“Incentives,” Religion, Capitalism, and Things Inherently Evil in General.

It is all but impossible these days to get the "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" from the media. Everyone in today's journalism has an axe to grind, and they are not above doing it in the guise of news. It seems to me, therefore, that we ought get a few things straight.

I was moved to this when recently a “print on demand” publisher offered me one of those “special, if you pay before the end of the month” deals. I’m the wrong guy to say that to, just as I’m the wrong guy to offer religion, capitalism, or prostitution. Having been reared by a German nobleman grandfather to consider everything logically and scientifically as a matter of honor, I realized the evil inherent in such things when I was twelve years, two weeks, and eleven hours old. I often forget my birthday, meaningless construct that it is, but I never forget that day. Nor should I. Frost’s road that divided in a wood, it has, after all, made all the difference.

You may see why one of my wives called me “Spock” during most of our marriage.

The publisher in question seeks to increase his business by assuring that I will purchase his product. That is a practice as old as the concept of capitalism, which, of course, is a system driven by greed, and whose logical consequence and end is the exploitation and enslavement of all by one of their members.

Take the oil and military industrial industries today for an example.

The capitalist seeks justification in the logically specious argument (the Existential Fallacy, to say nothing of Circulus in Probando, the circular argument) that “circumstances” make such a result impossible. The vicissitudes will somehow intervene for the weak and the poor. In order to support his petitio principii (begging the question) asseverations, he quickly develops a creed wherein wealth is created out of nothing, ignoring the rather obvious fact that all wealth must come from – out of - the planet we occupy. Either practice or creed, of course, seeks to justify its means by its end, and is inconsistent with the basis of all human ethics he himself preaches so cynically – and illogically.

Apologists for capitalism must also be religious, seeking as it does justification from God. Religion is in its essence an illogical practice, one as despicable as that of capitalism, and one based almost invariably on what is called “prayer.” Prayer seeks favor from a god who is held at the same time to be just, yet another logical impossibility. If god is completely just, he must be completely indifferent, inasmuch as to answer one of his creation’s prayers, he must favor one above the others. One cannot be partially just, any more than one can be partially immaculate. Or pregnant.

"The great tragedly of science," Huxley noted. "A beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact."

The concept of capitalism is, of course, rooted in the religions of unjust gods. Capitalism’s second premise is that god rewards the labors of some men over those of others. If he does that, then he favors one over the rest, a definition of injustice.

Governments which provide for favoritism are equally lacking in impartiality, and therefore unjust. Our own practice of “lobbying,” wherein certain segments of society – invariably the already monumentally rich – seek ascendance over their fellows by offering incentives to the people’s representatives is inherently evil – to say nothing of cynical, conniving, and hypocritical. It resembles closely the religion that seeks the same kind of favor from god; indeed, in the United States, government by criminal conspiracy – for a nation that tolerates, encourages, or provides for lobbying, there is no way to escape the fact of that logically – is a religion, one which has supplanted prayer to god with prayer to government. God or government that offers “incentives” is evil, inasmuch as the incentives have to be favor for those who can in some way pay for it, meaning that others who can’t are left wanting.

Neither is government that is unjust orderly, the purported reason for all government, and the stated purpose of our own. The fact that “incentives” like prayer and secular blandishments build uncertainty into any system that provides for them is logically escapable. If I can change at will – mine own - the value of any given number or several, there is no way for others using the system to be sure of the sum or product of any set of numbers. If god answers this prayer or that one, there is no way for any of his creation to know what he expects or demands – what is “right,” in other words.

If government awards favors to one or a number of its citizens, there is no way for the rest to know what is expected of them, and lawful (anybody recognize our own, benighted system of “regulation” and “justice?”).

The inherent evil of any chaotic – and capitalism, religion, and similar systems must by their nature be chaotic (a conclusion which parallels Arrow’s Theorem) – is the scientifically observed fact of entropy. Entropy is defined as the measure of disorder in a system, and physics tells us never decreases toward order; rather, it increases toward more disorder. In a closed system like a society, that means that someone must become a victim (where one assumes that destruction of one member by another or others is disorder). The fact, for instance, that there is so much food on a table where a certain number of people sit means immediately and irrevocably – the fact is its god – that the diners either share or compete for the food. Sharing, of course, provides for “order,” while competition provides for the survival of the fittest, whatever that may mean. One thing it “means,” inevitably, is a free-for-all. Somebody “wins,” somebody goes hungry (the weakest, that is – like children), and somebody dies (the weakest again). Capitalism.

Not for nothing was prostitution the first profession. And religious practice.