“No need to ask, He’s a Smooth Operator” — Sade Adu
It might be considered lame to write a satire and then come back and explain it, but here I go. First, a little background.
When I was a teen my grandpa and I used to work on cars. Pa loved me dearly and at times he was my favorite person in the world. But he let me do something that horrifies me to this day.
Back Then There Was no EPA, or even an E
It was then (a looong time ago) common practice among “shade-tree mechanics” to wash black, greasy machine parts in gasoline. So we cleaned car parts in an open metal pan of gas, using our bare hands and old rags. We were sometimes under a carport, but also did this sweating in the hot sun. Pa and I didn’t smoke, but my grandma did, and she was often not that far away, behind a screen door in the kitchen with a lit cigarette, or cooking at a gas stove. In the same vicinity, we might at times crank up a lawnmower engine. We were one spark away from horror.
No, I did not burn up. I apparently did not absorb enough lead or hydrocarbons through my skin to disable me. So what is my point? First, of course, is that common practices, customary behavior, can be awfully stupid. Not a new idea. I at least have reflected on this, and I avoid having gas-powered tools in my home.
Some of you will be in suspense though, wondering: what the f*** did they do with the dirty gas? Did the fools burn it, or what?
No. The lot next door had no house on it, just weeds. We tossed the gasoline into that vacant lot. We also changed the oil on Pa’s cars. I’m not sure, but I think we tossed the used oil into the weeds as well. In those days, I was unaware of anywhere else we could have taken it.
My youthful participation in these environmental crimes often comes to mind when I am thinking about an ideology that is also common and customary today. It idolizes behavior that can erode the welfare of anyone and everyone else without any qualms at all.
So, what?
I write about ideas, and I don’t get literary unless I get mad. It was easy to freak out a little over a year ago when it became obvious that selfishness and stupidity were going to prolong the life of the pandemic.
I had already dug into the historical roots of American selfish individualism. At some point, though, I got steamed and went on a rant about the strain of sociopathic libertarianism that has become the default moral code here.
Well, things aren’t any better this year, and I think it’s time to reprise my rant and get another three dozen readers. My bit for a better world.
A free man doesn’t worry about vaccines. If there’s an epidemic, somebody will make a vaccine and sell it to him. Won’t take any time at all without government interference. Somebody else will test it, make sure it works. No need to prepare ahead of time. A VC will finance the R&D for a 20:1 return. And it’s been shown time and again that people will pay everything they own to put off dying.
Yeah, at the time I didn’t understand that even a pandemic-stopper vaccine could become a driver of partisan rage and spite. Today the battered world (not just ‘Merica) is doing little to prepare for the next pandemic. My main point back then was that we would not have any low-profit medicines such as vaccines unless we did it as a society. The last sentence refers to our industry of dying, which tries its best to ensure that each of us dies broke.
The following part of the satire anticipated (barely) the comic opera mass delusion that is the crypto-blockchain-web3 complex. Who knew that there would be private clubs based on possessing art that looks like cereal box characters, promising theme- park benefits to members and delivering … nothing instead? It’s a belief system that perfectly meshes with the libertarian fantasy that we can have a civilization that requires no institutions, no infrastructure, no trust in other humans, in fact, no civilization really, and no concern at all — none, y’all — about the air, water, biosphere, and moderate climate that keeps us alive.
Libertarians are always thinking they can just start their own little society and finally be free. They don’t need anybody else for anything. This is ideology negating common sense. But it does attract free riders and sociopaths, who smell the blood of fools. So, back to paying …
What if you can’t pay? Well, a free man makes his own money. There’s all these computers out there with nothing to do. They can compute crypto money, and the energy to do that is cheap. Plenty of free people will sell you oil that they find just lying around. Or some geek will compute the money in Iceland using volcanoes or something.
Crypto money is the best. Can’t be counterfeited. Can’t be stolen from you. But you can steal it from fools who don’t protect their keys, or you can swindle them any number of ways. Or you can sell crypto to fools for more than you paid.
When a free man needs a computer he just buys one from some nerds, let them figure out how to make it and where to get the parts. Parts is parts, after all.
Free men will really be free when they can make their own towns. No laws, Baby, cause a free man can take care of himself.
A free garbage man can just dump his trash in a river, or the ocean. No water? Then get some schmuck to dump it on “public” land. Let the unfree deal with it, that’s all they deserve.
In a free town, your car can be as big as you want. Somebody somewhere will make it for you, grade some dirt roads for you to horse around on. The wind will blow the exhaust gas away.
In a free town, somebody shoots at you then you just shoot ’em back. Free men join a militia to solve any other problems. As they say, “It takes a militia,” right?
Free men buy their medicine from free doctors who can make whatever medicine they want, and sell it. Free men don’t get rare diseases; if they do, they’re not free, they’re fools.
Geeks can get together and teach themselves how to make medicine, or cell phones, or trucks, or qubits. They can pay for their education by selling the stuff they make. For everybody else — no worries — most education is lies anyway.
In a free town, if it’s too hot, people just buy an air conditioner and plug it in. No electric utility? Then just buy a generator from a geek. Gas is cheap.
Women can be free too. All they need is something to trade for what they want. Same deal for orphans, handicapped, dumbasses, freaks, and old people.
Foreigners, and people who look like them, are free to find their own places to be free. It’s a free world. Not your fault if they chose to be born where it’s too hot, or too dry, or too messed up to live.
Free people can grow their own food. How hard can it be? And they can wash the germs off with clean water. Somebody will sell you clean water. They just need to go upstream from the free town dump to pump it. If you don’t trust ’em, boil the water first, using your generator. Or chop down some trees for firewood.
If you can’t grow food, or can’t be bothered, then hunt. That’s what animals are for. If the meat goes bad, just throw it out. The dogs can eat it. In fact, there’s plenty of unlucky suckers who will scrounge the food you don’t want.
Volcanoes, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, 98-degree wet-bulb temperatures, crop failures, terrorist attacks, planet-killing asteroids, ancient microbes from the melting tundra, War? Some fool, or even another free person, will help you. Or just tough it out with your generator, truck, firearms, gold, and buckets of rice and beans. Be prepared.
Since I wrote that stuff we have had many painful new environmental events. But, less expected was our current lesson about war, our cultural pan of gasoline.
Sure, it burns up people and their stuff. It also disrupts supply chains, commerce, agriculture, shipping, and prices. Prices are the measure of all things to the free economists, and they are the measure of truth to the Rationalists (Google ‘prediction markets’). And it’s just Tubad Sosad if you can’t afford the price of living.
The free market tosses un-priced, so-called “negative externalities” like carbon buildup into everybody’s lot next door. The gods of war just light that shit up. Which suggests a new ending to my original rant.
If you can’t stand the price of war you can always blame someone for it. We are the blaming species. If you figure out who to blame it will get your head through any disaster, right? That, along with better weapons than the bad guys, and a positive attitude.