Tag: Ignorance

Hey, America — Here’s A Radical Idea: Let’s Tax The Ignorant

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I hope like hell this isn’t a revelation: ignorance is blissful only for the ignorant.  Ignorance is expensive as hell for everyone else.

Ignorance is caused by lack of information.  Willful ignorance is a refusal to accept information that would cure the ignorance.  Stupidity, on the other hand, is just that — stupidity.  It’s deep-seated dopiness; dim-wittedness on steroids. 

There’s less hope for the stupid than the ignorant.  In theory, one can inform the ignorant.  The stupid… they’re too stupid to learn anything.  That’s a big part of their problem.  It’s why they’re stupid.  

Though many, many stupid people are ignorant, a stupid person can’t ever be willfully ignorant.  Stupid people — where their stupidity is concerned — have no choice about being stupid whereas willfully ignorant people… well, there’s the “willful” part — the deliberation.  Willful ignorance is a choice.  And — as ample evidence proves — ignorance (willful or otherwise) costs a bomb.  In money.  In lives.  In prestige.  In decency. 

Now, while I pity most stupid people (it’s not their fault they’re stupid), there is one group of the stupid who I despise.  They’re the people whose stupidity was caused by greed.

Greed – the data is pretty uniform on this – makes everyone stupid. 

While taxing the ignorant may seem cruel, it’s really the only way to motivate them to fix their problem.  And all they have to do to fix their problem?  Learn something.  Cure the ignorance with good information.

It’s a little like using light to ‘fix” a darkness problem.  And when you finally get the lights back on?  Bet the ranch you’ll find an ignorant person sitting there – unaware they didn’t have to sit in the dark.

End of the day? I bet the ignorant will thank us for, in effect, taxing the ignorance right out of them. Then we can set our sights on the stupid.

Slavery Sucks. All Forms Of Slavery, That Is — Including The “Subtle” Ones…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Slavery has been a thing homo sapiens do (we don’t know if any other human species did it) since we figured out we could force someone else to work for free. Slavery, in its essence, is stolen labor.

Yes, it’s a stolen life. But, from the point of view of the enslaver, the goal is to steal the labor above all. You can’t steal too much food or sleep — the slave will die. The only other cost basis for a slave is output — work. Take away the raw costs of feeding, clothing and housing the slave, the profit derived from another human (other than their raw materials) is their work. Slavery wants THAT for free.

But there are other forms of slavery where, in essence, a free person gives away their “work” to the person (or organization) who will absolutely enslave them. Employers do it with the contracts they force employees to sign. Credit card companies do it — so do time share companies and gyms. America does it with the way we handle health care (how many people stay in jobs they hate just because they need the employer-provided health care?) Religions do it especially. If you want to belong, you have to surrender your reason and free thinking. Those will only “un-enslave” you from the slaver’s point of view.

About ten seconds of listening to any Trumpanista or republican defend the indefensible tells you — this person is a slave. They have surrendered all freedom of thought to a “thing”. To a person. They are as shackled to their ignorance as any slave ever was.

Except the real slave yearns to be free.

And that’s the difference — between people who’ve been enslaved and people who actually WANT to be slaves.

Ignorance is slavery.

Blind faith is slavery.

Personality of Cult is slavery.

Political indoctrination is slavery.

Trumpism is slavery.

I’ll toss in one more — for the Media’s sake — “Both Sides Do It” is slavery (okay — a lesser variety — but it IS a distinct sub-set of Ignorance). Both Sides Do It is lazy thinking that false equivalences things that do not in fact equal each other (like climate science and climate science denial — two points of view, not at all the same in their truthfullness). “Both Sides Do It” is soft slavery for the Media but hard slavery for the American Public — who continue to be enslaved by the RESULTS of the larger ignorance.

I trust I don’t have to explain all that to free people.