It’s been something of a privilege to watch better minds than mine tackle the issue I raised in this post about my friend Joe and the ‘social contact’.

The issue was fairly simple: How do you counter the idea that the Government can get you to do anything it wants because, by remaining in the country, you’re implicitly agreeing to abide by a  ‘social contract.’

IanB got stuck into the idea that you can ‘just leave’ because this is the standard response that you always get from collectivists – “if you don’t like it, leave”

This argument creates the illusion of a contract being voluntarily agreed with. You go into a pub, you’re agreeing to abide by the rules set out by the landlord. You come into my home you’re agreeing to abide by the rules that I set out.

But being born into a Nation and living in a Nation is not the same as ‘going into a pub.’ Under international law you cannot deprive someone of their nationhood. He concluded that the Social Contact would be valid if you could leave the state whilst physically remaining where you were. As in, Milton Keynes deciding to secede from the United Kingdom. If this were possible then the collectivist’s argument holds up. If it’s not (which it’s not, not anywhere) then it does not.

This question of personal sovereignty was tackled by Jock Coats, who writes that a ‘Social Contract’ is inherently totalitarian unless it can be explicitly agreed to by individuals, and reasserts what IanB said about ‘leaving’ meaning being able to reject the social contract without physically leaving the geographic bounds of the state. He explains how the principle of self ownership is the only one that can be universally applied (without creating two classes of people, ones who are owned by others – or slaves, or ones who own others – the state), and that a ‘social contract’ denies the possibility of self ownership. Very clever stuff.

Counting cats takes a different approach by ripping apart the idea that you can ever be said to be agreeing to a contract that you can’t actually read, or see before you sign it. The more repressive a Government, the less information people have about the contract they’re signing when they elect each successive Government. In other words, you can have a social contract but only one that ensures complete freedom, because this is the only circumstance under which individuals within a state can be said to have a full, comprehensive understanding of what ‘signing the social contract’ actually means. If you’re forced to sign a contract you cannot read, is that enforceable?

Finally, Costigan Quist drives the final nail into the coffin of the social contract, pointing out what should have been screamingly obvious from the start – there is no social contract. It’s just a metaphor, and one that doesn’t actually hold up. He points to the exceptions of non-violent direct action, to conscientious objection – all things tolerated and allowed under a modern western democracy, but that the ‘social contract’ does not allow for. At this point the whole thing just quietly falls apart, and forms the basis of a very simple and effective retort to even the most stubborn lefty.

I quote,

As a rule of thumb, when your political philosophy comes up against reality and fails to explain it, reality is declared the winner.

This summary of the debate doesn’t really do justice to the comments people have left on these 5 posts, and in most cases calling them comments is a bit of an insult. This is what makes blogging worthwhile and shows that blogging is sometimes at home to Mr Reason and Mrs Logic and not just bluster, gossip, rhetoric and dogma.

Once again I find myself screaming at the odious Harriet Harman to, in short, stop trying to help. From the ‘they do it to us so why can’t we do it to them?’ school of ad hominum attacks, she tells us that men cannot be trusted in power, and argues that the Labour Party should always have one woman and one man as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, or something.

It comes down, as always, to a collectivist interpretation of feminism and a individualist’s interpretation.

The collectivist likes to think in terms of collectives. So women are a collective, and to that collective are attributed lots of wonderful characteristics that are generally found in woman. Being caring. Being empathetic, etc. Each member of the collective, then, is assumed to have these general characteristics and therefore an individual woman in a position of power would bring said characteristics to the job.

Which is, of course, total bullshit.

The one true hard generalisation you can make about members of the ‘female’ collective is that they all know what it’s like being a member of that collective. The same can be said for the men in the ‘male’ collective, and I suspect this is the one that Harman is interested in.

To argue that leadership should have a representative from each of these collectives is typical of a collectivist mindset – that people belong to groups, and from those groups emerge leaders to represent their interests as a group. If those leaders advocate something, then it’s good for the collective even if the individuals within it suffer.

So is it a surprise that someone like Harman slurs men as a collective group, or that she believes both ‘groups’ should have equal representation? No. I mean, it’s the least surprising thing ever, after sliced bread selling more than un-sliced bread. It’s amazing it made even made the news.

Let’s now consider the individualist’s perspective on the whole issue of gender, of minority rights and everything else – take each individual on their own merits. That’s it. Race, gender, sexuality, disability, nationality – these are rarely relevant to whether or not a person is able to do a job.

“Ah,” cry collectivists. “People don’t though!” they argue, again generalising all human beings into yet another collective. “Ah ha!” I reply. “Perhaps if you stopped promoting collectivism and thus treating people as groups rather than as individuals, we wouldn’t have this problem?”

If only it were that simple – well it is that simple – if only it was that simple to smack such people over the head with the reality stick like that. Collectivism is the alpha and omega of racism, sexism, nationalism. “Ah but” they say. At this point another knock on the conk with the reality stick might be useful.

At completely the opposite end of the political spectrum from Harriet Harman and nearly 50 years ago, Ayn Rand – not someone I’m especially pleased to be referencing – wrote a book where the main character is a woman whose main dream in life is building rail roads, not the perfect white wedding or acquiring a pair of Manolo Balonicks.

Not only is this character technically competent (and good at maths) she’s accepted by her peers not for her appearance, but on her merits, for what she has achieved. The fact that she’s a woman is neither here nor there.

Perhaps if Hollywood ever does make a film version of Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart will be transformed into a hard-working mum, struggling to juggle her career and her duties as a mother. Luckily the state helps her out by providing child care help, which allows her to go off and do her job properly. When she finally comes face to face with John Galt, she explains how without the state’s childcare help she’d never have been able to build the John Galt line, so basically he’s wrong and must be stopped – they end up having a bit of a gun fight and in the end Dagny blows John out of the airlock, saving the country. All the other industrialists, brought to tears by Dagny’s tale, return to work with cheer in their hearts.

Annnyyyyway….

See, I’d like to see a world where women were judged purely on their merits (and, in fact, see men judged on their individual merits too), and perhaps we’re getting there. But the answer, surely, cannot be Harriet’s way – the sense of entitlement as a ‘leader’ of a collective. The answer has to be for women to show what ability they have and, in short, not give a flying fuck whether or not men – as a collective – accept women – as a collective – as their equals. It simply doesn’t matter – what matters is the individual and the individuals they deal with whether you’re a man, chicken, goat or whatever.

So, in hindsight not my best idea. The housemate and I here in Gore Towers decided to watch Superman II. I was full of regret and remorse before the thing finished.

Even his name, “Superman”, has my cringe gland working overtime, flooding my brain with cringesterone and cringealine.  And that outfit he wears… how could you have a romantic candlelit dinner with someone wearing that outfit and not spend the whole evening being distracted by the cape and shiny red underpants?

So it offered excellent heckle opportunities, of course – I observed the main villian “General Zod” and his obsession with having everyone kneel before him. “Kneel Before Zod!” he said, I think, roughly 300 times during the film.

“You know,” I said. “I think General Zod is a bit of a mental. That kneeling thing? That’s quite the pathology.” Such is the problem of looking at the behaviour of characters in children’s films and trying to apply a real world interpretation of their behaviour and personality.

But what really made me angry, though, was that scene where Superman talks Marlon Brando. I realised, there and then, that Marlon’s done a real number on his son’s head.

See, Superman’s been told that he must use his absurdly over the top powers to serve the humans.

There’s no reward. Very little in the way of thanks. He must, in effect, fly from disaster to disaster saving people and must do that until he dies of old age. And, if he’s not going to do that then his ‘only choice’ is to become a normal human.

We call him Superman, but really he’s humanity’s biyatch. He’s our slave.

The alternative presented – demonstrated in the form of General Zod – is that he uses his powers for ‘evil’ and dominates the world. So, there using powers to indulge a fetish for having people kneeling before you, or sacrificing your own life with no reward.

Sheesh… some choice that is. In hindsight, the choice to go to an Alien planet and have super powers and live your life as the servant of the planet’s inhabitants or stay on your own planet and have a bit of free will? I know which one I’d choose.

See, the Libertarian Superman would, I suspect, use his powers to help save Nasa a good $500,000 off the cost of putting satellites in orbit, and his strength could be invaluable for doing away with the need for cranes in certain construction projects. In fact, in all walks of life there would be a use for a man with his powers – sure, it’d be expensive because there’s only one of him, but Superman, if he really believed in Truth, Justice and the American Way should be able to make quite a comfortable living doing lots of interesting things.

Of course, Libertarian Superman wouldn’t really be as exciting for the young nippers watching the film – Hey Kids, look! It’s the Super Invoice!

But why did this make me angry? Well, it’s when Superman’s Dad, having explained Superman’s shite life to him, says something like, “you reward is a hidden inner happiness. You can’t deny that you feel it.” and Super replies, “Yes, yes I feel it.”

Bollocks he feels it! That’s the Big Lie, you see – the idea that if you completely subjugate yourself to others that it somehow brings a ‘deeper’ fulfilment and happiness, that if you’re not feeling it then you’re not doing it enough – or worse, that you’re just a profoundly immoral person and it’s you that’s the problem. Thing is, doing something for absolutely nothing – no thanks, no gratitude, no respect, no hope of cash or future favours in return? You might do something like that because *you* want or need something done, but what if it’s something you don’t care about, have no interest in, has no impact on your life whatsoever? What if the impact is that it hurts you? What possible, possible inner happiness can anyone gain from that?

Poor Superman, I say.

I do actually remember the days when I’d say, “The Government should stop people from doing X” and think, you know, the people who want to do X? They’re scum, aren’t they? Who cares what they think? Sure a lot of people won’t like it, but the greater good will be served.

I used to think like that. Over time, however, as I found myself more and more in the ‘X’ category at the hands of this Government, I began to become more and more uneasy about this sort of thing. Who am I to impose anything on anyone? What if I’m wrong? The reasoning that you had to be a bit fascist if you wanted to be properly liberal stopped making sense. The best way to fight fascism is to promote liberalism, and that means using liberalism as your weapon of choice.

Fascism isn’t killing Jews, although fascists have killed Jews. Fascism isn’t racism, although fascists can be racist. Fascism, at it’s heart, is the principle that what’s good for the group is good for everyone in the group, irrespective of the needs or concerns of individuals within the group. That’s what fascism is, in a nutshell – and while it’s got different names and nicer branding, fascism was and still is a hugely popular idea across Europe and the rest of the world, encapsulating as it does both Socialist and Christian Dogma about Collectivism.

Thanks to a hat tip from Martin on twitter, I came across this horrible little piece of fascism from the Guardian:

The internet requires regulation, just as film, television and computer games do. If companies such as Facebook abdicate that responsibility, it suggests government intervention is needed to prevent an internet-powered surge in racial hatred. The spread of racism and hate is not something that can be left to chance or the whims of the private sector. Working against hate, bullying and racism must be part of the price companies pay when they offer an online social environment as their product.

Requires? Surely it is not the internet that requires the regulation. It is politicians and idiots like Andre Oboler, the article’s author, that demand and ‘require’ these things to be regulated. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s always worth remembering who benefits?

It’s not even worth debating this moron’s specific argument. The point is he wants to use fascist tools against fascists he doesn’t like, as a way of trying to stem the tide of fascism on the internet. Anti-Fascism FAIL.

Free Speech is a wonderful, wonderful thing Andre. You brush it aside too easily.

Social Security spending is going to overtake the country’s Income Tax receipts this year. Worse still, soon servicing Brown’s debt is going to cost us more than we spend on education.

It’s this ignorance of the ‘opportunity cost’ of money taken from the private sector and individuals by the Government that continues to baffle and amaze me. I’ve said before myself, the Government now spends more in a year than the entire wage earners of Britain earn combined. If you think about it, that sort of figure – over 700 billion – is the equivilant of 28 million private sector jobs. That’s 700,000,000,000 divided into the average wage of £25k. 28 million jobs. More new jobs than there’s people in the country to do them.

Yet it actually buys us a mere 5 million public sector jobs.  And the biggest reason given for protecting Government spending? It’ll cost jobs. Ha. Good one. What… wait? You’re serious? This is really happening?

If this is winning, I’d hate to know what losing feels like.