Pandemics

What’s the best way to deal with a highly-infectious, extremely-deadly pandemic? Should society coercively quarantine the infectious and the possibly-infectious? Should society coercively close businesses and ban social gatherings? Should society provide government financial aid to the businesses closed and government medical aid to the people infected?

None of these. No matter how bad the pandemic, emergency, or natural catastrophe, government never has the right to initiate coercion. And no such criminality or tyranny is ever necessary or beneficial to society.

The correct answer to the problem of disease pandemics is: individual liberty. This is the correct answer to every social, economic, political, and public health problem – no matter how sudden or disastrous.

The free individual and society tend to be highly rational, responsible, competent, and even expert in unexpected, difficult situations. No matter what is thrown at them, free persons and voluntary social groups tend to be quite dexterous and clever.

Of course, when confronted by a formidable medical menace, like a dangerous pandemic, free individuals and societies do need to react effectively – to be reasonably prudent, wise, insightful, and slick. They also need to have fostered high-quality medical experts and institutions in advance. Then they need to assiduously follow their advice.

There’s no substitute for ingenuity. There’s rarely any unthinking, automatic, one-size-fits-all answer to a terrible pandemic. Both the individual, and society collectively, need to be intelligent and virtuous. They need to be flexible and deft about all of this. They need to take effective counter-measures to minimize sickness and consequent impoverishment.

Every free individual should call upon her hopefully-powerful education and moral code in deciding whether she wants to work or go out socializing -- or not. In the midst of a horrible pandemic, she must determine the proper conditions to meet and precautions to take before working or socializing.

Often the health situation changes quickly and radically This is one reason why the free individual – with all of her rights and choices protected – is by far the most likely to make the right decisions under difficult circumstances. The least likely is some mindless, soulless, fascist government bureaucrat. Do-gooding, welfare-statist, dictatorial, government agents -- if they get to decide – are almost guaranteed to wreck the health and wealth of all.

It also needs to be understood that in a pandemic, as otherwise, when a person knowingly or unknowingly infects another with a harmful or deadly disease, then she has committed a crime. If the disease-vector person can be accurately determined, she needs to be punished. The law should provide for justice in all such deliberate or negligent attacks which do serious damage.

It further needs to be understood that unlike in failed welfare-statist societies, government public places shouldn’t exist, except for tiny, isolated ones, for narrow, governmental purposes, such as the police, military, courts, and jails. Disease-causing government schools, roads, parks, etc. should not exist. They should all be private and capitalist. The natural responsibility and cleverness of the capitalist owners – who can readily be sued or jailed for getting people infected – will tend to slow the epidemic drastically.

Thus the best way to deal with a highly-infectious and extremely-deadly pandemic is thru social and economic liberty. Also thru the full exercise of individual freedom, responsibility, intelligence, and virtue.

The Wuhan Flu vs. Selfish and Greedy Bastards

Capitalism is desperate to solve the Wuhan Flu. Savage and brutal capitalists are out of their minds on this. The entire profit-seeking, private, medical industry is in a kind of feeding frenzy over this.

Yet these morally-magnificent thinkers and workers are doing virtually nothing. Why is that? It makes no sense.

All these spiritually-noble healthcare professionals know that there’s a fortune to be made here. Every medical entrepreneur, businessman, and capitalist on the planet knows that he can become filthy rich -- an instant billionaire, even -- if he solves this problem. Every selfish exploiter of other people's misery and every heartlessly, greedy capitalist in the world is desperate to get to work. So why don’t they?

Because the government says No. Because the do-gooding Welfare State says No. Because Big Brother says No.

So all the badly-needed Wuhan Flu test-kits, treatments, vaccines, and cures are currently going uninvented and unsupplied. Even medical materials and remedies which already exist are going largely unmanufactured. And it’s all because the tyrannical Welfare State government points its guns at the money-grubbing healthcare industry and says No. It stops cold the great humans who are entirely driven by selfishness and greed.

The baffling and hateful truth is that the illegitimate and tyrannical CDC, FDA, NIH, etc. – none of which serve a need or have any right to exist – have tied up the healthcare industry in their evil rules, regulations, red tape, and bureaucracy. New products are made snail-slow and king's ransom-expensive.

And so people are sick and dying in droves.

This is what Big Brother does. This havoc and destruction is what the Welfare State wreaks. Yes, people have to have a bit of education and virtue to see it, and figure it all out. But the nature of fascist, socialist Big Brother and the criminal, tyrannical Welfare State is obvious.

When their rights are respected and they’re allowed to operate, selfish, greedy capitalists virtually always solve the problem. They virtually always fix the mess.

This is because the money-hungry, selfish exploiters of any given situation – the savage and brutal capitalists – only think about themselves and what they can accomplish. They only care about money. They put profits before people, ignore the common good, never self-sacrifice, and exclusively go in search of filthy lucre.

Hence, these morally-magnificent beings get things done. The whole world benefits massively. These selfish and greedy bastards solve every possible socio-economic problem. No matter how bad society fouls up, they fix every conceivable mess. And these heroes of the world provide every unworthy lowlife on earth with an overflowing supply of things like gold-quality, dirt-cheap, Wuhan Flu test-kits, treatments, vaccines, and cures.

This is what happens when free enterprise and free trade are allowed to exist. This is what happens when social and economic regulations don't exist. This is what happens when the "protect the public", "serve the common good", Welfare State is held in check or terminated.

People have a right to be free. The medical industry has a right to function. The scintillating and wondrous people of selfishness and greed have a right to do their thing, seek their profits, exploit our weaknesses, parasite off our failures, make themselves grotesquely rich at our expense – and solve all of our god-damned problems!

It’s worth noting here that the selfish exploiters and greedy capitalists have a long and unbroken track record in human history. Whatever is desperately wanted and badly needed they do. They virtually always solve the problem and fix the mess. “Competence” is their middle name. “Ingenious brilliance” is their nature. If you want to be great and happy, as an individual or a society, you need to slavishly defer to them.

So long as selfish, greedy capitalists are granted their freedom, and allowed to operate as they wish and ought, they essentially always perform magnificently. Impossible problems gets solved quickly and easily. The products and services provided by the entirely selfish and monstrously greedy are notorious for having an extremely high rate of success and an extremely low level of cost.

Such is the nature of selfishness, greed, and laissez-faire capitalism.

Economic Stimulation

If the government truly wants to “stimulate” the economy it should stop interfering with it. Stop intervening in it. Stop coercing it. Bring a halt to its initiation of force, criminality, and tyranny.

There should be no more business permits. No more professional licenses. No more labor laws. No more government paperwork.

Business owners should be free to hire and fire at will, pay what they want, and make workers do as they command, without restrictions. Workers, in turn, should be free to accept, reject, and quit any job offered, and make any demands they desire. Workers should be allowed to instantly start up any “gig” job or business they wish as well.

There should be no more Welfare State nonsense and dictatorship, such as minimum wages, overtime pay, hours restrictions, paid holidays, paid sick days, maternity leave, bereavement leave, vacations, breaks, sundry benefits, or health care unless both employer and employee agree to them.

Government should stop coercively “helping” management and labor. Government should stop “benevolently” coercing all aspects of economic production and trade.

Let people live. Let people function. Let people be free. Let people be happy.

Let people enjoy economic liberty, and behave as they choose, and engage in whatever non-coercive, non-fraudulent, business activity they wish.

Government only exists to stop physical coercion and financial fraud. Government only exists to protect people and property. It should never “regulate” people and their voluntary, social behavior and peaceful, personal activity. It should never regulate economic activity or private businesses involved in producing, manufacturing, promoting, advertising, distributing, trading, buying, and selling.

All such regulation is criminal. All such regulation is tyrannical.

Production and trade are sacred and untouchable. Government has no right to interfere ever. Government has no right to intervene as an unwanted third party between two persons or companies that seek to exchange products or services. Under Natural Law and the inherent freedom of man, government has no right to prevent people from doing business as they see fit, and engaging in free enterprise and free trade as they choose.

Regulating business “to protect the public” or “for the common good” is an act of coercion and force. It’s an act of law-breaking and tyranny. And it never benefits the public or serves the common good in any rational or meaningful sense. This violation of individual rights harms and impoverishes everyone involved.

If government genuinely seeks to “stimulate” the economy it should leave it alone. Stop damaging it. Take its hands off. Call off the dogs. Lower its weapons. Laissez-faire.

Pandemic Misguidance

Despite what arrogant humans often think, microbes rule the world. Occasionally these mighty mites assert their power in spectacular form, such as Justinian’s Plague (541-42 A.D.), which killed around 25 million; the Black Death (1346-53), which killed around 120 million; the Spanish Flu (1918-20), which killed around 30 million (including 675,000 Americans); and the AIDS Epidemic (1981-2020) which killed around 36 million.

More recent microbial attacks have done less damage, due to recent medical advances, but there have been at least seven influenza outbreaks in the past century that have killed over a million. And awesomely-destructive bio-chemical weapons are a looming possibility in an era which loves to appease dictatorships.

So when deadly viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other tiny life forms press in upon mankind, this is the time for private and capitalist medical authorities to step up, take over, and help prevent a global pandemic. This is the time for real experts to assert themselves, assume rightful leadership, and advise us all what to do.

In American terms, this means The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Mass General, Beth Israel, and the medical departments of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and The University of Chicago need to lead the way. So too the health publications The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine.

What is to be avoided are communist organizations like The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), The National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and The World Health Organization (WHO), which are grossly incompetent by definition. These mindless, soulless, aggravating, destructive government bureaucracies have no right to exist. In any serious emergency, or even mild medical quandary, they will only make things worse to the extent these collectivist monoliths are allowed to exert their tyrannical authority.

Unfortunately, in today’s post-1918 welfare state world, virtually every American alive turns to these illegitimate and failed communist organizations above. They mostly ignore the real authorities – the effective and competent ones. Most Americans foolishly don’t rely upon or pay heed to the private and capitalist experts and geniuses who might actually know the truth and be able to helpfully tell everybody what to do.

And yet the truth is, whenever a serious medical crisis looms – such as today’s Wuhan Flu pandemic – this is exactly the time for the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, the Lancet, and JAMA to speak up and let their knowledgeable, insightful, wise voices be heard and followed!

Intellectuals

Intellectuals rule the world. Intelligent, educated, philosophical ones dominate almost everything and everyone. Those who are practical successes, who make their ideas and themselves relatively well-known, are the commanders of the earth.

Unfortunately, they and their ideas don’t have to be factually true, morally good, or spiritually elevated. Historically, most of them aren’t. Today especially, most of them aren’t. Intellectuals generally evade, deceive, and mislead. This is particularly so in our current, irrational, illiberal, post-modernist, regressive, nihilist, early 21^st century Dark Age.

But good is somewhat stronger than evil, as even the first Zarathustrans observed. And truth is somewhat stronger than ignorance and lies. So humans naturally ascend.

But good-guy intellectuals still have to work hard and smart to defeat the bad ones. And they even have to be fairly clever and slick – because their formidable, bad-guy enemies usually are thus too.

One interesting, odd, sad, alarming truth is that the truth-telling intellectuals seem to need to be fairly popular and well-liked in order to rule. They evidently can’t just meekly and quietly discover and explain the truth. They evidently also have to pleasantly and persuasively reach out – to both their fellow intellectuals and even somewhat to the masses.

The good news, for mankind and the good people of the earth, is it seems like competent, honest, virtuous, and noble intellectuals only have to be partially popular and well-liked. They just have to have a certain Aristotelian practicality and not end up heavily hidden or hated.

The other good news is that if some heroic rebel and saintly revolutionary has been badly abused by his fellow man contemporaneously, or deems them very low and unworthy by nature, then he can take revenge on them by remaining mostly silent or obscure. Evil mankind won’t effectively hear or comprehend his insights and truths, and thus will continue to decline and suffer badly. Justice will triumph.

American Health Care

The key to reforming America's health care system is identical to the key to reforming America's whole economy: deregulation. That's the magic word and concept. However boring, banal, unoriginal, and uninspired that prescription seems, deregulation is still the ultimate and definitive answer.

To understand how important this idea is, it must be borne in mind that regulation is just another word for regimentation, which is just another word for mandation, which is just another word for dictation, which is just another word for dictatorship. To solve virtually all of America's health care problems just get rid of the government tyranny involved. Let people live. Let people be free. This will work to solve virtually all of America's economic problems too.

And fixing these two seemingly beyond-hopeless messes is not -- as practically everyone today believes -- mind-bendingly difficult or infinitely complex. In fact, as already hinted at above, it's ultra-fast and ultra-easy. And anyone who says otherwise is considerably ignorant or morally dubious, if not both.

Step One is: Get rid of all the medical licenses. These constitute nothing less than a form of enslavement. They forbid people from working and acting as they wish and as society needs. So get these wretched bureaucratic waste-papers the hell out of the way.

No more government permissions or licenses needed for doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, pharmacists, nursing homes, personal home assistants, or other health care workers or facilities. Any medical business can open, and anyone can work in it, in a new and beautiful land of health care liberty, opportunity, efficiency, and excellence.

Licenses raise the cost and lower the quality of medical care radically. Every year, almost certainly, hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans die from them. And millions get terribly sick or stay injured or uncured. All for no reason except Big Brother.

Despite what virtually everybody thinks today, licenses weren't created to insure quality, competence, or minimal standards. They were created to kill competition and freedom. This they do very well. Also people.

With restrictive government medical licensing, large and disreputable elements of the health care industry profiteer wildly. And the pathetic suffering patients get financially and medically crushed. Under coercive government licensing -- which is absolute medical tyranny -- practically everyone gets gratuitously sick, injured, mangled, or killed.

Step Two is: Get rid of the F.D.A. The Food and Drug Administration is a heartlessly evil and dictatorial organization which has no right to exist. They too raise the cost and lower the quality of health care fantastically. Especially in the long run. Medical drugs, devices, and procedures are impacted dramatically. Especially in the long run. Almost beyond doubt, still more hundreds of thousands of innocents are mercilessly annihilated each year.

The F.D.A. says "no" when all the doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, patients, and customers want to say "yes." This is a government agency of pure regulation and tyranny. They create nothing but unspeakable agony and an extravagant slaughterfest.

Every one of America's totalitarian and death-worshiping medical rules, regulations, and laws needs to be immediately repealed. And every one of the F.D.A.'s employees needs to be instantly fired -- if not ruthlessly hunted down, like rabid wolves, and then exterminated from the face of the earth.

Under the Federal Death Administration the simplest drugs, devices, and procedures take decades to come to market. And that's assuming they get "approved" at all. Under the F.D.A. an aspirin worth two cents routinely costs five dollars each. A fifty-dollar hospital room generally costs two thousand bucks. And courtesy of F.D.A. control you normally have to share hospital rooms with strangers, like the worst flophouses imaginable. You have to wear hospital gowns which the poorest Bangladeshi beggars would refuse.

Altho' it's hard to estimate, probably 95% of all miracle drugs, devices, and procedures never even get invented at all, thanks to government regulation and the F.D.A. And so Uncle Sam's medical torture and bloodbath goes on and on. The F.D.A. Is a virulently anti-freedom, anti-human organization dedicated to inflicting misery and death upon every single defenseless American possible. Of the 2.6 million deaths recorded each year in the U.S. Probably more than 300,000 are unnecessary, even in the short run. So, at a minimum, the F.D.A. and the license laws perpetrate several new medical 9/11s every week of the year. 

Step Three: Even tho' it only moderately matters -- after blissfully terminating all medical permission papers and the lawless F.D.A. -- Americans need to be liberated in a few other health care areas as well. They need the freedom to purchase insurance across state and national lines, as well as buy drugs from overseas. And they obviously shouldn't be coerced into purchasing Affordable Care Act-type incompetent and over-priced government-regulated insurance plans.

All medical research should be capitalist and not communist, as most of it is today. The socialist National Institutes for Health, and similar state abominations, should also be abolished. Malpractice tort reform should bring together expert judges and juries who base their decisions upon science and medical truth -- not upon a desire to rob innocent rich people blind and help contemptible poor folks hit the litigious lottery. Medicare and Medicaid -- which serve mainly to torture and slaughter the old and the poor -- should be replaced by private insurance, personal savings, self-care, free internet advice, and charity in an overall health care system of exceptionally high-quality and stunningly low prices. A booming economy, under deregulated full capitalism, will also generate massive amounts of disposable income to lavish on health. 

The current American welfare state system is horrific and murderous beyond compare. We need to bring a complete and immediate halt to Big Brother's on-going medical holocaust.

Battle Royale

Ever since reason was discovered and invented in about 585 B.C. – that is, ever since strictly logical thought was successfully isolated from emotions, desires, drives, and instincts – the world has been a battleground between the forces of rationality and irrationality. This means an intellectual, psychological, legal, military, and otherwise war between those who search for and obey reason, and those who blithely ignore or brazenly reject it. This is the purest version of the eternal clash between good and evil.

This seminal reason vs. unreason philosophical conflict manifests itself culturally and societally in a ferocious fight between liberalism and illiberalism. In simple terms, this means the ideals of 1) rationality, 2) individualism, 3) liberty, 4) heroism, and 5) triumph vs. the ideals of 1) religion and nihilism, 2) altruism and collectivism, 3) fascism and socialism, 4) apathy and passivity, and 5) surrender and defeatism. This fundamental battle can also be described as the thought-system of up-wing liberalism vs. that of right-wing conservatism and left-wing regressivism. This means: the magnificent ideology of progress and ascent vs. the ideology of a weak, sad, barbarous status quo vs. the ideology of an even weaker and sadder retreat into worse barbarism.

Clearly the Holy Individual and his derivative, supportive society needs to be as rational and liberal as possible. This is the way to maximum personal greatness and happiness, plus maximum social harmony and prosperity. Selfish pleasure, cultural richness, and the victory of man demand rationality and liberalism.

Good vs. Evil

Rarely do the forces of good actually speak up and denounce the forces of evil. Aristotle certainly never denounced the religious. Rarely do the forces of good actually take action and attack the forces of evil. America certainly never attacked the Soviets.

But when they do, the effect is electric. When they finally do, the result is almost always magnificent – a wonder to behold.

Too bad the forces of good don’t know their own strength.

Of course, when the good guys do stand up to the bad ones – when they become proper paladins of the right – practically the whole world squeals like a pig in reaction. Almost everyone squawks in exaggerated outrage and then quickly – if somewhat awkwardly – closes ranks behind the forces of evil. They stumble a bit – staggered by the righteous blow – but they also hurriedly launch a fierce and chaotic counter-strike against anyone who dares to say or do anything virtuous. The bad guys are honestly surprised and infuriated that anyone would say or do something morally good – something against the ruling rampaging mob here on Planet Scum.

On January 4^th, 2020, at the Golden Globe movie awards, in Los Angeles, host Ricky Gervais mocked and condemned the hypocrites, ignoramuses, and lowlifes who dominate Hollywood. The day before, at the main Bagdad Airport, President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of the mass-enslaver and mass-murderer Qassam Soleimani (Iran’s top general) – an enemy who perpetrated decades of Middle Eastern horror. The reaction of practically the whole planet to both of these rare and virtuous acts is that they were “shocked...shocked” that any such morally good things could happen.

Such statements and acts of defiance and heroism are basically never expected by the bad guys. And yet...deep down, they expect them all along. They know how much they deserve them.

Indeed, the great actors of human misery and destruction are only truly shocked that such events are so rare. They privately realize their own depravity. And they secretly understand their own intellectual and moral weakness. Hence they’re also aware of how quickly they can be devastated and swept from the face of the Earth if only the forces of good at long last rise up against them.

But where are such forces? Where are the champions of reasonism and liberalism today, or any day? Why is it they practically never show up, these forces of nobility, civilization, and the ascent of man?

It’s because they’re busy cowering at home. They’re busy falling silent and remaining passive. They’re busy saying and doing nothing for fear or incurring the wrath and revenge of the rampaging mob.

Well, the irrational, illiberal monsters seem to have the upper hand today and always. From many perspectives, they seem to rule the world virtually uncontested – like Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. But, in fact, they do not. The forces of good – even if a small minority – almost always exist in sufficient numbers to triumph. They simply don’t realize their own power and natural authority.

The forces of good – of reason and science, individualism and self-interest, liberty and justice, etc. – need to rise up and fight back. This is a moral duty they owe to themselves and even their fellow men of virtue. They need to work hard and smart to be truly good – and then to publicly proclaim their own righteousness. They need to speak and act and realize that the world is actually theirs, in fact and by right.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of…

Donald Trump killed Qassem Soleimani. Good defeated evil.

Now the Iranian dictatorship has quietly decided to be rather docile and submissive toward the semi-free state of America. This is almost always the case.

So Trump has decided to be rather forgiving and magnanimous toward the mostly-slave state of Iran. This is almost always the case.

Big mistake. Now is precisely the time to kill ten times as many Iranian leaders. Then the dictatorship will be ten times as docile and submissive.

After this, America needs to be completely merciless. Kill ten times more. And so on. To the end.

Make the Iranian dictatorship cease to exist. Spare the civilians – who are quasi-victims of the slave state – but annihilate as many leading government officials as possible.

Then forcibly convert the conquered nation to semi-liberty and friendship – just as America did to Germany and Japan in 1945-1955.

Do the exact same thing to Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. Be sure to take their oil as just payment for goodly services rendered.

Then do the same thing to Pakistan, China, and Russia. Try to kill off every damn one of their top governmental, military, and police officials. Take time to publicly laugh when doing so. This will better humiliate the vanquished.

Their nuclear weapons are no match for America’s intellectual self-confidence and moral righteousness.

But wait a minute… America almost totally lacks those two qualities. So…

Back to appeasing the dictatorships. Or, at least, letting them live, enslave, and destroy in peace.

No more killing the Qassem Soleimanis of the world. No more good defeating evil.

America is intellectually and morally bankrupt. So she needs to go back to kissing up, and bowing down, to the dictatorships of the planet. Soleimani was a rarity and a mistake.

To the Virgins, to Relish All of Time

(apologies to Robert Herrick of 1648)

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
  Old Time is e'er a-flying;
And this same bloom that smiles today,
  Tomorrow will be dying.

That glorious star above, the sun,
  The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
  The nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When mind and heart are warmer;
Youth being spent, the weak, and worst
  Times will succeed the former.

So be not coy, but use your time,
  And while ye may, go fuck;
Or having lost your prime, you'll be
  Forever out of luck.