Google sucks piles I'm moving to Steemit

Short and sweet, Google isn't allowing me to post ads on my blogs here on blogspot any longer. Not that I provide my angry nerd rants for money, but I have found another platform where the possibility at least exists and it is ad free!

Steemit is amazing, it is hip with the crypto kids, I can post in markdown (which I do mostly anyway) and it seems that there's less of an agenda there than on Google's patronising platforms.

Whereto from here?

• I'll be moving posts from here to Steemit slowly but surely. Shortly after moving a post, I might delete it from here.
• I won't be posting new posts here any longer.

If you are interested, please follow me on Steemit.

Private property is theft, personal property is fine

That awkward moment when reality meets your ideology. Some anarcho-communist is having a fanny wobble because informal settlers got evicted in Newtown. But wait! Anarchist communism doesn't approve of private property, only personal property. So on what grounds does anyone have the right to reside anywhere?

Property is theft

You may ask:  Isn't this maxim a bit of a wank?

Let's try to unpack this bromide which was so obviously flawed that even Karl Marx could see its shortcomings.

1. You're allowed personal property, so things like bicycles and underwear.
2. You're not allowed private property, so you can't put up a fence. Ouch, right in my rent-seeking feels!

The corollary is that you're allowed to have stuff like bicycles and underwear, but you're not allowed to keep your stuff anywhere. You're also not allowed to own stuff like bicycle and underwear factories. Property is theft! But only private property. Personal property is the category error we invented.

The Vespa Militare. In the abscence of property rights, all personal property bicycles would probably be have to look like this? Read more about the bazooka Vespa here!

But no, it's not a bit of a wank, you pleb. This ad hoc hypothesis oops I mean well-founded ideology of the ages is just too deep for you to understand. You just need to read (insert author you've never heard of for the plain and simple reason that they're not worth being read here). 

Because they too repeat bromide aphorisms designed to impress impressionable minds, but they take much longer to get to the point which you so rightly pointed out is a bit of a wank. 

Hang on while I reinvent the wheel so I can explain who should produce things like bicycles when they have no ownership claim on where to manufacture them, and who would purchase bicycles when they have no ownership claim on where to put them once purchased.

Kim Jung-on, at least one emperor who isn't naked. He doesn't believe in property rights either.

But I'll never admit that my emperor is naked, not even when he is sans underwear! You just don't knit underwear very well with your eyes!

Why has outrage come to dominate platforms like Twitter?

This question was posted on twitter by Sarah Britten Pillay. I shall try to answer that here, or at least address some of the topics surrounding this notion.

What makes a platform like Twitter more outrageous than the next?

A brief summary of my thoughts on the topic:

1. It would be interesting to contrive some outrage meter that could detect outrage levels in a piece of text.
2. Plenty if not most of social media outrage is manufactured as a distraction.
3. Outrage that isn't manufactured can be analysed by means of kin selection concepts from biology.
4. If you aren't entirely sold on the sociobiology idea, then the balance of risk and incentive from game theory can also shed some light on the rationale behind social media outrage.

Outrage levels are too damn high

I do agree that social media platforms tend to be filled with more outrage than others, but as far as I know there is no means of detecting or measuring outrage. The need exists for some outrage quotient or some method of classifying platforms into categories according to their outrage content.

Intuitively, a platform like Twitter is more prone to outrage than a platform like Facebook, where your more close friends and family members are watching you in some perverse panopticon.

It is also intuitively more filled with outrage than Linked-In, because some employers might be loathe to hire people with free-flowing outrage. They much prefer hiring people with pent-up rage, those ticking time-bombs of the workplace, and people who confuse Linked-In for a dating platform.

If the assertion is that outrage dominates a platform, then there needs to be a gauge akin to the signal-to-noise ratio. Except here it would be a signal to outrage ratio, where outrage and signal are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but for the most part I think it's safe to regard outrage as just noise. White noise, even. In this manner, one could establish not only whether one platform is more outrageous than the next, but also whether outrage dominates a given platform.

I'm currently not drunk enough to math yet. Using a different approach, some chatbots can copy emotion. This approach can already help to classify a given piece of text in terms of emotional content, and by extension detect the presence of outrage. Perhaps even the level, then, when the amount of words associated with outrage as a ratio to neutral words or words related to the key concepts are considered. For the topic of this discussion, let's just assume that when it comes to outrage, Twitter has more of it than Facebook, and more of it than corporeal platforms like a coffee shop meeting or a braai gathering.

Plenty of outrage is manufactured - Fauxtrage, if you will

The recent Bell Pottinger white monopoly capital saga illustrates how this outrage is frequently intentionally engineered as bread and circuses distraction. The fact that it didn't work to add fuel to the fire of South Africa's perceived strained race relations, shows that outrage is frequently more bark than bite.

White monopoly capital. More real than the manufactured outrage campaign.

 

It also suggests that being numerate can help one to discern signal from noise, even in this medium. But being numerate is overkill. Purely sharpening critical thinking skills, with the aid of FiLCHeRS or PEARL, is sufficient to see when people are for example playing identity politics, or when there really is smoke to the fire. This counts especially for people like me who went to a tertiary institute suffering from the delusion that it will teach one critical thinking. It will not, unless you specifically take a course on critical thinking. It is far more likely to infect your mind with a particular ideology, like science must fall's peculiar notion of decolonising education. In other words, it doesn't teach you how to think, it rather teaches you what to think.

Bearing this in mind, plenty of the outrage on social media platforms can safely be assumed to be pure fabrication. As the public, we should hold the media to account, but it's more important to foster critical thinking skills so that inappropriate, context-free outrage has no fertile ground on which to fall.

What about real outrage?

No doubt there are some angry sociopaths out there hitching a ride next to the information superhighway. Why is this? Assuming that Facebook as a more personal and intimate platform contains less outrage than Twitter, and also less outrage than Linked-In, it points to two aspects:

1. A more intimate platform has less outrage.
2. A platform where outrage counts as a liability has less outrage.

This pattern seems to fit the perceived outrage of social media platforms in general. It can be analysed, though not sufficiently explained, by kin selection and Game Theory.

Hamilton's Rule: How kin selection emboldens outrage

Kin selection is the notion that traits detrimental to individuals in a given population would become more widespread if these traits increase the odds of survival for the entire population. In more crude terms, individuals would do silly things that prevent them from getting laid, if it means that their peers enjoy an increase in the odds of getting laid. If their shenanigans does work to get their peers laid, then this kind of savage behaviour can be expected to become more widely adopted. Enter the wingman.

Q: Mr Haldane, would you give your life to save your dying brother?
A: No, but I would give my life to save two brothers, or eight cousins.

What does this have to do with outrage? Of course genes don't get transferred in the biological sense here, but memes do spread in an analogous way. Certain groups treat activism as a commodity by means of the commodification of activism, whereby you virtue signal your sacrosanct virtues uncritically in order to be part of an in-group, and in order to cast aspersions with impunity onto any out-group that dares question these values. Try to tell someone that you're not a feminist, for example. Automatically, it means that you oppose gender equality. And if you are comfortable with the feminist religion, chances are someone has called you a feminazi.

By Todd Huffman from Phoenix, AZ - Lattice, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3365538
I like bees! Bee behaviour can be explained by kin selection.

As an internet troll on a platform where you have fewer close connections in your network, you then have incentive to be particularly incensed and make yourself unattractive to potential mates. This is purely because it is less risky to do so than on a platform where you have a more close-knit network.

Can Game Theory explain why someone would have a Britney Spears-level outrage meltdown on social media?

Game theory is the practice of analysing actions in terms of risk and reward pay-offs. The particular game form relevant here is the Volunteer's Dilemma. Similar to the kin selection notion, the Volunteer's Dilemma demands a sacrifice from one member of the group, which would be detrimental to that member, but which would gain a higher reward for the rest of the group.

It's completely rational not to be the poor sod handling the grenade, from an individual perspective. I deduce from this that on social media dominated by outrage, outrage must have a larger reward pay-off than it has risk. This despite the fact that knee-jerk outrage mongering could have one losing your job embarrassingly. 

Some groups attach value to anti-social displays. On a good day, this results in a kind of introspection and constructive criticism. On a bad day, these anti-social displays just make those displaying them look like troglodytes.

Conclusion

While there is no gauge of outrage as yet, it does appear that some social media platforms are more dominated by outrage than others. It is also important to reckon the manufactured, fake outrage out there and then perhaps stop taking outrage on social media seriously. It's not easy to discern between noise, outrage, real outrage, fake outrage, pure signal, and signal that is just abrasive or tactless.

Outrage itself is not necessarily a problem, since the platforms offer tools to deal with outrage. Some downsides of these tools are that they could lead to echo chambers and the loss of online anonymity. While we should hold the media to their own standards and point out their hypocrisy where we see it, the rest of us also have responsibility to sharpen our critical thinking skills.

By utilising kin selection concepts from biology and some risk-reward pay-off concepts from game theory, we can rationalise why people would seemingly go out of their way to huff and puff like firebrand revolutionaries on some social media platforms, while being meek and mild on other formats.

Shelley Garland: a case study of post truth media

This past week saw a prank of Sokal Affair proportions, only within the context of our own ailing media. You can read the entire Shelly Garland saga here, and I would be completely over it by now if it weren't for the fact that the Huffington Post tried to wiggle their way out of this one by means of Spanish Inquisition.

Background to the Shelly Garland saga

A blogger passed around some bait in order to expose the hypocrisy of those custodians of ethical journalism who had been warning us about fake news, post truth media, alternative facts and a whole new basket of deplorables. It was a meticulously crafted prank.

To their credit, the Daily Maverick saw the Shelly Garland bait for the tripe that it is, and said take this cup away from me. Which is to say they had an editor who wasn't asleep at the wheel and just performed some rudimentary editing. Also known as doing your job.

The local chapter of the Huffington Post fell for the prank hook, line and sinker. Which shouldn't surprise anyone because it's just an agitprop channel for sanctimonious douche-bags. If it bends over and performs fellatio on my sensibilities, I shall just publish it. Screw ethics, screw fact checking, screw the public and their trust. It sounds good, it paraphrases canon. Publish!

What is the thanks Shelly Garland got for exposing evil hypocrites who prey on public trust?

What was their reaction after having been exposed for enabling the exact same fundamentally unethical journalists that they were claiming to combat?

They tracked down the author at their place of work, marched in there with a paparazzi army, hauled him over a rack, extracted a confession out of him, and returned with all but his scalp and his testicles. The poor bastard had to resign in embarrassment, and all this for having the gall to try out independent thought for size.

Blaming the victim, but when we do it, it's for a good cause

Victim blaming is when one holds the victim of a wrongful act responsible for that wrongful act.

This should sound familiar.

That is per definition what has happened here. The Huffington Post publishes a helpful guide on how to spot fake news, plus their own terms and conditions, but they must have cleaned out their orifices with those.

Those moral principles that we nail to the door of the cathedral are there for the common people, not for the gentry and the clergy at the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post has the divine right of journalist kings and they're here for the head of Shelly Garland, that naughty wife who at first seemed to be producing the heirs they so badly desired, but then revealed it had been stillborn.

I guess nobody should be surprised after exposing hypocrites when they behave in a hypocritical manner. But hey, everybody makes mistakes. Why no second chances?

Why the editor of the Huffington Post should resign

Why no second chances, you may say?

Because, frankly, the editor in charge of the Huffington Post ended up there for manufacturing fake news while simultaneously being the editor of another publication, the Mail & Guardian.

This is already the second chance. This person has brought another publication into disrepute, for doing exactly the same thing, again.

What was their response the first time?

"I have made many mistakes of course, and these have been carefully documented and picked over by social media - but this is the lot of any editor and the unfortunate truth is that women editors will always have it harder" ~ Verashni Pillay

Let's unpack that: She says being a woman means she is incapable of being held to the same standard as anybody else who does editing. So it's not her fault, it's her sex's fault.

She thus admitted that this job is too hard for her and that she is incapable of doing it up to the standard that is required for editors in general. But of course, what she actually meant was, equality is about a doublethink double standard whereby we should have a set of standards for editors who are not women, and another set of standards for editors who are women.

And here I was under the impression that feminism was about equal rights of the sexes. This is what we bash into people's skulls and enforce by means of torture and confession, but when the same standards are expected of us, then being fundamentally evil hypocrites, we respond with fundamentalist hypocrisy.

Even worse, if someone points out this hypocrisy to us, they are the ones in the wrong. When we are called out on our crimes and our harmful actions towards people, those whistle blowers were asking for it by the way they dressed.

Please, if you value your profession at all, spare us the doublethink and do the right thing for once in your life.  If this is not out of incompetence and neglect, then it must be wilful. In neither case, when your miserable and atrocious neglect causes people to lose their income and then you turn around and have the gall to try and make it seem like it's their fault, you should in addition to resigning also consider seeing a professional about that narcissism.

Fist bump the Trump

Apologies, but this blog has moved to Steemit. Feel free to follow me there (https://steemit.com/@gargunzola).

 

Fist Bump the Trump Superbug 

Published on

09/12/2016 17:48
Greenwich Mean Time

After this weapon of mass media hysteria didn't fend off the infection, Trump was a superbug. He could just wing it willy-nilly, hapless, incompetent, blundering and barely intelligible, but at least he appeared tolerant by comparison.

The Orange Gaze: Science must fall due to discriminating gravity

By now, every Robert and his mother's brother have seen the Science Must Fall video. Before anyone hurls abuse at the unfortunate souls who expressed these views, it should be noted that these views are not the result of uneducated minds or the legacy of Apartheid which left the majority of our population with an inferior school system.

The bitter irony is that these views originated within the academic ivory towers too, and they are very much Eurocentric. Much in line with the trend of Pomo departments thus far, they've had to employ some cultural misappropriation of perfectly clearly defined jargon from other fields which enjoy a higher pedestal than their own soap boxes.

A Safe Space is one of these terms. A Safe Space is invoked here, not for providing comforting surroundings for a legitimate sufferer of trauma to receive help, but in order to build a wall for an echo chamber. Somehow, this cargo cult science flew the nest and now thinks it can defy the laws of gravity.

The more recent Ivory Tower origins of Science Must Fall and Decolonization

To any interested in the TL;DR version, I suggest Explaining Postmodernism. Anyone else might be interested in the Sokal Affair and its related Science Wars. This debate has been more or less settled, I am told, and fortunately intellectual rigour has prevailed for the most part, even in the departments which had spawned this fashionable nonsense.

Still, there are many more versed in that one of the Two Cultures who would jump to the defence of the Science Must Fall cheerleaders, and this has been the case. I find it endlessly amusing. To their credit, the Science Must Fall ladies narrowed down and stood by views which are virtually indistinguishable from that of their bare naked monarchs whom I shall decline to gender here. They put the cat among the pigeons, and now their defenders are trying to herd cats in trying to contextualise it or plainly just by putting words in the mouths of these brave souls.

If it smells like dog shit, don't start a philosophical debate. Just don't step in it.

In science, when a researcher has been exposed as a fraud, he would enjoy an abrupt end to his career. This has been the case with Andrew Wakefield, who started the MRR vaccine controversy. Sadly, while his scientific career is over, there's no shortage of suckers who are quick to part with their money. Similarly, I am not aware of a single university tenure that was lost as a result of quit frankly peddling woo, and this woo continues to woe many. But science has its issues too, I hear you say?

Science is not perfect so these other imperfect things are just as important

It is true that science isn't perfect, but it is not true that not being subjective is one of these imperfections. Nor is it true that science is colonialism, or that Isaac Newton discovered the laws of gravity in the same way that Christopher Columbus discovered America. There is a relativity of wrong, and scientific theories are not wrong inasmuch as they are incomplete.

The history of gravitational theory is coincidentally a perfect example to illustrate the myriad of contributors, across space, time, race, ethnicity, - and dare I say it, class - who were crucial to Newton's discovery.

The Orange Gaze

There needs to be a term for these people who suffer from middle class guilt and who try to show solidarity with those they so firmly want to entrench in the downtrodden, disenfranchised paradigm from which only they can save them by creating awareness and making demands. Libtard or Lefty are already loaded terms, and this is not necessarily combined with the Radical Chic. It tends to have an overdose of commodification of activism, though.

Without realising or even bothering to try and consider how much collateral damage there may be within this class, or the long term effects on everyone or anyone else, they tend to just beat their own drum in blissful myopia.

A great example of this kind of person is Rachel Dolezal. In tribute to her glorious spray-tan, I've decided that we shall call this phenomenon the Orange Gaze. I've erred in the Pomo ways by defining this term too lucidly already, so suffice to say I'm always up for playing the pomo drinking game.

Tales of epistemology and loathing from the Ego Chamber

There are certainly fascinating epistemology questions in science. David Hume asked a few of those, and left them unanswered. The Demarcation Problem is another one that comes to mind.

Despite major unanswered epistemological problems, science went ahead and cured plenty of third world famine, third world hunger and put first world men on the moon. This while the Pomos are still puzzled as to what their genitalia denote.

The reason why we may know in science is because science has a more solid methodology. It may have its issues too, and it is only now becoming aware of at least one of its methodological ones in statistical significance. Yet in trying to solve these riddles, one does not need to decolonize anything, unless that means getting rid of the assholes who suffer from sophism. One merely needs to do science and allow one's ideas outside of the Ego Chamber, where they may be scrutinised and even ridiculed according to their merit.

There are enough engrossing problems in science and the philosophy of science without the need to invent more. We'll certainly get further in solving them without burning our universities.

White tears the most valuable currency but not as valuable as fauxtrage

This formerly glorious publication which I shall not even bother naming has also fallen into the habit of censoring its comments section, at least when it comes to white tears. Fortunately, I could still save this obviously far superior comment from the rather myopic agitprop from whence it came. I know it is superior because the quality of your commentary is inversely proportional to how long it stays unscathed. That's why the sanctimonious finger-wagging op-eds rarely get deleted, but the comments rarely last long.

Anyone - black or white or of any other pigmentation persuasion - with a Rhodes Scholarship can but only cry White Tears. Someone with a Rhodes Scholarship is in the very lap of privilege, the likes of which not even the majority of pale South Africans born with a silver spoon will ever see. That is why it is not uncommon to see their ilk waiting on tables instead of whipping their slaves on their ill-begotten land, which they refuse to give up, you see.

A similar campaign was started by someone for Darryn August. It also managed to raise more than R 100 000 and is currently just shy of R 200 000. Leaving the problematic notion of trying to quantify a qualia in the manner of how much charity is charity and beyond which charity is obscene behind for a second and just taking things as they are presented:

The notion that this is only minority white capital showing black capital who is boss is entirely falsified (read: It is revealed for the spurious, contrived notion that it is, directly from the shallow depths that it had to stoop to). Sorry, I didn't do a pencil test on Darryn August so I cant tell you if his skin colour merits charity, nor how much is really enough and beyond which it would just be obscene to extend further goodwill to someone. But feel free to decide for yourself and don't forget to judge someone else's charity harshly if it causes cognitive dissonance and doesn't fit within the neat, convenient, lazy, regurgitated ideological blinkers.

By the way, instead of pontificating about how much the goodwill of other people puts you to shame, perhaps it is more fruitful to find a cause that you feel is worthy and donate to that. Per definition, there are very few people who are truly privileged like a Rhodes Scholar would be anywhere in the world. One person's charity does not pacify yours. You should be ashamed because for an activist you didn't do much in any active sense, but it's not too late. You too can do some good for a change. It would be a radical change, but it is worthwhile. Whataboutery on the other hand is a lose-lose scenario.

Contrary to what is claimed, anyone can in fact start a crowdfunding campaign. It is true. Many have, but the reason why this particular White Tip campaign was so successful is largely because it gave people like me an opportunity to tell people like the Rhodes Must Fall rascists and remedial Radical Chic journalists that they are full of manure.

Cell C supports gorgeous women doing things to men at a company

Finally, someone admitted it. What gorgeous women do to men at a company. Nobody hires women to do actual work. It's true. We just put up with your lovely kind in the workplace, despite the adverse effects you have on us when we perform actual work like scheduling golf club and strip club meetings.

We put up with you, the fairer sex, when you're clever - but not too clever, and gorgeous - but not too hideous. Just like we put up with those delicate purely ornamental pot plants and the often disputed ambience of the barely functioning air conditioner. Just another one of those necessary evils of the workplace, you see.

But hey, one day when one of my chest-beating ilk decides to retire, I hope to see one of you mammary-bearing, cherry picking members of society replace one of us old boys. That's just the kind of equal opportunity go-getting that I would like to inspire around here, at our great sacrifice. I mean we're not used to women who may be smarter than us and certainly not ones who are expected to get over the ridiculously low bar we've established for ourselves. If that's not motivation for you girls, then I don't know what is. You go, girls! You go!

Godspeed to you, and remember: On this side of the glass ceiling, nobody can hear your screams.

White wine? No thanks, I prefer red I must be racist

As you know by now, I love shooting fish in a barrel. There's plenty of fish in the #WhiteWhine – A 12-Point Rant post. I'll just repeat the points here and scoff at them one by one:

The time has come for a 10-point dressing down of white South Africans who bitch and moan about everything. Let’s call it #WhiteWhine.

That's not really making a point now is it?

Many white South Africans seem unaware that they are considered just a cut above Nazis in the international scoundrel rankings.

Know who also sits fairly high on the international scoundrel rankings? Omar al-Bashir, Muammar Gadaffi and Robert Mugabe. None of those are exactly Nazis, and none of those are exactly friends of Apartheid. In fact, all of those seem to be pretty cosy with the ANC leadership, which by the way does not sit fairly high on the international scoundrel rankings. And by the way, all of those are large scale owners of capital in South Africa.

The logical conclusion is that when it comes to ranking scoundrels, the international community doesn't know its earhole from its arsehole. I'm not sure what to make of this point, except to conclude that it's ill-conceived.

Even in American movies, white South Africans are often portrayed as generic bad guys, on a par with Nazis, terrorists and rogue aliens.

Name one film where Charlize Theron was the bad guy.

American movies also portray the Klu Klux Klan as the good guys, least we forget about the Birth of a Nation. Perhaps American movies are not exactly barometers of what constitutes generic bad guys, nor generic good guys? At least this point is moot and not a throwaway, but pretty much stillborn.

Why are we, white South Africans, portrayed this way? Is it fair that we should be so grossly stereotyped? Are we really like Nazis?

These are a few rhetorical questions. In order to make a point of any kind, one has to make a statement of some sort, preferably an assertion. TKO.

The answer: it’s understandable. Why? Imagine if the Nazis had retained their ill-gotten gains after the Second World War.

Imagine if it were true that the Apartheid spoils were kept as ill-gotten gains. Only they weren't.

The government was and still remains the majority land owner, and the biggest owner of capital in the country. The largest corporations are by far the state-owned enterprises like Eskom and Telkom. These are no longer in the hands of Apartheid-era statesmen, nor Apartheid-era whites, nor even in the hands of white people in general. They are managed by the largely black ANC government and most of their employees are also black.

What about shares? The largest pension fund in Africa is the GEPF. Guess who is in charge of that? Pro-tip: It's not F.W de Klerk, it is managed by the largely black ANC government.

What about the JSE? This article on how to protect your wealth from Zumafication explains that most of the top companies listed on the JSE rely on foreign profits. They rely not on Apartheid spoils, but on current modern day trades with other nations, and most of them invest offshore due to corruption and mismanagement in South Africa since 1994. That's after Apartheid, in case you were wondering.

They are not owned nor managed by Apartheid agents. By law they have to comply with BEE, and they do. If you do not believe me, search for the companies listed there and look at their board of directors before making ignorant statements about capital ownership in South Africa. Just start here with the biggest private companies in South Africa. You will notice that many of the faces there are also in government. 

Those are the minority capital owners in the new South Africa, just like they were the minority capital owners in the old Apartheid South Africa. Only they are not the same people. Nor are they of the same race.

You’re thinking: “Bullshit! We aren’t Nazis! We didn’t commit genocide!” Well, perhaps you and your parents didn’t, but our ancestors did.

Actually yes, bullshit. South Africa was never involved in genocide. Nor were our ancestors. The closest practice to genocide we have seen in South Africa is the employment of concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War . They do not count as genocide since they did not focus on wiping out one particular racial or ethnic group exclusively, the Brits were rather indiscriminate.

White people have murdered and exploited other nations and peoples for centuries, since colonial times, when our days of privilege began.

So have the Black people, Asians and Arabs. You really need the IQ in order to understand why this statement is utter bullshit, but then if you had the IQ you wouldn't be making such ignorant statements in the first place.

You’re thinking: “Ja, but what can I do about that?” Well, let’s look at how Germany has dealt with its grotesque Nazi past.

Finally, a good point. Germany dealt with its grotesque Nazi past by rebuilding its capital stock with a highly skilled workforce. Yes, really, it is that simple, but if you want more details have a look at the Wirtschaftsfwunder.

They were lucky in the sense that they had a highly skilled workforce and brilliant leaders at the time. We do not have a highly skilled workforce and our leaders surprise me every day because they don't inadvertently drown themselves in their own bath tub.

Germany has flourished by working hard, trying to do better, setting an example in terms of equality, cooperation and generosity.

Germany also does not have a race-based affirmative action program. Finally, another good point and one certainly worth considering. How we can change our current efforts to be more in line with what worked in Germany? Perhaps we should not have a race-based affirmative action program either?

Perhaps we should be focusing on making the majority of our population employable by turning ourselves into a highly skilled workforce?

Perhaps we should be focusing on building capital stock?

Perhaps we shouldn't be throwing the majority of our population into a debt trap and blaming a small yet skilled and hard-working minority for carrying the bulk of the burden?

Perhaps we should realise that there isn't a privilege queue where all the pale faces line up and all the rest are shown away?

White SA’ns who bitch and moan need to imagine Nazis bitching and moaning because their world has changed. That’s how you’re seen.

Imagine for a second that white South Africans are not Nazis. I know it is hard because there is more EQ than IQ here, but just try and picture the scene.

BONUS! You need to be more like Germans. Understand the privileges you enjoy. Do better. Strive for equality, cooperation, generosity.

That's not really a point now is it? That is empty sloganeering. Unless the point is that we should follow in Germany's footsteps, in which case it is a repeated point. This is the third time, by the way.

EXTRA BONUS! You’re thinking: “Get off your high horse, arsehole.” But I already shot the horse and gave away the meat a long time ago.

That's not really a point now is it? 

Either this is list is scraping the barrel for other incredulous troglodytes or it is an ingenious application of Poe's Law. For the author's sake, I hope it is the latter, because the points aren't even counted correctly. The only point worth mentioning is that we should try to emulate the success of Germany. Since it is repeated three times, that's a hit rate of 1/12 or 8,33%. It wouldn't even get Matric in the new South Africa.

The first African Disney princess is not even Black

If the peanut gallery is to be believed, the first African Disney princess is a white colonial. Why should we make a big fuss over the demographics of Disney princesses in this age of non-racialism and trying really hard not to perpetuate stereotypes? The article is helpful in prescribing our concerns to us:

1. The Disney Princess franchise doesn't have a history that celebrates diversity.
2. Tiana is Disney’s first and only black princess, but she spent most of her movie being green. Also she wasn't African enough.
3. Children films reinforce stereotypes and this can have a measurable, negative effect on children.

 

The Diversity of Disney Princesses

The Disney princesses include a Bavarian, four Frenchies, a Dane, an Arabian, a Native American, a Chinese, an African-American and a Scot. This does not however do for stringent diversity requirements, since there's clearly only one token Scot.

With an overwhelming majority of four out of eleven French princesses, this indisputable evidence indicates a hidden Hollywood agenda of classically conditioning our poor children into being French.

 

Tiana is the only black princess

In another troubling diversity window-dressing attempt, Tiana is black but she's not African. She's only African-American, like nearly 13% of the American population. America being Disney's home country. She should rather have been black and African, which would evidently go a long way towards not portraying African people as stereotypes.

To boot, she was forced into portraying a typical garden variety bi-racial relationship because Disney couldn't stomach the idea of an African-American girl bringing an African-American boyfriend home to meet the folks. Such a revolutionary idea is just much too far ahead of its time to appeal to African-Americans.

Instead, she spends most of the film in your typical garden variety interspecies romance. Duly note that along with Ariel and Belle, Tiana is one of only three Disney princesses who portray an interspecies romance. Even more problematic, along with Pocahontas, Tiana is one of only two princesses who portray an inter-racial romance. Truth be told, this shocking lack of diversity just shakes me to my core.

 

Research shows that media exposure influences the body image of our kids

The first empirical study conducted into this area clearly found how "exposure did not affect body dissatisfaction or engagement in appearance-related play behaviours".

Regardless, it is imperative to note how roughly 6,6% (N=8 out of 121 participants) of the test subjects indicated they would have to change their hair colour or their skin colour in order to be a princess.

Be careful to notice how even though 32,3% of the correspondents agreed that looks don't make one a princess, and 53,3% agreed that their accessories alone make them a princess, that lonely 6,6% exception is the exception that proves the rule.

I'm glad that I found this article, which is bolstered so undeniably by empirical research. Clearly, more should be done occupy that 6,6%'s minds so they can be more like the majority of girls who see things our way.

Response to the Muslim Judicial Council

Following the barbaric attack on a bunch of nearly retired cartoonists in France, it is inevitable that Islamophobia would rear its head again. There's also this half-baked, watered down and not really helpful comment from the Muslim Judicial Council. They're not really doing a good job to help the rest of us discern between Muslim extremists and moderate Muslims. This comment has been deleted from their drivel (Freedom of speech has its limits), so here it is in all its glory:

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist" ~Salman Rushdie. 

A depiction of someone's imaginary friend is not hate speech. Hate speech is clearly defined in our constitution. Drawing cartoons does not target a specific group for their race, religion or beliefs. 'I believe in freedom of speech, but..' sounds a lot like 'I am not a racist, but ...'. Nobody has the right not to be offended and neither does anyone's god or prophet.

The burden of proof is on the Muslim Judicial Council to show that Islam is in fact the religion of peace and that they do not tolerate extremist savages in their midsts. Their condemnation of these acts should be unequivocal and their support for freedom of expression should likewise be unequivocal so that the more ignorant amongst us have no chance of associating them with extremism.
That being said, I for one am looking forward to this year's Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

Russell Brand and the Messiah Simplex

Moved to Steemit. Read it here:

Russell Brand and the Messiah Simplex

The Commodification of Activism

The commodification of activism is a term I've coined to describe the popular culture phenomenon whereby everyone who creates awareness for their personal bugbears considers themselves an activist.

 I've since moved my blog to Steemit. This is just kept here to verify the date and to invite you to read more on a more decent blogging platform, built on a blockchain, opposed to censorship unlike Big Tech, and supports Markdown!

The Resource Based Economy mind virus

We've seen the Zeitgeist films and sadly they're still taking a hold on impressionable young minds that could be doing something useful instead. Despite its shoddy research, its baseless assertions and its gross generalisations (or perhaps because of them), a few things about the films stand out:

1. We have to get rid of all monetary systems.
2. The answer to all our woes is a Resource Based Economy.

Bad ideas have a habit of outliving good ones, perhaps because they are neat, plausible and wrong. These are all hallmarks of the kind of thinking that does not require much thinking, and as we know thinking is the hardest work of all. Perhaps this is why the bad ideas keep being perpetuated, while paradoxically the good ones are also neat, plausible and slightly less wrong. Why the good ideas don't get perpetuated as readily is beyond me.

Here's an image of Frank Zappa. Because Zappa is god.

 

Why should we get rid of a monetary system?

The Zeitgeist films try very hard to blame all our current problems on a monetary system. This is probably because the Zeitgeist movement conflates a fractional reserve banking system with monetary systems everywhere. Most people are economically illiterate and the notion that money is the root of all evil is not exactly a hard-earned conclusion.

"Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store".

Let's picture a world without money to highlight why there is money in the first place: If all we have are commodities without a currency to mediate, we are reliant on the coincidence of wants. To simplify the point, let's forget all the other complications such as a lack of a store of value, a lack of a unit of account, a lack of a standard for deferred payment, and all the other benefits that money gives us. Let's just focus on the coincidence of wants.

Suggest that you are a dental floss salesman from Montana. You go to the dentist. Your dentist is already well-stocked when it comes to dental paraphernalia and he does not require more dental floss. You are living in a society that has been exorcised of all money. How do you pay for your dentist visit?

This is perhaps why some anthropologists claim that debt is the first instance of money. Maybe some barterers got sick of getting the same goods from the same people and just said let's stick to I.O.U.s. Just like Menger's original account of where money originated, this is pure speculation and the functions of money do not rely on the order of things. It does however show two things:

1. Without money, we still need a coincidence of wants. This coincidence of wants presents an unsolvable problem. To be more succinct, it is impossible to please everyone.
2. The Resource Based Economy relies on commodities and conveniently ignores services that are provided by skilled people. This is perhaps because its chief evangelist is not a trained engineer and is unfamiliar with the kind of perseverance it takes to become skilled in a discipline. The Resource Based Economy just assumes we'd all be happy to get our daily bread from spambots and go on our merry way while automatically just obtaining the kind of skills required to maintain the spambots. If this is the case, why is there such high incidence of crime amongst people on welfare who do have the bare minimum that anyone could ask for given to them? But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's see what an RBE is.

 What is a Resource Based Economy?

Before we get to the Venus Project, it is worth noting what economics is. Economics is a social science primarily concerned with the production, consumption and distribution of resources. A Resource Based Economy thus refers to an economic problem per definition. Any notions that a Resource Based Economy is a radically new idea are thus misguided and testifies plainly of ignorance of economics as a field.


The Zeitgeist evangelists are familiar with the term as a reference to a system where information, goods and services are freely available. Their Resource Based Economy (RBE) relies fundamentally on the "average man" - a notion that first inspired the Socialism and Communism from which Zeitgeist bildungsphilisters are trying to separate themselves at all non-monetary costs.

This begs quite a few questions:

1. Where do these skills and services come from? The information content of virtually any tertiary education is already freely available (see Khan Academy for one), but this has not yielded the masses of skilled semi-professionals that it could have yielded. By contrast, voluntary free association has yielded many fruitful projects, amongst them Wikipedia and SETI@home (and no, these are not examples of gift economies, these are examples of Collective Intelligence). 
2. What about people who prefer having more of a given commodity than is provided by the spambots? We are told that the Venus Project does not rely on bartering or on a monetary system. What if I like hoarding chickens and I end up with more chickens than anyone in the Venus Project? Are the spambots going to dish my chickens out to all and sundry, in which case I have no more incentive to keep them in addition to experiencing the tyranny of social engineering first hand? What if my chickens require more land than my allocated land? Will the Venus Project assure me the property rights to enlarge my coop, or will I have to conduct a chicken coup d'edat? Death to the naked apes! Power to the flightless birds!
3. How does this system deal with scarcity? Some commodities are in fact scarce and this is more or less reflected in their monetary value, give or take a few hiccups. If we share scarce resources equally, we'd all be fitted with essentially a pittance of that resource that is of no use to anyone.
4. How does this system prevent bartering, trading and all the other innately human impulses that give rise to inequality in the first place?

The dangers of this system are not contained in its misguided calls for getting rid of currency, but in its social engineering implications. Social engineering is nothing new: It has been tried and tested and it doesn't work. The reason why it doesn't work is because the needs and wants of a group of individuals cannot be accurately portrayed by merely averaging out their individual whims and conveniently ignoring the outliers. Many of the brightest, most highly qualified engineers have tried, and failed. This is nothing but the principle of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need' in denial and in disguise.

Is it a good idea to unravel all the gains of the Age of Enlightenment to return to a serfdom? Except now it's an improvement because of social engineering, scientific socialism, and the consolement that the serfdom is run by the same kind of bots that crashed Wall Street?

Open letter opposing etolls

This is my letter of complaint regarding the etolls. I decided to replicate it here because I received no acknowledgement that my letter has in fact been received. Government seems hellbent on rubberstamping this bullshit through, so I am merely putting this out there so they can't act surprised when they sit with the tax revolt and the civil disobedience when they try to go through with this highway robbery.

If you'd also like to add your voice, feel free to get the details from the government gazette and email these clowns. Also please support Outa if you can. Government is a gang of thieves at large (apologies to Rothbard).





Kindly note that I am opposed to etolling and any means of tolling any public road. I feel that the fuel levy should be sufficient to maintain roads and that tolling is not an efficient nor desirable means to pay for road maintenance. The treasury should foot the bill, as we pay taxes for maintaining infrastructure. We do not pay taxes for upgrading official presidency residences like Nkandla, nor do we pay taxes for petty lawsuits to protect the 'dignity' of a certain privileged elite. Taxes should go towards the benefit of the public. Everyone benefits when government does its job of maintaining public resources.

I am opposed to the user pay principle, because many road users from as far as Durban and even Cape Town do in fact use the Gauteng roads to transfer goods into and out of the province.  Furthermore, if one would like to maintain the user pay principle, then ALL of the road users - including ministers of parliament and public transport users - should pay for the privilege of using the road. A principle is only valid if it counts for everyone. There can be no exceptions, because if there are, the principle does not hold.

Since the government has been collecting fuel levies for quite some time, from all users, by means of the national fuel levy, there should have been enough funding available to maintain the road. The fact that there may not be, is not a valid reason to fleece the public some more. Rather, it is reason enough for the powers that be to abdicate.

In addition, I feel that the government is being dishonest here. We were not given 30 days to comment on the tolls, we were given less. Also, we should have been given this opportunity BEFORE any construction on the gantries started, not AFTER they have been constructed. Most of  the costs go towards paying for toll collecting fees (85c out of each Rand according to public information sessions), so this is ridiculous. These are externalities and do not relate directly to building and maintaining the road at all. Also, the tariffs are allegedly not new, this according to the Justice Project SA.

Finally, I feel that government should be responsible with managing public resources. It was irresponsible to gamble public pensions on this 'white elephant'. The road should have been maintained already, we already paid to maintain it and this was arguably the least efficient means that government could have gone about maintaining the road. Government should foot the bill and stop fleecing the public every time it makes a mistake.

Money versus 'Resource based economics'

There's still mass confusion ruling in the midst of the Zeitgeist movement and the Venus Project zealots. The Zeitgeist movement thinks we do not need money because a fraction of the monetary system we currently have is fractional reserve banking, while the Venus Project thinks it's easy to do a bit of finely tuned central planning and cater for everyone's subjective evaluation of goods and services. Here are some basic questions about money that I tried to answer:

How is money generated?

Money is a medium of exchange. It is generated by manufacturing it, just like any other product. Unlike any other product, money (as in currency) has the highest marketability and serves as the greatest store of value. Any currency has to have these 2 properties. I'll illustrate this with an egg:  Suggest that you are an egg farmer.

Highest marketability merely means that everyone is happier when you pay them in money than when you pay them in eggs. On your egg farm, your workers will be happier when you pay them in money than when you hand them a tray of eggs for a day's work. In turn, you can get eggs with money, but you can't usually trade eggs for something else in the barter or direct exchange way.

A store of value means you get a bit more time to decide what you'd like to trade. This means you aren't limited by how long your eggs stay fresh in order to make purchases in the direct exchange/barter way, but you can shove all the money under your mattress for a rainy day.

As you can see, our current system separates the basic economic principle of exchange from money entirely. In short, 'let them eat credit'. You don't exchange your eggs on your egg farm for a car with money serving as a convenient medium of exchange. Instead, your car is usually bundled with financial services, guarantees that you won't default, monthly instalments and insurance to the extent that it's more about currency than exchanging goods and services for other goods and services.

For this reason, amongst others, the Rothbards of the world believe we should stick to an objective standard for money. The first known cases of money did this, with measures of silver equal to a certain amount of grain. Which leads us to your next question:

What conditions exist when this money is created?

It varies. Money as in a medium of exchange is usually created whenever you have something that I value and I have something you value, but we don't value them equally and we find something that has a higher marketability and serves as a store of value. This could be anything, from the Roman Empire's silver coins (which served as currency as far as India and existed side-by-side with bartering), to cowrie shells, which was the currency of choice in Africa for hundreds of years. By the way, cowrie shells also cast doubt in the notion that there is no empirical observation of currency taking root, besides the fact that debt is also currency.

The exact material used for money depends on many factors. In history, the most common denominator is usually some precious metal, like gold. This is because it is scarce, its purity can be determined objectively and it can be weighed objectively, so it serves as a standard. I still think we should use beer as our currency. Often, people were not happy with the authorities meddling with the purity of commodity money, which brings us to:

Who owns the 'right' to create money?

Everyone does. At least that's the ideal of people like Friedrich Hayek. This also happens whenever a certain currency is inflated to such an extent that its marketability is no longer more significant than something else, like the Zimbabwean Dollar that was neglected in favour of American Dollars, or mobile phone credit that is used as currency in Iraq. It's also the idea of bitcoin and other newer versions of digital currency. In reality, the authorities keep a tight grip on money creation as it's easy to launder money, in which case they lose out on taxes, or to counterfeit money, in which case we may be defrauded. 

What purpose does interest serve?

Without interest, money lenders have no incentive to lend to those who need money. This is an awkward position for many small businesses and the poorest of the poor, many of whom are women in impoverished communities building businesses with loan shark money. I'd think interest serves everyone's interests.

Without currency there is no economy!!!! So why are we not taught about currency and the creation thereof?

I'd take that one step further: Without currency, there is no civilisation. We live in the information age, where we are quite capable to teach ourselves nearly anything we'd like to know. We do have currency so going back to a stage where we no longer have currency is not progress, it's regression. If anything, we'd have to invent and embrace the next stage of our evolution. In other words, build the future.

An open letter to an open letter to Mike Basson of Avastar

This is an open letter to an open letter to Mike Basson (owner of Avastar). Avastar is a new club that is built around the idea of emulating theme clubs on the Vegas strip. I haven't been there, but I couldn't help but notice how the owner did a great job at marketing his venture through social media, particularly with an Avastar Youtube video.

You would gather from this blog that I am a big fan of cheese, which is why I like heavy metal and horror films. I also like corny cheese which is why I hope to visit Avastar in the near future. But a couple of minor points came to mind while reading the open letter linked to above.

"From a Capetonian perspective... "

This is a dead give-away that this is not really a Capetonian perspective. Real Capetonians are wilfully ignorant of anywhere in the country beyond the mountains that the eye can see. It's only political refugees from Gauteng who went to Model C schools and then to UCT who feel the need to point out to the rest of the country that they are Capetonian. Real Capetonians won't speak to the rest of the country out of principle because true Capetonians are Trustafarians. 

The Trustafarians even put a mountain between them and the other people who live in Cape Town. Despite these measures, meeting a true Capetonian is not as hard as it sounds. If you'd like to meet a native Capetonian, you'd have to resort to these two simple steps:

1. Find a native Capetonian.
2. Convince them that you are not from beyond the mountains.

This is a reasonable approximation of what a Capetonian looks like in the field.

 The former is not as hard as it sounds, you just need to follow that distinguished Hospice thrift shop smell. The latter is easily achieved by taking on the appearance of a recently mugged and desensitised golf enthusiast. This is to say you need a grandpa hat but be sans golf gear and sans caddy. Caddies are very Boere-Swazi and we only still keep them in Gauteng. I'm not sure why we do as they frequently make off with our golf gear.

The final cog in the wheel is that you must use the Zen approach. This means using the age old reverse psychosis technique. To clarify, if you were not Capetonian, the obvious thing to do would be to look, smell and feel like a thrift shop before you approach people in an unassuming manner to meet them. 

In Gauteng, we do this mostly to show that we are unarmed. This is so we don't get shot in the face by people who assume unassuming approachers are in fact trying to take their golf gear by force. In Cape Town, you must appear like you are merely part of the scenery and you're trying to avoid Those Who Walk Behind The Mountains. Sooner or later, you would bump into a Capetonian and you'd start talking. Good locations for these chance meetings are recently gentrified neighbourhoods with a few remaining buildings on the verge of getting demolished.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that Cape Town's little known and even less frequented underbelly has scummy joints the likes of which Mike Basson can only dream of with his Avatar blue fur wet dream.

I intend on visiting Avastar in the near future. I have to try a cocktail on a goddess.

Drinking doesn't solve problems?

As part of the techlash I'm moving away from Big Tech autocracies with their social justice tyranny, so catch me over at Steemit. 

Drinking doesn't solve problems?

Pretoria is Pretoria

I don't particularly care what you want to call a street. All I know is each time the Pretoria municipality (I am uncertain of its name at this stage) tries to change names, they're upsetting enough people to such an extent that there is legal action.

Some Boer commando that apparently never happened in South Africa. Because we all know history in South Africa started with Apartheid, right?

Nation building my lillywhite ass

This cannot possibly be indicative of 'nation building' when the municipality alienates its own people to such an extent each time. Who cares what the road is called? A rose by any other name and all that. Fact remains service delivery has not exactly improved, and isn't this what we pay rates and taxes for after all?

It appears that the municipality is fighting the law of identity. Well, good luck to them.

On another note, a list of proposed Pretoria name changes indicates the following:

• Was Beatrix Street, now Steve Biko.
• Was Mears Street, now Steve Biko.
• Was Voortrekker Street, now Steve Biko.

All I can make of this is that there's a guy named Steve Biko who has to tie the shoes of the mayor every morning, because clearly sher is retarded (sher is my third-person, singular personal pronoun that indicates 'he or she', in case you were wondering).

What is the point of taking three distinct roads and naming them all the same name? What exactly is the point of taking another road and splitting it up into four different sections, each with its own name? Surely, you could've left that road in tact (or split it into Church and Steve Biko, for argument's sake) and then you could've named the three similar roads unique names? Goes to show, there's no rational thought behind the name changes. It's all about ideology or (idle-LOL-ogy).

Boer is beautiful too

Perhaps Steve was right: Black is beautiful. But Boer can be beautiful too, and just like people still refer to Istanbul as Constantinople colloquially, people are going to refer to Pretoria as Pretoria for centuries to come. Name changing to enforce your hegemony is not particularly effective, so why not focus on potholes and service delivery? You know, the reasons why we pay the municipality?

Sexual Violence against Women in South Africa

Regular readers would know by now that feminism is somewhat of a whipping boy for me. This is part of why my knee-jerk reaction to the sophistry that rape in South Africa is perpetuated by the usual suspects of patriarchy, men's sexist attitudes and the terrible Protestant capitalist upbringing forced upon us - not to mention that age old scapegoat The Media and its photoshopped princesses - is one of disbelief.

How sexist am I? Apparently somewhere between male and female hostile sexists, but less benevolently sexist than most people who participated in the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory questionnaire.

In the nature-versus-nurture debate, I put more stock in sociobiology than in the products of society theory. Putting the knee-jerk behind me, I decided to suspend judgement and look at the data before I chop off my genitals and become a nun (or a none?). As before, regardless of what most people would have you believe about feminists and their hysteria, and regardless of what most of them rationalise lies behind the serious issues, we do have a serious problem on our hands in South Africa. We need to do something about the fear that women in South Africa live with - a realistic fear of violence and particularly rape.

How do we know that our culture produces rapists?

This statement - widely believed by feminists (their labelling, not mine) - assumes several initial points:

1. South African cultures condone or promote rape.
2. Rapists are mostly socially constructed. That is, a rapist is someone whose actions are instigated and controlled to such an extent by his cultural milieu that committing rape is somewhat of an inevitability.
3. The prevalent attitude of South African men is sexist
4. There is a link between this generally sexist attitude of men and our high incidence of rape.

Unlike what one would expect from a cultural milieu that socially constructs beasts of sexual violence, most men in South Africa are not rapists. This presents a problem to the analysis that we're merely suffering from a patriarchy hangover. Paradoxically, this fact does not fill me with joy because it means solving the problem is far more difficult than handing baby boys Barbie dolls and Cosmopolitan magazines to play with in their formative years.

 

If not for sexism, why do South African women live in fear?

I don't believe that sexism is appreciated or condoned by our culture. Of course, there are so many cultures in South Africa that such a statement - and the statement that our culture produces rapists - is essentially meaningless. I only have anecdotal evidence to go by, but believe me telling a girl to knit you a sweater and make you a sandwich will not win you many friends of either gender in my circles.

However, the high incidence of rape in South Africa is somewhat worsened by culture. In particular, there are some superstitious beliefs that hold having sex with a virgin will cure you from AIDS. There are also cases of corrective rape, designed to cure unfortunate lesbians of their preference for women. Most rapists are likely to be male and between the ages of 20 and 40. Furthermore, alcohol and spousal abuse are factors that make your chances of getting raped more.

 

Is rape a gender issue?

Of course such a statement is anathema to me. There is a difference between sex (broadly male, female and other) and gender. Gender is tied with particular social and cultural roles. Suffice to say I am not familiar with a cultural practice in South Africa that condones rape - bar the mentioned voodoo sangoma witchdoctor cures for AIDS and lesbianism. Also bar the lip service that some establishments like the church pay to condemning rape while their servants get caught in the act of child abuse a little too often to lend much weight to their official dogma.

Culturally, the official dogma is still that rape is something that is frowned upon - to say the least. Plus, many men are raped in prison too. However, for the most part, rape victims are female (of any gender) and rape perpetrators are men (who don't deserve their gender bits). I do not believe that we live in a culture whereby men's attitudes are mostly sexist. Of course such attitudes exist, but not disproportionately to the rest of the world. The rest of the world doesn't have a rape problem of our proportions, which again contrasts to the expected situation if rape were merely a result of anachronistic gender attitudes and bias. Furthermore, I couldn't find a study that measured the gender attitudes of South African men. The only stats I could find refer to rape victims and their terrible ordeals.

Whether you put stock in the whole patriarch equals rapist conjecture or not, the harsh reality is getting raped is not a realistic fear most men have to live with - not even in Cape Town's Pink Triangle. Even worse, most women in South Africa are living with a realistic fear that they could be raped. And yes, it does get worse: When women are raped, they are mostly too afraid and ashamed to report the crime to the authorities.

As ridiculous as most humanities subjects are to those of my Vulcan ilk, the concerns raised do not strike me as being ridiculous or based on hysteria. This judging by the testimony of those working in the field of sexual violence, dealing with rape victims on a daily basis, whether you buy into their ideology or not. 

 

What can we do to remedy the situation?

Even if rape in South Africa did result from our cultural milieu, fixing that requires a generation or two and it's impractical to construct a measure of the change or a measure of the results of such change. We would never know if we're socially constructing the right kinds of rape-free genders. We need something that we can do right now to make women feel safer in our society. While most men are not rapists, statistically, most of us should be familiar with a rapist. We cannot afford that rape is something other men do and we can do nothing about. Furthermore, most rape victims know their rapist fairly well. I think a good place to start is with ensuring that women who were raped are not afraid of reporting the crime and have some faith that they can talk to someone who will be able to help.

Another good place to start is to have a Designated Dave kind of character to help prevent rape. Just like Designated Dave takes care of the driving while you take care of the drinking, this character takes care of your drink when you go to the bathroom and generally ensures that whatever you get up to by means of sharing DNA samples is consensual.

What do you think?

Please feel free to leave me a comment so we can find a working solution. As someone who does not associate with feminism or any ideology except Incertitude, I would like to become familiar with working solutions. For the time being, the only such solution I have found is chemical castration.

Sources

I have linked to sources throughout the text. I did my best to sidestep the ideological landmines, but the best sources on rape I could find deserve another mention:

• Sexual Violence Research Initiative that focuses on the bigger picture of gathering data and the smaller picture of providing assistance to sexual violence victims.

• Understanding Prejudice, a site dedicated to the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. This is a questionnaire (survey to you Merkins) designed to determine how much you hate sex. I mean, gender.
• Violence against women, a World Health Organisation study of 2011. Yes, not something from the Middle Ages I'm afraid.