Degrading shitwork

If we assume a person sleeps 8 hours a night and works a full time job, 40 hours a week, that person would nearly half their waking hours at some place of employment. And for what?

The con of wages is that by definition you are being paid less than what you have earned. If you are creating 15$ an hour of goods or services, you will be paid less than this. Otherwise how would an employer not spend everything on labor costs? The actual value, the full value of what you have created flows up the pyramid to those who own or manage the work you are doing.

Most people go to a job they don't like to make other people rich in exchange for not having to sleep in a dumpster.

Essential Anarchist Texts

The Conquest of Bread

by Peter Kropotkin

The definitive work of anarcho-communism, Kropotkin's profoundly idealistic work envisions a society founded on unceasing cooperation between all people. His intense love of mankind glows from behind the pages. Is it naive? Probably. Will the whole world ever follow what Kropotkin proposes as the best system? Probably not. But still, one of the oldest and most venerable of anarchists should be read by anyone seeking a full view of libertarian economics.

Blackest Night

*spoilers*

As much as the cynic in me recognizes the inherent con of a never ending series of massive company crossovers, the sucker in me can't help but read them.

Blackest Night is DC's current ongoing event. So far I respect it for a number of things. The first is explicitly dealing with the concept of comic book death. Why is death a revolving door for certain people? So far the question has only been raised, but I hope it will be dealt with. Blackest Night: Batman was good. It had both Tim and Dick trying to deal with the fact they will never see their parents again. And a guest appearance from the ever lovable Deadman!

The main series has so far chewed through characters like a lawnmower through a stack of baseball cards. So far the dead include: Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Kyle Rayner, Aqualad, Hawk and half of Firestorm. Why am I impressed with killing characters off? What's the difference between cheap stunts and good writing? It's a fine line, but with comic universes being static any shake up is a positive.

And who wouldn't love armies of flying zombies?

And pray for a resurrection...

Martian Manhunter

Who he is: A standard of the Justice League for many many years. Never really successfully carried his own series, so that sort of puts him on the top of the B list.

How he died: In the first issue of Final Crisis, Libra, a harbinger of Darkseid stabs Martian Manhunter to death. A funeral is held and everyone is very sad. :(

How long has he been dead: About a year and counting.

Chances of coming back to life: Medium. He was never really all that popular as a stand alone character, and as far as I'm aware there's no cry for him to come back. That said, as a member of Justice League, he should not be counted out completely.

Batman

Who he is: Probably the most popular comic book character, second only to Superman in terms being instantly recognizable.

How he died: Also during Final Crisis, Darkseid shot him with the "Omega Sanction", the death that is life. His body is fried to a crisp and he is buried in the ground. In the last issue of Final Crisis we see him stranded in the past, back in caveman days. This is due to the nature of the Omega Sanction, which traps someone in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, with each life being worse than the last. Basically, a Hell tailored to each individual person that Darkseid shoots out of his eyes. Mr. Miracle escaped from it before, and now it's Batman's turn.

Time spent dead: About a year and counting

Probability of coming back: Certain. Grant Morrison says he was never meant to "die", just be out of the picture for a while as part of an overall story line.

Various people's families and girlfriends

This groups contains the parents of Tim Drake, Hal Jordan, Batman, Captain Marvel, The Question, Dick Grayson, and Superman. Also included are Superman's adopted father, Kyle Rayner's parents and various girl friends, as well Spiderman's Uncle Ben. Those are the big ones, there are others too numerous to mention.

How they usually die: One of two ways. Either as part of the character's origin, in which we never really see them alive. Or, a villain kills them, and in the case of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex, stuffs them in an appliance.

Possibility of coming back: Nil. As characters either created as corpses or killed to provoke an emotional response, their purpose has been served.

The Question

Who he is: An Objectivist superhero created by Steve Ditko. He then got turned into a vaguely Zen inspired introspective fellow by Dennis O'Neil, and then into an urban shaman by Rick Veitch.

How he died: Of cancer. After hand picking and training his replacement, Question expired from lung cancer on the side of a snowy mountain. His last words: "Time to change...like a butterfly..."

Time spent dead: About three years so far.

Possibility of coming back: Low. Rucka, the writer that killed him off, is currently writing his replacement. It was a well written death and his new replacement is a good character. Furthermore, he never really hit the A-list to begin with, so there's no massive outcry for him to come back.

The New Gods

Who are they: Jack Kirby created an entire mythology of Superheroes/Gods that lived in a separate dimension (called the Fourth World) in the DCU. The good Gods of New Genesis battle endlessly against Darkseid, the God of Evil.

How they died: During DC's Countdown series, a spin-off called (appropriately) Death of the New Gods killed them all off. Their creator, the Source, found them to be a failed creation and destroyed them all, in preparation for creating a Fifth World.

The continuity got a bit messy. In Countdown, the planet Apokolips is last seen taken over by Brother Eye and the OMACs. There is no mention of this in the Death of the New Gods series, which was published concurrently. At the end of Death of the New Gods, all of them are dead except Darkseid and Orion, and the story then segue ways into the last few issues of Countdown. Orion rips out Darkseid's heart, and then walks off, severely injured, as the last surviving New God.

Immediately following Countdown starts Final Crisis. We find Orion dead in the first issue, but Darkseid's soul has possessed an avatar of his that lives on Earth, Boss Darkside, whom we saw in Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory. He then, somehow, summons the spirits of his various sidekicks, who all possess Earth inhabitants as well. Darkseid takes over the Earth and defeats goodness, erases free will and just generally makes a mess of things.

In the end, even the God of Evil can't stand against a pissed of Superman and Batman's infinite supply of bad ass. First, Batman shoots him with a bullet that can kill Gods. His body is poisoned. Then both Flashes cause Darkseid to get struck by the Black Racer, a sort of Grim Reaper character. This separates his soul from his body. Wonder Woman lassos his body, breaking the hold he had established over the people of Earth. Last, but not least, Superman completely obliterates his soul by...(wait for it)..singing. ("Darkseid always hated music," Superman quips.)

Possibility of coming back: Certain. It's just a matter of time before someone gets around to it. Grant Morrison seems a likely candidate, but it probably won't happen until, at the very last, DC's current big event Blackest Night finishes up. I would like to thank they'll leave Darkseid dead considering how utterly destroyed he ended up getting, but I guess we'll see.

Alan Moore's trash is another man's treasure?

In a recent interview comics guru and cranky old grandpa figure Alan Moore said the following:

" It’s the paucity of imagination. I was noticing that DC seems to have based one of its latest crossovers [Blackest Night] in Green Lantern based on a couple of eight-page stories that I did 25 or 30 years ago. I would have thought that would seem kind of desperate and humiliating, When I have said in interviews that it doesn't look like the American comic book industry has had an idea of its own in the past 20 or 30 years, I was just being mean. I didn’t expect the companies concerned to more or less say, “Yeah, he’s right. Let’s see if we can find another one of his stories from 30 years ago to turn into some spectacular saga.” It’s tragic. The comics that I read as a kid that inspired me were full of ideas. They didn’t need some upstart from England to come over there and tell them how to do comics. They’d got plenty of ideas of their own. But these days, I increasingly get a sense of the comics industry going through my trashcan like raccoons in the dead of the night."

So what should be made of this? I submit for evidence two scans, one from an issue of the current ongoing series Green Lantern Corps and one from a short story written by Alan Moore many many years ago called Tygers.

Anyway, this is from Moore's story:

And this is from Green Lantern Corps:

Ok, so the one borrows from the other. How many specific elements from Moore's short story are incorporated into the current ongoing Green Lantern stories?

-Demon Plant Ysmault

-The character Quill

-The group Quill references he is a member of, "The Five Inversions"

-Children of the White Lobe

-Sentient city of Ranx as an enemy of the GL Corps

-Evildoers attempting to detonate blink bombs in the core of Mogo

-The greatest Lantern, Sodam Yat

-The prophecy given to Abin Sur is a major plot point, and is quoted from directly one other occasion other than the above

-A major plot point is that Abin Sur was driven mad by the the prophecy, which we also see in the short story, and that it indirectly lead to his death

So, does that mean that "Blackest Night" is a rip-off of Tygers? I wouldn't say so. But it would be dishonest to say they aren't intentionally borrowing almost every facet of this short story.

No good superhero stays dead.

I love comics. I really do. I believe as a medium "sequential art" has an almost unsurpassed ability to display both information, emotion and ideas with no limit on imagination or ingenuity. That said, almost all of comics is dominated by two companies: DC and Marvel. And the overwhelming majority of their output is part of one genre: superhero comics. And I like superheros. I do. But there are issues with the genre. Case in point: death. Superheroes die, and they have an annoying habit of coming back to life. If you're going to kill someone off, at least let them stay dead. It really stretches suspension of disbelief to the breaking point and beyond. Anyway, here are some thoughts on specific people.

Superman

Who He Is: Probably the most iconic and recognizable super hero of all time.

Death: Beaten to death by newly created villain Doomsday. The world mourns, people crap money buying comics.

Time Spent Dead: About a year.

Resurrection: As Superman is basically a solar battery, judicious application of Kryptonian technology is able to recharge him to life, albeit without most of his power. He later gets his powers back while fighting against Cyborg Superman near the end of the storyline. The Death and Return of Superman story is sort of the classic example of a big marketing gimmick. The same storyline that killed him off in the beginning brought him back at the end.

A number of characters were introduced, however, that are still with us: Steel, Superboy, Doomsday and Cyborg Superman.

Rating: I'd give it a C-. It has had a lasting impact, creating a number of new characters, (which comics sorely needs) both heroes and villains. At the end of the day, it was basically a massive marketing ploy.

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

Who He Is: A staple of the DCU, a Justice League member, with hundreds of issues of his own various titles under his belt.

Death: After his home city of Coast City was completely destroyed by Cyborg Superman during the Death of Superman saga, Hal kinda lost his marbles for a while. Determined to undo the murder of 7 million people by any means necessary, he betrays the Green Lantern Corps in an attempt to obtain enough power to rewrite history. Becomes super villian known as Parralax and kills various Green Lanterns and Guardians of the Universe in his new found mania. Later, in a moment of self sacrifice, dies to save the Earth from a creature (a Sun-Eater) that was, as you might imagine from the name, eating the Sun.

Time Spent Dead: Hard to explain. (Basically three years) (But also eight years)

Resurrection: After dying, Hal was chosen to become the new Spectre, a supernatural spirit of vengeance. So, at this point Hal as a person is still dead, but we can consider him alive as he is still an active character. About five years after this, it was retconned that Hal had not gone insane per-se, but had been possessed by an entity known as Parallax. After being purged of this entity Hal is freed from The Spectre and returns to life. Through a second series of retcons we find out that the Green Lanterns he killed are, like, still alive and stuff. And then he rescues them, thereby resolving him of a great deal of moral responsibility. Batman seems to be the only one that remembers Hal trying to blow up the Universe.

Rating: This one is really absurd, even by comic book standards. Well intentioned, but completely all over the place. Johns continued presence in the Green Lantern Universe is great, though, once he got this out of his system. I'll give it a C for good intentions.

Superboy

Who he was: A clone of Superman and Lex Luthor created during the Death of Superman saga. Bounced around in his own series for a while, went through a number of costume changes before settling into the Titans.

Death: Killed by Superboy Prime during the Infinite Crisis storyline. Died a hero fighting against impossible odds. The kind of death Superheroes envy.

Time Spent Dead: Four years

Resurrection: Superheroes from the future, the Legion of Super-Heroes, are locked in a struggle against Superboy Prime, who is basically unstoppable. At this point he has survived a release of energy equivalent to the Big Bang and an explosion capable of destroying the entire Milky Way galaxy. They send one of their number back in time, who then retrieves Superboy's body and places him in the same chamber that was able to recharge Superman back to life. Back in the future, after being recharged for 1,000 years, Superboy pops back up and keeps on fighting Superboy Prime. After Superboy Prime is (finally?) defeated, Superboy Regular is then sent back in time to a year after he died.

Rating: Considering the same author killed him, and then later brought him back, the phrase "cheap stunt" comes to mind. And time travel is kind of the ultimate escape hatch for a comic book writer. I'll give it another C-.

Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)

Who he was: A staple of the DCU, he kinda fluctuated in purpose. His first big break was as a costar of Green Lantern. He later joined the "grim and gritty" trend with his own Mature Audiences ongoing series. Green Arrow transitioned away from that and become more of a standard superhero. One of the most socially conscious characters in mainstream comics, he routinely rails against "fat cats" and "The Man."

Death: Blown up by a group of eco-terrorists while aboard an airplane.

Time Spent dead: About six years.

Resurrection: Hoo boy...His old friend Hal Jordan, who had gone insane and become almost God like in power, before sacrificing himself to save the Earth, resurrected Green Arrow. To make things more complicated, he did not bring him back to life from when he died, but from an earlier time in his life when they were both at the height of their friendship. He then later had to re-unite with his soul to become a whole person, and is now a mainstay of the DCU.

Rating: Preposterous levels are very high. It was, however, very well written by Kevin Smith. The time he spent dead showed it wasn't just a cheap stunt. I'll give Green Arrow's resurrection a B.

The Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)

Who She Was: A sort of C-grade Batman supporting character. Her big claim to fame was that she was Robin's (Tim Drake) girlfriend.

Death: Murdered by Black Mask, a twisted, sadistic, nihilist gangster.

Time spent dead: about four years (sort of)

Resurrection: Pulled the whole "I wasn't really dead" trick. She was nursed back to health by a friend, cruelly let all her former loved ones believe she was dead for reasons best known to herself. She just recently premiered as the new Batgirl. Oddly, she had been seen as a ghost during the time period she was thought to be dead.

Rating: Considering how much of a minor character she was, bringing her back seems rather pointless in comparison for just creating a new character to fill whatever her role as the new Batgirl is going to be. D.

Jason Todd (aka Red Hood, aka Robin 2 aka "Batman")

Who he was: After the first Robin grew up and became Nightwing, Jason Todd become the new Robin. He was a fairly unpopular character, and when DC later held a poll to decide whether he would live or die, the fans gave him the thumbs down. This paved the way for the new/popular Robin of Tim Drake.

Death: The Joker beat him to a pulp with a crowbar, and then tied him up and set off a bomb. Batman rushed to the scene only to find Jason's lifeless body.

Resurrection: During the Hush storyline, where all of the A list Batman villains united with new villain Hush to (totally) get rid of Batman once and for all (we swear it will work this time), Batman fights what appears to be an adult Jason Todd. In the next issue we find this was just shape shifting Clayface trying to mess with Batman's head.

It was then retconned that it was Jason Todd the first time, and subsequent encounters were actually Clayface. How did Jason come back? Well, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy Prime is trapped in a pocket dimension. Everytime he beats agains the walls of his pocket dimension, ripples cause disturbances and shifts throughout the universe. One of these disturbances brought Jason Todd back to life, albeit without most of his faculties. A quick bath in a Lazarus Pit brought him back to 100%. He then became a villian known as Red Hood, had extra-dimensional adventures, tried to become the new Batman and then became Red Hood again.

Rating: The "Superboy Prime punching reality in the face" trick is now derivesly called a "retcon punch." With good reason, the words "really super fucking lazy writing" come to mind. F.

Bucky

Who he was: Captain America's sidekick. Cap's origin story introducing him to post WW2 comics includes Bucky dying whereupon immidaetely after Cap is frozen in ice for twenty years.

Death: In the final days of WW2, a super secret Nazi unmanned plane carrying explosives is launched from an airfield with both Captain America and Bucky hanging on for the ride. Cap falls off into the Arctic ocean as the plan detonates, killing Bucky.

Time Spent Dead: Almost 40 years

Resurrection: Turns out he wasn't really dead. He was frozen in the ice similar to Cap, where the Russians found him and brainwashed him into a living weapon called the Winter Soldier. As the Winter Soldier, Bucky would perform assassinations and secret missions, and then get frozen between missions, causing him to have aged very little in the intervening years. Cap helps free up his mind from the evil Russians' influence and he becomes the new Captain America when Steve Rogers bites the bullet.

Rating: I'll be honest, I haven't been following this one real closely. But bringing Bucky back seems about as necessary as bringing Uncle Ben back. I'm leaving this one rating-less, but my initial thoughts are not good.

Police force as a subsidy to Landlords

What happens in a traditional rental/land-lord relationship when the renter stops paying rent? The landlord will call the police, and eventually the police will come and evict you. The police do not charge for this service, they are, after all, benevolent enough to stop both poor men and rich men from sleeping under bridges.

If a landlord does not live up to his obligations, what choices does the renter have? He may move out, most commonly with the option of either breaking his lease, forfeiting the deposit, or wait for his lease to run out, paying for services that are not satisfactory. In other words, the landlord has no immediate incentive to fulfill his obligations satisfactorily, at worst he can receive bad word of mouth. If the renter does not fulfill his obligations, i.e. stops paying rent, the landlord can have him evicted for free by the police.

If the police were not here to fulfill this role, the landlord would have to pay a security force to play this function. This would increase the cost of doing business, and all landlords would have to charge higher rents. Cooperative housing would thus be more efficient, and be able to compete successfully against, traditional landlord/renter housing, not having this additional cost.

In other words, traditional landlord/renter relationships are a byproduct of The State.

Democracy is coming to the USA...

The Health Care debate is interesting to watch from the perspective of seeing so many interest groups collide against each other.

Radical Democrats rail against the Health Insurance companies, harnessing (justifiable) populist anger and channeling it into political support. Meanwhile Radical Republicans are violently opposing it, with murmurs of Hitler comparisons and violence bubbling up amongst their supporters.

Both of these positions aren't based on anything principled, merely attempts to harness populist anger into political support. My statement that these statements are not principled is that most of the Radical opposition is based on fanciful claims and that the Health Care reform that the Radical anti-health insurance industry Democrats supports is basically a bail-out for the insurance companies, excepting only the "Public option."

The Health insurance industry is enthusiastically for "health care reform", as long the public option is nixed. This extremely corporate friendly reform is billed by some as a blow against Big Business and by others as a Marxist take over. It is neither.

I think this article illustrates the true nature of Health care reform: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-healthcare-insurers24-2009aug24,0,6925890.story

Describe a revolution while standing on one leg...

One Big Union. General Strike. Community Technology. LETS. Private Currency. Microcredit. Mutual Aid Societies. Permanent Autonomous Zones. Voluntary Socialism!

Community Technology

Community technology by Karl Hess is one of the most inspiring books I've read in a long time. Hess is (extremely) light on theory and heavy on both hope and cold hard ideas. His basic supposition is a call to local autonomy of communities. This fits extremely well, in my mind at least, with the Anarchist idea of a counter economy. Imagine a community functioning without any connection or reliance on the Corporate-State economy. The three things that struck me most were the things they were able to successfully pull off in the run down Adam-Morgans neighborhood.

Food.

Hess shows how a community, even an entirely urban community, can supply large portions of it's own food by using un-used space. Roof-tops or unused warehouse space, basements, or abandoned lots can be converted to green house hydroponics, yielding high volume of fruits or vegetables considering the amount of labor/space. People themselves can grow "victory gardens" and collaborate their yields in local "farmer's markets", or simply supplement their own diets. As far as protein goes, Hess outlines how aquaculture can, again using unused space, generate an enormous amount of a simply raised fish, rainbow trout in the book. Again, using un-used space a moderate amount of labor can have an enormous yield compared to the market needed to fulfill.

Energy.

Even more so than when the book was written, solar should allow complete energy independence for a given community. Covering rooftops with solar panels would create a local energy grid, shifting power where it's needed in the community. Electric cars would be run off of the solar generated electricity and easily provide the transportation needs of the overwhelming majority of a city's residents.

Other things he mentions is saving up money for renters to buy the apartment buildings they live in. Adding a few Anarchist ideas like a People's Bank and a general strike to drive out the remnants of the Corporate-State economy, which would then be appropriated according to Rothbard's confiscation principle, and you're looking at a beautiful thing. A revolution without firing a shot.

Say you want a revolution?

Lately, one can't help but notice the word revolution enter the lexicon. On message boards, youtube videos and statements to the press I keep hearing this country might be headed for a revolution. And, as an anarchist, as much as I oppose our current corrupt murderous system, an amry of gun-stockpiling conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, angry white men all, is more frightening than anything we're likely (fingers crossed) to see from the Obama administration.

The Ghetto in our Hearts

(part 2)

As the Gilded Age winded down, the great business empires were continually frustrtated by their failure to achieve either monopoly or industry cartels. US Steel, Standard Oil and their ilk were enormously wealthy, but unceasing competition were starting to contract profits of these unwieldy behemoths. And they did what every good businessman in trouble does: ask the government for help. And although there was much dis-agreement between business leaders, regulators and the Presidents, the major continuity remained clear: to cartelize each industry to provide "stability". Competition is war, after all, and war is Hell.

A good example is Teddy Roosevelt's Pure Food and Drug Laws. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair had created a furor for clean food laws. No one seemed to notice that this wasn't the point of the novel, nor (as Sinclair points out in the novels) was the industry opposed to it. The Meat Trust couldn't sell their disgusting products in foregin markets, they had been entirely blocked, and The Jungle was giving them a ton of bad PR. So the Bull-Moose himself stepped in. With the new FDA seal of approval, foregin markets allowed American meat in again, and the public's disgust began to subside. Was there in any improvment in the quality of the meat? In some cases, marginal improvements, more often than not though the regulators worked at the discretion of the Meat Trust.

And so it goes. When Populist outrage (justifiably) grew against the "Money Trust", the handful of super banks running the economy, when recessions followed recession without sight in end, business people began writing proposals to "stabilize" the banking industry. Legislation first drafted by Chambers of Commerce would end up getting proposed in Congress. And that's where the Federal Reserve came from. And so it goes, again and again. The public is outraged, as they usually should be, but any attempt at "reform" is drafted and supervised by the very people who are being "reformed", conforming to very narrow lines of thought, and although concessions to the public are usually made, the winners are always the same.

The Ghetto in our Hearts

Discussions of the American economy are so rife with mis-charectorization and outright falsehoods, a person needs a sword to cut through all the cobwebs. Or, short of a sword, a book.

Two such books are The Triumph of Conservatism and Regulating the Poor. Both books deal with two areas of the American economy most commonly mis-understood: regulation and welfare.

Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko is a revionist look at the "Progressive Era", the period at the tail end of the Gilded Age whereupon the modern regulatory apparatus was born. The book traces the Roosevelt administration and the two subsequent presidencies, Taft and Wilson.

The common myth of regulation has two sides, either the government is filled with naive do gooder liberals who attempt to fiddle with economy, to the detriment of everyone involved, out of either a misguided and quixotic quest for equality, a hatred for the wealthy, or perhaps a deep seated love of Karl Marx; or, the government is simply trying to mitigate the excesses of the market place. Both these views are completely false. They contain a fundamental mis-understanding, a beleif that Big Business and Big Government are opposed. A cursory understanding of history shows the relationship to not be one of either antagonism or even parasitism, but of a symbiosis. Big Business and Big Government feed off and support each other to rob cheat and steal from the rest of the country.

(end of part 1)

The Strange Death of American Freedom?

There seems to be a popular meme floating around, both right and left, in the mainstream of political discourse. Something to the effect of: America has fallen from it's lofty perch. America's founding was a great and noble, but the government has fallen into corruption since then. The wisdom of the Founding Father's has left us. Our freedoms are being taken away.

And yet, any objective look at history shows that America is exponentially more free now then when it was founded. The Founding Father's spoke of self determination and freedom. And founded a country with a massive slave based feudalism. They talked of "taxation without representation", and yet the only people who were represented were wealthy white landowners. And while striking a blow against Imperialism, they wiped out the Native Americans. The slaves are free, the franchise is universal and domestic populations are no longer being ethnically cleansed. America is more free than it ever has been. Which isn't to give any credit to the government, nor to deny they are trying to take our freedoms away.

The supposed act that represented America's long fall into slavery is debated, some say the creation of the Federal Reserve, some the New Deal. And yet the hidden assumption seems to be that the freedom of blacks, the poor, women or Indians doesn't matter. The only freedom to be concerned with is Middle class white America.

We need to recognize that the Founding Father's weren't saints, that America's founding wasn't special, and that society is slowly improving. We just need to find out how to help it along, and stop the occasional reactionary back slides.

P.S. to Thoughts on Healthcare

In addition to the below information, I think it is also likely that Americans would be more overall healthy without the continuous government interference in the market. One of the largest ongoing welfare programs is the Farm Subsidy program, where the government pays huge sums of money for people (and multi-million dollar international companies) to grow enormous quantities of inedible corn. This corn is either used as animal feed, leading to corn fed beef, which has a higher fat content than grass fed beef, and highly processed food pumped full of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both of these are cheaper than they would otherwise be due to their reliance on a subsidized crop. It's damn near impossible to not eat High Fructose Corn Syrup and it's prevalence coincides with a drop in price, and thus rise in consumption, of highly processed pseudo-food.

Without all of this, it's safe to assume that people would be healthier and require less health care overall.

Musings on Health Care

The Pharmaceutical industry is often a target of populist scorn, but rarely is it mentioned in mainstream conversation that one of their main sources of power is a government created monopoly: a patent. With the elimination of the patent system the cost of all patented products would decrease dramatically as competition exploded. Medicine would become cheaper, health care costs would go down.

It sounds absurd (to some) to say it aloud, but our government has taken direct action, through regulation, to increase doctor's pay by creating an artificial shortage of providers. Largely done at the behest of the AMA, these regulations, if removed, would allow qualified professionals from other countries to practice in the US, as well as more people being able to become doctors. The number of providers would go up, the cost of health care would go down.

Under the current tax code, under an apparent attempt to stave off socialism (boo! hiss!), employers are given tax incentives to offer health care to the employees. This ties people to their employer for health insurance. Health insurance is then a commodity where the person who actually uses it is not involved in the choosing of the finer details. An agreement is reached between the employer and a health insurance carrier, and the employee is given some options, A B or C, for example. Removal of these incentives would give more consumer choice for health insurance, and the decreased cost of health care would decrease entry cost into health insurance, leading to more companies. All of this together would lead to a more de-centralized health care industry, as well as a more equitable one.

It goes without saying this is a very complex topic, and these are simply some brief thoughts on the matter.

Legacy

John Ostrander, the writer who brought us the best work ever done on the Spectre, is currently offering an ongoing series in the Star Wars universe, set over a hundred years after the film and thus taking place long after all other stories. What an intriguing concept. Upon reading, one must struggle mightily to keep down the disappointment, as the plot is mostly rehashes of previous stories.

A Sith Lord takes over the Galaxy and is hunthing down the Jedi! Wow, what an original plot twist. An alliance of Rebel fighters, striking from secret bases, fights against the new Imperial power. Hmmm....that seems familiar, too. There are strong points, a frontlines view of an Imperial civil war, the story of the new Sith Lord and the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong among others...but overall it seems like such a waste. This could have been an oppurtinity to create something entirely original and so far Ostrander doesn't seem to have even tried.

The Empire Strikes Back

Recent, within the last decades, advances in the way Americans relate to the past and the world around them has long provoked a reactionary backlash. A better example could not be found than a history book released fairly recently. The book attempts to be a response to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which committed the heinous sin, in some people's mind, of presenting a historical perspective focusing on 99% of the population, instead of the 1% that makes up the generals/leaders/wealthy. (I'm paraphrasing Zinn there.)

Hence we now have a massive tome entitled A Patriot's History of the United States: from Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror. The title tells us everything we need to know about this book, presumably the author's intent. What are we to make of this, and how worried should we be that some people want to go back to a 1950's worldview: the Indians were savages, America is the greatest country that has ever existed and we should believe whatever our leaders tell us?

The real kicker is that subtitle, though. What exactly did Columbus discover and what was so great about it? We know now that Columbus wasn't the first European to make his way to North America, viking explorers can claim that title. Which ignores the the larger question: how can someone discover something millions of people already knew since the day they were born? It's like saying I discovered blogs when I first started one. In which the discovery is personal only, and of no historical value, obviously not the intent. The only way we can keep Columbus' discovery great is by denying that the original inhabitants of America were even people. Hence, Columbus discovered an un-inhabitated wilderness. In which case, the title of the book is inherently racist and ethnocentric. As for the greatness of this supposed "discovery", it doesn't seem to have been so great for the Indians, who would spend the next 500+ years being slaughtered by colonial powers and their proxies.

Sadly, I don't see the "Columbus' Great Discovery" meme going anywhere. Until, we all just need to preserve and spread the truth about history: the heroes weren't always the winners and the winners weren't always the heroes.

Gift economy

There was a pot luck (sp?) at work last Friday, and it got me thinking about a gift economy. (an economy with no exchange) The pot luck being a perfect example: entry into the system requires you bring one thing, it doesn't a certain type, shape or minimum value. Once in the system, you can take as much as you want from everything that was brought.

The equivalent would be some kind of community store, and bringing in an item would give you access to the store. If the communal store were to have enough item's to satisfy people's needs, we would need many more people contributing than a simple pot luck. And what stops a handful of bad apples from abusing the system? Once you start trying to figure out this nugget things get hairy fast. Employees would be needed to monitor the community store and to make sure people weren't just bringing in garbage. Who would the employees be? Anyone in the community could volunteer, perhaps, and maybe working a shift would count as a contribution to the store. How often would a person need to contribute? Once a week? Once a month? Once in their lifetime?

Perhaps there could be a share/use ratio, like p2p sites. And anyone who's ratio is within certain bounds is trusted to use the system to it's full extent. Anyone who hasn't contributed much in a while needs to contribute x number of goods to get back in good standing. Again more regulation, more problems arise. Maybe people are good enough that no such rules would be needed at all? It's hard to say.

Judging a comic by it's cover

After having read the first two issues of the new Vigilante series, I can say that many times you can judge a comic by it's cover. Case in point: is there a non descript character spraying seven pounds of shell-casings out of his weapons, as if carrying some kind of ammunition fountain? If yes, peruse inside: is there large amounts of sanitized violence and %$#@ed words? If so, you are holding an extremely pointless comic striving to capture some kind of dangerous bad-ass mystique. And for some reason I bought the second issue before learning my lesson.

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Jimmy Corrigan, an oddly shaped, bizarrely structured comic by a writer/artist that's never done mainstream work, is probably one of the best comics ever published. It can be hard to get through, I admit to two failed attempts before completing it in one day. When it was finished, my faith in humanity had been thoroughly destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt again.

The "story" concerns a 39 year old man, the title character, with seemingly no friends and no ability to socialize, who's only point of contact with humanity is his Mom, living in a nursing home, who calls him several times a day. Jimmy has a severe crush on a co-worker, but can't say more than ten words to her. He has never met his father, and when he gets a letter from dear old pop asking to meet he feels a compulsion to meet the odd old man. The unfolding story then stars, Jimmy, his father and his grandfather, all named Jimmy Corrigan as far as I can ascertain. All are lonely, the youngest is a perpetual bachelor, the older two are widowers. Loneliness pervades the book, dripping off ever panel, of which there are sometimes 30+ of on a single page. As we cut back and forth between Jimmy's grandfather growing up as a 9 year old circa the first World's Fair, all three Jimmy's daydreams, nightmares and random musings and modern day Jimmy's self hatred and total lack of assertiveness, a heartbreaking, but all too realistic portrayal of fractured modern life emerges. The effect is hard to describe, but is undeniable. Echoing a comment on the inside jacket, it seems like an intense act of either bravery or masochism on the author's part to even publish this quasi-autobiographical document.

My original interest came about due to Neil Gaiman mentioning Jimmy Corrigan on the inside cover of Blankets. Blankets being the best comic since Jimmy Corrigan, supposedly. Jimmy Corrigan is the better work however, a kind of artifact reminiscent perhaps of what would result if a human heart was cut open, and the jumble of thoughts and feelings that poured out were transformed via alchemy into a work of fiction.

Thoughts on property...

I would like to comment on a news story from a month ago. Quoted sections are below

"Welcome to the revolution," Rosemary said, greeting a homeless couple looking for housing.

....

Lonnetta and Dwayne took a seat on Rosemary's couch. Dwayne, 52, walking on crutches from a series of recent foot surgeries, explained that he lost his janitorial job in June when he broke his foot. The married couple asked that their last name not be used.

"Welcome to the Revolution!"

Forced to survive on Lonnetta's $637 a month Social Security check, the couple soon became homeless. Social service providers told them to stay at Harbor Light, a homeless shelter in downtown Minneapolis, where the couple would be housed on different floors. Lonnetta, 48, feared being separated from her sick husband who she said needs frequent reminders to take his medication. Instead, the couple started living out of their truck.

A relative put Lonnetta and Dwayne in contact with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a national anti-poverty organization based in Minneapolis.

....

Meanwhile, Honkala grabbed several documents left on the downstairs kitchen counter, including paperwork stating that HUD owns the house. One document indicated that the home was last inspected on February 3rd.

full story

Here we have people actually doing something about the current economic situation. There are those who would question the legitimacy of this action, however. For example, a comment on the original story:

Poverty rights?

Hey, how about property rights? If that property doesn’t belong to you, you have no business there!

Talk about a sense of entitlement. Not that I don’t feel sorry for people down on their luck…but that doesn’t give people the right to trespass or steal!

The first two sentences present a good point: What about property rights? And they people involved certainly did not own the house before they took it for their own. So who did own the house? The article states the Housing and Urban Development Department was the current owner. From their website:

What is a HUD Home?
A HUD home is a 1 to 4 unit residential property acquired by HUD as a result of a foreclosure action on an FHA-insured mortgage. HUD becomes the property owner and offers it for sale to recover the loss on the foreclosure claim

What is the Federal Housing Administration?

The Federal Housing Administration, generally known as "FHA", provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders throughout the United States and its territories. FHA insures mortgages on single family and multifamily homes including manufactured homes and hospitals. It is the largest insurer of mortgages in the world, insuring over 34 million properties since its inception in 1934.

What is FHA Mortgage Insurance?

FHA mortgage insurance provides lenders with protection against losses as the result of homeowners defaulting on their mortgage loans. The lenders bear less risk because FHA will pay a claim to the lender in the event of ahomeowner's default. Loans must meet certain requirements established by FHA to qualify for insurance.

Why does FHA Mortgage Insurance exist?

Unlike conventional loans that adhere to strict underwriting guidelines, FHA-insured loans require very little cash investment to close a loan. There is more flexibility in calculating household income and payment ratios. The cost of the mortgage insurance is passed along to the homeowner and typically is included in the monthly payment.

So, long story short, the government helps lenders, at the cost of the borrower, reduce their risk. When the home was foreclosed, as so many were when the economic house of cards tumbled down, the HUD took over the home. And promptly let it fill with cob webs. With the housing markets down, it could be a while before the HUD finds buyers, and thus the home-owners are driven out by the police so their house can gather dust. What theory of property rights is this? By what right does the government lay claim to empty property? And property rights theories that protect vacant government lots while families sleep in their cars leads to a question: whence did this theory come? And it seems to have quite the emotion behind it: witness other comments on the original article that express more anger than the quoted section.

Without attempting to trace the origin of the theory that the State has the right to hold property vacant, while children sleep under bridges, through history, we ask ourselves? Who benefits? The first beneficiary is the government, who can turn a profit by participating in the real estate market. As their website explains:

Are there any special programs?
Properties in designated areas are available at a reduced sales price to law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, nonprofits and local governments. ... Although HUD does not offer financing directly, some of our homes qualify for FHA-insured loans.

How is FHA funded?

FHA is the only government agency that operates entirely from its self-generated income and costs the taxpayers nothing. The proceeds from the mortgage insurance paid by the homeowners are captured in an account that is used to operate the program entirely.

While exceptions might be made for government employees and charity cases, this system is clearly not run to benefit the population at large. Who else benefits? The banks who have FHA mortgage insurance and real estate agents who get commission selling the homes. And lastly, regular people, sometimes, possibly, maybe. By what right should a homeless couple accept a definition of property rights that benefits everyone but themselves? It is clear that the view of property rights they are running afoul of was likely propagated and/or created by either the State or it's direct beneficiaries.

Property rights were not handed to man, from God, on a stone tablet. They should be part of a functioning society, not an impediment. Property should be some kind of social consensus, not an iron clad rule enforced by those who benefit from it.

If a property is not being used, and the owner, the State, has never used it for anything, why should not someone use it themselves? Have they not abandoned it by letting it lay dormant for so long? Why shouldn't a person be able to appropriate it for themselves, improve in it and live there? The point of all this is that the action taken in the above story is an encouraging action that fits into a world view that emphasizes property rights that benefit society, not narrow parts of it.

These thoughts are obviously fairly brief, but I think a valid point is buried in there.

Hellboy: the Crooked Man issues 1&2

If I could pick any artist to draw Hellboy other than series creater Mike Mignola, Richard Corben is the guy I hope I'd be smart enough to think of. Mignola and Corben are perfect for each other. While Hellboy started out as (really) short stories, Mignola seems to have grown as a writer and brings us a three issue mini-series featuring his title creation. Hellboy, however, is not really the main charector. A mountain man who dabbles in the occult, a sort of hill billy John Constantine, drives the action. I loved this story, I think it's some of the best Hellboy Mignola has written and Corben is a match made in heaven for the material. Eagerly await the third and final issue