I try solidify my opinions on multiple matters in my blogs. I also try to make people (including myself!) Laugh. A good belly laugh is a good indicator of "Truth".

I am mortally opposed to hereditary aristocracy, and, by extension, monarchy.

Wealth, status, and power should be earned, not inherited.

From this core concept flows my support for both the inheritance tax and my eternal opposition to family dynasties such as the Bushes and Clintons from retaining political power.

I believe in meritocracy, instead.

… through action or inaction, mostly inaction. Inaction is often good. Action is sometimes helpful.

Through Charles Stross recently I learned the phrase: Trotskyite entryism, which describes how groups are infiltrated from without and destroyed.

Which aside from being a big unfortunate mouthful of a phrase, seems eminently true.

This is what happened to the Tea Party, and innumerable other organizations, like the IWW… I enjoyed the Tea party movement initially - I guess I enjoy anything that shakes up the establishment. Trotskyite entryism REALLY explains what happened to the Tea Party and I shudder to look at it now. The cure seems worse than the disease sometimes (but then again, the media is skewing the reportage, as well - there are still some genuine voices in there, somewhere)

It's also what happened to every startup I was associated with, once it grew to beyond about 100 people. The people that were good at political infighting rose to the top. Once at the top, the mission of the business suffered at their hands.

The iron law of Bureaucracy, as Jerry Pournelle calls it, is highly related.

I don't know if there's a cure for it. Most days, I don't think there is. The number of people with good motivations in an organization have to outnumber the ones with the bad, and there needs to be a way to "out" the bad folk and the org, one more powerful than wikileaks.

As much as google promises "they won't be evil", and people want to believe - hell, I want to believe - AND google has managed thus far to be pretty good - ultimately it will all just become marketing dross… I give them 5 years more, 10, on the outside.

So, I would like it if all organizations came with an expiration date. Corporations USED to be granted a license to exist for XX years in order to accomplish a specific task, and then they would be dissolved.

For that matter I think capital cities should be moved every 25 years or so to another location more representative of the country. It is long past time Washington returned to being a physical swamp, and the capital moved to somewhere more central (colorado, for example)

I don't identify with one. I have a blog post that tried to describe where I don't fit on the political map. If you can describe to me a school of thought that applies well to me, please let me know. I'll probably identify something I disagree with inside of five minutes, but I do enjoy the mental exercise.

I'd love to settle into some demonstrably true set of beliefs. It would save on a lot of angst and worry, and I'd be able to act from conviction and instinct in more situations.

I'm going to sit down here one day and try to write it all out, talk to the history involved, etc. I'm big on history. For example, progressives (with whom I share many sympathies) believe that we need big government to combat big business, and you know what? They were right - in the late 1800s through about 1915 or so - it worked. Now big government and big business are in league with each other, so what do you do now?

And: when certain kinds of libertarians (with whom I also share many sympathies) go on and on about the government being too intrusive… I feel that the true elephant in the room is the set of laws that effectively grant corporations more rights of people, while they retain the morals of a child.

So, I'd like very much, for the powers of BOTH kinds of organization to be reduced.

Does this make me an anarchist? Nope. Anarchy would be a very unstable form of government, don't you think?

I do happen to be a states rights sort of guy (well aware of but NOT tarnished by the john bircher association progressives constantly try to tag me with). I'd rather there be 50 states - with 50 different sets of laws - all trying to figure out how best to govern - and the federal government be limited to what it was originally designed to do. I think. Most days.

I note that this too, would reduce corporate power…

I'd love for it to be tried in America. So far, no luck. I'm GLAD there's both a socialist and a libertarian in congress today. I wish that there were less lawyers and more people more representative of the class divisions in America - more doctors - more engineers - more plumbers…

I'd like unions to be more like craft guilds, be more respected, and have actual power. Not that I'm particularly fond of unions either, I'm not fond of large, or long lived organizations of any kind, as I wrote above.

Something more along the lines of the "bar association" for engineers and engineering would be a good thing. A little respect for good engineering would go a long way toward curing many of society's stupidities.

I would rather we covered the rooftops of America with solar panels, or built 100s of nuclear power plants, than cover the deserts of the middle east with blood.

I'd rather be energy independent than an empire. Otherwise… walk softly and carry a big stick.

I worry about our vast arrays of weaponry turned inwards, rather than outwards.

I think sousvalance should be a basic citizen right, and for that matter, we should crowd-source all the cameras on all the public spaces.

I used to be a libertarian (small-l) leaning Republican (socially liberal/fiscally conservative).

Having started and run multiple businesses, it was hard to take the intrusiveness of regulations, and cope with the hurdles of hiring employees, and deal with all the other hurdles between cash flow and profit.

I had a hard-core phase from 1985-1989, and a slow gradual liberalisation that happened as I got older and more educated. I LIKE that there are so many factions within libertarianism, they are all pretty interesting. All founder on a few facts, but they are interesting theories nonetheless.

I LOVED the roaring 90s. I didn't vote for Clinton either time, but the second was because I was still mad about him canceling Clementine 2. I should have. In 2000 I held my nose and voted libertarian. To this day I have no patience for Al Gore, and I thought Bush would be an ineffective president - which he was - and was what I wanted - but hadn't factored in Dick Cheney - or 9/11. Not incidentally, that I believe the presidency has the power people ascribe to it.

In a pinch, I could get along with anyone of either party. While I resented the influx of religious fundamentalism on the right and the airheaded crystal fueled greenism on the left, I regarded both as essentially harmless. I felt tolerance was a major virtue, no matter if you believed that the earth was created 6000 years ago, complete with pre-embedded dinasour bones, or if the position of the stars at your birth had any influence over your love life.

If there was a Church of Reason, I'd belong to it.

Then the Bushes achieved power and I started fondly remembering the good old days, when all we had to worry about were a few sex stained dresses. I vastly preferred the 90s to the 00s.

Now we pay the piper for a pair of wars, and, if anything, I've swung even more to the left than the democratic party, and yet still precariously hang onto some nearly formless sense of individualism, of libertarianism that has no reasonable bedrock to cling to.

Who would I vote for now? What party? Haven't a clue. I know I left the US 4 years ago because I was fed up with Bush. I came back because, well, I'm still not sure about why…

I know who I wouldn't vote for at the moment, and they are all Republicans.

Mike Huckabee Sarah Palin Mitch McConnel

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hjd1ItFL-MxV5D8lRgNQKuPvHgSA?docId=e21254c876f34e67bb5fd6a6d2a7ce47

I guess I'm willing to give Obama another 4 years, but so far as I can tell, he too has been captured by the system. I'm reminded of an old Bill Hicks routine, where after the president is elected, he's called into a room where the MIC show him the Kennedy assassination from a camera perspective, never shown before.

• What percentage of people, in all countries, own their own homes outright, without a bank loan?
  We see this "homeowner" statistic, hovering at around 65%, in America. How many actually own them outright? What are the demographics of that?

  And, more importantly, how have THOSE demographics been changing. I'd be willing to bet that far fewer own their home outright in their 50s now, than did 50 years ago, and the trendline is massively downwards. This makes the conventional concept of "homeowner" more like a newspeak word for serf. But I haven't seen this statistic anywhere. I sure would like to see it.

• Climate change
  My official position on this has been (for nearly 8 years now) - I'll wait until the middle of this sunspot cycle (2013 or so), more satellites launched, and more data come in. We don't understand the sun, or this particular sunspot cycle - and, given that without the sun it would be getting mighty cold in a few days, it has arguably the most input into our heat budget.

  My bitch about the whole AGW debate is that there ARE plenty of things wrong on earth - like peak fishing and peak oil - that we could do something about if not for the whole AGW debate.

Personally, I don't think these are all that radical. You decide.

• Eliminate the 2nd mortgage deduction
  Maslow says that shelter is on the first level of maslow's pyramid. It says nothing about having 2 shelters. I really don't know the economic justification behind the second mortgage deduction, except that it obviously leads to a lot of idle housing stock.

• Copyright law returned to the 1909 standard, and require registration.
  Throwing around copyrights willy-nilly isn't enriching anyone except the lawyers.

• Patent law
  I still - even after a recent close encounter - don't have a take on patent law. I am developing a nuanced interpretation in my field.