MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Privacy 101

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2025

Don’t know where to begin? Here are 6 steps to get started on your privacy journey!

NBTV Media

https://nbtv.substack.com/p/privacy-101

Regaining the Right to Consent

In today’s hyper-connected world, the right to control our own information is often stripped away without our knowledge or consent. Companies, data brokers, and governments collect vast amounts of data about us—more than we might imagine.

The good news? We can take back control.

Privacy isn’t about hiding—it’s about reclaiming the right to decide who gets access to our data and how it’s used.

Surveillance apologists normalize invasive practices, but you have the power to push back and reclaim your digital life.

If you’re overwhelmed by where to begin, don’t be. Every small step you take makes a big difference. This guide will help you get started with six simple changes that can significantly improve your daily privacy.

Privacy 101

In this guide, I’ve highlighted a few tools I personally use and find effective, but there are so many incredible options available. For a deeper dive, check out our other articles and videos that explore the tradeoffs of other alternatives. If you’ve discovered tools we didn’t mention, share them in the comments so others can benefit from your experience!

6 Simple Steps to Start Reclaiming Your Privacy

1. Switch Your Browser

Your browser is your gateway to the internet, and it’s often a major source of privacy leaks. Popular browsers like Chrome and Edge collect massive amounts of data about your online activity.

  • Solution: Switch to a privacy-focused browser.
  • Resource: Use privacytests.org to compare browsers and see how they handle tracking and other privacy measures. Some browsers that stand out on the list include Brave, Mullvad, and LibreWolf (with a special mention that goes to Tor, obviously).
  • Steps:
    • Import your bookmarks from your current browser to make the transition seamless.
    • You can also import any saved passwords if that is a barrier to you switching over. Even better is to import any saved passwords directly into a password manager: this is a more involved setup so we have a deep-dive on password managers that we didn’t include in this 6-step introduction.
    • Set your new browser as the default for easy use.

2. Change Your Search Engine

Google Search dominates the market, but it also builds detailed profiles of your interests, habits, and even medical concerns, and countless entities aggregate this data on your and exploit it.

  • Solution: Try privacy-focused search engines, there are countless, including Brave, Mojeek, Metager, SearX, Whoogle, Startpage, Duckduckgo, Swisscows, and Presearch to name a few. Let us know which ones give you the best results!
  • Pro Tip: Make a secondary search engine your browser’s homepage for easy access to multiple options.
  • Why It Matters: Switching search engines is one of the easiest privacy wins—90% of people use Google, so just making this change puts you ahead of the curve.

3. Secure Your Messaging

SMS and regular phone calls are not private. Almost all countries require telecom providers to build backdoors for government surveillance, but these backdoors are exploited.

  • Solution: Use private messaging apps that are E2EE.
  • Resource: Check out securemessagingapps.com for an in-depth comparison of private messaging apps and their features. My favorite is Signal, but you can try out others like Threema, or SimpleX, or whichever stands out to you on the list.

4. Upgrade Your Email

Popular email services like Gmail analyze your inbox to build detailed profiles on you.

  • Solution: Use privacy-focused providers like ProtonMail or Tuta, which offer E2EE in-network, and tools like password-protected emails for anything out-of-network.
  • Steps:
    • Import your Gmail history and contacts into your new email provider for an easy transition – you can do this with a single click.
    • Set up email forwarding from your old account to your new one, gradually transitioning your contacts.

5. Migrate Your Calendar

Your calendar holds sensitive information, including your daily habits, appointments, and locations.

  • Solution: Switch to end-to-end-encrypted calendars from providers like Proton or Tuta.
  • Steps: Import your existing calendar data with just a click, and all your future appointments will now be private and secure.

NBTV is part of the Ludlow Institute, a non-profit funded by the community, not sponsors. To keep up-to-date with our latest privacy tips and support our advocacy for digital rights, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

6. Use a VPN

A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and hides your IP address from the websites you visit, protecting your location and online activities.

  • Solution: Choose reputable providers like Mullvad or ProtonVPN. Be very careful which VPN you download: a large part of the industry are just scam apps run by shell companies that collect you data. Only choose reputable providers.
  • Why It Matters: A VPN adds an extra layer of protection, preventing websites and data brokers from easily profiling you.

Takeaways

Reclaiming your privacy is about taking control of your digital life and asserting your right to choose who gets access to your data.

While it may seem overwhelming at first, the steps outlined in this guide are simple, actionable, and make a huge impact. They’re also quick wins that don’t require technical expertise. Each step builds on the last, making privacy less daunting and more empowering.

Privacy isn’t about perfection or doing everything at once—it’s about progress. By starting small and gradually adopting tools that align with your values, you can reclaim control over your data one step at a time.

This journey is about more than protecting yourself—it’s about building a better, more secure digital world for everyone. Your privacy is worth it, and you’re more capable than you realize. Take that first step, and you’ll quickly see how much power you really have.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

“Stabbed in the Eye” Hoax: How the Pro-Israel Right Weaponizes Victimhood

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2025

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Trump Reveals Plan For The Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2025

The president said that this new arrangement could be either temporary or long-term, but one would have to be extremely naive to believe that either Israel or Washington plan on emptying out Gaza of its inconvenient population, rebuilding it, and then bringing them all back to shiny new homes.

How is helping Israel cleanse Palestine of Palestinians a US problem? Is it because Israel has the power to prevent re-election of anyone who is critical?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/02/how-the-media-cracks-down-on-critics-of-israel

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trump-reveals-plan-for-the-ethnic

Caitlin Johnstone

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/yChkAGlVmto?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Well that didn’t take long. President Trump has said he wants to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to US client states Egypt and Jordan, which would of course be a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. It would also align perfectly with longstanding Israeli agendas to remove Palestinians from their homeland so that their territory can be seized and settled by Jews.

Speaking with the press on board Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he talked to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about taking in large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza, and said he plans to speak with Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about doing the same.

“I’d like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, saying the Gaza Strip is “a real mess” and “literally a demolition site”.

“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qwvMvm3gf0g?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

The president said that this new arrangement could be either temporary or long-term, but one would have to be extremely naive to believe that either Israel or Washington plan on emptying out Gaza of its inconvenient population, rebuilding it, and then bringing them all back to shiny new homes. Israel has a very extensive history of grabbing land from Palestinians and then refusing to give it back, which is why there are so-called “refugee camps” for displaced Palestinians that are as old as the state of Israel itself.

“Just five days into his second term as president, Trump left no doubt about what his intentions are for Gaza,” Joe Lauria wrote for Consortium News on Trump’s comments, adding, “He tried to present what he was saying as humanitarian concern, but only the most ill-informed person about Gaza would not see that he is talking about committing the crime of forcibly relocating a population.”

Trump supporters will no doubt defend his stated plans as a compassionate effort to rescue Palestinians from unfortunate circumstances, because Trump supporters are chowder-brained bootlickers who would defend literally anything their president did. But make no mistake: this is the advancement of an agenda to end the existence of the Palestinian people in their historic homeland, and would fulfill the darkest desires of the most depraved political factions in Israel.

Mere days after the Hamas attack on October 7 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry produced a document proposing the removal of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. At around the same time, an Israeli think tank called the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy published a paper arguing that “There is at the moment a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government.”

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Hillbilly Music History Workshop-Full Presentation

Posted by M. C. on January 26, 2025

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Why the World Is Giving Up on Birthright Citizenship

Posted by M. C. on January 25, 2025

These conclusions also suggest it is not a coincidence that there are so few unrestricted jus soli states with positive net migration rates. Worldwide, nearly all states with unconditional jus soli are found in Latin America and the Caribbean.3 The countries in these regions are nearly all net out-migration countries, or countries with very little in-migration. Only three countries outside the Americas have unconditional just soli: Chad, Lesotho, and Tanzania. All of these countries are net-outmigration countries.4

https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-world-giving-birthright-citizenship

Mises Wire • Ryan McMaken

Earlier this week, Donald Trump signed a new executive order which attempts to end so-called “birthright citizenship” in the United States. During the signing ceremony, Trump declared that the United States is “the only country in the world that does this with birthright…”

This is untrue and the Washington Post, among other publications, was quick to declare that Trump “falsely claimed” that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship, also known as the legal principle of unrestricted—or “pure”—jus soli.

Trump would have been accurate, however, had he said that birthright citizenship is becoming rare, and that it is especially rare among those wealthier countries that experience positive net in-migration. In many countries, as generous welfare states attract growing numbers of migrants, the idea of unrestricted jus soli has become less popular.

Indeed, Europe no longer contains any states that offer birthright citizenship, and others have added new restrictions to what jus soli provisions they have. 

Decline of Jus Soli in Europe

Since the early modern period, migration between European states has been a significant phenomenon, and these numbers increased many times over during the Industrial Revolution. It was often the case, however, that these migrations were seasonal or limited to relatively small enclaves of minority populations. Moreover, many areas of Europe were experiencing labor shortages since, throughout most of this period, Europe was a continent of emigration rather than immigration. After all, during the nineteenth century alone, millions of Europeans emigrated to the Americas. 

After the Second World War, however, things began to change due to decolonization and growing human mobility. As a 2018 report from the European commission puts it:

Large-scale immigration into Europe began after the Second World War as a consequence of decolonisation and of economic reconstruction. Although several north-west European countries, such as Germany and France, put specific immigration programmes in place to attract the desired workforce, most post-war immigration into Europe was spontaneous and unregulated. The general expectation in the receiving countries was that immigration was temporary and that immigrants would return to their countries when their labour was no longer needed. However, this expectation proved to be misguided. Although restrictions to immigration were imposed in the 1970s, following the economic stagnation caused by the oil crisis, the number of immigrants continued to rise. A new wave of immigration occurred after 1990, following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the launching of eastern EU enlargement.

In the UK, for instance, mass immigration from the colonies and from wartime ally states such as Poland intensified after 1945. As the second half of the century wore on, however, the prospect of continued migration drove new policies on naturalization and migration. For example, although the UK had long employed a liberal jus soli policy, the 

Commonwealth Immigration Act 1968 introduced patriality, which required those seeking British citizenship to prove they had a parent or grandparent who already possessed British citizenship. This move saw the beginning of a shift in British citizenship from jus soli to jus sanguine or citizenship passed on by parental lines rather than place of birth.1 

Over the past  thirty years, some countries have expanded the use of jus soli but only in restricted form. This proved to be part of a larger trend across Europe  toward restrictionon just soli naturalization and this has meant that

the number of countries that offer merely facilitated naturalisation is becoming smaller as more states introduce ius soli at birth conditional on legal long‐term parental residence, or, after birth, as an option at majority. The group of countries with double ius soli has also been strengthened through the recent reforms in Luxembourg and Greece.

Ius soli citizenship has also become more politicised, and, as in the case of adult naturalisation, has become increasingly conditional, through the introduction of more stringent residence requirements for parents, and of additional requirements for facilitated naturalisation, such as continuous residence, public order conditions, and language and civic knowledge tests.

In 2004, when Ireland abolished its unrestricted jus soli provisions, Europe ceased to have any states that offered “birthright citizenship.” Rather, European states have tended to add new jus sanguinis elements—requirements based on the origins of the child’s parents—to restrict jus soli. Today, nearly all member states of the European Union require that at least one parent be born in the country (i.e., “double jus soli”) in order to obtain automatic citizenship.

Source: “Acquisition and loss of citizenship in EU Member States,” 2018. 

Similar trends have happened in the European “outposts” of Australia and New Zealand. Unrestricted jus soli had existed in Australia, but this was abolished in 1986. Birthright citizenship was abolished in New Zealand in 2006.

Why Does Unrestricted Jus Soli Decline?

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The LA Fires: Progressive Governance Claims More Victims

Posted by M. C. on January 25, 2025

Not surprisingly, California’s politicians and others are blaming “climate change” for what has happened and one expects to see future lawsuits against energy companies, claiming that they have caused warming that is responsible for the current spate of wildfires in California and elsewhere. However, the real culprits are California officials themselves and the legal and regulatory straightjackets they have created that prevent people from taking the necessary actions to abate fire risks.

“The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.”

https://mises.org/mises-wire/la-fires-progressive-governance-claims-more-victims

Mises Wire • William L. Anderson

Much has been written about the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, including articles on this page and other libertarian sites. After several days of uncontrolled fire and destruction, we are very familiar with the governmental failures that have led to this current crisis. Progressivism is the guiding star of both California’s state government and local governments in the highly populated regions on the state’s Pacific Coast, and progressive policies have all but guaranteed this latest disaster.

Governing ideologies matter and matter greatly. The former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would not have been as repressive as they were without guiding ideologies of their political leadership. Modern progressivism, while not as virulent and violent as the German and Soviet regimes, operates with a similar utopian worldview to repressive ideological regimes, and people living under progressive governments pay a serious price.

California’s governance has been ultra-progressive for more than a decade and cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have become the poster children for failed progressive regimes. Democrats hold a 3-1 edge over Republicans in both state houses, while the California congressional delegations in the US House and Senate are dominated by the Democratic Party, which has won almost all the statewide elections for office in the past 30 years. Democrats hold a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, which means Republicans cannot mount a challenge to any policies favored by Democrats.

Not surprisingly, California’s legislation is highly progressive, from the setting of high minimum wages to environmental policies, all of which impose huge costs on Californians that people in most other states don’t directly experience. Likewise, Los Angeles and San Francisco also have progressive governments that place leftist ideology over the nuts and bolts of ordinary governance.

Like most progressives, California’s lawmakers and activists believe that they can accomplish whatever they wish through legislation and coercion. When people in California believed that insurance rates were “too high,” they pushed through Proposition 103, which, according to Connor O’Keeffe, “severely decoupled” insurance rates from risk, which encouraged more building in fire-prone areas. On top of that, California’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, has announced a one-year moratorium on insurance cancellations, which means insurance companies cannot cancel a homeowner’s policy even if they are in a fire-prone area.

By forcing the few insurance companies that still write policies in California to offer below-cost premiums in places where wildfires are likely to happen, the state is all-but-forcing these companies into bankruptcy, as the claims in the latest fires certainly will out-strip whatever revenues they received from premiums. Given that the estimated damages are likely to be the highest ever from a wildfire, perhaps more than $20 billion, this will affect insurance companies across the nation.

Not surprisingly, California’s politicians and others are blaming “climate change” for what has happened and one expects to see future lawsuits against energy companies, claiming that they have caused warming that is responsible for the current spate of wildfires in California and elsewhere. However, the real culprits are California officials themselves and the legal and regulatory straightjackets they have created that prevent people from taking the necessary actions to abate fire risks.

Elizabeth Weil, writing in ProPublica, points out that more than a century of fire suppression in California forests has created conditions that when fires start, they turn into conflagrations:

The pattern is a form of insanity: We keep doing overzealous fire suppression across California landscapes where the fire poses little risk to people and structures. As a result, wildland fuels keep building up. At the same time, the climate grows hotter and drier. Then, boom: the inevitable. The wind blows down a power line, or lightning strikes dry grass, and an inferno ensues. This week we’ve seen both the second- and third-largest fires in California history. “The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.”

However, both the National Environmental Policy Act and California air quality laws, among others, make it extremely difficult to do anything to mitigate the damage done from fire suppression.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Did Trump Just Drop Some Hints About His Peace Plan?

Posted by M. C. on January 24, 2025

As for the compromises that might be requested of Russia, these could include freezing the Line of Contact while being asked to accept only the partial demilitarization of Ukraine and practically no denazification.

A What plan?

denazification – That would suggest that, yes Virginia, there really are (US taxpayer supported) nazis running things in Ukraine.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/did-trump-just-drop-some-hints-about

Andrew Korybko

Trump’s known for his capriciousness, however, so it might be that he either didn’t mean to hint at anything at all in his latest remarks about Russia or he might unexpectedly change his mind about the compromises that he considers to be acceptable for each party during his upcoming call with Putin.

Trump said a few words about Russia shortly after his reinauguration while signing Executive Orders in the Oval Office. They’re important to interpret since they might hint at his peace plan, which he’s yet to officially reveal, but reports have circulated claiming that he’ll “escalate to de-escalate” through more sanctions against Russia and armed aid to Ukraine if Putin rejects whatever deal he offers. He’ll likewise allegedly cut Ukraine off if Zelensky rejects the same deal. Here’s what he said on Monday afternoon:

“Zelenskyy told me he wants to make a deal, I don’t know if Putin does … He might not. I think he should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal. I think, Russia is kinda in big trouble. You take a look at their economy, you take a look at their inflation in Russia. I got along with [Putin] great, I would hope he wants to make a deal.

He’s grinding it out. Most people thought it would last about one week and now you’re into three years. It is not making him look good. We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed. About 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia’s bigger, they have more soldiers to lose but that’s no way to run a country.”

Starting from the beginning, his claim that Zelensky “wants to make a deal” coupled with his uncertainty about Putin’s willingness might be meant to portray the latter as an obstacle to peace, thus possibly setting the stage for the previously mentioned punitive measures. As for his opinion that Putin is “destroying Russia”, that’s hyperbole but frames his counterpart as the weaker of the two, especially when contrasted with Trump’s declaration earlier that day about the start of an American Golden Age.

He then elaborated by pointing to Russia’s inflation rate,

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

TikTok is worse than you think. But no, it shouldn’t be banned.

Posted by M. C. on January 22, 2025

The TikTok Debate: Privacy, Manipulation, and a Dangerous Precedent

“Data Collection: Beyond TikTok, platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram feed China through real-time bidding (RTB) systems, data brokers, and other pipelines.”

https://nbtv.substack.com/p/tiktok-is-worse-than-you-think-but

TikTok collects a staggering amount of data. Only recently, with the U.S. government moving to ban the app, have many begun to grasp the extent of its invasiveness. Beyond tracking what you watch and interact with, TikTok monitors every tap, keystroke, and interaction within its in-app browser.

Last year, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act required ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest its U.S. operations or face a ban. Here’s the reasoning they gave:

  • Data Collection and Access: TikTok enables vast data collection, including location tracking, keystroke monitoring, and personal data aggregation. The Justice Department called this “unprecedented,” raising fears of espionage and exploitation by China.
  • National Security Threats: Officials warn of potential spying, blackmail, and recruitment by China using TikTok.
  • Content Manipulation: Concerns include the Chinese Communist Party manipulating TikTok’s algorithm to influence U.S. public opinion, suppress dissent, or spread disinformation.

Although ByteDance challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court upheld it. A ban took effect on January 19, 2025, though enforcement remains uncertain after a delay announced by Trump. For now, TikTok’s future is in limbo.

So, why am I against a ban?

I’m a huge privacy advocate, and agree that TikTok is an atrocious piece of spyware. But banning it is the wrong solution. Here’s why:

1. It’s Ineffective

A ban won’t stop China—or others—from collecting data. China is already embedded in U.S. telecommunications, IoT devices, and the data brokerage industry, which sells detailed profiles of Americans to foreign adversaries. TikTok is one piece of a larger puzzle.

  • Data Collection: Beyond TikTok, platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram feed China through real-time bidding (RTB) systems, data brokers, and other pipelines.
  • Manipulation: TikTok’s algorithm isn’t unique—other platforms also manipulate public opinion through content curation, advertising, and social graphs. This problem is actually a huge issue that we have to face, and a ban on TikTok won’t stop it.

2. It Creates a False Sense of Security

Banning TikTok might feel like a win, but it’s an illusion. Politicians get credit for “solving” the problem, while the real threats persist. People become complacent, assuming the issue is resolved, and the urgency to address broader privacy concerns fades.

3. It Sets a Dangerous Precedent

This is the most important reason: Censoring software establishes troubling government overreach into personal choices. Today it’s TikTok; tomorrow, it could be any software the government deems problematic. Perhaps it’s Signal private messenger for “lack of regulation and impeding national security,” a privacy coin for “enabling untraceable transactions,” VPNs for “bypassing government censorship,” or non-mainstream social media for “spreading misinformation.” This precedent risks eroding autonomy and critical thinking, leaving individuals reliant on the government to decide what’s safe.

The Bigger Issue: Privacy Violations Everywhere

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

BREAKING: Kennedy Claims Something ‘Weird’ Happened To Expedite George Soros Radio Stations Purchase

Posted by M. C. on January 22, 2025

Senator Kennedy…always interesting. Another illegal (i.e. unconstitutional), 3 letter agency, of faceless un-elected bureaucrats, massive fail.

Don’t expect the Orange Man to break any new trails. He wants more power for the CIA and FIB to fight domestic terrorism. One might ask oneself, self, where were they to begin with?

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

“Class” Analysis: Marx’s Shell Game

Posted by M. C. on January 21, 2025

“Unnecessary conflicts between different ill-defined “classes” of people benefit the state. Bastiat called the state “the great fiction” by which everyone tries to use the state to plunder everyone else. This simultaneously enriches and empowers the political caste and its beneficiaries and gets the people to conflict with each other rather than the political caste.“

https://mises.org/mises-wire/class-analysis-marxs-shell-game

Mises Wire•Joshua Mawhorter

Though it is full of fallacies, so-called Marxian “class” analysis still pervades much popular and political discourse. This divisive worldview unnecessarily exacerbates conflicts between groups (so-called “classes”) and is a convenient worldview for the political state because it empowers it to treat all differences between groups as moral inequities and “problems” to be solved by treating groups unequally in the name of equity, justice, and fairness.

Previously, I have written about Marx’s “class analysis” and what I call the “ideological fallacy”—if all argumentation is necessarily biased special pleading on behalf of one’s “class,” then Marxism itself is admitting non-objectivity as just another class-biased ideology. In that case, Marxism cannot be an objective science; or, if it claims that objective truth and persuasion through argument is possible between “classes,” class consciousness and analysis are bogus.

Whenever someone claims, “All people are slaves of ideological bias,” then they have two options—either their statement does apply to them (and is not to be trusted as objective), or it does not apply to them (and the theory is not true). The consistent arguer of ideological bias and Marxist class warfare is inviting you not to believe him either way! Additionally, if the Marxist arguer of ideological bias and class conflict truly believes what they argue—that no one can be convinced against their class interest and no one can objectively stand outside their ideology, then the logical conclusion is clear, “Shut up!” This is the error of polylogism, that is, the self-defeating argument that different groups of people (“classes”) have fundamentally different different logics.

Marx’s Sleight of Hand: “Class”

This article attempts to expose another fallacy within Marx’s theory—his sleight of hand regarding class conflict. Marx engages in a form of the fallacy of equivocation, that is, he argues with one definition, but then switches the definition, or what it designates, in the conclusion. His shell game is subtle, especially because it actually begins with a statement that is largely true historically,

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another…

So far, this is true. These were state-imposed legal castes. They involved the creation of legal categories imposed by the state. Ralph Raico distinguished, however, that “these opposed pairs turn out to be, either wholly or in part, not economic, but legal, categories.” In short, Marx borrowed the coherent libertarian class-caste analysis—that various groups attempt to use state power to privilege themselves and/or to restrict others. This was used to establish his point only to quickly smuggle in a voluntary-contractual relationship as if it was also obviously one of class-caste conflict: capitalists and workers.

Class versus Caste Analysis

“Marx obfuscated the problem by confusing the notion of caste and class.”—Mises, Theory and History

Libertarianism has a rich tradition of class-caste analysis, in fact—focusing on the key distinction between political elites and state-connected cronies on the one side (the “few”), and the productive public on the other (the “many”)—caste analysis is key to libertarianism. Furthermore, Marx simply borrowed these concepts and wording from classical liberals (though he equivocated on the definition). Marx even admitted in an 1852 letter,

…no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes.

But Marx took a voluntary-contractual, intertemporal exchange—that between the capitalist-entrepreneur and the wage-earner—and placed it into the category of exploitation with other exploitative relationships (land-owner/serf, slaveholder/slave, etc.), applying the slippery concept of “class conflict” to both. This is akin to creating two categories with accepted definitions—squares and triangles—followed by a list of square-shaped things only to include a triangle-shaped item in the square category.

Because of this confusion and ambiguity in the concept of “class,” we are now treated to a seemingly-endless, ever-growing list of neo-Marxist “classes” in conflict—race, sex, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. For example, see the Intersectionality Wheel of Privilege and Power. Virtually every perceived and actual difference between peoples puts them into some sort of intersectional “class.” These differences are patent evidence of injustice and require the political state elites—in actuality, the most privileged class!—to treat unequal peoples unequally in order to achieve “equity.”

“Class” Categories

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »