Umair Haque and #WhiteGuyDude/Dick – Identity Politics & Predictabilty | The 'M' Word:
Given the following tweet exchange, the first time Umair has come to my attention, I find his likely influence worrisome, though sadly unsurprising:
"Wait, society was broken, the economy was in a depression, the planet was melting down. And you guys were making apps?" -- our grandkids
— umair haque (@umairh) March 29, 2014
@umairh @neurofuzzy My grandparents lived through the depression, it was not like this. Maybe just try not to be such a baby?
— Robin Debreuil (@debreuil) March 29, 2014
.@debreuil my grandparents lived through war, genocide, atrocity, and the collapse of empire. Try not to be such a witless #whiteguy dick
— umair haque (@umairh) March 29, 2014
@umairh Your hashtag was irrelevant & shows 'witless' stereotyping & prejudice. App creation is perhaps last vestige of 1/x @debreuil
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) March 29, 2014
@umairh ... An innovative spirit fostered by a 'free' capitalism that could solve the problems u complain of, but now 2/x @debreuil
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) March 29, 2014
@umairh ... Is destroyed as the West slides down socialist road to serfdom and big brother statism @debreuil
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) March 29, 2014
The US has glaring deficits in all these public goods — education, healthcare, transport, energy, infrastructure — not to mention the other oft- unmentioned, but equally important ones: parks, community centers, social services.
So the US should invest in its common wealth. For a decade, and more. Legions of people should be employed in rebuilding its decrepit infrastructure, schools, colleges, hospitals, parks, trains.
[Snip]
If the US invests in the public goods it so desperately needs, the jobs that it so desperately needs will be created — and they will be jobs that (wait for it) actually create useful stuff. You know what’s useless? Designer diapers, reality TV, listicles, reverse-triple-remortgages, fast food, PowerPoint decks, and the other billion flavors of junk that we slave over only to impress people we secretly hate so we can live lives we don’t really want.
Now read again what I said above about Umair and his distrust of free markets as the best means of coordination and to foster innovation: I had him pinned precisely simply from that single hashtag use. If in New Zealand, Umair would be on the far Left of our Green Party; the extraordinary thing is he's writing for the Harvard Business Review. Chief amidst the dangers being promoted here is his fundamental socialist belief in a society where law making be based on the common good, rather than a principled, free society that seeks only to protect the rights of its smallest minority: an individual. It's advocacy of the state ascendant over the individual; the command (crony) economy, not the spontaneous order arising from the complex web of decisions and results that comes from free adults going about their lives via private enterprise. I'm not covering it yet again, but at the end of this post if you scroll down I've copied a summary from various of my posts on the fallacy of the common good, and how lethal that concept is to a free, prosperous, and civilised society. But to end with the very predictable Umair, how does he propose to pay for these legions of workers building public goods?
Where will the money come from? Dirty secret number three: It doesn’t matter. Print it. Borrow it. Tax it from the super-rich, in whose coffers it’s merely sitting idly. It does not matter one bit. It’s a second order question. If the U.S. doesn’t invest in public goods, it will not prosper; and if it doesn’t prosper, it cannot pay off the debts it already has.
I'm speechless after reading that, including the internal contradictions he makes across just this single short paragraph. Umair's answer is the global tax surveillance state; after all these rich pricks just have their money sitting around idly - who knew - so we'll relieve them of it. I'm always stunned at how socialists so glibly talk about the violence of theft. That money is not sitting idly, albeit this throwaway comment again reveals so much about the writer. And of course Umair is not stopping at just tax, his prescription is, well, as the US government he strangely despises has been doing: printing money and borrowing: despite Umair's PR, there's nothing new under the sun going on here, the only difference being how flippant and careless he is on the topic. His Capitalist Manifesto, appears to me to be just another Keynesian, (inverted commas) 'Communist' one.
That last sentence was deliberate as I already know what Umair's response to this post would be:
I write about the US needing healthcare and jobs. I get called "Lenin" and "Castro" in the comments. Love it. http://t.co/EmQcFZEhm8
— umair haque (@umairh) May 3, 2014
See, that’s just being glib again; as with the idle money of the rich comment. It’s not because you advocate decent healthcare or jobs, we all want that: it’s that you think the state as master, trumping individual rights, will bring that, and that comes from a certain econopolitick model called socialism, and what modern history has taught people like myself, and thinkers such as Rand, von Mises and Hayek, is that in reality there is no middle way between the free, prosperous society and a socialist one. And with your family’s history, as you explained in your second tweet above, you of all people should understand the dangers of delivering the lives of individuals to the machinations of a state that has the powers it needs for your public works program.
Incidentally, these apps Umair is so scathing of, are themselves more important than he realises, and they didn't come about without an invention history that includes 'public good' firms which aren't minor, including Apple and Microsoft. Via apps I have been able to increase my productivity, and my quality of life, because apps have truly allowed me to live in a seascape in the middle of nowhere, and yet only be an electronic click away from my client base: apps have allowed me to live here:
Even better, all these apps which make my life so joyous were paid for out of profits made possible from apps that previously increased my productivity, and my choices; they were not paid for by theft from someone else's hard work via the tax state. And no need to stop here. I only know of Umair and his writings because of an app called Twitter on my laptop; I wrote this blog post on Office Squared, an app on my iPad; and will publish it to blogger on another app. Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to disparage the meek little app, brought to us by the millions, billions of free humans working voluntarily in that wondrous social meeting place called the market, all going about their lives pursuing their happiness.
But not for the socialists, of course. No the Umairs' of the world are so arrogant as to say all these billions of people are wrong, and that the state knows best. Again, Umair, get your head out of managementspeak and read history on what happens in societies where the state knew best.
unfollow me right now if you're not black and you decided saying or typing the n word in full was a good idea while debating Jeremy Clarkson
— Coley Tangerina (@ColeyTangerina) May 2, 2014
On another Twitter thread I saw a Left-Liberal male being castigated by other identity politickers for using the phrase 'beautiful writer' of a female writer, because beautiful to them is a genderised term: their contention being a male can't use that word as it always referred, when written by a male, to a woman's looks, not the style and quality, in this case, of her writing. (Jesus Christ almighty). Anyway, the stupid male on that thread buckled and deleted his tweet. So only blacks can use nigger; only women can use the word beautiful when speaking of a woman's attributes outside of physical beauty. I'm wondering if someone better codify all this for us? You can't imagine the anger I feel over that, and to any writer or artist reading this post, I ask how do you feel about being proscribed words on the basis of political correctness like this? More of that dangerous thread in another post, but seriously, forget aesthetics, how are we to have needed discussions on serious matters that are denoted and signified by a word, if we're not allowed to write the word down: we just have to whisper it's the 'n' word. Soon we'll be investing words with mystical powers, which only shaman will be able to speak. Again, again, again, again, this is childishness. While reserving myself the right to use the word in a novel, I would never employ it in the ordinary course of life because it is offensive, but it behoves us to be adult when analysing the society we've both made and had imposed on us. Case in point, Musa Okwanga.
If you want to intelligently write on the harm done by Clarkson, you do it like Musa Okwanga does. Note in his piece on Clarkson, Musa spells the whole ‘n’ word, and he does so deliberately because of the effect it has:
And further note in his post, no #WhiteGuyDude hashtag; this piece is so powerful because he deals with Clarkson first and foremost on the level of a complex individual who is both ‘brilliant’ and flawed:
@LewSOS I reckon @Redbaiternz right on this one. There is a pseudo silencing machine called MSM on un-pc thought. @HamishMack @danylmc
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 1, 2014
.@MarkHubbard33 @LewSOS @Redbaiternz @HamishMack @danylmc You are actually crazy.
— Philip Matthews (@secondzeit) May 1, 2014
@secondzeit No. That's the kneejerk you're too prone to Philip. I once blogged on Hone's right to use nigger http://t.co/zxz9CcPCcB
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 1, 2014
@lantern See, your use of 'white dude' says so much about prejudice, and a sadly hate filled, closed mind #IdentityPolitics
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 1, 2014
@lantern Also, u knew nothing about me when u made 'white dude' tweet; but that usage (& your RT) delivers much of your mind #Mansplaining
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 1, 2014
@lantern May as well make the most of your kind RT'ing. Read this one from 'Coincidentally' half way down: http://t.co/eVacmFfT3X
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 1, 2014
However, first, as a final note, to the repressed groups Umair and Leeb feel themselves part of, here's the crazy thing: I believe absolutely in your rights, as individuals, to do, believe, advocate whatever you like, so long as you do no harm, initiate no force or fraud, and let me go about my life as I wish. I am not the enemy you want to create from me with your hateful hashtags, so let me tell you as a 'friendly': grow up. I reckon that's my most oft used phrase currently. And then get your common good coercion unto slavery out of my life; you have no right to be there because my right to be left alone trumps all in a free society, albeit I realise a free society is the last thing either of you want. Not really, because this common good, these public goods to be built by the legions, have to be paid for by a coercive global big brother tax surveillance state that renders the privacy abuses of PRISM, NSA, Stasi, et al, insignificant. And that's even if command economies worked: they don't, in Venezuela right now the planners can't even coordinate a supply of toilet paper, and if you follow the news, you'll note the predictable killing has started, as has occurred through the history of collectivism and every tyrant whom has set out using the iron fist of state to enforce on the citizens the common good as 'they' see it.
And finally to the Marxist Feminists, the 'hey look, #WhiteDude', is tactically like telling a joke: told the first one thousand times, yeah, it's a bit funny, but from the one thousand and oneth time, it falls rather flat. This blog is where I construct, and then reconstruct my-'self', so far be it from me to tell you what to do, given that's your point, but I reckon a bit of creative reinvention wouldn't do you any harm either. Surprise me ... or not; yeah, there's me demanding again.
Coincidentally, I'm currently working on a piece about rape culture feminism; an -ism based on identity rather than individualism. My thinking has changed on this, from an initial unthinking feeling of a rape culture as correct, as given to me by the media, to a questioning of the underlying assumptions of a rape culture premise based on distorted, and distorting, views of human relations. Readers of this blog will know from my posts over the latter part of 2013, this topic has become increasingly important to me, as it should be to all of us who dream of the free, civilised society. For this is the further inveigling of neo-Marxist brutishness into the lives of individuals: radio announcers Willie Jackson and John Tamihere were silenced by a rape culture seeking not dialectic, but vengeance. I will show it is quite possible these two men were fired from their show for merely doing their jobs - running a talkback show: talking to callers; questioning callers; bringing items of public interest up for debate. But rape culture feminism, in a move pregnant with symbolism, found them guilty in the questioning, so went for the boycott in a campaign instigated and run by white male Marxist Giovanni Tiso. Indeed the instance of a white male strutting in with his righteous indignation to rescue the little women is so full of irony it's hilarious, at least, if it were not so serious. And what Tiso did was serious, because he shut down not only Willie and JT's radio show, but diverted all the properly directed energy there had been in the debate surrounding the horrible Roast Busters, and the violence of rape in our society, to two radio jocks who were paid to be controversial, and there the energy from a useful discussion was dissipated entirely. I've not even heard of the Roast Busters since. What a waste that deflection was. Nothing is ever gained by silencing. Nothing. That point is quite possibly the only point on which I agree with Chomsky:
I will also show, thereby, in this piece I'm still writing, quoting almost wholly two feminists who believe in reason and individualism, how neo-Marxist rape culture feminism has become a feminism seeking only the oppression of an insidious Left-centric conformity which wants forever to stomp on the face of an individual human being, and to do that sadly via the ruthless mechanism of the state - the latter especially regarding the enforced gender quotas, in public and private office, which form part of this agenda, and are possibly only one election away in New Zealand. And as Willie and JT found out, when dissent is made an example of against conformity, the tactic is always initially to sully the reputations of those deemed to be drunk on their privilege, a tactic from which even the Law Review Girls were not immune. Just as for the sin of a single tweet into her timeline, on Twitter - social media - and on a matter not even regarding gender politics, the anonymous Thorny proceeded to write an entire blog on how drunk on privilege I must be, with the clear inference I'm a misogynist. And that ludicrous, slanderous post is still up. I'm calling bullshit to this. Further case in point, a sadly typical tweet by such an identity mired feminism on Twitter:
‘Men attention seeking’ is the catch cry shrilled by this feminism at those who would reason against it, seemingly ignorant this was the very tactic of Edwardian men against the suffragettes - diminishing their reality by calling them attention seekers. These neo-Marxist feminists have become what they despise. Albeit in the face of such a tweet as this, all I can say - meeting matronising with patronising - is stop drawing attention to white men, then, dear. You've scored an own goal, just like Tiso did. More importantly, as I have to mansplain it to you, stop feeling about men so childishly as mere identity – the stereotypical generic male invented by a rape culture feminism – because we men, unsurprisingly like you women, if you care to think about it, are all complex individuals, damn near all of us, not rapists. And understand how rape culture feminism, even this tweet, thus forces society into a confrontational paradigm between the genders. What is gained by that? My piece will show there's a constructive alternative that can set us all, women and men, each race, each religion, free to pursue our happiness - classical liberal individualism; because the opposite of sexism is individualism, just as the opposite of racism is individualism. An individualism, poignantly as regards this debate, that shows gender, race and belief stereotypes for what they are: stereotypes.
I'm a grown woman. I can do whatever I want. #lifeofamuslimfeminist #Beyonce
— Aysha Syed (@ayshaspace) January 11, 2014
Extract II - The Fallacy of the Common Good:
I quote just two of my previous blogs on the tyranny of common good: from TheTyrant’s Call:
And – politicians note – from this blog’s most read post, still with hundreds of weekly reads, and growing, despite having been written in 2012, 1984 Comes to 2012, talking of how children in the UK were in a school education unit being taught to dob in suspected tax evaders in their neighbourhood (including mum and dad presumably):
What a long long long post.
ReplyDeleteThis in particular is just nuts:
. If in New Zealand, Umair would be on the far Left of our Green Party
No. He wouldn't. He just wouldn't. For a clue, he advocates:
rebuilding its decrepit infrastructure, schools, colleges, hospitals, parks, trains.
and that infrastructure, in his case, includes things like roads and road bridges.
The Greens would never fall for that. So - roads, "roads of national significance". schools & hospitals like Christchurch. Parks like the Wellington War Memorial and trains like Electric fucken Britomart.
No, he wouldn't be on the "far left of the Greens". He'd be in the National Cabinet
True. He's definitely Greens on the anything goes financing though.
DeleteCompartmentalise.
ReplyDeleteThat's a tiny bit esoteric Reed?
DeleteDo not sow a field with two kinds of seed. :-)
DeleteCollapsing into deep thought.
Delete