Pope a Hypocrite: Hoards Gold and Condemns Greed

Today's case study in what is wrong with the world is drawn from this article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25754069/

The headline reads: "Pope urges young to spurn the 'spiritual desert' : He challenges crowd of 200,000 to help world turn away from materialism"

Aside from the many many philosophical problems I have with attacks on materialism, greed, and selfishness. And aside from the many many problems I have with those who promote altruism over rational egoism. Aside from these things, is there anything more hypocritical than the figurehead of the Catholic church berating people for enjoying personal comfort that they have at least done something to earn? Has anyone out there even seen the amount of gold that decks out the Vatican? If not, here's some pics:


If they're so earnest about sacrifice, why don't they lead by example and distribute church wealth to the needy rather than trying to make us feel guilty for spending the money that we earned with our labor? I mean, after all, who deserves their money more? Some guy who works his ass off every day of his life? Or some fat and indolent preacher-boy who's never done anything but sit in a high chair and rattle off how worthless people are? I'd bet on the worker over the preacher any day.

And, hell. While we're on the topic of greed and materialism anyway, why don't we look into this "spiritual desert" and see what's really going on there.

"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair," the pope is quoted as saying. He blames this on greed and materialism and people turning away from faith. I would argue that this despair, this fear is spreading as a direct result of the faithful. And if not directly through religion than indirectly through secular altruism.

How can a person have self-esteem, if the more successful they are at their job (and therefore more successful monetarily)--How can they have self-esteem if the better they are, the more guilty they are supposed to feel? How come excellence and the demand of greater rewards for greater excellence is condemned as a sin? If someone is good, then, dammit, they deserve more. We NEED good teachers, we NEED good doctors, we NEED good engineers. But how do we expect to find people who can fulfill these needs? Should we expect them to appear magically and just perform these functions because that is their nature? Or do we have to assure that they have an equitable return on their efforts, so that they are self-motivated to perform these functions in society? Yet oddly enough, we turn around and condemn the people who are doing exactly what we are paying them to do, we condemn them for being TOO good.

Has anyone who has sat down and blindly condemned people for greed actually fully thought this through? As we progressively enact more laws, and the religious organizations gather more followers, and the secular humanists jump on the band wagon and berate rampant selfishness and the profit motive, has anyone noticed the corresponding erosion of the economy, rampant inflation and critical shortages of teachers, nurses, mathematicians, and engineers? Perhaps the faithful are hoping that they can merely pray and have God magically deliver the trained professionals who will keep the engine of global civilization running. Or perhaps they think that those who are capable of providing those services should do so simply for the sake of all those who can't, and should serve humbly, apologetically, and with head bowed in shame for the epic force of will and dedication of mind necessary to accomplish such feats of creation as has never been known to the leaders of the religious front.

What insights have popes or cardinals or imams given us as to the structure of the universe or the fate of humanity? None. Not a thing. All they have done is preached how near disaster we are, and how we should abandon reason, when reason is needed most. Can the pope build a railroad? Can he erect a building that will not fall? Can he conjure more food from the ground or purify our water? Can he answer the dual needs of protecting the environment while not stifling economic prosperity? Can he do any of these things? NO.

All the pope can do is pray, and berate and cajole and beg. And for what? Why is he doing all this needling? Is it for the good of humanity, as he would claim? Or is it so that he can take advantage of the poor, the ignorant, and the ashamed? He'll casually accept money from the poor, and claim that it is going to help those in need. As he wears gold crowns and lives in a gold bedecked palace. He'll gleefully accept the donations of the guilty rich who, ashamed of their own prowess, seek to assuage the moral conflict that rages inside them by hoping to buy their way into paradise. And the ignorant, the church will gratefully embrace the ignorant, because to embrace God requires no discipline of the mind, it requires no rigor of thought, no effort of will. All it takes is the effort of release, of everything.

If you release your mind, your body, your will, your judgment, your soul, your self-esteem, and your pride, then you will be beloved of god. If you destroy everything there is that makes you who you are, if you destroy anything and everything that makes life good and worth living, then you will be saved by god. God wants to destroy you. The religious want nothing less than the spiritual destruction of humanity. That is why the absolute sacrifice is the symbol of their faith. The absolute of death is sacrosanct in every major religion.

Death is the ideal. A noble death is a noble goal in every major religion. No religion abhors death and reveres life to the extent that they would say, "Live your life to the best of your ability and enjoy those fruits of that ability for they are the mark of your best nature." No, instead they claim that the very qualities that enable you to survive are the qualities that you must apologize for. They claim that the more able you are to live, the more guilty you should feel. That is because, in faith, we are all expected to want to die, but not being able to, should feel guilt for our life.

How perverted and despicable a promise to humankind! Such a miserable and filthy demand! To demand that all should die to fulfill the warped philosophy of the incompetent. To demand that the worthy apologize to the unworthy, that the able apologize endlessly to the inept.

Wouldn't it be a better world, if we all stood as equals--not in the sense of some guarantee--but in the sense of having equal rights to the fruits of our own labor? That we could stand shoulder to shoulder with giants and thank them for all that they have given us in the terms of an easier, safer, healthier life. We could thank them, and allow them the freedom to enjoy the fruits of that inestimable boon they have granted us. Without guilt. Without shame. Proud and radiant as human beings, all of us. Proud that we have done the work that we were best able to do, no matter what work that is. Proud of what we have attained, and created, and managed to preserve around us.

Would it matter if we all cannot be a Vanderbilt, or an Einstein, or even an Elvis? We do what we can. We build what we can. Does anyone have the right to begrudge another the results of their own work, whatever work that may be?

I say NO! I say ENOUGH! The time has come to stay this madness. Reject religion. Reject the secular altruists who preach freedom on one side, and berate the use of it on the other. Reject all those who would offer you a collar in exchange for your self-esteem. Do not be seduced by the prospect of harvesting the wealth of those you envy--for all that road promises is that you will be sacrificed to those who envy yours.

Defend your freedom. And do it not for the good of others. Do it not for the good of generations to come, or for the protracted and unseeable future. Do it for yourself! Do it for the now! Reject all forms of statism, nationalism, religion--all forms of spiritual and physical sacrifice. Claim your birthright, claim that which is yours, not because I say so, but because you earned it. Reject the claims of all those who savor the unearned, who would make you a slave and expect you to be grateful for it. Fight them, do what you can. Speak, blog, vote, protest. We cannot afford to surrender. To surrender is to embrace death.

Abolish the Federal Reserve

I couldn't've said it better myself...So I won't try. Check out the video:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QHKJWm9IsM

Not Enough Teachers = Not Enough Nurses = Not Enough Teachers

There's a big question that I would have in response to this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25626353/

And that big question is: WHY?

You see, as a student of finance, it seems highly unnatural that such a large distortion in the job market should appear. If there is such a high interest and so many students who want to learn nursing, then how can we possibly explain the lack of teachers? Simple. Government intervention in the economy.

Government subsidizes medical treatment and insurance thereby driving prices up. While at the same time a litigious culture and permissive judiciary drive the price of hospital insurance up. (Now of course, a doctor who causes harm through incompetence should be punished. But proper consideration of the patient's chances at survival if there had been no doctor at all should be weighed into the judgment.) These create a stress on the resources of hospitals. But, hospitals are, for the most part, private institutions so they have certain flexibility to raise wages, prices and respond to supply and demand.

But factor in things like minimum wage, taxes, insurance premiums etc. and we see a pressure on all businesses (not just hospitals) that keeps them from hiring the necessary personnel. Why? Because they are not free to respond to supply and demand in the labor market and that means that inequalities arise. The inequalities give rise to underemployment of the work force which means unemployment for the workers.

So why do we see too many applicants, not enough teachers, and a surplus of jobs? Well, because there are not enough teachers, there are not enough trained nurses. And if there are not enough trained nurses, then that almost certainly guarantees that there will not be enough trained teachers or nurses in the future as well. So, what is driving the teacher shortage? Well, it's simple. The rewards for entering the nursing profession are greater than the rewards entering the nurse training profession. The highly subsidized and legislated public higher education market has horribly skewed both the importance of teachers and the ability of universities to respond to market conditions. The obscenely high demand for nursing teachers should see a corresponding rise in benefits for those jobs. The free market would enable universities to respond to the demand for teachers by competing with the hospitals for those veterans that both need so desperately.

Unfortunately, for decades, our university system has been dedicated to antiquated systems based on seniority and wedded to sneering socialist dogma which scorns free-market ideals as base capitalism. They rush to suck up private funds, but sneer at the very systems which generate those funds. If their own systems were structured more efficiently, then there would be enough teachers. If you need more teachers, you need to make the terms more attractive. If you need better teachers, then you need to reward based on merit rather than on seniority or associations. You need to look at the work. And you need to pay people what they're worth. If any business tries to get away with anything less, it will inevitably either have a shortage of necessary labor, or it will be stifled with incompetent labor. So, because hospitals consistently offer better terms, the skilled nurses who could potentially become teachers go into the hospitals instead of the schools and only the few who choose to forsake those benefits go into education.

Government intervention kills. By creating market imbalances, by creating 'wormholes' in the fabric of the labor market, government creates unemployment, drives inflation and creates shortages of all kinds. If you want to know what is strangling the US economy it is the American people's mad quest for state-mandated security. Terrified to face the reality of shouldering responsibility for our own lives, our own careers, our own finances, choices, and the consequences of them. Terrified to face the facts of our existence, the fact that there can be no guarantees, the fact that we cannot avoid responsibility for our own actions, we can only defer the responsibility to others, and even then we are only deferring. We cannot run from the consequences of our folly forever. It comes back.

Reality cannot be fooled, schmoozed, or cajoled into letting you have your cake and eat it too. And the ultimate end of market imbalances is not a thing as sterile and intellectual as those words would make it seem. The cost of an economic imbalance is a human life. A dream thwarted unnecessarily by an arbitrary condition that never needed to have been. A life snuffed out, through poverty, exhaustion, despair or negligence. A life that never was. A child who will never have the opportunity to move up the social ladder because clutching and frantic paranoia has convinced so many that the only way to be secure is to hand over all choices to others, and those others (suffering from the same paranoia) have responded by securing their own supposed interests and locking the social ladder in place.

The foolishness that they refuse to recognize is that the more they lock that ladder in place, the more they undermine their own future prosperity and even survival. So whether you're a Republican clamoring for government subsidies for big business, or if you're a Democrat howling for universal health care you are in effect pleading for the same thing. You are pleading for the guarantee of your own interests at the expense of everybody else's. What you fail to see is that that it is also at the expense of your own interests to demand such things. That in the long run, it will come back to you.

When you are lying in the hospital with insufficient nurses taking advantage of your governmentally guaranteed health care, will it be a comfort to you to know that everybody will have the same quality of health care, regardless of how insufficient that health care will have become?

When you are baffled by the collapse of your stock prices despite the money you poured into government lobbies, when the real effect has been the collapse of an economy too top heavy with those very lobbies, will it comfort you to know that you were just doing what everybody else is doing?

When America runs blindly off of the cliff of mad devotion to equality and tolerance as a social absolute, a universal ideal, will it comfort you to know that all people will be guaranteed jobs even when no more jobs exist? When we lack the necessary teachers of math, science, and medicine today, what will you do when buildings collapse, planes fall from the sky, and you die from diseases for which there already are cures? Will you be comforted by the hollow ideal of sacrifice to God, nation, or society? Or will you scream and beg and plead for someone to come save you from the nightmare world of your own creation?

There is an alternative. Reverse the course we are going down. Do not overcorrect by doing more of the same thing which has created the various tragedies of our modern age. Change course. Do what has not even been tried. Set business free. Set yourselves free. Cut back the strangling tide of bureaucracy and neo-fascism which is threatening to tear our country apart into rival camps of those who would control our liberties through force and those who would control our liberties by finance, between Republicans and Democrats, between Big Brother and the last lingering relics of the idolaters of communism. Reject them both. Elect Bob Barr for President. And maybe we'll have a chance at putting this nation back together again.

Not Everything that Parades as a Democracy IS a Democracy

I'm taking a little break from the American story right now just to point out that in some parts of the world, fascists have taken to calling their countries democracies when they are really anything but. All one has to do is look at Zimbabwe, where the fascist dictator Mugabe actually has the gall to claim that he is an elected official. How can a thug dare to call himself a president? Easily...his boys have the guns. Countries like this are a constant reminder of the necessity of checks and balances in government and the essential nature of human rights as absolute values. Freedom is not something that can be compromised and still retain any meaning. When you hand over your responsibility to make decisions to a big mob with guns, it may not be so easy to get your right to make them for yourself back again.

And take a hard, close look at the financial chaos in Zimbabwe. The nation is on the brink of collapse. Why? Is it because of greedy multi-national corporations? Or is it really because of a government laden with corruption and barbarity that scorns all the principles of capitalism and yet still cries mournfully for succor from the wealthy nations of the world. Why are the wealthy nations wealthy? Is it because they just happened to be that way? Not so. Many of the countries of Europe and Asia were financially wrecked just a mere 60 years ago, after the second world war came to an end. What made them able to rebound and outpace their collectivist neighbors was that they adopted certain values, values which mimicked those of the United States Constitution. Those values being freedom in society and freedom in business. The extent to which they embraced these values was to the extent to which they became affluent. Where there is no freedom, there can be no affluence, nor progress. If you don't believe me, don't take my word for it. Simply look at the broken and battered nations of Africa, where petty dictators lash their people into inhumane poverty and then beg for the developed nations to grant them succor...only to expand their armies and drive around in Mercedes and Cadillacs.

The next time liberals beg for you to placate the suffering in Africa, take a good hard look and imagine who it is that your money is going to really help. Will it be the starving poor? Or will it be bloated and evil fascists like Mugabe? Think about the architecture of poverty. Who is it that drives away industry, drives away the intelligent, skilled workers from a country? Who is it that murders the poor for obeying, or murders them because they don't? It is the system of oppression which creates poverty. It is freedom which ends that oppression. So before you turn our freedoms over for the sake of the unnamed poor, who you understandably wish to help--After all, to cast a blind eye to suffering would be inhumane--before you do that, first think of what would be the best way to help.

Can we really help the most by trading in our property rights, our right to our own moral consciences and then expect that other countries will in turn value those these even more greatly? Can we seriously expect that? Or should we instead make more of a stand for our own liberties and our own rights, so that we can go out into the world with moral certainty and the firmness of our convictions to serve as a powerful example of what ideals can actually accomplish when translated into reality.

It is always best to lead by example. If we surrender our rights at home, we cannot expect the rest of the world to 'do as I say, and not as I do.'

I'll end with these links to articles and video on the Zimbabwe situation:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25432146/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25470052/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/144274

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143803?from=rss



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFJUOa_ABUg



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRS0n1inpWg

Vote Bob Barr in November. Vote Libertarian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im0Wqj3BSvU

McCain: Hypocrisy in Action

And if there was any doubt about McCain's trustworthiness or moral integrity, well, this should settle it. Please watch the Before and After videos that follow:

BEFORE



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbNImNX8Xuw

AFTER



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8KZpsp04XM

Election 2008: McCain and Obama on Religion

Well, what should I say? I dislike Obama because he's a socialist. I dislike McCain because he kisses up to the religious right. But after watching these two videos, there's no way I'm voting for McCain. I guess it depends on how the Libertarian candidate presents himself. But McCain is off my list. If the Libertarian doesn't impress me, then I'm voting for Obama.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9izhjnaLa3M



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg8lCLumByw

The Weakness of Conservatives...The Hypocrisy of Liberals..

This old footage of Ayn Rand is as relevant today as it was when it was shot in 1961. Here she is addressing the conservatives of the GOP but she might as well be addressing the rival political parties today. Instead of the threat of Soviet Russia, we can think of the threat of religious extremism. And of course there is still communist China, whose relaxed financial rules have created a smokescreen for their continued fascist treatment of its citizens.

China's aggressive suppression of freedom of speech, it's negligent disregard for human life evidenced in its nonchalant attitude to food safety and chemical waste, and it's belligerent self-righteousness when challenged on its premise of citizens as sacrificial fodder to the social animal--these are all situations born of the socialist system, both its mind-numbing effect on its citizens and the cumbersome way in which it adjusts to meet crisis.

How much blood will pave the way to a continued and vibrant communism? How much more blood will we provide as we rush to surrender to an enemy so pitiful and small that it could not survive but by the sanction we grant it? How much blood will they pour on the pyre of the greater good as they rush to convert capitalism in to the socialist quagmire that their ideals fix in the stars as the highest moral system?

Whether that enemy be the religious multitudes swaying to prophetic breeze of idolatry and hate. Or, whether that enemy be the fascist legions of 1st world mercenaries unleashed by the moral abdication of capitalism's defense.

Watch this video and ask yourself, how much blood has been spilled in defense of socialism? How many lives sacrificed? How many dreams crushed? Ask yourself how much of that blood has flowed in the scant 47 years since this video was created. And ask yourself how much more must be sacrificed before we finally fix what must be fixed? Before we embrace capitalism as both effective and a moral ideal.

I'm sure it would be fascinating were Obama and McCain able to respond to this lucid challenge from another age.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTf6NK0wsiA

And this is what you can do about it...

These are the views on torture of the main presidential candidates for the 2008 election. You be the judge.

Clinton

Obama

McCain

Vote your conscience, don't vote the odds.

Unfortunately they all profess religious beliefs as is required by the unashamed bigotry of religious voters in our nation. Ah well, beggars can't be choosers. As much as I dislike the religious affiliations of ALL of the candidates, I would rather vote for a Christian who supports my freedom to denounce his religion then I would for an atheist who supports torture.

Of course the best of all worlds would be a candidate who was an atheist, has an understanding of human rights, and was intellectually honest enough to fight evil where there's evil and defend good where there's good. We need political leaders who can reason and be honest about where their reasoning leads them. Unfortunately, in politics we often get what we ask for. If the majority of voters are irrationally dedicated to the superstition of gods directly, or irrationally worshipful of society as a god, then in either case what we will get will be either religious zealotry or socialist propaganda. Either way, human rights of the individual end up taking a back seat to the "good of the many" without anybody stopping to think how "the many" can have rights if "the one" does not.

That's why I usually vote Libertarian, depending on the candidate of course. The bottom line, don't vote the odds, vote your conscience, but at the very least get out there and vote. If enough people do the same then no matter how forsaken you may feel your political views may be, then at least there's the chance for change. If everyone just votes what they think has the best odds to win, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and your ideals always get sold short.