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A thousand MOVIES I must see before I die. I MUST!

Out of the thousand, I've seen 207.

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The Time Museum by Matthew Loux
Brave by Svetlana Chmakova

Both graphic novels and both OK!

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I got up to Sonic Archives #5. Universalamander is an odd fellow. He knows the location of the freedom fighters but doesn't tell it. Now, this rematch is a second story that wasn't originally published, and it was probably for the best. I know I know, you're supposed to see this through 5 year old lenses, but think about this! He doesn't tell Robotnik even though he knows how to get back there to fight them. Robotnik works with him, even though he has no reason to, because Universalamander went on a rampage as his own guy the first time. idk.

I remember the first one because the sonic firsts was in Sonic Mega Collection, and looking back I'm like, what? Lucky for Sonic he can fight back because in the space of one panel, he has amassed all 7 emeralds plus 50 rings by the star post and I guess he just left them lying around out there. Talk about a rushed story. Why not use them to fight Robotnik once you have them? Why not use Rotor's enlarger on the freedom fighters? Group of alternate-universe sonics, hundreds of them, team up to stop one alternate-universe Robotnik but leave without stopping the other one? There are some missed opportunities here to be sure. Know what I think? They wanted to keep the comic going.

The deleted story was also the first appearance of Nicole, which also would've been odd if this had been published, because I think the canon story was different? Was Nicole inherited in the TV show? Because here she's bought by mail order like she's a standard smartphone model or something. The mail orders happen some other times in the comics. Where are they coming from?

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Sonic Archives #6. The ultimate life form E.V.E. reaches its final form after only 4 robot learning attempts! That's a pretty good track record. Also, Robotnik is able to recognize a final form when he sees one, which begs the question: why did he not design that to start off with? Either way, E.V.E. inevitably turns on its former master and then floats off into space like any ultimate life form would do. Also, Robotnik wasn't killed but was instead zapped into another dimension for some reason.

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Mega Princess. My favorite character is Mega Pony!

150 Movies You Should Die Before You See - of which I've seen 14. Don't let anyone ever tell you that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Hudson Hawk are bad movies.

[Pyro ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ ✔]

Watching WWF

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Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein. So far it's just in a dream. Ripoff!

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Art of Atari by Tim Lapetino.

After Warner communications bought Atari, Bushnell actually argued against the VCS (later the 2600) in front of the board, saying the market was oversaturated. They were right to not listen and went on to make the big bucks, but I guess Bushnell was sorta right? If the crash happened a few years earlier he would've been the smart guy in the room. But it didn't, so he wasn't, and Atari made some of its own mistakes to get there.

Warner also considered changing the Atari logo but decided not to, after finding it already had more brand recognition in 1977 than Mickey Mouse. "So we had paid $3,000 for the original logo...and they spent $100,000 to find out - don't f*** with it!"

Steve Jobs was a lazy hippie who paid Wozniak to do his work for him. Jobs pocketed most of his "work" money and paid Wozniak by letting him play arcade games for free at night. It took a while for middle management to figure out this scheme, but Bushnell apparently knew something was up and was fine with the results of Wozniak's moonlighting. Jobs walked around barefoot and people complained about his smell (from lack of showers), so they kept him on as the only night shift engineer.

Atari controllers always sucked imo, some more than others. Is that safe to say? I think that's a safe bet. The 2600's controller came from a canceled standalone unit for Sears called Tank II. The industrial designer had made it square to fit into the way that unit was made, but in the 2600 they just stuck out. When asked about it, he said "I was always embarrassed - it wasn't the easiest controller to hold in your hand, with angular edges and kind of square...it was designed to rest in that Tank game. It ended up as a standalone thing, but didn't go with anything else (on the 2600) visually, really...If I were going to design an XY controller, it wouldn't look like what I designed. It wasn't very ergonomic. If I knew it was going to sell that many, I would have designed it easier to hold."

Weirdest Centipede art: a girl in green greasepaint among the mushrooms, with some disco sparkle lighting. This shot was for arcade distributors and not the general public.

Hiro Kimura's Pac-Man: weirder than the Mega Man art

Unused art for Haunted House: www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/517984394617356255/ almost went out but got altered because eyes were on boobs.

Most badass art award goes to Phoenix.

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Some Atari peripherals that never were. The Atari Mindlink!...It was a headband that read your muscle movements. Play testers hated it because it gave them headaches after a few minutes, due to the rapid brow twitching and other movements needed to control the thing.

The Cosmos: a lost opportunity in hologram imagery, as Atari moved to keep it focus on the 2600 (despite its potential and cheap game carts that could've gone for less than $10). Two big players involved in it left the company and went on to make the first production holograms - picked up by banks, credit cards and even Atari's own quality seals.

Kee Games: Bushell skirted exclusivity agreements with distributors by selling clone games to others through a "competitor" run by his neighbor. They had to give it up after the scheme was found out.

Atari's Jaguar VR never saw the light of day, planned to go up against the Virtual Boy but lol the Jaguar plus the cost. Only 1 game was made for it, 3D version of Missile Command. Only a few functional headsets have been found, but that's up from zero.

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Booth babes wore this Trak-Ball shirt at the 1982 Consumer Electronics show.

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The compugraph foto! ASCII faces.

A possible connection between Space Invaders and the cover of Boston's Don't Look Back was investigated, but not conclusively found.

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50 Politics Classics, finally continued.

Paul Kennedy: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987). Strong military spending is a lagging indicator of national wealth - and may end up costing more than it's worth to protect the gains made during a nation's initial growth phase. "Great Powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on 'security' and thereby divert potential resources from 'investment' and compound their long-term dilemma."

Book quote: "Around 1500 there were several power centers around the world: Ming China, the Ottoman Empire, the Mogul Empire in India, Muscovy, Tokugawa Japan, and a cluster of states in central-western Europe. Why did these European states grow massively in power while the others declined? The problem with all the non-European powers, Kennedy says, is that they were illiberal. Not only did they require uniformity in religious belief, commerce and weapons development only happened with the consent of the ruler. In contrast, Europe had no overarching ruler, and the constant warring between kingdoms and city-states only encouraged the development of military technology, which spilled over into other technological developments. Competition also encouraged an entrepreneurial culture that helped to create wealth. European societies thus began 'a constantly upward spiral' of economic growth and enhanced military effectiveness that saw them move ahead."

Martin Luther King's autobiography: "The reality of segregation, like slavery, has always had to confront the ideals of democracy and Christianity. Indeed, segregation and discrimination are strange paradoxes in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal."

"To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself."

Naomi Klein: No Logo. Raised on 'gender-free' toys by draft-dodger parents in Canada, and hating wilderness trips, Klein responded by looking longingly to brand name products her parents denied her. Then she went to college, came out lib, the usual anti-business stuff. Toned it down after 9/11 for fear of being called unpatriotic, but was back at it a few years later directly comparing free market believers to jihadists.

Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address. Shorter than the other guy's big speech, Lincoln also wasn't feeling well and soon after came down with a mild case of smallpox. 5 different versions of the speech and Abe may have added some words of his own on stage.

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government. The rights to life, labor and property. The father of classical liberalism, Locke is seen as "an inspiration to people who prefer their politics to be based on reason rather than tradition." While extremely dangerous to write in his time, Locke's book was not seen as the inspiration behind parliamentary supremacy and the right of consent of the governed following the Glorious Revolution. Locke was basically calling the monarchs of his time illegitimate dictators, so he had published anonymously and avoided calling any leader out by name. It was in the 18th century when Locke's works influenced French Enlightenment thinkers and our Founders, along with anti-slavery advocates.

Locke's first treatise attacked Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, a defense of absolutist monarchy that argued just as kids belong to their parents, grown men belong to kings and live in submission to them, and that the king is by necessity above the law. Locke pointed out that the comparison of adults to children does not hold - adults can think and act for themselves, and do not need to live in a state of dependence. Locke's second treaty examined the state of nature, which would not be like the Hobbesian view of total anarchy without the absolutist in charge. Locke argued that all people had natural rights from birth and followed (God-given) natural laws, which everyone recognizes at least in principle: preservation of life, not harming others, respecting what belongs to others. "Natural justice": all have the right to punish an offender. At a later stage of civilization, people do not issue justice directly in order to avoid bias, and an independent judiciary forms.

Therefore, all rights are issued to (and granted from) the individual. For example, when the judiciary was established, it begun with the individual entering into a compact where they handed over the ability to personally punish an offender in exchange for a service (justice from an unbiased third party). Locke's natural rights at birth rejected the medieval idea that everyone was born into a certain set station in life. This includes kings, who were NOT born into a position to do whatever they wanted without any consent from the people. "Politick Societies all began from a voluntary Union, and the mutual agreement of Men." Monarchies forgot that their elevated position relied on popular consent. If a monarch decides to go against the law (the expressed will of society), he no longer has support from the people, and it is therefore lawful for the people to resist the king. Tyrants who only look after their personal advantage can likewise be deposed. In Locke's time, when the king claimed supremacy and could either bribe, intimidate or dissolve parliament to get his way, Locke argues that this would be a "state of war" because the king is attempting to use "force without authority" - it is the king, not the people, who is rebelling against the natural law of consent from the governed.

Locke also argued for property rights because these preceded political organizations, and no parliament or king could take from individuals what was rightfully theirs. The government also had no right to raise taxes unless the people consented through their representatives, and that taxation must be for the public good. Individuals own the fruits of their labor - by using their labor to develop a resource, this becomes known as their property. A constitutional system is best for an advanced society based on trade, since the power of commerce rests in multiple people engaged in it - not a kingly monopoly that was arbitrary and prone to trample on human rights or take away one's property. At the time Locke admitted his views may have appeared to be "strange doctrine, it being so quite contrary to the practice of the world." And there are of course tyrants today, but popular consent in politics in the modern world is now far more widespread.

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Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy. Countries that enjoy the most personal freedom make the most rapid progress. Tortured and then removed from public life after the Medici family returned to Florence following 18 years of exile, Machiavelli turned to writing as a potential political comeback. First The Prince, then this longer work. He didn't expect the Discourses to be published in his lifetime, given comments on how the Italian states operated. Machiavelli argued any utopian system that tried to enforce its order on people would be fragile, unable to deal with dissent. Instead of Plato's state, which sought to stifle change, Machiavelli looked for ways to accommodate it.

States failed over time: monarchy to tyranny, aristocracy to oligarchy, democracy to anarchy. Machiavelli argued that Rome's success was its ability to balance each of these elements without letting any of them dominate. Rome had its consuls, senators and tribunes who gave some form of representation to everyone. Machiavelli compared the failures of contemporary Italian states to Rome. The Roman government allowed for impeachment of corrupt officials (see: Coriolanus, who tried to starve the Roman people during a famine to reduce their power. He was exiled). Threats to stability occurred when one faction accused another of a charge, the other faction then accused right back with counter-charges, each side accused the other of lying, etc. Italy's failure in Machiavelli's time is they had no effective outlet for these grievances, and often turned to outside states, expanding the problem of disunity. In contrast, Roman tribunals were an effective way of settling an issue and required some form of evidence, "for having a remedy at home, there was no need to seek one abroad."

Machiavelli said that a state looking to expand should imitate Rome, a state looking to retain its present form should operate like Venice or Sparta. Lycurgus, founder of Sparta, governed via a smaller group of king and nobility only, and said marriage with foreigners was not allowed so as not to "dilute" the population. This kept tranquility but also meant the state did not grow. States therefore had a choice between growth with some instability, or internal order but a lessened military reach. After brief invasions of Greece and Italy, respectively, neither Sparta nor Venice could hold on to such gains for long. "It is neither natural nor possible that a puny stem should carry a great branch." Machiavelli disagrees with Livy, who had said fortune made Rome great. It was smart policy. Individuals are flawed like kings or nobles, but can be trusted more to maintain laws and institutions. For 400 years the people of Rome proved they could be just as patriotic as the nobility, and despised the idea of monarchy. Anarchy is possible from this group, but it's also more likely that these individuals can be brought back to order and reason. Meanwhile a king would simply view law as his plaything to be changed to suit his needs, and this only ends with his death. Therefore "Even a poorly run republic is likely to afford more opportunities and justice than a well-run kingdom" (book author).

Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela was kicked out of the ANC for opposing nonviolence. The ANC was itself later banned by the government. Mandela went on to the military group Spear of the Nation, or MK. Mandela's influences included African nationalists, Che Guevara, Chairman Mao and Fidel Castro. It was during this period that Mandela would bomb power stations. He was eventually captured in 1962. He brought out the African garments to wear in court and said he wouldn't get a fair trial because the judge was white. ANC leadership was later arrested for sabotage, based on its plan of action to engage in guerrilla warfare, which netted them life sentences. It would end up being 27 years, winding down with the end of apartheid.

Marx/Engels, the Communist Manifesto. Considered too radical for an academic post, Marx went on to make some infamous drivel. Money/class > religion, politics, birth, anything else. Wanted the abolition of property and the family. Workers would just magically unite into some stateless wonder. The author (obviously): "Even the true believers in Communist revolution like Lenin admitted that there was hardly anything in Marx's writings about the economics...how it would work in practice...Given that Marx and his followers distrusted economics (at least mainstream economists such as Ricardo and Adam Smith, whom they dismissed as bourgeois), it should come as no surprise that the political economics they spawned were so deeply flawed. As Hayek puts it: 'If socialists knew anything about economics, they would not be socialists.'"

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Mencius: The Mencius. "The people are of supreme importance; the altars of the gods of earth and grain come next; last comes the ruler." Born roughly a century after Confucius, Mencius sought to apply Confucian teachings during the Warring States period in China (403-221 BC). Like Confucius, Mencius traveled with his message but it did not find many followers in a turbulent era. He later wrote in retirement, although many scholars now believe the books were written or compiled by others following notes from his disciples. The Mencius became one of the Four Books behind Confucianism.

In this period, feudalistic states were giving way to centralized government and warring administrative districts that vied for control. Some ruling states had declared a "mandate from heaven" for their growing power. But Mencius argued that only upright and benevolent nations would last - immoral ones would be replaced by others whose rule was more justified. "The Three Dynasties won the Empire through benevolence and lost it through cruelty. This is true of the rise and fall, survival and collapse, of states as well." A strong kingdom comes through loyalty - since there is no difference between killing someone through a knife and killing them through misrule, leaders must not hold extravagant feasts while its people are dying by starvation.

Mencius said that going to war simply to extend one's power is like "looking for fish by climbing a tree." This does not earn loyalty or power for a corrupt state. War is only a last resort, only to remove terrible rulers, and the state conducting the war must be morally superior in order to hold proper authority. Benevolence through morality, the moral authority of a ruler, trumps brute force. Such a leader will be successful regardless of his state's size.

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge: The Fourth Revolution. "Countries that can establish 'good government' will stand a fair chance of providing their citizens with a decent standard of life. Countries that cannot will be condemned to decline and dysfunction." In the 20th century, democracy won. We went from no countries in the year 1900 that allowed all adults to vote, to 120 countries and 2/3rds of the population by century's end. However, democracy has eroded in recent years and countries like China, while adopting capitalist policies, oppose democratic approaches to government. The postwar liberal welfare states of western societies have left the west in debt and on an unsustainable path. Reform is necessary and the current challenge that liberal governments face.

What were revolutions 1-3? The authors write that revolution 1 was when European countries transformed in the 17th century from principalities and kingdoms into centralized states. The Hobbesian view of state power drove these developments. Revolution 2 were the American and French revolutions, which sought new reforms to government and an accountable, meritocratic state. Britain moved away from patronage and towards merit. Cronyism was reduced, free markets developed and personal liberties expanded. The 3rd revolution was the 20th century liberal welfare state, which was developed in response to inequality. The problem is that the safety net became an entitlement cushion, a bloated Leviathan. "Government used to be an occasional partner in life...Today it is an omnipresent nanny." Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan led the charge to reform in the 1980s, but did not stop government expansion permanently. Reagan could not get the House to make spending cuts to match his tax cuts.

The authors point to California as the example of a big, broken and inefficient liberal state. Overlapping levels of government, lobbyist groups holding huge sway (see Mancur Olson in a later entry), and a state that spends the same amount on prisons as it does on education. Europe is in a similar bad state. Italy, for example, owns 574,000 official limousines for its 180,000 highly-paid representatives that it cannot afford. Europe's population is in decline and aging. Over time spending will increasingly be sucked up by either welfare or defense, leaving less and less to spend on education, investment, or anything else. Back to California, public sector unions will demand more and more, lobbying for benefits while the average taxpayer will go poorer and poorer to pay for them.

What to do? Competition! In every other facet of society, free market options have made individual choices better and the market more efficient. Why would the same thing not happen if competing interests were looking for schoolchildren or patients? Contrary to the critics, cuts in spending have not caused a new dark age, but instead an efficiency revolution. Britain, similar to the US with charter schools, has pulled back from standard high schools and allowed academies to have significant autonomy. Teacher unions and leftist politicians complain, but the parents themselves love it and the children benefit. In 2012 the OECD countries owned roughly $2 trillion worth of companies that employed 6 million people, on the grounds that these companies could not be sold to private interests or people would be ripped off. But the authors argued that ownership is not the important factor. What matters is proper regulation of these companies. Why does the US continue to own the failing Amtrak, prisons, post offices and airports? The sale of these assets would help pay down debt and lead to greater efficiency.

The other step is to dismantle the subsidy system. Leftists focus on redistributing stuff to other people, but what we really need to do is "dismantle the welfare state for plutocrats." The US still sends $10-30 billion to farmers each year, even though New Zealand ended such subsidies in the 1980s - a country that is 4x as reliant on agriculture! - and saw huge productivity gains. Finally, the welfare system needs to be reformed and dedicated to the truly needy. People on the dole should be getting training or looking for work. Some of this reform has already happened, but there is some way to go. No more politicians promising unsustainable entitlement handouts at the expense of future generations: just as we have an independent central bank, we should put welfare in the hands of an independent commission.

"It is time to put the 'liberal' back into 'liberal democracy.'" As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, a central government can only keep its legitimacy if it was self-limiting. Government should not make promises it cannot keep, such as an end to all terrorism or an end to all poverty, false promises which only tend to limit the freedoms of everyone else. Therefore, the fourth revolution is all about turning the emphasis back over from social to individual rights. This is not only the correct thing to do, but is necessary to sustain democracy. Without such reform, cronyism will only continue as money is increasingly funneled to vested interests away from those who actually need it - only increasing cynicism against democracy. It is time to buck this trend of stagnation and grow the economy by unleashing the power of the individual. The most powerful force of wealth and well-being is a nation's people, so it's time we trusted them again. This is how the US and Europe got ahead of the rest of the world, by emphasizing liberty, and they can do it again.

John Stuart Mill: The Subjection of Women. A Utilitarian approach to the rights of women, unleashing the intellectual power of women so that society benefits as a whole. It simply made no sense to deny educational opportunity to 50 percent of the country. This was a strong statement, to demand "perfect equality" in 1869. Mill rejected arguments to custom or tradition which were really just based on feelings (in some places of Europe, women had actually slid backward and had fewer property rights than they had in the middle ages). Mill said the tradition argument would have more weight if other societal arrangements had actually been tried in the past and failed, and yet there had been no experiments people could point to in the past of women-run societies that anyone could examine. Furthermore, arguments that men were stronger physically were important in the past but became less so in modern societies, where mental ability and skill became more important in the workplace. The lack of womens' rights, during a period of increasing personal freedom in Britain, was therefore as baseless and contradictory as the ancient Greek citizens who had pride in their personal freedom even as they held onto an entire class of slaves. This was particularly odd in a culture that said it was "unnatural" for women to run things, but was used to being ruled by a queen (which visitors from other countries viewed as unnatural, but Britain was more used to). It wasn't "unnatural" - it was just something the British were used to, compared to things they were not used to.

In fact, the presence of a law to either drive people down a certain path or restrict them is an indicator that there is nothing unnatural. For example, no one had to write a law to say strong men had to be blacksmiths. The natural course was for people who had the ability to gravitate to that position. Freedom and competition lead people to the field best suited to them, and this also applied to women. Mill tied this argument to his economic philosophy and stated that the market would sort out this issue. In Mill's time, women would gain some property rights but would have to wait another 50 years for the right to vote.

Hans Morgenthau: Politics Among Nations. International politics has always had power as its main goal. This is a realist argument, as opposed to the idealists who wanted the League of Nations or the UN for peace. Ultimately, participants in these international groups are not about abstract ideas like equality or justice. They are about power: keeping it, expanding it, or demonstrating it. The best we can hope for on an international stage is the realization of a lesser evil, not an absolute good. Morgenthau's family was forced to flee the Nazis, and he would grow up to advise two US presidents during his academic career. A staple of the realist school, this book has gone through 7 editions.

One example of realism in international relations in the late 1940s, which Morgenthau pointed to, was US recognition of China's communist government. While we would be morally justified in ceasing contact, for the purpose of international relations the political dimension required some dealings with them, at least to keep open channels of trade and diplomacy. Prudence is the desired trait here. There is room for morality, but not as the only thing. A pure realist would be a beast, a pure moralist would be a fool who lacks prudence. National survival is more important than taking an unequivocal moral stand, because what good is it if a nation is "right" but loses standing? Just as you do not apply standards of politics to a priest or monk, you cannot do so the other way and place their standards on a politician. The proper standard is whether the leader can keep the state's power, and this will often require him to do something that will make the typical person squeamish. Though not mentioned by Morganthau, Machiavelli's The Prince took a similar stance four centuries earlier.

Morgenthau emphasizes the balance of power principle, which recognizes equilibrium: when a great power overreaches, this leads to resistance or a vulnerability that allows another to rise up. The balance of power theory went from ancient times to the British, who often had its eye on the greatest threat to the balance of power in Europe. Winston Churchill noted several times in its history, Britain could've joined with the stronger power and shared in some of the spoils, but instead took the more difficult course of challenging the aggressor. Prestige is also an important factor, because it influences what other nations think of us and the level of power they think we have. One example was 1945's Potsdam conference, where Churchill, FDR and Stalin couldn't agree on who got to enter the room first so they each came in at the same time through three separate doors. During the Vietnam war, peace negotiations were once delayed for ten weeks because the US, North and South Vietnamese disagreed over the shape of the conference table. Prestige is important. During WWII, Germany and Japan made a fatal mistake bringing in the US because they viewed our prestige as low, but our actual power was greater than theirs. At the same time, Hitler was reluctant to invade Britain because its naval prestige was greater than its actual power.

Diplomacy also matters. Diplomacy is the brain of the operation. An expansion of power has to be justified morally or else a nation will become a pariah. If a nation has poor judgment or lacks vision, all its industrial or natural advantages will be wasted. Blind militarism did not work for Sparta, Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Diplomacy has often failed, but has also succeeded. The prevention of costly wars that risked the collapse of the power was key. Nations must be willing to compromise on all matters not vital to their survival. The Cold War was not resolved during Morgenthau's lifetime, but turned out to be an example.

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Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State, and Utopia. "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?" An uncompromising argument for a rising libertarian movement. The fundamental question of political philosophy is, why have a state at all? Nozick looks at Locke and rejects social contract theory; rather, the invisible hand led to our society: everyone pursuing their own interests leads to the development of institutions to protect all. But either way, only a "nightwatchman" state is justified - protection from violence or theft, and the enforcement of contracts. Any additional state power necessarily requires a reduction in liberty.

"Fair distribution" people ignore that others own what's being distributed, and do not show fairness by taking away from those who created things from their own work in the first place. All transfers must require consent from the owner. But is it correct to pay athletes so much money? Nozick points out that this is what happens in a free society, when people shift resources around based on value, not need. If one thinks this is wrong, they will have to begin restricting freedom of action. The result is that entrepreneurs have no incentive to build anything, as it is only taken away from them by the state. Redistributionism is conducted out of envy. Taxation amounts to forced labor, as it means someone has to work extra hours to pay for another person. This is a reduction of liberty, because the beneficiaries of these entitlements become partial owners of you. They unjustly claim ownership of your labor - an idea that goes against all liberal principles as expounded by Locke.

Nozick proposes that people have a choice: the state (i.e. our federal government) should be minimal, presiding over a large number of smaller communities that are allowed to set their own policies. Anyone would have the freedom of movement to set up, join or leave the community of their choice. Nozick's approach to libertarianism, therefore, allows a wide range of options for individuals. People can choose high taxes, for example. They could choose worker-owned factories in a microcommunity. They could choose all sorts of arrangements. The state itself would simply prevent violence. "Social justice" is something that should be left to individuals, to engage in of their own free will if they so choose, but not the state's business. Redistributionists are arrogant in that they assume the moral high ground and yet have been abusive throughout history, stealing from others in the name of "the greater good." Nozick recognizes that since there are good ways and bad ways of running a community, that many of them will fail (and leave their citizens demanding a state bailout). However, there will also be success stories and it is the right thing to do - personal responsibility that emphasizes and develops the goodness of the individual will always bring about a more moral society than one which disregards responsibility and surrenders everything to the state.

Joseph S. Nye: The Future of Power. The man who coined the term "soft power," Nye argued that nations with the best narratives and ideas win out. Soft power alone is not enough - military power, diplomacy, cultural and moral clout are also factors of what he called "smart power." The author compares Russia's hard-power approach to China's soft power: while Russia was denounced for its invasion of Georgia, China's staging of the Olympics the same year was explicitly a soft power exercise meant to demonstrate the nation's peaceful rise. Nye did not focus on states, but rather the resources that generate power, asking if military or GDP could still be seen as indicators of power in a modern world. Consider power as a 3-layered chess board: the US is the uncontested military superpower on the top layer. In the middle layer is economic influence, which is more widespread. On the lower level are outside actors that operate separately from states (NGOs on one end, terror networks and gangs on the other). Nation-states will no longer have the power they once did, because money, ideas and diseases flow across borders more easily than ever. Issues like climate change and terrorism are also trans-national concerns. While militaries will remain important, non-state actors will be more likely to stage the threats. Nye admits, however, that given the choice between hard and soft power he would pick hard power any day, since it will save you in matters of survival and soft power can be easily lost (overused, or used to paper over hard power attacks on others, soft power just comes off as propaganda and loses legitimacy).

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Mancur Olson: The Rise and Decline of Nations. The longer a society is around, the more likely special interest groups will seek benefits for their members at the expense of everybody else, reducing inefficiency, aggregating more for themselves and making politics more divisive. Pressure groups were seen at the time of writing as a healthy part of democracy, but Olson argued that they could go bad. The problem is when these groups reject the idea of growing the economic pie and instead focus on taking a bigger piece for themselves. Like wrestlers in a china shop, they don't care about the damage caused and only care about winning. These groups hurt social mobility by demanding barriers and restrictions to keep people out (the explosion of licensing laws today in the interest of "public safety"). The special protections given to these groups means the public has to pay more, so more of their money is not being productively spent elsewhere: "the great majority of special-interest organizations redistribute wealth rather than create it, and in ways that reduce social efficiency and output."

Another example of inefficiency: union demands that a technological advance be stopped if the technology will lessen the demand for its workers. These groups fight positive change even if it would mean greater production, a large amount of benefits and more prosperity for society as a whole. Special interests back regulation to eliminate competition and create an uneven playing field. This only helps government workers or those connected to power, as knowing the right levers to pull becomes more important than actual innovation or creativity. The result is that society's brain power goes toward preserving the status quo rather than new advancements. Olson points to how competition has helped nations grow quickly: postwar West Germany and Japan took off because, once liberated, they had no established interests standing in their way. Meanwhile, Britain (which became known as the "sick man of Europe" at this time), stalled out due to all its established state regs and crippling union actions. This can even be applied to states within a federal system: compare how the southern US has grown rapidly as opposed to the stagnating northeast and midwest regions, which have been run by more established interests. The reason why free trade is so good for a nation's growth is because it allows people to get around or undercut the vested interests. Sweden and Norway, like Britain, had big unions as well but weren't functioning as badly as Britain because their government didn't try to set up tariffs, making them relatively open to market forces.

Olson points to classical liberalism's argument that the government stifles growth and is best when it gets out of the way, by saying that government isn't the only thing out there that can stifle growth. Union minwage laws are one example, since they make unemployment higher than necessary and stop companies and workers from making new agreements that would benefit both. We should also not assume that redistributive policies are meant to take from the rich and give to the poor - often it's the other way around.

George Orwell: Animal Farm. Rejected from publication twice on the grounds that Stalin had just helped win WWII. Orwell was in lefty circles but not a fan of communism. "One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc. are suddenly forgotten."

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Cucumber Quest: The Ripple Kingdom

Scott Pilgrim - unlike the movie, this was all right! Because you see, the jokes are pulled off properly in comic book form, where they work. People get surprise lines, in comics, not irl. When you make one scripted joke and meet it with condescending sitcom laughter for one panel, this works far better than milking an entire scene out of it with a random laugh track for no reason.

Back to 50 Politics Classics...

Thomas Paine: Common Sense. Responsible in large part for shifting the cause of liberty toward full American independence. While Paine noted that the British seemed more free compared to the rest of the world, it was still a monarchy with both a hereditary king and house of lords. "Though we have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the crown in possession of the key." Paine argued that monarchy is a form of idolatry that goes against natural equality, as it is rewarded by birth - the original leader may have been effective, but future generations may be saddled with an incompetent or infant ruler. "Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived." It also "reverses the common order of nature" to expect a huge American continent to be satellite to the much smaller and far-off island of Britain. Despite his attempts at persuading Jefferson, Paine was not able to get a clause in the Declaration abolishing slavery.

Plato: Crito. One of Plato's accounts on the trial of Socrates, this is written as a conversation between a death-row Plato and his wealthy friend Crito - forming an early argument for social contract theory. Although it is the mob who can have the power of life and death over others, we must live according to a universal moral standard and not the emotions of the masses. It is not life itself, but a good life that is important - an existence pursuing honor and justice. Plato refused to escape prison, therefore, because one must live one's life in accordance with the law. If he fled, why would a different city take him in and expect him to follow their laws, when he ignored the laws of his own state? Also, by fleeing Socrates would prove his critics right - that he did not respect the law and was therefore a bad example to youth. "To Socrates, laws may have been manmade, but they were part of a divine plan to see eternal truths become manifest...Socrates' final words are: 'Let me follow the course obviously set out for me by God.'"

Karl Popper: The Ope Society and Its Enemies. Written in response to Hitler's invasion of Austria in 1938, Popper viewed civilization as the transition from tribalism to larger, open and free societies - which were under attack. In volume 1, Popper aimed to dethrone Plato and Marx. Plato was the greatest promoter of a closed society, while Marx's belief in an "inevitable" new society based on his small set of ideas laid the groundwork for illiberal states of the 20th century. Even if both of them were well-meaning, the damage to society that comes from their "impatience to better the lot of our fellows" has been real and, at times, devastating. In contrast to the utopias and the workers' paradises of the world, civilized societies look for piecemeal solutions to specific problems while maintaining individual freedom and responsibility.

In Plato we find some issues that plagued us up to modern times. Plato lived in a time of war and upheaval, and Popper argued that this caused him to view all change as a corruption. In order to avoid descent into tyranny, Plato argued to preserve the state by having the "right" people in charge - avoid class war, for example, by "giving the ruling class a superiority which cannot be challenged." This class would be the only people allowed to be educated and own arms. The lower class would be treated like sheep or cattle, "not too cruelly, but with the proper contempt" as Popper put it. Plato also feared the ruling class would splinter from within, so his proposed solutions were to end all loyalty to anything but the state - accomplished through the abolition of family and an end to private property. Plato even proposed a system of human breeding so only the best would continue on. Popper argues that Plato wished for a return to tribalism, rejecting the Athenian city state, its social mobility and subsequent instability/changes within society.

Though Plato's state never came about, Popper argues his ideas have been the template for every collectivist state based on social engineering for "the greater good." This strips people of their individual potential and creativity, since their personal well-being no longer matters vs the central planner's goals for the good of society. Instead of viewing a state's strength as related to the combined contributions of individuals, Plato and the totalitarian states said that the value of the individual only comes from the state. Popper criticized the social sciences of his time for viewing Plato as a humanitarian, while glossing over his radical positions - in fact, Plato's misperception as being liberal included the mistranslation of his work as "The Republic" when a more accurate title would've been "The City-State" or "The State." Popper compares Plato to a political artist (and this includes dictators such as Lenin, who said "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"). Plato viewed a political ideal in his head and to get there, he had to aggressively brush out the existing canvas to start from scratch with a blank one. This too often leads directly to justification of state violence to reach these ends. Popper's open society, in contrast, is one where individuals have a right to carve out their own lives according to their own plans.

Philosophies that argued for being "on the right side of history" or "inevitable" were referred to by Popper as historicism. An ancient parallel would be "chosen people" meant to inherit the earth, or racists who argued it was "natural law" for one race to inevitably prevail over the weaker ones. Marx's inevitable worker state is cut from the same cloth. In each of these movements, the individual is nothing and has no say against the wider forces of history which are allegedly, inevitably moving against him. Popper also attacks Marx's influence Hegel for worshiping the state (Hegel was the first official philosopher of the militarist Prussian state). "Nearly all the more important ideas of modern totalitarianism are directly inherited from Hegel." When all authority lies with the state, blatant propaganda and lying are permissible in order to accomplish goals. Hegel also argued in favor of military conquest for glory, opposing the bourgeoise person as living only for material/personal ends. This philosophy contributed to Germany's warrior attitude leading up to WWI. Marx ended up going his own way, but kept Hegel's idea of historical inevitability and argued that there was no use in day-to-day incremental changes to the current system, which would be overthrown anyway. Popper points out that historicism, therefore, gets in the way of reasoned, scientific approaches to solving social problems. "Popper suggests that the key to understanding why people support grand historicist ideas is that it absolves them of personal responsibility. After all, if the composition of society is due to impersonal forces, the development of the individual is unnecessary."