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25/04/05 - Moving
This now at atopian.org.

24/04/05 - Drugs
Channel 4 had a program on last night regarding various solutions to problem that politicians won't even suggest, such as abolishing jail, legalising all drugs, having enforced, but tradeable, limits on travel, and making hospital architecture better. Whilst some of them were dubious, it was certainly refreshing to see some non-mainstream stuff on TV (although, I suspect they interviewed George Monbiot but didn't include it).

Legalising drugs is certainly an interesting idea (and one that unlike other ideas on this blog, requires far more empirical research to draw any tight conclusions on); a policeman there was suggesting that drug habits cause something like 80% of burglaries, as well as many other crimes. This sort of thing makes clear how often crime isn't done because people are "evil", but because they have problems of their own. Legalising, but highly regulating drugs could cure many of these problems, and probably cost us far less in rehabilitation centres than we currently pay in police and crime every year. As the main political parties fight for who can be "toughest" on criminals, perhaps a little sympathy and help might be in order? And, of course, no-one stops to think that these problems such as rising crime might be due to a failing education system, families who are worked too hard to look after each other, a lack of community and so on.

Whilst I'm wary of those who claim that crime would magically stop if a better social system were in place, I do think that crime could certainly be drastically reduced by such measures. It even makes economic sense as well, for all those hard-headed capitalists out there.

24/04/05 - New site
Been looking into various ways I can implement my blog, and other things into a new site during the summer. Looks like drupal is the way to go. I'm hoping to provide a series of wiki-based pages as both reference and introductions to radical politics, a series of blogs from various authors, as well as an option to display posts from any blogs on a particular topic, the same for essays, debates, and finally a bit of hosting on the side for anyone who's interested. Hopefully this'll be on its way by the end of May.

Meanwhile, another interesting link, testing predjudices - here.

Oh, and on the news the other day I saw some interesting statistics on terrorism (which I should probably confirm from the government, but what the hell), along the lines of there have been 1000+ terrorism based arrests, a mere 74 convictions, and only 3 of those were Islamic. Anyone care for some fresh scapegoat?

23/04/05 - Random stuff
A number of links on a variety of topics:

This is so plainly close to the kind of thing that would have happened in ostensibly authoritarian regimes like Nazi Germany, that I'm amazed there's less of a fuss about it.

The British National Party seems to be selling merchandise to raise funds, including this little tasteful number. Surely, (the merits of nationalism itself aside) they could have kept the joke and made it "British" if they were a nationalist, rather than racist party?

For those interested in Iraq, here is an interesting story about how those 'democratically elected' leaders in Iraq are doing.

On possible future politics, and an idea I've been playing with, which is introducing political models like the open-source programming model. A series of individuals can contribute to the same goal. So, on that, see this report on how the open source model can be applied in other areas, and the demos page itself might well be worth a read.

Finally, on the nature of politics, see this from spinon for a fairly accurate, but simple explanation of British politics. For a more wordy exposition, see this from the excellent ukwatch.

21/04/05 - Media
Posting has been a bit more sporadic recently, and will continue to be so for the next month or so as deadlines and exams loom.

Still, todays subject, following my complaint about the BBC, below, is the media.

First, a link I've had for ages but only just got around to checking out is Medialens.org. Excellent stuff. Another page I'll make sure to look at in the mornings alongside the news, aquaplastics, the Progressive Anarchist Think Tank forums, ukwatch and a few others.

To avoid the mistake I believe Chomsky and other lefties make at times, I'm going to try to avoid /blaming/ anyone for the problems with the media. Chomsky and others often suggest that media leaders and others and morally wrong for acting as they do. Whilst this may be the case (culpability is an issue I can't even begin to touch on in this post), I don't believe its the best way to explain things, since it tends to encourage 'conspiracy theory' type criticisms.

Back when I was in school, I recall watching the big breakfast. This was around the time of the launch of the controversial millenium dome, and Johnny Vaugn was discussing this. Up he held a paper (I forget which one), in which was an article attacking the millenium dome on various counts. Within the same paper, on a nearby page, was also an advert for the dome. Johnny's astute comment was something along the lines of "If I were in charge of that advertising, I'd ask for a refund, wouldn't you?". Indeed advertisers would Johnny.

In fact, the papers are aware of this. Thats why they can't print anything that might offend their advertisers. As Chomsky puts it, papers aren't selling News to readers, they're selling readers to advertisers. Nor, of course, will papers print anything that might offend their owners. So, how often do you think newspapers will print articles critisizing capitalism, the rich, big-business or anything in the status quo that might even begin to threaten these institutions?

Now please be aware that I'm pointing to a trend here, not a flat law. There are of course some more left-wing opinion columnists and so on, but they're clearly drowned out both by the other more right-wing opinion columnists, and the fact that the choice of articles and news that papers print is strongly dictated by bowing down to big business. The Sun might run a long campaign against travellers, but they certainly wouldn't against the boss of Shell for climate damage.

There are other key ways in which media is biased, such as their choice in hiring staff (do you think Rupert Murdoch would hire someone as opposed to him in worldview as me?), and the fact that in attempting to give some neutral point of view all they can do is maintain the status quo. These, however, will have to be left for another time. I hope to add these considerations to the introduction soon, but I've not got around to it as yet.

So, use medialens, read blogs, use alternative, not-for-profit news sites. You'll find some links here.

19/04/05
Sign this. Definately a worthwhile cause, for absolutely everyone, not just those into alternative politics.

Anyone who likes numbers might want to have a glance at this, which is a Swiss page documenting the UK. I should probably check to see if we've got a similar page on our government pages.

I was also dissapointed to see the BBC publish this, and then shortly afterward remove links to it from all their other pages, as well as not publishing any comments on it (including one I made). Whether it was intentionally pulled for having too non-mainstream content, or whether it was pulled due to some standard process (such as few hits, and therefore little interest), I'm not sure.

Finally, just to touch on social ecology vs parEcon and thoughts I'm having on that, my main line of thought is something like the following: Social ecology rejects anything economical on a large scale, allowing it to subsume economic processes under local political ones. ParEcon, on the other hand, tries to keep the economic stuff by introducing councils for workers, consumers, /and/ political decisions.

I'm playing with the idea of a hybrid theory, which keeps politics and production local decisions, but consumption large scale. That means you can keep economies of scale (my community could just consist of one factory that supplies the entire continent), democracy (I have direct input in politics, production, and can order objects for consumption). The difficulty that arises with such a hybrid theory is twofold: Firstly, that you've got to somehow keep production in communities reasonably high, but without enforcing market conditions on inter-community trade. Secondly, you've got to make sure that your method of distribution of goods makes sense; that it provides things where they are needed. I'm working on both of these.

18/04/05 - Social Ecology and ParEcon
I've done a couple of posts recently that contain a lot to digest, so today's post will be short.

This is some horrifically biased reporting.

This is good.

I've been reading some of this recently, a debate between ParEcon and Libertarian-Municipalism / Social Ecology / Bioregionalism / Libertarian-Communism (I think they're all synonyms, although I could be wrong). I've got several thoughts on the whole debate, and reading their criticisms of each other has given me several thoughts on what each has right and what each has wrong, and a good starting point for thinking about how to incorporate the goods bits together. I'll try and write some kind of essay on it for this webpage if I get the time; I'll be sure to post a link in here when I do.

17/04/05 - Achievable Aims
One thing that seems to haunt the left is a slight lack of clear goals. We mostly think capitalism is bad, that the state is not functioning correctly (i.e. not under the people's control), have general cynicism of the media, and so on. And yet we don't say, "Capitalism needs to be replaced by this", whatever this may be. Now I'm not denying that alternatives are being thrown around in some quarters, but only that any have yet to be universaly (or at least majoritarily) accepted. This, I believe, means we should focus on some perhaps closer goals, which are achievable, and definately take us closer to where we want to be, no matter where we stand.

So, a mini manifesto, written for the UK, but I suspect much of it applies elsewhere:
The political system:
Introduce proportional representation. This will allow a more diverse range of opinions to feature in parliament, and will give those with views outside the mainstream at least some say in decision making, and some mainstream media coverage of real issues.
Introduce 'Street' Candidates and move power downward. An additional tier of political candidates (national, local, street) would increase personal invovlement and understanding of political issues, as would moving power downwards from the national level to the local, and from the local to the street.
Lower the limits for party spending on advertisements and donations. This will, again, allow less mainstream parties to have a fair chance in the political arena, and make politics slightly less about money.
Make tax and spending transparent. Limit the number of taxes the goverment can impose (to something like 3 I would suggest; income, business and anti-social goods), and requiring simple percentage run downs of spending each year

The economic system:
Limit advertising expenditure. This would encourage smaller businesses and increase the number of /genuinely productive/ jobs in the economy.
Enforce right to evict bosses. Provide all workers the right to call a vote on their immediate boss; with a consensus on evicting said boss, the company is required to hire a new one. If the evicted boss owns the company, then /all/ workers vote among themselves on a new owner. The benefits should be obvious; such as the greater responsiblity towards workers this gives bosses.

I suspect there will be two criticisms of these goals. Firstly, that they are reformist: they don't go far enough. Secondly, that they are not achievable: they go too far. In response to the former, I know that they don't solve all the problems we face, but they are exceptionally beneficial in their own right, and would open up many larger possibilities down the line. In response to the latter, I would certainly disagree on some counts, such as proportional representatio (already present on the continent as well as advocated by some mainstream political parties), and I think others may come as soon as some start coming; increased democracy would increase our say in economic decisions, for example.

You'll notice that I don't mention our incompetant media or suggested reforms for them in there. And why not? Because I believe that is one of the goals the left is pursuing very successfully already. The growth in blogs and independent media is huge, and we should not fool ourselves in saying that this is not important: its huge. We are at a stage like the early days of the printing press, where a variety of opinions are published, and it is left to the intelligent reader to work out what to take on board and what is rubbish. We are not there yet; these media aren't quite mainstream, but we're getting there.

One out of three ain't bad.

16/04/05 - Political spheres and concepts
Before I move onto the heavy stuff, I'll mention this article on the supposed "terrorist" we had in Britain, as much to highlight the fallibility of the mass media as the actual content of that case. Secondly, this is an interesting take on climate change and how to stop it!

I've been making my way through this, which is a series of short-ish articles from Michael Albert, discussing political theory in general, and in fairly abstract terms, his own take on things. He points out that political theory largely involves picking out as powerful a set of concepts as you can and working out how they interact.

On what major concepts am I working? At the highest level, morality, where that is conceived broadly as something like "What should we be doing?" (or, what does "better" mean in the sentence "I'm trying to make the world a better place"?). Under that comes several tiers of Goods, at the highest level, a mere four goods (happiness, freedom, rationality and desire-satisfaction). At the next level we have eight goods (equality, welfare, education, freedom, life essentials, community, personal relationships and tolerance) derivable from the highest tier. Then, under these comes a third-tier of goods (which I haven't specified, since the task would be huge and largely pointless except as an index).

And how am I working from these main concepts? My main thread is how best to increase those good things, although this main thread comes in many guises, from critisizing capitalism, to advocating environmental concerns, to critisizing "human rights" as a concrete method of measuring morality. This leads me to the, perhaps somewhat hidden, other main concept I work with. This other main belief, the core of anarchism, is that people can increase these goods for themselves better than they can for others. People know best where their own concerns are and how to solve those concerns. That means that we should aim to have a social system that empowers as many people as possible, as much as possible. That, I believe, is the fundamental point of democracy. This why I believe democracy is the most important thing to aim for: all by itself it can make the world better since it best accomodates decisions that themselves make the world better.

That is anarchism: the belief that the people should rule themselves, not only because of the inherant value (freedom) of empowering people, but also because it entails numerable other benefits.

Does my prioritisation of democracy escape Albert's criticism of taking a single concept as fundamental? I believe it does; democracy is /the/ pre-requisite for any political aim, and in this sense, is fundamental to the pursuit of a better society. As way of an example, feminism is a good aim, but it can more easily be achieved through pursuing democracy first and then advocating feminism, rather than vice-versa. Aiming for something other than democracy first is like being stuck out at sea and reaching for the shore rather than the paddle next to you.

I think that flow of thought may need illustration, so consider the following analogous conversation:
A: What kind of art do you like?

(What kind of society shall we head toward?)

B: Good art.

(A morally good society)

A: But what art is good?

(What is good?)

B: Art that is pleasing to the eye, makes me feel good etc.

([my tiers of goods])

A: And what sort of art best fills that role?

(How can we best promote those values?)

B: The Impressionist School

(Democracy)

A: Which art gallery has good impressionist works?

(How do we best implement democracy?)

B: Umm...

('Umm...' indeed.)

I know that was a long post, but I think it's important.

15/04/05 - How are we doing?
I said I'd do something in depth.

One concern that drew me further into the political domain is that the planet is actually getting worse, rather than better. A definite concern for anyone engaging in politics, I'm sure you'll agree. The question is clearly important: if things are improving, then motivation to worry and step up to the political platform is small. If things are getting worse, however, a real feeling of powerlessness and despair can set in.

A potential worry is that we are heading towards some 1984/Brave New World hybrid; a world where a leading elite keeps the masses as virtual slaves, contrary to the opinion of those masses themselves. It is perhaps clear that such a scenario does not require the rather crude methods of thought control advocated in those novels, but can instead consist in a more subtle massaging of public awareness. Now I'm certainly not suggesting that such a state of affairs is already upon us; merely that its possible that this is a direction we're heading in.

How would someone support such a melodramatic picture? Some key justifications might be the worryingly increasingly popular social meme of a raging war of good vs evil (1984 has insightful, yet seldom mentioned remarks on the domestic control a hypothetical war provides), the lack of a popular dominant left-wing ideology, increasing political apathy, the increasing omnipresence of businesses whose jobs is to change opinions in prescribed directions, the growing gap between the poor and rich and the increasingly authoritarian policies of Western goverments.

And yet, a moments consideration shows how ridiculous the picture I just painted is. The "war on terror" is no recent development; the Cold War fulfilled the exact same role. The lack of a dominant left-wing opinion means that the left is itself adhering to anarchist ideals of independent thought and a diversity of opinions along a broad spectrum. Political apathy is a myth; the Iraq war provided the largest protests in history; disengagement is solely from party politics, and is heightening elsewhere. Corporate advertising is an evil, certainly, but the increased need for PR might perhaps be due to an increased need to control a restless public; similarly, right-wing goverments are exposing their weaknesses rather than exacerbating their evils. The more extreme these failures get, the more sceptical and opposed people are becoming to them. The growing gap between rich and poor yet again simply provides incentives for us to fight harder, and makes the failures of the modern world all too clear.

Put simply, that which does not kill us, makes us stronger, and as they fight harder, our aims and targets become clearer.

The political values that need to be adhered to are clear; equality, community, democracy, freedom. The specifics of how to animate these may be unclear, but our goal is coming closer, and we will reach it.

15/04/05 - 1984, tax, and climate wars
1984 is on radio2. Good stuff. Anyone who hasn't already read it, I suggest you listen in (or find yourself an audio copy on the web somewhere (after you obtain permission from the copyright holders, obviously)).

There's also yet another load of right-wingery here. The arguments regarding the sheer simplicity and transparency of a flat tax system are arguments I have some sympathy with, but the article doesn't even mention the idea that its possible to have a simple and transparent sliding scale tax system. You could easily, for example, tax at a percentage equal to half their income, in percent. So, earning �100k/yr, you'd pay 50% tax, at �50k/yr, 25%, �10k/yr, 5%, and so on (and cap the top tax boundary at 50%, otherwise your earnings would begin to go down as you made more! - this is because I've set tax rate as one flat level, rather than a true sliding scale, where its 5% on your first 10k, 10% on the next 20k and so on). Of course, thats only an example, but the principle is sound; you can easily set tax at a sliding level corresponding to earnings. Tax and spending transparency is yet something else that I think is very desirable, and is perhaps possible within mainstream politics.

Finally, yet another depressing article that I missed at the time, here. Is it just me who finds it a scary possibility that in response to warnings of rioting and nuclear war due to climate change, the Pentagon is perhaps pursuing /winning/ that war, rather than preventing it?

I promise I'll post something more in depth and focused sometime soon.

14/04/05 - Fascism, liberalism, moral responsibility
This morning has been rather depressing on the news front, for two reasons.

Firstly, as veritas release their manifesto, Mr Kilroy Silk has attacked "Liberal fascism". Christ. "The idea that everybody should respect each others' cultures [is] 'nonsense'" apparently (here). However, he does also make a further, vaguely sensible point, that "not all cultures were equal - some [a]re 'reprehensible'.". He does highlight this pervading viewpoint that people's beliefs are somehow beyond criticism; patently false. Being "liberal" doesn't mean accepting any way of life unquestioningly, (because that would be ridiculous: what if its my culture to eat my firstborn?). However, Kilroy's suggested alternative, to accept only the British way of life, unquestioningly, is even worse. As I've said before, the key is actually thinking, and looking which cultures have which things right and wrong. In terms currently popular, I'm suggesting that multi-culturalism (live and let live, no questions asked) is silly and irrational. I'm also suggesting that fascism (pick your traditional culture, and stick with it) is even worse. And the best alternative? Polyculturalism - appeal to independent standards of reason to judge the merits of various beliefs and belief systems. It should also be noted that I'm purely discussing culture (including religion) here, whereas I suspect Kilroy would extent his remarks to race and nationality if he thought he could get away with it.

There's a further problem of what extent to tolerate alternative cultures which you think are patently immoral. I might disagree with capitalism, but if I were in power, would I have a moral responsibility to stamp it out, like I might do with infanticide? These questions are tough, and I would have thought depend on identifying where the debates lie and the chances of my own opinion being wrong (A presumable good indicator of this might be popular support for various positions).

The other piece of depressing reading, was this, which argues that Americans are getting even less tolerant of taxation and actually looking after one another. As I've stressed before, I think that this is a direct result of viewing morality as solely a duty not to actively harm people rather than actively do good; which might instead involve a duty to pay taxes and help the poor. Of course, another obvious problem is the fact that we're clearly not all born equal; enforcing a higher rate of tax in order to give everyone a fair start in the rat race through higher education standards seems mandatory, even under their minimalist conception of morality.

13/04/05 - A Classy rant
Well, since I'm meant to be working, I've tidied the house, done the dishes, read thousands of pointless websites, been on a Chomsky film hunt, and more; I guess its now time to avoid work some more by posting here.

Opening up a huge (red) can of lefty worms, todays topic is class.

I'm generally not a big fan of class rhetoric. Don't get me wrong; I'm certainly in favour of better conditions for the people who are generally referred to as the lower classes, and think a lot of the "upper classes" have it too easy. But, and this is key, I don't think "ownership of means of production" is as neat a distinction today as it was in the past.

I believe it was Richard Dawkins who suggested that people have an "intolerance of ambiguity"; suggesting that we all too readily try to throw stuff into categories when they really sit on a continuum. A nice example is race; there are no defining lines to be drawn when we categorise skin colour, and yet people still continually think that there is a clear difference between people who are black, white, yellow, or whatever.

Similarly, I think we're much better off looking at how to improve the lot of the worse-off portions of society, than improving the lot of the "working class". There is no such homogenous lot. Sure, some people are worse off than others, and we need to work hard to get the standard of living (amongst many, many, other things) of those higher. But society is not split into tiers.

Ownership of means of production was a valid (although still rule-of-thumb) method of differentiating the poor off from the well off in Marxian times. Now, things have changed. I own means of production; my computer. Thats all companies like microsoft have. Conversely, some people don't necessarily own means of production but clearly are ridiculously well off compared to the rest of us (e.g. David Beckham).

Thats obviously short for a subject thats pre-occupied the left for over 100 years, but my point is simple: the poor are poor off for a number of reasons, ranging from access to education, to wealth, to job opportunities, to discrimination, to a lack of representation in the political arena. These all need addressing, and more. Assuming that there's some clear dividing line that needs removing is a gross over-simplification.

Of course, thats not to deny that ownership of MOP has some effect in some places; its another factor among many (I do, however, suspect that "employment guarantee" might be a better measure of workplace empowerment).

Worker controlled workplaces should be one goal among many for the left, and "class war" discussion just oversimplifies many issues that clearly expand far beyond any classification of class the left gives. I also still heavily suspect that merely passing control over to the workers, rather than the community as a whole, is inadequate, but thats a topic for another time.

12/04/05 - Democratic Audit
Democratic Audit is a research group attached to the University of Essex. They just released an audit on the state of Democracy in Britain. And, I'm personally exceptionally pleased (well, also displeased, if you understand what I mean) to note, they echo many thoughts I've had and put in here. Now just to see if they actually get anything done about it. See the report here.

I would urge you to read it all, and I should also point out that their site might be an interesting read for some election analysis.

There were some positive points in there, which I'll let you find for yourself: I'm afraid that this blog is focusing on making things better, not clapping ourselves on the back; and that means some selective use of attention.

Some highlights:
"Large sections of the population have felt unrepresented"
"the period has witnessed some of the largest mass protests in British history - a sign of the vigour of civil society."
"Policy disasters.. ..are the product of the virtually unlimited powers which an unrepresentative electoral and parliamentary system delivers"
"'electoral democracy' degenerates all too readily into elective dictatorship"
"Poverty and inequality run deeper in the UK than in any comparable EU nation"
"Parliamentary elections are grossly disproportionate"
"The second chamber is an entirely unelected body"
"the parties are run by small oligarchies that observe quasi-democratic practices"
"Recent governments have centralised power"
"responsibility to Parliament is a fiction"
"avoidance of political embarrassment.. ..will remain a strong element inhibiting full disclosure [of information]"
"Concern has increased.. ..about the degree of business influence over government"
"Most people in the UK believe they have no influence over government policy between elections"
"sections of the electorate across the political spectrum have felt not just ignored but actively snubbed by the government on issues that they regard as vital"
"Local government is too remote from local communities and too much under tight central control."

"Overall, Britain compares very badly on both regional, and local government with similar European states."

Reports like this, performed by an independent body, re-iterate several points that I've made previously. Mostly, just how far we have to go. The economy, health-service, education, law, crime and all of the other roles of government are not functioning correctly if they are not under the control of the people, no matter how productively they are running.

I urge you to point the above report out to those people who feel that voting is our sole social responsibility in life. Voting is currently not the tool politicians pretend it is.

12/04/05 - As easy as A, B, C?
Interesting. Good to see what matters to people today.

12/04/05 - Underhand Politics
Cybersquatting looks pretty fun. It seems that Labour have hired a man from America who previously got in no trouble (and rightly so, see below) at all for buying up gwbush.com and displaying doctored pictures of Bush snorting cocaine and drinking bourbon. A tactic that many of us have seen on the net for a while now; doctoring photos to make a point (do you lack faith in the pope?). At any rate, this is a fairly interesting tactic by Labour, and I'll be intrigued to see what they put him to; laws are stricter on party campaigning than they are on the public regarding censorship. Labour have apparently bought a series of Michael Howard related domain-names, and to add to the confusion, the Lib-Dem's have bought a plaid-cymru one.

Hmm. It looks as though britishpolitics.co.uk is free; maybe I should buy and spam it with images of proportions of votes in comparison to proportions of power, ridiculous misrepresentation of issues, immense undemocratic power concentrations and a political system incapable of making issues understandable or interesting to voters (or rather, that is capable of making voting a matter of trivialising issues).

On the other hand, maybe I should keep thinking on how to build a better alternative.

12/04/05 - Censorship
Andrea Dworkin has died. She was, as the BBC point out, a crusader against pornography, suggesting that it leads to rape, degrades women, and is a breach of women's rights. (In contrast, others suggest that it is a good force for women's rights, but I digress).

The merits of her argument aside, I'm afraid I still don't think censoring porn, or (more importantly, some might say) anything else is a good idea. You may have the best of intentions, and even some sound arguments (which she may well have done; they are at least certainly not worth throwing out on a cursory glance), but censorship is still a bad idea.

Why? Because it raises the question of who does the censoring. As I say, I'm sure many genuine attempts to censor things were done with very good motives and very sound argument, but unfortunately at some point you've got to implement this stuff into policy. At that point, you've got to either specify some guidelines as to what falls which side of the line of censorship, or trust some group of people to do it themselves. The former leaves a lot open to interpretation, and the latter is even worse. In Canada, 1992, the courts outlawed material that was "obscene"; and the definition of this took into account much of the feminist discussion and critique of pornography. And what happened? Both Dworkin herself, as well as other feminists, such as MacKinnon, have had their work seized at the Canadian border, and many other non-pornographic works have been seized (with a particular emphasis on anything pertaining to homosexuality - which presumably is more likely to offend the border staff). Not Dworkin's intentions, nor the courts intentions I'm sure, but this highlights well why banning certain forms of speech outright is bad idea. Language unfortunately doesn't carve up into "good" and "bad" as neatly as we'd like.

Several feminists (and others) are now looking at freedom of speech, and suggesting that speech is an act (e.g. running into a crowded theatre and shouting "Fire!"), and therefore the dichotomy we draw between speech and acts, and some acts being bannable whilst no speech is, is a poor set of distinctions to make. I suspect that they are wrong in claiming this, but the arguments do need careful examination. If they are right, I think freedom of speech will enter a quagmire of moral argument.

Anyone interested either in arguments surrounding pornography (and censorship), or feminism in general, I'd highly reccomend "Feminism; Issues and Arguments", by Jennifer Saul. There's probably also a tonne of material around the web, although I'm not sure how far you'll get searching for "Pornography arguments" on google!

11/04/05 - Random Comments
Yes, I know I said I wouldn't post again today, but its nearly tommorow, and I promise there's nothing too deep here.

Firstly, I wanted to point out the uber cool forests-forever.com. Very swish.

Secondly, there's an article over at the BBC here, about Tesco being too big for anyone to compete. At least the messages that capitalism isn't necessarily the best thing ever are creeping through these days, including the recent Rover factory semi-crisis. (So much for Labour's ethos of non-interference). The article has a fairly amusing complaint that "tesco aren't trading fair and square" because they lowered their prices temporarily in one area to put someone out of business. Not great I know, but again, this isn't some minor exception in the capitalist system: its exactly the kind of tactic businesses use. Thats how the system works, and it has no ethos of fairness built into it.

11/04/05 - Site
Yet another site revamp, and I think that'll be the last for the near future. It looks reasonably tidy now, and its also actually mine so I get to get rid of the ads down the bottom (which probably weren't that apparent on this page, but they were elsewhere). Now all I need to do is buy a domain and some space (after my exams I think), write some more content for the site, and I'll put it up properly.

I think I've been a bit heavy in posts on here recently, so thats all you get today.

10/04/05 - Ethics
After seeing Rich discuss his ethics (and mine in passing) here, an amusing read from UKwatch here on Ted Honderich, a post from Aarons blog here (thats actually a link to a forum its been replicated on, in case you're interested in reading some discussion on it), and since ethics is one of my favorite subjects, I think its time I put something positive down about ethics and what this whole "making the world better" thing involves.

If there's one thing I've come to realise personally over the last year or so, its that whats true isn't necessarily the best way to think about things. To take an obvious example, you might agree with the physicists that the universe is make of quarks, but that doesn't mean we should start talking about trees, schools, the weather and life in terms of quarks rather than more complex terms. Similarly, in ethics, there is some divergence in how I think we should best approach dilemmas to what we're actually doing when we're doing ethics

Put simply, in truth, I think, ethically speaking, what we're trying to do is maximise (in total) the following four things:
i) The amount of happiness (i.e. people actually feeling happiness)
ii) The amount of people's desires that are satisfied (i.e. people getting what they want
iii) The level of rationality (broadly speaking) people have (making people more intelligent and informed)
iv) The amount of personal freedom people have (freedom from interference)

(There's a possible fifth I've yet to decide on: fulfillment of human potential, but I digress).

Now I think these are correct, not only because they seem to get the right answers (if you think about it long enough), but also for independent reasons I won't go into here.

However, I think they're a rather abstract lot to work out what we should actually be doing from. So, again, for reasons I won't go into here, I suspect the following 8 item list is what we should actually think about:
a) Equality
b) Human welfare
c) Human freedom (both freedom to and freedom from)
d) Education (broadly)
e) Material Basics (food, shelter etc.)
f) A sense of community (not necessarily geographical)
g) Personal relationships
h) Humility and tolerance

I occasionally change my mind on these, so I know this is probably different from the 7 Rich quotes me for. You'll also want to point out that there's redundancy in there (material basics surely are only good because they contribute to welfare for example), but thats my point as to why these aren't the "real" values; they're just a neat set for working things out. I should also emphasize (h), as consequentialists are often critisized for commiting huge atrocities to try and make good consequences. In my book, the reason that this is terrible is simply because of the sheer arrogance of trying to orchestrate humanity in this way; it simply does not work, for so many reasons, not least because the people doing it are generally not as clever about whats good and how to get there as they think.

Now, you might wish to take these secondary goods into a further level of tertiary goods, and make them into "human rights" or something similar (this is kind of what Rich suggests); I however suspect that subsets of each of those with more concrete values would be better, in order to keep the emphasis on the group and not the individual. For example, equality could be split into gender equality (feminism), race equality, financial equality, equality of opportunity, and so on. In fact, you could even take these third tier goods, and take them into even more concrete goods (a fourth tier), so feminism could be split into equality in the workplace, equality in the home, and so on.

There's a few other minor things I could point out against the articles I mentioned at the beginning, but as Rich at one point suggests, much of it is of little consequence (!) when it comes to actually applying this stuff. On the other side of the coin however, almost 100% of the stuff in this blog relates to these goods, so I'm sure I'll refer to them from time to time. Two more directly related topics, and of particular interest to me, are the links between these goods and anarchism, and property rights.

09/04/05 - More right-wingery
Looks like I'll stick with the original of my attempt to recreate the libertarian's arguments, since I've had no real revelations since, and it looks like a reasonable representation of their self-interested world of omnipresent free trade. As always, the argument here might seem a little abstract, but I hope that they can help lead to solutions to the underlying problems that we face, as well as providing clear rebuttals to often made criticisms of the left (and their critiques of the right).

I'll repaste it below, but with numbers in square brackets inserted after key parts. Underneath that, you'll find a key with a title of the general problem I think we need to address with their argument there. Then, in theory, over some period of time I'll try and visit each of these criticisms in detail.

"Everyone is born[1] with a number of human rights[2], including rights to property. They, being free[3] agents, can then trade any of these rights (but more often property rights) freely[4] with one another. This alone assures that the world that we live in is just[5]. However, we are also fortunate[6], for these conditions improve the situation for everyone. People, being rational[7] and self-interested[8], will enter, most of the time, contracts that benefit themselves. Since both parties will adhere to this, contracts will be mutually beneficial[9]. There may be some inequality[10] under such a system, but it is for the greater good[11]: it motivates us all to do better, and due to the above considerations, this benefits us all."

[1] Are we all born equal?
[2] Various "rights" criticisms
[3] Only negative, not positive freedom
[4] Location/Information constraints on contracts
[5] More demanding moral system?
[6] Why not introduce a system that does this intentionally and consciously?
[7] Incorrect reasoning and misinformation
[8] Aren't we (at least to some extent) altruistic?
[9] Externalities
[10] Inequality understated, and getting worse
[11] Keep motivation without sacrificing equality possible?

Should anyone of a libertarian-leaning stance find fault with how I've presented you here, please e-mail me and I'll do my best to adapt my statement.

09/04/05 - Environment
A topic I've yet to cover in here at all is the environment. I'm not going to point out root causes or anything right now, I'll save that until I dissect the paragraph of Right-wingery I wrote (and have yet to ammend) below.

Instead, I'm going to make a brief comment on this at the BBC, and below, this at treehugger.

The BBC article is regarding several states and groups in the US trying to take legal action against the environment agency over there, in order to persuade them to take action over carbon emmissions. Excellent stuff. To what extent the environment agency could (even if these groups do manage to pressure it enough that the government listens to them rather than big business (unlikely?)) manage to curb emmissions is unforunately, hard to determine. I suspect however, that it will find it fairly difficult (and this will cost a lot too: I wonder how many Americans will favour this court case once their taxes rise and companies start exporting all of their jobs to China?). Managing a system where every single company (and individual?) in the US has to pay extra tax at a rate corresponding to the amount of emmissions they have would be phenomenal. It'd basically require the tax related civil-service sector to double in size. Thats no mean feat (although perhaps would counteract the problems with a lack of jobs by creating them?). I think that this again reiterates the need for a social system that itself manages to pay sufficient attention to the environment rather than slapping a huge government construct on top of capitalism to try and do the same job.

The treehugger comment is about a CEO of some energy company also calling for carbon-emmissions tax. I've not sure how big his company, "Duke Energy", is, but I suspect its small. That means by forcing carbon taxes on larger companies he'll be sure to benefit, especially if his company already has the structure in place to provide low-carbon services. Its easy to be sceptical here, of his motivations, but I think we should perhaps at least be grateful for the fact that market forces are counter-acting both monopolies and pollution in this way. Of course, that doesn't mean we should stop fighting! As I say above, market forces are not adequate to deal with the environment sufficiently, but something is better than nothing.

I'll deal with "externalities" and the environment sometime soon.

08/04/05 - Tactical Voting
Some reassuring support for my earlier assertion that voting Lib-Dem is safe can be found here. Nick writes:
"if the swing is purely Labour to Lib Dem, there's no way for the Tories to get a majority. The most seats they get is 233 with swings of 15.5% and 16.5% - beyond that, as the Lib Dem share of the vote heads towards and past 40%, their seats drop along with Labour's"
(Although I think he's a fairly big lib-dem supporter by the looks of his site, but I'll let you judge his presentation of the facts for yourself.)

This at BBC news is also worth a look on the subject of tactical voting.

08/04/05 - Zero-Sum-Games
Gah. I was hoping to avoid any talk that was too jargonish.

With my poor knowledge of game theory type stuff, as far as I understand it, a zero-sum-game is one where no matter who wins, the group as a whole doesn't benefit. In other words, if we have a pie, and are deciding how to divide it up, it doesn't matter how we divide it; we still end up with the same amount of pie in total. In contrast, (I'm using my own terminology here out of laziness to look up the correct stuff, so I apologise) you can have positive-sum-games, and negative-sum-games. An example of a positive-sum-game is division of labour. If you're good at cooking apples and I'm good at picking apples, how we divide the labour in our baked apple factory can increase the total amount of good cooked apples.

Big Digression:
For completions sake, some other distinctions you might want to think about:
-Negative-sum-games are of course the reverse of positive-sum-games (all three of course really sit on one continuum, so really negative-sum-games are just very low positive-sum ones, but I digress); an example being dividing portions of poison out between us. The more we play, the worse the consequences get (assuming that the poison's effects don't diminish with lower dosages).
-A possible final category would be variable-sum-games, which could come in two varieties. One would be where whether the outcome is positive or negative is a case of luck (a fair and non-profit lottery might serve to move wealth from rich to poor (negative) or from the poor to the rich (positive), or neither (zero)). The second would be where the outcome depended on further information; so different sub-categories of that game fitted into different categories. "Trade" might be an example of this; trade in an equal system is positive, in a society with lots of inequality, negative; because the in an uneqal system the rich can screw over the poor, whereas in an equal system trade is mutually beneficial. Thats a crude example, but you get the idea.
-We could further divide each of these into "strong" and "weak", depending on whether the game will definately cause that outcome (strong), or probably cause that outcome (weak). However, I suspect most games will end up being weak, so we can leave this aside.
End of digression bit.

You with me? "Positive", good; "zero", pointless.

The point of all this? Well, any societal system we have, we want it to basically involve as many positive-sum-games as possible, and as few negative-sum-games as possible. Zero-sum-games, whilst not directly bad, take up time, and possibly resources, and so are worse than positive-sum-games. I guess, in rather more sensible language, we're talking about whether a system makes things better, worse, or the same.

Capitalism is meant to be filled with positive-sum-games; "exchanges would not be entered if they were not mutually beneficial!" they shout. An infinity of other objections aside (this is almost what the whole "theory" quest is about!), one thing to notice is the vast quantity of zero-sum-games in capitalism.

To give three examples (all of which are highly contentious, but I suspect my fundamental point is correct):
-Advertising companies compete for market-share; often this is about taking a larger share of the same pie, rather than making the pie larger
-The stock exchange is about who manages to get their gambles to pay off. The vast quantities of money involved mean that a large amount of resources and time are pumped into this by companies trying to get a good share; but the pie size, as ever, remains the same.
-Product prices going down; simply means that other companies also cut prices, and wages decrease to compensate. The first company to make the move benefits at the others' expense, briefly, before an equilibrium returns. Again, its competition over who gets the pie, not how much there is.

If you think these points are minor, you'd be mistaken. I will dig out some figures sometime, but especially advertising and the stock market involve some of the most important resources (i.e. clever people!) that this country has, and to no net benefit.

The figures are huge, but the value is nothing.

07/04/05 - Good anarchist website
I just came across this. It seems very good, well written and decently argued. Its also fairly open-ended, so he/she gives a fair summary of various schools of thought on different issues. I particuarly reccomend basic principles of anarchy and ideological hegemony. The main reason for not reccomending anything else on the page is because I've yet to work my way through it all, but judging by those it looks very good.

I also realised that Shawn, responsible for the progressive anarchist think tank, is now also spearheading this, an alternative to the infoshop / blackened flag, due to a recent "disagreement" over their running practices.

Shawn's new site looks neat, and is inspiring me to actually try and get my site both onto a decent server (I might in fact ask Shawn if he'll host me at phub.org), and to get this blog onto something like wordpress so I can get an RSS or Atom feed from it to something like anarchoblogs.

This is also worth a look at.

07/04/05 - Income under capitalism
One thing thats been floating around my head recently is how people get paid under a capitalist system. Essentially, you personally get paid, and then the state takes some of that off of you in tax. The problem is, people have a natural aversion to giving their money away in tax. Of course, in reality, it should never have been declared theirs in the first place. Income isn't some metaphysical thing where you get what you deserve; its wholly dependent on the system that you find yourself in at the time. Unfortunately, the current way of doing things makes everyone feel like they're being shafted out of their hard-earned wages.

A decent replacement then, needs to have an income system far more closely related to benefit of others, as well as yourself. That could serve to begin to curb the self-interesteness that capitalism embraces and promotes, as well as allow for far better community organisation. If we begin we the assumption that people work entirely for themselves, and then have some of that taken away from them, of course we end up with a system where being selfish is a virtue, and therefore taxation and community are feared. On the other hand, if we begin with the assumption that when you work, you work for the community, but are granted some of the rewards, by the community's good grace, then building a sense of community and encouraging more social goods becomes a far more easily obtainable goal.

Michael Albert's ParEcon suggests people should be paid by co-worker assessment on the effort, time, and sacrifice (e.g. health risks) they put in whilst working. In the context of what I've written above, this system is an improvement on capitalism, but not a complete solution. Pay by his measures is clearly fairer, and could even lead to an increase in production if it were done well. However, it still retains this presumption that you work for yourself, and not for others, and perhaps that is one concession to the capitalist that we should not allow. How, of course, such measures could be implemented but not in a top-down (essentially communist) way remains to be seen.

06/04/05 - Chomsky on post-modernism
Here. Its an interesting read to anyone (like myself) who's never really understood what the big deal over post-modernism is. At least I'm not alone in having a dilemma between assuming I'm missing the point entirely or thinking its just plain rubbish. I should also stress that Chomsky in the article uses the words "theory" and "philosophy" to refer to continental philosophy, a wholly distinct body of theory and philosophy from the analytic philsophy and theory that people such as myself attempt to engage with. (For anyone who thinks I'm just trying to excuse myself from the kicking he's giving philosophy, you'll notice he refers to the Paris intellectuals, and that a thourough disdain for theory would make his friendship with Michael Albert confusing to say the least. There's also a cryptic comment at the start of that which I think is expressing respect for Rawls (an analytic philosopher), although I have to confess I don't quite understand the sentence.)

Although, while I'm discussing Chomsky, I should point out that I often find he tends to just engage with the facts, and not the reasons behind them, or solutions to the problems beyond solutions within the current political framework. Authors such as Dickens were critisized for writing novels which supposedly attempted to deal with the problems of the time, and yet generally concluded with something like "be nice to each other". A heartfelt statement maybe, but hardly a hard hitting, movement building, earth shattering attempt to say how we can actually improve the world. As I've written before, changing individuals is of course good, and worth pursuing, but we should also pursue social systems that tackle some of these problems by themselves. You don't do that without some serious sitting back and analysis of whats going on.

06/04/05 - Right-wing Neo-Liberalism
Or right-wing anarchism, or whatever you want to call it really. I'm trying to put together something around a paragraph in size that sums up their position in as favourable terms as possible (even better if I can find them summing up their own position around the web somewhere). Then, in this blog, I'll hopefully, over some period of time, do a kind of summary disection, pointing out the main places where their argument falls apart.

So, how far have I got so far? Its difficult, but I think the following is an ok start. Hopefuly I'll think on it and produce a refined version to then tear apart within a week or so.

"Everyone is born with a number of human rights, including rights to property. They, being free agents, can then trade any of these rights (but more often property rights) freely with one another. This alone assures that the world that we live in is just. However, we are also fortunate, for these conditions improve the situation for everyone. People, being rational and self-interested, will enter, most of the time, contracts that benefit themselves. Since both parties will adhere to this, contracts will be mutually beneficial. There may be some inequality under such a system, but it is for the greater good: it motivates us all to do better, and due to the above considerations, this benefits us all."

Of course, if there is one thing it's easy to forget, it's that they are actually right at times. In some respects the capitalist system has brought a lot of benefit. So I think one thing left wingers need to bear in mind that protesting against capitalism isn't simply a protest against capitalism. Its a protest which says that capitalism may be better than feudalism, despotism, communism etc., but its not as good as this. Of course, working out what "this" is is the real task ahead of us. I just hope that we find an decent alternative before some make-do one is forced upon us, due to an event such as either an oil crisis, or a climate crisis (or rather, what that could lead to). These problems may be a way off, or they may be soon. Maybe others issues will become far more relevant. At any rate, the global system we have now is not flawless and problems will come. Solutions will be needed, and they won't come overnight. Bearing in mind that capitalism has created some good doesn't mean that it has also created many bad things, and these do need to be sorted. So:

Thinkers of the world, unite! (and find us a solution!)

05/04/05 - Awesome.
http://alastair-campbell.blogspot.com/

05/04/05 - Party Politics
After reading a number of interesting (here and here) pieces on voting choices for this election, as well as the general timing of it, I figure I should make some generals comments on the election.

Reiterating comments made elsewhere, if you ask people who they're going to vote for, the usual response is "No-one, they're all the same" (damn I've lost the link for that). Fairly accurate. Therefore, the main priority for Britain should be to make the political system itself better. Other issues can be important, but without a decent political structure there to start with, how on earth are we meant to contribute to the running of this state sensibly?

So, the most important issue to anyone (even more so to those who lie in the more radical side of politics) for this election should be what the parties are proposing to do with the political system itself. The BBC helpfully tells us the following:

Tories:
"Make House of Lords mostly- elected chamber; strengthen Parliament; oppose all-postal ballot; scrap supreme court; hold vote on future of Welsh Assembly; repeal Human Rights Act"

Some interesting ones in there. I especially (my comments a few posts ago notwithstanding for obvious reasons) appreciate the last one. Taking away the minimalist ethical code of conduct we have seems like a great way to improve the country! Despotism here we come. Strengthen parliament too, should send a shiver down anyones spine who's worried about a government that doesn't really represent the people.

Labour:
"Further Lords reform abolishing hereditary peers; created Scottish Parliament, Welsh and NI Assembly, want elected regional assemblies; new Supreme Court outside Parliament"

Not much happening there. Could that possibly be because Labour are happy with the status quo?

Lib-Dem:
"Referendum on electoral reform; extend vote to 16 year- olds; make House of Lords mostly elected chamber; PR for local elections; more powers for Welsh, NI Assembly; written Constitution"

To be honest I'm sceptical of extending the vote to younger people will make a blind bit of difference, but I can't imagine it would do any harm so I'll let them off (at least they're interested in political reform). PR for local elections sounds like a fairly sensible idea. Of course the fact that the difference this would make is hard to discern in the first place re-emphasises my point that something needs changing. A written constitution too, is a difficult one to judge. On the one hand, it should stop flagrant abuses of human rights and further corruption of the political system, but at the same time, it could lead to unacceptable non-progression further down the line (as has happened with the US and gun control).

Whats the verdict? Well Lib-Dems seem to be doing most (i.e. very little, rather than very very little). They're also talking of upping tax on the rich to improve public services; good on them. Finally, they want to replace council tax with a local income tax: another sound idea, seeing as the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the rich do at current.

What about all this talk of "labour winning anyway", "a vote for lib-dem is a vote for the tories", or "there are better things to be doing with your time"?

Well, polls seem to show that labour aren't so far ahead of the tories as we might like. Regardless, voting isn't entirely pointless: politicians model how they put themselves forward based on public opinion. That means that an apathetic left in Britain will make the country lean further to the right.

What about the prospects of voting Lib-Dem and letting the Tories through the back door? This could be a dream result for the left. Yes, I said /a good result/. Why? Imagine the scene: Lib-Dem: 25%; Labour: 35%; Tory: 36% (if they win it'll be close). Britain simply would not accept that as a Tory win. Almost all of those Lib-Dem supporters would have voted Labour if not Lib-Dem, and the controvery would just serve to highlight the inadequacies of the British political system.

Re-read that second sentence. I did say could. There's always a chance nothing would come out of it. But lets face it, the chances of your vote for Lib-Dem ending up as a Tory led and subdued Britain are small. All this talk of wasted votes is Labour spin, knowing they can assure themselves an election win by stealing Lib-Dem votes, rather than battling for Tory ones.

So what am I expecting this election? I'm expecting a narrow Labour win over the Tories, but a nice big jump in Lib-Dem popularity. That might make the next election actually worth more discussion than the 15 paragraphs I've given the current one here. Hardly the largest decision you'll make over the next four years.

So, what should you be doing, as a politically motivated (as we all should be) person in Britain? Electoral politics isn't worth ignoring, but its hardly worth jumping into either. I think, as with many things, diversity is the key: many approaches are best. So, I'll just put a brief paragraph of the merits of various methods of political engagement, to try and incite you to go and do something, and as Rich says: "Don't just (not) vote!" (although I think he's a little harsh on voting..).

Protests: Protests are beneficial in a number of ways: They can increase political interest in the rest of the population, and highlight issues the media wouldn't otherwise cover. Through that, they can also force debate (at the very least) into parliament. Finally, a good show of disapproval towards the government in general can tell them they need to buck their ideas up.

Pursuing alternatives: There are some "moral pioneers", who really engage with alternative ways of living, be it starting a cooperative business, living without motorised transport, boycotting goods, or even founding an independent community. These can inspire others to do the same, educate us all in what actually can work, and perhaps, most important of all, they're good in their own right. Living green, for example, doesn't just show that you can cut pollution, but actually is cutting pollution.

Educating/learning: The internet is a fantastic resource: search for blogs, websites, news sources, articles, and more, all with the intent of understanding the world around you. Start your own blog, or website, or whatever. Writing helps others looking for information, and can even help you archive previous thoughts and ideas you've had.

As I say, a diversity of things is best: so if you can't find the time to protest, you can still boycott the larger coorporations for your shopping, run linux, be careful with electricity, use Ukwatch as well as your usual news source etc.

Boy that was a long post.

03/04/05 - Blog
I've received an email from the clearly well organised people at ukwatch asking if I might be interested in contributing some stuff there. I'll keep you informed on that one. I should also, whilst discussing this blog itself, apologise for the rather crude blogging system I'm using here: simply writings posts on top of the old ones. The main problem with this is that it doesn't allow for comments on my posts. I'll hopefully someday get around to using something like wordpress to allow for this sort of thing in the future. For now feel free to post somewhere on the Forum, or email me.

03/04/05 - Religion
This blog has and will attempt to address some fairly large issues, and bearing in mind I've got to try and make posts small enough to be easily digestible, I can only touch on issues, and hope to spark some internal debate in anyone fortunate enough to be reading this fine publication. So, continuing the attempt to address some undeniably humungous issues, my subject for this post will be the merits of religion.

Personally, I'm what (I believe) is generally referred to as an "agnostic". I'm not sure whether God exists or not, but, to be honest, I don't really care.

You might wish to re-read that last sentence, just to make sure you do realise I'm crazy. You see, the thing is, if God does exist, what has he given us all of these wonderful powers of reason and intelligence for? I hope its not just to work out the change I deserve at the corner shop. Given that, whether he exists or not, I think the real thing we should be more concerned about is using our powers of reason to find correct (i.e. true) answers to life's problems.

Now that doesn't mean ruling out everything the Qu'ran, the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita (apologies for what are probably misspellings of at least one of those) etc. say. These things don't survive for long if they're obviously false, and for that reason I certainly wouldn't dismiss them out of hand.

So, what's the lesson to be learnt here about religion and tolerance in any future society? I think mainly that religious belief shouldn't be considered immune to criticism for one, but also that atheism shouldn't be arrogantly assumed either. As is often the case, dialog, and non-dogmatism is the key. Discuss the issues, see whether you really do agree with what religion X says, or whether you're just assuming it on (the bad kind of) faith.

You've also got to be careful treading the line between religious beliefs and humanist beliefs. A pupil can be let out of assembly at school if its her prayer time, but not if she feels obliged to go and volunteer at Oxfam. Where lies the difference? I'd suggest that those pursuing dictates of tolerance make sure that they allow for a greater variety of beliefs than they do at current.

03/04/05 - Human rights and non-interference
After reading an interesting article by George Monbiot, as well as an interesting exchange with a friend regarding rights and responsbility, I figured I'd post some thoughts on here regarding the ever commonly referred to "Human Rights".

The law roughly reflects morality in society, trying to keep the peace, and maximise the amount of good, whatever that may be, in the world. To do this, the law generally refers to various "human rights", such as the right to vote, the right to life, the right to free expression, and so on. However, There are several worries with this way of conceptualising morality, and therefore the law.

Firstly, rights tend to be about non-interference. Your right to life tends to more be associated with not being killed, rather than being provided with the necessary prerequisites for living. Likewise, the right to freedom of expression doesn't guarantee us all a newspaper column, just that if we do write something, that it won't be censored. Non-interference may play a part (perhaps, although I'd be inclined to disagree, the largest part) in morals, but it clearly isn't the whole story. It seems as though society is morally obliged to, for example, actively educate people, as well as just simply not prevent them from educating themselves. This tendency for rights to focus on freedom from interference can be illustrated in what is generally termed "compensation culture": someone can be sued for providing your son with a poisoned dinner, but not for not providing him dinner at all. Rights then, can seperate people and be a barrier to the kind of communities that we need if we want to transcend the "free" capitalist era.

Secondly, rights shouldn't be viewed as absolute. I may have a right to life, but if by turning off my life-support machine and letting me die you can save ten other patients, then so be it. Outcomes count for far more than processes when thinking about what to do.

Thirdly, you've got to bear in mind that rights are not some black and white system where you either have the right or you don't. My right to vote can be more or less well available, so just "having the right to vote" doesn't tell you all that much about how much say I have in decisions.

Fourthly, and finally, you've got to bear in mind that we've somehow got to decide which rights people do and don't have. Just stating that I have the right to be provided with free cheese doesn't mean that I actually should be provided with free cheese. Now some of these choices of which rights we do and don't have might be easy, but others not so much so. Do I have the right to commit suicide, or take drugs? To decide in these cases, and, perhaps to decide how we are to weigh up various rights against one another, we need to appeal to something else.

What might this something else be? I'd suggest several "goods", which are exactly the kind of thing which people (and perhaps animals) always want, regardless of their circumstance. Goods such as happiness, getting what you want, freedom, being rational, being allowed to follow one's life goals.

Now personally I find it easiest to look at these, and then perhaps construct a slightly more concrete set of goods, such as education, healthcare, self-determination, democracy etc., and simply work with those. Others might still wish to work with human rights, and bear these points in mind. Either way, you've got to make sure that you don't just unquestioningly assume that the rights people assume are sensible ones to have.

I'll probably come back sometime to specifically mention which abstract, and which concrete goods I think we should worry about, as well as how we should decide to distribute them.

Of course, if you agree that rights are a fairly arbitrary system of thinking about more "real" good things, then the question of property rights springs up. If "ownership" is only one way of treating material goods, what other ways are there? This is another question I'll be sure to come back to.

03/04/05 - Computer software
I'm currently at home visiting my parents, and since being here I've suddenly been forced to endure the horrors of both Microsoft Windows, and Internet Explorer. For anyone who isn't aware already, the far better alternative to internet explorer is firefox and the main alternative to windows is linux, the distribution of which I reccomend to anyone starting out is Mandrake. As is often pointed out, one way to start change is by creating superior alternatives, and these fit that bill. They are both publicly maintained and built, which has lead many to point out the anarchistic nature of them. So, aside from giving your computer a break from terrible software, you can also support the alternative economy, and stop microsoft from continuing to monopolise the computer industry.

02/04/05 - Efficiency and Democracy
As a self-described anarchist, for me, (and I think most would agree, for anyone else) too, I believe highly in equality; in non-hierarchical societal structures. However, as the political right are very keen to point out, equality is not the only good that we are concerned about; another is what is generally referred to as efficiency, or perhaps simply production. This, the right claims, is not independant of the distribution, and therefore by distributing goods unequally, we can improve everyones lot because production for society as a whole grows, and the worst benefit too. The merits of such argument aside, I think that this flags up a key problem for anyone trying to engage in vision.

As far as I see it, there is tension between production maximisation and democracy. As may be obvious, the ideal democracy would be a direct democracy, where each person has a say in decisions, and there is no need for representatives. However, ideal production requires, at the very least (there are certainly other places where conflicts arise too, most obviously simply in use of time), economies of scale. Not every city needs a cancer ward; one cancer ward can cater for large numbers of people; or at least it makes (productive) sense to design them that way.

But, of course, economies of scale are to do with making decisions for large groups of people, and ideal democracy requires small groups of people and only small, understandable decisions that need making.

This tension can be seen in play with various current popular ideologies.

Firstly, the current right, and their emphasis on production as the key good (other problems with it aside), pays little attention to democratic principles. The economy of all Western countries is democratic is almost no senses at all. Production on the other hand, is very good. Whatever other defects the right may have, a lack of technological progress is certainly not one of them (picking up on this fact, some people have turned to primitivism and blaming all modern problems on technology; the two correlate fairly well. Of course, I'm really not convinced that primitivists have picked up on anything of particular interest in this correlation. Technology is only as good as the way in which it is applied, and if its currently doing bad things, thats not a reason to ban tecnology, its a reason to change social structure.).

Secondly, libertarian-municipalism, as far as I understand it, is put forward mainly by eco-anarchists, seeking to rectify environmental problems first, and attending to others only secondarily. They emphasize small "bioregions" which are more of less independant of each other, and each attempts to make sure that it adheres to the principles of deep ecology (treating the planet as a life organism itself, and respecting /its/ rights). Libertarian municipalists therefore sacrifice all economies of scale (for which they are often chastised), but in their favour, democracy is made simple; small regions makes small directly democratic groups easy to work with. Production might be low under in a bioregion, but individual contribution to society can be kept high.

Finally, Michael Albert with his ideals of "ParEcon" and the related "Parpolity" tries to solve the problems in this tension by simply having shed-loads of directly democratic meetings. He therefore manages to keep economies of scale, and keep production high (he is an economist after all), but at the price (again, for which he is often chastised), of a humungous amount of organising. ParPolity, for example, involves "nested councils", each of which consisting of a small number of members, each of whom electing a representative to attend the next tier of meetings in groups of the same number, and so on up. Whilst this manages to keep production high, and he furthermore emphasizes several checks to keep the processes nicely democratic and accountable to those that they are making decisions for, one can't help but wonder if it could be done with less paperwork.

I suspect that this tension between democracy and production will have to be solved somehow else. How we can solve it, I'm not sure. This perhaps leads back to my earlier post about divisions between economic and social spheres of engaging in vision, and I wonder if fundamentally better solutions can be found to these problems by not treating material distribution as a problem entirely distinct from social superstructures.

30/03/05 - Away
I've been away for the last day or so, and will be away for the next few days: posting may be sporadic.

28/03/05 - Why bother with vision?
Seeing as the blog is supposed to mainly focus on vision; that is dealing with questions like: "What kind of society do we want?", I figured I should post some general stuff on "vision". So, firstly, I will discuss why we should bother with vision at all. Secondly, I will briefly discuss to points to bear in mind on method.

Firstly, for those who feel that the current societal structure is the best that we can hope for, and the only way to make the world better is to make individuals better, consider the following. It is clearly at least logically possible for better structures to exist than what we have at current. Sure, Bill Gates giving most of his money away to charity is a good thing, but surely it would be better if no-one were in a position where they had to make that choice; where the money ended up where it was needed anyway. There are many other examples; the world is clearly not perfect, and we can take some moral stress off of individuals by creating structures which take care of things by themselves.

Secondly, for those who think that there are better structures, but that engaging in vision is pointless: If this structure collapsed tommorow, the representative democracy, the capitalism, etc., what would replace it? If your answer is something like "self organising of individuals to solve problem themselves", then you're already actively engaging in vision; you're arguing for some particular method of social organisation (and for anyone who thinks that that is a complete and correct answer, you've still got to decide how individuals should organise themselves).

Finally, for those who think that vision is pointless because even if good (or even "correct") answers are found, no-one will pay them any attention, I think history shows you to be false. People repeatedly justify the current situation by appealing to theory, or justify change by appealing to theory, and people like Marx clearly did change the world; by (ironically) engaging in theory. Theory can guide actions, give us a direction to work in, make us aware of problems, and, for that matter, it can stabalise a society: and for that reason I will also here engage, at times, with why the justifications for capitalism and representative democracy fail.

And, on that note, it can help us understand where we are now better. By proposing what utopia might look like, we can see more accurately where, in current society, things are going wrong. It gives us a yardstick to measure politics against.

On method: Obviously there are a number of ways of engaging in vision, but some important factors I tend to bear in mind are:
i) Morality. Almost the key to politics; a society that actively fights against happiness, equality, freedom etc., is not a good society. In contrast, one which activly promotes human values through its structure is very beneficial.
ii) Problem solving. Many, many, people argue for change because of a particular problem facing the world today; the environment being the most prominent example. A theory of how to construct society that doesn't deal with key problems is not a good theory.
iii) Potential for change. I mentioned below that a theory could be said to only be as good as the change that it allows for. A society with many avenues for change, adaption and overhaul, in light of new information and ideas is a good society. In some respects, this is one of the appeals of democracy: it is a dynamic social structure. Anything that we propose to replace the current structure with is unlikely to be a "final answer" which gets everything correct (as far too many theoriticians have historically arrogantly claimed), and on that basis, we should allow for further change to occur.

As I say, there are more, but I think those are three key ones to bear in mind.

Changing the world, as I, and others, have mentioned before, can be split into three: information, vision, and action. Information tells us whats going on today, where the problems are. Vision can tell us why those problems are occuring at a deeper level, and how we can solve them. Action is the child of these two; it is when we actively fight for certain things on the basis of the information and vision we have. Vision plays a key role in this process. Perhaps it requires less people, or is more difficult to get right, but it is vital nonetheless.

And, a handful of links. I'll try and incorporate them into the text more in the future.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=4172;
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=6623; http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=4710

27/03/05 - Economic Structure and Social Structure
Blueprints for society are often divided into two distinct entities; the economic structure, and the social structure. To take two examples, Marx favored this distinction very heavily, and argued that the economic structure determines the social structure. The inhabitants of Znet (broad generalisation here!) divide the blueprint into ParEcon (Participatory economics) and Parpolity (Participatory politics).

The distinction does indeed make a great deal of sense when understanding the world, and even features to some extent on the compass I drew (25/03/05) - there appear to be social hierarchies and economic hierarchies. Tony Blair and Bill Gates both have power, but in different domains. However, the example I just gave may serve to illustrate the worry I have with this distinction. The two are not wholly distinct: Bill Gates gains social power through having economic power (he can influence governments for example), and Tony Blair has economic power through having social power (he can influence economic structures).

Perhaps then, in order to create a society where both of these domains each have equality, the problem can be halved in size if we can devise a way to construct society in which the two domains are combined into one. Then the scope for conflict between the two becomes non-existant.

Of course, devising such a unification would be no easy task. That does not mean there is no hope though. Writers such as Foucalt have tried to explain the world solely in terms of power relations, and this throws out the distinction between the material and the social. Property rights, for example, can just be seen as a brute facts about social use. Whether such ideas can be translated into actual policy and politics, however, will take some heavy thought.

I'll certainly return to property rights and the point of material goods sometime in the near future, and maybe, if I ever get some bright idea, I might write on possible unified social/economic structures.

26/03/05 - Capitalist Education
There are many faults of capitalism (which I'm sure I will address at other times), but the one I intend to pick up today is its lack of emphasis on education (both schooling and information media such as the TV). Its often been said that a political system is only as good as the amount of change it allows for, and capitalism certainly doesn't score well on this.

Education in a capitalist system is precisely education towards furthering the system: business based degrees and job skills. There are exceptions, of course, but the trend remains. Not only is this bad because it makes capitalism stagnant (I highly reccomend "Brave New World" for a viewpoint on what happens when stability is treated too respectfully), but also because a key assumption that capitalism works on is that people will make rational decisions. Note that by "rational" here, I mean both knowledge of the relevant facts, and also the ability to think clear-headedly.

Not only does capitalism not promote a healthy sense of education, but in fact it actually fights against it. This is precisely what advertising is all about; preventing the consumer from making the most rational decision.

Capitalism can, at times, look good on paper. That, when you think about it, is because those who are sitting there working it all out /do/ have access to a lot of relevant facts, and are generally clear-headed academics. Claims that the environment shouldn't be a problem under capitalism, because people will refuse to buy products which damage the world around them is patently false; but on paper it is hard to refute, precisely because it does make intelligent sense that people will do that.

This isn't to suggest that increasing education could solve all of the problems in the world today (although I imagine it would help), but just that anyone thinking about how the world should be constructed should make sure that they give education the respect it deserves.

So, to aid the fight for knowledge, here's a handful of links for educational purposes:
http://www.ukwatch.net/; http://www.infoshop.org/inews/ (check out the links on the left); http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page; http://www.zmag.org/pps.htm

25/03/05 - Political Compass
Various sites (moral politics, political compass, politopia, okcupid) have tried to create a map which various political systems fit into, and, in my opinion, have failed miserably. This is partially due to trying to fit too many on there, and partially from picking out the wrong attributes of political systems as fundamental. One common mistake seems to be trying to fit conservative vs progressive type distinctions in there, which I'd personally see as capturing attidues to change from the current system (and are therefore dependant on the system one is in at the time). For example, I might be a progressive in the current UK, but if I lived in an anarchist state I'd probably be labelled a conservative, because I'd be against change.

Personally, I'd run economic equality along one axis, and personal freedoms along the other. Then, minimal freedom, maximal equality fetches us communism, minimal freedom, minimal equality fetches fascism, maximal freedom, minimal equality fetches capitalist libertarianism, and maximal freedom, maximal equality fetches anarchism. As follows:

(Man, I need to get a decent drawing program on linux - sorry)

This captures how certain the four related to each other well; communism is often worried to be closely linked to fascism because of its highly authoratative nature. Libertarianism has historically always had close links to fascism because of the great inequality it permits. Anarchism shares the freedoms of libertarianism, but still tries to retain the social cooperation and equality of communism, which is why it can seem very common sense, but at the same time is often criticised for being overly optimistic about human nature.

Like many political decisions, two very key notions that are in play here are freedom and welfare, and their respective distributions. I'll return to human values and their distribution sometime soon.

25/03/05 - New Blog
Welcome to my blog. Not sure how updated this will stay, but I wanted somewhere to archive various thoughts I've had, and perhaps one day there might be content here worth reading. The site will hopefully contain a neat exposition of some key ideas, but it obviously can't contain everything, in the interest of brevity. Hence this blog.

I've heard activism politics split into three sections: information, vision, and action (these vaguely correspond to introduction, an alternative, and practical advice on this site). This blog, and my personal focus in general, tends to be on vision. There are a lot of informative sources out there (ukwatch, disillusioned kid, znet), but less clearly articulated vision and deep analysis of the problems we face and the solutions we need.

The title, incidentally, comes from this:
"The sleep of reason creates monsters"