rest of them because you know, they’re like, “alright, alright, alright, you cannot pay taxes for anything else, just stop fucking kids”, like, “alright guys, we stop fucking kids” – and everybody’s like, “alright good. See the Catholic church is listening, they’re doing good now”, because it allows us to overlook those other thousand infractions since that one’s so bad. Maybe that’s their long term strategy. I mean, they’ve been around a long fucking time at this point so I don’t see them going anywhere.
Jad: No, no, they’re definitely not going anywhere.
Kevin: Yeah, I was raised Catholic – they’re insane. It’s a nutty fucking culture, and I don’t understand for the life of me and as I’ve gotten older I understand it less, and of course it’s interesting if you speak with a lot of Catholic people, most Catholic people will tell you one of the things they love about it the most is the tradition.
Jad: Oh sure, yeah.
Kevin: Which of course, I – is what makes me dislike it probably the most. I think people often get confused between the words tradition, and just kind of the blind following, and I guess that’s the part that really, really gets me about my experiences with Catholicism is just that it’s – people just get lost in the tradition. It doesn’t – I don’t think it means anything to them.
I don’t think they really think about what it is, and I think they just kind of follow along – it’s kind of a – the sheep leading the sheep type of mentality. And I think it’s actually quite a bit different from a lot of other religious institutions that I’ve been a part of I guess, which I don’t agree with any of them – but at least I feel the other ones have a little bit more variation to them, where people are kind of more lively and paying attention. And I just don’t feel it’s like that at all in the Catholic world.
Tom: No.
Kevin: But, just an opinion of my experience.
Jad: Well, Catholic church has definitely got the candles, and incense, and bells, and music, and humming, and you know, giant –
Kevin: Gold scepters.
Jad: Gold scepters, and giant cathedrals, and wacky outfits –
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jad: And there’s nothing else like that. I mean not until you go to like the Eastern religions.
Kevin: Yeah, some Eastern religions and I mean – I guess Judaism to some degree I mean, has various parts of that. But as far as I’m concerned, I mean, they’re in line with Amish style. I mean, I think people look at that as this crazy type of religion and the sorts of things that they do – which does transcend kind of into their regular day to day life – but yeah, I mean if you’re an outsider looking into a Catholic mass, it’s fucking nuts.
Tom: Yeah. Interesting, my wife is from Mexico, and she was brought up Catholic. And like you say you know, you do all these things – these little rituals, and traditions, and when we first met I remember one of the first Christmas’s – I don’t know if it’s Christmas, New Year’s Eve – she wanted to turn on – because you know, the Pope was on.
And I was sitting there watching all these proceedings, and I think for the first time, she heard someone – which was me – mention her just ask the question, or point out, “isn’t that interesting that he’s in that church. See all that gold? Look at all that gold? Look at the scepter he’s got – that’s gold”, it’s like isn’t he supposed to kind be the kind of a humble servant? What’s he doing with all that stuff?
She just like, picked up on that immediately. Like, wow, it struck here like you know, you’d never think about it if no one ever mentions it. And I think if you mention it, I don’t know what percentage of people it hits them, but yeah, it struck her right away like, he’s always telling everybody we need to help the poor and all that, then what’s he doing sitting in that church, 8 gazillion dollars worth of gold all around it.
Kevin: Well I would say the majority of my South American friends have a similar type of view – of course, all of them being raised Catholic. And everyone them will say, “yeah, yeah, yeah, we don’t like that about Catholicism at all, it does turn us off from it”, but they’re not turned off enough where they’re ever going to walk away from it. It’s just – that’s the tradition of it and the family values –
Tom: Right, and it becomes very, very, very difficult to just drop that because again, you get so many little rituals and things, and superstitions and things built in that if that’s your whole life, it’s real difficult to detach yourself from all of them. You always feel like, “well, if I don’t do this then I’m going to have some bad luck because that’s what’s always been in my head”.
Kevin: Oh yeah. For sure.
Jad: And that’s where we leave it for this week. Thanks so much for listening. If you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or other correspondence, please e-mail us at JKPod@JKPod.com, or stop by the website at the same name, and let us know your thoughts. You can also swing buy our websites, Jad-Davis.com, or KevinLudlow.com – all one word, don’t forget to leave out the hyphen – to see what else we’re working on. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, take care.
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This week we had some left over content and managed to string it together for yet another mini-episode. Our topics are as interesting as they are disturbing and include nuclear blasts, online nuclear simulators, the alleged North Korean crisis, and even claims of cannibalism from within a starved North Korean population.
The claims of cannibalism are probably the worst, albeit we didn’t have a tremendous amount of information on the topic. We’ll most likely pick some of these topics back up in a future episode and explore them with much more depth.
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References
Kevin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the JK Podcast, where we pursue topics of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. This week we had some leftover content and managed to string it together for yet another mini episode. Our topics for this discussion include nuclear blasts, online nuclear simulators, the alleged North Korean crisis, and probably most disturbing, claims of parent child cannibalism from a starved North Korean population.
Since it’s another short episode, we’ll jump right into it. As always, your hosts are Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow. Welcome back to our show.
Jad: Just watching a little video on the Russians dropping a – their largest nuclear bomb – pretty crazy looking.
Kevin: This is an old video.
Jad: Old video, yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, I think I’ve actually seen this. What’s the name of the thing?
Jad: The Czar[?].
Kevin: The Czar[?], yeah, that’s it. I have seen this one before.
Jad: It’s funny.
Kevin: There’s a simulator somewhere online that lets you – it’s got like, all of the major bombs that have ever been created by Russia, the United States, and China, and et cetera, and –
Actually, there’s quite a few of these available online. Just search Google for “nuclear bomb simulator”, and you won’t be disappointed.
– it gives you all their names, and what you can do is you can set the epicenter and it actually will create all the radii’s, so it shows like, the initial blast [?], the destruction radius, the radiation fallout, and then just kind of everything beyond that, and then it lets you set parameters yourself like if you want to just create a crazy bomb. It’s just kind of interesting to see what some of these weapons would actually do.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: There is one of them – I don’t remember what one – that actually would – I’ve dropped it on the capital before – the Texas capital – and it basically blows its way out to Dripping Springs, so –
Jad: Uh huh, yeah.
Kevin: So it would do some pretty good damage.
Jad: That’s what they do.
Kevin: For those not familiar with central Texas, Dripping Springs is about 25 miles from the Texas State Capitol building. Such a blast would cause immeasurable devastation to the area.
Jad: There’s that other one that shows all of the test nuclear blasts since I guess, 1944, 45 – whenever it was – so like, the first one starts in the desert in the United States – it’s like a you know, a Google map or whatever – and then it just starts –
Kevin: Oh, right.
Jad: Yeah, then it’s called the [crosstalk] then the Russians start lighting up, you know, the wastelands up in the arctic, and then China starts lighting stuff up, and then India, and then it’s like South Africa, Israel, India, Pakistan, and then pretty soon like, the entire world was like these flashlight bulbs of you know, nuclear blasts going off – it’s kinda crazy, yeah. I mean, the United States did like I don’t know, some thousands of tests, you know?
Kevin: That’s crazy. It really is.
According to Wikipedia, which gets its citation from nuclearweaponarchive.org, the United States has conducted more than 1,054 official nuclear tests involving at least 1,151 different devices. The discrepancy of more devices than tests accounts for intentional failures and device detonations, as opposed to actual tests.
I’ve read a lot about the tests that they did out –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – in the you know, southwest United States, and I mean it’s – that in itself is you know, shit, I drive through there all the time.
Jad: Sure, yeah. Well, there’s lots of cancer.
Kevin: Yeah, we’re all slowly dying of radiation, so – did you happen to catch this on Reddit on something, because I –
Jad: Somebody posted this on Facebook.
Kevin: – just happened to notice on the one of the top Reddit videos today, it says “HD Footage of Nuclear Tests”.
Jad: Ah, could be wherever I saw it posted – then they were making the point that like, [?] had this and we turned out fine. They maybe tried to put a damper on the North Korea scare.
Kevin: Ah, right. Yeah I forgot that that’s even the thing all of a sudden again.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Did they confirm – they said the other day that – or North Korea told people that they did a nuclear test. Did they actually do one – was that confirmed?
Jad: The only thing I saw was they had some kind of size mech[?] something that indicated that they had.
Kevin: Hmm, interesting.
Jad: But yeah, I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t really read into it too much to see if it was legit or –
Kevin: Well God bless those little guys.
Jad: Yeah man, it’s gotta suck to live there.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: That’s an example of just how far you can drive a population into starvation and cannibalism and shit without them fighting back.
Kevin: Jesus, have you – did you read about the various cannibalism claims a couple weeks ago?
Jad: I saw it go by, I didn’t look into it. I just – I saw – just read what somebody posted about it.
Kevin: Well I mean, they were executing the people that were practicing cannibalism, but at the same time like, the people were so hungry, I mean, every story was kind of similar I mean, eerily horrible. These dads basically were just slaughtering their children –
Jad: Oh God.
Kevin: – and then eating them because they didn’t – I mean, I guess it’s kind of a double fold I guess, the kids were obviously starving just as much, so you might even be able to argue you know, this kind of humanity sort of thing, although I doubt it. Everyone I’ve read was just a little worse than the next.
Jad: Yeah. Well cannibalism, yeah, that’s pretty – that’s insane, I mean that’s –
Kevin: It takes a lot to –
Jad: Yeah, and again it’s like, “well, I really don’t want to eat my kids, but I really, really don’t want to march in and destroy this awful leader guy, so I guess I’ll eat my kids.”
Kevin: Yeah, pretty crazy that that happens. I kind of feel – I’ve never been a parent – but from what it sounds like if I were, I feel like I’d rather have to go destroy a leader guy than eat my child.
Jad: Your children? Yeah. That’s kind of the way I would go too, I think.
Kevin: Seems to be the general sentiment.
Jad: Or die fleeing the country, or die some other way, might as well.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean fuck, at the very least put the kid in a backpack and start hiking south I mean – or any direction really.
Jad: Maybe not east.
Kevin: I guess if they flee to China, China sends them back though, right?
Jad: Maybe, yeah, the [?] have that kind of relationship.
Kevin: And that’s about all we had on the topics – short, definitely not so sweet, but hopefully informative none the less. Thank you so much for listening, and we hope you’ll come back and check out future episodes of this project. If you’d like to get in touch with us, stop by either of our websites as Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com – don’t forget the dash – or KevinLudlow.com, K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. You can also visit our podcast website at www.JKPod.com. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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Chris Dorner shown in military fatigues
In this week’s episode, Jad, Kevin, and special guest Tom DeLorenzo discuss the fate of Chris Dorner. Chris was a 33-year old Naval Reservist turned LAPD police officer who recently and allegedly killed himself after a police siege. He was believed to have killed four people before distributing a rather lengthy and disturbing manifesto about his experiences on the LAPD.
The entire incident was plagued with frightening realities of how police forces are becoming increasingly militarized. There were news stories warning Los Angelites to obey officers citing that the force was “on edge”. Then there was the incident where officers fired approximately 100 rounds into a truck that they thought was Dorners. Even if you ignore that the truck was occupied by two older Hispanic women instead of a younger black man, even if you ignore the fact that it was a blue Toyota instead of a gray Nissan like the one Dorner was thought to be driving, you still can’t ignore the fact that modern police protocol simply fires into a vehicle that clearly had made no threat against them. Worse is that a similar incident happened a second time!
So if you didn’t have enough reasons to say fuck the LAPD, you’re sure to find a few more within the episode.
We also discuss how modern technology might have altered or hastened the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy Assassination. Jad brings up the interesting point that there seems to be a lag in time before regular people (non-conspiracy-theorists) actually become interested in outcomes other than those presented by the mainstream media. He suggests that by the time people do become interested, the actual story is no longer even relevant. It’s a pretty interesting exchange.
Music
References
Kevin: Hello again and welcome to another episode of the JK Podcast. In addition to a fascinating topic and current event, Jad and I are happy to have Tom DeLorenzo as a special guest. Tom is the author of New World Rising, a collection of essays dedicated to the individual rights that we so frequently and very passionately discuss on the JK Podcast. He also happens to be an Austinite, making him a perfect fit for our show.
This week we discuss the fate of Chris Dorner, the 33 year old naval reservist turned L.A.P.D. police officer who recently and allegedly killed himself after a police siege. Chris was believed to have killed 4 people while also distributing a rather lengthy and disturbing manifesto about his experience on the Los Angeles police department. The entire incident was plagued with frightening realities of how police forces are becoming increasingly militarized.
There were news stories warning Los Angelites to obey officers, citing that the force was “on edge”. Then there was the incident where officers fired approximately 100 rounds into a truck that they thought was Dorner’s. Even if you ignore the fact that the truck was occupied by two older Hispanic women instead of a younger black man, and even if you ignore the fact that it was a blue Toyota instead of a gray Nissan like the one Dorner was thought to be driving, you still can’t ignore the fact that modern police protocol simply fires into a vehicle that clearly had made no threat against it.
Worse is that a similar incident happened a second time. Of course, then there’s the actual tapes from the police siege. It was during this time that police officers ultimately decided to burn down the cabin that Chris had holed himself up in. Here’s some of the audio that quickly circulated after the event:
Recorded Audio: [?] [Inaudible]
Beyond the static, you can hear the police yelling phrases like, “burn that fucking house down” – not exactly what people should be thinking about when it comes to the American justice system. We later discuss how modern technology might have altered the history of the Kennedy assassination. Jad brings up the interesting point that there seems to be a lag in time before people actually begin considering a conspiracy theory. By the time they do, the actual story no longer even matters to history – it’s a pretty interesting exchange.
As always, your hosts are Jad Davis and Kevin Ludlow, and our special guest this week is Tom DeLorenzo. Enjoy the show.
Tom: Did you guys do a chat last week.
Kevin: Yeah, actually. It was pretty good. The most obvious topic on our minds I think, was everything that was going on in Los Angeles at the time because Chris Dorner was still alive at the time I guess – well I think he was. I think it was the very next day that they actually wound up killing him.
Tom: I think we’ve probably asked that question before, I don’t know if it’s our connectivity to the internet or what, but I mean, doesn’t it just seem like it’s gotten ridiculous in the last couple three years especially – the number of cases of just blatant stuff like that going on?
Kevin: It’s a topic in itself that I explore frequently, and I still don’t really have any good data for it – maybe you do – but I don’t know if that question is true or false, and it makes a really big difference in the world that the 3 of us live in because with a scientist type of mind, you have to consider the fact that it might not be that that’s occurring at any more rapid rate, but rather that the popularity of you know, disseminating those stories and the ability to do so is increasing, and therefore we’re just seeing it more, and more, and more.
I’d really like to see numbers – not just about police abuses because that is a big one – but there’s so many topics like that. It’s kinda like the notion that the world is always looking like it’s getting worse, but often times it actually is getting a lot better as a whole, it’s just – you just – it’s really hard to see it that way.
Tom: Yeah, but I don’t discount the doubt and maybe it’s always been bad, but I mean just looking at the way that police forces have become more militarized and they seem more aggressive and it seems like a completely different set of people. My dad was the mayor of Island Lake when I was growing up, and there was a police department in there – just your typical 350 pound cops with big stomachs, and seems like they’re getting more and more replaced with crew cut ex-soldiers and a lot more killing equipment.
Kevin: Let me rephrase, I mean I’m definitely on – I definitely believe that as well, and I see that. It’s definitely the intuitive view then I hold it – I’m quick to come to that conclusion and I find myself always trying to stop myself and say, “well, is that really true, or is that just my perception of the negative.”
Tom: Yeah, and it’s hard to know exactly, but –
Kevin: Right. But I think at very least, I can certainly agree with you without any data behind it that police forces are definitely looking more and more militarized for sure, and I think we’ve come a good 50 years from a neighborhood cop that walks his beat and knows everybody –
Tom: Yeah.
Kevin: – to these guys that are just as foreign to me as they are when they’re patrolling the streets of Afghanistan.
Jad: I mean it’s clearly the case that – like you said – I mean, one, there weren’t that many ex-soldiers coming back from war torn countries where they had been shooting children and women 15 years ago, and they didn’t have the budgets, they didn’t have federal dollars coming in to buy tanks and stuff like that. So clearly the police force is more militarized now than it was. But my touchstone sort of is Waco, which is kinda the same story as just what happened – I think the difference being that you know, Waco was federal agencies, and this was like a local – the police department.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But the activities were largely the same and it wasn’t a siege I guess, but – so I think people were just as willing to accept that sort of thing 20 years ago given a premise, but now the premise has presented itself and so now it can happen.
Tom: I need to sit down and really analyze it, but I didn’t really like that comparison when I’ve heard it a few times – the Waco thing and this guy being in a cabin – I don’t know if it’s equivalent or not.
Jad: I think the stories might be radically different, but I guess as far as the morality of it goes, I’m not making that point. My point is if you have people that haven’t been provided a trial and there’s clearly an opportunity just to wait them out and capture them, but instead you set fire to them, then – that’s the parallel I meant.
Tom: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.
Kevin: Well, it’s exactly why the country is not intended to be a democracy, right? I mean, that’s the fundamental rule behind why a democracy is a bad idea, versus a republic – a democratic republic – because now you’ve got mob rule – I think – is effectively what you’re getting out there, right – where you create this premise where all of a sudden that’s the bad guy, and so yeah, this guy is fucked up, you’ve gotta go kill him. Like, that’s just – that’s the answer, that’s the right way to do it, and I think you know, we were speculating that it was probably 80 to 90% of the population is like, “yeah, that’s good – that’s correct”, and specifically why you’re not supposed to have mob mentality you know, dictate these things.
Tom: Well, it’s not like we have a republic compared to a democracy, but even in the theoretical republic, I mean, there are issues you know – if 80% of the population really doesn’t want Obama care, Obama care is still going to go through, right?
Kevin: Well it shouldn’t[?].
Tom: Constitutional republic puts a few people in charge of everybody, and there are times when they make decisions that are against what the majority want.
Kevin: Oh, clearly. Clearly. But I mean, I guess what I’m getting is that there’s a fundamental core of logic that you shouldn’t be able to trump. I mean, that’s the general idea of it, and I guess in a case of a suspect or what have you, the mentality of the country isn’t supposed to be that a guy is accused of something, and so everybody goes and hunts them down and kills them, right?
Tom: Right.
Kevin: I mean that’s specifically why there’s a set of laws, due process, et cetera that’s supposed to protect him – even if he did all those things. Even if he’s the most criminally negligent person that ever existed, you’re still supposed to provide him with that and of course that’s not the mentality though – there’s been a shift there. So I think kind of like the Waco thing, it was the same sort of mentality where you had most of the country look at them as the Waco people, or the dividians are the bad guys –
Tom: Oh, sure.
Kevin: – and the feds are the good guys, and even if that is true, the outcome is still completely unjust. Even if we assume that they are guilty of something – which to this day, there really isn’t any evidence that they were – but if they were it still is not the right means for it.
Jad: So Tom, I’m just curious, what was the – when you were saying you saw a distinction, what were you thinking of?
Tom: Well, what were the people in Waco accused of?
Jad: I think they were accused of weapons violations and – but I know what you’re saying, but they were accused of like, you know, child molestation and all kinds of stuff.
Tom: I agree with the fair trial – I mean obviously I agree with what you’re saying there, but when I look at it it’s like if he was this kind of guy on a rampage and you’re chasing him and you get him into a cabin, it’s almost like – I mean the guy is playing a game of, “I’m going to shoot you or you shoot me first.” I mean, it’s not quite the same as you know, a building full of people with women and children and then they start burning the place down.
Jad: Sure.
Tom: I agree with you that it’s not right. I see the parallel that you need to put a person on trial, especially when you’re taking the L.A.P.D.’s word on it that he actually did something in the first place. It just didn’t strike me as a real parallel.
Jad: Well in that sense though – to go back to the original point – that means that the Waco thing was worse than the Dorner thing.
Tom: Definite – I mean, in theory, if there’s a wild guy out there, crazy guy out there who’s extremely dangerous, you might consider it justifiable to shoot him on site instead of giving him a chance, you know what I’m saying?
Jad: Right.
Tom: But again, if you do that and then it wasn’t really him, then you’ve obviously killed the wrong person. It was just a little closer, that line of self defense even though I don’t think it really was. I agree they could’ve just waited him out.
Jad: Yeah. I’m not really married to this issue or anything, but I think if you’re going to make an argument for having an L.A.P.D. in its current state is that they have overwhelming force to the degree that they can do anything like, they could totally wait anybody out in any situation. They don’t actually need to hurt anybody ever for the most part because they’ve got like, 10 Robocop armored dudes for every citizen or something like that, so that is the argument for overwhelming force if you’re taking the statist side.
Tom: And of course, if you’re going to believe their story then the whole burning down the cabin is irrelevant because supposedly, they just [?] teargas in there, right – so if he wanted to get out he could’ve gotten out. Supposedly he shot himself, is that – you know, they’ve got that covered. “We put teargas in there, he didn’t come out, and then he shot himself”, so you know, the fact that it burned down is irrelevant, right?
Jad: I think that’s the other Waco parallel that I think is noteworthy, is essentially you know, you’ve got a lot of evidence – in both cases – you’ve got probably overwhelming evidence in Waco, I don’t really know about the most recent one – but you’ve got all of this evidence that exists that points to the fact that they intentionally set fire to the place that these people were, but they have a story that is not supported by any evidence, but everyone believes it.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: Right.
Jad: And that’s kind of a common thread between the two stories as well. That’s not something that’s new you know – the American people being gullible and basically accepting the story that makes everything feel safer for the moment.
Tom: I think what was even more troubling, Kevin, than the idea that you know, most people are all gung ho about shoot the guy and kill him, and don’t give him a trial. Probably more troubling than that is the fact that well documented on the new and everything is that the cops are running around just firing on trucks and innocent people, and I don’t see any outrage about –
Kevin: I mean, undoubtedly, no question.
Tom: And there’s just like almost no reaction –
Kevin: Right.
Tom: – anywhere. That’s completely inexcusable, right? I mean –
Kevin: Right.
Tom: – wrong truck, wrong color, wrong people, 50 shots going into houses, and I mean, and they didn’t even kill him. If he was there, he would’ve killed them I’m sure after you heard all the click, click, clicks.
Kevin: Yeah.
Tom: But if you’d watch the news – and I don’t know if this has been going on – but I think the war on drugs has contributed to that so much more that you know, people are just – cops just breaking into places and shooting up people and just not held responsible at all and it doesn’t seem to trouble anybody.
Kevin: Well, that just takes you to a much I mean, grander and systemic problem with the country and I mean, you could take it – I think even last week when Jad and I were talking about this – in my head, metaphorically, it all kinda goes back to the whole 9/11 thing. I always take it back to building 7, right?
In my opinion for our lifetime or certainly my lifetime, I mean, that’s just kind of the epitome of conspiracy theory, and I think to this exact point, what you’re saying, there’s obvious inaccuracies or things that occurred that nobody wants to talk about afterwards, and they just accept and there’s no outrage for it. There’s no protest on the streets saying, “where is the investigation?”
Tom: Right.
Kevin: In the case of Los Angeles, why were these two cars just riddled with bullets? Well, how did that happen? How is it possible that that happened? And again, taking it back you know, 10 years ago, how’s it possible that this building had nothing to do with it – it just came to the ground in the blink of an eye too – how did that happen?
It’s the same sort of, theory, but they rolled into a kind of a lump argument and say, “well, there was a crazy guy running the streets”, and I think it’s true, but you know – that’s the true statement, but that’s where people stop the statement, and that’s where people stop the statement, and that’s where people stop their investigation and say, “well, there was a crazy guy running the streets, so this happened.” “There were terrorists that flew planes into buildings” – like, these are both true statements but it has nothing to do with the ancillary incidents that occurred.
Tom: And if – again, like you said, without worrying about what the details are – if the very fact that that guy on September 11th, 2001 an entire building can fall down under the circumstances that it did and it really cannot even get anybody’s attention or be taken seriously –
Kevin: Right.
Tom: – then starting with that you know, you can do anything after that, right?
Kevin: And that’s why I’m saying the couple of trucks that got riddled with bullets in Los Angeles, who gives a shit? I mean, literally, nobody does. They just don’t care. It’s – I mean, if – like you said, that’s why I put it kind of as the epitome event – if this occurred 10 years ago and you know that nobody raises a brow to that, of course you can shoot up some trucks. I mean, nobody’s going to do anything. That’s just kinda where I think we’re at and – so I don’t really question often, you know? It’s real fucked up and real sad, but I don’t see how to fix that other than doing – at least in my mind – doing what I do and doing what we do and just trying to slowly educate people to thinking slightly differently.
Tom: Yeah. When you talk about 9/11, I think in the first few years after it happened, if you had any thoughts that anything was odd or completely ridiculous – and I think maybe now a fairly large percentage of people probably have an idea that that whole story doesn’t work somehow, but it’s too long ago now and it’s – but I don’t think it – yeah, it doesn’t have any real effect. I don’t know if people are becoming less trustful of stories that they get fed or not, or if they just keep going along with them.
Jad: Seems like it’s a keep going along with that, and it seems like there’s actually this really interesting mapping. It’s almost as if the timing of human psyche is known. Like, if you look at the JFK thing as another example – and I don’t even know what the conspiracy theories are for that – but apparently like, 85 or 90% of people don’t believe that it was a single assassin, or something like that.
And you know, over time like you know, 10 years after it happened, they went back and you know, officially congressionally studied it again and found that it was probably more than one assassin and then like, 20 years later, there’s more evidence. But by the time you ask somebody you know, “is the official story about JFK real?” it’s not even relevant, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That’s something that happened 60 years ago or I don’t know, 50. So by the time you get to like, 85, 90% of people understanding or you know, having some notion of the reality, who cares, you know? So I think we’re seeing the same curve now, probably the day after it happened, 99% of people would say, “the president’s story is true”, or whatever, and now it’s probably down to like 70%, and then by 2050, nobody will believe it anymore, but by then, who cares?
Kevin: Right.
Tom: Yeah I mean, it’s kind of odd, and I guess people are used to carrying these contradictory ideas in their head. It’s kind of odd that maybe most people would say, “yeah, that JFK story doesn’t add up”, and then just not even contemplate what that might mean – “well then, who did it”, or – that’s 40, 50 years ago – whatever.
Jad: To expand on the point, 60 years before that there was a genocide against an entire race of people, you know – just wrapping up, you know? And this same constitution, same government, there’s nothing different about it except that they added you can’t drink beer, and then they took that law out. Other than that, it’s the same governing document.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And yet this country that you know, that committed genocide, that’s just not even a possibility now, and it’s just totally different now somehow. So we are just like, American exceptionalism with an extra parameter – an extra time parameter – which is just shockingly odd.
Tom: People like to latch on to that, even if it’s 50 or 100 years – well, we didn’t know any better back then, or people were a little naïve back then, or people –
Jad: Sure.
Tom: – brought up differently, or that’s what you know – like, there’s an excuse once 50 years ago by then, it’s a whole different – it’s history.
Jad: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin: Now it’s funny to think what would’ve have occurred you know, if we had the technology today – your Facebook, your Twitter, et cetera – how that story would be. I wonder if it would be a lot like 9/11 wound up being, you know, where you definitely had all these splinter groups of people who are like, “this is fucking crazy. I can show you all the evidence”, but then the general narrative was still, “no, this is what happened and we’re all fine with that, and if you don’t believe us then there’s something wrong with you, and you’re the anti-American individual who supported the president being assassinated”, you know?
Tom: Well I think one of the main differences between those two events is the way you can get information. I mean, in ’63, you heard it on the TV, you saw it on the TV and I mean, that’s it, right? I mean, you can’t just plug into the internet and get a whole bunch of different views and ideas, and ballistics information if you had no idea about ballistics, and then you could go study it – just like you could go study about steel, and iron, and structural things if you were really interested in investigating stuff with 9/11, for instance.
But yeah, as you say, if all that technology was available back then, yeah I’m sure there would’ve been all these groups saying different things and having different ideas and theories. The official story I guess, probably would’ve – and even in 2001 – I can’t remember back then, I mean, where people still mostly plugged in to two or three channels on TV, or how much had the internet and cable, and different stuff proliferated by then – was there a fairly wider range of sources in the mainstream back then, or –
Kevin: I’m going to guess in comparison to today, the internet was still very, very small – even though to me, it was a very large and pervasive sort of thing.
Tom: Right.
Kevin: I think as a whole, it was actually probably pretty insignificant until broadband was not widely available, or certainly not that many people had it, and you couldn’t stream video at the time. I mean, you could, but it was difficult – it was laborious. So there weren’t video clips floating around, you certainly didn’t have media channels just dumping information on there – it just wasn’t the same thing.
Tom: And if I can use my sister as a prototypical example of Joe average citizen – Joanna average citizen – in fact, I can remember talking to her after 9/11 about stuff and she said something to the effect of, “oh, you got that on the internet”, as if like you know, the internet was this new thing that was like oh, that’s where all the crazy stuff is. You know, it was still new enough I think back then, whereas like the majority of people are like, “oh, the internet – that’s not real news or information. You can’t trust anything that’s there.”
Kevin: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. Definitely one of the shifts that’s occurred is that it’s obviously acceptable now to take information from the internet. But anyways, I agree with that for sure, that if you were taking information from the internet, it was probably just perceived to other people that you were the conspiracy theorist – even though you were just reading regular news.
Tom: The interesting point about that is that it just goes to show how we are all trained to receive a single feed of information, and that is the truth. The internet is a source of 10 different feeds of information, it’s acknowledged that 5 of those feeds are probably garbage in any given instance, but it’s up to the person to distinguish what’s true and what’s not. We’re trained to be in school and listen to the one point of view and absorb it and that’s the truth.
It was like a completely foreign idea that you might receive 5 different points of view and it was up to you to find what was true out of that, whereas most people trained to absorb one track of information, they couldn’t even conceive of that that. It’s like, “well how do you know it’s true?” It’s all crazy, if there’s not one person they’re telling you that this is true, how can you be the person to dig up the facts and decide what’s worth believing and what’s not.
Kevin: Yeah.
Tom: I don’t think most people are comfortable with that.
Kevin: No, I tend to agree.
Jad: Yeah I just don’t – I really don’t have an opinion on that, I don’t know. I think it’s definitely the case that you know, we all left our work in a computer lab to go home and watch you know, what the hell was happening on the news –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – you know, so I mean it’s clearly you know – people who had access to the very best technology could offer, it was still more information available on TV than if it was just you know, nonsense information.
Tom: Right.
Jad: The strange thing is to me though because I guess I was revising what I was thinking about the timelines because like, the Kennedy thing, again, I don’t think there were even conspiracy theories until they released this [?] film or something, that was like 7 years after it happened. It was the first time people had you know, a firsthand document film or whatever that they could analyze and all that kind of crap.
Tom: Back and to the left.
Jad: Exactly. You know, so that kind of again, it makes it sound like things should happen on a quicker timeline now, but I don’t know. But the thing is, I think that the issue is somewhere in people’s minds is like a calculation going on which is a very rational one – which is like, well, let’s just say that’s true, what do we do now? And the only answer that anyone really has is, “well, we have to go get shot to death by security forces trying to storm the White House”, or something like – you know, you can’t do anything, so you might as well just have your brain be like, well, CNN is right and these other people are crazy, you know?
Or you know, the warring[?] condition is right and these other people are trying to send me newsletters via the postal service or[?] crazy, what’s the advantage of accepting the truth in that case, you know? There really isn’t one.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: Do you think that really leads to a purposeful self deception, where you actually believe yourself, you might be motivated to say, “well, what can I do about it? It’s better to believe them.”
Jad: Well I think it allows you not to look at it. It’s a multi-layer defense, right? Because you don’t have to go to strike the root[?], or you don’t have to go find an alternative explanation, so you don’t even have to investigate it if you don’t want to, but let’s just say you do. For every 9/11 truth thing, there’s like architects and engineers explaining why the 9/11 truth thing is not true or you know, whatever it is. So you can take it to whatever depth you want and exit at any time into the you know, everything’s cool, we’re all fine. And I think probably most people just don’t even bother with it. They’re – again, I’m not sure if it’s conscious, but the reason they don’t bother with it is because the only solution is to radically alter your life and you know – the only solution that’s say, media available.
Like, what do you do when you’re facing – when you’re facing evil of that magnitude? The only answer that movies and whatnot provide is when you try to go kill it or something, that leads to death, and that’s kind of well known. Point being, I think that you know, that whole process is just short circuited at level one by like, “oh, I can just go watch a football game, or I can do anything – I can play with my kids, I can go to the park, I can go get ice cream, I can do any number of things that are immediately productive and allow me not to have to worry about the fact that this might be some crazy monstrous story that I’m an unwitting[?] pawn in.
Tom: Yeah, and I don’t know if it really gets that deep to be thinking of it as a practical you know, “what can I do about it”. I think it might tend to be more emotional where it’s just like, “I don’t want to believe that, and so I’m not going to.”
Jad: I don’t think it rises to the level of consciousness at all. I think it’s a you know, it’s a biological survival mechanism or something, right? It’s kind of like when people are dying in movies and they’re shot or whatever and they’re like, “you’ve been shot”, and he’s like, “no I haven’t, I feel fine”, or whatever, right before they collapse. Like there’s – you know, if the brain believes that all is lost, there’s no point in processing that, you know?
So it’s not a conscious thing, it’s not a decision to not examine the facts because if they’re true, I might have to you know, take some drastic action – it doesn’t even get that far. It’s like you said, it’s just an emotional like, “oh, that’s a stupid idea”, but what’s behind the biological survivability of that mechanism is that it prevents you from going down tracks that are dangerous, or uncomfortable, or whatever.
Kevin: And that’s about where we ended things on the topic this week. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in, and we truly hope you enjoyed the content of the show. If you haven’t already, please stop by our website at www.JKPod.com, and check out some of our other episodes. We’d also really love to hear from you.
If you have any ideas for the show or general comments, please reach us at our website or either of our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com – don’t forget the dash – and I’m at KevinLudlow.com, K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. We’ll have links on our website to the material found in this episode, and we’ll be sure to include a link to Tom’s book, New World Rising. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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This nice man wants to protect and serve you. Or shoot you in the head from 500m.
Jad and Kevin discuss the positive social media response to Dorner’s attacks on the police and the continuum between lone gunmen and revolutionary armies. The episode wraps up with an analysis of the historical tendency to embrace violence as a means to fight oppression and the myth of redemptive violence–the narrative that captures humankind’s relationship with violent power.
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Jad: Hello and welcome to another installment of the JK Podcast. This week is the first in a two-part discussion around the curious case of Chris Dorner, the details of his crimes, and those of the Los Angeles police department are by this point, well documented by dozens of mainstream and alternative online news sources. Here’s a rough sketch of the story to provide posterity with enough detail to follow along with our discussion.
Chris Dorner was an L.A.P.D. police officer and naval reservist who served with the mobile in-shore[?] undersea warfare unit, including a brief deployment to Bahrain ending on April, 2007. In July of 2007, he reported a superior officer for excessive force during an arrest. The review board – two L.A.P.D. captains and a criminal defense attorney – unanimously ruled against Dorner. They concluded that he was trying to avoid a bad evaluation from the superior officer. As a result, Dorner’s employment was terminated on September 4th, 2008.
For the next 3 years, he appealed several times upward through the California legal system and was ruled against each time. In early February, 2013, Chris Dorner wrote a rambling Facebook post alleging pervasive and systemic bigotry and corruption from the top to the bottom of the L.A.P.D., and declaring a number of members of the L.A.P.D. and their families as targets in what was planned as a long series of vengeance killings in an effort – somehow – to clear his name. He then killed the daughter and soon to be son-in-law of the L.A.P.D. captain that served as his counsel during one of his appeals.
A week later, he killed an L.A.P.D. officer and wounded 3 others in several ambushes. Now it was time for the L.A.P.D. to go on a shooting spree. During the manhunt for Dorner, they fired over 100 rounds into two separate vehicles, completely unrelated to Chris Dorner. Luckily, they were unable to kill any of the passengers. A few days later, Dorner was supposedly caught in a cabin at a ski resort outside L.A. Kevin covers this part in more detail in part 2, but spoiler alert, they burn down the cabin – allegedly on accident – and though the body was charred beyond recognition, Dorner’s driver’s license miraculously survived – case closed.
After touching on the obvious and oft discussed problem with having standing armies serve as peace officers, we talk about the narrative surrounding the events. Many denizens of social media supported Chris Dorner based on the overwhelming awfulness and injustice of law enforcement in general, and the L.A.P.D. in particular. This despite the fact that two-thirds of his kills were completely innocent, by any standards of justice outside those of organized crime who see family as legitimate targets, and U.S. foreign policy, who see family, friends, people standing nearby, coralligenous[?] and anyone else in the same or surrounding countries as legitimate targets. Let’s join the conversation with Kevin’s enthusiastic response to my query about possibilities for this week’s topic.
The topic – something you wanted to shoot the shit about?
Kevin: We can talk about police forces, and ex-marines, and snipers, and assassination attempts, and on, and on, and on – a million other things related to everything in Los Angeles since last week –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – that is – I have talked with a lot of people about it. You know, a lot of my friends who are of our general – I suppose – sentiment in our life have actually – he called me and asked me, they’re like, “hey, I don’t really know a lot about this. I’m starting to see more stuff about it. Like, what’s the deal with this story?” And I’ve told them all you know, giving your personality and your interest in the side of politics that you take, this is probably one of those stories that you should read up on a little bit because it’s – I think – a pretty good illustrative point of what I see going on in this country, or what I see escalating in this country.
It’s frightening to say the very least, but it’s just so fucked up. I can’t imagine that people in Los Angeles are turning a blind eye to this, at this point I don’t really know, but it just seems that if I were there I’d certainly be with groups of people speaking out to say, “what the fuck is going on? Why the fuck are there – why is there a military wearing S.W.A.T. team outfits, running around our streets?”
They’re talking about these gun bans – you know, Obama talking about the assault weapons ban – I mean, for fuck’s sake, if they took it away from cops I probably would support it all of a sudden. There’s nothing more frightening to me than a bunch of pseudo-marines in cop outfits running around playing cowboys and Indians with people, it’s just – I just don’t even have words for what’s been going on with that.
Jad: Yeah man. Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean it’s like you said, it’s you know, there’s people walking around like – what’d you say, you counted like 34 or 45 or whatever bullets –
Kevin: When I saw it yeah, I just counted it – I mean, real quick when I sent you that picture, I think they were at like 34 holes that I saw, yeah.
Jad: Yeah. Just shooting the hell out of a car and then walking away, and nothing’s ever going to happen to those guys. They’re going to draw a paycheck for the hours they spent walking around shooting up vehicles. Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. I think actually, Los Angeles is the home of S.W.A.T., I think that’s the first place that there was a militarized police force – metropolitan police force. So – I could be wrong about that, but yeah. [?] like, it was to do with kidnappings or something like that. You know, there was like a spade of kidnappings in the 60’s or early 70’s or something like that, and – I have to check that out again – but I think that’s where it all kinda started.
I did actually fact check my vague recollection, and indeed S.W.A.T., the use of military grade weapons, and tactics by police was quietly phased into the L.A.P.D. in the 1960’s. The first significant use of S.W.A.T. was against the Black Panthers in 1969. Not to try to justify my factual error, but S.W.A.T. was used in 1974 against the Symbionese Liberation Army, which were the left-wing gorillas that kidnapped Patty Hurst. That may be how I got kidnapping cross wired in there. A final note, while S.W.A.T. used to be limited to a few dozen officers in the largest metropolitan areas, virtually all cities now have heavily armed military police – even rural police forces look like cavalry, complete with armored personnel carriers, body armor, helmets, masks, and military small arms.
Kevin: Yeah, the whole militarization of it is you know, obviously a topic that is hot in conspiracy theory circles, and the outside media circles, things like that obviously, and to just see this sort of thing unfold with this type of disregard for frankly, any type of basic principles of law and order. I mean, from the side that on their badge, that’s the one thing that they’re supposed to be protecting of course, not that I give that any credibility, but it’s just that in this particular instance, it’s – I mean, you couldn’t illustrate any better that that’s clearly not what they’re doing, and to just see it unfold like that I think was really pretty mind boggling.
I don’t know if you actually saw it, but a video of them assaulting the house got posted on Live Leak today.
Jad: Oh no, I didn’t see it.
Kevin: So it was pretty interesting – well and of course, all it is is I mean, it’s a bunch of guys – I don't know if you’ve ever played paintball before, but it basically looks like that. I mean, you’ve got a bunch of these fucking assholes running around in just full fatigues you know, strapped with God the fuck knows what, running around and I mean they are just unleashing on this house, and then one of them runs back and he’s all out of breath and tired and then you know, he’s like, “give me some more”, and he runs back and I mean, just reminds me of being a kid running around with fake guns and pretending to shoot one another because it’s fun – only in this case, they’re really shooting people.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Not only just shooting people, they’re – in fact, not only just legally shooting people, but under the guidelines of the law that this is somehow – this is what they’re supposed to be doing.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And I just – I can’t for the life of me figure this out. If that’s the guy, you’ve got what, 1,000 police officers surrounding a house and that’s the best they can do is just fire shots into it until it burns down?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So they were talking about again how they found the – his driver’s license next to him –
Jad: Uh huh.
Kevin: Of course, there’s some pretty humorous memes floating around about that one based upon the fact that his body was allegedly charred to pieces and apparently, the $1.50 piece of plastic next to him was in good shape. I mean –
Jad: Right, nice.
Kevin: Takes a hell of a fire to char a body.
Jad: That is amazing how the identifications of people always comes out of incinerated buildings and blown up things, just like, “oh yeah, it really was this guy. We found his ID right here.”
Kevin: Yeah. There it is.
Jad: That’s a pretty frequent event – it’s very handy.
Kevin: Well it leaves me to question then you know, what actually is going on with that. I haven’t read any conspiracy theory circles at the moment, but I assume they’re flooding with information or with theories at the moment.
Jad: Oh yeah, no, I have no doubt.
Kevin: Well anyways, it’s just the topic in general I mean, I know we’ve cut on it countless times in our discussions, but seeing the escalation of the militarization of local police forces, it really emphasizes the strength and the purpose of the 2nd amendment, and to all those assholes who want to counter it by saying, “well I don’t know where your militia is”, but that’s actually what the language of the second amendment says.
To them – at this point – I would say, “you’re fucking right, we need to get some militias together because God knows this whole police force is one giant fucked up crazy militia running under the guise of the law, and it’s just a matter of time before this sort of thing that happened in Los Angeles is just full scale, I think. I mean –
Jad: Sure, yeah.
Kevin: – so – I mean, it’s a little pessimistic for the short future, but it just seems to trend that way.
Jad: Well I think my though is that it’s to do with the American exceptionalism thing – and maybe I’ve gone this – this is something I think about a lot, so it’s something I’ve probably mentioned to you before – but this guy you know, he is what he is, right? But I mean if you have 1,000 of those guys and they’re all cooperating, then you have a revolutionary army or whatever.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Self titled, that’s just what it is. I mean, it’s nothing more, nothing less when a band of armed people start shooting the people who are claiming to have the monopoly of violence in a geographical area, then you can call it whatever you want, but objectively it’s just two groups of armed people struggling for control of some space, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Clearly when it’s just one guy, he’s not likely to win, but when you have 10, or 50, or 100, then it’s on you know, and it just keeps escalating until one side or the other vanquishes the opponent, so the idea that that’s not going to happen here ever under any circumstance is just ridiculous. I mean, right now we’re like totally flushed with all the food we need, and all the gasoline we need, and most people have jobs, but if you don’t have food for a few weeks and then dudes like that start popping up, you know, people hide them when they show up at their houses and people help them and arm them, and that’s all a revolution is. That’s all a civil war is is that happening, so it’s – the idea that that’s not going to happen is just strange to me.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And I think that’s what you’re seeing – at least I’m seeing because I’m on a bunch of crazy people’s Facebook pages and whatever – that people who are like either passively or explicitly supporting him, their couching their support in revolutionary language – everything from like, just fuck the police, to everyone needs to help this guy, you know, or pray for his survival or whatever.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Like I said, it’s always in that revolutionary language which is all part of the thing. If there’s going to be a narrative you know, again, when it’s one guy, or 10 guys, or 100 guys, at some point the narrative is that they’re fighting against the awful evil of the occupying L.A.P.D. and the only difference between the crazy guy and the revolutionary army is just the story, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s the same thing, so I feel like I’m not making much sense.
Kevin: Oh, you’re making perfect sense. I totally agree with your point in fact.
Jad: Well, then good.
Kevin: No, no, I mean, it’s interesting to hear you describe it like that as well because I mean, it’s not a hard concept to grasp or anything. We just don’t generally think about it like that you know? You think about kinda your point, like you’ve got one rogue fighter for example – this guy – and he’s invariably going to be labeled a bad guy even though – I mean even this – and I think even in a lot of not so you know, far leaning circles, I don’t want to say that he’s been labeled – I don't know that people are seeing him heroically or anything, but I think there’s a lot more people that are sympathetic to his position than I would’ve imagined, and I don't know that they would’ve been initially, but given the way that I think people have seen things unfold, they’re like, “well this is fucked up, what the hell are you doing”, and lots of people that I wouldn’t expect to be drawing the conclusion of well, obviously they want to kill this guy, so that’s kind of telling in itself.
You know, I mean, any time you want to assassinate a person you really have to question, “well, did he murder 3 people”, because I know there’s lots of stories of some guy who murdered 3 people the other day. I mean, I don’t think we’ve got you know, fleets of militarized police trying to kill that person as well. So is it unique because he you know, he’s ex-military, or has sniping capabilities or what have you? It doesn’t seem all that necessary either, but I guess the manifesto, him suggesting that he’s going to go and kill more people that like, that makes it the more revealing.
But anyways, my point is just that it’s interesting when you – what you described saying you know, get 10, 50, 100 people, and now all of a sudden you’ve got these two groups that are fighting one another, and it’s so hard to take a step back from that and recognize that they are just people both armed to the nines fighting one another and whoever has more men standing at the end is the group who ultimately wins the conflict, and it’s just weird to think that 100 people might go up against 100 police, and maybe 100 police die and that group is victorious.
What happens after that point, I don’t really know, but it is kind of an interesting philosophical point. I think it’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that that really is all a revolution is – it’s not really this magical thing beyond that. It’s fighting the guys that are allegedly in place to help you to begin with – i.e. government.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Or dominions of government anyways.
Jad: Well I think that the subtle point though is that that’s an excellent reason for not supporting them as well, right? That’s an excellent reason to not believe that that is the way out of you know, L.A.P.D. repression because lunatics who will kill people indiscriminately and you know, that’s what this guy is, right? I mean, you can say he killed 3 cops and 2 civilians, so he killed 40% innocent people which is you know, that’s about on par[?] for an army or whatever. But I mean, there’s nothing good about it, there’s nothing good about him, there’s nothing – right? Because that’s always what happens in times that are not as flush as our times is those same stories about he’s fighting for justice, he’s fighting to destroy the corruption.
Those stories catch on because people are hungry, and people are oppressed, and people are whatever else, and so they pick up that story of like, these guys who are killing indiscriminately are trying to get rid of the awful evil people who we hate, and so we have to support them and forgive their excesses and whatever else, and that’s – and again, that’s the story of every armed conflict of every government in every revolution that’s ever happened. Nothing ever ends up ridding anyone of any oppression, right? It just ends up with a new group of people that are allowed to kill whoever they want and take whatever they want, and call it just and call it the rule of law –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and so it’s just strange to me that people seem so desperate – again, and this is to do with the people who are finding some kind of positive thing here – people are so desperate for anything besides the rule of the current awful people that they’re willing to like, be like, “oh, you know, he accidentally killed 2 other people” – what’s the word – “collateral damage”, or it’s you know, you’re just using the same fucking excuses that the awful people are using. It’s just you’re supporting a different set of awful people.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: The awful people yet to be entirely awful to you. Anyways, it’s just short sided or something.
Kevin: No, that’s a strong point. It’s funny how fickle people become. I mean, I guess I – to some extent – should catch myself having been in that same boat in this past week. Certainly I’m not happy – I don’t ever want to see anybody get killed, even when they’re a bad guy, I probably just assume them not get killed, I always think there’s better means than that, but in some cases, that’s a naïve position in itself. But in this case, you’re right. I mean, I was kinda looking at it like – I don’t want to say I was excited about it – but it’s kind of exciting – to what you said – just to think of somebody else not really being the hero, but kind of playing the role of Robin Hood a little bit, right?
Jad: Sure, yeah.
Kevin: You’re obviously opposed to whatever the state interest is – in this case, the Los Angeles police force. You know, for some reasons that while they sounded crazy in his manifesto, I happen to believe that they’re probably very true because I’ve heard just countless stories like that over the years, and when I was in L.A. it’s the same sort of stories that you hear from people – nobody stands up to the police out there because every story ends the same way like, yeah, they just – they fucked me – so yeah, you just don’t do it. So I mean it’s just kind of like a little like, mafia circuit. And so to have somebody else stand up into that, that’s fantastic and it excites me, but immediately you’re right.
You know, here I am condemning the police because for the most part, the police force – you could argue – actually may be keeping the peace, but once in a while they fuck up and bunch of people get hurt, or beat, or shot, or whatever, but their justification is always the same, is to say, “well yeah, once in a while we’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette”, and so now here we are on the other side and I’m like, you know, well this guy – so he accidentally killed like, one innocent person or what have you. It’s like, you’re using the exact same expression all over again and I think it’s a great point – you’re totally right. That doesn’t make it any better, all you’ve done is you’ve traded the old boss for a new boss, as they say.
Jad: Right. Well the thing is this is what I think is the interesting meta-narrative of it is that I have the same feeling. Like, whenever I first saw that and I mentioned it to you at work, I have to put on an – I have to jump out of my own head for a minute to look at it from Mars or whatever, and be like, “oh, this guy is just a crazy killer like the people he just left”, and he’s just turning around and started shooting it back at them. Because we’re wired for that shit, I mean, every story, every superhero, right – I mean, all of them – that’s what they do, right?
They take the law into their own hands and just start fucking shit up, but it’s always like, after some awful, awful you know, oppression has happened, or like – trying to think of who does a really good job of that – is Quentin Tarantino with Inglorious Basterds or whatever, right?
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jad: I mean he makes the bad guys so fucking evil that you’re just so thrilled when someone shows up and just starts butchering everybody, you’re like, “Yay”, you know? There’s a guy – the first time I realized this, this guy’s name is Walter Wink, he’s a theologian, but he traces this back to like, the creation mist[?], and the Babylonians and stuff, and like – or the Greeks with Zeus. Zeus is king of the gods because Cronus – or the Titan – you know, had enslaved or had eaten I guess all of the other you know – all of the other gods, right? And so Zeus you know, is the one guy who can fuck up Cronus.
He does it, and then he gets to be the king, right? So when you’re powerless against overwhelming evil, then the story is that you know, you turn in your desperation to somebody who’s outside of morality, who will you know, who will save you and liberate you from the oppressive evil, but at the same time, then takes rulership over you and remains outside of the moral code that you’re bound to. Like I said, the superheroes, and cartoons, and like, it’s always the same story is like, the components being the overwhelming evil, the hero that’s outside of the – outside of morality, and then you know, everyone else who’s just kind of a peasant or whatever in the story.
That ends this segment. We pick up and examine other aspects of the story less to do with Greek mythology next week with guest host, Tom DeLorenzo. Thanks for listening. If you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or correspondence, please e-mail us at JKPod@JKPod.com, or stop by the website with the same name and let us know your thoughts. You can also swing by our websites – Jad-Davis.com, or KevinLudlow.com , all one word, don’t forget to leave out the hyphen – to see what else we’re working on. Thanks again for listening and until next time, take care.
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The front of Austin City Hall.
In an effort to continue evolving the show, Jad proposes the idea that the show occasionally focus on local Austin politics. Kevin has spent some time working in various local political organizations and was immediately keen on the idea. For a few minutes, a whimsical meta-discussion turns to local content.
The episode primarily focuses on the changes coming to Austin with the new 10-1 [re]districting structure. After decades of a 7-member at-large city council (mayor included), the November 2012 elections paved the way for something new and potentially exciting. Starting in 2014 the City of Austin will be divided into 10 single-member districts, each providing one council member to the public cabal. As far as we know, the mayor will still be elected at-large and will be 11th member of the council.
Jad and Kevin spend some time discussing the age-old “gentleman’s agreement” – the one that was supposed to ensure racial equality on the council. They also discuss how this new proposal finally came to pass and how it will likely change some of the city landscape and project funding.
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the JK Podcast. Every week, we try to excite, delight, and incite our listeners with the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. If you haven’t yet visited our website, stroll over to www.JKPod.com for a complete episode listing.
It’s not very often that Jad and I bring the meta-discussion into our episodes, but it’s also not never. As residents of Austin, Texas, Jad proposed the idea of occasionally pursuing some local political agendas in addition to the global picture that we typically focus on. I could go on with this, but he does a much better job explaining it.
Jad: To tangent out of content and into meta-conversation, I was thinking about this the other day, like, our mutual expertise is in technology, and you have a particular expertise that’s very rare in like, city government. Not many people have any fucking idea what’s going on, but they’re all interested in it, you know what I mean? But the best they can do is like read letters to the editor at The Chronicle to try to get a gauge of what’s happening. The analysis you bring and the information you have is just so much more nuanced, you know, it’s not even – they don’t even compare, right?
So I was thinking like, it seems like those are you know, because we talk about things that are – they’re nobody’s area of expertise, which is I guess why we can hold our own talking about philosophy because there are no philosophers, you know, or there’s so very few. Or we can do it you know, talking about radical political theory because no one talks about radical political theory. You know, neither of us are that you know, expert at it or anything, so I was just kind of thinking and I was wondering if that would be something we could focus more on, say Austin, or focus more on you know, technology, privacy, that sort of stuff.
Kevin: Yeah. We talked about that once I thought, about –
Jad: Oh, we did?
Kevin: Yeah, well I thought we did about the possibility of talking about some local governance, and I’d actually be really interested in it. I think we could probably get a pretty decent base of people who would be interested in hearing about it. Particularly right now as this whole member district thing’s going to turn up, I really think that the politics in Austin are about to get really interesting, albeit it’s not going to be for a year.
And that’s really all it took for the meta-discussion to end, and for the local political discussions to begin. As always, here to titillate your inner ear is the voice of the co-creator, Jad Davis, mine as well, Kevin Ludlow, welcome back to our show.
I have a friend who’s the policy aid for one of the council members, and she was telling me pretty much how it’s going to unfold starting in the beginning of 2014. Apparently that’s when the 10 districts are going to take effect, so it’s got another year yet, but all of the council members will be taken off the board at that point.
Jad: Right, right.
Kevin: Only one of them will be eligible to run, per the term limits. So essentially what you’re going to have is at least 9 brand new council members from 10 different districts around the city.
Jad: Oh, yeah. But if you have any like, more in depth information about what’s going to happen that you’re privy to give out or whatever, then let me see it and maybe next Wednesday, we can do a show just on re-districting.
Kevin: Oh, sure.
Jad: You know, and again, it’s – the limits are scoped to Austin to some degree, we don’t have to have it in the same stream podcast, but I think a lot of people would be interested in it and like I said, just kind of a – it’s a very niche area of expertise, so it seems like it would be useful.
Kevin: Well sure, I’d love to talk about it and to the other thing, I mean talking about privacy, and just technology in general I mean yeah, I think we can both just talk circles around that and I think it is interesting to find people who are both politically motivated, and capable of communicating well – at least with one another but I think with people in general – and have knowledge of a niche of technology in itself. Like I said, that NSA – I wished people like us had been conducting that interview, I think it would’ve been far more interesting you know, at a very technical level that I think technology people and privacy people would be really interested to listen to.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: You know, it’s funny, when I got that article published in Forbes back in June or whenever – July or whenever it was – that woman – her name is Cashmere Hill – she’s a writer for Forbes and she actually specializes specifically in online privacy – like, that’s what she writes about for Forbes which is why she picked up that article. But yeah man, I’d love to talk about that – in particular the re-districting, there’s so many sides to it right now I think all them are so very interesting, and I think a lot of it has to do with the whole California migration, and a lot of it has to do with – a lot of it has to do with money, so –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – I’m just intrigued.
Jad: Yeah man, well don’t – I don’t want to walk blindly into it – but the thing that seems strange to me is that is it like new money overwhelming old money? Because it seems like the status quo or the historical establishment has enjoyed being from three zip codes, right?
Kevin: Right. For the most part, yes that’s correct.
Jad: So they finally – it sounds like in this idea has kind of gone past like, whatever, 8 or 10 times and every time it gets voted down but somebody keeps trying to pass it, and that somebody has enough clout now that they finally got it through, right?
Kevin: Yes, well it’d be interesting to actually look up the history of it as far as what people wanted in terms of member districts. Quantifying that number plays a pretty big role too, right? Austin only has 6 city council members and then it has a mayor, so there’s 7 on the city council because the mayor counts as one of them. But from what I’ve read, that’s actually incredibly small for the size of Austin.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: So if you take an average American city, compare the size of it, and then compare the number of governance structure, it’s really, really small. Like I think Manhattan for example – I’m not entirely sure of this – but I think they’ve got something like 32, or 38 council members just for Manhattan.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So it’s huge, which is not surprising because it’s a huge population, but the point is is that that plays a role into it too, like maybe a long time ago – some of the single member districts – maybe they only wanted to create like 5 member districts and then have a mayor. There’s been other proposals like you’ve seen to have a few member districts, and then several at large people. Well the derivation of that – divvying up the city – plays a really big role, and I think with the number that they’ve come up with – 10 – I think that is pretty substantial in and of itself because inevitably what’s going to happen is you’re going to have enough districts that are going to be on the fringes of the city who are going to – I assume – strongly oppose a lot of the positions that those inner 3 zip codes have thus far taken.
Whereas if you just had, say 4 member districts, and then 3 at large people, well the at large people are – that’s a wash, so that doesn’t matter – and then of course, you could pretty easily quarter up the city such that you still had enough of that core support where you could still pretty much get anything you wanted passed.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And I just – I think with the number that they’ve created; I don’t think that’s going to be possible anymore.
Jad: Right. So I guess my question is or what I’m wondering is given that there was the other proposition 4 or whatever, as well as the position of just leave the things the way they are, the Austin establishment is on that side. The other side is Californians, and people coming in from other places, or is there like a defection, some people – I can’t imagine who’s defecting because they’re all going to get thrown out, so it’s not like – it seems like it would have to be a defection of the beaurocracy, more than the elected leadership – if there was one.
Kevin: Well, so I’ve sat in a couple of groups over on the east side, so like I told you, there’s the Austin Neighborhood Council, and the Austin Neighborhood Council is responsible for having put a couple of people – or a number of people over the years – on the council, and as of right now they’ve got at least two people – Chris Riley is the third[?], he’s kind of on the fringe of ANC, I don’t know if he’s direct representative of them, but anyway, I think he’s still in that group. The two primary ones are Cathy Tovo[?], and Laura Morrison, who are – Laura Morrison was the president or char – whatever they call it – of ANC for some time, and I don’t know if that’s true of Cathy Tovo[?] also.
But the point is is that the majority of ANC or a lot of ANC is kind of in those central areas that we’ve talked about before. Well, there’s other parts of the city that also have like, their own little chapters of ANC, so there’s like the ANC East, which is what yours would be a part of, and that pretty much encompasses I mean, anything that’s – anything east of 35 really, but it’s stretching from the river, basically up to at least 290, but maybe even all the way up to 183, I’m not really sure.
And you know, I’ve sat in on those groups for a number of years, and they’ve actually always – I think, if I recall – they’ve actually always really been in favor of single member districts, and I know it’s been on their agenda for the last couple of years that I’ve participated with them. I haven’t gone to any of their meetings in about a year and a half, but I still get all their e-mails and everything. I think there has been a group of people – probably predominantly on the east side – who are or have been in favor of single member districts because they look at it from the minority or the civil rights point of view, and the reality is is that you’re familiar with the gentleman’s agreement that’s been in place?
Jad: Right, right.
Kevin: So I guess for anybody who doesn’t know, there’s been a gentleman’s agreement for years, and it’s actually some interesting history with it when it was challenged I think by Gus Garcia in the early 90s – I don’t remember the exact history but I’ll find it. Anyway, the idea being that you would always have a Hispanic on the board, and you would always have an African American on the board, and I believe that I extended to say that you would have a woman on the board as well. And so the way that Austin works is that even though everybody’s at large, you still have places, which is really weird.
A long time ago they had ex-council members – let’s just say 6 – and so whoever got the highest votes throughout the city, those were your council members, right? But that’s not the way they do it, so you’ve got like a place 2, and place 2 at this moment is the Hispanic seat. So it’s taken over right now by Mike Martinez, who’s been in office for some time. Well, if somebody was going to challenge Mike Martinez, they would be a Hispanic.
Now they don’t need to be, but that’s just kind of the way that the gentleman’s agreement has been set up so that way, a Hispanic is challenging a Hispanic, and one of the two of them is going to win that seat – even if they get a very small percentage of the overall vote, I guess, or even if most people didn’t vote for them, but they’re only competing with one another at that point.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So anyways, I think there is a large group of people who are interested in that and who have actually wanted to have single member districts just to push the civil rights issue, but I believe that what’s happened is with the influx of people that you’ve had – predominantly from California – many, many, many whom have settled in the east side of Austin because properties are really cheap, and it’s you know, all about being a hipster there. I think that that has largely changed the influx of the vote. I could be dead wrong about that, but that’s my speculation as far as why it’s finally topped the scales, and they won by – I mean I think it was like 60/40, if I’m not mistaken.
Jad: Oh, wow.
Kevin: So it was pretty substantial for election terms, when you get a 60% of something.
Jad: Oh, sure, yeah. That’s crazy.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Okay, cool, yeah. That sounds like that’s a rich topic.
Kevin: Oh yeah, for sure.
Jad: I think we’ve probably in the last 5 minutes, there’s actually a teaser episode already, so.
Kevin: Well we can definitely do that.
Jad: So the other part of it then, jumping back to the meta-level you know, I don’t know how much time or energy either of us has for this sort of thing, but you know, there are people that also – I mean, somebody at The Chronicle writes about this stuff, right?
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: We could – what do you think about like, trying to actually get people like that to do interviews with them, or something like that? Would that be interesting, or is that jumping the project to a too taxing of a level?
Kevin: No, I mean you know, I’m all about taxing myself.
Jad: Yeah, I know. That’s the thing, I feel like my time commitments are – I mean, they’re not waxed – but you know, you’re like driving a 140%, so I don’t want to like you know, over commit you if it’s going to burn you out.
Kevin: And there you have it, our very first push into some local Austin politics. Thank you so very much for listening, and we truly hope you enjoyed the content of our show. As mentioned earlier, we do have a website up at www.JKPod.com, and of course we’d love for you to stop by. If you have any ideas for our show at all, please reach us at JKPod.com, or at either of our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot come – don’t forget the dash – and I’m at KevinLudlow.com, K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thanks again, and we’ll be back again next week.
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In the second part of our very first two-part episode, Jad and Kevin continue their discussion of whether or not people prefer being slaves. As we noted in the previous episode, the idea is pretty simple: there’s an almost endless supply of examples illustrating how people appear to be passive when any type of control structure takes over their lives. This can be applied to government, religion, education, and of course the literal notion of slavery as well.
In this second installment we pick back up exactly where we left off in the previous episode and consider topics of authoritarianism as it pertains to individuals being enslaved. The discussion opens with Jad and I considering the various abuses carried out by police during the occupy protests. We then bring some technology into the conversation before discussing whether the natural human tendency is to rebel against enslavement, or to embrace it. Of course our belief is that education (or lack thereof) plays a huge role in this process for better or for worse.
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the JK Podcast. As always, we’re doing our best to ponder and pursue the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. And for those of you who haven’t yet been to our website, please take a look at www.JKPod.com. Before introducing our topics, we should point out that this episode is actually a continuation of episode number 13, with the warm and inviting title, “Do People Prefer Being Slaves”. In our previous installment of this episode, Jad and I open up with the idea of whether or not people prefer being slaves.
This isn’t necessarily the literal whips and chains type of slavery, but rather people being forced to participate in modern government without their individual consent. We pick back up exactly where we left off in the previous episode, and consider topics of authoritarianism as it pertains to individuals being enslaved. The discussion opens with Jad and I considering the various abuses carried out by police during the Occupy protests.
We then bring some technology into the conversation before discussing whether the natural human tendency is to rebel against enslavement, or to embrace it. Of course, our belief is that education or lack thereof, plays a huge role in this process, for better or for worse. The other voice you’ll hear in this episode is the co-creator, Jad Davis, I’m Kevin Ludlow, and welcome back to our show.
Immediately reminds me of the whole Occupy movement, right? You can love it, you can hate it, you can be one of those people who’s like, they have no agenda whatsoever, they’re just a bunch of college hippies that are just doing it for attention, they’re making a mess, et cetera, et cetera – maybe all of that is true, I don’t necessarily think it is, but let’s just assume for the record that it is. It doesn’t change the fact that it was broadcast as openly as can be, beating the shit out of them for no reason. I mean, we shouldn’t have police forces that are just walking around pepper spraying people, and then beating them with batons.
Even if the guy does take a piss in the street, maybe that’s not good for the general societal view, but it doesn’t change the fact that I mean, this violence is real. I was really hoping that there would’ve been a bigger counter-movement in the United States against that violence – and it definitely brought some attention for sure – but I still think that the majority of the people who it brought attention to were the people who were already on the side of it to begin with.
My classic circle jerk interjection, it’s just now a bunch of college liberals think that it’s wrong for the police to beat them for protesting, but they thought it was wrong two months ago. I don’t need them to think it’s wrong, I need the conservative to be like, “well, I don’t agree with these protests, but on the other hand, I definitely don’t agree living in a country where people are getting beaten down for protesting”, but those people are definitely not standing up.
Jad: Yeah, yeah. Well I just had a heart sinking feeling just now because I was putting together all of our conversations, and your point is always you know – which I think is – it sounds hilarious, but I’ve never really thought of – but like, the point that when you say to somebody like that, “oh man, that’s”, you know, this guy was just – he chained himself to a tree or whatever to avoid being moved and they you know, beat the crap out of him, pepper sprayed him, and now he’s in prison for six months for you know, resisting arrest –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and they were like, “yeah, fucking deserves it”, or whatever. Like, there is no argument. Like, you can’t do anything about that guy, you know what I mean? And that’s – there’s no sitting on the fence, really. Like almost everybody is either like, “yeah, that’s awful”, and most people are like, “well, we should you know, pass laws to make that illegal”, or whatever. But there’s a category of person that – the person who thinks you’re crazy is the person who believes that you know, whatever the police do is right –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and that person, you just gotta wait for them to die you know, because you can’t engage self interest with that guy until of course, the police van pulls up in front of their house and drags them out in the middle of the night, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But by that point it’s too late for them, and that’s the only thing that’s going to convince them it’s a bad idea, you know? It’s just like a level of narcissism and lack of empathy that is just so far through the roof that unless they’re actually physically being harmed, they can’t bring themselves to conceive that something might be a bad idea.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: The heart sinking feeling comes from not – there’s nothing for that, and that’s you know, that’s probably 20% of the population I would say, right?
Kevin: Sure. Well that’s why I thought that – again, I don’t know that I agree with it entirely – but I think that was interesting about creating the whole 1% thing is that in every one of these cases, what you’re doing is you’re creating a divide of people, right, that you’re creating this subcategory because that way it’s them, not you. So to your reference or to your point, in the 50s, the cops aren’t beating people, they’re beating black people – and that’s OK, so long as you’re white. And here we are all these years later, the cops aren’t beating people, the cops are beating these fucking degenerate hippy protesters that shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer money in the first place, and that’s OK so long as you’re not one of them.
And the point is is that these are small groups you know – in any type of percentage that you look at – I mean it’s a small group of people who are actually protesting in the scope of the country, there’s a small group of black people that exist at all because even today, something like what, 10% of the country at most is black, so you’re talking about pretty small groups of people to begin with, and I think that’s kind of been one of the very strategic goals from the evil oppressors, if you will.
So long as you keep doing that, you keep creating this divide that people can go to, and I thought the interesting thing of the 99% [?] one percent is to say, “look, we’re all really fucking poor, and if we could just get on board with that, it doesn’t matter if you’re like, bible belting, far right leading sort of conservative, or the far left hippie – you’re still getting fucked by this corporate infrastructure that’s taking over this country, and that’s the whole 1% – you’re part of the 99%, so let’s get on board and lets us rally together so when you see us getting beaten down, just know that you’re part of that exact same group”, but of course, that message has definitely permeated the hearts and minds of this country just yet.
Jad: You’re right, that is probably the best you can do though, is to say, “Look, we’re the same”, and “look, I’m being put in prison”, but again, I just don’t – well and again, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “guess what, you’re a slave too”, you know? And it’s just like the thing with the property taxes, so many people’s defense mechanism is to be like, “no we’re not, you’re a dirty hippie and I’m a regular taxpayer, law abiding citizen.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I saw a funny meme the other day that was like, “when someone says that they’re a taxpayer, get ready for them to be an asshole, or say something asshole-ish”. That’s pretty funny.
Kevin: Slightly a side point to these things we’re talking about, you’ve obviously seen my website before but I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this before, but the philosophy that I had of this website, if I could put every single thing available to me online, like, if everything was already exposed, then there would be very little that anybody could ever hold over my head. So kind of to this whole, the government’s indexing everything Google has, right? My take was years and years ago that I just assumed that everything you do, every keystroke you make, everything you say at some point is going to be on record somewhere – that’s just, I think that’s just inevitably going to happen.
So I don’t know if you remember or not, but we were talking about all the businesses that I’ve set up. I’m paraphrasing, but I remember you saying something to the effect of, “you know, I’ve spent all these years trying to ignore the government, I’ve really never thought about just setting up their own systems to play against them”, so I guess again, my whole idea was to say, “look, yeah there’s all sorts of embarrassing shit that’s out on my website, there’s videos and probably things that arguably shouldn’t be there”, but my hope is that at any point if somebody’s like, “here’s this video of Kevin having done this”.
I’d be like, “well, it’s been online for 20 years”, so it’s just kind of been this lesson of coming to accept the terms of the future to say there’s nothing that you can do that’s going to be private, so I’d rather just embrace that early on, and this way when somebody tries to hold something over my head I’d be like, “well, yeah it is a little embarrassing and it probably isn’t something that everybody needs to know, but since they’re going to know it anyways, I’d just as soon be the one to broadcast it to them” – that’s kind of the philosophy of where I was going with it.
Jad: Yeah, that’s a good thought. I like the idea of – well I can’t remember how you phrased it just now – but basically like, preparing yourself for the inevitable future – that was a good line, I like that. Yeah man, no, that’s pretty clever. That makes a lot of sense.
Kevin: Yeah, I don’t know if it will ever have any real impact, and in the meantime it allows me to enjoy having everything catalogued on my site.
Jad: Right, right. Yeah, it serves a multitude of purposes. I something similar I thought was kind of along the same lines where someone was saying that in the future at some point, people who don’t have an online presence, who don’t have a Facebook page or whatever, will be considered suspect.
Kevin: Oh, yeah.
Jad: Because if you’re not being open with information then you’re clearly hiding something, that kind of idea.
Kevin: Well there’s been some articles that I’ve read about recently with the job market, so now apparently there’s a lot of corporations who are looking at people that don’t have social networking profiles, and they’re being instantly turned away because it’s already suggesting that there is something irregular about that individual for not participating in the social construct of say, social networking or whatever the case may be.
Jad: Interesting. I know the conversation you’re talking about. My analysis of you – and [?] talk about with Elisa too – is that you have a natural anarchist tendency. I remember talking about this with Elisa because I always joke – I mean I’m only half joking – that she’s like you know, she’s from the hill people of Appalachia or whatever – it’s this clan-based thing, you know? There’s no like, first principle ethics to it, it’s just if someone fucks with the clan, then it’s all out war and you just devastate whoever the fuck it is and put them in the ground, and then you go back to your you know, you don’t fuck with anyone else, no one else fucks with you but you know, if someone does fuck with you then it’s holy war time.
So when I [?] and I’m like, “oh, well that’s this thing called non-aggression principle”, you know? And you agree with most of the militia groups around the country about their stance on this. You know, it’s a – I wasn’t previously aware of that – but I think yeah, you guys are both – have that natural – you’re natural anarchists. I think it’s all to do with – or [?], so there’s a genetic component, but it clearly has a lot to do with like, when you say something as a child, when you express an opinion, or a desire, or a personal preference you know, what happens? Are you free to pursue it, is your identification something you want, something that’s rewarded, you know, or at least respected, or is it crushed, you know?
And I think for most Americans, they have to spend a whole lifetime having all their personal preferences overwritten by authority figures that that’s what they’re comfortable – they’re uncomfortable in a situation where that’s not happening. Maybe that goes back to the slavery thing maybe, because – this guy has an analogy, it’s Stefan Molyneux again. It talks about a guy who’s a boxer – imagine like a Rocky Balboa character, right? So he grows up and you know, he’s fighting, he’s in like, the streets of Philadelphia or whatever just fighting, and then – you know, with schoolmates and all that sort of things, sort of a rough life or whatever – and then goes – when he’s like 10 or 11 – he gets into a boxing ring and he basically knows emotionally how to deal with physical pain.
He gets really, really good at that, right, so he’s – you know, that’s what a boxer is, right, is basically marshalling all your human instincts to you know, flee, or panic, or whatever when you’re getting the shit beat out of you, and control that and bring it into a place where you know – where you’re able to react appropriately, right? So he becomes an expert at getting the crap beat out of him and fighting back or whatever, but then he’s incapable – in a situation in which that’s not happening, there’s a lot of anxiety. He doesn’t know how to respond to somebody who’s not in that confrontational situation with him.
But if he can find somebody who will fight him right, then he’s like, “OK, now I know what I’m doing. Now I’m in my wheelhouse” or whatever. If you are used to a life in which authority figures, your parents or whatever are saying, “sit down and shut up”, you know, “do as you’re told”, and then maybe even like, “Oh, you did what we told you to. Here’s a candy bar”, you know, or whatever. You know that authority model of like, overriding your personal preferences and replacing them with somebody else’s in order to get their approval.
If you’re comfortable with that, then when someone’s like, “well what do you want to do? Let’s do what you want to do today. Go get the job you want to get”, or whatever – you don’t know what to do with that, right – it could be anxiety provoking. Whereas if someone’s like, “oh, go to this classroom, sit in this thing for a year, and then you’ll get a piece of paper. Take that piece of paper to that guy and he’ll give you a job, and he’ll tell you what to do next.” Then you’re like, “oh, cool”, like, “oh, thank God. I was afraid there for a second that I was going to have to figure out what I wanted.” From the outside, what that looks like is somebody who doesn’t want to not be a slave.
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely.
Jad: Because I guess being free is novel enough to be uncomfortable.
Kevin: A female friend of mine pointed this out to me just yesterday that I have a natural proclivity towards not ever wanting to be defeated in a challenge. I mean it’s like, clinical I think. I’d be really interested to talk to a psychiatrist about it. I don’t think it’s a healthy level. I mean, it’s to the point where it’s like, I don’t ever want to have been able to say that this person or this thing got the best of me, but it becomes irrational at a certain point.
Your average person would say that it becomes irrational at a certain point because you’re – think about what you’re giving up because you want to pursue the fight. But for whatever reason, the fight is what’s interesting to me like, it just truly drives me. And I just think that in all cases of governance that is actually what’s driving me to prevail. I don’t want some irrational force to have bested me for no particular reason. That is definitely how I was raised, and I guess it’s true that maybe not many people are raised that way.
When you asked me like, “how’d you know all the stuff with the city, and with the state, and how do you set up all this stuff”, well, I just fucked up a whole bunch of times, and I just – every time you lose, you learn a lot more and I’ve definitely lost way more times than I’ve won, but for whatever reason it just – it make it that much more interesting for me to pursue whatever that victory is. So I don’t know why it’s there, but it does.
Jad: Yeah dude. No, I think it’s very healthy. I hope that’s a natural part of human nature. To go back to the slavery thing, my argument usually is – or I shouldn’t even say my argument – my optimistic hope is that tendency that you have is a native human tendency, that all of our societal constructs – religion, school, and all that – are designed to get rid of that because that’s very inconvenient for someone who wants to control you, right?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So you know, for every industrialist or every ruler of any sort, somebody who does not want to be defeated and will go through any lengths to overcome a foe – even when it becomes self destructive – I’m not saying that’s the case for you, but –
Kevin: No, there is some truth to it.
Jad: So to that extreme though where it’s like you know, at this point it on principle that I’m going to defeat you, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: That’s – you can’t have 300 million people with that attitude and collect 50% of their income every year.
Kevin: No you totally cannot.
Jad: So I think that’s my – I really – I’m convinced by my own argument – which is not surprising – but that you know, that throughout all of history, everything is geared toward diffusing that spirit. I think that’s the native human tendency, and I think that the evidence that that is so is that you have to have this huge infrastructure whose sole purpose is to get rid of that tendency.
Kevin: That ties the whole question together then doesn’t it, because if you assume that that’s true – which I know you’ve made that point a number of times and I don’t think I disagree with you at all, I just – I’ve never thought about it I think quite as in depth as you have thought about it, but to be fair I have been thinking about it much more since we’ve started doing this – that in itself answers the people prefer to be slaves because it’s not necessarily that they do prefer to be slaves, it’s rather that this machine if you will, has become so large and so efficient at doing what it does – in that sense I mean breaking that spirit –
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: – that the natural result is that people are of the mindset that they really prefer to be slaves. The danger though that maybe is worth examining at some point, is if there’s a tipping point to that. Let’s assume that inherently nobody wants to be slaves, and that everybody has that natural proclivity towards life that I was referring to myself about, that they’re just going to challenge everybody, it doesn’t matter – even if the person’s being nice – they’re just going to distrust them just on merit, and then it’ll work itself out.
But then that machine comes into place, and that machine starts breaking that spirit, and slowly, slowly, slowly, more people start getting on the wagon of saying, “I prefer to be slaves”. It’s internalized with, “this is OK, I’ve got a master, but I’m safe, I feel safe”, and it keeps going, and keeps going, and keeps going, but eventually you get to that bell[?] curve right in the middle of that, and now the danger becomes does it start chasing its own tail there, where now you’ve gotten a critical mass of people who believe – that prefer to be enslaved – that it then makes people like me look crazy because I’m the one challenging the system.
Maybe it is still a learned – a natural product of humans – to be willing to challenge their system, but the fact of the matter is that immediately when put in that society, there’s too many people that are going to tell you to the contrary where you can’t actually reverse that trend and if so, how do you go about reversing that trend.
Jad: Sure, yeah – no, absolutely. I think that’s right. Have we talked about this before, that the majority of enforcement of an authoritarian regime is not top to bottom, but side to side? So like for example, the government’s never sent you a letter saying, “we’d really appreciate it if you’d stop fucking with us you know, and stop making all these businesses and just go get a job somewhere”, right?
Secret police have not visited your house and said, “stop trying this construction project, and stop tying up city council with your requests for X, Y, and Z”, right? You know, the government has not had those messages toward – has not told you you’re crazy for trying to do what you do, it’s the other people who are slaves –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – to the government.
Kevin: Exactly.
Jad: I’m not saying anyone has been malicious or whatever, maybe they have or haven’t, but like, they’re trying to make you feel crazy for trying to do what you’re doing – for trying to be a free person.
Kevin: Absolutely.
Jad: Right, so it’s interesting that they can save – that’s part of the system too – is they can save all their resources because everyone around you is going to tell you you’re crazy, and tell you you know, “you are free, shut up”, you know? They don’t even need to bother.
Kevin: Well you’ve heard me – I mean, that’s one of the little taglines that I’ve come up with I guess that you’ve heard me say probably in almost every one of our episodes now, pick your topic of choice, it doesn’t really matter. But it doesn’t scare me when the government tries to do something bad – bad can be anything – because I perceive that that’s what they’re going to do. Like that’s – I have already put them on that pedestal from the get go, that they’re going to be in favor of doing something that infringes upon me. But what scares the shit out of me is when the average individual supports their desire to do that, and that’s what I’m seeing an increase of right now.
HOA’s for example – and it doesn’t surprise me that there’s some governmental body that says, “we think that A, B, and C should happen” – that’s the power struggle, that’s the person who seeks power, who wants to tell you what you need to do. That doesn’t scare me at all if that person does it, I’m like, well of course there’s always going to be that guy who’s standing on the top of a mountain with a gun saying, “come and take it”, right – that’s the world. But what scares me is when the rest of the audience that’s at the base of the hill says, “no, it’s good that he’s up there”, and I think we’re seeing an increase of that.
Jad: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about – if Tom was involved – having it as a topic because we’ve talked about it a little bit before. Your argument to somebody else is saying like, you know, “look, there’s this giant oppressive machine that you – in some ways at least – express favor for that is causing me tremendous financial detriment. It’s harming me, and not only that, but it threatens from time to time to destroy me or kill me.”
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And if someone comes up and says, “oh, you drove your car through the front of my house and you killed my dog and you know, you’ve done all this damage to me”, like if you – and you look out your window and there’s your car or whatever – if you were to say, “oh, you’re crazy you know, you’re overreacting”, or whatever, that’s like what a sociopath says, right? If you generally didn’t mean to do it you’re like, “oh fuck, I’m so sorry, I must’ve been drunk, I must be”, whatever, I don’t know – if you have empathy for the other person – if you’re not a sociopath – then you listen to what they’re saying and it engenders in you a feeling of remorse, regret you know, that sort of thing.
So you know, any time you walk up to anybody and you have this discussion about what you know, the relationship you have with the government and their support of the government, you get the sociopathic response which is you know, “well fuck you you know, love it or leave it”, or “yeah, you can always move”, or you know – or, “you’re just crazy, like, that’s not a problem, you’re just a crazy person.” You get the sociopath from everybody, so is everyone a sociopath then, or is it just like a compartmentalized sociopathy, like everyone’s a sociopath with respect to this particular topic of conversation.
Kevin: So after some 40 minutes of discussion, that’s where we’ll leave the idea of whether or not people prefer being enslaved. As always, thank you so very much for listening, and we truly hope you enjoyed the content. As noted earlier, we do have our website up at www.JKPod.com, and we’d love for you to take a look at all of the episodes that we’ve released. If you have any ideas for our show, please reach us at our website or at either or our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com – that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, don’t forget the dash, and I am at KevinLudlow.com, K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thanks again, and we’ll have another episode out very soon.
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In our very first two-part episode, Jad and Kevin discuss the idea of whether or not people prefer being slaves. The idea is pretty simple: there’s an almost endless supply of examples illustrating how people appear to be passive when any type of control structure takes over their lives. This can be applied to government, religion, education, and of course the literal notion of slavery as well.
In this first segment we explore the gist of the idea, ponder whether the responsibilities we have towards one another in personal relationships could possibly be deemed slavery, and discuss some control structures in local government.
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the JK Podcast. For those of you just tuning in to the show, please stop by our website at www.JKPod.com, where you can find a complete episode listing of the entire show. Since the show began back in the summer of 2012, this episode marks the first time we’ve recorded a full two-part episode – indeed a proud moment for our producers.
Jad and I begin part 1 of this two-parter discussing whether or not people actually prefer being slaves. The idea is that since most people allow themselves to pick-pocketed by governmental agencies without much outcry, perhaps it’s just easier to live with a master than to stand up to him. It’s a topic that we’ve pondered in the past, but for whatever reason have continued to avoid
– Oh, and then the – my random thought that one morning about people actually wanting to be slaves.
Jad: Yeah. I saw something just the other day, where was I – but it was interesting just because there was – somebody was thinking through this [?] said the only thing you can really conclude is that people enjoy being slaves, and I was like, “God dammit”, that’s like the third time, the third place I’ve seen that proposition – I’m sure it’s a pretty common one. But in the last month or so –
Kevin: I mean, I’d be the last person who inherently believes that, it was just kind of one of those you know, that’s just where the logic led me one day.
Jad: Yeah, it’s the data.
Kevin: I’ve kind of exhausted all other outlets.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Even after we introduced the idea of the topic, we still couldn’t quite decide whether or not to run with it.
Well, we probably shouldn’t do the people prefer to be slaves thing because – well, I don’t know, maybe we should do that sometimes since, I think you’ve got some pretty strong anti-views to it. I don’t really have a pro-view necessarily, just kind of a [?] points to say, “well, why do people do this, and why do they do this, and why do they do this”, because all of those lead to that direction.
Jad: Yeah, yeah. It is a model that matches the fact that everyone is voluntarily enslaving themselves.
Kevin: Right.
And with that, our curiosities peaked and we took on the topic. Presenting some counterpoints to the idea is the co-creator of the show, Jad Davis, I’m Kevin Ludlow, and welcome back to our show.
Jad: My only counterpoint that I could come up with was essentially that most people think they’re free. They see freedom as an ideal state. They understand that it’s good, and they think they’ve achieved it. They don’t think that – the fact that they have to give up their paycheck to the government means that they’re a slave, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So they definitely want that body to be controlling their life in some manner – they vote for it at least you know, or [?] – but it’s almost always a vote to control somebody else, you know? It’s a vote to take money from that guy because he sucks. I guess if they had the objective view of their position – the people around them, the people that rule them – then their question would be now that you know, how do you feel, or are you willing to put up with this, or whatever – but that seems like it’s a you know, hypothetical at best.
Kevin: Well right, that’s why I think that the whole argument is really just kind of riddled with interesting psychology, not really so much political thought. I think it’s the same reason that the anarchist position of it – which is almost identical to the libertarian position in this case – they’re seen as crazy from most people in the general public I would think. People would think that my points of view are exceedingly radical.
The things that I would say constitute enslavement, people say, “dude, you’re crazy, that doesn’t mean you’re a slave” – that’s just what most people would say and I respectfully disagree with them, but unfortunately, how do you convince that entire group of people that that’s the case or more importantly, why do I think that that does constitute slavery. To be fair, there is some theoretical level that you could keep taking it to where you would really never be un-enslaved. Even if you were theoretically free to do every single thing that we say you should be able to do, there’s probably still going to be something that you could say that you’re tied to.
Jad: Right. Well I mean, you’re like a slave to – you can’t – you can never be free from having to eat or breathe – I mean, I’ve even heard that argument. I think most people are willing to be bound by the laws of physics, you know?
Kevin: Sure, sure. So that’s the furthest theoretical level maybe you can go to, but I would say like, it seems that people naturally as animals, gravitate towards partners, like, we just require relationships, never mind like, husband, wife, spouse or whatever, just relationships with people in general, and as a result like, there’s certain things that you have to do for those people. I mean, I guess you don’t have to, but that’s right there where the psychology kind of starts. You can say you don’t have to, but if you don’t then that relationship is dead, so in some sense if you wish to have some sort of support at all, you ultimately have to continue playing the role.
Jad: No, you totally make sense. That totally makes sense, in fact I think there’s some misconception, or missing part of a definition, or something around there because that thing you describe, if you and I are going to be in a relationship together, then there are certain things – like, I can’t blow up your car, or punch you in the face, or shit on your lawn, or – there’s certain things that you’re not – you’re just not going to associate with me, and fulfill whatever you know, relationship roles I want from you unless I reciprocate. So you can say that I’m not free, I can’t do whatever I want and have you do what I want for me, right?
If I want that, I have to work with you as a peer to satisfy whatever it is that you want so that we can be in this relationship. You could have a position that says that’s not freedom, right? But that’s not the anarchist or libertarian position at all. The anarchist and libertarian position is that that’s society. That’s how we all get along, and build sky scrapers, and have food, and everyone has medical care, and – that’s how we do all of that stuff is by dealing with each other on that level. So if that’s not freedom, then you’re defining yourself out of existence in a sense.
I mean, the only person who’s free is like a hermit right, or something like that – and that’s I mean, again, not sustainable. So that part of the argument is interesting because I think that’s – to go back to the core definition – is freedom visa vis another person is they’re – not that they are making demands of you as in, “if you want this, you have to do X”, but rather that they’re saying, “you have to do X or I’m going to hurt you”, right? That’s the key difference between like, a pure relationship and a master/slave relationship.
Like, I can ask you to live on my farm and pick cotton, and I can offer to pay you, or I can offer to give you a house or whatever, but the moment I say, “you have to do it or I’m going to beat the crap out of you and chain you to a tree and make you do it anyway”, then you’ve transitioned from a free relationship, to a master/slave relationship.
Kevin: Right. Well your non-aggression principle obviously, should be the fundamental core value there, right? I mean, you have to put that before anything else, so that – what you’re describing, the master/slave relationship – infringes upon the non-aggression principle. You’re saying if not, then I am going to use aggression against you, which by definition, you’ve already destroyed your whole philosophy.
Jad: I think that’s right, yeah. I would say – and again, just to like, lop off the extremes – I would say that if you’re definition of freedom, or if somebody’s definition of freedom falls outside of that where a peer to peer relationship is an encroaching on individual liberty or whatever, you’re just arguing a different realm, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: I don’t have any counter argument to that.
Kevin: Right, it’s completely outside of the scope. I agree with that fully. You’re right I mean, keep it wrapped inside of the non-aggression principle – natural laws of physics and biology still apply, right?
Jad: We’re working our way slowly but surely.
Kevin: You’ve gotta eat, you’ve gotta breathe, so there’s that. I’m trying to take it to some level where I can determine if you’re still you know, “theoretically enslaved” or not, and coming full circle or at least coming back to what the question at hand is is that the fact that you have to pay taxes – by definition – makes you a slave to somebody else. Why is it that when I make that objective point – or at least what I see to be an objective point – person A, B, and C – in fact, in many cases – 99 in 100 people – in this country anyways – might turn right against me and say, “well you’re not a slave, you’re participating in society”, and in fact, that’s the typical thing that I hear is that there’s a societal construct and you have a contract, and if you want to be part of the society, then that’s what you have to do and if you don’t, you’re free to move at any time, or you free to move away from that society.
And I guess right there it becomes kind of like a theoretical norm because my argument is to say, well, that’s true, I could technically move away except that I didn’t do anything to get into this society in the first place, I just popped up here through no fault of my own – I guess the fault of my parents if you want to get technical – and then beyond that, there’s that practical level of saying, well is it really practical that I should move to some island by myself because I’m unwilling to abide by this social contract?
And so anyways, that’s kind of where the discussion – at least as I’ve seen it – typically tends to go to, so – hence I remain in the boat of being the fringy, kind of overexcited crazy person, whereas this person’s like, “that’s just how it is, so you’re not really a slave. You’re just participating in what’s deemed a fair system.”
Jad: Right. There’s actually a – there’s a lot of responses I guess – this is a secondhand story, so I would have to look up the original source for this, but it’s Frederick Douglass I guess, who transitioned from slavery to freedom during his lifetime and wrote about it from both sides. It relates a story where he talks about how at some point, his master let him go work outside the plantation like, two days a week, or three days a week, or something like that – which I guess may not have been that uncommon, I don’t really know.
But – so he would go you know, hire himself out for a job and you know, work and get paid, and then his master took like, 20% of whatever he made, right? And he actually said that that was worse than the chained slavery because at least when you were chained, or when you were you know, a chattel slave, you realize that you were a slave, you understood, it was very clear and tangible. Whereas the other way felt really comfortable and felt much less oppressive, and so is actually a more subtle form of slavery.
Kevin: That is very interesting because I’ve got so many – so many tangential thoughts I can come up with with that one from experiences in my own life – all of which sadly, kind of go back into the notion of maybe people really do prefer to be slaves, and maybe at this point it would be fair to categorize or recategorize slaves as – it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re owned directly by somebody, right? I mean, that’s the – I think that’s the problem with the word slave is that you say slave and it assumes that you’re a black guy on a plantation being whipped, with a chain around your leg, or something like that, right? And in fact, that’s not true, that’s at very best just the metaphor for it. There’s a lot of instances I can think of – and maybe these are too tangential – but a couple years ago – you’ve been to T. Cad[?] before, Travis Cad – keeps up with all the property values of our county?
Jad: Oh yeah, right.
Kevin: Appraisal districts, you know, there’s one for every county in the country, as far as I know. In any case, I really was displeased with how it worked, you couldn’t really get any aggregate statistics on anything, so as part of my city site project – you can buy the data from the appraisal district, it’ll cost you about $80 bucks, and they give you a DVD, it’s about 6 gigs of just text data. It’s a nightmare to go through and parse, but I did. I wrote a program that parses the whole thing, puts it all into databases for me, and I wrote this really nice front end to it – it’s really powerful – and I actually tried selling it to the county, it did not work. But people who are interested in T. Cad[?] loved it.
What I found interesting about the experiment though, was that I got so many complaints about it. I mean dozens if not hundreds of complaints, and every single one of them had the exact same problem with it. It wasn’t that they didn’t know that the data was there, I was like, “well, wait a second, I haven’t – there’s nothing private here. This is all completely public, it’s available, it’s already available online”, and what their responses always were was that, “yeah, yeah, yeah, but you’ve written this software in a way where it is so indexed by Google, and it’s now so public that we disagree with it.”
And my argument always – on the counter side – was to tell people that – and I guess it’s just a philosophy I have – but I’m like, “this is the problem is that you believe that somehow or another you’re hidden, or somehow or another you’re not participating in this system. I appreciate that you wish to be private, but what I’m telling you is that your life is completely public in the sphere made by the government already. All I’m doing is putting in the forefront where you can see exactly what is in fact public, and now once you can see it, you want that hidden but it’s no different than what’s already there.”
And it was kind of this weird – I guess – game that – I wouldn’t really play with people – but just kind of this weird exchange that I would have with people where it occurred to me that so long as it was hidden – like they already knew it at this point, like, they definitely knew it because I put it out there and they knew I was – I wasn’t doing anything special, I was just getting government data – they were happier just that the public data was there, but that it was more hidden because to them it meant that it wasn’t there, if that makes sense.
And at the end of the day I was like, “but it is there. It is still there. All you’re doing is lying to yourself if you don’t believe this. If you don’t like it being there, then by all means, band together and let’s tell the state or the county that they can’t make that available – I’m fine with that. But I don’t feel that I’m the bad guy in this particular case” – kind of tangential to the whole story here, but I just find it interesting that ignorance to that sort of thing seems to play out above anything else, and maybe that’s why that day when I
Filename: Ep13 Do People Prefer Being Slaves Part I JK Podcast
Client: Kevin Ludlow Product: Transcript Date Completed: 6/30/13 Order Number: 151
Audio Source: http://www.jkpod.com/2013/01/23/ep13-do-people-prefer-being-slaves-part-i/
Length: 23:37 Word Count: 4,709 Document ID: GCM-TS-008
brought this up and wrote this down here, is that it led me to believe that it’s not that people want to be enslaved, it’s just that the ignorance is better than the reality of you know, considering that maybe you really are enslaved.
Jad: I think that’s right. I think that’s the key. I don’t know what level of consciousness this happens, people do not like to have it pointed out that they are slaves, for sure. You can attack somebody who is making your public data more easily accessible, but you can’t consider the fact that that data shouldn’t be public in the first place, right? Because that would mean that you have to turn and face this heavily armed, fully funded, impenetrable wall of you know, non-empathetic beaurocracy to try to do something, and deep down in your heart you know – and there’s exceptions because people actually do that kind of thing from time to time – but in most of our hearts, we just don’t have that kind of energy because it’s going to take bound – I mean, you know how it is.
And you were facing parts of it that were meant to be operated. When you turn to the county and you say, “I want all public records to be expunged or hidden”, I mean, you’re talking about – I mean, that’s not even like, an option, right – there’s no form for that. So people get angry when that kind of thing becomes apparent to them and then if there’s a likely target around that they can divert their anger towards, they’ll unload on that.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Somebody who they can’t influence, or make feel bad, or bully or whatever, you know? That’s kind of like the pecking order thing, right? They can’t fight up –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – so they’ll fight down or across and somehow relieve some anxiety that way.
Kevin: Yeah, it was just interesting seeing people would rather just not know that, so therefore I become the person to attack you know, as a result of it, which – I mean, I did do it, I did put it out there, I did make it more accessible and I guess, it amused me every time that happened because I felt good that I had written something that was way better than this other thing that existed. I just figured if you’re going to put it out there, at least make it useful to –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: But the people who are trying to spy on somebody else – at least successfully spy on it – I’d rather everybody know. You know, it’s kind of like – well, this gets us into other tangents – but I watched a video the other day from an NSA whistleblower – you may have seen this clip. This guy worked at NSA for years, he’s since stopped working for them, but he’s explaining how – what the government’s doing right now is any major mail carrier that exists digitally right now is giving all of their data to the government – just on the reg. So he was saying, he’s like, “they put in the request”, he’s like, “these requests are actually there”. He’s like, “you can find the forms that the NSA or whomever else is submitting to say ‘we want this’, and all of these companies are happily complying with this, Google being one of the big ones”.
And so he was talking in terms of the data storage that they have, I mean it’s just unfathomable that this amount of data storage he’s talking about, and the interviewer unfortunately wasn’t particularly – he wasn’t as tech savvy. Like, I think we would’ve had much more interesting questions for him, but he was like, “well what you know, I don’t understand, what do they do – so now they’ve got all this accessible to them?”
And the NSA guy was very technically savvy, and he’s was explaining, he’s like, “no”, he’s like, “they don’t need to do anything with it. The fact is they have a record of it.” So all of a sudden for you, and you, and you, and you and most other people you’re ever going to know, it doesn’t matter at all. But imagine that you ever come to a position of power because like, well now it becomes very interesting to say, “Oh, well let’s go through all of the personal correspondences that Jad Davis has ever had. Somebody start the process of pulling all of his data from our giant data servers, let’s see what we can find”, and of course I mean, anybody’s got personal correspondence, it’s just not intended for other people to read, right?
So it was just kind of the same thing that he was saying, he’s like, “the problem is”, he’s like, “we’ve been telling people that this is happening, but when you expose it, they just want to know about it”, and I don’t know, it just kind of gave me the same mindset that the ignorance of it is – something about it, people just prefer the ignorance over the – over just the accepting that this is actually occurring because then maybe they’d have to do something about it, I don’t know.
Jad: Yeah. Yeah, I read that story too, that was – I didn’t listen to the interview, but that was fascinating. Especially the part where he was like, “there’s no filters, it’s just a straight copy of everything and they’ll look it up later when they need it”, you know? I can’t remember if he referenced this or somebody made reference to it, but they were saying you know – Potrais[?] – or not Potrais[?], but the other guy who was with him who had like 30,000 e-mails or whatever.
Kevin: It’s Potrais[?] and the other guy, yeah, he was talking about both.
Jad: OK. But yeah, that kind of model, sure I mean that’s you know, it’s ultimately for political control, and I think that’s the other thing to is with all of these things, everyone has a calculation to make, right, because if you oppose this, then you suddenly become somebody. I mean, if you really actually successfully start to oppose it, you become a person whose data will be mined, and who will be followed by the police, and who will have an FBI file you know, generated for them and – so all of the things that the NSA whistleblower, and everybody else who’s basically saying you know, you can be assassinated at any time, if the president writes it on a piece of paper, you can die, you know?
All of those things, you’re only engaged by them when you become politically aware, and active, and dangerous. I think everyone thinks – which is true for a long time – that if you just keep your head down, it’s going to be somebody else –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – who gets got. This is where I – again, I think this has always been the case – like, I think there was police brutality in the 50s, but it was all against black people. If you were a white person at all, the police respected and adored you, and police brutality becomes an issue when the white political class falls into the you know, into the target class.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: The point is that these things expand slowly – and sometimes not so slowly – and everyone as long as they’re not in the scope, as long as they’re not a target of it will try to ignore it and put it off, and play it off as long as they can.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And that’s like that thing that’s – that clergy of some sort, and he was in Germany, you know that little poem thing or whatever where it’s like, first they came for the gypsies, and –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: That’s exactly what it is. I saw today, somebody – they were a colleague of Chris Hedges[?], do you know that guy?
Kevin: Um, I don’t.
Jad: He wrote a book called, War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning.
Kevin: Okay.
Jad: And he’s like a war correspondent. Lately he’s been an anti-NDAA guy, and he and somebody else went to court to try to challenge the NDAA for the part of it that says that if you are a material supporter of somebody we consider to be a terrorist, you can be arrested and imprisoned without trial, blah, blah, blah. And so a bunch of journalists – him being one of them and I think [?] Chowsky[?] also was on the suit – they all filed a suit and said, “we want to challenge this particular part because we feel like we’ve done stuff that qualifies for this”, and I don’t really know the details of the law, but essentially they actually got in front of a judge and the judge asked government guy – I guess the defendant in this case – and is just like, “OK, I’ve looked at these papers, I see what they are, they’re writing about – they’re interviewing people who you have on a terror list or whatever, and they’re writing their responses.
Does this person qualify under the guidelines you have for indefinite detention and banishing?” And the government guy was like, “we can’t say no, like, can’t say that they’d be safe. We don’t know yet.” And so this person wrote an article today that basically was like, “hey everybody”, you know, “I can be banished. Apparently it’s totally possible. It could happen to me”, and I think that’s that moment that pushes somebody into the other camp. It’s like, I’m now included in the target group, so now I have to say, “look, we’re all slaves here, and I need you guys to help me”, and the problem is no one else is going to help until the next iteration where it’s like – for whatever reason – you guys all need to go to this work camp and build toys for export to Europe or something, I don’t know, but whatever it is like, you know – then they’re like, “hey everybody, we’re all slaves”, but it’s too late like, you know, they keep slicing groups off, and you know, and taking them away and that’s just how it always goes and it seems so unbelievable, like that could just never happen, but always fucking happens.
Kevin: Always.
Jad: It’s the same thing. I guess it probably is written down a number of places, but there’s gotta be like, a manual somewhere which is like, “if you see writing in the streets, then you’re going too fast. Try to scale it back a little bit”, you know?
Kevin: And that’s where we’ll take our break this time. Remember that this is a two-part episode, so we’ll pick back up exactly where we just left off in the next episode. As always, thank you so very much for listening. If you have questions, comments, or ideas for the show, please contact us via this website, or you can reach us through our personal websites – that’s either Jad-Davis.com – J-A-D dash D-A-V-S dot com, don’t forget the dash, or KevinLudlow.com, K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W. We truly hope you enjoyed the content of this episode, and we’ll be back next week with the second part.
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As we were gearing up for a pretty long discussion on modern slavery, we accidentally found ourselves amidst a discussion of local Austin shooting ranges. This is probably because Kevin had recently purchased a new weapon and had been at a shooting range prior to the recording.
We essentially advertise for a few local Austin shooting ranges, discuss our observations of various gun range sightings, and even discuss getting comfortable with the idea of shooting ranges.
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the JK Podcast. If you haven’t yet noticed, we do have a website setup at www.JKPod.com, where we host all of our episodes. Please pass that link around as you see fit to do. This week is a little different from previous episodes. Jad and I wound up getting into a discussion about shooting ranges, namely as I had just returned from one before our show.
I’ve been killing stuff all day, so you know.
Jad: Killing paper targets?
Kevin: And clay pigeons.
Jad: Nice.
Kevin: The episode admittedly turns into a bit of an advertisement for a few of the ranges in the Austin, Texas area – incidentally where we’re both located. But despite that, we thought it would be fun to share the discussion with our usual audience. The other voice you’ll hear is the co-creator, Jad Davis; I’m Kevin Ludlow – welcome back to our show.
I know you’re not a big shooting guy – or I perceive you not to be anyways – I’m not either. But that place that I went to today was badass.
Jad: Yeah, where’s Liberty Hill? I don’t even know where that’s at.
Kevin: Liberty Hill’s a – it’s a town that’s about – probably about 35 minutes from your house. You just – you take 183 to 29 and you go past Cedar Park and past the toll road, all that stuff, and you hit Highway 29. And if you turn left on Highway 29, basically you’re headed towards Burnet, and ultimately Llano, but before you get there, you hit Liberty Hill – it’s just a tiny town. And –
Jad: Oh dude, yeah, it’s like right past that state park – Ink’s[?] Lake.
Kevin: Yeah, by Ink’s[?].
Jad: Yeah, yeah.
Kevin: Not nearly that far, but –
Jad: Okay.
Kevin: – but it’s in that vicinity, yeah. So if you went to Liberty Hill and the next about 20 miles down is Burnet, and then if you continue down 29 past that, you’ll get to Ink’s[?] Lake.
Jad: Right. Right, yeah.
Kevin: Run right into it. And so we were probably about – I don’t know – half an hour, 45 minutes from Ink’s[?] Lake – but anyways, this place there, it was just – I mean normally when I’ve gone to shooting ranges it’s just real tight, it’s real controlled. In this place though, you rent these things that they call tactical bays, and literally what it is is it’s a 50 square yard piece of dirt that has these 20 foot high berms – just earth and berms – on three of the four sides. You just drive your car or truck right into the thing and it’s yours – you do whatever the hell you want.
Jad: That’s cool.
Kevin: In this case, it was just me and my buddy, and you set up targets, you just – it’s basically just like being in your backyard and being able to shoot. So –
Jad: That sounds pretty nice.
Kevin: It was really cool, so I think if your wife wants to tryout her shot; it’s just a way more enjoyable experience.
Jad: Well that other place that you found that’s up near Cedar Park or whatever –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Leander – how was that?
Kevin: If you’re curious, the other range that Jad is inquiring about is called the Eagle Peak Shooting Range. It’s right next to Cedar Park, but is technically in Leander, as Jad accurately stated.
It’s pretty good – compared to some of the other ones I had been to, that one was really nice. But you know, it does get a little crowded, you know? You’re in close proximity, so I mean there’s just constant compression waves all around you.
Jad: Ah, right.
Kevin: I mean, unless it’s empty, but I’ve never been there when it’s not just packed. They’re really militant, which is good, you know? They have to be, it’s dangerous and all, but it’s just about all the crazy rules that – you know, they make you watch this video just to even go to the place, you have a little membership card – it feels a lot different. This place that I was at today, I mean it was – it felt like going into a day spa where the guys are just like, “how’s it going? Come on in, we’ve got plenty of open ranges for you”, so it was my new golden level of comparisons for gun places.
Jad: Very cool, very cool. We went to Red’s the other day and dude I mean, it is – it could just be because it was packed obviously, but there was like, two people with like 357’s on either side of us, and then there was some guy on the rifle range you know – which is like 30 feet away or whatever – that was shooting some I mean, just like a bazooka or something – it was crazy. They had this giant scope on top, and he only shot like one shot every minute, but every time that shot went off it was just like, absurdly loud and there’d be this explosion against the back wall like, where the you know – the splatter had so much kinetic energy that it would actually like, spark in all directions and stuff.
But anyway, so it was just like, very rattling. I guess it was good if I was trying to like, learn how to shoot in a combat situation or something, but –
Kevin: Under pressure, yeah.
Jad: Yeah, I mean, it was like terrifyingly loud. And like you said, it’s not even the volume because you’ve got headsets, it’s that compression wave thing, like you can feel your body being like, run through with you know, this energy.
Kevin: It takes a while to get used to it. I mean, that’s what I’m saying, like even at this place that I went to in Cedar park – or Leander, wherever it is – you know, you’ve got a guy on each side of you shooting a .45, I
mean, it’s just – never mind like, a Magnum .45 or something – your face is just getting pounded with this wave.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Anyways, that’s why at this place I mean, it was just follow these basic rules so we’re safe, and that’s it.
Jad: Right. Try to shoot over a berm. Yeah, it sounds cool. Another thing too – this is not that interesting, but it was just kind of funny because our gun kept jamming too.
Kevin: Oh, yeah.
Jad: Twice the pin didn’t – it doesn’t look like it was actually able to push the pin on the cartridge.
Kevin: Okay.
Jad: So you know, we’d pull the trigger and nothing happened [?], so we waited a minute to make sure it didn’t like, have a short fuse or whatever. But then [?] popped it out, and it was you know, like untouched essentially. And then the other – and then like three other times you know, it wouldn’t load the next cartridge –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – and so Elise was – [?] and with all the noise [?], I don’t want to like, disassemble this thing here – just trying to make sure I didn’t put it together wrong or something. So – but anyway it was just kind of – well, I looked online and it was like, “that’s totally normal, just clean your gun really good”.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: But it was again, just like in that scenario I was like, man, this is – I should learn how to do brain surgery here or something, or work on the computer, and then I could probably eventually do anything.
Kevin: Yeah, I had you know, some similar experiences there. It was one thing when I was with my buddy who’s like really experienced with all that. He’s got a million guns; he just kind of haphazardly takes it apart like it’s a regular tool, right?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And me, when I [?] I’m like, “uh, it didn’t fire, what the fuck do I do”, you know?
Jad: Right, right.
Kevin: And I feel like the whole world’s about to blow up in front of me.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: But honestly, like after a few times of doing it now, I feel pretty comfortable and the guys have walked me through like, everything that you do, and the steps, and how to resolve it, and fix it, and diagnose it and everything.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: I feel good. I’m getting my level of comfort a little better, I guess.
Jad: That’s cool, very nice. Is that where you went today, or –
Kevin: Yeah, that was the deal, so that’s why I took off.
Jad: Nice. That’s a good way to spend a day.
Kevin: This friend of mine from Houston, he’s you know, a pretty big shooter. He like – he takes tactical classes like, around the country. He flies around places that have some like, badass class that he hears about and he takes the class.
Jad: Wow.
Kevin: So like, he was in Arizona a couple of weeks ago learning how to tactically shoot Uzis.
Jad: Wow.
Kevin: And – so anyways, he’s really knowledgeable of this, which was great for me, and he heard about this place – he’s like, “man”, he’s like, “I’m telling you, this place is like, renowned in the country. Like, everybody knows about it.” He’s like, “I’m not going to drive a 5 hour round trip for something shitty”.
Jad: Nice.
Kevin: And sure enough –
Jad: [?] Houston, right.
Kevin: Yeah, I mean – so sure enough, it was a hidden gem.
Jad: Nice. That’s excellent.
Kevin: But yeah, definitely highly recommend it. Just make a day trip of it, for sure.
Jad: Okay, cool, yeah. Do you know the name of it, or was it – I was kind of looking for it online just as Liberty Hill shooting – what was – do you remember the name of the place, or –
Kevin: Yeah, it’s called – it’s called Best of the West Shooting Range.
Jad: Ah, got it. Yep, very nice.
Kevin: Basically, what they – for the tactical bay that we had – I mean, they have rifle ranges, and pistol ranges, and skeet shooting – I mean, they’ve got everything. It’s just an enormous piece of property, so it’s really spread out – which is nice in itself. Like, you don’t feel like you’re next to anybody, which is – it’s a good feeling when you’re playing with guns to begin with.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: But beyond that, there’s – it was $16 bucks per person, so we spend $32 to be out there for I don’t know, like, 5 hours today.
Jad: Nice.
Kevin: And the guy said – he’s like, “well, on the weekends it can get really crowded”, so he said, “basically it’s first come, first serve, and we’ll put you in a 2 hour rotation. So after 2 hours, we’re going to kick you out of a tactical bay and put the next person in the rotation.” They said on the weekdays they hardly get anybody, so you come out here early in the morning on a weekday, you pay $16 bucks, it’s yours all day.
Jad: Wow, cool.
Kevin: So that’s just what we did.
Jad: Sounds pretty fun.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Especially with a dude that’s – how many different weapons did you fire today?
Kevin: Let’s see, I fired 5 different weapons today.
Jad: That’s not too crazy.
Kevin: No, but he didn’t bring that much of his arsenal up apparently, so –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: But I suck, I really do suck at pistol shooting – not at rifle shooting, I’m good at that – but I’ll tell you man, like, my accuracy went sky high today with this guy giving me instruction, it was fantastic.
Jad: Cool.
Kevin: Because it’s something that I wish I were good at, but I’m just not yet.
Jad: Well, sounds like you made a major step in the direction of getting better today.
Kevin: Oh yeah, it was night and day by the – from the beginning of the day and the end of the day.
Jad: Very cool.
Kevin: So I felt good progress.
That’s about all we had on the topic of local Austin shooting ranges. As always, thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoyed the content. We do have a website up at JKPod.com. Please stop by if you haven’t already. If you have any ideas for our show, please reach us at our website, or you can reach us at either of our personal websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com – J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com – that’s Jad-Davis.com – and I am at KevinLudlow.com – K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thank you so much, and we’ll be back again next week.
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Another of our mini-episodes, this is actually a followup to a previous episode. Jad and I get into a small discussion about mercenary groups, their history, and how the United States has been increasingly relying upon such groups in the Middle East. We discuss Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) and the role they play in the modern battlefield.
About half-way through the episode we find ourselves in a tangential discussion of the acclaimed HBO series, Game of Thrones. Of course, we always find ways to connect the gaps.
If you’re a big TV fan, let me be the first to tell you that this episode contains a few spoliers!
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of our ongoing weekly discussion. This week we’ve done something a little different. Typically, Jad and I engage in a one to two hour discussion on various topics, and then edit those down to the material we call a podcast. Usually we wind up with extra material that doesn’t really have a place, and so it’s just tossed to the side. But this week, we’ve decided to keep some of those table scraps. After a short and seemingly tangential discussion on mercenaries, we straight even further then got into a brief discussion on the hit HBO series, “Game of Thrones”. If you’ve not seen the show, it’s an amazing production based on the series, “A Song of Fire and Ice”.
Having seen it, I would highly recommend the show. Although I’ve never read the books, Jad is actually reading them for the second time now. If you’ve never met him before, he’s one of the nicest and most patient people you’re likely to encounter – essentially my polar opposite in that regard – and at the moment is actually reading the books to his wife, Elisa, just so they can watch the show together.
Jad: I’m actually – I’m reading with Elisa, I’m reading them again to her because she refuses to watch things until she reads the books, but there are certain things where I’m like, “okay, I really want to watch this so I’m reading you the book.”
Kevin: If you’ve neither read the books nor watched the television show, there are a few spoilers in this episode – I repeat, some of the story will be revealed to you. I do provide another warning before those spoilers, but you have been warned. Until then, here’s a short discussion on mercenary groups.
Probably a whole different topic that we could get into at some point, but I think that’s what’s really interesting about all these private groups that have come about you know, like The Black Waters, which – I forget what they changed their name to – but that group you know, where you basically have private mercenaries that the government is essentially just hiring professional mercenaries at these unbelievable rates to go in and do their business for them because now, you basically remove the entire government system from the equation, and yet the government is still very much in control of those systems.
From a government point of view – and from the most evil of mindsets – it’s quite brilliant actually. For us, it’s one of the most terrifying things I can think of, actually, that this is all of a sudden permissible and encouraged, no less.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: I don’t know what we should do with that though.
Jad: Yeah. The Mises[?] Institute has a whole bunch of stuff on mercenary groups. It’s really fascinating because they’re very ambivalent about the stuff. These are historians that have read stuff that I haven’t read, so I don’t know how to evaluate it exactly, but they’re talking about like, the treaty of West [?], up to the first World War, so like 16 – whatever it is – 48 or something – there’s this period of time where like you know, villages are burned and cities are burned, and it’s just like this – like the 100 years war and all that sort of era of religious conflict, where civilians are legitimate targets and you know, populations centers are decimated and it’s just awful, and all of the armies are national armies – or you know, armies of thiefdoms really.
But then it transitions into a stage of the early nation state, where they make these rules where they say, don’t kill civilians, and the armies are supposed to meet out in a rural area for their fighting so that no one gets hurt, no property is destroyed, blah, blah, blah. And mercenary armies are used a lot, so it ends up in these conflicts between you know, these cousins who happen to be like the Archduke of Bavaria, and you know, whatever, Franz Ferdinand or something –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – in [?] Hungarian empire[?]. Their mercenary armies come out and they negotiate with each other because they’re getting paid by one side, and now they’ve got money from the other side, and they might do a small engagement or whatever but they’re in it for the money – they’re not in it for the nation’s state, or for their god, or for whatever, so they’re very reasonable about walking away and letting their guy lose. And since the price of losing isn’t losing your country because that again is you know, is sort of frowned upon by this structure of the nation state, [?] usually just pay a penalty and you lose some you know, peripheral lands and pay reparations or something and then you’re done, and then you get to still be the Archduke of Bavaria or whatever.
So it’s this weird period of time where warfare is like, not that scary you know? And then the industrial revolution like the Civil War is kind of supposedly the end of that period, and then the 1st World War, it’s all gone. Anyway – as a total tangent – they have all this literature on mercenary armies just being like maybe, potentially you know – they have an upside and a downside I guess. The downside being you don’t have to convince anyone in your country to start a war, you can just hire mercenaries.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And mercenaries are always present at the end of empires – the British hired the Hessians to fight the United States, and the Romans actually were sacked by mercenary armies that they have previously employed and just weren’t happy with the terms that they separated on, so they just went to Rome and picked up their money. So –
Kevin: I guess that’s one way to do it.
Jad: Yeah. So – and that’s kind of the scary part – to me – of Black Water / Xe[?], or whatever they are –
Kevin: Since neither Jad nor I were certain what this group is calling itself these days, here’s a short history from Wikipedia. In 1997, the organization was founded by a former Navy Seal named Eric Prince, under the name it’s probably best still known as Black Water. In February of 2009, the name was changed to Xe – spelled like the chemical element for Xenon, Xe.
Finally in December of 2011, the company changed its name once again – this time to Academy[?]. If you’re curious, that name is in reference to Plato’s Academy, a somewhat unconventional name for a private mercenary firm. According to the company’s new CEO, Ted Wright, that was chosen specifically to sound more, “boring”.
Jad: – is that yeah, what happens – what happens when they don’t get paid anymore, but there’s still a cohesive military unit like, hanging out somewhere in the southeastern United States.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: That’s problematic, but as far as like, I’m not that convinced by people who say we should have a national army again, you know? I don’t really give a shit if the government pays a bunch of poor, newly immigrated people to go murder people, or if they pay you know, ex navy seals to go murder people like, that – I don’t think that’s an essential part of the equation.
Kevin: Yeah, I agree.
Jad: It just ends up with different dynamics, and yeah –
Kevin: The end game is the same, I agree. I don’t think that matters one bit. You know – as a random aside – have you watched or read perhaps, “Game of Thrones”?
Jad: I’ve read it.
Kevin: I’ve not read the books, but if you get an opportunity I would highly, highly recommend the show – it’s very good.
Jad: Oh cool, yeah.
Kevin: They’ve done I mean, an unbelievable good job about it, but it’s – this entire episode has really reminded me of the show because it’s so well illustrated in the show as well.
Jad: Yeah, yeah.
Kevin: And I’m sure the books probably tell it even better.
Jad: Well I’m not going to ruin it any for you, but –
Kevin: Please don’t.
Jad: – it gets even crazier with Vankers[?], so season 2 is out on video right now, right?
Kevin: Yeah, season 2 is done, so we’re waiting on season 3.
If you are following the show, season 3 premiers on March 31st, 2013. The season is set to follow the first half of the book, “Storm of Swords”.
The end of season 2 I assume is the end of book 2, but –
Again, if you have any intention to watch the show or read the book, please stop listening to the podcast right now. The following conversation does contain a few spoilers.
– basically – the dwarf – has basically saved the kingdom with his brilliant tactics, which that whole scene is – holy shit, it is awesome.
Jad: I’ll bet it’s pretty impressive.
Kevin: It’s really, really well done. And then it kind of ends with you know, he still gets cast to the side and his father comes back and he’s treated as nothing, even though he saved everything. So, anxious to see where part 3 picks up.
Jad: Oh yeah man, yeah. It should be good. Yeah, yeah. So we’re almost – we’re halfway through book 2, so I’m hoping to catch up. I guess we can start watching season 1.
Kevin: Well season 1 is exquisite. Season 2 – and maybe this is just the way the book goes – season 2 starts off really awesome and it never gets bad, but there’s just a whole lot –
Jad: It does drag.
Kevin: There’s a whole lot more exposition yeah, that happens. So it’s10 episodes each season, I would say episode – maybe like, 2 or 3 through 6 or 7 are kind of slow, and then the last 3 of it though are just – it’s worth the exposition at that point.
Jad: Yeah, yeah. We’re at that part of the book actually, the part where everyone’s kind of just sitting, waiting for – supposed to do something, you know?
Kevin: Yeah. That just happens, like every one of these feudal groups – well, that’s just what made me think about it is that we were talking about like, what happens with the power struggle and of course, well here’s what happens – you get all these little groups that splinter off, they’re all seeking power, they all want to be king and they’re all leading their own people. Inevitably, they have disharmony between them for stupid reasons, but I understand that that’s just a natural byproduct of humans – and then they fight to the death over it. Sorry, it’s interesting.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: So, that’s about it. As promised, quite a bit shorter than our normal episodes, but hopefully not any less compelling. Thanks as always for tuning in, and we hope you enjoyed the content. We do have our website set up at JKPod.com, where we keep all of our recordings and show notes. Please take a look if you haven’t already, and feel free to send anybody in that direction. If you’d like to reach either of us directly, visit our websites – either Jad-Davis.com – J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, or KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again, and we’ll be back with a longer show next week.
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A small group of people being rescued from a ski trip (the relevance to this is in the episode)
This week’s episode marks the longest recording we’ve released to date in our reasonably short catalog. We tried trimming it down it bit, but there was just too much juicy discussion to ignore. Hopefully everyone gets their money’s worth.
Our topic for the week centers around the idea of forcing morality onto others within a society. We explore various hypothetical ideas such as how a government might form from an isolated group of people, how roles of leadership would surface, and what the driving forces would be behind the desire for collective participation. We also spend some time pondering whether or not a practical solution is necessary to every problem we encounter. Slavery for example: were 750,000 lives really necessary to address this problem, or were there other ways?
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the JK Podcast, a quaint little place on the internet where we explore the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality amongst other parts of the human experience. This week’s episode marks the longest recording we’ve released to date in our reasonably short catalog. We tried trimming it down a bit, but there was just too much juicy discussion to ignore. Hopefully, everyone gets their money’s worth.
Our topic for the week centers around the idea of forcing morality onto others within a society. We explore various hypothetical ideas such as how a government might form from an isolated group of people, how roles of leadership would surface, and what the driving forces would be behind the desire for the collective participation in the group.
We also spend some time pondering whether or not a practical solution is necessary to every problem we encounter. Slavery for example, were 750,000 really necessary to address this problem, or were there other ways? There’s quite a handful to take in and we certainly hope you enjoy every moment. I’m Kevin Ludlow. The other voice you’ll hear is Jad Davis. Welcome back to the show.
Jad: There’s a show that – it kind of drives me nuts actually, but it’s not our dynamic at all – which is good – but it’s a good show. It’s called Free Talk Live, and it’s kind of crazy. It’s on you know, 500 radio stations Nationwide –
Kevin: Okay.
Jad: But the guy who runs the show is an anarchist, you know, like a real anarchist – like a non-violent – just anti-authoritarian.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: He is sort of the show engineer – the techie guy – he runs it out of his own house –
Kevin: Okay.
Jad: – and then they just kind of built up syndication over the years. The other guy he does the show with though is this kind of wheedling statist guy. He just always believes that there’s some you know – this is also your position, but I’m not trying –
Kevin: No, no, no.
Jad: – to play the two of you, but anyway, so they get in these long, huge fights like about every 10 or 20 episodes or so, and they actually get genuinely mad at each other you know, and he’ll be like, “fine, Mark, that’s fine. Next point, next caller”, or whatever, you know? It’s amusing anyway, and that’s kind of our initials – for starting spots anyway.
Kevin: I guess that’s kind of true I mean, I guess the semblance that we have is that I’m certainly very opposed to the government – I guess I’m of the mindset that – well, kind of going back to my all people are evil sort of thing, is that you’re always going to have people who are seeking power, and as a result of that you’re always going to have some sort of governing structure that’s in place. You don’t have to call it a government, but there’s always going to be somebody holding the gun because I think all people are evil.
So if you had a society of 10 people, one of them is going to get stronger than the other ones and say – you know, he might even be a good guy – but he’s going to say, “hey, no, no, no – we’re going to do it this way”, and when they say, “I don’t really want to do it that way”, maybe he’s not going to shoot them, but he’s going to very cleverly coerce them into saying, “no, no, no – we’re going to do it this way”, and [?] you’ve got a government structure that unfolds[?]. So I guess my take is to say if I assume that that’s always going to be the basis then we’re going to have to work within the confines of that system somehow or another.
So even though I’d like to be against it, I’m hopeful that there’s ways to at least improve it. I actually tend to agree with you – you’re never going to fix it, you’re never going to make it good, and even though I guess I had never really expressed it before or perhaps even fully thought about it, I think your point on our 2nd episode about you know, even if you were to have somebody like the Ron Paul, or the Gary Johnson[?], or Ralph Nader type person – a Dennis Kucinich – somebody who genuinely wants to only have the government do the good things.
Aren’t there going to be other people that want to rise up above, or isn’t that person perhaps even going to corrupt and start to seek additional power? How do you prevent that from happening in the long run? And I think the answer – now that I’ve thought about it for a few weeks is that you’re absolutely right, you’re never going to fix that.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: But it doesn’t change the fact that I think – in my mind anyways – we’re still going to ultimately live within those confines.
Jad: Right, right. Well I guess we’re never going to get to have a good fight then because I totally agree that this is like a classic though experiment is that if you could press a button – just like the previous episode – and make the government just vanish, then would you do it? The idea being you know, what about people who are waiting for their check tomorrow you know, so they can go get food – are you willing to cast them out at the same time, do you free everyone else, and what do you think would even happen?
Would there be like, just riots and the entire country burning as the anti-anarchist would always predict, that could actually be the case if you just instantly banish the government without having people prepared mentally to be free people, you know?
Kevin: Right, right.
Jad: And like you said, like, the classic example of like, a Roman Empire falling, right? All of a sudden there’s no central government, and there’s just 5,000 tiny, tiny little futile systems with little lords everywhere that have each managed to seize the gun – or the power –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – in their little tiny space, and they spent the next thousand years trying expand their power and fighting with each other and whatnot.
Kevin: And here we are.
Jad: And here we are again, right?
Kevin: Right, right.
Jad: So I agree, I think that – I think there’s probably – there’s a whole spectrum of them obviously, but the anarchist argument that I think I would subscribe to is that you have to have each of those 10 people – as in your example of 10 people – and each of those 10 people has to understand that nobody has the right to drop a gun on them.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And the minute somebody drops a gun on somebody else, everybody’s responsibility to stop that from happening, and it’s not really a problem if everyone understands that. The problem is when there’s 9 people, or 8 people that feel like they need to do what that one guy says because God appointed him as position, or because we all voted for him to be in charge, and then the one person says, “I don’t want to do that”, then the guy points the gun at him. You’ve got to understand at a fundamental moral level that threatening people who haven’t hurt you is evil, and if you don’t have that then who knows what will happen.
If you do have that though, then the bully is immediately stopped you know, at the point of his first attempt to use aggression against somebody else – and that’s what you have to have in order to have a free – a governmentless society because otherwise I totally agree with you. Some army guy is going to take his tanks and roll up to Washington, D. C. and be like, “now, continue to pay continue to pay your taxes”, you know, “we’re in charge of this thing now. Just because the other government banished doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay.”
Kevin: Right, right. We’re still taking something. But I mean, on that note I mean, do you think though that in those groups, leadership is still required?
Jad: I think so. I think the only – it really is fairly simple – the only thing that’s not allowed – anything is allowed, persuasion, ostracism, I don’t have to talk to you, I don’t have to sit next to you, I don’t – you know, if you have offended me in some way, there’s no way that we have to interact with each other. The only thing I cannot do is force you to do what I want you to do.
Kevin: True.
Jad: I can pay you to do it, I can ask you to do it, I can do anything – I can beg you to do it, and that should be well understood. Anyone doing that with anyone else, nothing is – no one is being fundamentally violated, but the minute somebody threatens someone physically you know, and not in self defense, then that is the violation that can’t be tolerated.
Kevin: Right. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, it’s an interesting point of view because I was going to say you know – from a psychological point of view as I’ve gotten older – one of the things I really like doing is you know, planning events and – I don’t need to be a leader of things, but I also don’t mind being a leader of things. Oh, you weren’t at lunch with us the other day, but I was telling them about this big ski trip that I put together – I think it was 2 years ago. I had 38 people go on the trip, so that’s a lot of people to mobilize into the mountains and get them all set up, and in any case, the point though is to say that I’ve learned that people for the most part really do want to have somebody tell them what to do in many situations like that.
It’s just easier for people because if you let everybody to their own devices then obviously there’s all sorts of – just confusion and general chaos that ensues. Now I suppose the difference is that – and that’s why I asked about the leadership – at no point am I saying you know, “you have to do this, or else”, it’s just to say, “hey, this is what’s going on, I’d like you guys to follow.” But I guess you know, if I expand that into a – philosophically expand that into a much larger setup – let’s just say I take all these people on a ski trip and I’m the one who’s in charge of it, and so I’m taking care of everybody, so to speak, and kind of leading the way for say, a week. Well maybe the last day that we’re there, the world blows up and there’s little factions of people left.
At that point in time, it stands to reason that I don’t know, probably a lot of people would still look to me for direction since I’m the one who was already giving direction. Maybe that continues, I don’t know how it works in the long run, but I assume anyways, that that’s kind of how that cycle happens. I mean, I think back to like, older Scotland or Ireland and you know, just all these tribes that formed.
Northern England, who were dealing with these outside forces and there was just some guy in the group who was like, “look, I’m going to do the best I can to help us all”, and then eventually when they started claiming some independence, that guy or that guy’s family for whatever – for better or worse – they were just kind of the ones who took over as the permanent leaders and [?] one of those little futile governments was set up.
Jad: Yeah. I think that’s probably exactly how it happens, you know?
Kevin: Yeah, and I don’t have a huge conclusion to that, I’m just saying I just think it’s an interesting and a fairly natural product that just kind of occurs of group mentality, really.
Jad: Well and I think that there’s nothing – I mean, human beings do amazing things when they work cooperatively –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: There’s this stupid essay called like, I Am a Pencil or whatever. It was written in like, the 50s or whatever. But this guy basically just goes through like, the 4 million people it takes to like build a pencil, but you know, human beings do this – we exchange with people who are exchanging with people, we exchange subparts, we you know, plan ahead, we follow leaders, we organize ourselves naturally, inherently all the time to get stuff done – everything from like, getting 10 people to order a pizza, to having 38 people go out on a hill, and nowhere does anyone physically threaten somebody in order to get something done except when it’s you know – except when it’s the police, or some maladjusted person, but more frequently when it’s the government coming in to take control of something.
So I think the idea that people are all acting independently, and there is not cooperation, there is no coordination, that’s not really realistic at all. Our greatest faculty is language, and the only purpose of language is coordination and again, wherever you see groups of humans, they’re almost always working with each other to get something done in a completely voluntary in peaceful manner. And I think you’re right – historically it comes from defense, probably.
Kevin: Yeah, I’m sure.
Jad: So it’s like a cast of people that can afford to buy metal to forge breastplates so they can afford to have horses to form cavalry –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and they end up being the warrior class, and they’re also the owning class – you know, owning the land – and eventually they end up just kind of ossifying it into a government.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But again, that’s not required, that’s just historical.
Kevin: No, I suppose that you’re right. I mean, I guess that’s interesting to consider if it is something that has some very statistical likeliness of occurring, or as you say, if it is just historical. I’d be interested to see if there’s a correlation to it.
Jad: Well I think it’s almost certainly the same as something like, say slavery, where before the 19th century, it was universal. Every society just had slaves – that was part of how the structure of a society was. And again, you can see how that follows, right? You have a warrior class, or a you know, a military class that owns land, and then when they have captives, or you know, people fleeing from other places or whatever, they put those people to work on that land, but they you know, physically own them.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: In a creepy way, it’s a very natural human thing for a society that does not believe that all people are equal, that does not believe that you know, other races are the same as us – believes in a hierarchy with their race, or their particular people at the top. It’s only natural for them to feel like they own the other people, and even make it where it’s a virtue, you know? I’m taking care of these people because they’re too stupid to take care of themselves. I mean, that’s a very common – it’s the white man’s burden, right? It’s like, that’s kind of the rationalization of the humanitarian who owned slaves, right?
Kevin: Right, right.
Jad: But at some point in human evolution, this is what I like – the positive part of progressivism is it does seem to be the case that there is a march forward where the boundaries between people falls, and we understand that yes, the guy who my great grandfather owned his great grandfather is a slave, that was based on a misapprehension that we were different categories of being. But I understand that we’re not and everyone else around the world for the most part, understands that to be the case – so slavery is gone.
Again, if you were to say in the 19th century, “we’re going to end slavery in the next” – well I’ll say the 17th century – “we’re going to end slavery by the 19th century – by the end of it”, people would just be like – it’s just a natural part of things. A, it’s a natural part of things, and B, if we don’t have slaves, then how is all this work going to get done? And then – this is actually a sentence from your book that I picked out, was the one where it’s like – the part where you’re like, “if you propose something is wrong, you need to propose a solution.”
Kevin: Oh, sure.
Jad: I think there’s certain cases where that’s not the case, and slaver is one. “We need to end slavery”, well how are we going to pick all the cotton, right? Well, you won’t have to answer that question. Like, in fact, if you were to say – and this is not my – this is a guy named Stefan Molyneux came up with this analogy – if you were to say, “well what we’re going to do see, is we’re going to dig into the earth and find what the residue of dinosaurs, we’re going to extract that, we’re going to go through a refining process, it’s going to turn into a liquid, they’re going to put that liquid into giant metal machines, and we’re going to set fire to the liquid, and it’s going to turn the machine, and it’s going to harvest the cotton for us.”
And I was just like, you end slavery because slavery is wrong, and then actually not even that you worry about the rest of it later, or you burn that bridge when you come to it or whatever, but you understand that human ingenuity will very, very rapidly begin to solve all of the sub-problems and assemble it into a new system without a central control. As long as you allow it to happen, it will happen. If there’s a need, the need will be met because meeting that need allows people to acquire wealth, which is what most people on the planet are trying to do –
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: – it’s just a very natural process. But when you try to solve the entire think in your head, that’s a very unnatural process and almost impossible.
Kevin: Oh, I agree with that and I think – I guess when I wrote that part I certainly wasn’t thinking of this in mind – but allow me to expand a little bit.
Jad: Go for it.
Kevin: Sure, I mean, I guess the only thing I would say about it is that from the humanitarian or the philosophical side of it, I could not agree with you more. You certainly don’t need to propose a solution because you’ve got this general moral guidance of what is supposed to be right and what is supposed to be wrong, and of course that in and of itself fluctuates over time. For – 300 years ago, as you very rightly pointed out – there was nothing immoral about slavery to begin with, right?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Now it’s completely immoral to even consider the notion of slavery, even though it does actually still exist in all sorts of ways, but we’re kind of turning a blind eye to those – and my guess is that in another 300 years, society will look back at you know, the early 2000s and say, “well, wait a second, people were indebted to this company for A, B, and C? What’s that all about? That doesn’t make sense? They were enslaved to a company.” But anyways, I guess the other side of that though, and I guess why I feel that the solutions are important – it kind of takes me back to the conversation I was saying about the civil war thing, right?
Like, a proposed solution that you could’ve had – and again, it’s this probably wouldn’t have economically worked but it’s just to start the ball rolling – is to say, “Well look, we don’t really care if you have a slave or not, in fact, you probably don’t even want the slave. What you want are the economic benefits of having a slave – I get that. So how about we buy off your slaves from you” – that’s almost kind of like a king theory, right? Like, you don’t have to convince the humanitarian. You don’t have to convince the philosopher. You don’t have to convince the guy sitting on the side pondering existence of life all day long, you know – the Aristotles – you don’t have to convince that guy.
You have to convince the king who’s sitting the throne saying, “this is the law of the land and I don’t really give a shit, we’re not going to change it”, you need to present the solution to him so that – I guess in my opinion – you can accelerate that moral change because in the absence of it, what it takes is just a great deal of time. And in this particular case using slavery as the example, if you don’t propose a solution, then what you have to do is you have to wait until the society is convinced that slavery actually is immoral. But that took a really long time after the Civil War to accommodate that, and I think that you could’ve addressed that in a much more rapid way.
I think you – I mean this is just speculation – but my guess is that had we actually not had bloodshed over the Civil War, had we found some sort of a solution in order to kind of wean people off of slaves and then end it, my guess is that the whole notion of Civil Rights probably would’ve been very radically different, and certainly wouldn’t have taken 100 years just to start talking about that – is my guess.
Jad: I totally agree with you – I 100% agree. And I see your point to with the solutions, and I wasn’t trying to denigrate solutions, but if you’re just going to say end it, you’re not going to convince people to end it. You have to have a – or not have to –
Kevin: Well there’s certain people – I guess is what I’m saying – that you have – I believe you have to convince.
Jad: Well, right.
Kevin: But you don’t need to be convinced of a moral argument because you’re going to take the moral side of it, and you’re going to say, “yes, we should do this.” Wars for example, the wars going on right now I think are great examples of this. You don’t need to convince me that this is immoral, I don’t need to convince you that this is immoral, but there are many people who have yet to see that because they perceive that there is this threat of terrorism that actually exists right now. The perceive that the United States was attached you know, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and this is specifically a resulting consequence of those people’s actions against us – that’s what people see.
Now I’m not one of those people and you’re not one of those people, and most people you know are not one of those people, but those people exist in record numbers across this country – even though it has dwindled down pretty substantially. My point though is that t for the last many years, I haven’t made the argument to say to people that, “this is ridiculous, we were attached on 9/11 for other reasons, you need to look at 30 years of blowback, you need to look at et cetera, etcetera”, because whilst I agree with all those arguments in a philosophical sense and I can discuss them with you until you know, we’re blue in the face, to that average person, they don’t give a shit about that because they’ve never thought about it, and they’re not going to start thinking about it right now.
But what I can tell them is to say, “hey, do you have any idea how much money this war is costing us? Do you understand why you’re losing your job right now?” All I’m saying is maybe you should consider wrapping some of this war because we’d have a little bit more money to put back into our own economy. And it’s a relevant point too – I mean, it is costing us money – but frankly I don’t even give a shit about the money, I give a shit about the fact that we’re killing innocent people for absolutely no reason other than to kind of wave our feathers at them.
So I guess my point is is to try to say, “Well look, let me circumvent that process or that point of view for the time being, and let me try to appeal to these people in a condescending sort of way”, what is a very much more simplistic attitude, because I think that they would be more willing to look at that point of view and to consider that point of view, and I don’t feel that they’re willing to consider the moral issue.
Jad: Sure, sure. So you’re talking about tailoring your argument to the audience, really.
Kevin: Yeah, exactly. So I guess what I’m saying is there has to be something that is going to convince the person who’s not seeing it from a philosophical side, they need something tangible, so I want to find something that’s tangible for them – even if it’s not the best tangible solution, it’s at least something to start the conversation.
Jad: Oh, I totally – I completely understand, that makes sense. I think the other is more of a strategic goal because like I was saying earlier, if someone’s only not waging war because it’s expensive – which is a fantastic way to convince someone to be against the war now – but it’s not a sustainable way to keep people out of a war because at some point, there will come a time when there is a financial advantage for them to have their nation start a war – that they’d brought Haliburton or whatever – then at that point in time, if the rule is if it’s financially disadvantageous for me for the war to happen then I’ll be against it, but otherwise I’m for it, then you’ve lost that person or that group of people. And obviously this is very abstract, but –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – if the rule is that killing people for no reason is wrong and that’s what you can actually have people reason their way to through whatever system you know – the education or whatever – if they’re able to sit and think and be like, “hmm, well I’m going to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, and I don’t want to be a part of that because that in itself is wrong, regardless of the utilitarian arguments around it”, then you’ve got a sustainable piece. But I mean again, you’re talking about talking to someone tomorrow, I’m talking about some distant future of time, so it’s not really a counter-argument against what you’re saying.
Kevin: Well no – and I agree with you – actually what I would expand upon that in fact because I think it’s a relevant point that gets omitted far too often, is that at some point in time, let’s assume that this war is going to end, or these series of wars are going to end. Let’s assume it’s going to happen in 5 years, right – like a Vietnam sort of thing where eventually we’re just like, “this is fucking ridiculous, we’re done”, eventually people come home, right? And frankly, I don’t actually see that happening in this particular case, but for sake of argument, the problem is as I see it, is that once that happens, the people like you and I tend to stop making the arguments, and maybe I’m completely off base there, but I feel like the people only make those arguments – the philosophical argument – when there’s a need to make that argument, and I think that’s the problem.
I think that in a sense like this, you need to be making both arguments. You need people like you know, making the argument that you’re proposing, and I think you need people making the argument that I’m proposing because the goal is to end the madness, and whatever argument you can make that convinces one person to do that is a step in the right direction. But once that’s all said and done – like once the war has ended, once the last soldier’s home from Vietnam – you don’t get to stop there. You don’t get to say, “okay, now let’s not do that again”, and leave it at that until all of a sudden it happens again and then have to make the same arguments.
I think that’s the time when you have to most ramp up the notion of, “now let’s reflect upon what we did” – let’s really drive this into people’s minds. Let’s let people understand this is completely unnecessary, it’s completely immoral, and this never should happen again. And sure it’s going to happen again, but the hope I suppose, being that each time it happens a little bit less, and maybe that’s too positive an outlook on it, I don’t know.
Jad: Right. Well I think that’s the anarchist argument though is that it has to be comprehensive, otherwise it will inevitably happen again. In other words, if we say we leave Vietnam, but we still have the President, who still has the power to take money from people and build an army and send it somewhere, it’s like your position from the “Everyone is Evil”. If that position exists, that war is going to happen –
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jad: – and it’s not going to be any less of a war or more of a war necessarily – that all depends upon the economic conditions – but it’s going to happen again. The point is that the same reason that killing some Arab guy is wrong, or putting a guy in from Afghanistan who’s a sheep herder in a cage because you think he’s a terrorist – that’s wrong for the same reason that taking someone’s money to build an army in the first place is wrong.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: The point is that both of those things are violations of a fundamental human freedom that has to exist for everyone in order for there to be peace, and once it does exist for everyone, there is peace and wealth without end, and there’s no limit to what the human species can do once we stop occasionally bombing ourselves back 100 years – or bombing other people back 100 years – and just setting fire to tremendous amounts of wealth for nothing, you know? It’s ridiculous the amount of – again, form the utilitarian perspective – I mean, all of the wealth of the industrial revolution in Europe, all of the wealth of the 19th century – all of it – was destroyed in the first World War.
Like, all of the improvements of mankind since the first World War have – again, just speaking in an abstract term of wealth – were all generated since 1919. Like, everything before that was destroyed for nothing – nothing at all. The only reason it was destroyed was because of institutions like monarchies and central banks that allowed you know, just endless debt to be piled up to like, buy weapons to send guys off to die for no reason at all.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: I mean and there is reason of course if you’re a Czar or whatever, then you’re trying to [?] up the Ottoman empire and there’s a purpose to it, so yeah, it’s not not beneficial for anyone, it’s just not beneficial for almost everyone.
Kevin: Well no, I get your point actually very – I think it’s a great point. I wish we didn’t agree so often actually, it would be better for our program.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So in the writing that I did, that was a large part of it and actually – going back to that whole LA thing – you know, it was interesting because when I was there, the healthcare bill got signed into law. Like I said, it was my birthday – it was March 23rd of 2010 that it actually got signed into law – and
a couple weeks before that is when the reconciliation vote happened and you know, they effectively passed it, right – it was going to get signed into law – and you know, everybody out there was really excited about this and you know, I was – I don’t think it was being really the contrarian, but I was just pointing out, “Well wait a second, like, this doesn’t – I’m pretty sure we didn’t do this the right way, and we circumvented all this process, and we haven’t accounted for how this is paid for, you know, all sorts of procedural things that just are completely ignored”, and of course, what everybody out there told me was, they were like, “well you know, whatever.
First of all, we don’t really care about your position, but never the less – like, so what, the republicans have done this for years you know, why should the democrats not do the same thing?” And I feel was a fairly poignant comment to all those people is to say immediately like, “yeah, they have done these things before”, and that’s why we’re engaged in this 8 year war that we were in at the time. So my point is to say maybe it’s not the best way to go about a system of governance, to just trump all these very basic systems of checks and balances, and I guess to the point that you were just saying, I could not agree with you more that once that war has ended or subsided at the very least, you absolutely need to stop the system, you need to disengage from that system.
Effectively, there’s another war in the chamber, so to speak, and you’re just waiting for it to come about because the systems are still there that allow the government to basically perpetuate whatever it wants because it’s got a limitless source of money – at least so the country thinks – and it’s just a matter of time before that next war happens. So I absolutely agree that you need to completely remove those systems from existence at all, and taking it a step further obviously, there was a lot of people calling for criminal investigations of say, the Bush administration. I was all in favor of that, quite frankly.
And of course it’s never going to happen – and in many ways, I would be in favor of the exact same sort of thing for the Obama administration once it’s all said and done for all sorts of these military occupations that that administration has got us involved in unconstitutionally – in my opinion. So I guess the point is that I agree that you don’t get to rest once the war has ended. My point is I think that’s the time when you need to really strike and to shut those systems down so that they can’t happen again. But of course, actually accomplishing that is a whole different can of worms.
Jad: Yeah, for sure. And I think the other slightly disheartening part is that the history of empire is typically the history of reluctant engagement, followed by a period of perpetual engagement, and I think – I think we’re already in the perpetual engagement phase – I think that now is just waiting for the money to run out.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: You know, at some point soldiers don’t get paid anymore, they don’t get paid in money that’s worth anything, and then the war ends because they’re not going to fight for free.
Kevin: And so we end on Jad’s proposal that wars end when soldiers don’t get paid. Incidentally, we intend to pick back up next week with a discussion on mercenary armies. As always, thank you so very much for tuning in to the show, and we hope you enjoyed the content. If you haven’t yet seen our website, please take a moment to check out other episodes at www.JKPod.com. You can also reach either of us individually – Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, and I am at KevinLudlow.com, that’s K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com – we’d certainly love to hear from you. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you next week.
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Look at the adorable puppy (I think). It’s tiny, see, like this episode.
Despite the length of the title, this is a tiny installment, barely lengthy enough to be considered episode 9 of the jkpod jkpodcast. This mini-episode (relative to the others), is comprised of a short stretch of conversation that hit a couple of interesting points. I couldn’t bring myself to leave these points behind.
The first relates to the fairly evident desire to help others exhibited by most people, and the upside down expectation that the government will reflect that desire in their budgetary allocation.
Kevin follows up on the theme of living outside of the commonly accepted narrative and how odd it is to find “Hope” as a legitimate and viable political offer from the supposed servant class to the citizenry.
Hang onto your hats, this one will be over before you know it.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to a tiny installment barely lengthy enough to be considered episode 9 of the JKPod JK Podcast. To further set appropriate expectations, this is a mini episode relative to the others, comprised of a short stretch of conversation that hit a couple of interesting points I couldn’t bring myself to leave behind.
The fist relates to the fairly evident desire to help others exhibited by most people, and the upside down expectation that the government will reflect that desire in their budgetary allocation. Kevin follows up on the theme of living outside of the commonly accepted narrative, and comments on the oddity of finding hope as a legitimate and viable political offer from the supposed servant class, to the citizenry. Hang on to your hat, this one will be over before you know it. We now tune in to the Jad of recorded past.
People do want to help, I mean that’s the reason why you can have 60% of people can say we need to maintain a social safety net, right – even if they’re 25 years old, there’s a good chance that they’ll think that we should have a social safety net because there’s a belief, like you were saying earlier, that if there’s someone who’s disadvantaged, our tendency is to want something good to happen to them, or want them to receive help one way or the other. But I think historically that help happened at a community level through churches, and friendly societies, and unions, and that sort of thing, that the responsibility for that has been taken over by the government system –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And now if that – when you have that native concern for the well being of mankind, or for some segment of people, you can just shut it off and then be like, “oh yeah, there’s a social program for that. I’ll make sure and vote for whoever’s going to bump that up”, and then you go about your day because there’s an illusion that that personal responsibility has been fulfilled, and your role as a voter/taxpayer.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: The awful downside of course, is that what’s actually happening is the money that’s being taken from you is being used to put people in prison and drop bombs on them, and then you’re actually inflicting a great amount of harm with money that you insist everyone pays to this central organization.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Yeah, it’s really awful. Lately, I think Warren Buffet and somebody else just – in the last week or so was like – oh, Stephen King I think – was like, “oh, my taxes should be higher, we should raise more taxes”, and I’m like, really? You feel like there’s too many Muslims left on the planet? Do you really – I mean did you see a black man who wasn’t in prison and you really thought, “shit, we need to pay more because there’s at least some of them walking free.” I just don’t understand this – again, it really takes a mind boggling intellect to look at a single day of news about what the United States government is doing, and then at the end of the day to be like, “you know, there’s a lot of suffering in the world, so I need to empower this organization and get them more influence and money.”
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: I mean it’s just – it’s insane. It’s like literally the opposite conclusion of what the you know, the facts on the ground indicate should happen. It’s really strange.
Kevin: Sometimes I really feel like The Matrix is the perfect movie because I’m living in the Matrix, where I feel like somebody just gracefully unplugged me and I’m like, really? Surely you can see that this is happening. I’m not even getting to the conspiracy theory, I’m just only looking at what is happening day to day. I just – I can’t see how we think that this is a good thing. Of course if you talk with people more and more about it, of course every one of them is going to tell you the same thing, that – they’re like, “well, you know, we’re just hoping for the best that comes out of it.” I mean for God sakes, Obama ran on a campaign of hope, and I really tore that to pieces in 2008 to people.
I’m like – I mean, I get the whole marketing thing behind it, but I would tell people, I’m like, “don’t you find that a little strange that somebody running for the most powerful office in really the world, is running on a campaign of hope?” Like, you’re not supposed to hope that these people are good. Like, that’s why it’s a democratic process. I mean, they don’t have to hope for anything – you’re supposed to be able to get exactly what we should have. But clearly, that’s not how it works any longer. And maybe to
some of your elder points – or older points – it’s – maybe it’s never worked like that, I don’t know.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: So maybe I’m becoming even more disillusioned.
Jad: Boom, that was it. You’ll have to tune in next time to find out it Kevin becomes even more disillusioned. Thanks for giving it a listen, and please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or other feedback. If so, you can e-mail us at JKPod@JKPod.com, or visit either of our websites – Jad-Davis.com – that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S, or KevinLudlow.com. Thanks again for listening and until next time, take care.
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Kevin’s book cover. Despite the Gadsden snake, this really is a moderate approach.
As you may know, Kevin recently completed a book, “American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach,” which is a quick but broad-spectrum read about healthcare, insurance, micro-economics, business, and the political process. His analysis is leavened with personal anecdotes, analogies and thought experiments which he uses to illustrate his major points.
If you weren’t already aware, Kevin’s and my worldviews are built on different but overlapping core premises and “American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach,” is, as the title suggests, not radical on the grand political spectrum. The problems he identifies are universally acknowledged and the several remediations he recommends are practical, available, and will strike most readers as uncontroversially helpful approaches.
But given the tightly constrained nature of the healthcare debate, where the most progressive administration we’re ever likely to see put forward a plan whose centerpiece is a 20 year old idea from the most conservative establishment think tank in existence, Kevin’s proposals are far beyond the most radical ideas on the table.
We will probably have several future episodes focused more or less on “American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach.” Today’s podcast is pulled from casual conversations that we had while recording shows on other topics. Upon further review, I thought there was enough good material to put together an introduction to the book before a more thorough discussion.
Music
Jad: Hello and welcome back to our podcast. This installment is a little different and a little shorter. As you may know, Kevin recently completed a book, American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach, which is a quick but broad spectrum read about healthcare, insurance, microeconomics, business, and the political process. His analysis has leavened with personal anecdotes, analogies, and thought experiments which he uses to illustrate his major points.
If you weren’t already aware, Kevin’s and my world view are built on different but overlapping core premises, and American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach is – as the title suggests – not radical on the grand political spectrum. The problems he identifies are universally acknowledged, and the several remediations he recommends are practical, available, and will strike most readers as uncontroversially hopeful approaches.
But given the tightly constrained nature of the healthcare debate, where the most progressive administration we’re ever likely to see has put forth a plan who’s centerpiece is a 20 year old idea from the most conservative establishment think tank and existence, Kevin’s proposals are far beyond the most radical ideas on the table. We will probably have several future episodes focused more or less on American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach.
Today’s podcast is pulled from casual conversations that we had while recording shows on other topics. Upon further review, I thought there was enough good material to put together an introduction to the book before a more thorough discussion began. Because of the unintentional nature of this content, I had to do a fair amount of creative editing to clear out some names – mostly the name of a reviewer – and edit around non-relevant tangents. Please forgive any audio oddities that come your way. To start us off, Kevin gave me a rundown on the origins of the book and how it came to be.
Kevin: When I first starting writing the healthcare book, what it actually started was a larger book and the healthcare was just supposed to be a chapter of it. That was actually what I was working on and then I just got really interested I guess in the healthcare side of it, and so I kind of separated it and then expanded it quite a bit more than it originally was
because I wanted to be able to finish some of it. And so I guess my idea was to you know, eventually finish the other chapters and just have them all as you know, slightly longer chapters, but each one an individual book. I hate soliciting it but I’m curious. So you read the book?
Jad: Yeah man, I really enjoyed it.
You’ve already heard most of my high level review, so I’ll spare you the repetition. Well jump back in as I highlight my personal experience of reading ideas and stories that I had heard bits and pieces of around the lunch table.
I heard chunks of the logic before from the parts we’re reading, and I’ve heard some of the stories before –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – so it was really interesting to then read like, your fully fleshed out you know, and probably drafted, and revised, and revised versions of those same thoughts.
Kevin: Oh yeah. I’ve had a bunch of people from the left read it you know, even while I was working on it, and then I guess –
Jad: Here the editing gets rough, so I’ll give you a little bit of context. A mutual acquaintance of ours read the book on the first day it came out. He’s a policy wonk – though not professionally – and a strong supporter of the affordable healthcare act.
Kevin: I just kind of jokingly was showing it to him because the argument came up and I was like, “well, I did write a book about it, so there’s that.” The next day I said to him, I was like – you know, off to the side – I was like, “man that was really nice of you”, I was like, “I really didn’t expect you to read that”, and because even though we disagreed on a number of the things, I think he really – at least from what he described – like, he really took in a lot of the points that I made, and it really kind of takes me back to every single episode that you and I have ever had or everything we talk about is that – I guess it’s reassuring a little bit, or is a little bit motivating to have that conversation and even though he disagrees with parts on it, he’s willing to look at that other side because trying to make the points that I at least I thought would balance his position as well.
Jad: Yeah, the people that you don’t intend to read it that read it and you know, and have a thought –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – is a huge win. If you’re able to take someone who’s like very savvy and very you know – thinks about this stuff all the time –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and you’re able to give him something that he hasn’t thought about, then that’s definitely – you know, a [?] huge win, so I can’t use that against you – an even huger win.
Kevin: Need to get you a “saurus”.
Jad: Is huge win in the thesaurus? That really surprises me.
Kevin: It might be in there somewhere.
Jad: Kevin continues on, talking about one of the primary intentions of the book, which is to provide broadly acceptable positions that encourage conversations instead of reinforcing ideology. He does this while saying, “circle jerk” a lot.
Kevin: You know, I use the “circle jerk” expression a lot. You know, it’s most of the topics that I read in political circles are of the “circle jerking” type of nature, right? Like, I listen to people talk about them afterwards and I’m like, “well of course all you guys agree with that because you already agree with it. Convince the other group of what your position is. Write it in such a way that you’re able to plant the seed into the other group’s mind because you don’t need to convince me any further – I’m already on your team. But you do need to convince somebody else because this person thinks you’re insane, and I don’t think you’re insane. Prove that to them.”
I guess that’s the side I come from and it’s probably far too arrogant of me to think that maybe that occurred, but I guess that was the experience I felt, so I felt kind of good about that. But yeah, I would love to do that, I would love to chat about it, and I’d definitely love to get your critique on it – and for that matter, Elise’s critique because I think you were saying that she actually has kind of that similar view that I have on it where even though she might not fundamentally agree with it, she believes that it’s probably the better way to go. Isn’t that what you were saying?
Jad: To fill in the gap here, Kevin is talking about a single pair health plan. Elisa works for a Medicaid provider and believes that a hybrid system – as we have now – is the worst of both worlds, where the healthcare system is heavily regulated by the state to favor the monied corporate interests. Her belief – which Kevin also hints at in his book – is that the healthcare system would be
less dysfunctional if free from government control, or put completely under government prevue[?].
She experiences all of these things all these things all the time or whatever. Compounding pharmacy is selling something for $30, Merck or something that sells the same thing for $700, so Merck is trying to make it illegal for compounding pharmacies to provide the Medicare providers you know, this web of political intrigue essentially, surrounding this – surrounding Medicaid.
Kevin: Yeah, I didn’t explicitly define it. I do talk a lot about the middle layer – the middle man – basically how the insurance company is really just working as a – they’re really working as a financial manager – they’re not working as a – they’re not working as an insurer, right? They’re just moving money around, which doesn’t really serve a purpose for anybody. I don’t explicitly say in the book anywhere about how we should have this public option necessarily, but what I talk about is the fact that in the absence of a public option, these are the things that are going to inevitably occur unfortunately, so –
Jad: Kevin talks about his editor in this effort.
Kevin: You know, actually I have to give my girlfriend some credit for it. I actually did name her the editor of the book. She’s really good at being able to shorten things because she reads like a book a day, and I hate reading actually – ironically. Or at least books, I just – I read non-fiction online all the time. But she was really kind of instrumental in just kind of cutting it down. I tend to be a lot more verbose than I need to be and her take was to say that’s not a very good way to write because you lose people’s attentions very quickly.
Jad: Finally, Kevin explains the clever tactic he’s used to get early feedback on the book.
Kevin: Per kind of what I’ve read online and everything and even on Amazon, what I’ve been doing is actually I went to Ron Paul’s book – so one of his first ones on Amazon – and what I did was I looked at all the reviews that had been written for it and there’s like 1,500 reviews or something, and you sort them by most relevant – and I literally clicked on every single person. As I would click on them I could determine if they have an e-mail address and in some cases I would look them up on Facebook.
So I’ve actually contacted like 40 people, and I sent them e-mails saying, “hey you know, I’m a Ron Paul supporter”, and I was like, “you know, I’ve written this book. I’ve read some of your reviews on Amazon. If I send you the book, would you be interested in reading it and potentially reviewing it for me because I’m just trying to get some exposure to it”, and so far – with the
exception of I think one person – everybody’s actually said yes. So yes, I’m pretty excited.
Jad: So you’re sending out a fleet of books then?
Kevin: I’m going to be. I’m actually waiting for that fleet to get here. I’ve got a box of 50 of them coming on Friday, and then I’m going to mail them out to all these people.
Jad: Yeah, very cool.
Kevin: Yeah, so it should be interesting. I’d be curious to see what you know, a bunch of people that I don’t know and I don’t really know what their views are – be curious to see what they say about it.
Jad: As of this recording, American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach is ranked #2 in Kindle’s Economic Conditions category, #3 in Business Economics, and #5 in Government. You can read the e-book online or with your Kindle for a couple of bucks, or get the hardcopy for a couple of bucks more.
Thanks for listening. If you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or other correspondence, please e-mail us at JKPod@JKPod.com, or stop by the website of the same name and let us know what you’re thinking. We’ll have links up to the book at Amazon, and you can check out the reviews thus far. You can also swing by our websites, Jad-Davis.com, or KevinLudlow.com to see what else we’re working on. Thanks again for listening and until next time, take care.
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Is it a life of hard work or manipulation of political monopoly privileges that allow the monopoly man to kick back and enjoy untold riches?
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Jad: Hello, and welcome to another episode in our ongoing, unfolding dialog. If you haven’t already, you can stop by JKpod.com, where you’ll find all the episodes we’ve released thus far, as well as show notes and references. Kevin and I are still in are initial developmental phase of the show. While we find our bearings, we’ll probably bounce around fairly haphazardly along our mutual interests with a reasonably consistent focus on the grand ideas of liberty, human unity, and equality.
This week, Kevin shares a pair of related stories – one from the mainstream media, the other, a personal anecdote. In both stories, he takes positions that have always associated with reactionary or conservative arguments. I along with most humans, have a tendency to dismiss information that I have pre-categorized as flawed or worse.
In this case, since I know Kevin isn’t any more evil than he claims we all are, and because of his track record of delightful twist endings, I was inclined to hear him out. Kevin jumps right into a challenging idea – at least challenging to me – that millionaire businessmen – at least some of them – deserve the wealth that they’ve sacrifice to build.
Kevin: You know, it’s kind of interesting, there was – what’s the guy’s name – David Siegel – you may have read about him in the news over the last couple of weeks. He’s the guy who’s building that 90,000 square foot house, and he’s a – you know, he’s a multi-billionaire. Apparently he’s one of the largest resort developers in the world.
Basically, what he did was – maybe it was like 2 or 3 weeks ago, I don’t remember exactly when – he sent out a letter to all of his employees – maybe like 7,000 to 10,000 employees – something like that, it’s not insignificant, I mean, it’s quite a few. And he sent them this letter to basically kind of explain what it’s like to be a small business owner in the United States.
I don’t know that I agree with the moral sense of the letter because even though he didn’t say it like this because it would be illegal, he essentially said don’t vote for Obama because if Obama wins this election, I’m shutting down the business and you’re all going to lose your job. And so it got passed all around like, the liberal circuit, and I mean, people were furious about it, and even – like, I just kind of caught wind of it and saw the little notes on it and everything, and I was just like, man, that’s fucked up.
Well yesterday – just by completed coincidence before the debate – somebody sent me the e-mail – the exact same thing he sent out – and they’re like, “hey, if you haven’t read this, you really should”, and I was like, “oh, alright”. So I actually sat down and I read it, and I have to say man, like, I really, really sympathized with this guy after I read what he wrote because as a small business guy myself and somebody who’s real interested in that, I identified with every single thing that he wrote inside of that.
So some of the stuff that he was saying is – essentially, he’s like, “look, I grew up with a pretty intelligent group of friends. They all went off and they all were making money and what have you. They all made good salaries, but they were 40 hour a week sort of employees. They went to work, they did what they were supposed to do, they went home, and then all the rest of that time was theirs and my life wasn’t like that.”
And he’s like, “in my case, I spent all my time working this business that I had this dream of growing. I poured out every bit of money that I made into it. I never had a fancy house. I never had a fancy car. While all my friends were going out on the weekends, drinking, partying, I sat inside for 48 hour weekends working on the business.”
He’s like, “I did this for years, and years, and eventually, I started seeing some success with it. The problem that I have is that when they tell stories about me”, he’s like, “you see me building this 90,000 square foot mansion because I’m a billionaire, but what they don’t show you are the 30 years that I effectively indentured myself to only working on my business, and I had no guarantee of this success coming at all. And the only reason it came is because I did nothing but work on it and sure there’s some elements of luck to it as well.”
What he was saying was – as he went on – is to say, “The problem is that as the government grows, and grows, what they’re doing is they’re changing the game against people like me. So now, despite the fact that I’ve already put in all this time to do this, I’m going to be rich regardless of what happens – there’s no doubt about that.” He’s like, “I’m wealthy as all could be and nothing’s changed it at this point. But I could retire right now, but I don’t want to because I genuinely enjoy this. I’ve spent my whole life doing this – I’m married to this. As I’m having to struggle to run a business, we lost everything when the economy crashed a few years ago, you know? I’m dealing with that as much as anybody is.”
And he’s like, “meanwhile, I’m trying to keep 8,000 people employed. When I have to keep fighting the government for every single thing that I’m trying to keep afloat, at a certain point, it’s just not worth it to me. There’s so much that I have to fight just to keep a business going just because it’s difficult to make a business thrive. The last thing I need is the government making me do all of their obstacles as well. I’ve gotten to the age where at this point, if this continues to happen and the administration does more of this, I’m just telling you I’m closing the company, and I’m moving to Mexico with my wealth, and that’s the end of it. So you’re all going to lose your job – I’m just letting you know now.”
And it’s kind of weird because it was really direct and on one side I guess it’s pretty unfortunate and that’s pretty cold, but I totally get it. You’ve invested all this time and effort into doing something that should have some benefit, and yet the people that you’re fighting with the most are this bureaucratic agency that you have to rival with just to you know, just to do something that you should otherwise be able to do. This guy might be an arrogant, wealthy asshole for all I know, but he makes a good point.
Jad: There’s no contradiction between the notion that the government is bureaucratic, and [?], and awful to work with as a small business, while at the same time giving massive benefits, and favors, and shunting wealth to you know, huge corporations. But there’s a divide and it’s partially because our education trains all of us to be employees as opposed to business owners.
There’s a mental divide between people who own businesses, and people who work for businesses, and whatever it is – probably 20% on one side, 80% on the other. But that 80% puts everyone who owns a business in the same category, which is the people who run the government, basically, or are in cahoots with the ruling class, and are just getting you know, ridiculously wealthy from doing nothing.
So that’s the view from the one side, and the view from the other side is that businesses constantly on the edge of failure based on the whim of government, and the government is too restrictive. Both those things are true at the same time. Both groups thing the other group is wrong – you see what I’m saying? It’s perfect blend for nothing good to happen while the government continues to extract massive amounts of wealth and give it to a very small high-end group of business owners, or businesspeople I guess. They’re not really – they don’t own businesses, they own pieces of lots of businesses.
Kevin: That’s true, and I couldn’t be more opposed to that system either.
Jad: Oh sure, sure. It’s people talking around each other – it’s to do with partisanship I guess. It’s not engaging with the other person’s points, you’re just assigning them to a group, and then you just say, “I don’t have to listen to you because you’re the kind of guy who threatens his employees with being fired if they don’t vote for the right person”, so anything you have, any wisdom that I could possibly glean from you, I’m going to discard that along with your – the position that I don’t agree with you with.
And on the flip side, Mitt Romney is not going to change the law anyway that’s going to affect a genuine, legitimate small businessman. He might change the law so that yeah, developers can develop along a part of a sea coast if this guy wants to build a you know, a condo or something. It’s possible that he wants Romney to be elected so that he can benefit from government, but it’s very unlikely that he wants Romney to be elected so the government will become less restrictive on him and his business.
Kevin: I totally agree with that, and that’s – it’s a distinction I try to make to – in fact, this is a really interesting topic. I have to determine if we can – if I can throw this into a segment or not. But this is something –
Jad: And so he did.
Kevin: This was something that I experience time and again. I lived in Los Angeles a couple years ago, and man I fucking hate Los Angeles, I really do. It’d be a great place to go visit, but living there was just the most awful thing I could think of actually. But I had this conversation a lot and it was right – when I lived there, it was right when the healthcare bill was being passed – in fact, it was passed on my 31st birthday, I believe.
When I would discuss economics with people out there, of course, everybody vehemently opposed my position on these things and I mean, they would let it be known too. And I mean – and these were like kind of friends of mine at the time. But people would really rip on me for a lot of the things – for example, they were talking about the healthcare bill, and I went, “why would you even care anyways? Those penalties don’t apply for anybody that makes over $80,000”, and I’m like, “well, okay”. And they’re like, “what, you make over $80,000?” And they’re like, “well, fuck you, you can pay for it anyways”, and they get like, really mad about it.
It took me a while to like, kind of put this together. I was like, “I understand the position that you think you have against me, but you need to weigh my life – the choices of my life – against the choices of your life”, because most of these people were actors and actresses that of course, they didn’t make a lot of money. And what really bothered me about it though was that they had no general semblance of risk and reward.
I was like, “sure, I make plenty of money. I work around the clock. I’ve spend the majority of my life studying in a field so I can be very good at it. I go out and I do all the sales myself, and I’m constantly working.” I was like, “you see me up late every night, I work through the weekends” –
Jad: By the way, if you don’t know Kevin, this is no exaggeration. I’m sure we’ll get more into his bio in a later episode, but this guy is a productivity machine. I mean, this is some real David Allen, Steven Covey shit right here.
Kevin: There’s all sorts of things that I give up as a result to do that, and hopefully the end game is that someday, I’ve got a reasonable amount of money so I can do whatever I want. You, conversely, you want to say that this is unfair. Many of the people that I met, they had degrees from like, Yale, and Brown, and Harvard, and MIT, I mean, these were really, really smart people that I got to spend time with.
You have some of the most prestigious degrees that you can get in this country. You could be employed doing anything you want to do, making virtually any sum of money that you want to, but you certainly make a six figure salary with your education, but you don’t want to do that because you have the idea in your head to be an actor or an actress.
In the event that it happens, you have riches beyond belief, and now you’re famous as well. This is a tradeoff here, and what really bothered me about it was – and I guess that’s why this guy’s letter touched me a little bit – is that it’s about life choices, and I don’t want anybody to have an unequal starting point. Like, I’m totally fine with trying to help people – I think we should. But I just think people have come so far and are so dismissive of what they actually have in life, versus what other people might give up.
And that part really started to bother me, and I let it be known a little bit. Nothing would blow my mind more than when I was like, “look, yeah, you’re right. I make a lot of money. But I made it happen, and I went to a public university. My whole education was probably $20,000, yours was $200,000. You clearly had the upper hand – to me – and I’m doing better than you. Is it because you’re smarter or I’m smarter? No. It’s because I’m making the choices that allow me to do this, and you’re making choices that are for some other reason and I shouldn’t be penalized just because you want to pursue exactly what it is that you want to do.
Jad: Again, it’s that yin and yang thing, right, because that’s a situation which you’re talking to your peer group. They’re college educated, they sometimes even – colleges that would give them a you know, upper hand in a generic job market like Ivy League schools and whatnot. Your well is poisoned in a sense, because that argument is used for people who are like you know, in juvenile detention from age 10, and then put in prison at 18, and then now they’re 35 or something like that, and someone’s like, “well why don’t you go get a job?”
The problem is, again, that that argument is smeared between political rhetoric in which people are genuinely dis-empowered, and disenfranchised, and disadvantaged, and then told you know, “your own bad choices have got you here”, and the other situation where people are you know, genuinely capable of doing whatever they want, but they feel like people who make different choices and come out with different outcomes – they’re jealous of them.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: It’s just bad all the way around, again.
Kevin: So you know, I have written about that as well I mean, surprise, surprise. Yeah, it was me trying to contemplate exactly how that occurs, and I guess you’re right, it entirely occurs because we’ve conflated the two systems, and so when I express any negativity towards it, it makes it look like I’m putting down you know, the poor kid on the street who genuinely doesn’t have anything, and I’m not. So yeah, that’s what really started to bother me about it. I think even more so the fact that it was a personal attack, and then I also made the point on – a couple of times – to say if you want to get really nitty gritty with it, you have the opportunity – speaking to these people, “you have the opportunity to actually make money and increase the tax space further, but because you want to do just what you want to do, you don’t do that.”
`”In my case, I’m paying more taxes in a year than you’re going to make in a year, and you actually have the opportunity to be making those taxes so that you could be helping these social programs that you’re so allegedly in favor of helping in the first place.”
Jad: Yeah. Now that sounds awful, by the way. I mean, hanging out with that group of people sounds extremely taxing.
Kevin: It was rough, it really was. It took – I will not say that I handled it all that well all of the time, but I think it made me – it’s actually made me a little bit more balanced overall because I think it’s a good experience to have had.
Jad: In those conversations, once terms are defined and once caveats are in place, you say I recognize fully that you know, I was raised in a happy, loving home and I got to go to college, and I realize I had advantages, and yet at that point, you and I are tied – we’re at the same spot – and now we’re making different life choices, and that’s what we’re talking about and it’s a totally different ballgame than the again, the poisoned well of the conversation that happens on the political level.
Kevin: Yeah. It took some time to kind of readjust to that. The funny thing was – I guess, just to conclude on it – the girl that I dated at the time, she you know, she did not take well to my attitude on this. I mean, she understood it, I think she just took the side of her friends more than she would take the side of me on this. In fact, I think she found my side very distasteful.
Well, interestingly enough, she actually moved out of the city and moved to Austin no less, and I was talking to her recently and she told me that she went back there and – she’s been living in Austin for a couple of years now – and she went back there and she’s like, “you know, surprisingly, people really do talk about their political opinions way more than I ever though.” I’m like, “yeah, they really do there”, and I was like, “which I don’t have a problem with, the problem that I have with it is that they’re all very myopic in that view, and they’ll talk about it, but it’s a circle jerk – they’re not willing to hear any other point of view.” And she’s like, “yeah, I saw that as well.”
So apparently, some people were talking about economics, and she kind of stood in the middle this time and was like, “well, I don’t know if that’s entirely true. You know, I don’t know that you can”, they were just kind of making the same type of outrageous claims they would make against me at the time, and she said that even though she knows all those people, she said that she felt very castigated as well – like, they really shot her down quickly. She’s like, “I have a whole different point of view from what your experience was like out there now”, and I was like, “yeah, it was rough.”
Jad: It’s amazing how much you don’t notice about the intricacies of a position when you’re swimming with the fish as it were, right?
Kevin: Good way to put that.
Jad: When you agree with everyone else, everything just seems like it’s smooth and it allows a lot more what should cause cognitive distance to just kind of flow by you know, unquestioned. That’s why I think – like you said – you drop in the one fish who’s swimming in the other direction, it’s disrupting the very comfortable flow of awful things past people’s peripheral vision where they don’t have to worry about it because they’ve got a world view that lets it all bounce off, until that world view is challenged.
Kevin: Yeah, that always kind of surprised me about it, actually you know, meeting really intelligent people, gifted people for the most part, and it just kind of always surprised me hearing some of the arguments that I would hear because they were so very, frankly senseless, you know? I don’t mind people having their opinion, but you have to be able to back up the opinion with a legitimate sense of reality, and I felt like that was never really there and it always – it always surprised me because I expected that people like that would actually be able to make very strong cases against me, and I would probably learn something from it.
But instead, I actually just felt very personally attached, and I don’t feel like I learned anything from that side other than people – the haves were asking for more, frankly – at the expense of somebody else, no less.
Jad: And there you have it, a tale of two businesspeople – well, 2 tales of two businesspeople, and the anti-business culture they react against. I tend to have more sympathy for the second – that’s partially because I do a podcast with him. The 90,000 square foot home guy might also be a genuine dude out there hustling and making an honest living, though I’d wager against it.
In any case, Kevin and I will be making podcasts into the near future at least. If you have any comments or want to suggest a topic, stop by JKpod.com, and let us hear from you. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time. Take care.
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American students displaying the Bellamy Salute to pledge allegiance to the American flag. This is the same salute notoriously used by the Nazi party in Germany.
Our conversation gets rolling with a clip of Senator Rand Paul appearing on CNN. The Senator is discussing his desire to cut military spending.
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Kevin: Hello again and welcome back to another episode of our show. While we still remain nameless, we do have a website up and running at JKPod.com, where we house all of our episodes, recordings, and show notes. For the sake of promotion, we’d certainly appreciate you passing that link around as you see fit to do. We also have yet to settle on any specific subject matter for the show and I’m not entirely sure that we’re trying to at this point. That said, we continue to focus on the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality for all.
We’ve got some pretty tough topics to tackle this week with a spotlight still on the 2012 Presidential Election and in addition to many other incidental points discovered along the way, Jad and I discussed the emptiness of political positions. From there, we segway into a much more pressing issue and one that Jad is particularly passionate about, the unfortunate state of American education. Tying the two together, if we’re not raised to think critically then it’s really no wonder politicians can claim whatever they want.
Our conversation gets rolling with a clip of Senator Rand Paul appearing on CNN. The Senator is discussing his desire to cut military spending, and while I found the clip to be enjoyable and appreciate his position being contrary to both Governor Romney and President Obama, Jad was quick to warn that a deeper analysis might be warranted.
A friend of mine this evening sent me a clip to Rand Paul being interviewed and I don’t usually like a lot of Rand Paul’s positions – they’re definitely not that of his father. And they asked him about Mitt Romney’s foreign policy – the speech that he gave the other day – and Rand Paul was saying, “Well, I definitely do not agree with the Governor’s analysis of this.”
Audio Clip of Rand Paul: One, I think whenever we get involved with war, or providing weapons, or bombing countries, it needs to go before Congress. You know, the Constitution says that that is the prerogative of the Legislature, so that’s my first objection.
Audio Clip of Interviewer:-Mmm hmm.
Audio Clip of Rand Paul:My second objection is it’s difficult to know who friend and foe are. We’ve been over a decade or almost – over a decade now – in Afghanistan, and we have trouble telling friend from foe. The people we’re training – the Afghan soldiers – are turning their weapons on us, so how are we supposed to know who in Syria is our friend, who is our foe, what do they stand for –
Kevin: He went on to say that – he said what we really need is a more sensible and lightweight foreign policy.
Audio Clip of Rand Paul: What I would say is the same thing I say to liberals, you can’t always make education better by throwing more money at it. You can’t always make your country stronger or more safe by throwing more money at the military. Let’s figure out what we need as a country to defend our country, to defend our vital interests, but let’s not be everywhere all the time. Let’s not decide that every war is something that U.S. dollars as well as soldiers have to participate in, and so I do object to.
Kevin: And he said nobody on the conservative side wants to ever talk about that, and here Mitt Romney is trying to say we need to expand it – we can’t have this reckless spending on both sides. I was kind of impressed actually that he took that stance publicly, and –
Jad: Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah I mean I don’t know, it’s a harmless stance to take, right? He can totally say that, it isn’t – nothing is implied – and that’s kind of like Ron Paul’s gig the entire time. “This is the way it should be”, and as long as it’s just him and Dennis Kucinich believe it’s true then nothing will ever happen, so there’s no need to you know, to really worry about what Ron Paul was saying.
Kevin: The voice you just heard was the co-creator, Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow, and welcome back to our show.
It kind of goes a little bit to what I was saying last week about the “Everyone is Evil” thing because I said it’s easy for him to say that because he’s not actually in a realistic position to have to execute on it.
Jad: Sure. And even more to that point, when Rand Paul was half bucking for the VP –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: He was very, very in line with the main line Republican points.
Kevin: Totally agree.
Jad: And when Ron Paul is running he’s always emphasizing his immigration policy and his pro-life position, which are like his only two non-libertarian positions.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: One more than the other, I guess probably. But –
Kevin: The pro-life one I assume.
Jad: Well I don’t know, I think it all depends [?] are both hit or miss, but I think there’s probably a fair number of pro-life libertarians who would claim the you know, non-aggression principal against a fetus or something.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But there’s not a whole lot of real libertarians who believe in strong borders
Kevin: Yeah, I guess that’s a good point. It’s so much easier argument to take the side of anti-abortion. In fact, I like making that point to a liberal audience. I’m definitely a pro-choice individual myself, but I’m actually very sympathetic to the pro-life movement I guess. I think they go about it in a just wretched and awful way, but I get what their position is. It’s just such a religious argument because you know, as I always tell people on the left, I’m like, “Well you can always make the pro-life argument.” Everybody’s pro-life, it’s just when are you pro-life? You know, if the baby’s delivered, it’s 3 hours old, you can’t kill it, right? You’re a murderer.
Well what if it’s crowning? Are you able to kill it then? What if you’re already in labor, so you know the baby’s working its way down. Could you kill it then? So I mean at some point in time where this is where the argument always goes to is that it doesn’t really have anything to do with life or death. We all agree you shouldn’t kill something that’s alive, it’s just when is it technically alive? It’s a perfect political argument – you’re never going to win it.
Jad: Right, right. Well, that’s why it exists as a political argument because you can argue both sides forever and make entire campaigns and campaign seasons can focus on that one issue and nothing else.
Kevin: It’s impossible to answer because it’s a subjective comment to begin with. You can’t prove when a baby is a baby.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: It’s just an opinion.
Jad: Yep, exactly. But that’s what the government is for is enforcing opinions with guns.
Kevin: That’s absolutely right. And they’re growing efficient at it too.
Jad: Right. But yeah, so that seems to me to be the pattern – well like you said, if there’s some chance that Rand Paul could be voted out of office for his you know, moderation in foreign policy, then that moderation in foreign policy would instantly vanish.
Kevin: I think you’re right, and that’s really the unfortunate state of our country and so yeah, you’re right. To see him say what he was saying, I think the newscaster – I forget who was interviewing him – was a woman on CNN or something, and you know, she was saying – she’s like –
Audio Clip: Are you concerned that coming out with these criticisms – because they are significant. I mean, he has made a big deal about Army, the rebels – you heard him say it today, he said it yesterday. Also about the defense budget and how he wants to increase it. Are you worried that by coming out, you say you support him, but you could be hurting his chances to win.
Kevin: And essentially he says no, but more importantly, I think we need to talk about these topics to begin with –
Audio Clip: No because I think really what we need to be talking about are pretty important issues that transcend partisanship, and we need to talk about what’s important for the country. The only way we’re ever going to figure out our debt problem is we’re going to have to compromise. Conservatives like myself who believe National defense is very important will have to say that not every dollar spent on the military is sacred, and liberals will have to acknowledge that not every dollar spent on welfare and entitlements is sacred.
Kevin: And I don’t actually agree with that latter point. I don’t think he believes that, I just think he knows that it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s minds – I think – is already pretty much made up. It’s an unfortunate reality of the country also – everybody just voting for their group, I think.
Jad: Well there’s only two options, so you don’t really have a lot choice.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah that’s what I mean, you’re going one or the other.
Jad: Right. Actually, I wonder – I was reading that the Romney campaign is making a concerted effort to you know, kind of go back to the Ron Paul political structure that’s still out there and try to gather them together to vote for him.
Kevin: Really?
Jad: Yeah. I wonder if the Rand Paul is trying to build some kind of bridge there, you know? I support Romney and I still you know – anti-empire.
Kevin: Even though I don’t agree with a lot of the positions of Rand Paul, I previously liked to think that that was just because he happens to be a little bit more socially conservative then I might actually be. When he started coming about as a politician, I liked to think that he was raised well because obviously I like many of the positions of his father, so I thought he would at least kind of embrace that political enthusiasm, or I thought maybe he was a little bit more genuine than most politicians.
But as you accurately pointed out, as he started becoming a little bit more and more towards the, “Oh, I could be the Vice President”, he was pretty quick to step in line. So now when he says these things, I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, who the hell knows why he’s doing it? Maybe he really is saying these sorts of things because it gets people like – not necessarily me – but people like me to listen to him and say, “Oh, well, that is a good position. I support that and if this guy’s going for Mitt Romney, I guess he’s going to support that position too”, you know? I don’t know, but –
Jad: And even you know – and I’m going to spend the next 20 years of my life in a continuous campaign to get Rand Pau and you know, Rand Paul like people elected –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – in the hopes that something will finally stop this train from careening off the edge of this cliff.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. It’s such a helpless position I think, for people like us – and I don’t just mean with slightly more fringed political dissenting views, but just the 99,99% who sit on the outside of this political machine and you know, in our case, actually trying to at least be open to it, to talk about it, to be knowledgeable of what’s occurring and it’s just every time you get to the top of the mountain you know, you’re like, “oh, we finally climbed it”, but
no, you haven’t. There’s a whole other mountain range that you haven’t even seen yet, you just haven’t gotten that high.
Jad: Right, that’s true.
Kevin: So it’s a hard thing to continue in.
Jad: For sure. Although I have to say, I guess it’s just luck and good upbringing or whatever, but seeing things so clearly, seeing like, that doesn’t make any sense that the President would campaign on a peace platform and then keep the war machine going. How does this good man do these things? I guess it goes back to “Everyone is Evil”. If you understand that this person is in a position of absolute power and they’ve gotten to that after a lifetime of promising people that given this position of absolute power, they will pay everyone back for all of the money, and effort, and all it takes for him to be put in that position.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You know, once you understand that that is the position that he and everyone who’s in that the Presidency and politics is in, then it all totally makes sense why they’re taking all this money and funneling all to banks that should be going out of business and making way for new banks run by people who were the previously middle class. It’s so obvious and clear and it really kind of – I think it takes away a lot of frustration that it seems like everyone has about like, why are these people doing this, all these awful things when they’re supposed to be the good people that are helping us – to state it in the most naïve way possible but –
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: – you know, when it comes down to it that’s what the belief is.
Kevin: Oh, absolutely. So it’s good that you know that. You feel at least a little bit more enlightened being able to put two and two together like that. Unfortunately – at least for me – the problem that happens is that [?] start – never mind looking at the government – they started looking at everybody else and well, I reference The Matrix pretty frequently because sometimes I really think that we’re just inside of the Matrix and a couple of us are just kind of waking up to the fact that this is just a bunch of bullshit.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: At this point in the conversation, we turn our attention from political promises to the realities of the American education system – though it’s a little difficult to say which one has actually become worse.
Jad: But I think that brings peace to some degree when you read the radical educators like John Holt, or Paulo Freire, and basically they’ve just diagnosed the school system as being a place to train children to be obedient citizens.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Basically just to be pliant, and actually there’s other groups or other thinkers that kind of go along with sort of the motivation that you put your finger on a lot of times, which is to make you susceptible to corporate messages about what you need to do to have a happy life and that sort of thing. You know, but once you read enough of those guys and when you see it, an example of obsequious obedience to unjust authority, then you’re like, “oh yeah – public school.” And so it no longer boggles the mind, you’re just like, “oh, this makes total sense.”
Kevin: Did you go to a private school in Tennessee, or public school, or what was your –
Jad: No, I had a long slog out of the Matrix. I grew up in a very statist, religious, political, military household, so public the whole time, yeah.
Kevin: Yeah I mean, I had public school the whole time as well. But I mean, if definitely has changed pretty substantially, even since we went to grade school.
Jad: Oh yeah, for sure – huge. Huge.
Kevin: But looking at it now I mean, it’s just sickening to the mind, and you know, I try to take into consideration that of course when I was a kid in school – even in high school – that was not my focus, you know? I didn’t give a shit about how the institution worked. Obviously, I just wanted to drink and do whatever else I could – like everybody else. So I try to think about you know, how my parents would’ve viewed the school system then you know – being my age now – how they would’ve been looking back and saying like, “Jesus, this is awful compared to what it was in the 50s or 60s when we were in school”, you know? But I don’t think that’s really true. I don’t think that the gap between say 1955 and 1985 in nearly the gap between say 1985 and 2015.
Jad: No, I totally agree. I think the other huge gap you’ll see is if you said between 1950 and say, 1910 – I guess we’ll say 20 years, so 1920. I mean, you’re talking about a generation before I guess our grandparents were in school, it was not even required [?]. It was not that uncommon I guess at that point to not have had public education past 5th or 6th grade or something like that.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So yeah, I think you’re right. I think sort of the post Second World War is a big line for a lot of social structures that are sort of bearing fruit now and in the control Matrix.
Kevin: Oh yeah. We’ve brought it up a number of times. We’ve referenced World War II on several different occasions of our conversations, and not specifically the war, but just the culture that manifested post war.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: You know, with respect to how people would’ve viewed the state, I think you made the point several episodes ago talking about if somebody had just broken down the door into your house in say, 1955, and said, “A, B, and C” to you, you need to be complicit, your neighbors would’ve all at least said, “well this is not right, that can’t happen.”
Jad: Right.
Kevin: You know, who knows what the outcome would’ve been, but that would’ve at least been the general mentality. Whereas now I think you see something like that happen, there’s plenty of people who would be like, “oh, they probably did something” –
Jad: Yeah, they deserved it.
Kevin: Yeah, and that’s fucked up.
Jad: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Kevin: It scares the shit out of me, frankly.
Jad: Yeah, absolutely. This is – when I think about democracy and all that, I think I have accepted the position that essentially it’s an education campaign that people have to at least be willing to understand that they should mind their own business. Like you know, I may have an opinion about something, but I just gotta mind my own business sort of thing. Before you can really have a free society, really, the idea of a democracy or the idea of a collective government with those people in it just should make any sane person be like, “no, I don’t want any part of that at all”, you know? The people are just like, “oh yeah” – guy got shot because he was jaywalking – and they’re like, “well, you shouldn’t be jaywalking”, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You don’t want that person making political decisions for you –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and in the very least case as a voter, that guy could be a police officer, or a State Senator.
Kevin: But again – going back to your point – I think that’s largely how we’re taught to see things. It’s I guess in some metaphorical sense exactly like the, “he must have done something wrong.” It’s engrained in us now that well, yeah, kicking down somebody’s door, that’s not a good thing, but whatever that guy did – I don't know what it is – whatever he did, that wasn’t a good thing either – so it counter-balances.
Jad: Right. Right.
Kevin: And – anyways, I think we’re on this escalation of people making arguments like that, and it’s frightening.
Jad: Sure. Well, it’s like the one thing you learn not to do is to think critically. That is another thing that is guaranteed after 12 years of public education is that you’re probably going to have that faculty almost entirely destroyed.
Kevin: Well it took me years to regain it. I mean, I look back at my education in high school, and in junior high even, and then going into college, and then post college, and then where I sit now – and I think that when I was younger – certainly when I was in grade school – but even when I was in junior high still, I think I was lucky to have some pretty good teachers along the way, and you know, obviously a lot of support from home and things like that, and just the neighborhood I grew up in you know, friends, family supporting me. I think that I had a lot of critical thinking skills at a younger age, and I really think that – looking back at it – when I went into say even high school, they were just destroyed and maybe because you know, I was young.
Maybe because I’m trying to fit in, maybe because I’m playing sports and now girls are interesting and all that sort of you know, stuff like that – who knows? But even when I got into college, I still – they were with me because I guess I had the brain for it, or I had an upbringing that gave me critical thinking skills, so I was able to kind of recompose them all. But there’s definitely this window in my life where I’m positive I did not use critical thinking skills, and probably the only thing that saved me at all was just being a computer programmer since I was a little kid because at very least, I had to remain analytical to some degree.
Jad: Right. Yeah.
Kevin: Even if it wasn’t for you know, critically analyzing the world at the time.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Yeah, it’s devastating though, I guess is what I’m getting at. I could only imagine if you hadn’t – if you didn’t have any of those factors and you were put through that same system, who the hell knows what you’d turn out as.
Jad: Yeah, and then I think it’s interesting because the same system will spit out someone who is just convinced, if I gave you absolute control and authority over everyone’s life, would the world just be like this really perfect place? And the answer would be yes, and I think that’s also you know, where you have your critical skills removed and then you either have people who are able to memorize right answers and deliver them at the right time to be like, “oh, you’re very smart. You know so much stuff.” And then everyone else is just like ground down under it, you know, and just they’re [?] to survive and escape –
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jad: – you know? But it brings out both those types of people and both of them are equally useful for the continuance of the system.
Kevin: The country metaphorically is growing people to act like that – it’s to their benefit. And it’s a huge conspiracy theory to talk like that obviously. Very hard to have that conversation with so many people, but I think that if it’s not absolutely true, if there’s not really people doing that, then it’s absolutely going that way inadvertently.
Jad: Sure. Well I mean at the very least – like you always say – it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just a fact.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: The people that are being raised or whatever are collateral on loans –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – that the Chinese are making to the United States, and the United States to make [?]. I mean, every time they say, “we’re going to run a trillion dollar deficit”, the reason that people will pay a trillion dollars is because there are
children that are not born yet that are going to be expected to – in 30 years – be contributing back to the person who issues the loan.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: So I guess in an essence, we are batteries – at least to that degree – in the system.
Kevin: Well, and the irony to stuff like that is when you start looking at some of our subsidies and actually putting real numbers and dollars and cents with things again for example, the only reason that the Volts and similar cars are affordable of course, is because of the tremendous subsidy that goes with them. Now I don’t have any problem with electric cars. Actually I’m in favor of them, and et cetera, et cetera, but when you speak about economics in terms of the system and us being cultivated as fields of whatever, there’s this argument to be made as far as who’s actually benefitting from all these things, and I think they see that they’re doing a noble service for the world, and what I see is somebody who makes a very hefty paycheck by any comparative level in this country.
I fail to see how you should be entitled to tax subsidies for your vehicle because somebody’s paying for that, and of course in his mind again, like, “this is for the greater good.” But my argument to it would be to say, “Well if that’s for the greater good, you’ve got $20,000 in subsidies for that thing.” With $20,000 in tax subsidies, you could go to probably – I’m going to guess 30 or 40 houses in a lower income area, completely seal them in – weather seal them, put in brand new insulation – do everything, which [?] effect is going to be probably far greater than anything your car is ever going to do, and it actually helps people who don’t have the money to pay for those excessive utility bills, right?
It just becomes this very contradictory sort of world very quickly because people have that mindset are convinced of course that they do know what’s best for everybody else – they’re part of the good side of the system, and everybody else is in some metaphor or another on the evil side of it. You can’t control the whole system, and I think the people think that you can –
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: – as well.
Jad: That’s actually the interesting thing you always talk about – which I think is true – that engineers and – well engineer types, software people – tend to be libertarian because of their analytical skills.
Kevin: I think so, yeah.
Jad: On the flipside – and I think that is the majority – but when you engineer simple systems, the desire to expand that out and be like, “well, we can engineer everything.” It’s kind of the you know, the early progressive movement like after the industrial revolution where it’s like there’s all these people building these amazing systems for manufacturing processes or whatever, and it’s just like if we can scientifically predict how much coal it’s going to take to generate how much boiling water to create, how much energy to create, how many sweaters you know or whatever, we should be able to scientifically manage everything.
I think that’s the foundation of like the Soviet State. I think it was just based on this belief that if we just have enough smart people sit down and write enough equations, we’ll figure out how many shoelace everyone needs, and how many – and everything will be perfect, and there will be no waste, everything will be efficient, and be fair. And I really – I think that’s where that progressive movement comes from, and I think it’s where it has its roots.
Kevin: That’s about all we had time for this week. As always, thank you so very much for listening, and we hope you enjoyed the content. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we do have a website up at JKPod.com. If you have any topics you’d be interested hearing us cover, please do let us know. And if you’d like to reach either of us directly, please visit one of our websites – either Jad-Davis.com – that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, or KevinLudlow.com – K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thank you so much again, and we’ll be back next week.
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Oscar Romero was assassinated on 24 March 1980
In this episode we explore how human beings respond to authority. Since the philosophical ideals of libertarianism sit exactly opposite those of authoritarianism, Jad and I are essentially always focused on this topic. I think that made it all the more enjoyable to discuss.
We’re going to be looking at how most people are taught from an early age to blindly obey authority, and how that affects their ability to resist obvious injustices later in life. We’ll consider topics like minority subjugation, American slavery, the Jews in Nazi germany, and how upbringing, education, and religion all play a hand in these. We’ll also acknowledge that when you defy authority, somebody is probably going to try and fuck you up. But if people are unable or unwilling to stand up against such aggression, how do things change?
Clips sampled
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Kevin: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of our show. While we have yet to name this verbal venture, we have set up a website at JKPod.com, where you can find all of our episodes, show notes, and references. We’d certainly love for you to stop by and leave us your comments. As we continue flying in all directions around the human experience, the central themes of our show will remain those of humanity, liberty, and the pursuit of equality for all. In this episode, we explore how human beings respond to authority.
Since the philosophical ideals of libertarianism sit exactly opposite those of authoritarianism, Jad and I are essentially always focused on this topic. I think that made the conversation all the more enjoyable.
Jad: It makes sense that people are blind to the abuse of authority because they’ve spent a lifetime at the hands of authority that’s been blindly abusing them.
Kevin: So we’re going to be looking at how most people are taught from an early age to blindly obey authority, and how that affects their ability to resist obvious injustices later in their life. We’ll consider topics like minority subjugation, American slavery, the Jews and Nazi Germany, and how upbringing, education, and religion all play a hand in these. We’ll also acknowledge that when you defy authority, somebody is probably going to try and fuck you up. But if people are unable or unwilling to stand up against such aggression, how do things ever change?
We’ll be hearing a lot form the co-creator of the show, Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow – welcome to our show.
Jad: To stay sane as a human being, you have to believe that your parents are good you know, and you have to you know, believe that your 12 years you spent sitting in a chair like, filling out dittos was not a prison sentence handed down from your enemy, but was rather some attempt to give you some gift. And of course, God is you know, a great guy, so He’s going to you know – anything He does, anything that can be ascribed to Him has got to be good – even if it’s to do with genocide, and whatever else.
So you have to make this make sense. You have to weave the story together where this makes sense. And the only way to do that is to have some premises[?] like, there are certain people that are absolutely good, or whatever they’re doing is for the best –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and you just have to do it. And if you don’t do it, then whatever the fuck they do to you – no matter how awful – is totally just. And that’s – everything most people bump into in their entire lives has that message in it. And so it’s not a real shock that at some point, they’re just not able to grasp the fact that they deserve a lot better as a human being than what all of these institutions are handing out to them.
Kevin: Yeah, I guess you’re right. I mean, I think you and I, and John spoke about this once at lunch, and we were talking about when somebody tells you to do something, how difficult it is in reality to actually stand up to that. And it sounds very trivial I think specifically, I was about to go somewhere and we were talking about the TSA, and I know lots of people who talk a big talk about what they’re going to say to the TSA and what they’re going to do when this happens, or when they get pulled over by a police officer, what they’re going to say to make sure that there’s a charge levied against them before they are complicit with anything.
However, in reality that’s not what happens because it’s a whole different world when you’re standing there being subjugated, I guess – or just condescended, or talked down to, or abused in some sort of a manner. It’s a lot harder to stand up for yourself when you’re in that position, and there’s a person of authority either physically or metaphorically standing over you.
Jad: Right, absolutely. Sure. And I think that’s the same thing as trained, right?
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: I mean like, just imagine that you have a natural instinct to stand up for yourself or whatever, and you’re 4 years old or whatever and you’re dad – not necessarily your dad, but a typical dad anywhere on the planet throughout all of history says, “go do X”, and you say, “no, fuck you”. I mean, you’re not going to survive that encounter.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: You know? I mean, it’s a classic government thing, right? It escalates slowly you know? You get a stern warning, and then you might get pushed around a little bit. You know, if you fight back, eventually you’re going to be harmed.
Kevin: Absolutely.
Jad: And so when step 1 happens – which is you know, somebody who everyone around you imagines is your boss, is in charge of you, or has authority over you – tells you to do something, you’re already walking down that road. And even thinking about disobeying is going to make you sweat.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But just because that is the soup we swim in you know, everything is backed by violence.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Everything to do with the state – and sometimes with our families – were conditioned for that. Everyone is just reflexibly conditioned to that. It’s very rare, I think, to be an anti-authoritarian naturally, genuinely. I mean, we were talking about in that same conversation how you know – well for me anyway – it’s just something I’ve even tried to do within the last 5 or 6 years, and it still is terrifying every time.
Kevin: Sure. Oh you feel it, you get anxiety you know, your heart starts palpitating – it’s absolutely. I want to meet the guy who’s just calm as calmness could be and goes through that situation. You know, I’ve been getting better and better at it, and I do practice – but it’s a conscious effort. And then there’s another side – in my neighborhood anyways – there’s definitely just thugs walking around, quite frankly, and I’m always interested to know how they would feel when they’re dealing with positions of authority. You know, it’s a completely opposite point of view.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: And I’m just interested in that.
Jad: Yeah, it is interesting. I think you know, the position again, that you and I, and others have come to from being you know, at least in the same broad social category as the people who hold power, and the people who are police and all that. I think what we’re sort of inculcated with is that the institutions are good. That also adds to it, but when a police officer says you know, “I’m just trying to keep traffic safe, and so I need you to do XYZ”, the idea that we have is that this is a man trying to do something good in the social setting – man or woman – trying to do something good in the social setting, so we should do it because we want to help him do the good things. And even though at the TSA – which [?] ridiculous if you get down to it and you’d be like, “well, he’s trying to keep us safe from terrorism”, so you know, you’re just holding up the line, you’re just causing trouble for everyone, and what they’re trying to do is a good thing and so you should just help out and cooperate.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: I think our African American and Latino friends have a much clearer picture of what these agencies are for and what they’re doing, and I think they understand very clearly that they’re not helpful. That they’re not out there trying to do good, and that that’s not a virtue to obey them – at all. And I think in many respects, it’s just a far clear picture of what those cops and government workers, and social services, and all these things – what they really are.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: In many respects, they have a much clearer view of what government is than the middle class white population.
Kevin: Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I mean, the other side of it is considering what one has to lose. With respect to a job for example, a job is a great one because most people – in fact most people that I know – are really indebted to whatever their job is, and they’re scared of their job. They don’t want to lose it – I mean at all – and they feel it would be like, the most devastating thing that could possibly happen.
And so no matter how many irrational things they’re told to do, no matter how much it is against whatever social contract they’ve established with their employer, they’re still going to do it because it’s a fear based culture. And I don’t buy that, you know? I’m going to do the very best I can and if it’s not good enough for somebody, then that’s it – I just leave. I mean, there’s – I’m not going to let them be in a position to think that they’ve got something over me –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – at any point. There’s nothing that they could say to me, whether they’re like, “well, if you don’t do this, you’re fired”. Well then fire me – and I have no fear of that whatsoever. But I also recognize that very few people are like that because obviously, there’s a socioeconomic standing that tends to go with you know, the minority populations. And if I didn’t have anything, then what are you going to do you know – put a lien on my government assisted house? I mean –
Jad: Right. Right.
Kevin: So – and I don’t know if that factors in or not, but –
Jad: I guess it could very well – just the position of like, I’m just going to refuse to surrender to your authority, and like you said, you’ve got nothing to steal from me. The most you can do is put me in a cage and you’re probably going to do that anyway at some point. So fuck you, I don’t know.
Kevin: You in particular are probably one of the better examples of people that I know who are actually willing to stand up – at least in verbiage –
Jad: Important difference.
Kevin: Right. But that is the important difference, right?
Jad: Sure. Sure, yeah.
Kevin: But for things that you genuinely believe in, and those things are, I think, good in every respect for humanity, right? How far can you actually take that? If somebody says, “well, here’s the deal, either you step in line or you’re going to prison for the next 6 months”, is that enough for you to fight your case? If they say, “okay, well fine. You either step in line, or you’re going to jail for the next 30 years” –
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: And the threat of that, I think, really puts people into line and it makes people do things that they would otherwise obviously never do because you’re being – you’re at the barrel of a gun.
Jad: Well, I think that’s the crux of the whole thing right, because I don’t see how you can have morality when you’re under duress like that – morality goes out the window. You’re not making free choices.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: But I – and I think that the important distinction that all that draws out is that the only place you make moral choices is outside of the realm of government, and the only people that are allowed to wave guns around and force you to do that is this one group of people that calls themselves the state.
Kevin: It’s interesting though, because [?] if you extrapolate the context that you just said right, like I’m actually certainly happy to agree with you on it. If you have a gun to your head and you make a decision, are you really the one making the decision. Is it fair to say that you have some sort of moral obligation whilst under duress – and I think even legally speaking – you don’t, right? Like if you were to commit a crime whilst under duress, you’re actually – you’re in no way responsible for that, as they’ve proven many times.
Jad: Yeah, no, that makes sense, yeah.
Kevin: I mean, if you’re driving the getaway car but it’s only because somebody’s got a gun to your head, you’re not actually the getaway driver, right? You’re just doing what you’re forced to do. On the other hand though, if everybody has the gun to their head, how does the society ever change? Doesn’t somebody have to stand up and –
Jad: Get shot.
Kevin: – and either get shot, but get shot trying to grab the gun I guess, so to speak.
Jad: Right. Right. Well no, there’s a lot of interesting metaphors in there. The thing is I think it’s important to keep the analogies where they belong. Like you know, paying your taxes, there’s a literal gun to your head. Like, there’s an actually – you will actually be shot to death if you don’t pay taxes, and then when they come to take you away, you refuse to go with them – you’re not going to live. So any analogy that says you know, there’s a metaphorical gun to your head with X, Y, or Z, it’s really – it really is a different situation, you know what I mean?
Kevin: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Jad: And actually, there’s a really good – I think it’s pronounced [?] – he’s a French author who wrote this saying in like the 1500s – around the same time as Machiavelli was writing the prince – and it’s the first person who basically is like, there’s one prince, or one king with his 5 chancellors, and each of those chancellors has like 100 retainers, and each of those 100 retainers has like, 100 bended[?] arms, and so there’s like 8,000 guys that are ruling a few hundred thousand French people or whatever.
It’s like, we’re all on the same side, we could easily take them – there’s no problem at all. But instead, we worship them and bow to them, and do whatever they tell us. All we would have to do is like walk in there and take their guns, and they couldn’t stop anything. It’s the same argument with slavery like, it’s the slaves in the American south, outnumbered you know, the whites like you know, 30 to 40 to 1.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And so the question is why is that? Why is it possible that that kind of power dynamic can exist?
Kevin: The thing that actually pops into my head is all of the you know, the Holocaust movies I’ve watched – I forget the one in particular that does this, I think it’s The Pianist actually – but you know, they get all these old guys, they put them on the ground, and I think – there must be 7 of them – and the Nazi over them has a six shooter and he just goes to the first guy, shoots him in the back of the head.
Goes to the next one you know, a second later, shoots him in the back of the head. And he gets to the 7th guy and of course, he’s out of shots. So he just stands there and he’s just casually reloading his weapon, and meanwhile the other guy’s on his knees just waiting for it – he has to know it’s coming you know – he obviously does – God knows – easier said than done. But I always watch that, and it’s such a metaphor that puzzles me as to why doesn’t everybody stand up and rush the gone.
Maybe you’re going to die, but you know you’re going to get shot in the back of the head a second later. I think the simple answer is that you’ve got a hope – I think everybody has the hope that the good thing is going to happen – that somehow you’re just going to survive it that good is going to triumph over evil.
Jad: I think again – and this is the Jew and Europe example I think – is really pretty perfect, I mean it’s about as good as the slavery example. You’re talking about people from the instant their parents can tell them anything, it’s do whatever you’re told to do by this group that we’re living with, because we are – not even necessarily, we really are sub – you know, a sub-class of citizens. But they believe we are, and if you challenge that you’re going to suffer at their hands. So there’s this inculcated obedience to that authority that I think is just – like you said or like you’re saying in those instances – it’s just impossible to overcome. So I was just reading something today, and someone was actually writing about why good men do nothing sort of thing –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and then [?] were saying another example – one that I hadn’t heard before is that when they were liquidating the ghettos, the people would like, have their luggage packed and their clothes on like not that they were trying to escape, they just wanted to be ready to go when it was their turn to get loaded onto the trains. It’s just got to be super deeply engrained that you know, you are to do what you’re told and if you do what you’re told well enough you know, it is going to be a reward beyond this life maybe you know, if you obey the rulers and your being good, you’re fulfilling the requirement for you know, for some reward later, or because the leaders are good, you will be treated justly.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Even if you know somewhere else in your head that people are being killed wholesale. You can keep both those things in your head, I think it’s just a tremendous trick of conditioning.
Kevin: Yeah, the Jewish thing probably is a really good example. But I mean there it’s pretty much all upbringing then, right? I mean it’s just –
Jad: Sure. Sure. Well that’s –
Kevin: [?] cycle thing.
Jad: It’s always hard – the nature nurture thing is always tricky, but you were saying you know, your dad is a business man so he taught you to sort of thing and be mentally agile, and seek your own self-interest, and express your desires and not suppress them, right? So if there was 500 of you in a room, and some guy walked in with a pistol and was like, “I’m going to line you up and shoot you one by one”, that guy wouldn’t have a chance, right?
Kevin: Right. Right.
Jad: And so I think it is just all about upbringing I mean, I think that’s why I’m really interested in education and stuff because I think the purpose of the American school system is to make you docile and obedient. And along the way you might learn to count and read – maybe. But in any case, you’re going to learn to obey, and learn that if you don’t obey, you’re going to be punishes, and that’s good – that’s how everything has to work.
That’s why I think things like school, and the other thing I’m always reading about is religion because I think it’s just – that’s the purpose of religion is to break you into this idea that there’s arbitrary power that just does awful things – but it’s really, really good, you just don’t understand it because it’s too complex for you.
Kevin: Well, I mean, absolutely. You’ve seen – I assume the Zeitgeist movies, or at least the first one?
Jad: Yeah, yeah, I saw the Zeitgeist movie.
Kevin: Right. So I mean, that’s basically the point that he makes in it right? I mean that’s – that’s the structure of his entire narrative is that he starts off with a religion, shows how all religions are pretty much the same from their pieces and then metaphorically speaking, and then it goes on to more or less say that if you can be convinced to believe this without questioning it, then of course you can go on to believe this amiss without ever questioning it as well.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: You know, and I think it’s a really strong point whether you’re a religious person or not, I think you – I think you should be objective enough to be able to admit that to yourself.
Jad: Well, there are religious out wires – it’s really interesting. There’s a guy I actually follow on Facebook that I you know, end up sniping at every now and then. He’s a very, very nice guy and he’s just like – he’s a minister somewhere in Austin. I really can’t figure out what he believes other than like, you should be good, and we should have community. It seems like everything else, he’s like, “this is just crazy superstition to believe in prayer”, or whatever and I’m like, “really? Prayer? I thought that was kind of a fundamental thing.”
I had a totally different sort of thing, but like the Jesuits or whatever, there are instances in which somehow a group of people get the idea that God is against whatever the ruling class is, and then you end up with you know, seditious priests that are teaching peasants to read or something like that you know? Like Central America in the 1980’s you know where they actually ended up killing an archbishop because he was trying to incite a peasant rebellion, essentially. Oscar Romero –
Kevin: Yeah, Oscar Romero from El Salvador.
Jad: Yeah. Point being, it can be a revolutionary or radical force, but it’s just – it’s exceedingly rare, it’s almost always a reactionary you know, conservative force that tells you to accept your fate, to obey the laws, obey the rulers, you know? Or even more so, don’t even worry about the material world – this is all just a waste of time.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And you know, you should not even be thinking about what happens here at all, just focus on the future, you know? Focus on the part after you die, which is just a brilliant and patently[?] absurd, but brilliant tactic to keep people docile.
Kevin: I just – I feel like I’m part of the Matrix sometimes when I just look at everybody else and I’m like, “how is it that you clearly do not see what is going on here?” Regardless of your faith or your creator, or your level of poverty, or whatever the case may be, how can you not see some of the writing on the wall here? How your own government, how the state – whatever the state is – all around the world, it’s just built to subjugate its own people, and again, I guess a lot of it does come down to religion, and a lot of it comes down to the upbringing and it’s just – it’s blinding to me sometimes.
Well, unfortunately that’s all the time we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening, and we truly hope you enjoyed the content. We will pick back up with the other side of this episode soon and talk about education. I mentioned at the beginning of the show that we do have a website up at JKPod.com. If you’d like to reach either of us directly, visit our websites at either Jad Davis – that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, or Kevin Ludlow – K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thanks again, and we hope you’ll tune in next week for another episode.
]]>Human beings respond to incentives. It doesn’t matter how many good people there are, if there is an opportunity for taking advantage of people, the good people will generally shun such an opportunity and the bad people will trample each other trying to get it.
Government is a way to take advantage of others. Some individuals get to spend other people’s money to impose their ideas on everyone with force. This will attract the worst elements of society, who will crowd out and make these positions unavailable to the good folks. They will make the process so disgusting . . . that good people will not be able to endure the odious path required to reach the seats of power.” — Tom de Lorenzo New World Rising
In this episode we explore another of Kevin’s very reasonable idea with an eye-catching cover (how many of these does he have?): Everyone is Evil.
Coming soon (need to find it again :p )
Jad: Hello, and welcome to another episode of this yet unnamed enterprise. We do have a named website now – JKPod.com – where you can find all the episodes we’ve released thus far, as well as show notes and references. We’re still in our initial and developmental phase of the show. While we find our bearings, we’ll probably bounce around freely and haphazardly among our mutual interests with a reasonably consistent focus on the grand ideas of liberty, human unity, and equality.
Every time we sit down to record, I’m struck by the many topics we have to leave behind. I assume as time goes to infinity, we’ll get around to covering everything. In the meantime, it hurts to watch the really juicy but only tangentially related topics zip by. For example, a couple weeks ago, Kevin mentioned that:
Kevin: “I think all people are inherently evil myself – I’ve made the point many times.”
I knew immediately that it was a conversation that we needed to have.
Jad: “Well that’s a conversation we need to have at some point for sure.”
Kevin: “Absolutely, I’d love to. Yeah, I’ve got a whole super-theory on that one.”
Jad: In today’s episode, we examine that super theory – which struck me as an odd position to hold for a libertarian. Usually, the people are evil [?] has trotted out by proponents of the state managed society. The idea being that without the careful surveillance and consistent armed intervention of the government, the citizenry would descend into a Hobbesian war of all against all. So we sat down to explore Kevin’s “Everyone is Evil” theory.
Kevin: Everyone is evil. Well, it’s not a particularly complicated philosophy, and I think at the heart of it you would probably agree with the tenants[?] of it. But it’s also something that I think very few people probably can get on board with. Very few people can probably agree with it. It’s not an indictment on any one person, it’s just that given the opportunity to do something, I believe that we’re just programmed to – evil is a very subjective word – but to do whatever is the less moral route is generally speaking the way that human beings are going to go – again, presented with the case.
Jad: What’s the end of the evil spectrum for you? Do you think someone would you know, only not do because they’re under some sort of social scrutiny?
Kevin: Let’s just use things like evil is greedy, or selfish, or arrogance, or egotistical, or in any normal societal construct, if somebody were excessively greedy we would probably see that as a negative thing. Mitt Romney right now for example – with this whole tax situation – people look at him and they say, “He’s greedy”. It’s a negative indictment against who he is. Evil in all these sorts of senses I kind of encompass under the same branch, but it’s just a – it’s a negative – I guess more appropriately – it’s a negative moral outlook from other people looking in –
Jad: Okay.
Kevin: – is perhaps a better way to say it. The level – I think – also fluctuates, and so you said – I think you asked a second ago – what is the level at which somebody would be willing to – rephrase your question for me.
Jad: Actually, I think you kind of answered the question, but I’ll rephrase it and then we can go from there. But I was wondering – you were talking about people being greedy, or you were talking about you know, someone killing someone in cold blood evil, you know? So there’s like a spectrum of evil you can imagine that you know, stealing toothpaste or something from a pharmacy is on one end, and you know, and genocide is on the other end.
Kevin: Absolutely.
Jad: So what I was wondering is when you were saying everyone was evil, were you saying everyone was capable, or in their heart was ready to commit you know, murder if they go the chance, or everyone was willing to you know, take a little bit more than perhaps their fair share if given the chance.
Kevin: Not necessarily if they got the chance, but if they were – if their back was against the wall. With the right provocation, I think anybody is capable ofthe most heinous form of evil, but we don’t want to admit that and that’s kind of my all encompassing evil philosophy – is that given the right set of circumstances, I don’t believe that there’s anything on this planet – I mean, as all heinous as you could imagine – that you couldn’t possibly do. It’s just that it’s just that it’s difficult to philosophize about them because in all reality, those set of circumstances are never going to come about in your life – or certainly hopefully not.
Jad: I would guess I would question if it really comes down to that set of circumstances and I’ll ask you about that in a second here, but is it still considered evil? I mean, is the action evil if it’s required by mere reality. Give me an example of a situation that you would put me in that I would be willing to commit evil.
Kevin: Say that your wife was in desperate need of some sort of organ transplant, and you had an opportunity – now I don't know how this opportunity arose – but you had an opportunity to directly intervene in accelerating the death of somebody else, or harvesting the organ somehow or another from somebody else who otherwise very well may have lived. You would be in this situation where you would intervene in your own favor. You would act in a selfish and greedy manner – or you certainly would think about it – for the sake of saving your wife’s life at the cost of somebody else’s own fate who didn’t need to meet that fate otherwise.
Jad: This idea began to remind me of something…
Right, right. Well, have you ever seen the – there’s a movie – I’d never seen it – but the premise is like someone shows up with a button.
Movie Quote: If you push the button, 2 things will happen. First, someone somewhere in the world whom you don’t know will die. Second, you will receive a payment of $1million dollars.”
And like, you can press the button and get one wish or get whatever you want. You know, say to save your dying spouse who needs a kidney transplant. But somewhere someone’s going to die – an innocent person is going to die you know? So that –
Kevin: I’ve seen the trailer.
Jad: So you can abstract it out to that, right? What’s the point at which someone’s going to press that button, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Your point is – I guess – that everyone has something – or are you saying everyone, like, even Mother Teresa would press the button?
Kevin: Poor Mother Teresa. Yeah, I think so. I think that – I think that every single person has some level where they would press the button and now that level varies drastically from person to person.
Interlude: If you push this button, 2 things will happen. One, someone somewhere in the world who you don’t know will die.
– Okay.
And two – you just – you just pushed the button. You just – you didn’t let me finish.
– Yeah, [?].
Someone somewhere in the world will die –
– Got it.
Don’t hit it again, that’s the second – no, just let me finish. But you’ll get a million dollars.
– Oh.
Yeah.
– Okay.
Great. That’s great. Yeah, you just hit it 3 times. You killed 3 people.
Kevin: You know, if you look at a murderer versus if you look at say a – a Mother Teresa.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Presumably that line is very far apart, but somewhere I do believe that it exists, yes.
Jad: Given the groundwork now, we kind of have a baseline of what you’re talking about here. We have a test where everyone’s going to press that button at some point. Does it grow out from there? The quote you had last time was that this was a good thing, and by this definition that everyone was evil was fine, it just – things had to be structured appropriately to leverage that fact or is it along those lines?
Meta narrator here.
I neglected to include this part of the quote. Here’s what Kevin actually said:
Kevin: But I don’t see it as a bad thing necessarily, I think it just needs to be harnessed in such a way.
Kevin: I think that the reason I came up with the – or I started thinking about the “Everyone is Evil” philosophy is not because we need to structure things in a certain way, but rather because things are already structured in a certain way, and I believe that it’s the inherence – it sounds a little silly like this – but it’s the inherent evilness that has kind of driven us to structure things in that manner.
What I mean is I guess the secondary point of it to the question you just asked is that people don’t want to admit, or they don’t want to acknowledge or even consider the fact that other people are evil, or other people are greedy, or other people are acting in their own self interest. And that I believe is kind of the super philosophy that ties it together and creates pretty much all of the problems that we have in a free society.
Jad: I see. So you’re saying we can trust the generals, and the heads of security, and the presidents, and congressional people to do the best thing for us because there are good people who have our best interest at heart sort of thing, or –
Kevin: Technically just the opposite. The people want to believe that. The people want to believe that President Obama, President Bush, President Romney – whomever – they want to believe that they are acting in the best interest of them – of the population – of the general good. But again going back to that philosophy, I believe that there’s too many interests acting on the behalf of those people for them to actually be able to act good – if that makes any sense.
Jad: Sure. Absolutely.
Kevin: There’s too many things presented to them that allow them to do something that us as normal people would never be able to conceptualize doing. So we sit here in these chairs and we say, “well, if I were in the President’s shoes, I would do A, B, and C”, and these things are – they’re good for people. You would help people, you would you know, try to foster the world to a better direction. However, put in the position of essentially absolute power – which is really what the president of our country has – put into that position of absolute power and you know, all sorts of monetary gifts, and all sorts of connections for your life, for your children, for your family – I mean they live the same lives that we do, and they’re considering their children’s lives, and their wives, and their parents’ lives just as much as anybody else is.
And I think that there’s just too many things acting against them for them to actually be able to act in a selfless type of interest, and because people are unwilling to admit that to themselves, it’s to all of our detriment.
Jad: Hmm. I totally agree with you. And you could go on for days about the incentive structure placed on those people that are in office. I always think about the fact that you know, the next day after you’re sworn in, you wake up and you basically owe a half a billion dollars to bankers, finance, and mineralites[?] – people in –
Kevin: That’s a good way to say that.
Jad: Yeah, and you’ve gotta get – to get working, you’ve got 4 years essentially to clear half a billion dollars of owing stuff and you don’t owe shit to anybody else.
Kevin: Yeah. My $25 donation is not really what took him over the top.
Jad: Exactly. So but there is an interesting – I think there is a flip side to this which is you have to have the belief in evil people, but they’re almost as cartoonish as the good people, right? I mean you have to have you know, inner city, urban youth that are just laying in wait to terrorize you and steal your hubcaps or whatever. Or Al Qaeda just waiting for you to go to sleep so they can you know, fly a plane into your house or something. Like, you have to have the same sort of cartoonish evil that the cartoonish good people are protecting your from, right?
Kevin: We have this need to put people in kind of the good versus evil category. You’re absolutely right, and I think that again it comes back to a very subjective interpretation of what evil is, and I think that’s really where perhaps more fringed ideals that maybe you and I share happen to develop because perhaps people like you and I and many people like us, we look at evil as being a slightly different thing. We look at our country as putting, say trade restrictions on – or putting restrictions on a country like Cuba. That to me strikes me as evil for a number of reasons, but you’re right, the majority of the United States sees that as we’re the good force in that, and they’re the evil force in that and I think that’s necessary just for humanity to exist – but I strongly disagree with its existence.
Jad: That’s very interesting. So you disagree hardily with the thing that we need to exist?
Kevin: Yes. I mean, I think it’s not that we need it to exist, it’s that given our current levels of education and adaptation to one another, and just our ability to function as a collective society, that’s I think an atypical and an expected byproduct of our particular system. So it’s not necessarily that we need it to exist, but so long as we are the way we are, it’s always going to exist and as much as I hate that, I just accept that that’s how it is because it would drive me crazy to have to worry about it every day.
Jad: Well we’ve gotten to the root of the engage in vote, versus just engage and go for the utopian society, I think.
Kevin: Sure.
Jad: So the thing I think is interesting – and this is not an original point by the – none of them really are – but let’s lay out your spectrum of evil. You know, you’ve got your button pushers that’ll push the button just to kill someone for fun, all the way to somebody who if it’s the end of the world versus killing someone, they’re still hesitant, you know?
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Moral dilemma. And you look at the position – well you look at the responsibilities that a political leader has. The responsibility is to occasionally kill strangers who have done nothing in order to fulfill the agendas of the people that you owe $500 million dollars to starting the first day of your presidency or whatever it may be – term in office. Who’s going to even fill the prerequisites for that job? Who’s going to be able to work their way up to having that position on a national scale?
It’s going to be somebody who is more likely to press the button to get what they need at the expense of random strangers. It’s less likely to be someone who is careful and considerate, and you know, and is – let’s say good by your metric -they are considerate of the needs of others and not so willing to run in and just cause mayhem in order to establish something that they personally need or want.
Kevin: Absolutely, which to some degree takes me full circle – people are not capable of seeing everyone else as evil because I think that’s one of the big problems that we have. Let’s say the United States is acting against Iran, or Syria, or whatever the country may be – I don’t believe that the President is necessarily acting in the interest of good and humanity. I think there’s all sorts of alternative influences that are acting on him, and yet the majority of the people in the United States – I would gather anyways – are – I don’t even know if they’re blind to it, I think they’re forcibly blind to it. I think they don’t want to see the truth in that.
They don’t want to see that, “well, maybe the United States and the leaders therein are not necessarily acting in a good and wholehearted manner. Maybe they are acting with “evil” type intentions, that’s really why I use the philosophy I guess because I have such a hard time looking at how the you know, how the country – how power structures work otherwise in our country or really any country, it doesn’t really matter.
Actually I’ll give you a real practical example of the “Everyone is Evil” argument – several months ago we were talking about the healthcare law – or the health insurance laws that like to make the distinction of – and one of the things that I’ve written extensively about is with respect to what a business is, and you know my thoughts on this, but I’m adamantly opposed to the health – well the healthcare bill – namely because it’s just a health insurance bill. All it does is legally empower the insurance companies of the United States to collect from individuals at penalty of law and I have a huge problem with that. And the thing that bothers me is that people are not able to look at businesses for what they are, and this takes it to a very utilitarian type of purpose.
But the purpose of a business at all costs is to make money. That’s the sole thing that a business as a system is tasked with doing. So no matter what you do, no matter what law you pass, if you involve the business at the end of it, you have to understand that the one thing that that business is still trying to do is to collect money from you – is to make more money than it’s costing them to provide that service – that’s their only goal. And so in this case, that’s what I try to point out to people is to say I’m not saying that companies can’t act altruistically – they certainly can – but at the end of the day, that’s not their goal.
And so that’s where I kind of get into the whole consumerism thing and kind of the evil effect where I say that their goal is to take as much money from you as you can, your goal as the consumer is to try to protect as much of that money as you possibly can. And somewhere in the middle exists the balance of a market and the problem that I have is that the powers that be in the government are destroying that market because they are singlehandedly decreeing basically where that line in the sand is. And it’s moving closer, and closer, and closer to the benefit of the businesses.
Jad: When you are putting forth your “people are evil”, it’s almost like a caveat emptor to everybody that it’s not a bunch of super-nice people out there, the insurance industry working together with the super-nice people and the government to make sure that everyone purchases something that they really, really need – it’s businesses paying the state to make laws to force people to buy stuff in the business.
Kevin: Absolutely. And so then tying it full circle, if you – Jad Davis – all of a sudden inherited the CEO’S position of a major insurance company in this country and you were told, “Look, you, your children, your wife – everybody that you’ll know for generations – you’re going to have the best life. You’ll be able to do whatever you want, provided that you kind of fall in line”, I think that under those set of circumstances, you probably would be much more likely to fall in line and that’s kind of where I get the whole – it’s not an indictment, it’s not a negative thing about people. It’s not a negative thing in this case – fictitious example about you.
It’s nothing bad about you, I think everybody would inherently do that. It’s just that very, very, very few people are ever going to find themselves in a real position to have to make that decision and that’s why it’s so easy for us to say, “Well, I would never do that.” But I think the second somebody says, “look, here’s a bag of $100 million dollars, this is all you’ve gotta do”, and they pour it on the ground and say, “I’m going to leave, you better do this”, I have a feeling that you might do it.
Jad: That’s sort of the anarchist position I think, is you have to accept that people are going to do those things and any one of us – in a position where we can you know, rationalize the costs and we can reap massive rewards on ourselves – are likely to do it or at least almost everyone is likely to do it. So you just can’t have that job – that job can’t exist. If there’s a job that where you can press a button and kill 10,000 Iraqi’s and you get you know – you get to be elected to the next notarial[?] campaign or whatever – that position can’t exist because there is somebody out there who will do that job.
Kevin: Well – and this is actually why I think – going back to your earlier question – why the larger world of good versus evil still exists. If we don’t have that good versus evil divide then we become – we have to become more introspective and we have to start looking at these problems that I’m talking about and the actual good versus evil. We need to start saying, “Well wait a second, why is this company acting on behalf of this company”, you know? “That’s not for the benefit of anybody else”, but instead our attention is diverted to say, “Well, yeah, we need companies like Haliburton to do what they do because there’s people coming to kill us.”
So yeah, at the end of the day maybe they take a little bit off the top, but the downside is that if they don’t do that well, look at this problem, and I think that’s the way that the modern political sense has really diverted the attention of the American people and I think that’s exactly the conversation point that you and I have all the time is to say don’t look at the United States for having bombed the Middle East for 30 years, look at the fact that we were attached once in that period. I think that’s an unfortunate result of exactly what I’m talking about. And just as a conclusion to the whole thing I would say that the underlying basis of the theory is not to – it’s not to make any type of indictment against any one person.
It’s not to – it’s not even to look at people in a bad light, or to take a pessimistic view of humanity – it really isn’t. At some point in history I think there probably was a better understanding of this. There was a better grasp that people needed to be watchful of the government at all times, but that’s completely gone away. But I think that we’re starting to see somewhat of a resurgence of that, and I think if we’re going to be successful in that resurgence, then we need to be aware of the fact that you know, to use law and absolute power corrupts – absolutely – and that’s really what my philosophy of “Everyone is Evil” is about.
Jad: Very nice. I think it’s a shocking line that is at the front of an entirely reasonable educational theory, so thanks for sharing.
Kevin: Well thanks man, I appreciate you asking the questions.
Jad: As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, Kevin’s statement intrigued me because the “people are evil” line is usually used as a pro-police[?], pro-regulation, pro-government position. It turns out that Kevin’s theory is an anticipation of the argument that a government and a well heeled[?] state corporate structure is necessary to reign in the apparent evil lying in the hearts of each and every one of us. The anti-freedom argument of course, ignores the fact that governments and corporations are abstract ideas. In reality, they’re just groups comprised entirely of people, thus if people are evil, then evil would have controlled the mechanisms supposedly intended to protect us from evil – which is kind of what it seems like when one surveys the world around us.
Thanks so much for listening in. Kevin and I are enjoying the hell out of this. We’d also like it if others found the material enlightening, intriguing, entertaining, infuriating, or otherwise engaging. To this end, please send suggestions, questions, comments, or other correspondence to JKPod@JKPod.com. You can also swing by our websites, Jad-Davis.com, or KevinLudlow.com, to see what else we’re working on and secretly communicate to one of us without the other one knowing. Thanks again for listening and until next time. Take care.
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Salman Rushdie
In this episode we’ll be looking at some of the recent turmoil in Libya. As you probably know, the country has been experiencing a number of radical changes since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in October of 2011. Recently a number of Arab nations, including Libya, have been violently protesting a YouTube film that parodies Islam. At the height of those protests came the assassination of Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya. At least, those were the stories being told in the United States. We’ll spend a little time exploring whether it’s terrorism or heroism to defend your own country from United States. And we’ll also consider how the application of the word “terrorism” is being used to invent a narrative for western audiences.
Discussion
Music
Kevin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of our show. In this episode we’ll be looking at some of the recent turmoil in Lybia. As you probably know the country has been experiencing a number of radical changes since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown back in October of 2011. Well, recently a number of Arab nations – including Lybia – have been violently protesting a YouTube film that parody’s Islam.
At the height of those protests came the assassination of Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to the country – at least, those were the stories being told in the United States. We’ll spend a little time exploring whether it’s terrorism or heroism to defend your own country from the United States. And we’ll also consider how the application of the word terrorism is being used to invent a narrative for western audiences.
The co-creator of this show recently published a piece exploring the current Lybian narrative as described by Salman Rushdie, a prominent author who has had a bounty on his head over the past 23 years for allegedly insulting Islam with his book, Satanic Verses. Let’s start with a clip from Salman Rushdie on NPR:
Interviewer: What do you think when you hear about violence in the Muslim world because people perceive that their religion has been insulted?
Salman Rushdie: In the last half century, these cultures seem to have slid backwards into – into medievalism and repression. I think it’s one of the great self-inflicted wounds. And out of that comes the rise of this new, much harsher Islam, come all these phenomena that you’re talking about. The thin skinness, the paranoia, the ease with which violence is engaged in, the readiness to believe that it’s okay to kill people if you declare yourself offended by something. This is the mindset of the fanatic, the mindset of the tyrant, and it’s a real shame that seems to have spread so widely across the Muslim world.
Kevin [reading Jad]:I hesitate to tell someone who grew up in the Muslim world about the recent history of the Muslim world, but anyone who says what Salman Rushdie just said needs perhaps a quick refresher. The quote slide backwards into medievalism wasn’t a “self-inflicted” wound. The people of the Muslim world were dragged into the torture chambers of medievalism by colonial secret police, were herded into medievalism by western armed and supported dictators, and were finally bombed into medievalism by thirty years of relentless aggression from western militaries and their proxies.
Yes, Islam is awful and stupid and can be a rallying point for the hostilities that are boiling over. The same is true for any Abrahamic religion. The idea that some thirteen minute YouTube clip is really actually driving the entire Muslim world in a bat shit, firebombing rage is remarkably stupid. I’m sure Salman Rushdie is not remarkably stupid – he sort of sounds like it in this interview though. Which brings me to point number two – the idea that some thirteen minute YouTube clip is really actually driving the entire Muslim world in a bat shit, firebombing rage is remarkably stupid, and yet that’s the story – at least the headline – nearly universally across all media. Man, those people are crazy.
They’re going nuts over an offensive YouTube clip? Another round of bombing is too good for them. I have actually heard a couple of reports that at least hint at the fact that perhaps, just maybe, daily drone attacks, constant military occupation, and the propping up of a whole chain of awful governments against the will of the population have something to do with the recent violence. Literally, like two, maybe three in a solid week of coverage. Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times makes the convincing case that the Lybia attacks was, “blowback” from the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi – an ally of the United States in the fight against Gaddafi, who was then assassinated. The death was announced on September 11th.
This story, in which cultures are clashing and a mad and unfathomable, “other” is just what is waiting to destroy you and your happiness is bullshit. It’s just a story, completely fabricated by people who would take your money – at gunpoint if necessary – to kill and enslave innocent human beings just like you and your family all around the world. It’s just a story to blind you just like Salman Rushdie is blind. Who can look at a history in the last 50 years and not see that the murderers who need to be held accountable, are the leaders of the western powers.
Don’t believe the stories. Don’t become blind to evil. Let’s leave the stone age relics of religion and rulers that the 0.0001% would have us cling to behind and forge a new path for humanity, a path that most of us have been on this whole time.
Kevin:Those were the words of Jad Davis, I’m Kevin Ludlow and this is our show.
Kevin:So NPR just kind of did this article with him, and that’s really where you kind of just pick things up right?
Jad: Yeah, absolutely. It was just a – and I don’t want to jump straight to the conspiracy theory, but it’s just a fact that there’s a narrative and every time there’s an event that takes place in the Middle East, somebody has to come out and say, or some set of people have to come out and say, there’s no excuse for this sort of violence, they don’t represent Islam, whatever it may be. So I think he was the guy this time you know, it was just a five paragraph thing is all he said in this interview on NPR. You can find that quote anywhere where somebody is condemning – essentially – somebody else across the world for throwing a brick through a window, you know –
Kevin: Right, right.
Jad: When that person is resisting the armed might of the United States military, it just happened to be he was the guy this time around.
Kevin: The only thing that I was a little surprised about, and I actually wrote it down, at the very end of it, he was asked:
Interviewer: You were saying that it says more about the perpetrators of violence than it does about whatever was written that offended them.
And Rushdie says:
Salman Rushdie: Yes, of course, of course it does. I mean, I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It’s very simple – the criminal is responsible for the crime. I mean, it’s quite clear that this YouTube film is a disgraceful shoddy little thing, and it’s – I think – perfectly proper to condemn it and the people who made it. But to murder people who had nothing to do with it because you deem yourself insulted and therefore other peoples blood can randomly be spilled, that’s clearly a deeply uncivilized attitude.
It kind of sounded to me like he actually was condemning the filmmakers too, and I may just be strongly misreading that. “I think it’s perfectly proper to condemn it and the people who made it, but to murder people who had nothing to do with it because you deem yourself insulted and therefore other peoples blood”, blah, blah, blah. So it sounded to me like he makes the distinction to say, look, you shouldn’t go out there and murder people that had nothing to do with this.
Jad: Wow, yeah. You know what, I didn’t even read it that way. It seems like a fair reading.
Kevin: And that really blew my mind because I’m like, wait a second, aren’t you the guy who was under the exact same sort of situation?
Jad: I would be willing to wager that he would take that back or qualify[?] because I highly doubt that he meant that it would be alright to kill the filmmaker – I could be wrong.
Kevin: Right, and that’s what really – it really threw me off because I know enough about his position and then I listened to the line a few times and I was like, I really feel like you should condemn anybody wanting to kill people, not just the people that didn’t have anything to do with the film.
Jad: Yeah man. That is a fine point – I can’t argue with that one bit. Yeah, no, that totally – I totally missed that. I was just going for the straight up – I think it’s kind of an argument you make in the last episode with 911. Just strictly on the numbers, if you’re going to say, who in the world is causing the most harm and mayhem and death at the moment? Is it the people who are upset because of this filmmaker, or is it the people who are occupying – militarily – the country that those other people are in? And it seems to me again, it’s just like, if you’re going to come down and say, “we need to hold people accountable for their actions”, then there are far more culpable criminals in the world. Unfortunately some of them have been sheltering him from lunatic ayatollahs so he may want to keep that opinion to himself. That’s my major take I think.
Kevin: Well, I think the thing is that all Abrahamic texts are essentially the same.
Jad: I totally agree. Yeah, I think that’s my understanding as well.
Kevin: And I don’t think it’s necessarily religion, but rather poverty and ignorance, and oppressive dictatorships that tend to push people towards fundamentalism in the first place.
Jad: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean it think that’s just like, say, the southeastern United States will take their religion very seriously – which doesn’t mean that they adhere to the teachings of the old and new testament – but it does mean that if somebody says that they speak in the name of God or whatever, they can heavily influence the mindset of those people and the political activity of those people. So it’s again to do with the poverty and I think just the systematic disempowering of those categories of people. Religion is one of the bombs I guess, for the soul, and it gives one a feeling of a place in the world where one doesn’t have one, I suppose.
Kevin: Let’s use this as a segway then.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: So, the big thing that’s happened is with respect to the bombing of the embassy. It goes on for a week that the reason he was killed is because of this Islamic video that surfaced. There’s protest all around it. One of them just spawns into him getting killed at this embassy – turns out that this was an actually a well-planned terrorist attack – and I use the word terrorist very loosely in this case. It seems like the Obama administration is finally on the side of saying, “okay, this was a terrorist attack”, and et cetera, et cetera. But I think it ties into this whole thing with Salman Rushdie. I mean is this – do we see this as a – and I don’t want to put you on the spot with this one cause this is a sensitive question –
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: I mean, is there any justifiable action here? Do we call these people terrorists, or are they actually just trying to continue fighting against an oppressor – the United States?
Jad: Well – and that’s the interesting thing, I don’t know the answer. That’s a country in which that diplomat was one of the political adjuncts to the anti-Gaddafi movement right, so he’s an ally with some of them, and I think it just – if anything it underscores the absurd complexity of those kind of political situations and how simplified the view is when it’s presented to us. If you read – I think I link to the Asia Times in there – Asia Times, Al Jazeera or whatever – you can get a feeling for exactly how nuanced that whole process was – the ousting of Gaddafi and the sort of coalition of European powers and NATO powers, and local militia, and foreign Jihadists all kind of, trying to come together for the purpose of taking over the country and then trying to divvy up the country. And that’s a process that’s ongoing, so I think the United States and other western powers are just other gangs along with local Arab gangs, and foreign Arab gangs, and whoever knows who else just – dividing up the bounty from the gang leader they killed.
Kevin: Sure, sure absolutely. I think you and I can probably say that in some cases, people almost deserve to die. Not that we want them to die, but if they’re going to be the ones to trample somebody else’s land and to tell somebody else what to do, then perhaps there’s a consequence that they ultimately need to suffer – or we shouldn’t be surprised when they do suffer it anyway. And in this case, do you think that same mentality holds with the embassy?
Jad: Yeah, I don’t know. So you’re saying essentially that there are times in which aggression is justified or justifiable right, I mean, like if you look back at the case of somebody who’s defending their home against a U.S. soldier that’s kicking down the door or whatever, potentially you could make the argument that even though the U.S. soldier is our guy, that the person defending himself against him was justified in doing so.
Kevin: Not only would I make that argument, I’d make it a big point to make that argument with people because I think that’s one of the things we fail to recognize and that’s again why I have a hard time even using the word terrorism in this case.
Jad: Right, absolutely, and I think we’re in 100% agreement. I think – and again, I’m not saying that this particular guy deserved it or whatever – but I think the situation he was in is he was – he’s a member of a group that was allied with another group, and the United States is at war with parts of that group. So there’s a conflict that he is a pawn in say, but if a slight is detected – and in this case, the theory is that the slight was that the assassination of Muhammad al-Lybi -I think his name is. The point is I think they’re saying there’s something different between gangs putting out hits on each other and working together sometimes and sort of the sacrosanct nature of state to state diplomacy is kind of – I think that clouds the issue – it makes it confusing. Whereas if you take the sanctity of the state structure and the state ambassadorial structure away and say if you have this turmoil of bloodshed and mayhem, then if you put yourself in the middle of it, you might die – it’s not unlikely.
Kevin: Sure, sure. I don’t think it’s necessarily surprising that Christopher Stevens – he was the ambassador – I don’t think it’s necessarily surprising that he was killed. Had it been a military base or had it been whatever – there’s any number of things that it could have been – an embassy – I think – bombings take the opposite side of this, but I feel that embassies are generally welcome in other countries. I mean, it’s something that most modern countries share is this embassy program. So, to attack the United States embassy – whether we’re occupying or not – the embassy didn’t set itself up there. That’s something that the government permitted I assume anyway. So, I don’t know exactly what to take on this one.
Jad: Right, well let me tell a possible tale and you tell me if it falls – if it changes the way you feel about it, and I’m not trying to do so necessarily, but I believe that the embassy and ambassador were established in conjunction with the rebellion against Gaddafi. And I believe it’s the case and again I’m not – I don’t have any facts and I don’t think very many people have any facts, so this is mostly conjecture – but the conjectures that I’ve read – again, the Asia Times and Al Jazeera, are that the ambassador was coordinating with foreign Jihadi’s to arm them – get them what they needed so they could continue to fight – which is entirely reasonable given the fact that he was there to help the people who were there to overthrow Gaddafi.
But then the United States assassinated the Lybian leader of that group when he was back in Pakistan after the conflict, and that group turned around and assassinated the ambassador. Given that telling of the tale, be it true or not, it’s a retaliatory killing because of an assassination of a person that the ambassador had been working with.
Kevin: Okay.
Jad: And, again I have a link to the longer story on the article. Yeah, that’s all of the evidence that I have, which is none. So, it’s just a story, but I’m saying if it’s not the case, if that guy just showed up, got off the plane, went to the embassy, had dinner and then got shot, then that’s not the story, in which case, it’s less reasonable that he’s a victim of the violence.
Kevin: So, that’s the story then that came from the Asia Times?
Jad: Right.
Kevin: That’s the hypothesis, but it’s – as you said to me earlier – it’s backed up by – it’s more than just conjecture. He’s got some facts to tie it together where it sounded pretty reasonable to you if I’m not mistaken.
Jad: Yes, that’s the case. And again in all of these things, it’s a story you know, and it probably has elements of truth, and probably some that aren’t true and it has a point to it the author has an opinion he wants to express. Just like the original story that people were mad about a movie and so they went and killed the ambassador – that had a point. It was trying to make people think a certain way.
I’m in no position to evaluate the truth or falsehood of the stories, I can only really do so based on the credibility of the actors or the authors I guess, in this case. And the credibility of the United States is very low and their stories change very frequently. In fact, it already has changed like hearing it three days later.
Kevin: Absolutely, provided that the story happens even in a reasonable manner in which he described it happening, then I would have to agree. I would say that that’s all fair game at that point. And it sounds horrible saying stuff like that, but that really is the position I’m taking of the United Sates right now and it’s very difficult to discuss that position with other people. Much like the 911 situation we were talking about. People just don’t want to hear it
Jad: Yeah, for sure. I think there’s like a vision of the past, in which ambassadors are – they’re the nonviolent people. They’re the people who are supposed to be avoiding wars and things. And it’s just like police officers – they’re supposed to be helping people and whatnot, but we’ve gotten past that point. Those stories don’t hold any water anymore. The state department is an arm of the American empire and police are violent bullies, and if you have those jobs – I’m not saying you should die, but there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to die and as you become more and more opposed to the will of people that are around you, the people that are around you on all sides , and their hostility grows towards the group you represent, again justified or not , no matter – you’re putting yourself at a position to where you’re likely going to just face the consequence. Again as this consciousness grows, people are going to understand that you died because you were serving darkness. You know, to put it in a sort of a – again, there’s the hyperbole I guess, folks.
Kevin: I think that’s the more justifiable hyperbole frankly, because there is a lot of that. That’s what the conversation – at least from my side – has been for a number of years now.
Jad: Right. In closing I was going to say the larger part of the article Salman Rushdie aside, is the story of the story – the tale that he’s a part of which goes along with the Islamic movie, and Muslims being crazy, and the United States strangely not in the story as any other part of this whole thing other than just somebody who’s country that movie came out of. I think that processing those stories in a different way, being cognizant that they serve a purpose and the purpose is to desensitize us to violence that’s going to happen to those people is kind of key. That’s really the – main thrust to the thing. Like I said Salman Rushdie just happened to be a mouthpiece for that incidentally.
Kevin: So that’s all we’ve got on the topic this week. Thank you so much for listening, and we hope you found the discussion both interesting and educational. Of course, we sincerely hope you’ll tune in to future episodes of this project in the future. If you’d like to contact us, stop by either of our websites at Jad Davis – that’s J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com – don’t forget the dash – or KevinLudlow.com – K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. As with our previous episodes, all material we reference will appear online. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you very soon.
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In this episode we explore some of the b-sides to a third-party system political system. The pretext to this exploration was considering whether or not a third-party could exist in the United States at all. With a series of back and forth questions, we come upon some interesting, and perhaps even surprising revelations.
Music
Kevin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of this experimental project. While we’re still in our initial and developmental phase of the show, the format is very likely to continue migrating in some unknown direction with each new episode. In the meantime, we look towards Radio Lab for some general guidance, which perhaps by no coincidence at all, the current format may have some similarity to. Between my personal interests and those of the co-creator, we’ll continue exploring a wide array of topics detailing the human experience. Central[?] to the show, we’ll remain in the themes of humanity, liberty, and the pursuit of equality for all.
In this episode, we explore some of the B sides to a 3rd party political system. The pretext to this exploration was considering whether or not a 3rd part could exist in the United States at all, and with a series of back and forth questions, we’d come upon some interesting and perhaps even surprising revelations.
Jad: You know for example, in Texas, it doesn’t matter who you vote for even at a meta level – at an even higher level it doesn’t matter because the republican’s going to win, so you may as well express disgust with the whole thing by adamantly not voting, or choosing a 3rd party candidate. This is interesting because this is one of those topics we haven’t covered yet.
Kevin: That was Jad Davis. I’m Kevin Ludlow, and this is our show. So to get started, I asked Jad about his general take of the American voting process.
Jad: I kind of – and I don’t really have a strong opinion on voting, and I think this is something interesting – sort of the between you and me is some line of like, how much we’re going to engage with the system, and I think in ways that I wish I was more comfortable with. You feel like engaging is a more productive of a way to go, and I have sort of avoided lots of those ways, much to my detriment I think. But the political thing is still – it’s one step further to me because I know want to ask anyone to run a police force, and a military, and a jail system for me to get what I want.
Even if what I want is everyone to be left alone, or whatever. There’s something distasteful to me about asking someone to be a ruler, or even saying, I think this is legitimate enough that I’m going to make a selection that I think would be the best person to rule us. I guess that combined with the fact that there’s nothing pressing on me where a vote is going to you know; help one way or the other. I pretty much decided to sort of stay away from the whole thing.
Kevin: So it occurred to me that if one person abstained from the voting process, this probably wouldn’t make much of a dent. But if the entire country abstained from voting, how would the democratic process work? Or do we even need a voting process to sustain democracy?
Jad: Well ultimately, I think that’s right. I guess I come at it from a – the moral, philosophical perspective that is not, “you’re never justified in pointing a weapon at somebody and telling them to do something when they have nothing to do with you, and they’re a total stranger”, and essentially, that’s what I mean, democratic governments wraps it in and everyone raises their hand. But the way things get carried out is still the same whether it’s a democratic system, or a military dictatorship.
And I think if you concede that point – if you concede the point that there are things that are so important that yeah, we might have to shoot somebody to get it done – even though that person is not aggressed against anyone else and they’re not stealing anyone’s property or anything, but they’re not going to participate. And because of that, we have to eliminate them, or expel them or whatever – confiscate their stuff. Once you concede that point which is essentially that the first thing you have to concede in a political system, then I think you’re inevitably going to end up down a dark road. It may take a while – you know, 200 years, the American experiment.
But eventually, the prosperity that comes from that – from the freedom of those people, to whatever degree they are free and I fully recognize [?] – but the American experiment that there’s a very small segment of people that were truly free, but it was so huge compared to any other society on earth at the time, and that prosperity it has generated is immediately recognized, and the claim that there is something so important that we need to collect our money together – whether everyone likes it or not – to build, to buy, or an enemy to defeat.
It’s just too alluring I think, and the freer the country initially, the larger that bounty is, and I think that’s why you end up with like, the Roman Empire, and the British Empire, and now, the American empire – I think its results in that event. So to go back to your initial question, I would say that yeah, I think the entire system or that initial concession of one person should be able to control another person if it’s in the best interest of some goal other than self defense, or protection of property, I think that concession leads down a dark road.
Kevin: So I pressed on and tried to explore the practical side versus just the philosophical side. In other words, we can’t live in anarchy, so what would be a practical side that attempts to avoid every level of authoritarianism as well.
Jad: The quick answer for me is I think there are solutions that allow everyone to remain equal. In other words, if for example, we say, well, we have to have somebody who’s allowed to stop person A from shooting person B – which I totally agree with – but I think that everyone should be allowed to stop person A from shooting person B. I don’t see where that is a special super power that seems like a power that everyone should have. The problem is of course that I don’t want person A to shoot person B, or to say, “I have the right to shoot person B, therefore everyone has the right to shoot person B”, if person B has done nothing wrong.
But of course what a policeman is somebody who can do that, but nobody else is allowed to, right? So if they’re driving past your house and they stop and your dog runs out, they can shoot your dog, and that’s totally cool.
Kevin: As we’ve seen.
Jad: As we’ve seen in Austin a lot. And if you’re running away from them, they can shoot you.
Kevin: As we’ve also seen.
Jad: As we’ve also seen frequently in Austin. Nobody else can do that, and I think that we should just universalize that – nobody else being able to do that. So I don’t see where a police force – if you want to call it a police force – has to have any special powers, they can just be people whose job it is to protect people on a full time basis you know, whereas somebody else programs a computer, and somebody else you know, is a doctor – this person’s job all the time is to keep an eye out, and make sure that violence and or theft are not happening. They don’t have to have any magical powers – that’s just what they do. I mean, it’s like a Wal-Mart security guy or whatever, right? You can’t just go shoot somebody.
Kevin: Exactly. And you’re still empowering the responsibility ultimately, which I think gets us into a really interesting segway altogether, and one that you and I have discussed in the past, which just comes down to the notion of rights versus responsibilities. And I think basically, what you’re suggesting – which I do agree with – is our government – through its democratic processes – ultimately empowering these individuals with rights that are above and beyond what other people have for whatever reason, and I don’t think it’s always been like that, so I think what concerns me as a global picture of this is just the fact that there was a time – in my opinion – when the United States had a collective entity of responsibility – where everybody had that responsibility. And nowadays, the people – as you say – are the lesser humans, the governmental bodies are more of the super humans, and those are the ones actually pulling the strings these days – and that worries me.
So at this point in our conversation, we break a bit from the initial ideas of whether voting impacts democracy in a general sense, and instead started focusing more on the specifics of the present. Jad turned the tables on me a bit and wanted to explore my own support of the various liberty candidates, namely Gary Johnson and Ron Paul, and he wanted to know what I hoped they might accomplish in this current election cycle.
Jad: So let’s go back to your – talking about Gary Johnson. In your support of Gary Johnson, what do you imagine coming of that, or let’s say – I’m not sure if you prefer Ron Paul, but I think that’s kind of the political figure that more people are familiar with to go with the argument that there is a way to engage with the system, and roll it back and you know, get it to return to a previous state where the government was in a manageable form. Is that kind of the idea of supporting the libertarian party?
Kevin: I think so. I think it’s – without having people like Gary Johnson or Ron Paul in the mix, I truly see both of the parties – as many people do – really just merging into this one kind of a [?] political party that we’re all systematically a part of, and there’s no way to escape it. If you don’t have somebody else who’s able to steer the conversation a different way – whether I agree with that way or not is irrelevant – just a different way, then we’re just going to slowly get more, and more and more centralized until we’re just headed in a cingular direction.
So – and then the party’s so large that it’s just very difficult to do anything, which I think is where we’re at right now is what we’re seeing, is that – it doesn’t really matter to me if you vote for democrat or republican. There are some differences, but they’re so subtle from my point of view that it’s really just one party who’s cleverly found a way to get the vast majority of the population you know, to own 90% of the vote roughly, let’s say.
Jad: Sure. Sure. I totally agree with you. I think when I think through what you’re talking about, if we concede that there is a anti-authoritarian bent[?] to the United States, so the founding fathers maybe had it in spades, right? Other than their blind spot for women and slaves, they fully understood the danger of a powerful government. They understood the danger of a central bank, they understood the danger of a fiat currency, they had thought it all through and they understood exactly what they needed to be on guard against always, and they realized that eternal vigilance was going to be part of any long term republic, right?
And even as recently as – like you said, let’s again concede – in the 50’s if you knock on someone’s door and said, “hey, we want to pass a law that says the police can listen in on any phone call that anyone makes, anywhere – ever – without telling anyone and without a warrant. Is that cool?” Most people would understand that that was a 4th amendment violation, they would be very much against it, et cetera, et cetera, and there were political actors in those times – that were the proto-Ron Paul’s – that were concerned about those issues – the ones of the day that were leading up to the larger issues that we have now, that were the FBI, and the CIA even being created.
As you were hypothesizing, there was a larger degree of general consciousness about those things and I think I agree with you. At that time when the state is very small and they have just kind of taken over public education, there’s not even a federal branch for public education, and they don’t have much power to tax, and they don’t have much power to police, and there was a large popular resistance to big government. Now we’re in a situation where they have infinite money, infinite police power, and almost nobody realizes that this entity is dangerous to them in a very short term. So it seems like pushing in that direction of trying to get that anti-authoritarian branch of the United States that’s been dwindling for 200 years to move in the other direction, despite being in a worse situation it’s ever been in, and against a much more powerful foe – seems like that’s kind of as unrealistic as say, the anarchist position.
Kevin: Yeah. I mean, I certainly can agree with that to an extent. You get into some pretty interesting psychology here. You get into those fundamental you know, primal things like hope, and consideration for the future where no matter how bad the odds are, there’s just this strange fire that’s still dwindling somewhere and it sparks you for whatever reason. And I think it’s – I think it’s largely – from a psychological point of view – exactly what president Obama did to his constituency for years ago. I mean, I think that those people in their minds were genuinely as charged about Obama as say, somebody like I, or you might be about a Ron Paul type of figure.
So do I think that they actually have a chance of succeeding? You know, I try to remain pretty practical about it so I say no, but on the other hand you know, I start looking at some of the things that have happened, and you know, I read a pretty good article not that long ago that was talking about Ron Paul and the fed, and of course we could debate the hell out of whether or not this would actually change anything even if it did pass, but let’s just assume that disposition of the fed would actually have a huge impact on the country if it managed to pass 4 years ago, or 5 years ago.
I mean, Ron Paul was labeled an absolute lunatic for discussing the Federal Reserve – I mean, just absolute lunacy – and now all of a sudden you know, even after all the dissent that happened at the republican convention and people were kicked out, and the liberty movement was effectively just crushed. It was still one of the primary topping points from what I understand, at the GOP convention. So you know – not to belabor the point – but I do have some you know oddly enough I suppose – some cycle of hope for that at the moment.
I guess I do feel that it could potentially start moving, albeit very slowly. I find the notion of libertarianism to be a very – a very powerful wave in the sense that I think you could get a democrat to convince somebody to become a democrat and they’ll, “okay fine, I’ll start voting democratic”. You can convince a republican to do the same thing, and the person would start voting republican. But you convince somebody to start looking at the world in terms of libertarianism and just actual liberty, in my opinion and experience; it’s a very eye-opening sort of thing for people. It really never considered the idea that what if there weren’t laws for this? Why do I have to listen to somebody telling me to do these things that doesn’t make sense? Why am I you know, the pawn in this game? It’s crazy, and so anyway, I guess I just have this glimmer of hope that enough of those people could get that twinkle in their eye that you know, that really sparks something.
Jad: Sure. Sure. So if you don’t mind, can you play devil’s advocate – I had that same feeling that indefatigable belief that there’s a way out. Somebody posted that the other day, the apocoloptimist – that everything is going to go to hell, but it’s going to be alright in the end. But I think the thing is, these ideas – the ideas of liberty – always gain ground when there’s sadly, things like hunger, and mass incarceration, and people begin to understand the messages are there, the arguments are clear, and people will begin to listen to them when things get bad.
The 2000’s have been bad in a whole series of ways, and I think that’s why more and more people are listening from both side because you’ve both got just these awful global wars, and you’ve got an economy that’s entirely collapsing while tons of money [?] hoovered up by a handful of people. On both sides of the left right spectrum, people are being pulled away into the third direction I guess – the libertarian Z access, right?
But if there was enough movement in that direction and people began to see that these things were dangerous, and they began to dismantle them in a 1776-ish sort of way, but we maintain the fundamental idea that there had to be this core body of people that had these magical powers that the rest of us don’t have, then how does that not just happen again?
Kevin: Well, that’s a very good question, and I think it’s – we have to have a mixed representation in government. This whole winner take all, two-party system – it doesn’t work. It’s going to lead right back into that – it was a decade ago now that I you know, I had the privilege of living in New Zealand for a year – and one of the things that I really loved about their government structure there is that it’s not a winner take all. So if 10% of the population say, votes from the green party, then 10% of your parliament in that case is going to consist of green party members – and I think that’s a wonderful way for this to work, and I think the governments that do that – and there’s a number of European ones, and New Zealand does it as well for example – I think that they are much better nations frankly, and I’d love to see the United States do that.
I think it’s one way that – I’m not saying it magically fixes the country, but I’m pretty certain that we wouldn’t be in these wars that we’re in right now if we had that type of mixed representation in our congressional body for example.
Jad: Right. Yeah no, and I guess I don’t entirely see how the multiple party system stops that from happening, but I mean I can’t disagree that proportional representation would be a big plus.
Kevin: You know, I don’t think it’s magic beans or anything like that. I don’t think it – the problem just disappears. It seems that there’s a lot more balance in the system when you ultimately have that. I would really be excited about participating in these things if I could see representation on the point of view that we tend to have inside of the congressional chambers – which just isn’t the case. Even the people who are allegedly elected to represent this movement, I – frankly, for the most part – I don’t really think represent my views very well at all.
Jad: I guess the counterpoint again is the very few people granted, who are in there doing that, just don’t have any leverage in the system at all. And I guess I don’t know New Zealand’s politics, but I mean, the European systems are sort of disintegrating as well, and I think you’re seeing a lot of the same aspects where it’s basically public debt that’s being held by central banks, which is essentially going lead to social services being slashed, and taxes going up – sort of a reentry of serfdom in European continent.
Again – to go back to my position – once you have that power – the power of taking someone’s money with limited recourse, and you have the public choice theory motor – which once I take that money and give it to corporation A, or bank A, or whatever, they’re going to turn around and spend all of their time and effort because it’s worth their while financially to increase that amount, whereas for everyone else, losing just a small amount to put together that sum is not that much to fight for.
I think as long as those dynamics are in place, they can be triggered at any time. A political system may coincide with a relative period of peace, but I’m not sure the relative period of peace is a result of the political system. But I’d be interested in thinking about it more.
Kevin: So that’s about where we left things this week. Thank you so much for listening, and we sincerely hope you’ll come back and check out future installments of this project. If you’d like to get in touch with us, stop by either of our websites at Jad Davis – J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, Kevin Ludlow – K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you very soon.
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The World Trade Center buildings on September 11th, 2001
Read Kevin’s original article on his website.
Jad: Hello, and welcome to this particular proto-project[?]. It’s incidentally and not unintentionally – and perhaps – only initially styled after, meta[?] narrative shows like Radio Lab – though, without the budget and perhaps the attention to detail. Given my interests and those of the co-creator, and given the lifespan to move from proto-project to project proper, future installments will range over all scopes and topics of the human experience.
The central connecting themes will likely include the grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality – though, without the horror and bloodshed of a French revolution. This particular episode revolves around the 11th anniversary of 9/11 – which for us, just passed into the rearview mirror. Our jumping off point is an article that – not coincidentally – was written by the other voice you’ll hear when you tune into the series. His name is Kevin Ludlow, and I’m Jad Davis.
It was a year ago today that I posted on my Facebook wall, “I fucking hate 9/11 and everything about it.” It was an honest feeling about the 10th anniversary of the American tragedy. Perhaps not surprising, I was met with some pretty strong views from both sides. A few in agreement appreciated the bluntness, but a few in disagreement were furious at my callousness. Contrary to what the latter group may have assumed at the time, my position was not intended as one of rudeness. It was not intended as a lack of sympathy for mourners, and it was certainly not intended as a childish outburst of disrespect for the deceased.
Instead, it was an introspective position, questioning very sincerely what 9/11 actually does mean to America – not what we’d like it to mean, but rather the meaning it takes on given our actions as a nation. Why can’t I, “fucking hate” 9/11? Why is that so wrong? In the 11 years since the towers were brought down, I would like to think that the United States has progressed in wisdom and maturity. I would like to think that the majority of people have become more knowledgeable, and less ethnocentric in their ways, but I am also very aware that this is far from reality. People are becoming more and more divided on a daily basis.
The United States military is involved in numerous conflicts with sovereign nations around the Middle East, and despite what the president claims, withdrawing from the region seems very unlikely any time soon. The rich continue getting richer, and the poor continue getting poorer – and worst of all is that with the exception of our fringed political dissenters – both left and right – nobody really seems to care enough to change anything – hell, most people probably don’t even notice. In my eyes, the United States is the antiquated representation of a former greatness.
Where innovation once stood, now stands blind corporatism in its place. Where soldiers and police once honorably defended philosophical values, now stands blind militarism, used for defending only value itself. Where liberty once stood, now stands an army of lobbyists, increasingly proficient at penetrating our three branches of government. And atop the entire chain is the media – always there to remind us that it’s the fault of someone else. We are every bit as good to the world as we think we are.
We now live in a country where it’s borderline treason to question anything that led to the events of 9/11. Never mind questioning the conspiracy theories, but even the underlying motives of the high jackers remains a socially condemned topic in most discussions. The population remains willfully oblivious to the fact that we’ve been dropping bombs in the Middle East for decades without consequence, and of course, to most people, it’s impossible to believe that we are directly responsible for arming and using the Taliban to stifle the Russians – now one of the very group we’re allegedly seeking to destroy.
Still, my personal favorite is that while we continue to wage wars and conflicts with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and soon to be Iran, we still enjoy relative peace with Saudi Arabia – ignoring the fact that 15 of the 19 high jackers actually were citizens of this country. My effort is not to denigrate the lives of the 2,977 innocent Americans killed by such evil intentions. My effort is not denigrate the lives of 2,977 innocent Americans killed by such evil intentions, but to force the issue of why we should ignore the more than 120,000 equally innocent lives that we have killed in reckless retaliation since.
The United States is the land of opportunity, and there is no tragedy too great for this mantra. We sell t-shirts, stickers, cigarette lighters, pens, coffee mugs, patches, plates, and truckloads of other petty memorabilia, embroidered with this notorious day. We can buy 9/11 in a dozen different colors, we just can’t talk about it quite as colorfully. This is how we choose to “honor” the memories of those who died because this truly is the character of the United States. We’re materialistic in every way imaginable, and it couldn’t be illustrated any better than on a day such as this. People were literally blown to pieces in the sky. Rescue workers were literally crushed to death by falling steel, concrete, and debris. Innocent men and women literally jumped to their untimely deaths to escape the horrors of being burned alive by jet fuels. And so, to immortalize these people, we find that in good taste to purchase tiny, plastic replicas of the buildings bearing the words, “never forget” across the front, and made in China underneath – we are truly surreal.
So when I wrote, “I fucking hate 9/11 and everything about it” on the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy, I genuinely meant it – and one year later, I still do. If we truly honored the deceased – as we pretend to do – we would all fucking hate 9/11. This is the natural human response toward any tragedy – especially one of such magnitude. Instead, we’re taught to embrace the moment as some kind of halftime pep rally, while we continue to sign the rights to the country away to the highest bidder. I suspect very sincerely, that before this chapter in history is all over, we’ll learn to fucking hate 9/11.
I agree to disagree with various aspects of the article. I thought it would be interesting to have a conversation about it, and Kevin and I had just been talking about maybe recording and editing some of the discussions we’d had based on our similar, ultra-fringy political views.
Hello.
Kevin: Hey man.
Jad: How’s it going?
Kevin: Pretty good – wow, that sounds really good.
Jad: Yeah, I know. I [?] –
After sorting out some technical basics, and talking about format –
Kevin: What do you want to do? How do you want to – how do you want to approach this?
Jad: And arriving at a conclusion –
We don’t have to go as far as the Radio Lab version where they –
Kevin: That was actually what I was thinking also [?] –
Jad: Yeah, so like Radio Lab, but with a lot fewer cool transitions. With all the details worked out, we were off.
Well here’s a good segue then – the 11th anniversary of 9/11 as of yesterday, and you had some thoughts on that?
Kevin: I did, actually. I posted a yearly rant that I like to come up with and I do a lot of writing, so threw some stuff out there. I you know, I tried to organize it pretty succinctly, and I put it out for some of the masses to see. And to say the least, I didn’t get – it was a lot of people didn’t give me very respectful opinions of it. But for the most part, I think that far more people disagree with the opinions that I was sharing than agree with it. And I guess, kind of what I was talking about and what I tended to say the other day was just the fact that I don’t really feel that the way the United States handles something like 9/11 is – inappropriate is perhaps the wrong word – but I think we go about it in a very type of inappropriate way for lack of a better word.
Obviously it’s this terrible, horrible tragedy, people died you know I mean, in the worst way, and I described that in some detail in this rant that I wrote the other day. And what bothers me about it is the way that we kind of – I feel – is very callous, frankly, and I find it ironic that people would say I’m the callous one for it. But we treat it almost like it’s this big event that we’re looking forward to. This really kind of got into my head on the 10 year anniversary of it last year, and I swear for weeks leading up to it, I felt like I was watching Super Bowl promotion commercials for you know, 9/11 – the night that it happened and you know, showing the towers over, and over – and I guess it just really kind of bothers me, quite frankly.
Jad: Sure. Sure. Did you notice a market decrease this year in the coverage? I mean obviously, the 10th year is like the you know – in the telling of the narrative, the mass memory event and all of the things that followed that they need 10 years, they have a bunch more critical milestone than 11.
Kevin: Sure. I did – I did notice a decline, actually. You know, I don’t watch television, but all the same you know, just even online and everything, there seem to be quite a bit less chatter around it, and listening to some of the radio talks and things like that, they certainly weren’t talking about it nearly as much as they were on the 10th anniversary. So I don’t really know what to make of that frankly, but there was a noticeable difference from last year.
Jad: I think it’s to do with what that year meant I mean, because it is a ritual – in a sense.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: Right, I mean, it is a – besides the commercial appeal or whatever, that you referred to in your article, there’s also a political justification for essentially all of the entire American policy for the last 10 years – both foreign and domestic. And so it’s really important that we all remember the same story and the same sequence of events that happened after the story. And it’s very important that we kind of forget about some of it – a little bit – such as the reasoning for invading several countries that were seemingly uninvolved with 9/11, yet somehow at the time seemed to be magically tied to it.
Last year really served as – 10 years, like you were talking about earlier with memory – it’s really a lot of recalls and rewrites, perceptions of the – at the time – can really have been manipulated by the intervening 10 years of retelling of the tale in a very, very coordinated and systematic way in media, and even with each other and so forth.
Kevin: Absolutely. Well I mean, did you find – because I agree with that entirely – did you find the same sort of thing – that there was perhaps less of a telling of it – and I don’t know what you’re you know – perhaps something your friends, or peers, or even family members – I mean, did you notice a difference yourself this year compared with last year – or even previous years to that?
Jad: I did. I did. I think last year I had the same perception you did, and I tried to hide from it to some degree, but last year was kind of inevitable. I mean, it was definitely like you said – for weeks ahead of time it was a big run up to the event.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: And this year, it kind of passed with very little – well I hate to say fanfare, but I guess it is appropriate – fanfare.
Kevin: Yeah. And I think so too, that what I was getting at which is why I – my rant this year was a little bit different than I guess, the position I was taking last year. I still think it exists, and I think it’s a very interesting segway that you – or that you actually [?] on there about the whole memory thing. You know, I’ve spoken with so many people about the event over the years, and I’m not a conspiracy theorist to be perfectly honest with you. I mean, I happy to explore alternate concepts of things, but I tend to look at simpler answers of things. And just over the years of exploring the topic with people, it’s fascinating to me how few people really know some of the just – not even the conspiracy, just the actual stories that happened.
Building 7 for example, I mean – blows my mind. Go out in the streets and you know how they do those things where they’ll be like, “who’s on a $100 bill”, and of course, nobody knows. Ask people who – how many buildings came down on September 11th, and they’ll tell you 2. It’s fascinating to me how little of the story people actually put together, never mind you know, the conspiracy theories that go well beyond that.
Jad: Sure.
Kevin: So I think it is really interesting as you say, that everybody has to keep kind of, the same story, and it’s been a real – as I expressed yesterday also – a real rah, rah, rah type of moment for nationalism, for the United States to justify its actions around the world.
Jad: You were talking building 7. Going down that trail, people will immediately sort of close off those lines of inquiry because they’re in the category of you know, like you said, conspiracy theory. Even though that’s – there are certain questions on the outline levels at least, which seem very, very legitimate how people still will [?] shy away from it. And that kind of goes to what you were saying some of the responses you got from your article tended to be along the lines – either it was you know, supportive, or if it wasn’t supportive, it was sort of a, “I really just don’t want to think about this”. So what were some of the responses like along those lines?
Kevin: You know, that was the thing. It’s not so much that the responses that I’ve gotten from people are outright negative. I’ve gotten a few of those you know, where people just say, “look, it’s wrong for you to talk about this”, and there’s clearly some frustration with me that they have for even you know, just bringing – it’s inappropriate I suppose. But more importantly – and I guess what really sticks out in my mind are people who did write to me and say, “you know, I don’t want to think about this – I don’t want to see it like that. I want to memorialize it as you know, as something to look – something to use for patriotism, and for the country to move forward with, and I have a very difficult time with that – with people – because building 7 I think is a great example, and what you just said is completely true – at least in my experience – you bring it up and immediately, it’s – you’re in the world of conspiracy theory.
And I’m not saying that the government did something. I’m not saying that there was some you know, nefarious internal acts that took place. The fact of the matter is it did collapse, so what – how can we not even talk about that, you know? When people say, “well, I don’t want to think about it enough to even consider the fact that that happened”, I’m like well, you know, I’m not theorizing, I’m just saying that’s what happened.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: Can’t we even just discuss what we saw, never mind what we think may have happened?
Jad: Right. Well and that leads into – [?] could pick the next layer out from that even, assume that the events all occurred exactly as they were outlined by the 9/11 commission –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – and which I think – if I remember correctly – does not even address building 7. But let’s just say all of that is totally kosher, you still are even getting into the conspiracy theory area when you talk about the possibility that it’s the American foreign policy of the previous 50 years leading up to 9/11 that might have had something to do with the event itself. Like even that is really – like you said – clouding this sacrosanct nature of the day and the event for some people it seems like.
Kevin: Oh, absolutely. I mean, and that was another you know – I included a paragraph or two, and I rant about that pretty frequently I mean, it’s a big – it’s a big issue with me for both just humanitarian reasons – which I think are the more obvious ones. But for economic reasons also you know, I just don’t see any sense in spending money to blow up the rest of the world as we’ve been doing for so long. And that was something that people wrote to me about as well, you know? They don’t want to hear about that, and I think I may have even said this to you earlier, but trying to put this in perspective with some people and they say you know, “this is where 3,000 people died”, and that is one of the facts – that’s terrible.
In the piece that I wrote you know, I wrote in some detail about how you know, you had people literally blown up you know, inside of a plane – that’s how those people died. You had people who were literally crushed to death by steel, and debris, and et cetera. You had people who – and this is probably the most graphic one we all remember – people who literally jumped 70 stories to their death because they didn’t want to be burned alive. And this was a horrible, absolutely horrible concept, but in response, we have – just in Iraq alone, never mind you know, another 6 or 7 countries we’re involved in – we’ve killed 120,000 people.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: And the point that I made to some of these people the other day – and I’ve made this before – is that I really do think that it kind of comes in terms of marketing and perception. I think when you tell somebody the number 3,000, or for that matter if you said 200 people died, right – it’s a lot of people. People are like, “oh my God, 200 people were killed – that’s phenomenal”. But when you start talking about things I mean, consider the Holocaust or something, I mean, it’s not something that you can fathom millions of people died.
When you say 120,000 people were killed, you can’t relate it in your head – you just know it’s a big number and I think most people just put it out, whereas with 200 people you’re like, “oh, that’s terrible”, you know? And I think there’s a real – I think it’s emotionally worse to actually have the much smaller, but still big number – if that makes sense.
Jad: The other aspect of it I guess, decides the numbers, kind of highlights what we don’t like to think about, which is the fact that we’re still a rampantly nationalistic you know, I guess racist, really – in a global sense – country that let 120,000 deaths of brown peasants is not a real deterrent to something if it – if there’s any kind of explanation of why it’s you know – was necessary required.
Kevin: Well, and that’s conversation I have frequently with people, which is –
Jad: Well[?], at this point the conversation took a turn and did what I think might be called post production. We decided that it should be its own stand alone episode. So you will need to come back again to listen in on the amazing and mind expanding content that we lay down next. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you’ll come back and check out future episodes in this project, and I’m sure the near future will have a clear way to contact this specific venture.
For the moment, you can come drop by and leave some feedback at Jad-Davis.com, J-A-D dash D-A-V-I-S dot com, or KevinLudlow.com, that’s K-E-V-I-N-L-U-D-L-O-W dot com, and there is contact information there, as well as a link to Kevin’s article, and any other show notes we come up with. It would be great to hear back from you, and we’ll talk to you again soon.
]]>Esta combinación no es la de más bajo consumo posible, pero es muy fácil de replicar, de resultados garantizados y con componentes muy fáciles de encontrar.
Y aunque no sea la combinación con el consumo más bajo posible, te ofrece de una forma sencilla hasta tres meses de autonomía con una sola carga.
Por cierto, que, aunque parezca obvio no es menos importante: el efecto de la pantalla de tinta electrónica, con su excelente visualización es increíble.
La está optimizada para bajo consumo y consta de un microcontrolador ESP32, una pantalla de tipo e-Ink (tinta electrónica (ePaper, como lo llama el fabricante), el controlador de pantalla y un cargador de baterías, todo integrado en una sola placa.
Una de las mejores características de esta placa (junto con su bajo consumo y estar preparada para funcionar con batería recargable) es que incluye una pantalla de tinta electrónica de 2.13″.
La principal ventaja de las pantallas de tinta electrónica es que son capaces de mantener la imagen en pantalla sin consumir energía. Esto es: una vez que pintamos lo que queremos en pantalla podemos incluso cortar la alimentación y la imagen seguirá mostrándose durante meses sin ningún consumo de energía.
Hasta hace poco tiempo, comprar un sensor de CO2 de bajo consumo era complicado (no se encontraban fácilmente) y, sobre todo, caro (no solían bajar de 60€ o más).
Todo esto ha cambiado con la llegada del y, sobre todo, con la posibilidad de comprarlo muy fácilmente en sitios como AliExpress a precios muy interesantes (sobre los 20€ con envío incluido). Es realmente bueno midiendo, flexible y su consumo energético es más que aceptable.
El montaje es realmente fácil: Solamente tienes que conectar el a la mediante solo cuatro cables y ya está. ¿Puede ser más fácil?
El firmware CO2 Gadget Advanced es probablemente el firmware para makers más completo y avanzado que existe.
Se trata de un firmware que puede funcionar con la mayoría de medidores de CO2 basados en ESP32 (yo diría que el 99% de ellos), tal cual o con modificaciones mínimas.
Al ser Open Source y estar todo su código fuente publicado puedes adaptarlo y modificarlo como quieras. Si eres programador, o simplemente sientes curiosidad, puedes encontrar el código fuente y mucha más información en el repositorio de CO2 Gadget en GitHub.
Te sugiero que leas el post general sobre CO2 Gadget para descubrir todas sus posibilidades:
Puedes instalarlo de fácilmente desde el instalador que encontrarás en ese mismo artículo, con solo un par de clicks en tu navegador. Sin necesidad de instalar nada en tu PC.
A día 30 de Marzo de 2024: Las funcionalidades para el soporte de pantallas de tinta electrónica y de bajo consumo están en desarrollo en este momento, en un estado bastante avanzado y posiblemente esté listo para beta testing en las próximas semanas.
Para más información, o si quieres ser beta tester, visita el repositorio de CO2 Gadget en GitHub.
La autonomía de este medidor, el firmware CO2 Gadget Advanced, es de unos tres meses, dependiendo de cómo lo configures (en base a tus necesidades).
Por ejemplo, con esta configuración, bastante típica: Cada 5 minutos toma una medida de CO2, temperatura y humedad, la muestra en pantalla y la envía por Bluetooth, (donde puede ser recibida en el teléfono móvil o puedes introducirlo en tu sistema domótico como Home Assistant con un Bluetooth Proxy para almacenar y visualizar los datos): La autonomía estimada del medidor será de unos 90 días.
Vamos a ponernos un poco técnicos (sin que sirva de precedente):
Aquí tienes el consumo del medidor, con la configuración indicada anteriormente, durante 10 minutos de su vida:
Como ves, la mayor parte del tiempo está durmiendo, sin hacer nada, y cada cinco minutos ves en el gráfico que hay un pico de consumo que corresponde a la medida de sensor, la presentación en pantalla y el envío de los datos por bluetooth.
Concretamente es un ciclo que consiste en estar 398,3 segundos sin hacer nada y 8,618 segundos midiendo, presentando en pantalla y enviando por bluetooth (y vuelta a empezar).
Como calcular la autonomía puede ser un poco tedioso, vamos a hacer uso de la inteligencia artificial y le vamos a preguntar cuál es la autonomía con un prompt como este:
Hola ChatGPT,
¿Puedes ayudarme a calcular la duración de la batería para mi circuito?
Quiero que calcules los ciclos y el tiempo completo de autonomía. Aquí está la información:
1. Duración del funcionamiento activo del circuito (en segundos): 7.8 sec
2. Duración del deep sleep del circuito (en segundos): 398.5 segundos
3. Consumo por hora durante el tiempo de funcionamiento activo (en mA): 28.16mAh
4. Consumo por hora durante el tiempo de deep sleep (en µA): 519uAh
5. Capacidad de la batería (en mAh): 2500mAh
ChatGPT nos responderá al momento algo como esto:
Claro, puedo calcular la duración de la batería para tu circuito con esa información. Vamos a realizar los cálculos:
Convertir las duraciones del funcionamiento activo y del deep sleep a horas:
Calcular el consumo de energía total durante un ciclo de funcionamiento y deep sleep:
Calcular cuántos ciclos completos de funcionamiento y deep sleep caben en la capacidad total de la batería:
Multiplicar este número de ciclos por la duración total de un ciclo para obtener el tiempo total de autonomía:
Por lo tanto, con una capacidad de batería de 2500 mAh y los ciclos de funcionamiento y deep sleep proporcionados, la autonomía estimada del circuito sería aproximadamente 2383.76 horas, o alrededor de 99 días y 7 horas.
Sigo trabajando en optimizar la eficiencia energética del medidor.
Mis esfuerzos de la última semana se han centrado en reducir la energía durante el tiempo que el medidor está «activo».
Con las nuevas mejoras en el código, el tiempo activo (en las mismas condiciones que la prueba anterior) se ha reducido de los 7.8 segundos a solo 6.8 segundos y además el consumo durante ese tiempo ha bajado de 28.16mAh a 23.14mAh. También el consumo en deep sleep ha bajado ligeramente, de 519uAh a tan solo 378.90uAh.
Para tener la estimación, le preguntamos de nuevo a ChatGPT:
Hola ChatGPT,
¿Puedes ayudarme a calcular la duración de la batería para mi circuito?
Quiero que calcules los ciclos y el tiempo completo de autonomía.
Aquí está la información:
1. Duración del funcionamiento activo del circuito (en segundos): 6.8 sec
2. Duración del deep sleep del circuito (en segundos): 398.5 segundos
3. Consumo por hora durante el tiempo de funcionamiento activo (en mA): 23.14mAh
4. Consumo por hora durante el tiempo de deep sleep (en µA): 378.90uAh
5. Capacidad de la batería (en mAh): 2500mAh
Para calcular la duración de la batería en ciclos y el tiempo total de autonomía para tu circuito, necesitamos considerar el consumo de energía durante el funcionamiento activo y el deep sleep.
Consumo durante el tiempo activo (en mAh):
hrs
hrsConsumo durante el deep sleep (en mAh):
hrs
hrsSumamos los consumos durante el tiempo activo y el deep sleep:
Ahora realizamos los cálculos:
Por lo tanto, con una capacidad de batería de 2500 mAh y los ciclos de funcionamiento y deep sleep proporcionados, la autonomía estimada del circuito sería aproximadamente 3308.82 horas, o casi 138 días.
Voy a provechar ahora para ampliar la información para el cálculo de la autonomía con algo que he tocado solo de refilón. Para ello me pasaré en la actualización de la autonomía del 5 de abril de 2024.
Hay que tener en cuenta que con las pantallas e-Paper hay que hacer una actualización total de vez en cuando (momento en el que el display parpadea, cambiando entre negro y blanco varias veces).
Esta actualización dependerá (tanto en tiempo como en frecuencia) de la pantalla que utilicemos.
Cuando toca hacer un «Full refresh» la pantalla está ocupada durante más tiempo que en una actualización parcial, y consume más energía.
En los ejemplos que hemos visto la pantalla no hacía una actualización total.
Vamos a ver, en términos de consumo energético, la diferencia entre una actualización parcial y una total.
En el siguiente perfil de consumo, tienes una actualización parcial y seguida de una total:
Como ves a simple vista, la actualización parcial (la primera) es más rápida y con menor consumo que la actualización parcial o «Full Refresh» (la segunda).
Vemos cada una de las dos por separado, empezando por la actualización parcial:
Puedes ver que dura aproximadamente 6.8 segundos y que su consumo medio es de 23.11mA
Veamos la actualización total o «Full refresh»:
Como ves, en la actualización total, el tiempo es de aproximadamente 10.8 segundos y en consumo medio es de unos 15.98mA.
Como la proporción entre ciclos de actualización parcial y total la configuras tú, tendrás puedes tenerla en cuenta según tus preferencias.
Fíjate en que la diferencia efectiva entre ambos periodos no es tan grande como pueda parecer. Una consume más durante menos tiempo y otra consume menos durante más tiempo. Te invito a hacer algún cálculo rápido para ver cuál es la diferencia energética real.
. Ten cuidado porque hay varias placas muy parecidas (que incluso pone que son la misma versión, pero no es así). No todas las placas están soportadas por CO2 Gadget. Este es el enlace donde yo la compré. Asegúrate de pedir la que pone «DEPG0213BN 9102 Chip».
: El último SCD41 lo compré en AliExpress, en este enlace el día 20 de marzo y el día 28 ya lo tenía en casa. Es una tienda con muchos votos positivos (4.8 estrellas) y que lleva funcionando muchos años (está en AliExpress desde 2012), por lo que no creo que tengas problemas. Asegúrate de comprar el que pone «SCD41 placa azul».
Si tienes acceso a una impresora 3D, he adaptado una caja impresa en 3D para este proyecto.
Incluye un espacio para alojar el sensor SCD41 con entradas de aire y aislado del resto de la caja para evitar en lo posible que se vea influenciado por el calor emitido por la electrónica y que las medidas de temperaturas no se vean afectadas (o, al menos, para reducir el efecto).
Tienes dos traseras para la caja. Una está pensada para poder meter una batería de tipo 18650 la otra, con menos fondo, es para baterías más estrechas.
Puedes encontrarla en Tinkercad para descargarla o incluso modificarla para adaptarla a tus necesidades.
]]>Por supuesto, aunque he puesto como ejemplos los Arduino (con ATmega328P, como el Arduino Uno, el Arduino Pro, el Arduino Nano), el ESP8266 y el ESP32, lo que veamos aquí será de aplicación para otros microcontroladores o incluso microprocesadores (Raspberry Pi, por ejemplo) adaptándonos a las características de cada plataforma.
Las técnicas se repiten en todas las plataformas, es cuestión únicamente de elegir la que tengamos disponible en aquella con la que estamos trabajando (o elegir entre varias disponibles, sabiendo las diferencias, ventajes e inconvenientes de cada una).
Vamos a ver lo básico que hay que saber sobre la generación de tensión variable con microprocesadores diferentes pero muy similares en su forma de uso.
Los microcontroladores (y microprocesadores) con los que trabajamos pertenecen al mundo digital, solo saben de ceros y unos (y si hablamos de los voltajes que representan estos ceros y unos, hablaríamos de 0V y de 5V o 3.3V).
Los microcontroladores, de forma nativa, no saben nada del mundo analógico y de voltajes intermedios entre «bajo», o 0 lógico, y «alto», o 1 lógico.
Si a un microcontrolador que funciona a 5V le presentamos en un pin de entrada «normal» una tensión de, por ejemplo, 4.1V la tomará como un estado lógico alto (o 1) y no la diferenciará en absoluto de otra tensión de 4.3V o de otra de 4.7V.
Si en un microprocesador que funciona a 5V queremos generar una tensión de precisamente 5V, no tendremos ningún problema y podremos hacerlo directamente. Ponemos el pin que nos interese «a 1» y ya tendremos 5V en ese pin.
Cuando queramos que sea de 0V, solo tenemos que poner ese pin «a 0» y tendremos 0V en ese pin.
El problema es que, si queremos generar una tensión cualquiera, intermedia, como 2.7V o 1.42V, tendremos que recurrir a diferentes técnicas, más o menos «indirectas», que nos permitan sortear esta limitación.
Por supuesto, también sucederá para leer esas tensiones, pero eso es otra historia y la trataremos en otro post…
Tenemos, principalmente, tres opciones para generar el voltaje necesario con nuestro microcontrolador:
No hay una mejor que otra, todas tienen ventajas e inconvenientes y en este artículo veremos las más importantes.
En el blog tienes varios posts hablando de las señales PWM y de cómo utilizarlas en varias situaciones, aquí nos vamos a centrar en convertir una señal PWM en un voltaje analógico que podamos usar.
Lo bueno del PWM es que todos los microprocesadores de los que estamos hablando (y la mayoría de los existentes) son capaces de generar señales PWM tanto por hardware como por software.
El PWM es uno de los primeros sistemas que se utilizaron con microprocesadores y sigue siendo el más usado cuando se trata de generar voltaje, siempre y cuando sus peculiaridades y limitaciones (de las que ahora hablaremos) lo hagan aceptable.
Si no tienes ni idea de lo que es una señal PWM, te recomiendo la lectura del siguiente artículo antes de seguir:
El sistema para generar el voltaje es muy sencillo, convertimos la longitud del pulso PWM (el ciclo de trabajo) en voltaje y lo utilizamos.
El problema del sistema PWM es que, si lo usamos «tal cual», lo que genera es un voltaje que «de media» tiene el voltaje que queremos, pero cada vez que la señal está a 1, el voltaje será el que el microcontrolador proporcione (normalmente 5V o 3.3V).
Dependiendo que lo que conectemos a esa salida (el «consumidor» de ese voltaje) esta técnica nos servirá muy bien (como para regular un LED o la velocidad de muchos motores) pero otros dispositivos no lo tolerarán y funcionará mal o se estropearán.
Imaginemos un dispositivo que funciona a 2.5V: si le proporcionamos una señal PWM de 5V con un 50% de ciclo de trabajo, la «media» de voltaje que recibirá será de 2.5V pero a lo mejor no tolera que el 50% del tiempo el voltaje que lo alimenta sea de 5V y se estropea.
Otro ejemplo más practico: si queremos alimentar un microcontrolador que funciona a 3.3V con una señal PWM de 5V y un ciclo de trabajo del 66%) ese microprocesador morirá inmediatamente porque, aunque el «voltaje medio PWM» sea de 3.3V, no tolerará los pulsos de 5V.
Es como si tuviéramos un grifo en el fregadero que entregara el agua » golpes». A lo mejor no hay problema con que el sumidero del fregadero no sea capaz de tragar esa cantidad de agua, pero cada vez que da uno de esos «golpes» lo salpica todo poniéndolo perdido.
Necesitamos convertir el «voltaje PWM» (que se mueve «a golpes» entre 0 y 5V, en un voltaje de 2.5V «real»).
Afortunadamente, solucionar el problema, convirtiendo ese «voltaje a impulsos» en un «voltaje analógico», más suave, es bastante sencillo.
Para la inmensa mayoría de las necesidades podemos hacerlo con un simple filtro paso-bajos que se puede construir con solo un condensador y una resistencia (también llamado filtro R-C por «Resistor|Capacitor»).
El montaje del filtro paso bajo es muy fácil, aunque calcularlo no es tan sencillo (y es diferente para cada caso), aunque tienes calculadoras en internet que facilitan mucho el trabajo.
Aquí tienes el esquema de un filtro que podrás usar en muchos casos porque funciona bien a 3.3V y a 5V con una señal PWM de 1Khz:
Y aquí puedes ver el efecto que tiene este filtro tan simple:
El canal 1 (en amarillo) corresponde a la señal PWM tal cual es generada por el ESP32.
El canal 2 (en azul) es la salida del filtro, con esa señal aplicada a la entrada.
Cómo puedes ver, la tensión de salida (línea azul) no es una tensión perfectamente estable, sino que tiene ligeras subidas y bajadas coincidiendo con la señal PWM. En este caso la tensión de aproximadamente 1V, tiene pequeñas subidas y bajadas de unos 42mV.
Es posible, con la elección adecuada de los valores del filtro R-C, hacer que la tensión sea más estable (a costa de que la conversión sea más lenta) o que la conversión sea más rápida (a costa de una tensión más inestable).
Aquí puedes ver este filtro construido en una pequeña placa:
La forma de generación de una señal PWM en Arduino, ESP8266 y ESP32 varía muy poco. Más abajo, te dejo el código básico que genera una señal de 1V en cada uno de ellos.
Si quieres puedes saber más sobre los filtro paso bajo en Wikipedia.
Es importante que tengas presente que, dependiendo del microcontrolador que estés utilizando, la resolución puede ser diferente.
A continuación, te hablo de la resolución PWM nativa de los diferentes microcontroladores, pero debes saber que es posible aumentar la resolución mediante técnicas software.
El Arduino Uno utiliza un microcontrolador ATmega328P como su unidad de procesamiento principal, y la resolución del PWM en este microcontrolador es de 8 bits. Esto significa que el rango de valores para el ciclo de trabajo (duty cycle) en las salidas PWM es de 0 a 255.
El término «8 bits» se refiere a la cantidad de bits utilizados para representar el valor de salida en binario. Con 8 bits, hay 
posibles valores distintos, que van desde 0 hasta 255. En el caso de PWM, estos valores representan el ciclo de trabajo como un porcentaje del período de la señal PWM.
Por ejemplo, para una salida PWM con un valor de 128, el ciclo de trabajo sería del 
, aproximadamente el 50%. Así, la resolución de 8 bits proporciona 256 pasos distintos para ajustar el ciclo de trabajo, lo que permite un control relativamente fino de la intensidad luminosa en LEDs, la velocidad de motores, entre otras aplicaciones.
El ESP8266, tiene una resolución de PWM de 10 bits. Esto significa que el ciclo de trabajo del PWM se puede ajustar en 1024 niveles diferentes, desde 0 hasta 1023. La resolución de 10 bits proporciona una mayor precisión en la modulación de ancho de pulso, permitiendo un control más fino sobre la salida PWM.
El ESP32 tiene una resolución de PWM de 8 bits por defecto. Esto significa que el valor del ciclo de trabajo puede variar de 0 a 255. La frecuencia del PWM también es configurable en el ESP32. La frecuencia por defecto es de 1 kHz, pero puede ajustarse según las necesidades del proyecto utilizando la función ledcSetup() para configurar el canal PWM y ledcWrite() para establecer el ciclo de trabajo.
Por ejemplo, ledcSetup(0, 1000, 10); configura el canal 0 con una frecuencia de 1000 Hz y una resolución de 10 bits. Luego, ledcWrite(0, dutyCycle); establece el ciclo de trabajo del canal PWM. Ten en cuenta que la frecuencia y resolución del PWM pueden ajustarse según los requisitos específicos de tu proyecto.
Aunque el código necesario se parece mucho entre diferentes microcontroladores, hay varias diferencias que conviene conocer.
También las posibilidades que ofrece cada uno de los microcontroladores son diferentes.
A continuación, te dejo algunos códigos de ejemplo (son códigos orientativos, no todos los he probado adecuadamente)
Para generar una señal PWM de 1V utilizando un Arduino Uno, puedes utilizar la función analogWrite() de Arduino. La resolución de la señal PWM en Arduino Uno es de 8 bits, por lo que el rango de valores para el ciclo de trabajo (duty cycle) va de 0 (completamente apagado) a 255 (completamente encendido).
Para obtener una señal de 1V, debes determinar qué porcentaje del ciclo de trabajo corresponde a 1V en comparación con el rango total de 0 a 5V (estamos utilizando un Arduino de 5V, por lo que el nivel lógico alto corresponderá a 5V). La relación es:
Entonces, para obtener 1V, puedes utilizar el siguiente código:
const int pwmPin = 5; // Puedes cambiar el número del pin según tus necesidades
void setup() {
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
int dutyCycle = map(100, 0, 500, 0, 255); // Map 0 a 1V en un rango de 0 a 255
analogWrite(pwmPin, dutyCycle);
delay(1000); // Espera 1 segundo antes de repetir
}
Este código configura el pin digital 5 (puedes cambiarlo según tus necesidades) como salida PWM y luego utiliza la función analogWrite() para establecer el ciclo de trabajo necesario para obtener 1V. El valor mapeado de 100 se obtiene utilizando la función map() para convertir el rango del ciclo de trabajo de 0 a 255 en el rango de voltage de 0 a 500 (0 a 5V, en milivoltios). La frecuencia de la señal PWM es manejada automáticamente por el hardware del Arduino Uno.
En un Arduino Uno, la frecuencia del PWM estándar es de aproximadamente 490 Hz. Puedes usar la biblioteca TimerOne para cambiar la frecuencia del PWM. Aquí está el código modificado:
#include <TimerOne.h>
const int pwmPin = 5; // Puedes cambiar el número del pin según tus necesidades
void setup() {
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);
Timer1.initialize(1000); // Establecer la frecuencia a 1000 Hz
Timer1.pwm(pwmPin, 127); // Establecer el ciclo de trabajo al 50% (127 de 255)
}
void loop() {
// No es necesario cambiar el ciclo de trabajo en el bucle en este caso
delay(1000); // Espera 1 segundo antes de repetir
}
En este código, Timer1.initialize(1000); establece la frecuencia del temporizador a 1000 Hz, y Timer1.pwm(pwmPin, 512); establece el ciclo de trabajo a la mitad para obtener una salida de aproximadamente 1V.
Recuerda que necesitarás instalar la biblioteca TimerOne antes de compilar este código. Puedes hacerlo a través del Administrador de bibliotecas de Arduino o mediante PlatformIO.
Aquí tienes el código adaptado para un ESP8266.
Ten en cuenta que el ESP8266 utiliza una resolución de 10 bits para el PWM, por lo que el rango de valores para el ciclo de trabajo va de 0 a 1023.
const int pwmPin = D1; // Puedes cambiar el número del pin según tus necesidades en la placa ESP8266
void setup() {
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);
analogWriteFreq(1000); // Establecer la frecuencia a 1000 Hz
}
void loop() {
int dutyCycle = map(205, 0, 1023, 0, 100); // Map 1V a 205 en un rango de 0 a 1023
analogWrite(pwmPin, dutyCycle);
delay(1000); // Espera 1 segundo antes de repetir
}
Este código configura el pin digital D1 (puedes cambiarlo según tus necesidades) como salida PWM y utiliza la función analogWrite() para establecer el ciclo de trabajo necesario para obtener 1V. El valor mapeado de 205 se obtiene utilizando la función map() para convertir el rango de 0 a 1023 al rango de 0 a 100. La frecuencia de la señal PWM es manejada automáticamente por el hardware del ESP8266.
Para generar una señal PWM de 1V con una frecuencia de 1000 Hz utilizando un ESP32, puedes usar el siguiente código:
const int pwmPin = 5; // Puedes cambiar el número del pin según tus necesidades en la placa ESP32
void setup() {
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);
ledcSetup(0, 1000, 10); // Configurar el canal 0, frecuencia de 1000 Hz, resolución de 10 bits
ledcAttachPin(pwmPin, 0); // Asociar el pin al canal 0
}
void loop() {
int dutyCycle = map(205, 0, 1023, 0, 1023); // Map 1V a 205 en un rango de 0 a 1023
ledcWrite(0, dutyCycle);
delay(1000); // Espera 1 segundo antes de repetir
}
En este código, ledcSetup(0, 1000, 10); configura el canal 0 con una frecuencia de 1000 Hz y una resolución de 10 bits. Luego, ledcAttachPin(pwmPin, 0); asocia el pin al canal 0. El ciclo de trabajo se ajusta como antes usando ledcWrite(0, dutyCycle);.
Asegúrate de que el pin que estás utilizando en la placa ESP32 sea compatible con PWM. Puedes ajustar el valor mapeado según tus necesidades para obtener la amplitud de 1V deseada.
En un ESP32, la frecuencia máxima del PWM depende de varios factores, incluyendo la resolución del PWM y el canal PWM específico que estás utilizando. La fórmula general para calcular la frecuencia del PWM en un ESP32 es:
En el ESP32, los timers y los canales PWM están asociados. Por ejemplo, el Timer 0 está asociado con los canales 0 y 1, el Timer 1 con los canales 2 y 3, y así sucesivamente.
La frecuencia del reloj del timer puede variar y se define en el núcleo del ESP32, y el divisor del timer y el contador del timer son configurables.
Para calcular la frecuencia máxima del PWM en un ESP32 con resolución de 8 bits, puedes usar la siguiente fórmula:
Donde (256) es el número máximo de cuentas para una resolución de 8 bits.
En un caso práctico, si la frecuencia del reloj del timer es de 
y el divisor del timer es 
(para propósitos de ejemplo), la frecuencia máxima sería:
Es importante señalar que estos valores son ejemplos y pueden variar según la configuración específica que se utilice en tu código. Puedes ajustar la configuración del timer y canal PWM según tus necesidades y restricciones específicas.
Para que nos resulte más sencillo hacer pruebas, he preparado el siguiente programa para ESP32.
Nos permitirá ajustar el ciclo de trabajo de la señal PWM a través de una página web y cambiar la resolución de la señal entre 8, 10 y 12 bits.
Además, podremos ver una sencilla representación gráfica de la señal PWM generada.
Solo tenemos que editar el código con el SSID y password de nuestra red wifi, cargarlo en el ESP y conectarnos a la IP del ESP32 desde un navegador web.
Puedes ver la IP del ESP32 en tu router. También puedes verla en el puerto serie del ESP32 cuando se conecta (por ejemplo, con el Serial Monitor de Arduino IDE).
La salida PWM está en el pin 27 del ESP32, puedes cambiarla como te convenga.
Recuerda, antes de grabar el programa en tu ESP32, editar el código con el SSID y contraseña de tu WIFI.
#include <WiFi.h>
#include <ESPAsyncWebServer.h>
// Configura tus credenciales de WiFi
const char* ssid = "nombre_de_tu_wifi";
const char* password = "contraseña_de_tu_wifi";
const int pwmPin = 27;
int pwmResolution = 8;
int pwmFrequency = 1000;
AsyncWebServer server(80);
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
// Conectar a la red WiFi
WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(1000);
Serial.println("Conectando a WiFi...");
}
Serial.println("Conectado a la red WiFi");
// Imprimir la dirección IP asignada
Serial.print("Dirección IP: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
// Configurar el pin como salida PWM
ledcAttachPin(pwmPin, 0);
ledcSetup(0, pwmFrequency, pwmResolution); // Configurar el canal PWM
ledcWrite(0, 0);
// Configurar las rutas para el servidor web
server.on("/", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String html = "<html><head><style>#pwmSlider { width: calc(100% - 40px); margin: 20px; }</style></head><body><h1>Control de PWM</h1>";
html += "<label for='resolution'>Resolución PWM:</label>";
html += "<select id='resolution' onchange='updateResolution()'>";
html += "<option value='8'" + String((pwmResolution == 8) ? " selected" : "") + ">8 bits</option>";
html += "<option value='10'" + String((pwmResolution == 10) ? " selected" : "") + ">10 bits</option>";
html += "<option value='12'" + String((pwmResolution == 12) ? " selected" : "") + ">12 bits</option>";
html += "</select><br>";
html += "<input type='range' min='0' max='100' value='0' id='pwmSlider' oninput='updatePWM(this.value)' style='width: calc(100% - 40px); margin: 20px;'>";
html += "<p>Valor PWM: <span id='pwmValue'>0</span></p>";
html += "<p>Porcentaje: <span id='percentageValue'>0</span>%</p>";
html += "<canvas id='pwmCanvas' width='600' height='300' style='display: block; margin: 0 auto;'></canvas>";
html += "<script>function updatePWM(value) {var pwmValue = Math.round(value / 100 * " + String((1 << pwmResolution) - 1) + "); document.getElementById('pwmValue').innerHTML = pwmValue; document.getElementById('percentageValue').innerHTML = value; var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.open('GET', '/setPWM?value=' + pwmValue, true); xhr.send(); drawPWMCanvas(value);}</script>";
html += "<script>function updateResolution() {var resolution = document.getElementById('resolution').value; var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.open('GET', '/setResolution?value=' + resolution, true); xhr.onreadystatechange = function() { if (xhr.readyState == 4 && xhr.status == 200) { location.reload(); } }; xhr.send();}</script>";
html += "<script>function drawPWMCanvas(value) {var canvas = document.getElementById('pwmCanvas'); var context = canvas.getContext('2d'); context.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height); var numCycles = 10; var cycleWidth = canvas.width / numCycles; var highWidth = (value / 100) * cycleWidth; for (var i = 0; i < numCycles; i++) { var x = i * cycleWidth; var y = 0; context.fillStyle = 'blue'; context.fillRect(x, y, highWidth, canvas.height); context.fillStyle = 'lightblue'; context.fillRect(x + highWidth, y, cycleWidth - highWidth, canvas.height); }}</script>";
html += "</body></html>";
request->send(200, "text/html; charset=UTF-8", html.c_str());
});
server.on("/setPWM", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String valueStr = request->arg("value");
int value = valueStr.toInt();
ledcWrite(0, value);
request->send(200, "text/plain", "OK");
});
server.on("/setResolution", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String valueStr = request->arg("value");
int newResolution = valueStr.toInt();
// Detener el PWM antes de cambiar la configuración
ledcWrite(0, 0);
delay(10); // Dar tiempo al PWM para detenerse completamente
// Configurar el nuevo canal PWM
ledcSetup(0, pwmFrequency, newResolution);
pwmResolution = newResolution;
// Reiniciar el PWM
ledcWrite(0, 0);
request->send(200, "text/plain", "OK");
});
// Iniciar el servidor web
server.begin();
}
void loop() {
// Tu código principal puede ir aquí
}
Un DAC, o Conversor Digital Analógico, convierte un valor digital en un voltaje analógico.
Simplemente le decimos al DAC el voltaje que queremos y él lo genera.
Algunos microcontroladores incorporan uno o más DAC en el propio hardware, mientras que otros no lo tienen incorporan y es necesario ponerlo externamente.
Por ejemplo, ni el ATmega328P y similares (Arduino Uno, Pro, Micro y Nano) ni el ESP8266, tienen DAC interno.
El ESP32 normal incluye dos DAC idénticos listos para su uso, aunque tienen sus limitaciones.
El ESP32 tiene dos DAC internos de 8 bits, que se pueden utilizar para generar señales analógicas en el rango de 0 a 3.3 voltios.
A diferencia de otros microcontroladores, como el ESP8366 o el ATmega328P del Arduino Uno, que no tienen DAC interno, puede ser una importante ventaja.
Aquí hay una breve descripción de los DAC internos del ESP32:
Para calcular el voltaje de salida de los DAC del ESP32, puedes utilizar la siguiente acuación:
Esta ecuación muestra cómo se calcula el voltaje de salida 
en función del valor digital value enviado al DAC, asumiendo una resolución de 12 bits y un voltaje de referencia de 3.3V.
A diferencia de muchas otras cosas de ESP32, los DAC tienen sus salidas cableadas a pines dedicados.
En la mayoría de los módulos ESP32, encontrará el canal 1 en el pin GPIO 25 y el canal 2 en GPIO 26. En el ESP32-S2 el canal 1 está en GPIO 17 y el canal 2 está en GPIO 18.
| ESP32 SoC | DAC_CH_1 | DAC_CH_2 |
|---|---|---|
| ESP32 | GPIO25 | GPIO26 |
| ESP32-S2 | GPIO17 | GPIO18 |
A continuación, te dejo un ejemplo muy simple en el que se establece un valor en uno de los DAC internos para generar una salida analógica de 1V en el pin 25 (DAC 1 del ESP32):
// Define el pin del DAC
#define DAC_CH1 25
void setup() {
int voltaje_deseado = 1000; // Voltaje deseado en milivoltios (por ejemplo, 1000mV = 1V)
// Convierte el valor de voltaje deseado al rango 0-255 para el DAC
int dac_valor = map(voltaje_deseado, 0, 3300, 0, 255); // El rango 0-3300 es para 0-3.3V
// Establece el valor del DAC con el voltaje deseado
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, dac_valor);
}
void loop() {
}
Este otro código tan sencillo genera cinco voltajes (cero incluido) con una pausa de 2 segundos entre cambios.
// Define el pin del DAC
#define DAC_CH1 25
void setup() {
// Configura e inicializa el monitor serie
Serial.begin(115200);
}
void loop() {
// Genera cinco voltajes parando dos segundos entre ellos
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, 0);
Serial.println("DAC Value 0");
delay(2000);
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, 64);
Serial.println("DAC Value 64");
delay(2000);
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, 128);
Serial.println("DAC Value 128");
delay(2000);
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, 192);
Serial.println("DAC Value 192");
delay(2000);
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, 255);
Serial.println("DAC Value 255");
delay(2000);
}
Por último, te dejo este tercer código, muy útil para hacer pruebas, que te permite elegir el voltaje de salida a través de la interface web.
#include <WiFi.h>
#include <ESPAsyncWebServer.h>
// Configura tus credenciales de WiFi
const char* ssid = "nombre_de_tu_wifi";
const char* password = "contraseña_de_tu_wifi";
// Define el pin del DAC
#define DAC_CH1 25
AsyncWebServer server(80);
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
// Conectar a la red WiFi
WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(1000);
Serial.println("Conectando a WiFi...");
}
Serial.println("Conectado a la red WiFi");
// Imprimir la dirección IP asignada
Serial.print("Dirección IP: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
// Inicializar el DAC interno
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, 0); // Configurar el DAC interno 1 (GPIO 25) a 0V
// Configurar las rutas para el servidor web
server.on("/", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String html = "<html><body><h1>Control de DAC Interno</h1>";
html += "<input type='range' min='0' max='255' value='0' id='dacSlider' oninput='updateDAC(this.value)' style='width: calc(100% - 40px); margin: 20px;'>";
html += "<p>Voltios DAC Interno: <span id='dacValue'>0.00</span> V</p>";
html += "<p>Porcentaje: <span id='percentageValue'>0</span>%</p>";
html += "<script>function updateDAC(value) {var volts = (value / 255 * 3.3).toFixed(2); document.getElementById('dacValue').innerHTML = volts; document.getElementById('percentageValue').innerHTML = ((value / 255) * 100).toFixed(2); var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.open('GET', '/setDAC?value=' + value, true); xhr.send();}</script>";
html += "</body></html>";
request->send(200, "text/html; charset=UTF-8", html.c_str());
});
server.on("/setDAC", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String valueStr = request->arg("value");
int value = valueStr.toInt();
dacWrite(DAC_CH1, value); // Establecer el valor del DAC interno 1 (GPIO 25)
request->send(200, "text/plain", "OK");
});
// Iniciar el servidor web
server.begin();
}
void loop() {
// Tu código principal puede ir aquí
}
El ESP32 DAC tiene 3 modos diferentes de funcionamiento, y los veremos brevemente en este tutorial, aunque sólo utilizaremos el primer modo en este tutorial.
Este es el modo más fácil y directo. Solo tienes que decir la salida digital (8-Bit) al DAC y éste lo convertirá al nivel de voltaje analógico correspondiente en el canal de salida DAC que hayas seleccionado. El voltaje permanecerá constante hasta que envíes una nueva órden al DAC. También se conoce como «Modo One-Shot» o «Modo Directo».
Los canales DAC del ESP32 pueden usar una técnica llamada «DMA» (Acceso Directo a Memoria) para generar las formas de onda de salida analógica sin que la CPU tenga que intervenir demasiado, gracias al DMA. Esto puede funcionar de 3 maneras diferentes:
El ESP32-IDF tiene muy buena documentación y APIs para esos modos y los usaremos en futuros tutoriales.
El ESP32 DAC tiene integrado un generador de forma de onda coseno que proporciona una forma de onda coseno en cualquiera de los dos canales de salida con frecuencia, amplitud y desplazamiento de fase ajustables. La frecuencia de salida de los DAC del ESP32 en este caso es de 130Hz-100kHz.
Los DAC internos del ESP32 también tienen algunas desventajas, que conviene conocer:
A pesar de estas limitaciones, el DAC interno del ESP32 sigue siendo útil en muchas aplicaciones y puede ser suficiente para proyectos que no requieran una salida analógica extremadamente precisa o de alta resolución. Para aplicaciones más exigentes, podría ser necesario considerar soluciones externas, como DAC externos.
Una característica importante del DAC del ESP32 (y que a veces será una desventaja y otras veces no, dependiendo del caso de uso) es que no se consiguen cero voltios. La salida siempre tiene algunos mV, aunque la pongamos a cero.
Desde luego, su ventaja principal es que no es necesario ningún hardware adicional y que su programación es muy fácil.
Como decíamos, la mayor desventaja de los DAC internos del ESP32 es que su salida nunca baja a cero voltios, saliendo siempre por el pin algunos milivoltios, aunque nosotros pidamos un valor de cero (dacWrite(DAC_PIN, 0)).
Existiría una solución fácil a este problema y es utilizar un circuito integrado Amplificador Operacional.
Por ejemplo, el amplificador operacional LM358 que tiene dos amplificadores operacionales en su interior y su especialidad es precisamente hacer cosas con voltajes, (como sumar y restar voltajes).
Rizando el rizo podríamos generar con el microprocesador el voltaje de offset para meterlo en el OpAmp. Probablemente podríamos incluso automatizar la puesta a cero y el cálculo del offset con el propio microprocesador. ¿Bueno, para qué liarnos ahora…?
Utilizar un DAC externo es la solución perfecta desde un punto de vista de calidad de la tensión generada y facilidad de uso. Es la forma «correcta» de generar un voltaje analógico arbitrario con un microcontrolador.
Algunos de los DACs populares incluyen el de Microchip o el ADS1220 de Texas Instruments. Estos dispositivos son capaces de proporcionar resoluciones de 12 bits (MCP4728) o más (el ADS1220 tiene una resolución de 24 bits).
Utilizando un DAC barato y fácil de encontrar, como el , tendríamos 12bits de resolución (212 = 4096 niveles de voltaje distintos).
Por menos de un par de euros podemos añadir esta opción a nuestro proyecto.
El MCP4725 tiene las siguientes características básicas:
Con una tensión de alimentación de 5 V es posible seleccionar tensiones de salida entre 0 V y 4,9988 V en pasos de 0,0012 V. En el programa Arduino el voltaje de salida se representa mediante un número entero entre 0 y 4095. La conversión entre este valor y el voltaje real es posible mediante la siguiente ecuación:
Aquí,
es el voltaje de salida.
es el voltaje de alimentación (VCC) del MCP4725.
es el valor digital configurado para el DAC (entre 0 y 4095).He preparado un pequeño firmware para el ESP32 que te permitirá manejar el MCP4725 y hacer experimentos con él fácilmente.
El programa presenta una interface web en la que puedes seleccionar el voltaje de salida del MCP4725.
Recuerda, antes de grabar el programa en tu ESP32, editar el código con el SSID y contraseña de tu WIFI.
También puedes ajustar los pines I2C que vas a utilizar mediante SDA_PIN y SCL_PIN, si no quieres que estén en los pines 33 y 32.
#include <Wire.h>
#include <Adafruit_MCP4725.h>
#include <WiFi.h>
#include <ESPAsyncWebServer.h>
// Configura tus credenciales de WiFi
const char* ssid = "nombre_de_tu_wifi";
const char* password = "contraseña_de_tu_wifi";
#define SDA_PIN 33
#define SCL_PIN 32
#define VCC_MCP4725 3.3 // Voltaje de alimentación del MCP4725 en voltios
Adafruit_MCP4725 dac;
AsyncWebServer server(80);
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
// Conectar a la red WiFi
WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(1000);
Serial.println("Conectando a WiFi...");
}
Serial.println("Conectado a la red WiFi");
// Imprimir la dirección IP asignada
Serial.print("Dirección IP: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
// Inicializa la comunicación I2C con los pines personalizados
Wire.begin(SDA_PIN, SCL_PIN);
// Configuración del MCP4725
if (!dac.begin(0x60)) // La dirección I2C del MCP4725 puede variar (por defecto es 0x60)
{
Serial.println("No se pudo encontrar el sensor MCP4725. Asegúrate de que esté conectado correctamente.");
}
else
{
dac.setVoltage(0, false); // Establecer el voltaje en 0, no escribir en EEPROM
Serial.println("MCP4725 encontrado");
}
// Configurar las rutas para el servidor web
server.on("/", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String html = "<html><body><h1>Control de MCP4725</h1>";
html += "<input type='range' min='0' max='4095' value='0' id='dacSlider' oninput='updateDAC(this.value)' style='width: calc(100% - 40px); margin: 20px;'>";
html += "<p>Voltios MCP4725: <span id='dacValue'>0.00</span> V</p>";
html += "<p>Porcentaje: <span id='percentageValue'>0</span>%</p>";
html += "<script>function updateDAC(value) {var volts = (value / 4095 * " + String(VCC_MCP4725) + ").toFixed(2); document.getElementById('dacValue').innerHTML = volts; document.getElementById('percentageValue').innerHTML = ((value / 4095) * 100).toFixed(2); var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.open('GET', '/setDAC?value=' + value, true); xhr.send();}</script>";
html += "</body></html>";
request->send(200, "text/html; charset=UTF-8", html.c_str());
});
server.on("/setDAC", HTTP_GET, [](AsyncWebServerRequest *request) {
String valueStr = request->arg("value");
int value = valueStr.toInt();
dac.setVoltage(value, false); // El segundo parámetro indica si se debe escribir en la EEPROM
request->send(200, "text/plain", "OK");
});
// Iniciar el servidor web
server.begin();
}
void loop() {
// Tu código principal puede ir aquí
}
El último método de generación de voltaje del que vamos a hablar es la modulación delta-sigma.
Es un tipo de señal en la que el valor analógico lo determina la «densidad de pulsos» de la señal (en vez de la «anchura de pulsos» de una señal PWM).
La principal ventaja de la modulación delta-sigma es que es muy rápida realizando cambios, lo que puede ser interesante para síntesis de sonidos, por ejemplo, pero nosotros no necesitamos esa velocidad para «generar voltajes», que es de lo que trata este artículo.
Una cosa importante es que, como en el caso de la señal PWM, es necesario un filtro a la salida y aunque en ocasiones puede ser suficiente con un filtro R-C (como utilizábamos con la señal PWM), el fabricante del ESP32 sugiere utilizar un filtro paso-bajo bastante más complejo.
De los microprocesadores que estamos viendo aquí, el único que tiene soporte nativo para generar señales con modulación delta-sigma es el ESP32, ni el Arduino ni el ESP8266 tienen esta posibilidad.
La modulación delta-sigma, también conocida como modulación por densidad de pulso, es una técnica utilizada en la conversión analógica-digital (ADC) y en la modulación de señales analógicas. Esta técnica se destaca por su capacidad para lograr una alta resolución y precisión en la conversión de señales analógicas a digitales, especialmente en aplicaciones donde se requiere una alta relación señal-ruido.
A continuación, te proporciono una breve descripción de cómo funciona la modulación delta-sigma:
La modulación delta-sigma se utiliza comúnmente en la conversión de señales analógicas a digitales en aplicaciones como audio, comunicaciones y sensores. Proporciona una alta resolución y una buena relación señal-ruido, aunque a expensas de una mayor velocidad de muestreo. Este enfoque se ha vuelto muy popular en convertidores analógico-digitales de sobremuestreo (ADC) utilizados en aplicaciones de audio de alta fidelidad y otros sistemas donde la precisión es crítica.
Aunque la modulación delta-sigma no es el objetivo principal del artículo, porque está pensado para la generación de otro tipo de señales, te dejo un ejemplo de código para ESP32, muy básico, para que sepas «qué aspecto tiene».
#include <Arduino.h>
void setup() {
//Configura delta-sigma en pin 27, canal 0 con una frecuencia de 1000 Hz
sigmaDeltaSetup(27, 0, 1000);
// Inicializa canal 0 a 0V
sigmaDeltaWrite(0, 0);
}
void loop() {
// Sube el voltaje suavemente
// Hará overflow a 256
static uint8_t i = 0;
sigmaDeltaWrite(0, i++);
delay(100);
}
Una carga electrónica con MOSFET es un instrumento tremendamente útil, nos permite aplicar una carga «controlada» sobre una fuente de energía como una batería, un panel solar, una fuente de alimentación, etc. y observar lo que sucede.
El abanico de usos es enorme. Podemos comprobar el correcto funcionamiento de una fuente de alimentación, comprobar baterías y su capacidad, caracterizar paneles solares y muchas cosas más…
Esta carga electrónica no solo es super fácil de construir, sino que además es super barata. Calculo que la puedes construir por menos de 5€, dependiendo de los materiales que ya tengas.
No quiero adelantar acontecimientos, pero estoy trabajando en un proyecto con ESP32 que me permita tomar un montón de datos sobre los paneles solares de forma automatizada, transmitiéndome los datos desde el exterior por WiFi.
La carga electrónica es una parte muy importante del proyecto, pero… Esto es solo el primer paso.
Llevo tiempo con intención de hacer unos experimentos con microprocesadores, como Arduino, ESP8266 y ESP32, alimentados con paneles solares pero cada vez que me pongo a ello me da una pereza horrorosa porque:
Para analizar cómo funciona un panel solar necesitas:
Seguro que le encontrarás un montón de aplicaciones, dependiendo del tipo de proyectos que hagas, independientemente de que yo particularmente la esté utilizando para el análisis de paneles solares.
Cómo siempre, lo mejor antes de ponerse con el diseño y/o construcción de cualquier circuito, es definir claramente los requisitos de lo que se quiere conseguir.
Esta es mi lista básica de deseos:
Creo que todos los requisitos se explican por sí mismos, aunque hay algún punto que conviene detallar un poco más.
Los dos primeros requisitos son un deseo que conlleva un compromiso: Será una carga electrónica con MOSFET básica para hacer experimentos rápidos. No se persigue una gran precisión, que sea de alta potencia o que funcione en absolutamente todos los casos.
Para cumplir con el tercer requisito (que funcione en un amplio rango de intensidades, potencias y voltajes con pocos cambios), vamos a hacer un diseño básico pero que utilice un MOSFET capaz, que nos permita gestionar una potencia relativamente alta simplemente mejorando el sistema de disipación de calor (pasando de transistor al aire, a transistor con un pequeño refrigerador, añadiendo si es necesario ventilador, etc.).
Por último, para que la carga electrónica con MOSFET sea fácilmente integrable en proyectos más grandes, la vamos a hacer controlable por voltaje: Simplemente vamos a aplicar un voltaje a su entrada y la carga se ajustará a una intensidad proporcional al voltaje de control.
Eso voltaje de control podrá ser proporcionado por una vulgar resistencia ajustable (como en este diseño básico), por un Arduino, un ESP8266, ESP32, o cualquier otro controlador o microcontrolador, como una Raspberry Pi.
Espero que pronto puedas ver novedades en este sentido, con esta carga electrónica integrada en un proyecto con un ESP32.
El querer hacer una carga electrónica con un mínimo de complejidad y componentes, supone aceptar un compromiso en lo que a seguridad se refiere.
Tendremos que usar la cabeza y pensar en lo que estamos haciendo porque, para reducir la complejidad al mínimo, no dispondrá de medidas de protección (sería bueno poner un fusible, eso sí).
Hay que tener en cuenta que, en el fondo, lo que hace una carga electrónica, con o sin MOSFET, es consumir energía transformándola en calor. Eso supone que tenemos que tener siempre muy presente la temperatura de cada componente y pensar cómo va a afectar a la misma cualquier cosa que hagamos, antes de hacerla.
Si decimos a la carga que consuma un montón, y eso es más de los que el dispositivo a la que lo conectemos es capaz de soportar, podemos estropear el dispositivo.
Piensa que, si el dispositivo es una batería, y hacemos lo que no debemos, la batería puede salir ardiendo.
También podemos estropear la propia carga si le pedimos lo que no puede soportar.
No puedo dejar de repetirlo:
USA LA CABEZA. ¡UNA CARGA ELECTRÓNICA, CON MOSFET O SIN ÉL, ¡PUEDE SER PELIGROSA SI NO SE USA CORRECTAMENTE!
Esta carga no tiene ningún tipo de limitación activa (más allá de las limitaciones derivadas de su propio diseño y construcción y de los componentes utilizados).
Resumiendo: usa la cabeza y actúa con responsabilidad y bajo tu responsabilidad.
Una vez hecha la advertencia, si os digo que la carga electrónica aguanta un maltrato relativo sin estropearse. Por ejemplo, yo le he metido durante algunos segundos 3A de polaridad invertida al revés (positivo y negativo del DUT intercambiados) sin mayor problema (el MOSFET IRLZ44N aguanta hasta -16V entre Gate y Source).
Entramos en harina, viendo el circuito electrónico de nuestra carga:
Como puedes ver, la carga electrónica está construida con muy pocos componentes.
Es perfectamente posible utilizar otros componentes, si los tienes a mano. Yo los he utilizado sencillamente porque los tenía a mano y no necesitaba pedir nada y esperar a que llegara.
Uno de los problemas habituales en este tipo de cargas electrónicas sencillas, es que son propensas a auto oscilaciones. En mi caso, en todas las pruebas que he hecho con diferentes componentes y en muchas situaciones, no he encontrado ningún problema de auto oscilación.
Aunque no es imprescindible, y te lo puedes saltar, quiero hablarte un poco sobre el transistor MOSFET que he elegido para la carga electrónica.
Lo primero, ¿por qué lo he elegido? ¿Es que es el mejor?
Lo he elegido por un motivo de peso: porque lo tenía. Y no, no es el mejor.
Aun así, es una muy buena elección para un proyecto de este tipo y si no lo hubiera tenido, hubiera estado muy algo en la lista de MOSFETs a utilizar.
Es un MOSFET muy duro, de alta potencia, barato y bastante fácil de encontrar, incluso en los sitios baratos para makers, como AliExpress.
Estos datos lo dicen todo: una intensidad soportada máxima teórica de 47A (Id), con un voltaje máximo de 55V (Vdss) y una disipación de potencia de 110W (cuidado, estos datos son los ‘ideales‘, por ejemplo, con un disipador ‘infinito‘).
Y, sobre todo: Es un MOSFET de nivel lógico que funciona bien con tensiones en su Gate de 2.5V (Vgs) y tiene una RDS(on) de solo 0.022Ω, lo que hará que se caliente lo menos posible, y eso en nuestra aplicación es muy importante, quizá lo que más (junto con el bajo Vgs).
Según el datasheet del fabricante, el RDS(on) es de solo 0.035Ω con Vgs de 4V e Id de 21A, que está bastante dentro de nuestra zona de funcionamiento.
Como no quiero dejarte aquí un montón de información que será inútil para la mayoría, te dejo el datasheet, que para eso está:
¿Te has fijado, por casualidad, en que el esquema tiene integrado un amperímetro en serie con el DUT?
Esto es muy poco habitual en un esquema… ¡tiene incluso un valor en mA!
El motivo es que el esquema que he preparado es completamente interactivo y… ¡puedes simular el funcionamiento del circuito sin necesidad de montarlo!
Accede a esta página de CircuitLab, y podrás cambiar valores y hacer medidas en cualquier punto del circuito.
Solo tienes que pulsar el botón «Simulate» y, por ejemplo, hacer doble click en el potenciómetro R2. Cambia el valor «K» por cualquier valor entre 0 y 1 (pon por ejemplo 0.02 que es como si el potenciómetro estuviera girado un 2%) y mira cómo cambia el amperímetro. Asegúrate de utilizar varios decimales.
Podrás ver como, por ejemplo, casi toda la variación en la carga se produce en el primer 10% del giro del potenciómetro.
También verás que la carga máxima es de algo menos de 600mA (más que suficiente como carga para los pequeños paneles solares que quiero analizar).
Puedes ver las medidas (voltaje, corriente y más) en cualquier punto del circuito solo poniendo el puntero del ratón en ese punto.
Pon en ratón sobre en MOSFET y la resistencia. ¡Podrás ver incluso la potencia disipada por esos componentes en tiempo real, según cambias los valores!
No te pierdas ver cómo cambia el comportamiento de la carga electrónica cuando cambias el valor de la resistencia R1 de 1Ω por 0.1Ω (más adelante hablaremos más de ello y de las pruebas que he hecho al respecto).
Como ves, este practico simulador, te permitirá muy con mucha facilidad, decidir cómo quieres que funcione la carga, en base a tus necesidades.
Como sabes, no me gusta simplemente ‘dar recetas’ para hacer algo sin que sepas qué hace y aprendas por el camino.
Me gusta explicarlo de una forma entendible para que cualquier persona, aunque tenga muy pocos conocimientos, sea capaz de comprender cómo funciona el circuito y el porqué de las cosas.
De esta forma espero que mis artículos aporten valor y que sean didácticos y permitan aprender al aficionado de una forma fácil.
A grandes rasgos (y a continuación iremos entrando en detalle), lo que hace la carga electrónica es lo siguiente:
La carga electrónica utiliza dos divisores de tensión resistivos para calcular el voltaje de referencia y el voltaje de medida por lo que es importante que, si no estás familiarizado con qué es un divisor de tensión resistivo y cómo funciona y se calcula, leas el siguiente punto atentamente.
Un divisor de tensión es un circuito formado por dos resistencias conectadas en serie entre una fuente de voltaje. Este tipo de circuito se utiliza para obtener una fracción del voltaje de entrada en la conexión entre las dos resistencias. La fórmula general para calcular un divisor de tensión es:
Donde:
es el voltaje de salida.
es el voltaje de entrada.
es la resistencia conectada al voltaje de entrada.
es la resistencia conectada entre la salida y el voltaje común (tierra).Si conoces tres de estos valores, puedes utilizar la fórmula para calcular el cuarto. Aquí te dejo las variantes de la fórmula para cada parámetro:
Calcular el Voltaje de Salida ():
Calcular el Voltaje de Entrada ():
Calcular la Resistencia :
Calcular la Resistencia :
Lo mejor para comprenderlo, como siempre, es ver un ejemplo sencillo, con números fáciles:
Estos cálculos son útiles al diseñar circuitos en los que necesitas reducir un voltaje de entrada a un nivel específico. Es importante tener en cuenta que la carga conectada a la salida del divisor de tensión afectará al voltaje de salida real. Además, se deben seleccionar resistencias que estén disponibles y sean prácticas para tu aplicación.
El voltaje de referencia lo sacamos del divisor de tensión que forman las dos ramas del potenciómetro R2.
Este potenciómetro, que es de 200kΩ en nuestro esquema, lo podemos ver como dos resistencias que suman entre las dos 200kΩ y que, cambiando el ajuste del potenciómetro, cambiamos el «punto intermedio entre las resistencias».
Te dejo la siguiente modificación del esquema, para que me sigas:
Podrías ver nuestro potenciómetro como dos resistencias separadas (R3 y R4) que pueden tener cualquier valor entre 0 y 200kΩ, con la particularidad de que ambas siempre suman 200kΩ (siempre X+Y=200).
Esto es extensible a cualquier potenciómetro, por supuesto, y en muchas ocasiones te resultará útil imaginarlas de esta manera para comprender un circuito.
Ahora que ya sabemos de qué se trata, imagina que el potenciómetro está justo a la mitad: El voltaje en el terminal «+» será de 2.5V
¿Por qué?
Porque como hemos visto antes: , de manera, que sustituyendo con nuestros valores tendríamos: 
Lo primero que tenemos que hacer es medir la corriente que pasa por el MOSFET de la carga electrónica (la corriente que viaja entre el punto «+ Load» y GND.
Realmente la corriente nunca (casi nunca) se mide directamente, lo que realmente se hace es medir la caída de tensión en una resistencia conocida (y así es como lo mide tu multímetro, por ejemplo).
Esto es muy fácil de hacer con la ley de Ohm.
La ley de Ohm nos dice que: 
Tenemos una resistencia para medir la corriente que es R1 y que tiene un valor de 1Ω.
De acuerdo con la formula, si pasara por esta resistencia una intensidad de 1A se generaría entre sus terminales una tensión de 1V.
Si midiéramos una tensión de 0.53V (530mV), la corriente que la estaría atravesando sería de 0.53A (530mA).
En este caso es muy fácil porque lo que vamos a utilizar es la tensión directamente, ni siquiera necesitamos aplicar la formula y calcular la intensidad.
Con los dos voltajes anteriores, que ya hemos calculado y que hemos visto que es muy fácil, vamos generar una tensión de control, que será la que aplicaremos al Gate del MOSFET, directamente y sin modificaciones…
Esta señal de control tiene un voltaje que es: el voltaje de referencia – el voltaje de medida.
Generar este voltaje es muy fácil ya que nos lo hace el circuito integrado LM358 que estamos utilizando, un Amplificador Operacional.
Los Amplificadores Operacionales, hacen justo lo que su nombre indica: amplifican señales y operan con ellas (sumas, restas, etc).
Tienen dos entradas y una salida: metemos un voltaje por la entrada «+» otro por la entrada «-» y en la salida nos proporcionará el primero menos el segundo.
La magia está en que con esto conseguimos que los voltajes se igualen justo en el punto en el que la intensidad es la que queremos.
El circuito integrado LM358 tiene dos amplificadores operacionales en su interior, aunque en este caso solo utilizaríamos uno:
Aquí te presento un ejemplo práctico que ilustra una idea bastante sencilla:
Para lograr una corriente de 1A, aplicamos 1V a la entrada no inversora y medimos el voltaje generado en nuestra resistencia en la entrada inversora.
Cuando el voltaje en la entrada no inversora (la referencia de intensidad deseada) supera al voltaje en la entrada inversora (la medición de la intensidad presente), la salida (el voltaje de control) se vuelve positiva, siendo más alto cuanto mayor sea la diferencia.
Dado que el voltaje de control está conectado a la compuerta del MOSFET, este conduce más, aumentando la intensidad y, por ende, el voltaje medido.
Cuando el voltaje en la entrada no inversora es menor que el voltaje en la entrada inversora, la salida se establece en cero. En este caso, el MOSFET deja de conducir, disminuyendo la intensidad y elevando el voltaje medido.
Este ciclo se repite continuamente a una velocidad sorprendente. Visualiza en tu mente este proceso sucediendo de manera ininterrumpida y a gran velocidad.
En consecuencia, el amplificador operacional genera el voltaje de control necesario (incrementándolo o disminuyéndolo) para igualar el voltaje medido al voltaje de referencia. Como resultado, la intensidad coincide precisamente con la que hemos seleccionado mediante el voltaje de control.
Por supuesto, un amplificador operacional es capaz de hacer muchas otras cosas, pero me he centrado en lo que hace en nuestro circuito, que es lo que nos interesa. Quizá otro día, escriba un artículo completo sobre el funcionamiento de estos pequeños amigos que tanto ayudan.
Por cierto… hemos visto al amplificador operacional realizando operaciones, pero ¿y eso de que amplifica? Si, en nuestro caso por 1 (por -1 realmente), aunque ya te adelanto que, para otros usos, son capaces de amplificar las señales cientos o miles de veces (la ganancia del LM358 es de más de 100.000).
De momento, si quieres puedes aprender más sobre amplificadores operacionales en la Wikipedia.
Lo primero que hice fue montar el circuito en una protoboard para comprobar que funcionaba correctamente, hacer las primeras mediciones y validarlo.
Aquí puedes ver el setup que monté para las primeras pruebas:
Básicamente el circuito pelado con un montón de puntas de prueba para medir varios parámetros de funcionamiento simultáneamente…
Está conectado a…
Tres canales del osciloscopio, donde puedo ver al mismo tiempo:
Una fuente de alimentación de laboratorio ajustada a 5V y con su corriente limitada a 10mA, que alimenta el circuito.
Limitar la fuente de alimentación del circuito a solo 10mA durante las primeras pruebas permite detectar si hay algún problema (por ejemplo, en el cableado), sin que nada se queme o estropee.
10mA es mucho más de lo que el circuito necesita para funcionar (realmente consume bastante menos de 1mA).
Una segunda fuente de alimentación de laboratorio ajustada a 5V y limitada a 100mA, que actúa como DUT («Device Under Test», o dispositivo bajo prueba). Dicho de otra forma, es el «dispositivo que estoy «probando«) y que puede ser sustituido por una batería, un panel solar, etc…
Poderla limitar, en este momento inicial de las pruebas, a 100mA es muy interesante porque no tengo puesto ningún tipo de refrigeración en el MOSFET y de esta forma no tengo que preocuparme por si se calienta o hay algún problema y la carga se pone en corto (pasando por ella un montón de amperios descontroladamente).
Una vez hechas las primeras pruebas, subí la limitación de la fuente que actuaba como dispositivo bajo prueba (DUT) hasta los 2A para probar la carga electrónica durante breves periodos de tiempo.
He utilizado el multímetro para hacer medidas varias en diferentes puntos del circuito.
En el momento en el que tomé esta fotografía estaba midiendo el voltaje en el Gate del MOSFET.
Una vez hechas las primeras pruebas y viendo que todo es satisfactorio, es el momento de crear un circuito un poco más limpio y permanente que me permita seguir avanzando…
No voy a crear una placa de circuito impreso a medida para la carga electrónica, pero sí que es interesante conseguir un montaje un poco más aparente, así que lo voy a instalar todo en una perfboard, tratando de que sea un montaje lo más compacto posible.
En esta ocasión me lo he trabajado un poquito más de lo que lo hago normalmente (para que te sea más fácil montarla, si quieres hacerlo), y he documentado mejor su construcción, aparte de crear unos bonitos diagramas 
. Te agradecería que me dejes tu opinión en los comentarios.
Para que te resulte más sencillo montarla, te dejo también las vistas con solo componentes:
y con solo el cableado:
Yo creo que, con estas imágenes, y con las fotografías que te dejo a continuación, el montaje no puede ser más sencillo.
En la primera fotografía puedes ver los componentes ya soldados en su lugar.
Como verás he hecho algunas modificaciones, en base a mis necesidades:
A la hora de «cablear» la perfboard, lo he hecho en dos pasos para reducir la posibilidad de equivocarme u olvidarme algo:
Primero he «cableado» solamente las líneas de positivo y negativo (y la pata central del potenciómetro, ya que estaba allí).
Después he cableado el resto (solo quedaban los tres cables de colores).
Separándolo de esta manera cada paso es muy sencillo y es más difícil confundirse o perderse.
Este es el resultado de la carga electrónica terminada:
Como verás, he incluido un conector hembra de 2 pines para la resistencia R1 (zona izquierda, no conectada en este momento), lo que me permitirá cambiarla rápidamente para hacer pruebas.
La alimentación de la carga electrónica es en conector delantero de dos pines (el cable violeta para «+» y azul para «-«).
El conector/terminal delantero de tres pines corresponde a la conexión del DUT (cable marrón para «-» y rojo para «+»).
Te dejo los siguientes comentarios sobre la construcción:
Un diseño de carga electrónica no estaría completo sin algunas pruebas de temperatura de los componentes, especialmente del MOSFET y de la resistencia de 1Ω.
Pueden faltar muchas pruebas, pero no las de temperatura.
Hay que, al menos, poner el dedo en los componentes (también cuando la carga electrónica lleva ya un tiempo funcionando a la máxima potencia a la que se la va a hacer funcionar), y comprobar cómo están las cosas.
Estos componentes pueden funcionar muy calientes sin que pase nada, pero todo tiene un límite. Si eres capaz de poner el dedo y aguantarlo cinco segundos, todo está bien (pueden alcanzar sin problemas mucha más temperatura de la que el dedo de Carlos Arguiñano soportaría un instante).
En este caso, en vez de utilizar el dedo, he utilizado el móvil con una cámara térmica VICTOR VC328B (una de las mejores adquisiciones que he hecho últimamente, la verdad) para ver realmente cómo están las cosas.
En esta prueba, con una carga de algo menos de 2W (350mA y 5V), y R1 de 0.1Ω, a los pocos minutos la temperatura del MOSFET se estabilizó en unos 110ºC.
Con un disipador pequeño, de solo 15x10x22mm las cosas han mejorado bastante.
Es posible ajustar la carga a 5W (5V y 1A) durante varios minutos (lo he tenido unos 10) y la temperatura del MOSFET ronda los 120ºC.
La he probado con corrientes de 2A y 3A durante periodos cortos sin ningún problema, lo que significa que para las pruebas que se suelen hacer con los cargadores de móvil normales, que duran pocos segundos o un minuto, a lo sumo, es suficiente con este pequeño disipador.
Estas pruebas han sido hechas con una resistencia de 0.1Ω 5W. La resistencia durante la prueba de 5V y 1A ha llegado a los 40ºC, aproximadamente.
He puesto este disipador de tamaño mediano porque es el que tenía. Está recuperado de una vieja fuente de alimentación de PC Corsair GS700 por lo que no tengo datos técnicos.
Con este ventilador, la carga ha estado ajustada a 2A 5V (unos 10W) durante, al menos 10 minutos, y la temperatura se ha estabilizado en unos 110ºC.
He podido comprobar haciendo pruebas con 3A 5W que la carga funciona perfectamente, aunque la temperatura llega a los 120ºC en unos dos o tres minutos.
Esta prueba ha sido hecha con la resistencia de 0.1Ω 5W y la temperatura durante la prueba de 5V y 2A ha llegado a los 55ºC, aproximadamente.
Es curioso (aunque no sorprendente, porque ya lo hemos comentado muchas veces en el blog) ver como la temperatura del MOSFET era mucho más baja cuando el gate estaba alimentado directamente por una señal PWM, que cuando el MOSFET está alimentado por una corriente continua pura (o casi pura, de señal PWM con filtro paso bajo).
Aquí se nota que el MOSFET, cuando está alimentado por la señal PWM pura, funciona en la zona de saturación y su RDS(on) es mucho más baja, y por tanto su disipación térmica.
Hablamos de que la temperatura del MOSFET con la carga ajustada a 5V 1A (5W) era de 60ºC al utilizar una señal PWM pura y de unos 100ºC al introducir el filtro paso bajo.
Como ves para cualquier uso un poco «serio» tendrás que poner un disipador al MOSFET.
En mi caso no creo que necesite disipador, de momento (o en todo caso el pequeño), porque los mini paneles solares que quiero analizar son de entre 1 y 2W y, sobre todo, porque las pruebas no van a ser continuas, sino solo de algunos segundos cada cierto tiempo (se trata de un muestreo).
Esto es solo un aperitivo sin mucho rigor ni utilidad, solo para adelantar un par de ideas.
En breve te dejaré más medidas, con más datos que espero que resulten de utilidad.
Mi idea es hacer un video al respecto, no sé si para este artículo o para el de la carga electrónica controlada por ESP32.
La elección de la resistencia determina el comportamiento de la carga electrónica.
No hay una mejor que otra. Cada una tiene sus ventajas e inconvenientes.
Yo mismo estoy encontrando que según lo que quiera hacer estoy utilizando la resistencia 1Ω o la de 0.1Ω, sustituyendo una por otra.
Una resistencia de 0.1Ω nos permite aumentar la intensidad a la que la carga es capaz de funcionar. Con la de 1Ω es difícil pasar de 1A a 5V, con la de 0.1Ω podemos alcanzar varios amperios sin problema.
Otra diferencia está en que con la resistencia de 0.1Ω el voltaje que tenemos que aplicar en el gate del MOSFET es 10 veces más pequeño y esto supone que, independientemente del método que utilicemos para generarlo (PWM, DAC o MCP4725 tenga 10 veces menos resolución, con lo que la intensidad que ajustemos con cada «paso» de voltaje de control será 10 veces menor.
Con la resistencia de 1Ω y utilizando un MCP4725 a 12 bits, cada escalón puede suponer 1mA de variación, mientras que con la de 0.1Ω será de 10mA, aproximadamente.
Resumiendo, ¿quieres precisión, pero menos de 1A? Usa la de 1Ω. ¿Quieres más intensidad, aún a costa de menos precisión? Usa la de 0.1Ω.
Ten en cuenta también que estos resultados son dependientes del MOSFET utilizado. Si usas un MOSFET diferente al IRLZ44N esto variará.
A continuación, te dejo, como complemento a este artículo, un video en el que puedes ver una explicación general de la carga electrónica.
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
Fuente de alimentación MLINK DPS3005
Fuente de alimentación RIDEN RD6006W
Osciloscopio Rigol DS1054Z en Amazon España
Quedan muchas pruebas y modificaciones por hacer, por lo que espero que este artículo siga creciendo con nueva información.
Con la carga electrónica alimentada a 5V (lo que es muy conveniente), el MOSFET IRLZ44N utilizado y la resistencia de 1Ω, la intensidad máxima de la carga electrónica no llega a 600mA.
Hay varias posibilidades para aumentar la intensidad:
He hecho alguna prueba rápida sustituyendo la resistencia por una de 0.1Ω y todo funciona perfectamente y, como estaba previsto, la intensidad es mucho más alta (yo la he probado hasta 3A durante breves periodos de tiempo y ha funcionado perfectamente).
Si hubiera hecho más pruebas con la resistencia de 0.1Ω es posible que la hubiera puesto en el diseño como resistencia por defecto. No lo he hecho aún porque 600mA es más que suficiente para mis necesidades actuales y no me corre prisa.
Ahora mismo el divisor de tensión está formado por un simple potenciómetro de 200K, pero no se está usando el rango completo de movimiento. Casi toda la variación en el voltaje de referencia útil está en el primer 10% o así.
Quiero incluir una resistencia fija en una de las ramas para que el rango de variación de la resistencia sea menor y permita utilizar, al menos, el 80% del recorrido del potenciómetro.
No lo he hecho aún porque al fin y al cabo no pienso utilizar esta carga electrónica con el potenciómetro más que para las pruebas iniciales. Luego estará controlada por microprocesador. Ni siquiera lo he probado en el simulador para ver, en teoría, que resistencia debería poner.
También espero, como he dejado entrever, publicar un proyecto más completo en la que utilizaré esta carga electrónica, y otros elementos, junto a un ESP32 para analizar el funcionamiento de paneles solares.
Ya he hecho algunas pruebas con la carga controlada por un ESP32 y los resultados han sido muy buenos.
Si te gusta el mundo de los MOSFETS y lo que se puede hacer con ellos, aquí te dejo algunos artículos del blog que pueden resultarte interesantes:
Siguiendo este tutorial, vas a poder construir, con muy pocos componentes, un pequeño controlador para que la Raspberry Pi controle por PWM cargas de baja y media potencia, como puede ser un ventilador.
Quería poner un ventilador a mi Raspberry Pi 4, controlado por temperatura, y quería que funcionara muy bien y que fuera pequeño y discreto.
Este driver PWM para Raspberry Pi no difiere mucho de otros existentes. Su gran ventaja está en su formato de montaje, que permite instalarlo de una forma fácil, segura y discreta.
La Raspberry Pi 4, por sí misma, es capaz de dar muy poca potencia en sus pines.
Cuando queremos conectar algo a la Raspberry Pi que consuma más de lo que sus pines son capaces de proporcionar necesitamos ‘un empujón’, un circuito que aumente esa energía.
Este Mini Hat PWM permite conectar a la Raspberry Pi muchos dispositivos que de otra forma nose podría.
El esquema de este circuito es el siguiente:
Es el mismo que ya utilizamos en el artículo Driver PWM con transistor MOSFET y que puedes encontrar aquí con todos los detalles sobre su funcionamiento. ¡Te recomiendo su lectura!
Básicamente, lo que vamos a hacer es montar el circuito de una forma compacta, aunque sin complicarnos la vida, sobre una placa de prototipos perforada (una Perf-board).
Lo importante, y lo que lo hace diferente, es que le vamos a montar un conector hembra DuPont que nos va a permitir montarla directamente en el conector de 40 pines de la Raspberry Pi.
Como veremos, una vez que cerremos la caja, casi ni se va a ver que está ahí.
El montaje es muy sencillo. La única dificultad que puedes encontrar es que el MOSFET es un componente SMD y necesita un poco de atención, pulso y aguantar la respiración a la hora de soldarlo. Nada que no puedas hacer.
En esta imagen puedes ver la distribución de componentes aproximada que queremos conseguir.
No es necesario que la hagas exactamente igual que está aquí. De hecho, es posible que consigas una mejor distribución de componentes.
Si es así, deja, por favor, un mensaje en los comentarios contándonos tus logros.
Para que te resulte más sencillo, te dejo a continuación un video del montaje del Mini Hat PWM.
Espero que, entre el video y la información de este artículo, no tengas ningún problema para montarlo.
Si aun así encuentras alguna dificultad o tienes alguna duda, deja tu mensaje en los comentarios y trataré de solucionártela.
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
Aunque puedes hacer muchas cosas con este circuito, uno de los usos más habituales es para conectar un ventilador a una Raspberry Pi.
No te pierdas el siguiente tutorial, donde tienes una estupenda solución, con una explicación paso a paso y todo el software necesario para controlar el ventilador en base a la temperatura de la CPU:
Espero que algo tan simple como utilizar una tira de pines cortada, te de algunas ideas para aprovecharlo en otros casos similares. Muchas veces, no son necesarios conectores específicos (caros y difíciles de conseguir) para hacer cosas interesantes.
Ten en cuenta que este montaje, aunque ha salido muy bien y es completamente funcional, es una primera versión, un primer prototipo. Seguro que el siguiente que construya quedará mucho mejor. Por ejemplo, ahora ya se cómo cortar los terminales de los componentes para aprovecharlos para hacer las conexiones.
Te dejo algunos artículos relacionados que pueden serte útiles para profundizar en el tema:
Este tutorial va acompañado de un video, que te dejo más adelante, para que te resulte muy sencillo seguirlo.
Siguiendo este tutorial, vas a poder construir, con muy pocos componentes, un pequeño controlador para que la Raspberry Pi regule la velocidad de su ventilador dependiendo de su temperatura y lo completaremos con un pequeño programa en Python que haga el trabajo de supervisión y control.
Siempre que escribo un artículo en el blog mi máxima prioridad es que aporte valor para al lector, que realmente aporte conocimiento. No escribir artículos vacíos que simplemente tocan un tema por encima con información que ya está por todo internet.
¿Por qué he escrito este tutorial sobre cómo poner un ventilador de velocidad variable para Raspberry controlado por temperatura, cuando ya hay muchos por internet?
Porque los artículos que he encontrado me han parecido demasiado parciales, o no me parecía que explicaran bien las bases, de una forma entendible.
Además, me he encontrado que la mayoría de tutoriales para implementar control de velocidad por PWM basado en la temperatura en la Raspberry Pi NO LO HACEN BIEN (más adelante te explicaré por qué).
Este artículo (y los otros artículos a los que enlaza, y que he escrito como soporte de este tutorial), intentan abarcar el tema de una forma profunda pero comprensible, intentando que cualquiera pueda entenderlo fácilmente solo con leer el blog y sin preparación previa.
¡Espero que lo disfrutes!
Parece mentira lo mucho que ha costado, tanto el hardware como el software, hasta que ha todo ha funcionado perfectamente.
Que me haya costado más de lo esperado no me ha desanimado en absoluto, todo lo contrario. Esto quiere decir que el tema no es tan sencillo y que este artículo tendrá mucho valor.
La verdad es que he aprendido mucho por el camino. No esperaba que un tema tan, aparentemente, sencillo me fuera a dar tantos quebraderos de cabeza.
Tengo varias Raspberry Pi funcionando en casa para diferentes tareas. Son dispositivos pequeños, con poco consumo de energía y muy estables en su funcionamiento (pueden estar meses funcionando continuamente sin necesitar un reinicio).
He utilizado la Raspberry Pi original (la v1), la Raspberry Pi 2, la Raspberry Pi 3 y sus versiones «intermedias (con la «B» o el «+» añadidas) y la temperatura nunca ha sido un problema. Todas han funcionado estupendamente durante años sin problemas de calor.
La última que añadí, una Raspberry Pi 4, tiene mucha más potencia y rendimiento que las anteriores y eso conlleva que tenga unos requerimientos de refrigeración muy por encima de sus antecesoras. ¿Se puede usar una Raspberry Pi 4 sin ventilador? Si, pero no es recomendable hacer funcionar una Raspberry Pi 4 sin un ventilador que la refrigere.
Se supone que si ponemos una Raspberry Pi 4 es porque necesitamos su potencia en algunos momentos (si no, ¿para qué usar una Raspberry Pi 4?, mejor poner uno de los modelos anteriores, que son más baratos y consumen menos) y en este caso dotarla de un ventilador de refrigeración es casi imprescindible.
La desventaja de añadir un ventilador a la Raspberry Pi 4 es que deja de ser un dispositivo 100% silencioso para convertirse en una pequeña molestia (sobre todo en un dormitorio o despacho silencioso).
La Raspberry Pi 4 en sí, no hace ruido, no tiene partes móviles, lo que hace ruido es su ventilador…
El nivel de ruido de un ventilador de 5V para una Raspberry Pi 4 puede variar según el modelo y la marca del ventilador, así como su diseño y calidad de construcción. Sin embargo, en general, los ventiladores pequeños de 5V tienden a ser bastante silenciosos, sobre todo si los alimentamos a 3.3V (si, ventiladores de 5V alimentados a 3.3V para que giren más despacio y hagan menos ruido).
El nivel de ruido de un ventilador generalmente se mide en decibelios (dB), y los ventiladores pequeños de 5V diseñados para Raspberry Pi a menudo tienen un nivel de ruido de alrededor de 20 a 30 dB. Esto es relativamente silencioso y no debería ser molesto en la mayoría de las situaciones.
Es importante tener en cuenta que existen algunos factores que pueden influir en el nivel de ruido, como la velocidad a la que funcione el ventilador y la calidad del rodamiento del mismo. Si necesitas un funcionamiento especialmente silencioso, puedes optar por ventiladores con rodamientos de alta calidad, como los rodamientos de fluido o los rodamientos de bolas, que tienden a generar menos ruido que los rodamientos más simples.
En cualquier caso, si el ruido es una preocupación para ti, puedes buscar ventiladores diseñados específicamente para aplicaciones de bajo ruido o aquellos con opciones de control de velocidad para ajustar la velocidad del ventilador según sea necesario, lo que puede ayudarte a mantener un equilibrio entre la temperatura y el ruido.
Teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, podemos decir que el ruido del ventilador de una Raspberry Pi 4, una vez que hemos elegido el ventilador (mejor o peor, de mayor o menor calidad) y lo hemos conectado, siempre girará a la misma velocidad, refrigerará de la misma forma y hará el mismo ruido.
Si queremos reducir el ruido, aprovechando el ventilador esté siempre funcionando al máximo (de hecho, ni siquiera necesitamos que el ventilador esté siembre funcionando) la solución está en tener un ventilador velocidad variable para Raspberry Pi.
Es bueno poner un ventilador en una Raspberry Pi 4 u otros dispositivos electrónicos similares por varias razones:
Todo lo anterior confirma lo que sospechábamos, poner un ventilador en una Raspberry Pi 4 es una buena idea si planeas utilizarla en tareas que generen calor o en entornos donde la temperatura ambiente sea alta. Ayudará a mantener la Raspberry Pi funcionando de manera eficiente y prolongará su vida útil al mantener las temperaturas bajo control.
Y ya que ponemos un ventilador, mejor que pongamos un ventilador velocidad variable para Raspberry Pi.
Te puedo decir, sin temor a equivocarme, que el ventilador más silencioso es el ventilador apagado.
Podemos poner ventiladores de mejor calidad, a menor voltaje, de rodamientos de grafeno o Kryptonita, pero todos, sin excepción, hacen ruido.
Si queremos que un ventilador no haga ruido, lo mejor es apagarlo cuando no es necesario y ponerlo a la mínima velocidad que permita tener la temperatura de la Raspberry Pi 4 bajo control (tampoco es necesario que esté siempre «lo más fría posible«).
Ahora bien, si tengo algo que comentarte: Por regla general los ventiladores para Raspberry 4 son muy pequeños (lo normal es que sean de 40mm) y esto significa que, para que den una cantidad de aire importante tienen que girar muy deprisa.
Para mover la misma cantidad de aire, un ventilador más pequeño (como uno de 40 mm) debe girar aproximadamente 9 veces más rápido que un ventilador más grande (como uno de 120 mm).
La relación de velocidad se calcula de la siguiente manera:
Donde:
Si sustituimos los valores en la fórmula:
En resumen, si queremos tener el ventilador más silencioso posible, deberíamos fijarnos en:
Para nuestro ventilador de velocidad variable vamos a utilizar un pequeño ventilador de corriente continua de 5V (si tienes curiosidad, puedes ver pulsando aquí los diferentes tipos de ventilador que podemos usar en una Raspberry).
Se trata de un ventilador simple que lo único que tiene es un motor de motor de corriente continua que mueve las aspas. En este caso, su velocidad dependerá el voltaje con el que lo alimentamos.
Tiene solamente dos cables, el positivo y el negativo de alimentación (que, por cierto, puedes conectar al revés y el ventilador girará en sentido contrario).
Si quieres más detalles sobre por qué he elegido este tipo de ventilador, por qué he decidido variar su velocidad mediante PWM y muchos más detalles sobre el control de velocidad de ventiladores mediante PWM, el siguiente artículo del blog te gustará:
Aunque no es obligatorio leer este artículo, es interesante que lo hagas, ya que sienta las bases para lo que vamos a ver a continuación.
Si ves que te pierdes en las siguientes explicaciones, vuelve aquí y lee el artículo «Controlar la velocidad de un ventilador con PWM«.
Lo vamos a hacer generando una señal PWM y amplificándola, con un pequeño circuito, ya que la Raspberry Pi no puede suministrar directamente una señal PWM con la energía necesaria para mover un ventilador.
Para ello vamos a escribir un pequeño programa en Python que genere una señal de PWM que tenga un Ciclo de trabajo variable en función de lo rápido que necesite que gire el ventilador para refrigerar la Raspberry Pi 4.
Haremos que la Raspberry Pi 4 ejecute este programa automáticamente y que cada 15 segundos (configurable) el programa modifique, si es necesario, la señal PWM para subir o bajar la velocidad del ventilador.
Este programa tendrá un valor mínimo de Ciclo de trabajo de la señal PWM para asegurarnos de que el ventilador siempre se mueva y que nunca se bloquee por no tener energía suficiente para vencer la inercia y empezar a moverse.
Además, vamos a escribir un pequeño programa auxiliar que nos permitirá averiguar cuál es el Ciclo de trabajo mínimo para que el ventilador arranque y cuál es el Ciclo de trabajo mínimo para que el ventilador no se pare, una vez que está en movimiento (ambos Ciclos de trabajo no tienen por qué ser iguales, y no lo serán).
Para nuestra señal PWM vamos a utilizar los siguientes parámetros:
Solo con alimentar el ventilador con esta señal PWM, en vez de conectarlo directamente a 5V (o 3.3V), tendremos un ventilador velocidad variable en la Raspberry Pi.
El consumo normal de los pequeños ventiladores de 5V de 40x40mm es de aproximadamente 150mA.
La Raspberry Pi solamente puede proporcionar de manera segura 16mA, según la documentación oficial de la Raspberry Pi (y 50mA simultáneos, sumando todos sus pines).
Vamos a añadir a nuestra Raspberry Pi 4 un circuito electrónico muy sencillo, con un transistor que, con esa pequeña señal de control, de intensidad limitada, sea capaz de generar una señal igual pero que pueda llegar a un mínimo de 200 o 300mA.
Este tipo de circuitos se suelen llamar «drivers».
Hay dos formas principales de hacerlo (muy similares) y te voy a dejar las dos, para que elijas la que prefieras (aunque mi recomendación es que utilices la versión con MOSFET).
Este es el esquema de nuestro driver con transistor BJT:
Salvo que ya tengas los componentes (especialmente el transistor BJT), te recomiendo que construyas el driver PWM con transistor MOSFET que te dejo más abajo.
Este es el prototipo del driver con transistor BJT que construí para hacer las pruebas.
Como ves, la placa está muy sucia (digamos que está muy «trabajada»), debido al gran número de pruebas que hice con diferentes variaciones:
Transistores diferentes en configuración high-side y low-side, diferentes valores de resistencias, muchas mediciones, etc…
Aun utilizando componentes normales «through hole» (no de montaje en superficie), como ves quedó un tamaño muy compacto, para poderlo meter dentro de la caja de la Raspberry Pi 4.
En el siguiente artículo tienes toda la información sobre el driver PWM con transistor BJT:
Este es el tipo de driver que te recomiendo construir. Entre otras ventajas, su funcionamiento es más eficiente que el driver con transistor BJT y se calienta menos.
Este es el esquema de nuestro driver de señal PWM con transistor MOSFET:
Como ves es muy parecido al driver con transistor BJT que vimos antes.
En el siguiente artículo tienes toda la información sobre el driver PWM con transistor BJT:
Te dejo el video que he preparado para que te resulte más sencillo seguir este tutorial. Te recomiendo que lo veas a medida que lo lees.
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
Aunque lo que vamos a hacer es muy sencillo y no debería causar ningún problema, el riesgo siempre está ahí, por lo que te recomiendo que hagas una copia de seguridad completa del contenido de tu Raspberry Pi 4 (te sugiero que, directamente, clones tu tarjeta Micro SD antes de tocar nada).
La generación de señal PWM en la Raspberry Pi con Python no es difícil en absoluto, pero es importante saber cómo, porque, o yo estoy muy equivocado, o la inmensa mayoría de la información que hay en internet está mal.
Aquí te voy a contar por qué la mayoría de tutoriales para implementar control de velocidad por PWM basado en la temperatura en la Raspberry Pi que he visto en internet NO LO HACEN BIEN.
Inicialmente, hice todo este proyecto con la biblioteca RPi.GPIO (que es la recomendada, y con la que lo hace el 99% de gente en internet) y notaba ciertos ruidos en el ventilador y muy poca suavidad en su funcionamiento.
Atribuía los ruidos y la poca suavidad en el funcionamiento a que no era un ventilador de buena calidad, pero, haciendo pruebas con el osciloscopio, vi que algo no estaba bien…
La señal PWM generada era horrorosa, llena de ruido, en una frecuencia que no era la que yo había establecido y tanto los valores de frecuencia como de ciclo de trabajo eran muy inestables.
Lo más curioso era que el sistema funcionaba y si no hubiera hecho pruebas a fondo con el osciloscopio nunca habría sabido lo mal que estaba resultando. Seguramente hay millones de sistemas como este ‘funcionando’ en el mundo sin saber los problemas que tienen.
Me puse a investigar y encontré que la biblioteca RPi.GPIO no genera las señales PWM por hardware, sino por software (aunque utilices un pin hardware), y lo peor, es que tiene problemas con las señales de más de unos pocos kilohercios.
Utilizando una señal PWM con una frecuencia de 1Khz, por ejemplo, el sistema funcionaba, pero el ventilador hacía un ruido, perfectamente audible, que era peor que tenerlo funcionando a plena potencia.
Una desventaja adicional importante es que cuando la señal PWM se genera por software, es la CPU de la Raspberry Pi la que hace todo el trabajo (y es mucho, porque tiene que estar continuamente atendiendo y activando y desactivando el pin) con lo que el consumo de CPU puede ser alto.
Sigo documentando todo esto, haciendo pruebas, escribiendo y grabando videos para podértelo explicar bien. En breve incluiré la información.
La solución estaba en utilizar otra biblioteca, en lugar de la RPi.GPIO. Una que soporte la generación de la señal PWM por hardware.
Hay algunos proyectos (los que menos) que utilizan algún tipo de control PWM por hardware, pero la mayoría tienen problemas o limitaciones.
Puedes generar una señal PWM en un pin de una Raspberry Pi 4, de una forma muy fácil, utilizando Python y la biblioteca ‘rpi-hardware-pwm‘.
Lo primero es preparar la Raspberry Pi para que sea capaz de utilizar los dos canales PWM hardware de los que dispone.
Tienes que editar el fichero /boot/config.txt e incluir la línea dtoverlay=pwm-2chan
Para ello, desde la consola ejecuta:
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
Y tras la última línea que empiece por dtoverlay (que posiblemente esté comentada, con una almohadilla ‘#’), incluye la línea:
dtoverlay=pwm-2chan
Esto habilitará el PWM por hardware en los GPIO por defecto: GPIO_18 para PWM0 y GPIO_19 para PWM1.
Si quieres, puedes utilizar (en vez de la línea anterior), la línea:
dtoverlay=pwm-2chan,pin=12,func=4,pin2=13,func2=4
Esto habilitará el PWM por hardware en los GPIO alternativos: GPIO_12 para PWM0 y GPIO_13 para PWM1.
Ahora reinicia la Raspberry Pi, para que los cambios tengan efecto, con:
sudo reboot
Cuando vuelva a arrancar la Raspberry Pi, entra de nuevo en la consola e instala la biblioteca rpi-hardware-pwm con:
sudo apt-get update
sudo pip3 install rpi-hardware-pwm
La Raspberry Pi ya está preparada para generar una señal PWM por hardware.
Ahora necesitamos un programa, que nos permita:
Para ello he creado un script muy sencillo, en el lenguaje de programación Python, hardware_pwm_generator.py, que nos permite llamarlo con tres parámetros en la línea de comandos de la Raspberry Pi:
import sys
from rpi_hardware_pwm import HardwarePWM
def set_pwm(pwm_channel, frequency, duty_cycle):
pwm = HardwarePWM(pwm_channel, frequency)
pwm.start(duty_cycle)
input("Presiona Enter para detener el PWM...")
pwm.stop()
if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) != 4:
print("Uso: python pwm_generator.py <canal_pwm> <frecuencia> <ciclo_de_trabajo>")
sys.exit(1)
pwm_channel = int(sys.argv[1])
frequency = float(sys.argv[2])
duty_cycle = float(sys.argv[3])
try:
set_pwm(pwm_channel, frequency, duty_cycle)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
pass
Guarda este programa en un archivo llamado «hardware_pwm_generator.py».
Puedes hacerlo ejecutando esta línea desde la consola:
sudo nano hardware_pwm_generator.py
Puedes ejecutar el programa con el siguiente comando:
python hardware_pwm_generator.py <canal_pwm> <frecuencia> <ciclo_de_trabajo>
Reemplaza:
<ciclo_de_trabajo> por el ciclo de trabajo que quieres, por ejemplo, «50» para un ciclo de trabajo del 50%.Por ejemplo, para generar en el canal 0 de PWM (PWM0) en el GPIO_18 una señal a 25Khz con un ciclo de trabajo del 80%, tienes que ejecutar en la consola:
python hardware_pwm_generator.py 0 25000 80
Para salir y detener el PWM, solo tienes que pulsar [Enter].
También puedes interrumpir y salir del programa con Ctrl-C. En este caso la señal PWM no se detendrá.
El código es el siguiente:
Vamos a ver qué tenemos que hacer para leer la temperatura de la CPU de la Raspberry Pi de una forma sencilla, para ir poco a poco y que sea entendible. Más adelante veremos como modificar la señal PWM en base a la temperatura.
Para leer la temperatura de la CPU de una Raspberry Pi puedes utilizar la biblioteca psutil.
Asegúrate de tener la biblioteca psutil instalada en tu Raspberry Pi. Puedes instalar psutil con el siguiente comando:
sudo apt-get update
sudo pip install psutil
Ahora que tenemos la biblioteca instalada, podemos ver la temperatura ejecutando la siguiente línea:
vcgencmd measure_temp
Aquí tienes un programa simple en Python que utiliza la biblioteca psutil para leer la temperatura de la CPU y la imprime en la consola cada 5 segundos:
import psutil
import time
def get_cpu_temperature():
try:
temperature = psutil.sensors_temperatures()['cpu_thermal'][0].current
return temperature
except Exception as e:
print(f"Error al obtener la temperatura de la CPU: {e}")
return None
def main():
try:
while True:
temperature = get_cpu_temperature()
if temperature is not None:
print(f"Temperatura de la CPU: {temperature}°C")
time.sleep(5)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
pass
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Puedes escribirlo en el fichero temperature_reader.py (como hicimos antes con hardware_pwm_generator.py), con:
sudo nano temperature_reader.py
Diferentes versiones de Raspberry Pi y de Linux pueden llamar al sensor de temperatura con un nombre diferente a ‘cpu_thermal’.
Ejecútalo desde la consola con la línea:
python temperature_reader.py
Si te da un error parecido a «Error al obtener la temperatura de la CPU: ‘cpu_thermal’» seguramente sea porque tu sensor no se llama ‘cpu_thermal’ y tendrás que averiguar su nombre.
Una vez sepas el nombre, tendrás que sustituir en la línea 6 el nombre ‘cpu_thermal’ por el nombre de tu sensor.
Por ejemplo, tanto en la Raspberry Pi 3 con la que empecé a hacer las pruebas como en la Raspberry Pi, este sensor se llamaba ‘cpu_thermal’.
Puedes utilizar este pequeño código para averiguarlo imprimiendo la lista de todos los sensores disponibles para entender qué nombres están presentes en tu sistema:
import psutil
import time
def get_cpu_temperature():
try:
sensors_data = psutil.sensors_temperatures()
if 'coretemp' in sensors_data:
temperature = sensors_data['cpu_thermal'][0].current
return temperature
else:
print("No se encontraron datos del sensor 'cpu_thermal'. Sensores disponibles:", sensors_data.keys())
return None
except Exception as e:
print(f"Error al obtener la temperatura de la CPU: {e}")
return None
def main():
try:
while True:
temperature = get_cpu_temperature()
if temperature is not None:
print(f"Temperatura de la CPU: {temperature}°C")
time.sleep(5)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
pass
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Este script imprimirá la lista de sensores disponibles en tu sistema si no puede encontrar el sensor ‘cpu_thermal’. Al ejecutar el script, podrás ver qué nombres de sensores están presentes, y podrás ajustar el código en consecuencia para leer la temperatura desde el sensor correcto.
Para leer la temperatura de la CPU de una Raspberry Pi 4 y generar una señal PWM con un ciclo de trabajo proporcional a la temperatura de la CPU, utilizaremos, como hemos visto antes, la biblioteca psutil para obtener la temperatura de la CPU y, de nuevo, la biblioteca rpi-hardware-pwm para generar la señal PWM.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import configparser
from rpi_hardware_pwm import HardwarePWM
import psutil
import time
import sys
import atexit
import syslog
import os
import signal
#Inicializa las variables
canal_pwm = 0
frecuencia = 25000
ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior = 0
temperatura_anterior = 0
tiempo = 6
ciclo_de_trabajo = 0
pwm = HardwarePWM(canal_pwm, frecuencia)
def print_debug(mensaje):
if debug and not as_a_service:
print(mensaje)
if debug and as_a_service:
syslog.syslog(syslog.LOG_INFO, mensaje)
def inicializar_configuracion():
# Valores predeterminados
defaults = {
'intervalo_de_prueba': 5,
'canal_pwm': 0,
'frecuencia': 25000,
'temp_min': 45,
'temp_max': 65,
'ciclo_min': 60,
'ciclo_max': 100,
'histeresis': 2,
'debug': False,
'as_a_service': True
}
try:
# Cargar configuración desde el archivo INI
config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read("temperature_pwm_controller.ini")
# Desempaquetar la configuración o usar valores predeterminados
intervalo_de_prueba = config.getint("config", "intervalo_de_prueba", fallback=defaults['intervalo_de_prueba'])
canal_pwm = config.getint("config", "canal_pwm", fallback=defaults['canal_pwm'])
frecuencia = config.getint("config", "frecuencia", fallback=defaults['frecuencia'])
temp_min = config.getint("config", "temp_min", fallback=defaults['temp_min'])
temp_max = config.getint("config", "temp_max", fallback=defaults['temp_max'])
ciclo_min = config.getint("config", "ciclo_min", fallback=defaults['ciclo_min'])
ciclo_max = config.getint("config", "ciclo_max", fallback=defaults['ciclo_max'])
histeresis = config.getint("config", "histeresis", fallback=defaults['histeresis'])
debug = config.getboolean("config", "debug", fallback=defaults['debug'])
as_a_service = config.getboolean("config", "as_a_service", fallback=defaults['as_a_service'])
return (intervalo_de_prueba, canal_pwm, frecuencia, temp_min, temp_max, ciclo_min, ciclo_max, histeresis, debug, as_a_service)
except Exception as e:
print(f"Error al cargar la configuración: {str(e)}")
syslog.syslog(syslog.LOG_ERR, f"Error al cargar la configuración: {str(e)}")
# Utiliza los valores predeterminados si hay un error al cargar la configuración
return tuple(defaults.values())
def calcular_ciclo_de_trabajo(temp, temp_min, temp_max, ciclo_min, ciclo_max, ciclo_actual, hysteresis):
try:
if temp < temp_min:
return 0
elif temp > temp_max:
return 100
elif temp_min <= temp:
if (temp > (temperatura_anterior + hysteresis)) or (temp < (temperatura_anterior - hysteresis)):
print_debug(f"***Superada histéresis. Nueva temperatura: {temp:.2f}ºC. Nuevo ciclo de trabajo: {ciclo_de_trabajo:.0f}%. La temperatura anterior era {temperatura_anterior:.2f} °C. El ciclo anterior era de {ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior:.0f}%")
ciclo = (temp - temp_min) * (ciclo_max - ciclo_min) / (temp_max - temp_min) + ciclo_min
ciclo = max(ciclo_min, min(ciclo, ciclo_max))
return round(ciclo)
return round(ciclo_actual)
except Exception as e:
print_debug(f"Error al calcular el ciclo de trabajo: {str(e)}")
return round(ciclo_actual)
def parar_ventilador(signum, frame):
try:
syslog.syslog(syslog.LOG_INFO, "Parando salida PWM")
pwm.stop();
time.sleep(1)
# Asegurarse de que todos los buffers estén vacíos antes de salir
sys.stdout.flush()
sys.stderr.flush()
sys.exit(0)
except Exception as e:
print_debug(f"Error al parar el servicio: {str(e)}")
try:
# Llama a la función para inicializar la configuración
(intervalo_de_prueba, canal_pwm, frecuencia, temp_min, temp_max, ciclo_min, ciclo_max, histeresis, debug, as_a_service) = inicializar_configuracion()
script_name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]))[0]
syslog.openlog(ident=script_name, facility=syslog.LOG_USER)
syslog.syslog(syslog.LOG_INFO, f"El servicio {script_name} se está ejecutando.")
# Para que se detenga el ventilador al para el script
signal.signal(signal.SIGTERM, parar_ventilador)
pwm.start(100)
time.sleep(1)
pwm.change_duty_cycle(0)
while True:
temp = psutil.sensors_temperatures()['cpu_thermal'][0].current
ciclo_de_trabajo = calcular_ciclo_de_trabajo(temp, temp_min, temp_max, ciclo_min, ciclo_max, ciclo_de_trabajo, histeresis)
if tiempo >= intervalo_de_prueba and debug is True:
mensaje = f"La temperatura de la CPU es {temp:.2f} °C. El ciclo de trabajo es de {ciclo_de_trabajo:.0f}%"
print_debug(mensaje)
mensaje = f"La temperatura anterior era {temperatura_anterior:.2f} °C. El ciclo anterior era de {ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior:.0f}%"
print_debug(mensaje)
mensaje = f"--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
print_debug(mensaje)
tiempo = 0
else:
tiempo += 1
if ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior == 0 and ciclo_de_trabajo != 0:
print_debug(f"Arrancando ventilador... (temperatura {temp:.2f}ºC)")
pwm.change_duty_cycle(100)
ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior = 100
time.sleep(1)
if ciclo_de_trabajo != ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior:
pwm.change_duty_cycle(ciclo_de_trabajo)
print_debug(f"Nueva temperatura: {temp:.2f}ºC. Nuevo ciclo de trabajo: {ciclo_de_trabajo:.0f}%")
print_debug(f"Temperatura cambio anterior: {temperatura_anterior:.2f}ºC. Ciclo de trabajo anterior: {ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior:.0f}%")
ciclo_de_trabajo_anterior = ciclo_de_trabajo
temperatura_anterior = temp
time.sleep(intervalo_de_prueba)
except Exception as e:
print(f"Error general: {str(e)}")
syslog.syslog(syslog.LOG_ERR, f"Error general: {str(e)}")
Puedes grabar el programa en un fichero con nombre temperature_pwm_controller.py mediante:
sudo nano temperature_pwm_controller.py
Este programa lee la temperatura de la CPU cada 5 segundos y ajusta el ciclo de trabajo del PWM de acuerdo con la temperatura.
Hay varios parámetros que puedes ajustar según tus necesidades y preferencias.
python temperature_pwm_controller.py
El script leerá la temperatura y ajustará la señal PWM periódicamente.
Pulsa Ctrl-C para interrumpirlo.
Si lo deseas puedes crear un fichero de configuración para que te resulte más fácil adaptar el programa a tus preferencias sin tener que modificar el script.
Este fichero es completamente opcional y si no lo creas (o falta cualquier línea) el script utilizará los valores por defecto que están definidos en el código.
Solo tienes que crear un fichero de texto, llamado temperature_pwm_controller.ini en la misma carpeta donde tengas el script (fichero temperature_pwm_controller.py).
Si quieres, puedes crearlo con:
sudo nano temperature_pwm_controller.ini
Dentro del archivo, solo tienes que incluir una primera línea, a modo de cabecera, con el texto [config] y a continuación incluir las líneas que desees de entre las que figuran arriba con los valores que quieras.
[config]
intervalo_de_prueba = 5
canal_pwm = 0
frecuencia = 25000
temp_min = 46
temp_max = 65
ciclo_min = 60
ciclo_max = 100
hysteresis = 2
debug = False
Puedes encontrar todo código actualizado en mi repositorio de GitHub y lo puedes descargar a tu Raspberry Pi directamente desde allí.
Una vez en la consola te recomiendo que crees un directorio en el que clonar el repositorio, y lo clones:
git clone https://github.com/melkati/raspberry-fan.git
Ten en cuenta que tendrás que hacer los ajustes necesarios porque los scripts no estarán en /home/pi sino en /home/pi/raspberry-fan
El archivo temperature_pwm_controller.service estará ya configurado para funcionar desde /home/pi/raspberry-fan
No tendría mucho sentido que cada vez que arrancásemos la Raspberry Pi tuviéramos que entrar en la consola y ejecutar un programa, de manera que lo vamos a automatizar.
Para que el script se ejecute automáticamente al arrancar la Raspberry Pi hay varias formas de hacerlo. Aquí vamos a ver cómo se hace con systemctl.
Para ejecutar un script de Python en el arranque de una Raspberry Pi utilizando systemd, puedes seguir estos pasos.
En este ejemplo el nombre del script es temperature_pwm_controller.py y la ruta completa donde está es /home/pi/:
sudo chmod +x /home/pi/temperature_pwm_controller.py
/etc/systemd/system/. Puedes nombrarlo, por ejemplo, temperature_pwm_controller.service.sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/temperature_pwm_controller.service
# Este es un archivo de servicio para el controlador PWM basado en temperatura
# que se ejecutará automáticamente al arrancar la Raspberry Pi.
[Unit]
Description=Controlador de PWM basado en temperatura
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
ExecStartPre=sleep 30
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/temperature_pwm_controller.py
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
Restart=always
User=pi
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Puedes crear el archivo con el siguiente comando:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/temperature_pwm_controller.service
Una vez creado, asegurate de que tiene los permisos correctos. Puedes darle los permisos con la siguiente línea:
sudo chmod 777 /etc/systemd/system/temperature_pwm_controller.service
Asegúrate de reemplazar /home/pi/temperature_pwm_controller.py con la ruta completa de tu script de Python, si lo has modificado.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable temperature_pwm_controller.service
sudo systemctl start temperature_pwm_controller.service
El servicio tiene un retraso antes de ejecutarse de 30 segundos para asegurarse de que la Raspberry Pi se haya iniciado por completo antes de poner en marcha el ventilador, por lo que tardará un tiempo en hacerlo.
Si en este punto reinicias la Raspberry Pi, el servicio arrancará automáticamente. Puedes hacerlo desde la consola con la línea:
sudo reboot
sudo systemctl status temperature_pwm_controller.service
Puedes parar el servicio con:
sudo systemctl stop temperature_pwm_controller.service
Puedes ejecutar el servicio con:
sudo systemctl start temperature_pwm_controller.service
Puedes ver el estado del servicio con:
sudo systemctl status temperature_pwm_controller.service
Puedes ver el log del servicio con:
sudo journalctl -f -u temperature_pwm_controller.service
Fíjate en que no es necesario que ejecutemos el script cada quince segundos ya que realmente está siempre funcionando, realizando su trabajo cada 15 segundos.
Estos pasos deberían configurar tu script temperature_pwm_controller.py para ejecutarse automáticamente en el arranque de tu Raspberry Pi utilizando systemd. Asegúrate de ajustar las rutas y nombres de archivo según tus necesidades específicas.
Ya tenemos todo lo necesario y podemos unir las piezas, hardware y software, y poner en marcha nuestro ventilador de velocidad variable para Raspberry Pi.
Aunque tienes un tutorial de un driver PWM con MOSFET (y otro de un driver PWM con transistor BJT), he diseñado un driver PWM específico para la Raspberry Pi: El Mini HAT PWM:
Todos los pines de salida de la Raspberry Pi 4 pueden sacar una señal PWM, pero hay que tener en cuenta que no todos los pines son iguales, a la hora de generar una señal PWM.
Los pines 12/13 y 18/19 generan la señal PWM por hardware, mientras que todos los demás pines generan la señal PWM por software.
Te recomiendo que utilices uno de los pines 12/13 y 18/19, salvo que tengas un buen motivo para no hacerlo, como el siguiente:
El hardware PWM y el jack de auriculares utilizan los mismos circuitos de la Raspberry Pi, por lo que no podrás utilizarlos al mismo tiempo. Dicho de otra manera: si usas el jack de auriculares de la Raspberry Pi 4 tendrás que utilizar PWM por software, con todas sus limitaciones.
IMPORTANTE: Si no utilizas el pin 18, recuerda actualizar el código con el pin que hayas decidido utilizar. Estos ejemplos están preparados para utilizar el GPIO 18 (pin 12 en el puerto de expansión de la Raspberry Pi 4)
Como vimos en detalle en el artículo «Controlar la velocidad de un ventilador con PWM«, y hemos recordado anteriormente, en este mismo artículo, cada ventilador responde de una forma diferente a las señales PWM.
Cada ventilador tiene un Ciclo de trabajo mínimo para que el ventilador empiece a girar desde que está parado. En unos ventiladores puede ser el 30% y en otros el 90% por lo que es necesario que lo pruebes tú mismo con tu ventilador.
Cada ventilador tiene también un Ciclo de trabajo mínimo para que no se detenga cuando ya está en movimiento. No podrás bajar el Ciclo de trabajo a, digamos, un 5%, esperando que así el ventilador funcione muy despacio. Con tan poca energía se parará mucho antes de bajar hasta ese 5%.
Para que te hagas a la idea, el ventilador con el que estoy haciendo las pruebas ahora mismo se para cuando el ciclo de trabajo baja a un 60%, aproximadamente.
Tienes que tener presente que ambos Ciclos de trabajo no tienen por qué ser iguales (y no lo serán).
El ventilador necesita más energía (un Ciclo de trabajo más alto) para vencer la resistencia para ponerse en marcha y necesitará menos energía para mantenerse en movimiento, una vez que ya lo está.
Todo lo anterior significa que tendrás que calibrar tu ventilador concreto para encontrar esos dos valores del Ciclo de trabajo.
Podrás calibrar tu ventilador fácilmente utilizando el programa pwm_generator.py que te he dejado antes (puedes pichar aquí para ir a él).
Tendrás que, con el ventilador parado, ir ejecutando el programa varias veces, subiendo cada vez el Ciclo de trabajo, hasta que el ventilador se ponga en marcha. Una vez hayas encontrado ese «Ciclo de trabajo mínimo desde parado» puedes utilizar ese valor, aumentándolo un porcentaje como margen de seguridad (puedes probar con un 10%).
Luego, con el ventilador en marcha, tendrás ir ejecutando el programa varias veces, bajando cada vez el Ciclo de trabajo, hasta que el ventilador se detenga. Una vez hayas encontrado ese «Ciclo de trabajo mínimo desde en movimiento» puedes utilizar ese valor, aumentándolo un porcentaje como margen de seguridad (puedes probar con un 10%).
La Raspberry Pi 5 es demasiado nueva y aún no la he usado, por lo que no te podré decir mucho sobre ella, pero si he tenido todos los modelos anteriores a la 4 y te puedo hablar sobre ellos.
Puedo decirte que, en los modelos anteriores de Raspberry Pi, 1, 2 3 y sus variaciones, el consumo de energía es mucho más bajo que en la Raspberry Pi 4 y nunca he necesitado utilizar un ventilador y su temperatura siempre se ha mantenido dentro de limites muy razonables.
Aun así, si quieres o necesitas añadir el ventilador en alguno de esos modelos, no te será difícil.
Yo lo he probado (y lo tengo funcionando) en la Raspberry Pi 3 y la Raspberry Pi 4, por lo que en estos modelos está bien probado.
Si lo quieres probar en otra versión, el software probablemente funcione tal cual, o con cambios mínimos.
Tola la investigación y el desarrollo lo ha hecho con una Raspberry Pi 3, solo cuando lo tenía terminado lo he instalado en la Raspberry Pi 4. El motivo es, simplemente, que la única Raspberry Pi 4 que tengo la tenía ocupada para cosas de la domótica de la casa, y no podía estar quitándola.
Si lo pruebas con otras versiones, especialmente si es con la Raspberry Pi 5, te pido que dejes un mensaje en los comentarios y así podré actualizar el artículo con esa información.
El software está probado en la Raspberry Pi 4 y funciona sin problema.
Por cierto, en la Raspberry Pi 4 he montado una versión especial del Mini HAT PWM con componentes SMD y unos pines más largos para poderlo poner pegado a la caja por fuera. En mi opinión, ha quedado muy bien.
Es el modelo en el que he hecho la investigación y el desarrollo por lo que está probado y debería funcionar sin problema.
Cuando pueda lo probaré en esta versión, aunque no tiene mucha utilidad porque no se calienta y no necesita ventilador. No preveo que haya ningún problema.
Lo que acabamos de ver es respecto al hardware de la Raspberry Pi, pero también el software puede ser diferente.
La versión concreta de sistema operativo que tenía instalada en la Raspberry Pi 3 era: «Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) armv71 (32bit) con user space de 32 bit.
El sistema operativo que tenía instalado en la Raspberry Pi 4 era: «Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) aarch64 (64bit) con user space de 32 bit.
Si has seguido el tutorial y encuentras algo diferente o que no te funciona no estaría de más de comprobaras tu versión.
Para ver la versión del sistema operativo instalada en tu Raspberry Pi, puedes utilizar el siguiente comando:
cat /etc/os-release
Este comando te mostrará el nombre y la versión del sistema operativo que se está ejecutando en tu dispositivo.
Si deseas saber si el sistema operativo es de 32 o 64 bits, puedes utilizar el siguiente comando:
uname -m
Este comando te mostrará la arquitectura del procesador de tu Raspberry Pi. Si la salida es armv7l, entonces estás utilizando un sistema operativo de 32 bits. Si la salida es aarch64, entonces estás utilizando un sistema operativo de 64 bits 12.
Para ver si el espacio de usuario de tu Raspberry Pi es de 32 o 64 bits, puedes utilizar el siguiente comando:
getconf LONG_BIT
Este comando te mostrará la arquitectura del procesador de tu Raspberry Pi. Si la salida es 32, entonces estás utilizando un espacio de usuario de 32 bits, si la salida es 64, entonces estás utilizando un espacio de usuario de 64 bits.
En este artículo hemos visto lo que tenemos que hacer para controlar la velocidad del ventilador de la Raspberry Pi dependiendo de la temperatura de su CPU.
Si no lo has hecho, te sugiero que leas los siguientes artículos, donde se amplía la información sobre cada uno de los aspectos que hemos visto aquí, resumidos:
Veremos primero un poquito de teoría (prometo que corta y entendible), lo justo para que puedas comprender lo que vamos a hacer sin limitarte a construir el circuito sin saber lo que haces y por qué.
Luego veremos un caso práctico con un ventilador, del que controlaremos la velocidad, con todas las pruebas y mediciones.
Si en algún momento te pierdes o quieres ampliar la información, al final del artículo, tienes las referencias de una serie de posts adicionales donde podrás aprender mucho más y resolver tus dudas.
Intentaré, como en otras ocasiones, que no sea una simple ‘receta’ de lo que tienes que hacer para montar el circuito. Voy a intentar que sea un artículo que aporte valor y te permita aprender fácilmente.
Si todo lo que quieres son unas instrucciones breves para construir el circuito, sin saber lo que haces o cómo funciona, este artículo no es para ti.
Un controlador PWM (Modulación de Ancho de Pulso) con un transistor MOSFET se utiliza comúnmente para regular muchos dispositivos: ventiladores, LEDs, otros transistores y casi cualquier tipo de carga.
Realmente no es más que un MOSFET que actúa como interruptor abriéndose y cerrándose de una forma determinada, al ritmo que le marca un microprocesador, para generar una señal que controle el ventilador.
El por qué necesitamos este circuito es muy sencillo: nuestro controlador por sí mismo no es capaz de generar una señal con la energía que un ventilador necesita para moverse.
La gran mayoría de los microcontroladores son capaces de proporcionar en sus pines entre 6mA y 50mA, pero nuestro ventilador necesita más energía para funcionar (un ventilador normal de 5V de 40mm de tamaño puede necesitar unos 150-200mA).
Si pidiéramos al microprocesador la energía necesaria para mover un ventilador, por pequeño que fuera, el microcontrolador se estropearía, en muchos casos, y en otros, simplemente dejaría de funcionar.
Incluso aunque el microcontrolador no se quemara ni dejara de funcionar, el ventilador no se movería, al no tener suficiente energía.
Aquí hay una descripción básica de cómo funciona este circuito:
El generador de señal PWM es nuestro Arduino, ESP8266, ESP32, Raspberry Pi o lo que sea que controlará el ventilador a través del circuito que vamos a construir.
El controlador PWM genera una señal de salida que varía en ancho de pulso (el ciclo de trabajo). El ciclo de trabajo determina la cantidad de tiempo durante la que la señal está a nivel alto (encendida) en comparación con el tiempo a nivel bajo (apagada).
La señal PWM actúa como una señal de control para el transistor MOSFET, permitiendo ajustar la velocidad del ventilador (o de otra carga que estemos utilizando, como un LED o un motor).
Si estos dos conceptos te han sonado a chino, no te preocupes. Más adelante te dejo dos artículos del blog en los que encontrarás todo lo que tienes que saber sobre qué es una señal PWM y sobre el control de cargas mediante PWM.
Un esquemático básico podría verse así para un MOSFET N-Channel:
Te dejo también esta otra visualización, por si te resulta más sencilla:
Este es un ejemplo básico y la selección específica de componentes dependerá de la corriente del ventilador, la tensión de operación y otros requisitos del sistema.
El transistor MOSFET actúa como un interruptor controlado por la señal PWM.
La carga que queremos controlar (el ventilador, por ejemplo) está conectado al MOSFET y recibe su alimentación a través de él. La velocidad del ventilador está directamente relacionada con el ciclo de trabajo de la señal PWM. Cuanto mayor sea el ciclo de trabajo, mayor será la velocidad del ventilador, y viceversa.
Además, casi siempre se debe agregar una resistencia entre la puerta y el pin 18 para controlar la velocidad de encendido y la corriente de la puerta.
Anter de seguir adelante, con la selección de los componentes que vamos a utilizar, es importante que sepas lo básico sobre cómo funciona el transistor MOSFET.
Te recomiendo que leas el siguiente artículo donde podrás encontrar todo lo que necesitas.
Recuerda que realmente este circuito no es más que un MOSFET que actúa como interruptor abriéndose y cerrándose de una forma determinada, al ritmo que le marca un microprocesador, para generar una señal PWM que controle el ventilador.
Ahora que ya sabes lo más importante sobre el MOSFET gracias al artículo que acabas de leer (¿que no lo has leído? ¡pues vuelve atrás tres líneas, pincha y léete el artículo! puedes empezar a aplicar lo que has aprendido para este circuito.
Es importante seleccionar un MOSFET que pueda manejar la corriente del ventilador y disipar la potencia generada. Además, el controlador PWM debe ser capaz de proporcionar la señal necesaria para controlar el MOSFET.
Si el MOSFET está controlado por un microprocesador (voltajes de 3.3V o 5V), es fundamental utilizar un MOSFET de nivel lógico o ‘Logic Level’ MOSFET.
Los MOSFET de nivel lógico o ‘Logic Level‘ están diseñados para que su funcionamiento sea una conducción todo/nada entre el drenador y la fuente con una señal de voltaje muy bajo (3.3V, 5V o a veces menos) en la puerta.
Recuerda, además, que un MOSFET de nivel lógico o ‘Logic Level Mosfet’ o conduce o no conduce. Al no haber estados intermedios se optimiza el diseño, evitamos perdidas y calentamiento del MOSFET.
Antes de pasar a la parte práctica, tenemos que definir exactamente lo que queremos, con sus requerimientos y parámetros de funcionamiento.
Vamos a necesitar definir, sobre todo:
Vamos a seleccionar los componentes basándonos en los requerimientos que hemos definido.
Solamente necesitamos tres componentes:
Necesitaremos también un ventilador de 5V de los que se suelen utilizar para refrigerar las Raspberry Pi y cosas parecidas.
Utilizaremos un ventilador de 40x40mm de dos cables (solo positivo y negativo) con un consumo máximo teórico de 200mA.
El diodo no tiene mucho secreto. Podemos utilizar casi cualquier diodo. Solo tenemos que asegurarnos de que soporta la corriente necesaria (que es muy poca, podemos asumir que unos pocos mA, porque sería solo la intensidad que es ventilador sea capaz de generar).
En nuestro caso vamos a utilizar un 1N4001 o 1N4007 (son casi iguales, a efectos de lo que aquí nos importa), aunque puedes utilizar muchos otros diodos similares.
Este diodo 1N4001 es omnipresente y lo podemos encontrar en muchísimos circuitos. Seguramente sea el diodo más utilizado del mundo (este o sus equivalentes chinos).
La selección del transistor MOSFET tampoco es muy difícil.
Vamos a utilizar un transistor que sea:
La selección del transistor MOSFET es algo más complicada que la de un transistor BJT, porque tenemos que tener en cuenta más cosas, pero no demasiado.
Tenemos que asegurarnos de que:
Por cierto, te puedes preguntar… ¿y cómo sé si un transistor MOSFET es adecuado para su uso con niveles lógicos de 3.3V (o 3V, mejor) ?:
Pues lo más fácil y directo es comprobar si en el datasheet del MOSFET aparece especificada un valor de Rds cuando Vgs es <= 3.0V. Esto puede aparecer en dos lugares del datasheet: como un valor escrito en texto negro sobre blanco o en la gráfica de Rds(On)–Vgs que incluyen todos los datasheets.
Yo lo que suelo hacer es buscar un MOSFET que especifique un Rds(on) @ VGS =2.5V
Para leer lo anterior, sustituye al leer la arroba por ‘cuando’ (esto indica a qué VGS, o cuándo VGS «vale», tiene esa Rds(on)).
Al grano, vamos a seleccionar nuestro transistor MOSFET:
Empezaré por decir que:
Busco entre los transistores MOSFET que tengo solo aquellos que sean de Canal-N y preselecciono los siguientes: Si2300, Si2306, Si2320.
¿Y por qué preselecciono precisamente estos? Porque son del mismo fabricante (Vishay) y así espero que te resulte más sencillo compararlos entre ellos y ver las diferencias, al ser sus datasheets bastante parecidos en formato.
Cuando se comparan transistores de diferentes fabricantes, al principio puede ser un poco más difícil porque en sus datasheets no muestren los mismos valores o tables, o porque las siglas de los valores que están indicando sean diferentes.
Puedes encontrar los datasheets de los tres transistores MOSFET aquí:
He creado la siguiente tabla, con los valores que nos interesan, para que nos resulte más sencillo compararlos:
| Si2300 | Si2306 | Si2320 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vds | 20A | 30A | 20A |
| Id | 3.6A | 2.8A @ Vgs = 4.5V | 2.4A @ Vgs = 2.5V |
| VGS(th) | 1.5V | 1V | 0.65V |
| Vgs máxima | ±12V | ±20V | ±8V |
| Rds(on) | 0.085(Ω) at VGS = 2.5 V | 0.094(Ω) @ VGS = 4.5 V | 0.085(Ω) @ VGS = 2.5 V, ID = 3.1A |
Lo primero que veo es que el Si2306 muestra en sus datos una Vgs mínima de 4.5V, lo que ya nos indica que el fabricante no sugiere su uso con valores más bajos.
Una segunda pista, nos la da el hecho de que, en el datasheet, el gráfico «On-Resistance vs. Gate-to-Source Voltage» solo muestra valores de Rds(on) a partir de unos 3.8V, lo que ya nos indica que no es adecuado para utilizarlo por debajo de ese voltaje.
¡Fuera el Si2306!
Entre el Si2300 y el Si2320 noy mucha diferencia, para lo que nos ocupa. Realmente cualquiera de los dos nos serviría. Mi elección va a depender de algo muy práctico y mundano: voy a usar del que tenga más.
La resistencia entre la compuerta (Gate) y la fuente (Source) de un MOSFET se utiliza para limitar la corriente de carga y descarga de la compuerta, ayudando a prevenir transiciones demasiado rápidas que podrían generar ruido eléctrico y consumir más energía de la necesaria. Esta resistencia es comúnmente conocida como una resistencia de compuerta (RG).
También se utiliza, como hemos comentado antes, para descargar el condensador interno.
La elección de la resistencia de compuerta depende de varios factores:
La fórmula básica para calcular la resistencia de compuerta (RG) es:
RG = ( trise / tfall ) / (0.35 × IG(max))
Donde:
La constante 0.35 en el denominador se deriva de la aproximación de que el tiempo de subida/descenso se considera alrededor del 35% del valor final. Puedes ajustar este valor según tus necesidades específicas.
Como ves, la elección de la resistencia de la compuerta, es dependiente de muchas consideraciones y permite unos valores dentro de unos rangos muy amplios.
En nuestro caso, vamos a utilizar una resistencia de 10KΩ y realizaremos algunas medidas para ver si la tenemos que ajustar:
Es importante señalar que, en algunos casos, puede ser útil agregar un resistor en serie con la compuerta del MOSFET para limitar la corriente de pico durante la conmutación y mejorar la robustez del sistema contra transitorios de corriente.
Este resistor adicional puede llamarse «resistencia de compuerta» en algunos contextos, y su valor se selecciona de manera similar.
Llega lo mejor: construir el driver PWM con transistor MOSFET.
Es un circuito muy simple, con componentes muy baratos y relativamente fáciles de adquirir. Además, es muy fácil de montar, incluso para alguien que está empezando o que es su primer proyecto.
Vamos a empezar por montarlo y comprobar, de una forma rápida, que funciona correctamente.
En el siguiente apartado, una vez que lo tengamos montado, veremos las pruebas y mediciones que podemos hacer con él y seguro que aprendemos un montón.
Existen varias opciones que tenemos para montar en circuito. Las principales son:
También tenemos la opción de hacer el montaje con componentes tradicionales «grandes» (through–hole) o con componentes pequeñitos de montaje superficial (SMD).
Como en este caso vamos a utilizar componentes SMD, por los motivos que ya hemos comentado, lo construiremos directamente sobre una perfboard, que es la forma más sencilla de montar este tipo de circuitos.
El montaje cableado al aire queda descartado cuando se trata de componentes SMD. Sus patas son extremadamente frágiles y no soportan absolutamente ninguna tensión mecánica.
Es un circuito tan simple que, en mi opinión, no merece la pena hacer una placa de circuito impreso a medida.
¿Te da miedo el montaje de componentes SMD? No debería. A mí me encantan y me parece incluso más fácil montar circuitos SMD.
Además, puedo tener un montón de componentes SMD almacenados en muy poco espacio y por muy poco dinero (si, son mucho más baratos) para hacer montones de proyectos sin necesidad de estar pidiendo componentes.
El montaje final lo haré directamente en una perfboard , tratando de que quede un montaje compacto, aunque sin complicarnos la vida por ahorrar un cm2.
Si tras ver el video, en el que se ve lo fácil que es soldar este tipo de componentes, te sigue dando miedo soldar componentes SMD, siempre puedes utilizar una pequeña placa adaptadora como estas.
Antes de hacer el montaje en Perf-board, haré un montaje rápido en una Breadboard, que permite cambios rápidos para hacer las pruebas y medidas necesarias.
Para poderlo pinchar en la Breadboard, lo soldaré a una pequeña placa adaptadora.
Como no tengo disponible una placa de este tipo para montaje de SOT32 (que es el encapsulado que tiene nuestro MOSFET) voy a utilizar uno de estos adaptadores para SOT89, aunque no quede exacto.
Verás que los pines del MOSFET no llegan a los pads de la placa, pero no importa, los extenderé con un poquito de estaño de más.
También puedes soldarlo en una plaquita perfboard normal. No te costará mucho.
Aunque es un montaje en Protoboard, he soldado el transistor MOSFET Si2300 en una pequeña placa perf-board para que nos resulte más sencillo manipularlo para las pruebas que vamos a hacer.
En la siguiente fotografía puedes verlo en detalle (puedes pinchar sobre ella para verlo más grande si quieres).
Esta es la distribución que vamos a seguir para hacer el montaje en Protoboard. Puedes pincharla para verla más grande y que te sirva de guía.
Y así es como quedará terminado:
Si quieres montar el driver en una placa de prototipos perforada, puedes seguir el tutorial del Mini HAT PWM para Raspberry Pi.
Aunque lo escribí pensando en la Raspberry Pi, puedes utilizarlo en cualquier otro proyecto.
¡Por fin la parte más interesante (al menos para mí)! Las pruebas y mediciones.
Ya hemos montado el circuito y hemos comprobado que funciona. Ahora podremos comprobar por nosotros mismos muchos de los puntos que hemos comentado a nivel teórico.
Con los datos de estas medidas podremos optimizar el circuito con datos reales, si es necesario, ya que algunos los hemos asumido o los hemos aplicado por aproximación.
Como habíamos adelantado, el MOSFET es un componente tremendamente eficiente que consume poquísimo.
Intercalamos el multímetro en modo de medida de intensidad entre la entrada de señan PWM y el Gate del MOSFET y alimentamos el circuito.
En este caso, está consumiendo unos 328µA, sin optimizar el consumo. Podríamos reducir el consumo poniendo una resistencia limitadora en el Gate, pero al no ser un circuito que funcione con baterías y ser tan poco el consumo no me he molestado en ponerlo.
Intercalamos el multímetro en modo de medida de intensidad entre el voltímetro y su positivo de alimentación y medimos.
Nada que no fuera lo esperado: 140mA, que corresponde, aproximadamente, con el consumo del ventilador.
Este punto pertenece al artículo Driver PWM con transistor BJT, pero te lo dejo también aquí porque la explicación es importante también cuando utilizamos un MOSFET para controlar el ventilador.
Los resultados no han sido exactamente los que podrás ver más abajo (puedes verlos en el video) pero quiero hacer algunas pruebas adicionales antes de actualizarlos, porque hay algo que no me cuadra…
La gran ventaja de utilizar una señal PWM es que podemos hacer girar el ventilador a la velocidad que queramos, entre el mínimo que admita el ventilador (por debajo de ese mínimo, que depende de cada ventilador, éste simplemente se parará, mientras intenta girar) y el máximo correspondiente a su voltaje de alimentación nominal (menos las pérdidas que, en su caso, genere nuestro circuito).
Esto significa que no podemos bajar el ciclo de trabajo al, por ejemplo, 1% porque el ventilador no tendrá suficiente energía para moverse.
Este ciclo de trabajo mínimo es muy importante saberlo, en aplicaciones prácticas, para evitar intentar mandarle señales PWM por debajo del mínimo.
Hay que tener en cuenta que, si mandamos al ventilador señales PWM por debajo del mínimo, el ventilador no se moverá, pero se calentará porque tendrá que disipar esa energía que le estamos mandando en forma de calor.
Esto es importante siempre que controlamos un ventilador mediante PWM, tenemos evitar a toda costa intentar mandarle señales PWM por debajo del mínimo que permita su movimiento fluido.
La medida del ciclo de trabajo mínimo para que el ventilador se mueva no será difícil, pero si un poco más engorrosa debido a que hay que utilizar otros instrumentos de laboratorio, diferentes al multímetro.
Para generar la señal PWM voy a utilizar un generador de funciones digital programable y lo voy a unir a un osciloscopio, para asegurarme de que la señal PWM que estoy midiendo sea la correcta y evitar errores.
Lo mejor, ya que es algo muy dinámico, es que veas las pruebas en el video, pero te puedo adelantar que:
Es muy importante que entiendas y tengas presente que estos ciclos de trabajo dependen de cada ventilador concreto y pueden variar mucho de unos a otros.
Iré ampliando la información sobre este punto a medida que haga más pruebas con este y otros ventiladores (y con diferentes drivers y microcontroladores, por si hay alguna diferencia).
Como siempre que construimos un circuito, especialmente si lo hemos diseñado nosotros mismos, debemos comprobar que su temperatura de funcionamiento sea correcta y esté siempre bajo control.
Lo mínimo es tocar con el dedo y notar que no se está calentando en exceso (al menos lo que nosotros consideremos en exceso).
Aquí, para evitar la subjetividad de nuestro dedo, voy a utilizar una cámara térmica para conocer su temperatura real en varias situaciones.
En la siguiente imagen puedes ver nuestro circuito tras funcionar durante, al menos, 30 minutos.
Como ves la temperatura del MOSFET es de «frío como el hielo». Vamos, temperatura ambiente.
Puedes ver el ventilador funcionando a 31.1ºC y bajo su esquina inferior izquierda está el MOSFET a la misma temperatura que su entorno.
Por cierto, que el ventilador no varía mucho su temperatura dependiendo de la señal PWM. Se mantiene en todo momento entre 26ºC y 31ºC (con una temperatura ambiente en este momento de 24.9ºC).
No he incluido estas medidas en el video por dos motivos: Porque no hay nada interesante que comentar y porque se me olvidó grabarlo antes de tener el video montado (y sí, si hubiera habido algo interesante que comentar lo hubiera editado de nuevo, aunque estuviera listo).
La elección entre un transistor MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) y transistor BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor) en un circuito de conmutación, como el control de un ventilador mediante PWM, tiene varias diferencias clave:
Principio de Funcionamiento
Corriente de Control
Eficiencia Energética
Velocidad de Conmutación
Sensibilidad a la Temperatura
Protección contra Sobrecorriente
La elección entre un BJT y un MOSFET depende de la aplicación específica, los requisitos de conmutación, la eficiencia energética deseada y otros factores del diseño del circuito. En general, los MOSFET son más comunes en aplicaciones de conmutación de alta frecuencia y para controlar dispositivos de alta potencia, mientras que los BJT siguen siendo adecuados para ciertas aplicaciones de baja y media potencia.
Como colofón de este artículo te dejo el video que he preparado como apoyo:
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
Generador de funciones FeelTech FY3200-24Mhz
Fuente de alimentación MLINK DPS3005
Osciloscopio Rigol DS1054Z en Amazon España
Pienso que hemos visto con suficiente profundidad cómo funciona, como calcular y como construir un driver PWM con transistor MOSFET.
Con el tiempo iré completando y mejorando el artículo. Visítalo de vez en cuando para ver las novedades.
Si te ha gustado este post, te sugiero que leas los siguientes los siguientes artículos relacionados, donde podrás encontrar mucha más información sobre este apasionante tema:
Imagina tener un interruptor que no solo apaga y enciende velozmente, siguiendo las instrucciones de tu microcontrolador (u otro circuito), sino que también se adapta como un camaleón a tus necesidades. Sí, eso es lo que hace un MOSFET. Es como el todoterreno de la electrónica.
Utilizar un transistor de tipo MOSFET (Transistor de Efecto de Campo Metal-Oxido-Semiconductor) como interruptor nos permite que nuestro controlador maneje cargas de potencia media y alta de una manera muy sencilla y eficiente.
En este artículo te explico cómo puedes usar un transistor de tipo MOSFET (Transistor de Efecto de Campo Metal-Oxido-Semiconductor) como interruptor.
Como en otras ocasiones, veremos un poquito de teoría (prometo que corta y entendible) y pasaremos a algunas aplicaciones prácticas.
Este post no pretende ser un artículo de nivel académico, ya que el área de los MOSFET es muy compleja y extensa, pero si pretende que le pierdas el miedo y que comprendas el cómo, el cuándo y el por qué.
Como siempre, voy a intentar que no sea una simple ‘receta’ de lo que tienes que hacer para montar un circuito. Voy a intentar que sea un artículo te aporte valor y que puedas aprender de él fácilmente y sin mucha complicación.
Este artículo no es para ti, si todo lo que quieres son unas instrucciones breves para construir un circuito que te permita controlar una carga, sin saber lo que haces ni cómo funciona. Para eso ya hay mucho publicado en internet una y otra vez.
Un MOSFET es un tipo de transistor especial que significa «Transistor de Efecto de Campo Metal-Oxido-Semiconductor», y tiene algunas ventajas sobre los transistores de toda la vida (que son los transistores BJT).
La inmensa mayoría de los transistores que se utilizan hoy en día son de tipo MOSFET, debido a sus grandes ventajas.
Los transistores MOSFET son auténticos héroes en el mundo de la electrónica. Su versatilidad y eficiencia los convierten en componentes esenciales para numerosos dispositivos y circuitos. A continuación, exploramos las 10 ventajas clave que hacen de los MOSFET unos verdaderos campeones en el reino de los componentes electrónicos.
Los MOSFETs son rápidos como el viento. Su capacidad para cambiar de estado (de encendido a apagado y viceversa) en tiempos extremadamente cortos los hace ideales para aplicaciones que requieren respuestas rápidas.
¿Quieres ahorrar energía? Los MOSFETs son tus aliados. En comparación con otros transistores, los MOSFETs tienen una baja resistencia en estado de conducción (Rds(on)), lo que significa que pierden menos energía en forma de calor.
Con su comportamiento controlado por voltaje en la puerta, los MOSFETs permiten un ajuste preciso de la corriente que fluye a través de ellos. Esto facilita la adaptación a las necesidades específicas de un circuito.
Los MOSFETs son versátiles. Pueden funcionar tanto con señales analógicas como digitales, lo que los convierte en una elección flexible para una amplia gama de aplicaciones.
Cuando están apagados, los MOSFETs consumen muy poca corriente, lo que los hace ideales para dispositivos que requieren un bajo consumo de energía durante períodos de inactividad.
En el mundo de la miniaturización, los MOSFETs destacan. Su tamaño compacto y peso ligero los hacen perfectos para aplicaciones donde el espacio es limitado y la eficiencia es clave.
Los MOSFETs son capaces de conmutar a frecuencias muy altas sin perder eficiencia. Esto los convierte en la opción preferida para circuitos que operan en el rango de radiofrecuencia.
A diferencia de algunos dispositivos electrónicos, los MOSFETs son menos sensibles a las variaciones de temperatura, lo que contribuye a una mayor estabilidad en diversas condiciones ambientales.
Gracias a su diseño robusto y a la ausencia de partes móviles, los MOSFETs tienden a tener una vida útil prolongada, lo que los hace ideales para aplicaciones que requieren fiabilidad a largo plazo.
Los MOSFETs se llevan bien con otros componentes electrónicos. Su diseño permite una fácil integración en circuitos más complejos, simplificando el proceso de diseño y fabricación.
Existen miles de MOSFETs diferentes con diferentes características y parámetros de funcionamiento.
Todo esto sin contar con los transistores MOSFET que existen dentro de los circuitos integrados. Por ejemplo, un procesador Core i7 980x, con 6 núcleos y 12 MiB de memoria caché, tiene la friolera de 1.170 millones de transistores (de los que supongo que todos, o el 99,999% son de tipo MOSFET).
Como imaginarás, no es lo mismo seleccionar un MOSFET para utilizarlo como interruptor de una carga pequeña o mediana (que es de lo que estamos hablando aquí), usarlo en un teléfono para crear sus necesidades de emisión de radiofrecuencia de varios GHz o usarlo para construir una fuente de alimentación
Si, existen miles de MOSFETs distintos y lo bueno es que todos ellos son necesarios y utilizables en un caso u otro.
No podemos empezar a hablar de MOSFETs sin nombrar los principales tipos que existen y dividirlos de alguna forma
Es la principal división entre MOSFETs. Todos los MOSFETS, sin importar otras consideraciones, pertenecen a uno de estos dos tipos.
Difieren principalmente en la polaridad de su canal de conducción. Aquí te explico sus diferencias básicas:
En resumen, la principal diferencia entre un MOSFET de canal N y un MOSFET de canal P radica en los portadores de carga (electrones para canal N, huecos para canal P) que conducen la corriente entre el drenaje y la fuente cuando el dispositivo está activado, así como en las polaridades de voltaje requeridas para activarlos.
Dentro de los MOSFETs, tanto de canal N como de Canal P, existe un tipo de MOSFET especial y que nos interesa especialmente: El MOSFET de nivel lógico (o Logic Level Mosfet).
Más que un ‘tipo’ de MOSFET distinto, el MOSFET de nivel lógico es un MOSFET ‘normal’ con un conjunto de características o parámetros de funcionamiento que lo hacen idóneo para su uso con microcontroladores, y que probablemente será el que quieras usar como interruptor.
Te hablaré en profundidad del MOSFET de nivel lógico cuando veamos el resto de tipos de MOSFETs y lo haré en un punto independiente para él solo, por lo importante que es para nosotros.
Estas categorías ofrecen una visión general de los tipos de MOSFETs disponibles, pero dentro de cada categoría, hay numerosas variantes y modelos específicos diseñados para cumplir con requisitos particulares en diferentes aplicaciones.
La elección del tipo de MOSFET depende de factores como la aplicación específica, los requisitos de potencia y las condiciones ambientales.
El símbolo del transistor MOSFET más utilizado es el siguiente (dependiendo de si es de Canal-N o de Canal-P):
Pines:
D = Drain (o Drenador)
G = Gate (o Puerta)
S = Source (o Fuente)
Como ves, el transistor MOSFET tiene, por regla general, tres patas, o pines:
En resumen:
La puerta controla el flujo de corriente entre el drenador y la fuente. Aplicar una tensión a la puerta crea un campo eléctrico que determina si el MOSFET está en modo activado (conducción) o desactivado (corte).
La fuente es la referencia de voltaje y corriente para el dispositivo, y el drenador es donde se toma la corriente de salida.
La relación entre la tensión aplicada a la puerta y la corriente que fluye entre el drenador y la fuente es lo que hace que el MOSFET sea un dispositivo controlado por voltaje.
Nos falta por comentar un aspecto muy importante de los transistores MOSFET a efectos prácticos:
Dentro del transistor MOSFET hay un condensador escondido entre la puerta y la fuente.
El propio datasheet ya nos da una pista de ello en el símbolo que utiliza para el componente.
Si te fijas podrás ver que el símbolo del MOSFET esconde el símbolo de tres condensadores.
Y es que, efectivamente, no hay uno, sino tres condensadores escondidos, aunque a nosotros el que nos preocupa en este caso es el que está entre Gate y Source.
Esto es muy importante por una cosa y el siguiente párrafo contiene el meollo del asunto:
Cuando aplicamos voltaje a la puerta del MOSFET para activar el MOSFET y hacer que conduzca, se carga el condensador que hay dentro. Ese condensador no se descarga por sí mismo (se descarga, pero en un tiempo relativamente largo), lo que quiere decir que hasta que no descarguemos nosotros el condensador, el MOSFET seguirá conduciendo.
La resistencia interna del MOSFET entre la puerta y la fuente es tan alta (del orden de varios MΩ) que no hay suficiente continuidad para descargar el condensador interno que hay conectado entre ellas.
¿La forma de hacer que se descargue el condensador entre la puerta y la fuente?
Fácil: poner nosotros una resistencia de descarga de forma externa. Es la resistencia de 10KΩ que puedes ver en el esquema y que tiene una razón principal para estar ahí: descargar el condensador interno.
Pero, ¡cuidado!
El aspecto de un MOSFET es muy parecido al de cualquier transistor BJT normal y dependiendo de su potencia, los encapsulados pueden ser más o menos grandes (como en cualquier transistor BJT normal).
A simple vista no se diferencia de un transistor BJT y hay que examinar muy bien el circuito para saber si un transistor es BJT o MOSFET a simple vista.
Por supuesto, existen MOSFETs en formato normal (through-hole o THT), los hay en formato SMD e incluso existen grandes MOSFET de alta potencia diseñados para ir atornillados (debido a su gran masa o necesidades de refrigeración) y cableados al aire.
Hay una cosa importante a tener en cuenta: Los MOSFET específicos para niveles lógicos (logic level MOSFETs) son componentes relativamente modernos, y en este mundo de constante miniaturización es muy difícil encontrar este tipo de MOSFETS en encapsulado through-hole.
La mayoría de MOSFETS de nivel lógico están encapsulados en formato para montaje superficial, SMD.
Cuando hablamos de MOSFETS en general, estamos hablando de componentes controlados por voltaje que son capaces de conducir más o menos en función de cuánto voltaje le apliquemos entre la compuerta y la fuente (el voltaje entre los pines Gate y Source, Vgs).
La relación entre cuánto voltaje aplicamos (Vgs) y cuánto será capaz de conducir el MOSFET, no es lineal y suele estar representado en las hojas de datos de los MOSFET en una tabla en la que aparece una curva que nos indica como es esa relación dentro de su rango de funcionamiento.
Claro, esto es un concepto totalmente analógico, en el que hay una infinidad de valores posibles.
En un mundo digital, que es el que nos interesa, algo así no nos resulta interesante ni conveniente. Lo que queremos es 0’s y 1’s. Que haya o no haya. Que el voltaje sea de 0V o que sea de, por ejemplo, 5V.
Además, en muchísimos MOSFETS, ese voltaje que hay que aplicar es de 10V, 20V o más, solo para que empiece a conducir. Para que conduzca por completo, los voltajes pueden ser mucho mayores.
Por supuesto esto tampoco nos conviene en absoluto a la hora de trabajar con microcontroladores, que funcionan con voltajes mucho más bajos.
Un MOSFET de Nivel Lógico es uno que funciona con un voltaje Vgs adecuado para el microcontrolador con el que lo vamos a usar y en el que la curva con la relación entre el voltaje aplicado y cuánto conduce sea lo más abrupta posible
Es lo más cercano posible a TODO-NADA, 0-1, SI-NO, lo más binario que sea posible.
Los circuitos lógicos, como todo, han evolucionado a lo largo del tiempo.
En los años 80, los niveles lógicos se relacionaban con 0V (para nivel bajo) y 5V (para nivel alto).
Poco después, el voltaje de los circuitos de nivel lógico alto bajaba, casi como un estándar, hasta los 3.3V
Hoy en día, el voltaje que representa el nivel lógico alto sigue bajando y ya es bastante habitual ver 1.65V como nivel lógico alto (e incluso menos).
Esto significa que la realidad que define qué es un MOSFET de nivel lógico va cambiando. Si al principio eran 5V y hasta hace poco 3.3V, ahora ya son 1.65V y seguirán bajando.
Déjame que te haga un pequeño apunte: Aunque algunos fabricantes especifican en en datasheet sí un determinado MOSFET es de tipo logic level, muchos no lo hacen. De hecho, hay muchos logic level que necesitan un voltaje (Vgs) de 4V o más, por lo que desde el punto de vista de una Raspberry Pi o un ESP8266 no serían un logic level mosfet.
Es importante seleccionar un MOSFET que pueda manejar la corriente que necesita la carga que deba controlar y disipar la potencia generada.
Además, el controlador del MOSFET (el circuito que lo controla) debe ser capaz de proporcionar la señal necesaria para controlarlo.
Si el MOSFET está controlado por un microprocesador (voltajes de 3.3V o 5V), es fundamental utilizar un MOSFET de nivel lógico o ‘Logic Level’ MOSFET.
Los MOSFET de nivel lógico o ‘Logic Level‘ están diseñados para que su funcionamiento sea una conducción todo/nada entre el drenador y la fuente con una señal de voltaje muy bajo (3.3V, 5V o a veces menos) en la puerta.
La selección del transistor MOSFET para tu aplicación, en este caso, utilizarlo como un interruptor, implica considerar varios factores.
Si estás empezando con la electrónica, es posible que, a primera vista, puede parecer complicado. Si te tragas el siguiente ladrillo haciendo un esfuerzo por comprenderlo, verás que en realidad es bastante fácil.
Realmente el MOSFET tiene muchas características importantes, pero realmente nos vamos a limitar a seleccionar las dos o tres más importantes.
De todas formas, si no lo pillas a la primera, sigue adelante porque el resto del artículo, lleno de ejemplos y casos prácticos te ayudarán a comprenderlo. Cuando termines vuelve aquí y encontrarás que lo ves con otros ojos y que todo te parece mucho más fácil y comprensible.
Aquí hay algunos pasos y consideraciones para ayudarte a elegir el transistor MOSFET adecuado para tu carga:
Quiero insistir en dos parámetros que son especialmente importantes y que determinarán el MOSFET que escojamos:
RDS(on) y Tensión de la compuerta (VGS).
Atención: Este punto es pregunta de examen. 
El valor RDS(on) representa la resistencia interna del MOSFET cuando está conduciendo.
Esto significa que si elegimos un MOSFET con una RDS(on) de 5Ω sería como si tuviéramos una resistencia de 5Ω en serie con la carga cuando está encendido, y esto no es lo que queremos.
Esa resistencia provocaría una caída de voltaje (nuestra carga recibiría menos energía) y un calentamiento, que se traduciría en pérdida de energía en forma de calor.
Visto esto, lo que queremos es un MOSFET con la mínima RDS(on) que sea posible.
El valor ideal de RDS(on) sería cero, pero, por desgracia, un MOSFET perfecto con un RDS(on) de cero no existe.
Dependiendo lo la aplicación, lo habitual es que escojamos nuestro MOSFET buscando que tenga la RDS(on) más baja posible.
La potencia disipada en un MOSFET (Pd) se puede calcular utilizando la fórmula básica de potencia 
.
Donde:
es la potencia disipada,
es la corriente que fluye a través del MOSFET
la resistencia del MOSFET cuando está en el estado de conducciónEs importante destacar que la resistencia representa la resistencia cuando el MOSFET está en el estado de conducción (ON). Cuando el MOSFET está encendido, existe una caída de voltaje a través de esta resistencia interna, y la potencia disipada es proporcional al cuadrado de la corriente que fluye a través de la resistencia.
Es recomendable verificar las especificaciones del fabricante del MOSFET para obtener el valor exacto de ya que puede variar según el modelo y la temperatura. Además, ten en cuenta que la potencia disipada también dependerá de la duración del tiempo que el MOSFET esté en el estado ON y de otros factores del circuito.
En aplicaciones de potencia, es común utilizar disipadores de calor para garantizar que la temperatura del MOSFET se mantenga dentro de los límites seguros.
El valor de Tensión de la compuerta (VGS) del transistor MOSFET que escojamos es el segundo valor que tenemos que tener muy presente.
Como hemos dicho, este valor es el voltaje que tenemos que aplicar entre la compuerta y la fuente. Este parámetro es crucial porque determina el estado de encendido o apagado del MOSFET y, por lo tanto, controla el flujo de corriente entre el drenaje y la fuente.
En un MOSFET de canal N, cuando se aplica una tensión positiva suficiente (VGS > Vth, donde Vth es el umbral de voltaje de la compuerta), se crea un campo eléctrico que permite que los electrones fluyan desde la fuente hasta el drenaje, activando el MOSFET. Cuando VGS es inferior al umbral, el MOSFET está en estado apagado y la corriente no fluye significativamente.
En un MOSFET de canal P, la polaridad de la tensión se invierte. Para activar el MOSFET, se aplica una tensión negativa (VGS < – Vth).
La VGS es un parámetro importante a considerar al seleccionar un MOSFET, ya que determina la compatibilidad del MOSFET con la lógica de control utilizada en el circuito. Es esencial que la VGS necesaria para activar el MOSFET sea alcanzada de manera confiable por la señal de control utilizada en el circuito, como la salida de un microcontrolador.
Dicho de otra forma, si vamos a controlar el MOSFET con un microcontrolador que proporciona 3.3V, VGS tiene que ser igual o inferior a 3.3V para asegurarnos de que el MOSFET conduzca a pleno rendimiento.
Al revisar las especificaciones del MOSFET en su hoja de datos, encontrarás valores como Vth (umbral de voltaje) y VGS máxima. Es esencial que la señal de control suministrada en el circuito pueda alcanzar o superar el umbral para garantizar un funcionamiento confiable del MOSFET.
Cuando utilizamos una carga inductiva (como un motor, y un ventilador tiene un motor) es recomendable incluir un diodo en paralelo con el motor para proteger el transistor contra tensiones inversas generadas en el bobinado cuando el motor se apaga.
Esto a veces es difícil de entender para el profano en electrónica, pero piensa en lo siguiente y verás que tiene todo el sentido:
Cuando el motor lo movemos con la mano, sin recibir tensión del circuito, genera voltaje (es como un generador). Lo mismo pasa si el motor se sigue moviendo tras retirar el voltaje, por su propia inercia (sería como lo moviéramos con la mano o con una fuerza externa al motor), generará tensión.
Además, el propio bobinado del motor almacena energía (en forma de campo magnético) que es ‘expulsada’ al retirar la alimentación.
Cualquier bobina almacena energía en forma de campo magnético (debido al efecto de autoinducción), que es ‘expulsada’ al retirar la corriente (funciona como si fuera el amortiguador de un coche).
En la inmensa mayoría de casos un motor pequeño, como el de un ventilador de 5V, no generará la energía suficiente para estropear un MOSFET, pero es una buena práctica ponerlo.
De todas formas, ten en cuenta que algunos MOSFETs son más sensibles que otros a esta tensión inversa y pueden estropearse.
Una carga puramente resistiva, como puede ser un LED o una bombilla, no presenta el efecto de autoinducción y no necesita el diodo.
Pienso que hemos visto lo más importante del uso de un transistor MOSFET como interruptor.
Ahora quedaría ver algún caso práctico, ¿no te parece?
Te propongo ver el siguiente artículo sobre el uso de un transistor MOSFET para controlar una carga mediante una señal PWM.
Esto no es más que un MOSFET que actúa como interruptor abriéndose y cerrándose de una forma determinada, al ritmo que le marca un microprocesador, para generar una señal que controle, por ejemplo, en este caso, un ventilador.
El artículo va acompañado de un video que aún no está terminado, por lo que te sugiero que te suscribas a mi canal de YouTube, pulsando el botón a continuación, para recibir una notificación cuando lo publique y no te lo pierdas.
Por supuesto, todo lo que veremos aquí también es aplicable a otro tipo de cargas aparte de ventiladores.
Vamos a ver primero una pequeña base teórica, pero entendible, y pasaremos a un caso práctico con todas las pruebas y mediciones, paso a paso, hasta llegar al circuito final (¡esa es la parte que más me gusta y estoy deseando que llegue!).
Si en algún momento te pierdes o quieres ampliar la información, al final del artículo, tienes las referencias de una serie de posts adicionales donde podrás aprender mucho más o resolver tus dudas.
Como siempre, intentaré que no sea simplemente una receta de lo que tienes que hacer para montar el circuito sin entender nada (aunque funcione) sino que procuraré que sea un artículo que aporte valor y te permita aprender.
Un controlador PWM (Modulación de Ancho de Pulso) junto con un transistor BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor) se utiliza comúnmente para regular la velocidad de un ventilador. Aquí hay una descripción básica de cómo funciona este circuito:
El controlador PWM genera una señal de salida que varía en ancho de pulso. El ancho de pulso determina la proporción del tiempo durante el cual la señal está en alto (encendida) en comparación con el tiempo en bajo (apagada).
La señal PWM actúa como una señal de control para el transistor BJT, permitiendo ajustar la velocidad del ventilador.
El transistor BJT actúa como un interruptor controlado por la señal PWM. Se utilizan dos tipos de transistores BJT: NPN y PNP.
Para un transistor NPN, la carga (el ventilador) se conecta al colector, la señal PWM se aplica a la base y el emisor se conecta a tierra.
Para un transistor PNP, la carga se conecta al emisor, la señal PWM se aplica a la base y el colector se conecta a la fuente de alimentación.
Cuando la señal PWM está en alto, el transistor BJT se activa y permite que la corriente fluya desde la fuente de alimentación hacia el ventilador, encendiéndolo.
Cuando la señal PWM está en bajo, el transistor se apaga, interrumpiendo la corriente hacia el ventilador y apagándolo.
Al variar el ancho de pulso de la señal PWM, se controla la proporción de tiempo durante el cual el transistor está encendido. Esto regula efectivamente la velocidad del ventilador.
Es común incluir un diodo en paralelo con el ventilador para proteger el transistor contra tensiones inversas generadas cuando el motor del ventilador se apaga.
Es importante seleccionar un transistor BJT con capacidad para manejar la corriente del ventilador y disipar la potencia generada. Además, el controlador PWM debe ser capaz de proporcionar la señal necesaria para controlar el transistor.
Un esquemático básico podría verse así:
Te dejo también esta otra visualización, por si te resulta más sencilla.
En este esquema, el transistor NPN controla el flujo de corriente desde la fuente de alimentación al ventilador, y la señal PWM regula la velocidad del ventilador al controlar el transistor.
La selección del transistor BJT para tu aplicación, en este caso, controlar un ventilador mediante PWM, implica considerar varios factores.
Si estás empezando con la electrónica, es posible que, a primera vista, puede parecer complicado. Si te tragas el siguiente ladrillo haciendo un esfuerzo por comprenderlo, verás que en realidad es bastante fácil.
De todas formas, si no lo pillas a la primera, sigue adelante porque el resto del artículo, lleno de ejemplos y casos prácticos te ayudarán a comprenderlo. Cuando termines vuelve aquí y encontrarás que lo ves con otros ojos y te parece todo mucho más comprensible.
Aquí hay algunos pasos y consideraciones para ayudarte a elegir el transistor BJT adecuado:
Al seguir estos pasos y tener en cuenta estas consideraciones, podrás seleccionar un transistor BJT que se ajuste a las necesidades específicas de tu aplicación. Recuerda que es importante considerar no solo las condiciones nominales, sino también las condiciones máximas y mínimas de operación para garantizar la fiabilidad y el rendimiento del circuito.
Antes de pasar a la parte práctica, tenemos que definir exactamente lo que queremos, con sus requerimientos y parámetros de funcionamiento.
Vamos a necesitar, sobre todo:
Ahora que ya sabemos cuáles son nuestras necesidades y qué requerimientos tenemos, vamos a proceder a seleccionar los componentes que utilizaremos, tratando de que sean de fácil adquisición.
Solamente necesitamos tres componentes:
Necesitaremos también un ventilador de 5V de los que se suelen utilizar para refrigerar las Raspberry Pi y cosas parecidas.
Utilizaremos un ventilador de 40x40mm de dos cables (solo positivo y negativo) con un consumo máximo teórico de 200mA.
El diodo no tiene mucho secreto. Podemos utilizar casi cualquier diodo. Solo tenemos que asegurarnos de que soporta la corriente necesaria (que es muy poca, podemos asumir que unos pocos mA, porque sería solo la intensidad que es ventilador sea capaz de generar).
En nuestro caso vamos a utilizar un 1N4001 o 1N4007 (son casi iguales, a efectos de lo que aquí nos importa), aunque puedes utilizar muchos otros diodos similares.
Este diodo 1N4001 es omnipresente y lo podemos encontrar en muchísimos circuitos. Seguramente sea el diodo más utilizado del mundo (este o sus equivalentes chinos).
El transistor tampoco guarda mucho secreto y podemos utilizar muchísimos en este circuito.
Vamos a utilizar un transistor que sea:
Solamente tenemos que asegurarnos de que:
En nuestro caso vamos a utilizar un transistor 2N2222A que es, junto a sus equivalentes chinos, uno de los más usados en electrónica, muy barato y fácil de conseguir.
Aquí tienes su datasheet del 2N2222A (concretamente del P2N2222A que es una versión algo más moderna), donde puedes encontrar todos los detalles sobre él.
Si quieres utilizar otro transistor en lugar del 2N2222A tendrás que calcular la corriente de base que te interesa y la resistencia limitadora en base a la ganancia de corriente (hfe o β) del transistor que hayas elegido.
Una cosa importante que debes saber, es que estos transistores (como todos los transistores más comunes) los fabrican muchos fabricantes y hay muchas versiones y entre todas ellas hay diferencias.
Si, como aficionados, compramos nuestros transistores en los sitios económicos con AliExpress o eBay, casi nunca sabremos exactamente qué versión del 2N2222 tendremos por lo que nunca está de más hacer las medidas de comprobación que veremos más adelante.
La función de esta resistencia es limitar la corriente que llega a la base del transistor.
La elección del valor de la resistencia de base depende de diversos factores, incluyendo la corriente de colector deseada, la ganancia del transistor (hfe o β), y la tensión disponible para la operación del circuito. Se puede calcular utilizando la ley de Ohm:
Rb=(Vin−Vbe)/Ib
Vin es el voltaje de entrada, Vbe es la caída de voltaje en la unión base-emisor del transistor y Ib es la corriente de base deseada.
En nuestro caso, el voltaje de entrada de partida Vin (para no entrar en demasiada teoría, luego los sacaremos mediante medidas prácticas) asumiremos que es de 5V (será inferior por la caída de voltaje en el ventilador), la caída de voltaje en la unión base-emisor del transistor (Vbe) vamos a asumir que es de 0.7V, partiendo a grosso modo de lo que nos dice en datasheet.
Luego, tendremos:
Rb = (5V − 0.7V) / 0,004A = 4.3 / 0,004A = 1075Ω
En valor 0,004A son, en Amperios, los 4mA de corriente que hemos calculado antes que necesitamos para la base del transistor.
Como 1075Ω no es una resistencia estándar, tendremos que buscar una. En este caso, la resistencia estándar más cercana en la serie E24 sería 1.1 kΩ (1100 ohmios). Es el valor estándar más bajo que supera los 1075 ohmios. Ten en cuenta que, en las series estándar, las resistencias disponibles son 1.0 kΩ, 1.1 kΩ, 1.2 kΩ, y así sucesivamente. En este caso, 1.1 kΩ sería la opción más cercana.
Ahora que, con fines didácticos, te he contado como se calcula la resistencia en teoría, debo decirte como hacerlo en la práctica.
Los transistores tienen dos modos de funcionamiento:
Cuando un transistor se utiliza en modo activo, significa que lo vamos a utilizar como un componente analógico (con en un amplificador de audio, por ejemplo). Aquí se calcula la resistencia tal y como hemos comentado.
Cuando un transistor se utiliza en modo de saturación, significa que lo vamos a utilizar como un componente digital, queremos que le transistor conduzca todo o nada (como es el caso de nuestro circuito).
En este caso lo que queremos es asegurarnos de que el transistor conduzca todo lo que le sea posible (esto hará que le llegue más energía al ventilador y que el transistor se caliente menos).
Para asegurarnos de que el transistor funcione en modo de saturación, lo que vamos a hacer es aumentar la intensidad en su base (reduciendo la resistencia limitadora).
¿Cuánto la vamos a reducir?
Básicamente todo lo que podamos, teniendo en cuenta que:
Para terminar de comprender esto, luego haremos algunas pruebas y mediciones que nos ayudarán.
Aunque ya hemos seleccionado la resistencia y hemos hecho una descripción básica de cómo y por qué, no me resisto a dejarte una explicación un poco más a fondo, por si te interesa (si no, simplemente, sáltatela).
La resistencia conectada a la base de un transistor en un circuito tiene varias funciones importantes:
Antes de pasar a la parte práctica del artículo, te dejo el video que he preparado como apoyo.
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
Ya hemos visto la parte introductoria más importante y por fin podemos poner manos a la obra y construir el driver PWM.
Se trata de un circuito muy sencillo, con componentes muy baratos y fáciles de adquirir y muy fácil de montar. ¡Un primer proyecto ideal!
En el siguiente apartado, una vez que lo tengamos montado, veremos las pruebas y mediciones que podemos hacer con él y seguro que aprendemos un montón.
Lo primero que vamos a hacer es ver las opciones que tenemos para montar en circuito y que puede ser:
También tenemos la opción de hacer el montaje con componentes tradicionales «grandes» (through–hole) o con componentes pequeñitos de montaje superficial (SMD).
Vamos a construir los dos, through–hole y SMD y así veras cómo se hacen los dos montajes y tendremos dos circuitos similares para hacer las pruebas y mediciones por duplicado.
He decidido, por motivos didácticos, construir primero el circuito en una Protoboard ya que será más fácil para hacer pruebas y mediciones y, cuando hayamos terminado, lo pasaremos para el montaje final a una protoboard.
Para construir el driver controlador PWM con transistor BJT vamos a seguir esta distribución de componentes sobre la breadboard con una alimentación fija en vez de la Raspberry Pi, para hacerlo más sencillo:
Creo que con el video que te he preparado puedes ver de una forma muy clara como se hacer el montaje en Protoboard. Si te surge cualquier duda, déjala en los comentarios e intentaré responderte a la mayor brevedad.
Aquí tienes el mismo montaje, hecho en una placa de prototipos perforada.
Como ves la placa está un poco ‘sucia’ porque ha sido usada para muchas pruebas.
Como verás, tiene un formato muy compacto, con los componentes montados en formato vertical para que ocupen menos espacio. Podrías ahorrar casi la mitad del tamaño, simplemente eliminando los conectores.
A muchas personas les da un poco de miedo el montaje de componentes SMD. A mí personalmente, me encantan y me parece hasta más fácil montar circuitos SMD.
Algunos motivos para que me gusten tanto los componentes SMD es que son muy baratos y puedes tener muchos diferentes para cacharrear y hacer pruebas y que ocupan muy poco espacio para almacenarlos. Además, el efecto «cómo mola lo que he hecho» y la satisfacción, al menos en mi caso, son mucho mayores.
Lo montaré directamente en una protoboard, tratando de que quede un montaje limpio y elegante. Verás que, cuando se trata de circuitos simples, como este, es muy fácil y el resultado es muy bueno.
Llegamos a la parte que más me gusta e interesa de todo lo que estamos viendo en este artículo, y son las pruebas y mediciones.
Aunque hacer este circuito y que funcione es muy fácil, basta seguir cualquier esquema que encontremos en internet y que nos parezca «serio» (por los comentarios de gente que lo ha construido, por ejemplo), hay algunas cuestiones que me rondan la cabeza y que quiero comprobar por mí mismo:
Esto no solamente nos va a servir para saciar nuestra curiosidad, por importante que sea, sino que nos servirá para optimizar el circuito con datos reales, ya que algunos los hemos asumido o los hemos aplicado por aproximación.
Antes hemos calculado que queríamos que la corriente en la base del transistor fuera de 4mA y que la resistencia limitadora debía ser de 1.1 kΩ.
Finalmente hemos decidido poner una resistencia de 510Ω para que el transistor funcione en modo de saturación (si te lo perdiste puedes revisarlo aquí).
Ahora vamos a medir realmente la corriente que tenemos en la base del transistor y si realmente hemos conseguido algo cercano a 4mA, un poco por arriba.
Para medirlo vamos a hacer algo muy sencillo: vamos intercalar nuestro multímetro entre la entrada de señal PWM y la resistencia limitadora de la base del transistor, vamos a ajustar el ciclo de trabajo PWM al 100% (o lo que es lo mismo, vamos a aplicar una tensión continua de 3.3V) y vamos a medir la corriente que pasa.
No es necesario que nos vayamos a las Leyes de Kirchhoff para ver a simple vista que la intensidad entre la entrada PWM y la resistencia y la intensidad entre la resistencia y la base del transistor será la misma, por lo que podemos medirla donde queramos.
Como podemos ver en la fotografía, la intensidad en la Base del Transistor (Ib) con la resistencia limitadora de 510Ω es de 4.86mA, por encima de los 4mA, como habíamos dicho. ¡Perfecto!
¿Lo calculamos para comprobar si es correcto?
Ib = (Vin−Vbe) / Rb
Ib = (3.3V−0.7V) / 510Ω
Ib = 2.6V / 510Ω = 0.0051A (5.1mA)
¡Muy cerca de los 4.856mA que estamos midiendo! La matemática no falla. ¡Perfecto!
¿Probamos con otra resistencia a ver si acertamos?
Vamos a ver qué pasa con una resistencia limitadora de 220Ω
Teóricamente, la intensidad sería:
Ib = (3.3V−0.7V) / 220Ω
Ib = 2.6V / 220Ω = 0.0118A (11.8mA)
Como ves, la intensidad en la Base del Transistor (Ib) con la resistencia limitadora de 220Ω es de 10.70mA. Solo un 10% de error sobre lo que habíamos calculado. ¡Perfecto!
Y todavía podemos calcularlo mejor… ¿Recuerdas que hemos cogido el valor Vbe (la caída de voltaje en la unión base-emisor del transistor) del datasheet? ¿Por qué no l medimos realmente?
Colocamos el multímetro, en modo de medición de voltaje, para medir entre la base del transistor (cable naranja) y el emisor (cable azul) y el resultado es:
Ahora que sabemos que Vbe son 0.8507V, podemos volver a calcular:
Ib = (3.3V−0.8507V) / 220Ω
Ib = 2,4493V / 220Ω = 0,0111A (11.1mA)
Según los cálculos son 11.1mA y nosotros hemos medido 10.70mA. Menos de un 4% de error. ¡Fantástico!
¿Recuerdas cuando hablábamos de que el transistor podría funcionar en modo activo o en modo de saturación (sí, lo vuelvo a nombrar, pero es que es importante)?
Pues voy a hacer algunas pruebas, variando la resistencia limitadora de su base, para ver qué efecto tiene y cómo afecta a nuestro circuito y a nuestros objetivos. ¡Te lo dejo en el video!
Por cierto, no te pierdas el video, si aún no lo has visto, porque veremos cosas muy interesantes como, por ejemplo, el calentamiento del transistor cuando lo hacemos trabajar en modo activo en lugar de hacerlo en el modo de saturación.
A mí me parece realmente apasionante ver viendo de forma experimental como todo lo que hemos aprendido, en teoría, va aplicándose en la práctica.
¿Y por qué, si hemos visto que funciona mejor con una corriente en su base de 11 o 12mA lo he dejado como estaba, con la resistencia de 510Ω?
Muy sencillo. Para que el circuito valga para todo, o casi todo.
Hay microcontroladores que no son capaces de proporcionar una corriente de 12mA, de manera que he decidido es mejor estar un poquito por debajo en términos de eficiencia, pero facilitar que el circuito le funcione a todo el mundo.
Como ves, algunas veces en ingeniería no se toma la mejor decisión técnica, sino la más conveniente.
Si sabes que tu circuito puede proporcionar más intensidad al transistor, siéntete libre de bajar la resistencia a 220Ω, o lo que consideres.
Lógicamente, el estar cerca del ‘límite’, esto también se podría mejorar utilizando otro transistor más adecuado. De nuevo he tomado una decisión conveniente, y no la mejor desde un punto de vista técnico.
La corriente en el colector (o lo que es lo mismo, la corriente que está atravesando el ventilador) es otro dato importante.
Aunque en este caso sabemos, de antemano que no es demasiado alta, tenemos que prestar atención ya que no puede superar la intensidad de colector admitida por el transistor (Ic).
Aqui podemos ver que la intensidad del colector ‘Ic’ es de unos 135mA, con una resistencia de 510Ω.
Esta corriente está muy por debajo de los 600 o 800mA que soporta el transistor (según datasheet que consultemos) por lo que podemos utilizarlo sin problema.
De nuevo, el voltaje entre el colector y el emisor del transistor es un dato interesante, entre otras cosas, porque nos permitirá conocer la potencia disipada por el transistor.
Si la corriente de colector (Ic) es de 135.07mA y la caída de tensión entre el colector y el emisor (Vce) es de 210.55mV, podemos calcular la potencia disipada (Pd) en el transistor con la fórmula:
Pd = Vce * Ic
Primero, convertimos la caída de tensión a voltios:
Vce = 210.55 mV = 0.21055V
Ahora sustituimos los valores en la fórmula:
Pd = (0.21055V) * (0.13507A) ≈ 0.0285W
Por lo tanto, la potencia disipada en el transistor sería aproximadamente 0.0285W, o 28.5 mW, con Ic de 135.07mA y Vce de 210.55mV
El transistor, como cualquier componente, tiene una resistencia interna y una disipación de energía que resta energía al circuito y por tanto al ventilador.
Para ver cómo afecta esto en la práctica, trataremos de medir las RPM cuando el ventilador funciona a 5V.
Esto nos proporcionará una base para comprender cuanto perdemos, respecto al máximo de RPM, al introducir nuestro circuito regulador.
Desgraciadamente, no he encontrado el módulo con emisor de infrarrojos y fotodiodo que tenía preparado para medir las RPM, por lo que no he podido hacer estas medidas. Prometo intentarlo en cuanto encuentre el módulo que se me ha traspapelado.
Lo que, si he podido hacer, es medir el consumo del ventilador al alimentarlo a 5V directamente (la intensidad que pasa por él). Esto nos servirá como punto de partida para poderlo comparar con su comportamiento cuando lo regulemos por PWM.
Como ves, el consumo es de, aproximadamente, 127mA. No muy lejos de los 135mA que medimos a través del colector del transistor.
Posiblemente la diferencia (la mayoría) esté las pérdidas que se producen en el propio consumo interno del transistor, unido a la pequeña resistencia que presenta el circuito.
Esto significa que el ventilador está funcionando de una forma muy parecida cuando lo tenemos alimentado directamente y cuando lo alimentamos a través del controlador, por lo que su pérdida de eficacia será minima.
Ahora que ya sabemos las RPM del ventilador cuando está funcionando a 5V, podemos alimentarlo a través de nuestro circuito y volver a medir sus RPM cuando está funcionando al máximo, esto es, con un ciclo de trabajo del 100%.
La diferencia entre la medida anterior y la nueva medida nos permitirá saber cuántas RPM estamos perdiendo al introducir nuestro circuito (y en algunos casos, decidir si esta pérdida es aceptable).
También mediremos el consumo del ventilador en este caso. Será más baja que al alimentar el ventilador directamente a 5V y nos dará una idea que qué estamos ‘perdiendo’ al introducir este circuito.
La gran ventaja de utilizar una señal PWM es que podemos hacer girar el ventilador a la velocidad que queramos, entre el mínimo que admita el ventilador (por debajo de ese mínimo, que depende de cada ventilador, éste simplemente se parará, mientras intenta girar) y el máximo correspondiente a su voltaje de alimentación nominal (menos las pérdidas que, en su caso, genere nuestro circuito).
Esto significa que no podemos bajar el ciclo de trabajo al, por ejemplo, 1% porque el ventilador no tendrá suficiente energía para moverse.
Este ciclo de trabajo mínimo es muy importante saberlo, en aplicaciones prácticas, para evitar intentar mandarle señales PWM por debajo del mínimo.
Hay que tener en cuenta que, si mandamos al ventilador señales PWM por debajo del mínimo, el ventilador no se moverá, pero se calentará porque tendrá que disipar esa energía que le estamos mandando en forma de calor.
Esto es importante siempre que controlamos un ventilador mediante PWM, tenemos evitar a toda costa intentar mandarle señales PWM por debajo del mínimo que permita su movimiento fluido.
La medida del ciclo de trabajo mínimo para que el ventilador se mueva no será difícil, pero si un poco más engorrosa debido a que hay que utilizar otros instrumentos de laboratorio, diferentes al multímetro.
Para generar la señal PWM voy a utilizar un generador de funciones digital programable y lo voy a unir a un osciloscopio, para asegurarme de que la señal PWM que estoy midiendo sea la correcta y evitar errores.
Lo mejor, ya que es algo muy dinámico, es que veas las pruebas en el video, pero te puedo adelantar que:
Es muy importante que entiendas y tengas presente que estos ciclos de trabajo dependen de cada ventilador concreto y pueden variar mucho de unos a otros.
Iré ampliando la información sobre este punto a medida que haga más pruebas con este y otros ventiladores (y con diferentes microcontroladores, por si hay alguna diferencia).
¿No tenéis curiosidad por saber cuál es el «voltaje aparente» que ve el ventilador, en vez de, simplemente el ciclo de trabajo? Yo sí.
Por ejemplo, si el ciclo de trabajo es del 50%, el voltaje «que ve» sería de 2.5V, si fuera del 30%, sería de 1.5V.
Puedes ver en el video el voltaje «aparente» momento a momento, medido por el osciloscopio, cuando hago las pruebas y mediciones de PWM.
Esto es importante siempre que construimos un circuito, especialmente si lo hemos diseñado nosotros mismos, comprobar que su temperatura de funcionamiento sea correcta y esté bajo control en todos los casos (por ejemplo, para cualquier ciclo de trabajo utilizado, no solo al 100%).
Normalmente con tocar con el dedo y notar que no se está calentando (al menos lo que consideremos en exceso) es suficiente.
En este caso, para evitar la subjetividad de nuestro dedo, vamos a utilizar una cámara térmica para conocer su temperatura real.
La elección entre un transistor BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistor) y un MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) en un circuito de conmutación, como el control de un ventilador mediante PWM, tiene varias diferencias clave:
La elección entre un BJT y un MOSFET depende de la aplicación específica, los requisitos de conmutación, la eficiencia energética deseada y otros factores del diseño del circuito. En general, los MOSFET son más comunes en aplicaciones de conmutación de alta frecuencia y para controlar dispositivos de alta potencia, mientras que los BJT siguen siendo adecuados para ciertas aplicaciones de baja y media potencia.
Generador de funciones FeelTech FY3200-24Mhz
Fuente de alimentación MLINK DPS3005
Osciloscopio Rigol DS1054 en Amazon España
Pienso que hemos visto con suficiente profundidad cómo funciona, como calcular y como construir un driver PWM con transistor BJT.
Mi intención es ir completando y mejorando el artículo con el tiempo, con nuevas medidas y explicaciones más sencillas y entendibles, según se me vayan ocurriendo o las tenga disponibles. Visítalo de vez en cuando para ver las novedades.
Si te ha gustado este post, te sugiero que leas los siguientes los siguientes artículos relacionados, donde podrás encontrar mucha más información sobre este apasionante tema:
Hacer videos como el que acompaña a este post lleva mucho tiempo, no solamente por el tiempo de grabar y editar lo que se ve, sino que hay mucha investigación previa, pruebas, pasos intermedios y a veces hay que dar algunos pasos hacia atrás y empezar de nuevo.
Aquí te dejo un ejemplo de lo que pasa entre terminar el montaje en Protoboard y conectarlo y probarlo. Son unos pocos segundos en el video final, pero casi dos horas en la vida real con preparativos, problemas inesperados, replanteamientos, regrabaciones, etc.
ESTE NO ES EL VIDEO «OFICIAL», es un «detrás de las cámaras». Si quieres ver el video oficial en YouTube del driver PWM con transistor BJT, pulsa aquí.
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
Las fuentes de alimentación conmutadas (SMPS) son dispositivos electrónicos que convierten la corriente alterna (AC) en corriente continua (DC) de una forma eficiente y regulada. Son importantes porque permiten alimentar diferentes tipos de aparatos electrónicos, como ordenadores, televisores, cargadores, etc., con la tensión y la intensidad adecuadas. Además, al ser más pequeñas y ligeras que las fuentes de alimentación lineales, ocupan menos espacio y generan menos calor.
Las fuentes de alimentación conmutadas pueden fallar por varias razones, como el desgaste de los componentes, las sobretensiones, los cortocircuitos, el polvo o la humedad. Algunos síntomas de que una fuente de alimentación conmutada está fallando son: ruidos extraños, parpadeos o apagones en el dispositivo alimentado, calentamiento excesivo o humo. Si se detecta alguno de estos problemas, se recomienda desconectar la fuente de alimentación y llevarla a un servicio técnico especializado para su reparación o sustitución.
Si tienes algunos conocimientos de electrónica y te atreves con ello, en este artículo te daré algunas pautas para que intentes tú mismo reparar la fuente de alimentación.
Si quieres, puedes ver este video en el que reparo una fuente de alimentación conmutada de 400W y 65V. En él muestro muchas de las técnicas y consejos que recojo en este artículo.
Hacer estos videos lleva mucho trabajo. Si te gusta el video no te olvides de darle a «Me gusta» y suscribirte al canal. Eso me motivará a seguir haciendo más videos como este.
A continuación, te muestro el diagrama de bloques genérico y muy resumido de una fuente de alimentación conmutada y te doy una descripción básica de sus componentes principales y su funcionamiento.
Los componentes principales y su funcionamiento son los siguientes:
En la siguiente imagen puedes ver el diagrama de bloques, mucho más detallado, de una fuente Mean Well S-350, muy parecida a la que he reparado en el video, para que te puedas hacer a la idea de su complejidad.
Ten en cuenta que algunas fuentes son mucho más complejas, con tensiones de salida adicionales y más circuitos de estabilización, seguridad y control.
Te dejo también el esquema de la fuente Mean Well S-350, para que tengas todos los detalles.
CUIDADO: LAS FUENTES DE ALIMENTACIÓN CONMUTADAS PRESENTAN VOLTAJES MUY PELIGROSOS, Y POTENCIALMENTE MORTALES, INCLUSO CUANDO ESTÁN DESENCHUFADAS.
La manipulación de una fuente de alimentación conmutada (Switched Mode Power Supply, SMPS) presenta varios riesgos debido a la presencia de voltajes elevados y la complejidad de su diseño. Aquí hay algunas advertencias y recomendaciones de precaución al trabajar con SMPS:
Advertencias:
Recomendaciones de precaución:
Recuerda que la manipulación de fuentes de alimentación conmutadas puede ser peligrosa, y si no te sientes seguro o cómodo realizando este tipo de trabajos, es recomendable buscar la ayuda de un profesional capacitado. La seguridad siempre debe ser la prioridad máxima.
Un paso fundamental.
Examinar la apariencia física de los componentes es una parte importante de la evaluación inicial al trabajar en una fuente de alimentación conmutada (SMPS). Aquí hay algunas sugerencias específicas para examinar componentes clave:
La apariencia de los componentes puede proporcionar pistas sobre posibles problemas en la fuente de alimentación. Sin embargo, ten en cuenta que algunos problemas pueden no ser evidentes a simple vista y pueden requerir pruebas más avanzadas, como mediciones de resistencia, capacitancia y voltajes.
Es importante realizar estas inspecciones con precaución y asegurarse de que la fuente de alimentación esté desconectada de la red eléctrica y los condensadores descargados antes de tocar cualquier componente. Además, ten en cuenta las precauciones de seguridad mencionadas anteriormente y, si no estás seguro de cómo proceder, busca la asistencia de un profesional en electrónica.
No descargues los condensadores electrolíticos de alto voltaje cortocircuitándolos directamente, puede saltar un buen chispazo y puedes dañar el condensador. Si no tienes una herramienta para descargarlos, puedes hacerlo a través de una bombilla.
Cuando una fuente de alimentación conmutada (SMPS) no produce ninguna salida, pero el fusible está intacto, hay varias posibles causas para este comportamiento. Aquí te presento algunas posibles razones y cómo comprobarlas:
Cuando el fusible de una fuente de alimentación conmutada (SMPS) está abierto, indica que hay un cortocircuito o una sobrecarga en algún lugar del circuito. Aquí hay pasos y pistas para encontrar y reemplazar los componentes defectuosos:
Yo tengo este Variac (o transformador de salida variable). Es un aparato muy sencillo, pero cumple su función. La verdad es que lo utilizo muy poco realmente.
El voltímetro que trae es muy inexacto, pero, si has visto el video, habrás visto que lo tengo conectado a un medidor digital que me da todo tipo de información.
Yo dedicaría este dinero a comprar algún otro instrumento de medida, salvo que tengas un caso de uso muy claro.
Los síntomas de una fuente de alimentación conmutada (SMPS) que funciona de forma anormal pueden incluir arranques intermitentes, voltajes incorrectos, ruido excesivo o incluso la activación de protecciones. Aquí hay algunos síntomas comunes y cómo podrías diagnosticar los problemas:
La verificación de los condensadores electrolíticos es crucial al diagnosticar problemas en fuentes de alimentación conmutadas (SMPS). Los condensadores electrolíticos son componentes comunes y su fallo puede resultar en mal funcionamiento de la fuente de alimentación. Aquí se destaca la importancia de verificarlos y se explica cómo medir su capacidad, resistencia equivalente en serie (ESR) y elegir repuestos adecuados:
En el siguiente artículo del blog tienes una explicación sobre la ESR de los condensadores con todo lo que debes saber para la reparar una fuente de alimentación conmutada.
Sí, el uso de una bombilla en serie con la línea de alimentación es una práctica común y útil al diagnosticar y reparar fuentes de alimentación conmutadas o cualquier otro equipo electrónico. Esta técnica actúa como una carga limitadora y puede ayudar a prevenir daños adicionales en caso de problemas persistentes. Aquí hay algunas razones por las que se recomienda esta práctica:
Para implementar esta técnica, conecta una bombilla incandescente en serie con la línea de alimentación del aparato que estás reparando. La potencia de la bombilla (en vatios) determinará la corriente máxima que puede pasar. Una bombilla de 60 o 100 vatios es comúnmente utilizada. Si la bombilla se ilumina intensamente, indica un problema en el circuito.
Sin embargo, ten en cuenta que esta técnica no sustituye las prácticas de seguridad estándar. Asegúrate de que la bombilla y otros componentes estén correctamente conectados y que no haya riesgo de descargas eléctricas.
Comprobador ESR condensadores MESR-100
Comprobador de componentes TC1
Destornillador eléctrico Wowstick 1F Pro
Soporte de placas de circuito impreso (el de 30 cm)
Fuente de alimentación MLINK DPS3005
Carga electrónica ajustable 150W
Variac (transformador variable) TDGC2-1KVA
Osciloscopio Rigol DS1054 en Amazon España
Saber reparar fuentes de alimentación conmutadas proporciona una gran satisfacción porque son dispositivos que fallan mucho y son relativamente fáciles de arreglar. Si sabemos reparar fuentes de alimentación conmutadas podremos reparar muchísimos aparatos.
Son muchas las fuentes de alimentación conmutadas que he reparado y te puedo decir que, la mayoría de las veces, son reparaciones muy fáciles, y en muchas ocasiones se ve a simple vista qué es lo que sucede y ni siquiera hay que medir.
Los primeros culpables, sin duda, son los condensadores. Te diría que, si en todas las fuentes que he reparado, hubiera cambiado los condensadores, sin más, el 80% de ellas habrían salido funcionando sin hacer una sola comprobación o medición.
Reparar una fuente de alimentación conmutada (SMPS) implica un enfoque cuidadoso y metódico. Aquí están las ideas principales a tener en cuenta:
La reparación de una SMPS requiere paciencia, habilidades técnicas y atención a la seguridad. Siempre sigue las mejores prácticas y, si es necesario, busca la ayuda de profesionales capacitados.
Para terminar, te dejo este otro artículo sobre la reparación de una fuente de alimentación de 5V:
Me ha animado a escribir este post el hecho de que muchos me habéis preguntado por él directamente y también porque, tal y como hemos hablado en el grupo de Telegram, muchos habéis comprado otros osciloscopios USB, mucho más caros que este, y no estáis en absoluto contentos con ellos.
Si eres un lector habitual de este blog, ya estarás familiarizado con él, de alguna manera, porque la inmensa mayoría de capturas de osciloscopio del blog están hechas con este osciloscopio.
Yo creo que será más fácil explicártelo si te hablo de otros osciloscopios y de cómo y cuándo uso cada uno de ellos.
Tengo cuatro osciloscopios en mi laboratorio:
El que más utilizo, con mucha diferencia, es el Loto Instruments OSC482.
El primero de ellos es un osciloscopio genérico USBEE, de los que hay montones en sitios como AliExpress o Amazon.
Funciona con un software llamado USBee AX-Pro, como muchos de estos osciloscopios genéricos. Por suerte, de lo que hay para este tipo de osciloscopios, este software es uno de los mejores.
Yo creo que el software con el que lo suministran es pirata y, desde que lo compré, no lo han actualizado nunca.
El problema es que la capacidad del hardware es muy baja, con un ancho de banda muy bajo y una frecuencia de muestreo aún más baja y el software es bastante malo, aunque lo hay peores.
Por supuesto, el osciloscopio no tiene memoria, lo que hace que dependa enteramente del software y de su capacidad limitada para transferir datos a través del puerto USB.
Este osciloscopio tiene también analizador lógico, pero no me gusta su software, por lo que tengo otro, parecido, que utiliza el software Seale.
No lo recomiendo, aunque no pueda decir que no funcione, porque cuando era el único que tenía me hizo un buen servicio, pero eso fue hasta que tuve el Rigol DS1054Z, momento en el que no lo volví a usar más, y, sobre todo, el Loto Instruments OSC482.
El osciloscopio Rigol DS1054Z es un osciloscopio de gama media, de una marca reconocida por sus buenos instrumentos, con muy buena relación calidad-precio, que se ha convertido en casi el estándar en osciloscopios de sobremesa para los makers.
Es un buen osciloscopio, de alrededor de 400€, con cuatro canales y además de hackeable por software por lo que puedes subir su ancho de banda hasta los 100Mhz y activar la decodificación de muchos protocolos, acercándolo a capacidades de osciloscopios muchísimo más caros.
Es un muy buen aparato, pero aun así uso mucho más a menudo el Loto Instruments OSC482. ¿Por qué, si el Rigol DS1054Z es superior? Por lo siguiente:
¿Y cuándo sí utilizo el Rigol DS1054Z en lugar del Loto Instruments OSC482?
Sobre todo, cuando estoy trabajando con señales de video o con señales muy bajas, donde el ruido es importante porque puede enmascarar la señal (y eso que el Rigol DS1054Z no destaca, precisamente, por su bajo ruido).
Una limitación del Loto Instruments OSC482 es que no tiene Tigger por hardware, solo por software, por lo que capturar una señal compleja, como es una señal de video compuesto, en el momento preciso, y verla correctamente con el Loto Instruments OSC482 yo diría que es imposible.
También hay que decir del Loto Instruments OSC482 que es más ruidoso y sus errores de cuantificación del conversor analógico digital que utiliza provoca que no tenga una gran precisión. Eso sí, ¿tan a menudo medimos señales en las que necesitas una precisión por debajo de 50mV? Yo, la mayoría de las veces, no necesito más.
Tambien lo utilizo cuando quiero ver algo en tiempo real, sin ningún tipo de retardo.
Es casi un juguetillo, pero en ocasiones es justo la herramienta que necesitas y hace un muy buen servicio.
No se le pueden pedir grandes prestaciones, todo lo contrario, pero hay veces en que lo único que quieres ver es cómo algo, que no trabaja a una frecuencia excesiva, cambia de estado. En estas ocasiones es un campeón.
Otro caso de uso para este osciloscopio, es cuando quieres tener un instrumento completamente aislado: Es el único osciloscopio que tengo que funciona con baterías, lo que me asegura que no va a influir en la lectura o me va a dar un susto por una conexión a tierra a través del enchufe.
Es algo muy básico, pero lo tengo hace muchos años y le sigo dando uso de vez en cuando.
Por lo que cuesta, no se puede pedir más…
Un salto cualitativo muy importante, respecto al osciloscopio USB genérico, tanto en hardware como en software.
No te voy a hablar aquí mucho de él, porque para eso ya tenemos todo este post, aunque si te diré brevemente lo siguiente, para comparar los puntos que he nombrado del anterior:
Me gusta su software y tiene muchísimas funcionalidades. Es cierto que hay que habituarse a él, porque tiene algunas peculiaridades, pero te acostumbras enseguida.
Por cierto, el software se actualiza frecuentemente y le incluyen funciones nuevas interesantes muy a menudo.
Su ancho de banda es mucho mayor, 20Mhz, y su velocidad de muestreo también con 50M s/s.
Además, al tener un hardware mucho más potente y memoria en el propio dispositivo, sus posibilidades son mucho mayores y no le afectan tanto las limitaciones que pueda tener la capacidad de transmisión de datos del puerto USB, porque gran parte del trabajo la hace el osciloscopio y solo comunica al software «los resultados», por lo que no necesita transferir tantos datos.
Una cosa interesante y curiosa del osciloscopio USB Loto Instruments OSC482 es que el protocolo de su interface software está documentado y, según el fabricante (aunque yo no lo he encontrado), hay un SDK por si queremos escribir nuestro propio software para él o integrarlo con otros sistemas.
También su conector de expansión de 15 pines está documentado e incluso el fabricante explica como el usuario puede conectar sus propias sondas y accesorios.
He tenido (y tengo) varios osciloscopios USB y la verdad es que eran aparatos muy limitados y muy lejos de lo que es un osciloscopio de verdad. Pensaba que todos los osciloscopios USB eran así, pero mi experiencia y mi opinión ha cambiado completamente con este OSC482.
En vez de dejarte aquí una lista interminable de especificaciones y características técnicas, pienso que es mejor dejarte el manual completo del fabricante para que tengas a mano toda la información:
Existen muchos accesorios para los osciloscopios de Loto Instruments. A continuación, puedes ver los principales, indicando, además, con qué modelo se suministra cada accesorio de los que vienen incluidos:
En la siguiente lista puedes ver lo que hace cada uno de ellos:
A continuación, te dejo los accesorios que yo tengo, con un pequeño comentario de cada uno de ellos:
Este módulo es muy útil en muchas ocasiones (escribiré sobre qué es un módulo de aislamiento diferencia o «sonda diferencial» y cuando usarlo).
Lo uso muy poco por el siguiente motivo:
Metí la pata al comprarla y compré la que tiene un ancho de banda de solo 50Khz (la IDM01) en vez de comprar la que tiene un ancho de banda de 300 Khz (IDM03).
La IDM01 con sus 50Khz puede estar bien para algunas cosas, como temas de audio, pero yo la utilizo sobre todo en reparación de fuentes de alimentación conmutadas, y muchas de estas fuentes manejan frecuencias por encima de los 100Khz.
Tengo otra sonda más «profesional», la sonda diferencial Micsig DP10007, que es la que suelo utilizar. Con sus 100Mhz de ancho de banda y aislamiento de 700V (en modo X100) es justo lo que necesito.
Este generador de señal Loto S02 no lo recomiendo.
Tiene muy pocas opciones, solo genera ondas cuadradas, sinusoidales y triangulares, la amplitud de la señal generada es muy pequeña y la calidad de las señales no es de buena.
Y lo peor es que cada vez que tocas un parámetro todos los demás cambian.
Tengo un generador de funciones FeelTech FY3200-24Mhz de sobremesa que funciona muy bien, pero si no lo tuviera y solo tuviera este generador de señal de Loto, no creo que lo usara.
Para que te hagas a la idea, fíjate si es baja su utilidad, que yo no he conseguido general una señal tan básica para cualquier generador de señales como una señal PWM de 25Khz con una amplitud de 3.3V y un ciclo de trabajo del 50%.
A lo mejor por eso se refieren a él como «Generador de señal» y no «Generador de funciones«.
Una basura…
Es un buen complemento para trabajar con altas tensiones de hasta 2KV.
Tiene una atenuación de X100 (en vez de X1 y X10 de las sondas que vienen con el osciloscopio), lo que da un extra de capacidad de medida y seguridad.
Existen varias versiones del Loto Instruments OSC482, mi modelo exacto es el OSC482L (con analizador lógico de 4 canales incorporado).
A continuación, puedes ver las diferencias entre las versiones existentes (pincha la imagen si necesitas verla más grande):
Yo compré el osciloscopio en marzo del 2021 y me costó exactamente 50,36€
Desde entonces el precio ha subido, como todo lo que tenga que ver con electrónica, y cuesta del orden de 90€ pero sigue siendo una compra perfecta.
Osciloscopio USB Loto Instruments OSC482
El osciloscopio que utilizo en mi día a día
Para mí es el mejor en su rango de precios e incluso es mejor que muchos mucho más caros.
Que no te engañe su marca «desconocida» es mucho mejor y más barato que los omnipresentes osciloscopios USB Hantek, que puedes encontrar en Amazon.
Puedes encontrar pinchando aquí la página de AliExpress donde comprar el OSC482.
Hasta donde yo sé, es la tienda oficial de la marca y es completamente recomendable. Tiene un 100% de reseñas positivas (no hay muchas tiendas en AliExpress que lleven años y tengan un 100% de reseñas positivas).
Si queréis un osciloscopio USB que de verdad funcione, os lo recomiendo sin reparos.
Cuesta alrededor de 90 euros y podéis encontrarlo aquí: Osciloscopio USB Loto Instruments OSC482
El modelo concreto que yo he comprado es el OSC482L, que incluye analizador lógico de 4 canales.
Se ha convertido en uno de los instrumentos que más utilizo a diario. Me es superfácil comprobar lo que hace un microprocesador, si una alimentación es estable, si un sensor se está comunicando bien, y un sin fin de cosas más…
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