I will now make some deductions from my philosophical
system and my view of history, and apply them to politics as it exists today.
The Westphalian political state, with its sovereign and
subjects, directly contradicts the idea of ethical equality. For it affords the
sovereign moral privileges to do things which the subjects may not.
It also contradicts the Enlightenment idea of the rule of
law. That is, that every individual under it must obey the same rules as
everyone else. We have seen many examples in recent years of contempt for the
rule of law being shown by those in positions of political power. For example, by Boris Johnson over the
Partygate scandal.
Thus, the ethical equality principle de-legitimizes the
political state, with its morally privileged élites, and puts in its place a foundation, on which
we can build civilizations which incorporate the rule of law.
The common-sense justice principle, too, has radical
repercussions. For it blows away another pillar of the political state: the
idea of sovereign immunity, or “the king can do no wrong.”
Under common-sense justice, those acting on behalf of a
state should be judged exactly as anyone else would have been. Thus, anyone in,
or formerly in, a position of government power will be held fully responsible
for any negative consequences of their actions or policies on human beings. Indeed,
since a wrongdoer that has had political power is likely to have done more harm
than those who have not, the (formerly) powerful will often be the hardest hit
by stringent application of the principle.
When you see that the “social contract” idea is no more than
a fiction, and that you have never given your consent to join any “political
society” against your will, you can see another serious problem of the political
state. For the idea that a state has a right to rule over people in a
geographical area depends critically on those people feeling some kind of
collective identity. For example, a common nationality, or a sense of “we’re
all in this together.”
Once you understand the falsity of the social contract idea,
you can easily reject all sense of collective identity or statist political
society. You understand that you are not a member of any collective you don’t
want to be in. And that you are not “British” in any sense beyond living in a
particular island; nor are you a mere “citizen” of a state called the “UK.” You
are simply a human being. And, provided you keep to the natural law of
humanity, no-one has any right at all to tell you what to do, or to violate
your rights, or otherwise to harm you.
An important feature of the judgement by behaviour principle
is that it helps you to distinguish your friends, human beings worth the name,
from your enemies, the politicals. For all you need do, when examining a
behaviour, is ask: Is this behaviour consistent, or not, with the natural law
of humanity, as you understand it?
If an individual deviates from this law grossly or often,
and there is no valid excuse such as self-defence, then that individual has
shown itself up for what it is: a political and an enemy of humanity.
Once you have appreciated that the people of a geographical
area are only a community, not a voluntary society, you can start to see why
democracy, as currently conceived, does not work, and never can work.
“One man, one vote” is a sound way to run a voluntary
society. (It is, however, worth noting that there are others: for example, the
shareholding method). This modus operandi is sound, because everyone in
the society can be presumed to agree on the society’s aims, and therefore on
the direction in which they want it to go. If they do not agree with these
aims, they can, and should, leave the society. But even if everyone agrees with
the aims, there will be differences in opinion on how best to achieve the desired
direction, or on who would be best equipped to guide the society. These need to
be resolved. Majority voting is quite a popular way to do this, since it gives
an illusion, at least, that everyone’s desires matter equally.
In contrast, when “one man, one vote” is used to select a
tendency among people who are merely a community, there will always be disputes
about what direction is desirable.
Before any pretence of democracy for all, political factions
had already formed, each seeking to push their own ideas about the direction of
travel of the state. The advent of sham democracy has led each of these
factions to attract a core of supporters, with the aim of achieving political
power. In the UK with its first-past-the-post system, this has led most of the
time to a see-saw of power between two main factions, each with their own core
of support.
That process still happens, and it is how Labour have power
today. But it has become more and more unpopular, as we have found ourselves
for more and more of the time ruled over by a faction hostile to us. Worse, the
policies of the mainstream parties have converged. I do not jest when I dub
them the Tyranny Party! So, we increasingly feel totally unrepresented, and
many of us have lost both confidence in, and respect for, all the
mainstream political factions.
Moreover, political power gained through election tends to
attract exactly the kind of devious psychopaths that want to harm or impoverish
others, and to evade accountability for the results. Far from giving us any say
in the direction of a country, the current “democratic” political party system tends
to produce kakistocracy – the rule of the worst.
Further, even if it was run completely fairly and honestly,
democracy would still be a majoritarian system. But as Mahatma Gandhi has told
us: “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” And a lot
of decisions come down, ultimately, to matters of conscience: to deciding, in a
particular instance, what is right and what is wrong. The idea that ten people
can vote to tell nine people what is to be “legal” or “illegal” for them to do,
is a travesty of all conceptions of freedom and justice. That democracy, as it
exists today, is neither fair nor honest, makes things worse.
Democracy today is coming to be seen as the empty sham it
is. We the people are not even being listened to by those that are supposed to
“represent” us. They listen, not to us, but to the greedy and tyrannical urges
of their parties and their leaders, to the bureaucrats, academics and others
that misadvise them, and to internationalist, environmentalist and corporate élites.
Further, democracy ends up breaking apart the very sense of
“we” that seemed to give it legitimacy in the first place. The victims of
unjust policies feel harshly treated, and become disaffected. Those who have
been harmed by the policies of particular parties come to hate those parties,
and those that vote for them. And those who have been harmed by policies of
successive governments of all parties, come to feel hatred and contempt for the
whole political system, and for anyone that uses it for their own ends. Thus,
sham democracy destroys the cohesion, the “glue” which ought to keep a
community of people together.
In a democracy, if you did not vote in a particular
election, or you voted for a party or individual that did not acquire any power
to make policies, you have not given your consent to the legitimacy of either
the resulting government, or of the policies they make. Moreover, if you did
not vote for a party in an election, then you did not give it any licence to
make laws to bind you, or taxes to impoverish you.
For example, I voted Reform at the general election in 2024.
I did not vote at all in 2019, after my Brexit party candidate was withdrawn.
(The last time I voted in a general election before that was for a Tory, way
back in 1987). I have never voted Labour, and I have not given my consent to
any of their policies ever. (Least of all IR35). Nor have I given my consent to
any of the policies of any party in government over at least the last three
decades, except for Brexit, for which I voted in the 2016 referendum and the
2019 European elections.
Moreover, the votes of just 20 per cent of eligible voters
cannot reasonably be taken to be consent of the people as a whole to be
governed by Labour. Particularly when no less than 40 per cent, by declining to
vote, indicated that they did not want to be ruled over by any political
faction at all, and 54 per cent did not want any of the mainstream factions. I
therefore consider that Labour do not have any mandate from the people to rule
over us, and certainly have no right to do to us any of the bad things they are
doing. It’s time we told them, in no uncertain terms, to cease, desist and go
to hell.
When you vote for a candidate in an election, you are
not just saying: “I think this candidate is the best available.” (Or even the
least bad). You are also underwriting the candidate’s policies. If those
policies will harm or inconvenience innocent people, you bear your share of the
responsibility for those harms or inconveniences. And if it is plain that a
policy will cause such difficulties – for example, nett zero or green policies
in general, or high taxes, or suppression of basic freedoms like freedom of
speech – then you have, at the very least, aided and abetted an aggression
against the victims.
Moreover, if you vote for a party which has had power, you
are also expressing your satisfaction with what the party did, and has done,
with that power. That is why, now, I can never vote for any of Tories, Labour
or Lib Dems. All three of these parties, when in power nationally or locally,
have done things that have harmed innocent people, including me. I regard all
three of these as criminal gangs, competing for the power of the state, which
enables them not only to commit more crimes, but to get away with them. And
even though they have not had titular power, the Greens have very significantly
influenced the other parties towards anti-human policies. In many ways, they
are the worst of the lot.
From my viewpoint, if you vote for any of the four, you are
committing an aggression against the victims, past, present or future, of their
bad policies. That is not something any human being should ever do.
I have noticed that, for the most part, we don’t seem to
have today the same problems with religious intolerance that we had in past
centuries. It is generally accepted in the UK that Christians of all kinds, and
Jews, and Muslims, and Hindus, and Buddhists, and Sikhs, and atheists and
agnostics, can simply do their own religious things with whomever they please.
There is little or no pressure for us all to conform to any one religious
agenda – if you disregard the scares about extreme Islamists trying to force
Sharia law on us all.
Contrast this with the 16th century, where if you
didn’t affirm the Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation” – bread becoming
flesh and wine becoming blood – the penalty during the reigns of at least two
English monarchs was to be burned at the stake. (Yet by the 1670s, those who did
affirm it were excluded from government office, or from graduating from a
university! Proving the arbitrary nature of top-down law-making.) But in any
case, knowing what we know today, transubstantiation is chemically impossible.
There is, for example, far more iron in blood than in wine.
I ask: If we today can have freedom of religion, why don’t
we have freedom in politics too? Why should any of us be forced to conform to
the policies of whatever faction is in power? Why can’t we just each do our own
things, as we can in religion, as long as we respect the rights and freedoms of
everyone else?
As I recounted above, I see this as a consequence of a
political model that, wrongly, sees the people in a geographical area (and
therefore, under the “Westphalian” system, subject to rule by a political
state) as being a society. When, in reality, we are only a community. We have
no general will, and therefore should not be subjected to any policies of any
state, or of any political faction within it.
Imagine, if you will, a system in which Hindus (for example)
could be elected in a country, for years at a time, into positions where they
could force everyone to behave as a Hindu, or face penalties. And the only
opposition parties were Muslims, Christians, and atheists, all of whom would do
the same thing for their own belief system. How could an agnostic like me, who
considers all belief systems not based on evidence (including environmentalism
and conventional religions) to be stupid, survive under such a system?
Given the evidence I presented in the chapter “Where we are
today” above, it is clear that in recent decades, governments have not been
acting for the benefit of the people. Virtually everything they do brings more
power to the state, at the expense of the people government is supposed to be
serving. And very often, what they do brings benefit to their cronies, such as
giving government contracts to their friends, or privileges to donors to their
party.
On top of this, they are continuing to force on to us
policies, such as “nett zero” and anti-car policies, that are actively hostile
to our interests. Yet we have never had any chance to say “No” to these
policies. These policies are being pushed by outside vested interests, notably
the United Nations. They are also supported by all the mainstream political
parties. Under such a system, our needs and desires count for nothing.
Worse, governments have become very cavalier about the costs
to the people of the policies they put forward. For example, as I documented in
the last of my 2023 set of essays debunking the “climate crisis” meme, no
objective, quantitative, honest cost-benefit analysis, from the point of view
of the people affected, has ever been done on “nett zero.” And at several
points over recent decades, successive governments have actually moved to
prevent any such analysis being done. So, it is not just our needs and desires
that they ignore; they also take no account of the costs to us of what they
want to impose on us. Or, indeed, of whether their projects are economically
viable, or indeed feasible at all.
Worse yet, governments like to single out for especially bad
treatment people whom they don’t like for some reason. Far from acting for the
public good, that is, the good of every individual, governments of all
political factions pick on groups and individuals to victimize. In the recent
words of one pundit, they “really stick it to the people they hate.”
Today, Labour’s latest chosen victims are pensioners,
private schools, farmers and family businesses, who join car drivers and small
business people, both also targeted by the Tories, as victims of the brutal,
remorseless political parasites and pests and their state machine.
It isn’t just government that has become corrupted and gone
bad. The economic system, that we know as “capitalism,” has gone seriously
wrong, too.
When I started my first job at IBM back in 1971, I didn’t
see much in the way of corporate politics. There were, of course, a few
not-very-nice people around, as there are in every workplace. And being young,
talented and naïve,
I tended at first to get more of the fall-out than most. But I did not see
people I worked with scheming for their own ends, or working against the
company that employed them.
By the mid-1980s, all that had changed. I remember seeing it
plain as day in a technical consultancy assignment I did in the financial
sector in 1987. Those I met in the client company divided into two groups, who
wanted to go in quite different directions. Their reactions to my report were
not based on an honest assessment of the work I had done, but on which side of
this political divide they took. It wasn’t a nice experience.
Then in the early 1990s, when doing bid management for a
computer systems company, I found some very strange attitudes among potential
clients. Their stated requirements didn’t seem to make sense, either
technically or commercially. It was only later that I realized this was a
symptom of the corruption, which was starting to overtake many companies in the
UK at that time. From being dedicated to serving their customers (and enjoying
financial success as a side-effect), many companies, particularly large ones,
were moving more and more towards a culture of just raking in as much money as
they could, as fast as they could. The economy was being taken over by what I
call “the money men.”
Since then, this culture has become all but endemic. Train
companies, for example, instead of treating their passengers as human beings,
have taken to seeing profits and “revenue protection” as their priority. With
the effect that every passenger is treated as a potential thief, and watched with
cameras, as if they are likely to be committing crimes.
Moreover, many big companies have become more and more
dishonest and disrespectful towards their customers. Microsoft, for example,
have all but destroyed the whole concept of backwards compatibility in
software. And Big Pharma drug companies rushed out COVID vaccines they claimed
to be “safe and effective”, that turned out to be neither effective nor safe.
Yet they have not been made to compensate the victims of their negligence and
recklessness, and are now constructing factories all over the world to make
similar drugs!
My diagnosis of what has happened is that, as financial and
regulatory pressures on companies from governments have steadily increased over
the decades, many bosses decided to “go with the flow.” They would do what they
felt was needed to keep their companies afloat, regardless of morality. Often,
this included active co-operation with bad political policies, for example by
rolling out privacy-violating cameras for schemes such as ULEZ.
As a result, the free market “capitalism” that many people,
particularly Americans, used to look up to as exemplifying the right way to
live, has been corrupted. Capitalism no longer has anything to do with the
honest business activity and trade, which lie at the heart of the proper
relationships between human beings in the public sphere. It has been replaced
by an attitude of “rake in as much money as you can.” And in many cases, it has
turned into active crony capitalism (“crapitalism”) in service of political
ploys.
For many years, people towards the conservative end or
“right” of the standard political spectrum have been voicing concerns about the
levels of immigration to the UK in recent decades. According to Worldometers,
from just over 50 million in 1950, the UK population grew to 59 million by
2000, and stood in 2024 at 69 million. A 12 percent increase in the population
over 50 years has been followed by a 17 per cent increase in less than half
that time. And all this against the backdrop of a falling fertility rate
since 2010.
There was a huge “knee-bend” in nett immigration, beginning
in the early 2000s. Yearly levels are now 2.7 times what they were in 2000, and
almost seven times what they were in the 1990s. This has had severe negative
effects, particularly on the housing market.
The complaints have been loudest about “illegal”
immigration. (Whatever that means). But these are only a small proportion of
the whole. Far greater are the numbers coming in “legally.” A lot of these
people are coming in for the purpose of working in the UK. Before 2021, the
bulk of these immigrants were from the EU. Since then, the number of immigrants
from outside the EU has gone up by two-thirds in just three years. Many are
coming from countries like India, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, and around 60% of “skilled
worker” visas issued have been for jobs in health care and care homes.
It looks as though the state, which funds most of these jobs
either directly or through private care providers, has been deliberately
encouraging these high levels of immigration for its own purposes. Such as
inviting in those with skills it perceives as needed, and securing a tax base
for the future. This is, quite clearly, social engineering. Indeed, my local
borough – with a population, as of 2013, of about 123,000 – has been tasked
with “supporting the delivery of at least an additional 11,210 homes in the
period 2013 to 2032.” At an average of 2.36 residents per household, this gives
a population increase of 26,500, or 21.5%, over 20 years.
I am not absolutely certain about this, but there may also
be a more sinister purpose to the UK state’s machinations on immigration. That
is, that they are seeking to weaken or even destroy the sense of identity,
culture and historical continuity, which used to hold the indigenous people of
the UK together in reasonable harmony for many centuries. It may even be that,
beyond destroying the fruits of the Enlightenment and the Industrial
Revolution, they are seeking also to destroy the culture that made those
revolutions possible.
There is certainly evidence that the UK state is in big
financial trouble. The “national debt” is around £180,000 per person, and there
seem to be no efforts to get it under control by cutting government spending or
functions. Moreover, I recall being told in the 2000s by a prominent
free-market economist that the welfare state had no chance of surviving in
anything like its then form, because the numbers simply didn’t add up.
Despite immigration, the UK population is aging steadily.
The median age has gone up from a low of 33 in 1975 to 40 today. With such a
trend, they couldn’t possibly rake in enough in taxes to keep the welfare system,
as it was in the 2000s, running for very long. Given this, it is hardly
surprising that taxes have gone through the roof.
It looks as if governments have been doing all this, not at
all for the benefit of the people they are supposed to serve, but for the
benefit of the state. And, since they themselves live by and off the state,
they are in effect doing these things for their own benefit. Those responsible
for these policies are both parasites and pests against the people.
This can also help explain why Labour are treating
pensioners so harshly. In their eyes, pensioners are no longer a source of
revenue for the state, as they were when working. They now see pensioners as a
liability. To be disposed of by any means they think they can get away with.
Starving older people, or freezing us to death, are acceptable, even desirable,
from the point of view of these cruel, ruthless pests.
Indeed, prime minister Keir Starmer has already acquired the
nickname “Keir Starver”. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has become “Rachel Thieves,”
and also “Rachel Freeze” for cancelling the help with energy bills for
pensioners to keep warm. And a Labour MP has said: “whether or not pensioners
freeze to death is their choice.” A “choice” between freezing and starving is
no better than a choice between being hung and being shot!
It doesn’t seem to matter to them at all how many years
people have paid taxes for, or how little they received in benefits in all that
time. This is particularly galling for someone like me, who from the end of my
education at age 21 up to my 60s, never claimed a single penny in government
benefits of any kind. And on top of that, they used IR35 to wantonly destroy my
career, making it impossible for me to go back to my “day job” at this late
stage in my career. Now that my savings are close to running out, I need every
penny of income I can get. Yet the politicals want to take away from me what
few scraps I have, and still want to prevent me practising my trade. Cruel and
ruthless are understatements.
The position I have reached over the years on the national
debt is as follows. The debt is not our debt, in any meaningful sense of
the word we. It is certainly not my debt, or your debt.
This debt is the state’s debt. Suggesting that a good way forward would
be to do to the state just what we would do to any other bankrupt organization.
That is, close it down altogether, sack all its employees and cancel their
cushy pensions, and distribute its assets justly among its creditors. Including
pensioners.
There has, since around the mid-1990s, been a meme going
round that the state is out of date, and no longer fit as a vehicle for
government (if, indeed, it ever was). There was even a 2014 book by Gregory
Sams, entitled “The state is out of date.” Part of his message is: “The wheel
needs a new hub, not just another revolution.” I think he is saying, in his
way, the same as I mean when I say “dismantle the system, and replace it by a
new one.” This is the second of John Locke’s three levels of responses to a
situation that has degenerated into tyranny.
Consider, if you will, whether in a world with nuclear
weapons, it makes sense to allow a political system to continue, that has war
built in to its roots? Or, in cultures which have been through the
Enlightenment and are supposedly “democratic,” to allow an élite class carte blanche
to make bad laws, that harm innocent human beings, like farmers, one-man
software consultants or pensioners? Or to exempt themselves or their cronies
from their bad laws? Or to evade being held responsible for damage they do to
those they are supposed to be serving?
In my
view, the answer is obvious. The political state is not only financially
bankrupt, but morally bankrupt too. It has passed its last-use-by date.
We need
to get rid of the state, and replace it by a system that works for us human
beings. We need to make the political parasites and pests, that have used, and
still use, the state to rob us and oppress us, compensate their victims in
full. And we need to kick those that fail to deliver the compensation they owe,
those that promoted, supported, made or enforced policies that harmed innocent
people, and those that have set out their stall to destroy Western industrial
civilization, out of our human civilization. They should never again receive
any of the benefits of civilization. Further, those whose conduct deserves
criminal punishment in addition, should receive that punishment in appropriate
measure.
We find ourselves embroiled today in a war. It is a war
between, on one side, we human beings worth the name; and on the other,
political parasites and pests. This war is an existential struggle for, if I
may use a religious word, the soul of humanity.
Only one side can win this war. And I cannot conceive that
our enemies can possibly win in the long term. For if they did manage to reduce
us human beings to nothing more than serfs or slaves, their economy would
quickly collapse, taking them with it.
I have come to compare this war we’re in with the long-ago
struggles between homo sapiens and the Neanderthals. But this time
round, the differences between us and them are not things like
stockier physiques or prognathous jaws. The differences are mental. And the
area of thought, in which our enemies lack most when compared to us, is ethics
and morality. So much so, that I have come to dub our enemies “moral
Neanderthals.”
Today, our enemies are attacking the legacies of all five of
our revolutions of the last few thousand years. First, they seem to think of us
human beings, not as naturally good, and fit and ready to make our Earth into
the peaceful, beautiful home and garden we deserve, but as naturally bad and a
blight on the planet. That is just what their “climate and nature bill” is
trying to make out. And yet, we can more and more easily see that in reality, they
are the ones that are bad and a blight on the planet.
Second, like extreme religious maniacs, they have lost
contact with reality and reason, and supplanted them by narratives and dogmas.
Yet those of us, who maintain our faculties of reason and respect for evidence,
can now easily see that their narratives are false. For example, more and more
scientific papers are now being published, in some of the most prestigious
journals too, which call into very serious question the entire “catastrophic
human-caused climate change” narrative. Yet the propagandists continue to shout
their dogmas at the tops of their voices.
Third, they are seeking to impose on us orthodoxy in
everything we do. And they are doing so in a manner that is both dishonest and
tyrannical. Fourth, they disregard, or pooh-pooh, the values of the
Enlightenment. And fifth, they are seeking to destroy our Western industrial
civilization. Yet, more and more people are starting to see through their
ruses, and to uncover the lies and contradictions at the roots of their whole
way of thought.
Our enemies seem to have gone mad. I am reminded of the old
saw: Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. I wonder, could
it be that our enemies’ minds are starting to shake themselves apart?
Could it be, I ask, that today we may be coming towards a tipping
point? At which, we honest human beings can finally discredit, remove from
power, and bring to justice the politicals, the enemies of human liberty and
prosperity? Thus, getting rid of the political dross, and enabling us human
beings to take full possession of our planet?
I have for many years held the view that, before we can
create a political revolution to fix our ills, we human beings need first to go
through a mental and moral revolution. About 1995, I sensed a change in the
patterns of what I felt able to think about. I sensed this as: “I and others
can now think things, which we previously couldn’t.” This sense of change of
pattern was, very likely, what triggered me in the direction of the radical
ideas I hold now.
As time has gone on, I have more and more felt that such a
mental revolution is on the way. At which, very many people will finally lose
the “wool” that our enemies have placed over our eyes for so long, and will be
able at last to see things for how they are. Sometimes, I feel this tipping
point is oh-so-close; I can almost see it! At other moments, it seems so far
away and unlikely, I am tempted to despair. But even as my life situation
continues to go from bad to worse, I am starting to find these moments less
common.
Getting through the next few years alive, sane and solvent
will, no doubt, be extremely difficult for all of us human beings. But I am
becoming more and more optimistic that, even if I personally do not live long
enough to see it, the next and due evolution of humanity is on its way. And, by
evolutionary standards, very soon.
