Adam’s Peace

Politics is complex, but fortunately, not complicated. My personal political stance is the same… complex but uncomplicated.

Capitol Punnishment

Probably the most complicated of my views is on the death penalty. I am strictly against it, yet I am completely supportive of the use of deadly force.

The key distinction in this stance is whether someone is in immediate danger or not. A policeman in a firefight should have every right to shoot to kill, though I would hope they could find non-lethal methods… The goal should be to preserve lives, even at the expense of a life. A person on the street should be able to defend themselves appropriately… If they truly feel that their life is in danger, then they should be justified in using whatever means necessary to defend themselves.

The problem with the death penalty is that, while a convicted criminal is in jail, they are not an immediate threat to anybody. Killing that person becomes an act in cold blood… nobody’s life is being defended, except perhaps hypothetical future victims. If we functioned on hypothetical situations, then hypothetically, everybody is capable of murder, so everybody should be put to death… At least, that’s my view on things.

I do believe that some people should spend life in prison without a chance for parole. As I said, if someone is in prison, they are not an immediate threat, and there is no reason to kill them.

This view extends to everybody… If I had a chance to judge Adolf Hitler, I would choose to inprison him rather than kill him. If he had a gun pointed at me, I would shoot at him… but if he were captured (rather than commiting suicide as he did), then I could not find any justifiable reason to end his life. Even the worst of monsters can do some good.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Socialism v. Capitalism

My financial beliefs are simple: Be both a capitalist and a socialist. I’m not talking about forms of government here… I am not a Communist, because as a form of government, it simply doesn’t work. On a small scale, Socialism works miracles. On a large scale, Socialism breaks down horribly. The opposite is true with Capitalism: On a large scale, Capitalism works miracles, yet is a force of destruction on the small scale.

Nobody can deny that we live in a global economy. The keyboard that I am typing on was made in China, and the microprocessor that sends the pieces of information to the various parts of my computer was probably fabricated in India. All of the parts were assembled in Malaysia, then shipped to the United States. If this weren’t the case, then a computer like the one I’m writing with would probably cost ten times as much. In this case, Capitalism is great, because it distributes the work to the areas that are best equipped to perform that work. Capitalism relies on the fact that not all men are created equal, and through specialization, it ensures that the inequalities remain, even if the individuals within the economy change their specializations. For instance, South Korea used to be the cheapest place to manufacture and distribute clothes, but because of the inflow of money, they were able to graduate to become the leading manufacturer of cars, beating out Japan in recent decades. Now, South Korea is a terrible place to run a clothing plant, and in the next couple of decades, the same will happen to their automobile industry. Eventually, the United States will become the cheapest place to manufacture goods, but with American Pride being what it is, it might be another century before we see the production levels we had in the 1950’s.

On the other hand, Socialism is an economic plan that can even out the short, euphoric peaks of Capitalism and fill in the long valleys between each culture’s golden age. A certain level of Socialism ensures that there will always be highly trained specialists working in the most important areas of our communities. Policemen and Firefighters work for the State, are well paid, highly trained, and highly effective. The same could be done for other important services, such as medical care. I am not saying that we should socialize all business. Commodities and luxuries should all rely on the competition that Capitalism provides, but when it comes to providing basic necessities to life, such as access to medical treatment, ensuring public safety, sanitation, education, and nutrition, we would find that our economy will steady out and experience perpetual growth.

Debt

This isn’t something that the current candidates are talking about very much, but I am very strongly opposed to debt in most cases. It is my belief that luxuries should be paid with money that is already earned. Buying cars and houses on credit is a gray area, because people need transportation and shelter, and a person who has neither would be a very ineffective worker. I completely support student loans, because it is a true investment into the nation’s future on the part of the banks who give these loans.

I personally have six months left to pay on my car, and rather than using the extra money per month to buy a new car, I plan on putting all of that money into savings. When I bought it, my car cost $13,000 (US). By the time July comes around, I will have paid $21,900, paying almost an extra $9,000 for the privilege to drive off the lot without having any money. Now that I have a reliable car, though, and with my plan to put the majority of the money into savings, I’ll be able to buy another brand new car in three and a half years. If my current car breaks down in a year, I’ll have the money to fix it, or to buy a used car to replace it. Besides my student loans, that is the only debt that I have, and I feel free to do whatever I wish to do with my life.

I still have monthly bills, of course, and I am planning on buying a house next year… But, I can shut down the services that I’m being billed for without having to worry about collection agencies hounding me, and it is easy to sell a house (despite what some market “experts” are saying about the housing market) and get the money you invested into it back into cold hard cash. I just have to make certain that I can easily cover my mortgage payments… and since I’m not paying interest on other debt, it is easy to keep myself from being buried.

I think that debt should be a major political issue… that people should also be taught basic money management skills in school (like what an asset is… hint: houses are not assets.)… that it should be far more appealing in people’s minds to actually own what they’re buying, rather than having a credit company own them.

The way I see it, is if I would be uncomfortable going to my father to borrow money for an item, then I should be uncomfortable going to a credit company as well.

War

In case anyone has forgotten, I’m a veteran of the U.S. Army. I raised my right hand, spoke a solemn oath, and signed a contract that said that my life was committed to defending the U.S. Constitution and the nation it represents.

With that being said, I think the most appropriate analogy to war is to see it as a hot poker. In an emergency, a hot poker can be used to stop a wound from bleeding and save a life… but it is completely inappropriate to just go around poking people with a hot poker.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The question is, what makes a good war? I say, it is the history books, and history is always written by the survivors. In today’s world, it is politically impossible to win an absolute victory… There will always be survivors who sympathize with the opposing side, and so, there will always be people who write histories that speak of the brutality of war.

I say, to have a good war, you must not use weapons… any weapons. This includes anything that causes suffering. The goal of a good war would be to achieve victory, not to defeat an enemy. If we can separate the two in the minds of the public, because they are indeed separate, then we can begin to have good wars. Until that point, every war will be evil… thoroughly and indisputably evil.

Let me explore that a bit in the context of a war on an idea… the famed War on Terror. (Again, beware when fighting monsters, lest you become one yourself.) When fighting an extreme idea such as terrorism, the goal shouldn’t be to bring terror upon the terrorists. The goal should be to first understand why they are setting roadside bombs. For the vast majority of cases, it is a simple recipe: Terrorism is a combination of a lack of education mixed together with nationalism/fascism, liberally covered in poverty and oppression. In some cases, a small dash of religion is thrown in to make it more palatable, just as a dash of salt makes a grapefruit taste sweeter.

So, to fight the war on terror, we simply need to remove the ingredients. Promote education (which often takes care of the fascism and oppression) and set up industries in the area. The religion really isn’t a problem, just as salt certainly isn’t sweet. In fact, the most terrorist-ridden religion, Christianity, is also one of the most prolific in providing charities around the world, and it really isn’t wise to remove a finger to get rid of a splinter. Having a war against a religion would only create more terrorist anyways. While we’re setting up capitalism, we should also set up socialism, such as public education, public police, public firefighters and rescue workers, public health care, and public sanitation. We shouldn’t have too much socialism, of course, because we want these areas to be able to stand on their own as their infrastructure grows, but providing social services can go a very long way towards helping them directly and increasing our public image.

Gay Marriage

It’s a public contract. Either allow everybody to get married, or require those who are currently married to get “civil unions” and let the churches keep the word “marriage.” Quit being bigoted, kick the church out of government, and give everybody equal rights. (We already learned that “separate but equal” is never equal.)

Internet Neutrality

It’s simple… If your business is providing other people access to the internet, then you have no right to limit what they do (and should have no responsibility either). If your business includes having a link to the internet, then it is your responsibility to make certain that link is secure. If you have a home connection, do a few hours of homework and make your computer secure. (You can ask me… I have a few recommendations… but there are so many different scenarios that I can’t cover all of them right now.)

There are already laws in place that can and should prevent people from hacking. If you’re a black hat hacker, get a life. Seriously, what are you going to prove by “pwning” a windows box? If you’re using a script to do your attacks, you’re not only unimaginative, but you’re stupid and you will be caught. If you’re using a proxy, well, at least you RTFM’d, and it would take a court order to catch you… but is it worth it? When was the last time a hacker actually got any amount of money?

As for gray hats… be careful out there. You’re doing a good thing, but not everybody thinks the same way. Contact your target first and ask permission… especially if they’re a corporation.

Oh, and please stop calling yourselves hackers, no matter what color hat you wear. You aren’t refactoring sloppy code to fit into a 64K mainframe core, so you aren’t hacking… The hackers disappeared long ago.

Religion

For the safety of religion, keep it out of politics. For the safety of politics, keep it out of religion.

Environment

Even ignoring objective, well documented evidence, I support conservation in some respects… I also support mass-utilization in other respects.

The key question, for me, is whether we can grow something within twenty years. If we can, then use more of it. If we can’t, then use less of it and recycle it every chance possible.

The Earth is a closed ecosystem. That is, every gram of waste stays on the Earth (with some minor, extreme exceptions). Fortunately, there is more than one way to recycle, and not all of them require large pollution belching plants.

No matter how hard we try, we can’t grow any more aluminum… We have to wait for it to literally fall out of the sky, one fleck of space dust at a time. Aluminum is a perfect material to recycle. In fact, recycling aluminum creates less pollution than mining it and processing its ore.

On the other hand, we can grow new paper. In fact, it is far better for the environment to use new paper than it is to recycle it. Besides the environmental cost of collecting it, sorting it out of all of the other recyclable materials, and grinding it down into a pulp, it also takes more chemicals to clean up recycled paper than it takes to clean up new paper.

Plus, most people who insist on stopping the loggers forget one important factor: supply and demand. The more demand that there is for wood products, the more forests get planted so that, in the future, there can be more harvested wood. By planting new forests and using the wood, we take out extra CO₂ from the atmosphere, and we safely store it in our filing cabinets and build our walls out of it.

Also, one more thing to consider: It costs more <em>money</em> to recycle paper than to make new paper. For the most part, recycled paper and new paper sell for about the same price… so where does the extra money come from? Well, it’s hidden in your taxes. That’s right… whether you use recycled paper or not, you’re still paying for it.

See, even with all of my socialism talk earlier, I’m not completely pink… I just believe that we should spend our tax money on what matters, not what looks like it might make us feel good.

As for the alternative way to recycle… Compost does wonders. I say, we bury our trash for a few decades, dig it back up, separate the toxic materials out (and either use them or find a way to make them non-toxic), recycle the metals, and use the non-toxic materials as fertilizer for the forests. In a way, landfills are a great idea… It keeps the trash from piling up in our back yards (and making us sick) and provides a storage place for future recycling projects. If we could just get more cities to adopt the idea that landfills can be used to collect methane for power plants (which burns more cleanly than natural gas and coal), then we can completely isolate our trash and turn it into a renewable resource.

On a final note about the environment: The Amazon rain forest isn’t being clear-cut by loggers… It’s being clear-cut by farmers.