Well, for those who did know yet, I am an Uber driver and so far I must say, I have an overall positive opinion of being an independently licensed taxi for everyone. It's a unique way of doing work.
To be honest, I was looking for work where I was living but that search always turned out cold no matter what happened. It was just that they sent emails that they wouldn't hire me or that I would wait to no avail. Then some of my family members suggested the idea of working for Uber. And Since I had nothing to lose, I might as well try it out. After car repairs and other things, I was driving for Uber.
Even though it's been a month I've been driving for Uber, I am overall pleased with now having work. But there are some issues I have with this situation. The more I see about Uber and Lyft style taxis, I have been hearing news of cities banning the personalized taxi cabs and even regulations on them trying to go to other states (apparently it's not ok for a California Uber to go drive into Nevada if a client wants to go to Vegas and vice versa). But do these regulators even know who they really hurt with enacting these regulations? They hurt people like me.
It seems they just don't want to understand what goes on in the regular onlooker for work. Since they know work is sparse right now, such an opportunity should be good. But instead of cheers, politicians and regulators don't use their brains and react in the most base of ways by saying no to whatever whims they want. And thus make it harder for people like me to make an income. The regulations not only affect us for lack of money gains but also for regular consumers who prefer such commodity services as such, they don't get the benefit of a more affordable taxi service. It makes everyone lose and that's truly an immoral thing to just bully someone out of a place just because they're doing it better than someone else who can too.
But the Uber and Lyft systems allow more accountability from people. People can review you for your virtues and failings with how you present your service and how accommodating you are to them. The standard is higher and made on a good platform but it's obvious to them, equal is fair when it is not.
Before I end this, I want to leave one final note. Just now I learned Uber is canceled in Denmark due to ridiculous demands and at least they had the sensibility to blame the laws for destroying them. And the only ones who pat themselves on their backs are the socialists and nationalists. Now Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were the socialist favorites. But who is the nationalist candidate that could also bring the power to tyrannically enforce anti-dog eat dog laws if possible? Chew on that for a little.
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Sunday, March 19, 2017
The Arts: A Free Market Solution
In the recent news, Many people are frustrated with Donald Trumps new budget plan and the most outrage seems to be going to the axing of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As an artist myself (A Novelist and Playwright), I want to talk about why this might actually benefit everyone more than hurt everyone and my opinion with this.
Most of my friends and some of my family members really care and support the CPB, with channels like NPR and PBS giving all sorts of entertainment for everyone. Whether you listen to comedy podcasts like Wait, Wait, ... Don't Tell Me, or seeing the lovely items on Antiques Roadshow, no doubt both channels have good shows to offers whether introducing us to Downton Abbey and the Nobles who must change in the 20th century, enjoying the comedy of Garrison Keillor and his musical friends on A Prairie Home Companion show, or enjoying the murder mystery antics on Poirot, Marple, or Father Brown, both channels have something to offer. However, there is a main point still needed to be said about funding the arts. What is the government's role in it? My answer is that Government has no duty to fund the arts, we as the consumer however, do.
In the history of the world, the great artists of their times were funded by multiple patrons of the arts, whether be the Medici family supporting the Italian masters, Queen Elizabeth II personally funding William Shakespeare, or even today's Patreon, people have funded the high arts since its conception. Sites like Patreon, GoFundMe, and Kickstarter help give publicity to many artists, some of which I want to fund but sadly don't have the money. (However, I did help a fund for Tim Schafer's Psychonauts 2 being a fan of Tim's since playing and discovering Psychonauts.) And it allows more people to fund them personally for loving the art they make whether be video game making for Undertale, making fan art with artists like Sakimichan, or movies like horror/black comedy film Director's Cut. The internet age has allowed many of us to become the patrons of the arts we wanted to be. We decide to chose who we believe are worthy in our investments for their art in a way previously not possible. However, this is my main reason as to why I believe government shouldn't have a say in art. Because we don't get to chose who deserves our money.
For those of you who don't know my opinion in taxation, it should be all voluntary. (Of course I know that will hardly ever happen but give my idea a chance and realize taxation is theft pure and simple please) But when it came to our taxes now, we don't chose who deserves our money to be funded. People have various opinions of art and should decide themselves how to appropriate their money. Having someone steal their money to fund another isn't what should be happening but it is. Art Galleries, Artists, and others have used the CPB and other arts related programs to fund their projects without personal opinions from others. Of course people use the argument of the public good but really, the public good is nothing equivalent to the individual members who decide for themselves which projects they want to fund with their own money. For example, I personally abhor abstract and postmodern art of any kind whether be abstract paintings replicate Jackson Pollock's schizophrenic style, sculptures where balloon animals are enlarged with no real purpose, or architecture that changes their style way too much to be recognized for functional purpose over odded-aggrandizement. Personally, I feel postmodern art is not meant for anyone but the artists to understand as some sort of condescending reaction to patrons of fine art and just give the taxpayers the middle finger and contort art to some ugly, unappealing, and schizophrenic form insulting the rational mind. (That itself sounds like a postmodern artwork) For people like me, we have no say to funding these artists and are personally ignored over some oddities in a museum that should be dedicated to bad art. We as patrons have no say in what we want for our art and if we disagree to fund it, we can't. As well as this, they also abuse the system to give themselves private and public money, aggrandizing themselves without a serious look at whether their art is of true merit and theiving from people like us.
Defunding the arts allows more power to the U.S. citizenry to decide for themselves the essential philosophical question of What is Art? The government obviously has no taste in art and should have no say to decide what we can fund and what we can't. And there are so many places and people we can find to see if we can make a wise investment in their art.
Most of my friends and some of my family members really care and support the CPB, with channels like NPR and PBS giving all sorts of entertainment for everyone. Whether you listen to comedy podcasts like Wait, Wait, ... Don't Tell Me, or seeing the lovely items on Antiques Roadshow, no doubt both channels have good shows to offers whether introducing us to Downton Abbey and the Nobles who must change in the 20th century, enjoying the comedy of Garrison Keillor and his musical friends on A Prairie Home Companion show, or enjoying the murder mystery antics on Poirot, Marple, or Father Brown, both channels have something to offer. However, there is a main point still needed to be said about funding the arts. What is the government's role in it? My answer is that Government has no duty to fund the arts, we as the consumer however, do.
In the history of the world, the great artists of their times were funded by multiple patrons of the arts, whether be the Medici family supporting the Italian masters, Queen Elizabeth II personally funding William Shakespeare, or even today's Patreon, people have funded the high arts since its conception. Sites like Patreon, GoFundMe, and Kickstarter help give publicity to many artists, some of which I want to fund but sadly don't have the money. (However, I did help a fund for Tim Schafer's Psychonauts 2 being a fan of Tim's since playing and discovering Psychonauts.) And it allows more people to fund them personally for loving the art they make whether be video game making for Undertale, making fan art with artists like Sakimichan, or movies like horror/black comedy film Director's Cut. The internet age has allowed many of us to become the patrons of the arts we wanted to be. We decide to chose who we believe are worthy in our investments for their art in a way previously not possible. However, this is my main reason as to why I believe government shouldn't have a say in art. Because we don't get to chose who deserves our money.
For those of you who don't know my opinion in taxation, it should be all voluntary. (Of course I know that will hardly ever happen but give my idea a chance and realize taxation is theft pure and simple please) But when it came to our taxes now, we don't chose who deserves our money to be funded. People have various opinions of art and should decide themselves how to appropriate their money. Having someone steal their money to fund another isn't what should be happening but it is. Art Galleries, Artists, and others have used the CPB and other arts related programs to fund their projects without personal opinions from others. Of course people use the argument of the public good but really, the public good is nothing equivalent to the individual members who decide for themselves which projects they want to fund with their own money. For example, I personally abhor abstract and postmodern art of any kind whether be abstract paintings replicate Jackson Pollock's schizophrenic style, sculptures where balloon animals are enlarged with no real purpose, or architecture that changes their style way too much to be recognized for functional purpose over odded-aggrandizement. Personally, I feel postmodern art is not meant for anyone but the artists to understand as some sort of condescending reaction to patrons of fine art and just give the taxpayers the middle finger and contort art to some ugly, unappealing, and schizophrenic form insulting the rational mind. (That itself sounds like a postmodern artwork) For people like me, we have no say to funding these artists and are personally ignored over some oddities in a museum that should be dedicated to bad art. We as patrons have no say in what we want for our art and if we disagree to fund it, we can't. As well as this, they also abuse the system to give themselves private and public money, aggrandizing themselves without a serious look at whether their art is of true merit and theiving from people like us.
Defunding the arts allows more power to the U.S. citizenry to decide for themselves the essential philosophical question of What is Art? The government obviously has no taste in art and should have no say to decide what we can fund and what we can't. And there are so many places and people we can find to see if we can make a wise investment in their art.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Living an Aristotelian Life in a Postmodern World (Part 1)
In today's society, there's hardly much interest in being a rational person. The intellectuals can't seem to come up with anything but that knowledge and wisdom are lies and can't be verified. The religion tell us to escape this world of flesh and greed with the spiritual world that hasn't been verified either. Hardly anything in this world is sacred to them anymore and thus they have lost all will to try to change it or they change it but damn anyone who doesn't agree with them even though they have no objective standard to a purposeful life. What a tragedy it is.
For myself, however, I live in a different kind of ethic. It's the Objectivist Lifestyle of where a man is worth himself and more if he can put his mind to calculate and create the world he wants for himself. (As long as he doesn't use force to create it.) We must use reason, negotiation, and persuasion to ally and convince people of his ideas and wealth creation. But not everyone follows the Objectivist Ethic. Many people find the philosophy too extreme for them with it's absolute rejection of the spiritual and the need for an Objective moral basis in Selfishness being the primary issues of this philosophy. (The arguments being from the religious that in order for an Objective moral foundation, God must provide it. The argument from almost everyone in the world is that Selfishness is wrong and altruism is good. Altruism being good however doesn't correlate as the definition of altruism is to sacrifice the better for the least of your preferences. i.e. Sacrifice yourself for others. And no reason has been truly made as to why any individual life is worth more to another than it is to that person.) But if so, how can Objectivists persuade people to live rationally in an otherwise irrational world? That comes in the form of the Aristotlelian ethics and method.
Aristotle (384 BC/BCE- 322 BC/BCE) was the Greek philosopher who helped inspire Western Civilization among his teacher and contemporary Plato. But both had different viewpoints of the world. Plato was concerned with the metaphysical realm of forms where perfection resides but Aristotle claimed that perfection can be found and made on Earth. The Aristotlelian Method comes from the scientific method he formulated at the time, giving him the title of the grandfather of modern science with his scientific method and researching capabilities being the primary source of all scientific endeavors to the present. But the primary issue needed to be explained is his ethics.
Aristotle's son Nichomachus, helped edit his father's work, presently titled for his son's editing work, Nichomachean Ethics. (Though scholars debate whether he was able to or not saying he could've died in war but that's a history lesson I'll have to research in the future.) This book gave the idea of what he had provided with using reason to cultivate good virtues by means of reason. What should be strived for is flourishing of the human body and soul is the primary means of having a successful life. Though we look for our happiness, Aristotle said that our search for eudamonia is a lifelong process rather than the short bouts of pleasure we think are actual happiness. It's important for all of us to pursue this eudamonia by following the virtues laid out in his Nichomachean ethics.
To Be Continued in Part 2 (The Ethics of Eudamonia)
For myself, however, I live in a different kind of ethic. It's the Objectivist Lifestyle of where a man is worth himself and more if he can put his mind to calculate and create the world he wants for himself. (As long as he doesn't use force to create it.) We must use reason, negotiation, and persuasion to ally and convince people of his ideas and wealth creation. But not everyone follows the Objectivist Ethic. Many people find the philosophy too extreme for them with it's absolute rejection of the spiritual and the need for an Objective moral basis in Selfishness being the primary issues of this philosophy. (The arguments being from the religious that in order for an Objective moral foundation, God must provide it. The argument from almost everyone in the world is that Selfishness is wrong and altruism is good. Altruism being good however doesn't correlate as the definition of altruism is to sacrifice the better for the least of your preferences. i.e. Sacrifice yourself for others. And no reason has been truly made as to why any individual life is worth more to another than it is to that person.) But if so, how can Objectivists persuade people to live rationally in an otherwise irrational world? That comes in the form of the Aristotlelian ethics and method.
Aristotle (384 BC/BCE- 322 BC/BCE) was the Greek philosopher who helped inspire Western Civilization among his teacher and contemporary Plato. But both had different viewpoints of the world. Plato was concerned with the metaphysical realm of forms where perfection resides but Aristotle claimed that perfection can be found and made on Earth. The Aristotlelian Method comes from the scientific method he formulated at the time, giving him the title of the grandfather of modern science with his scientific method and researching capabilities being the primary source of all scientific endeavors to the present. But the primary issue needed to be explained is his ethics.
Aristotle's son Nichomachus, helped edit his father's work, presently titled for his son's editing work, Nichomachean Ethics. (Though scholars debate whether he was able to or not saying he could've died in war but that's a history lesson I'll have to research in the future.) This book gave the idea of what he had provided with using reason to cultivate good virtues by means of reason. What should be strived for is flourishing of the human body and soul is the primary means of having a successful life. Though we look for our happiness, Aristotle said that our search for eudamonia is a lifelong process rather than the short bouts of pleasure we think are actual happiness. It's important for all of us to pursue this eudamonia by following the virtues laid out in his Nichomachean ethics.
To Be Continued in Part 2 (The Ethics of Eudamonia)
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Conservatism is the New Progressivism
Within already almost the end of another beginning month this year, President Trump's administration has been called so many things I can't even list. He's been cheered for (blindly and critically) by Conservatives and criticized (almost always) by the so called Liberals. Truly the weirdest of culture wars about a celebrity who became a President in the similar fashion to Ronald Reagan. But sadly that's about where that similarity ends with him and what some Conservatives hope for. With the election of Trump and an array of articles too hard to find the truth from yellow journalism, I've noticed a sad phenomenon that Conservatism is going through and will most likely and probably has already been it's killing point. It's moral compass.
Morally the Conservatives paint themselves as a beacon of laissez-faire capitalism, individual rights, and personal freedom. But the more I look into this, it's starting to sound more like they're actually into totalitarian tendencies; the similar lie told by many liberals when they called themselves beacons of freedom but instead have veiled themselves under banners of political correctness, appeasement, and lack of moral fiber or courage.Today, Conservatism is plagued with many wishy-washy premises in contact with the welfare state, the foreign war policy, and taxes and tariffs.
With taxes and tariffs, the Conservative mindset says that it should be lowered but not eliminated as funds from a government must exist and thus money must still be forcefully taken from their citizens rather than peacefully donated to them by volition. This attitude strikes concern to me as this is truly a major point in their attitude towards a bias towards money in what can be justified as only towards their religious purposes as Paul wrote "The Love of Money is the Root of all Evil." But this is no justification for theft. All taxes and tariffs are excuses for theft from the government to say, "You didn't earn this, so we're taking it!" It's an equivalent to the school bully who enforces his fists for other students lunch money.
With the welfare state, they fare no better. Conservatives constantly say they need to limit the welfare state to make American's self reliant on their own wealth and influence and that government is there to protect people's rights. But they themselves can't handle the consequences of a fully Capitalistic system and thus appease Democrats, Populists, and other collectivist types to allow for such inconsistencies to exist in the governing sphere with the lies and schemes of the welfare state. They don't even question why it is the government's purpose to do such a thing but just say they should lower it. The welfare state has created many, if not, all of the economic problems we face today with the elderly not saving enough money into the system, the high taxes needed to pay for them and others, as well as Obamacare. This one law almost every Conservative hates, yet now, they delay it. They had the chance when Obama was president and there where majorities in both houses or the Senate could've filibustered the legislation longer but have failed us one too many times. And if that wasn't worse, they want to fully replace Obamacare. Not repeal it, replace it. It's a true insult among all individual citizens tired of paying so much into Obamacare's lousy and inhospitable health market.
Lastly, the foreign policy of war has been the one that has irked many for a time to come. With the Bush Administration, Bush betrayed the ideas of what Islam can do to America by stating in a speech just given days after the 9/11 bombings that Islam is a religion of peace. Such a lie can't be forgiven and is already a crack in the rocky foundation of this policy. Another is a similar premise with how the war was constructed with our primary enemies by attacking a country (Iraq) who had, at the time, little contact with the members of Al-Queda and other terrorist organizations who were buddy-buddy with regimes like Iran and Saudi Arabia and letting many of our good men and women out in a country to fight sacrificially. The tactics of this policy even reflected Bush's appeasement with not wanting to destroy mosques and other financial and governmental places terrorist organizations were harboring new recruits or to the governments responsible for paying for their crimes against humanity. And with Obama, ... I think I don't have to explain how badly that went. But now with Trump in the president's chair, we see his rhetoric is both anti-Islam and anti-Muslim (I personally did not like the latter but the former I congratulate.) is strong but yet we have yet to see where that will go because having talk is one story but allowing the military to analyze and judge for themselves how to win the unwinnable war, is another.
If any Conservatives are reading this article, I ask of you this. If you wish to save your dying ideology, you need to start reevaluating yourself from the inside and start taking some crucial lessons from people like Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Frederick Hayek, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Yaron Brook, Aristotle, and others upon how to fight against the anti-Western ideals that are crumbling our society. You say you admire the founding fathers but they would all scold and even rebel against you for allowing such madness to happen. The Founding Fathers created a society inspired by American Individualism and you desperately need that in your philosophy. That is the greatest start to promote in contrast to pragmatic policy making you've got yourselves into on your own merits. Remember that "history is a battleground of ideas" and usually the most consistent win. The socialists, Left, Muslims, and other anti-western thinkers are winning. It's time to shred these shadows and start coming into the light.
With taxes and tariffs, the Conservative mindset says that it should be lowered but not eliminated as funds from a government must exist and thus money must still be forcefully taken from their citizens rather than peacefully donated to them by volition. This attitude strikes concern to me as this is truly a major point in their attitude towards a bias towards money in what can be justified as only towards their religious purposes as Paul wrote "The Love of Money is the Root of all Evil." But this is no justification for theft. All taxes and tariffs are excuses for theft from the government to say, "You didn't earn this, so we're taking it!" It's an equivalent to the school bully who enforces his fists for other students lunch money.
With the welfare state, they fare no better. Conservatives constantly say they need to limit the welfare state to make American's self reliant on their own wealth and influence and that government is there to protect people's rights. But they themselves can't handle the consequences of a fully Capitalistic system and thus appease Democrats, Populists, and other collectivist types to allow for such inconsistencies to exist in the governing sphere with the lies and schemes of the welfare state. They don't even question why it is the government's purpose to do such a thing but just say they should lower it. The welfare state has created many, if not, all of the economic problems we face today with the elderly not saving enough money into the system, the high taxes needed to pay for them and others, as well as Obamacare. This one law almost every Conservative hates, yet now, they delay it. They had the chance when Obama was president and there where majorities in both houses or the Senate could've filibustered the legislation longer but have failed us one too many times. And if that wasn't worse, they want to fully replace Obamacare. Not repeal it, replace it. It's a true insult among all individual citizens tired of paying so much into Obamacare's lousy and inhospitable health market.
Lastly, the foreign policy of war has been the one that has irked many for a time to come. With the Bush Administration, Bush betrayed the ideas of what Islam can do to America by stating in a speech just given days after the 9/11 bombings that Islam is a religion of peace. Such a lie can't be forgiven and is already a crack in the rocky foundation of this policy. Another is a similar premise with how the war was constructed with our primary enemies by attacking a country (Iraq) who had, at the time, little contact with the members of Al-Queda and other terrorist organizations who were buddy-buddy with regimes like Iran and Saudi Arabia and letting many of our good men and women out in a country to fight sacrificially. The tactics of this policy even reflected Bush's appeasement with not wanting to destroy mosques and other financial and governmental places terrorist organizations were harboring new recruits or to the governments responsible for paying for their crimes against humanity. And with Obama, ... I think I don't have to explain how badly that went. But now with Trump in the president's chair, we see his rhetoric is both anti-Islam and anti-Muslim (I personally did not like the latter but the former I congratulate.) is strong but yet we have yet to see where that will go because having talk is one story but allowing the military to analyze and judge for themselves how to win the unwinnable war, is another.
If any Conservatives are reading this article, I ask of you this. If you wish to save your dying ideology, you need to start reevaluating yourself from the inside and start taking some crucial lessons from people like Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Frederick Hayek, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Yaron Brook, Aristotle, and others upon how to fight against the anti-Western ideals that are crumbling our society. You say you admire the founding fathers but they would all scold and even rebel against you for allowing such madness to happen. The Founding Fathers created a society inspired by American Individualism and you desperately need that in your philosophy. That is the greatest start to promote in contrast to pragmatic policy making you've got yourselves into on your own merits. Remember that "history is a battleground of ideas" and usually the most consistent win. The socialists, Left, Muslims, and other anti-western thinkers are winning. It's time to shred these shadows and start coming into the light.
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