Well, if she had already figured out that she was working with a bunch of people to whom a lie was more believable and more comprehensible than the truth, resigning was the correct move.
If Kevin's smile was as knowing as the story implies, I imagine that he would be following her outa there. 😎
Chip: That’s certainly true in the way a great many companies use “marketing”. In my view it’s a sad commentary on the nature of our culture and our societal structure that you can make a statement like “Marketing is professional lying” and it happens to be true to any degree at all, let alone to the degree to which it has become increasingly prevalent.
Deception is the engine that drives fraud, and we’ve got a ton of it…especially in the domain of human interaction that we insist on calling “government”.
The thing we currently call “government” manufactures corruption, fraud, and conflict. It divides people into warring camps that perpetuate conflict, the very opposite of cooperation. It’s one big state that maintains its monopoly on power by legalized coercion of fifty smaller states, which in turn run the same divisive program on their component county-states, and city-states. Whatever that agglomeration of warring states is, the one thing it is not is “United”.
If that wretched hive of scum and villainy is government, then we need to find another word for the genuinely valuable service whose sole purpose is to secure (protect) the life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and other rights and properties of the individuals government is supposed to serve.
The key is individuals. It’s no good to glom people together into transient, unstable “majorities” that temporarily “win” at the expense of the minority, who (by definition) always lose.
Anyhow, the thing we call government is most certainly not a fountainhead of integrity. Anyone who looks for integrity in a system that thrives on conflict, fraud, and “progressive” parasitic exploitation of its most productive citizens is a crazed, deluded coon puppy barking up an empty tree.
Fortunately, there are still products and services whose providers have integrity, and provide honest value commensurate with what they advertise, and the price we pey for it. If everyone were frauds, no one would trust anyone, cooperation would vanish, and that would be the end of civilization. The collapse would be virtually instantaneous.
Of course, you can extend that same principle into the positive modes of human interaction. Integrity is universally valued. Everyone wants everyone else to tell the truth, to keep their word when they give it, to honor the agreements they make, to be reliable and trustworthy. There are no exceptions. It’s built into human nature.
Nice if you can get it. But what we want and what we’re willing to give aren’t the same. Unfortunately, the principle that what you give is what comes back to you is not universally understood.
In the past, cooperation and trust were emergent properties in human behavior that were the basis of survival strategies among two or more humans.
And we humans didn’t “invent” it either. Groups of animals were doing it long before humans existed. It’s every bit as much a part of what we often refer to as our “natural” or “animal” or “primordial” instincts as the more negative attributes of violence or savagery.
The question is, which of those natural aspects of our behavior should we choose to reinforce, encourage, and incentivize, and which ones should we de-emphasize, discourage, and actively disincentivize? Which ones produce the results we want?
Here’s an even more incisive question: What amount of preventing what you don’t want is sufficient to create what you do want? Most of what we currently call “government” is focused on the former (negative-squared) rather than on the latter (positive).
While we’re at it, here’s the most fundamental question of all: Do we even know what results we want?
The evidence on the ground that we have even bothered to ask that question—I mean from the standpoint of fundamental principles—seems pretty thin to me.
Oh we pay it plenty of lip service, especially in this 250th anniversary of the most articulate statement of such principles the world has ever seen. But talk is cheap. We talk freedom out of one side of our mouths, and then turn around vote ourselves out of it time after time.
I often wonder how much proof is sufficient to convince “the people” that the reason it’s not working it that it can’t work.
I should clarify. I absolutely do not mean that government can’t work. Government is an indispensable part of civilization. I’m guessing that’s probably why you “…can’t just sit here and accept it.”
I don’t blame you for that. I wouldn’t accept it either if someone said we don’t need government, or that real government can’t work. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not an anarchist.
The problem is that the thing we call “government” isn’t really government. It’s a political state that pretends to provide the service of government. It succeeds to a very limited degree in a few areas, but only at the expense of creating much bigger problems than it solves. The vast majority of it is not government at all.
In fact, the political state is the least likely kind of societal mechanism to provide the service of real government.
Yet, because of a fundamental fallacy—a universal false assumption—we believe that the only way to provide government is through some form of political state.
I realized that I haven’t defined the terms I’m using. I’m not deliberately being vague. There’s a right way to go about this, and exchanging Notes on Substack isn’t it.
Let's keep in mind that, twenty years ago, we didn't have an internet that allowed us to communicate directly with each other. We just had to take politician's and media's word for whatever they told us. These are very different times. Let's do all that we can with them.
The good news is that the task ahead has nothing to do with destroying anything. Creating what we want is a constructive enterprise.
When something that works is up and running, we just stop using what doesn’t work. In the meantime, however poorly it works, we don’t beat it to death with a sledgehammer.
Well, if she had already figured out that she was working with a bunch of people to whom a lie was more believable and more comprehensible than the truth, resigning was the correct move.
If Kevin's smile was as knowing as the story implies, I imagine that he would be following her outa there. 😎
Marketing is professional lying. Not a good profession for honest people.
Chip: That’s certainly true in the way a great many companies use “marketing”. In my view it’s a sad commentary on the nature of our culture and our societal structure that you can make a statement like “Marketing is professional lying” and it happens to be true to any degree at all, let alone to the degree to which it has become increasingly prevalent.
Deception is the engine that drives fraud, and we’ve got a ton of it…especially in the domain of human interaction that we insist on calling “government”.
The thing we currently call “government” manufactures corruption, fraud, and conflict. It divides people into warring camps that perpetuate conflict, the very opposite of cooperation. It’s one big state that maintains its monopoly on power by legalized coercion of fifty smaller states, which in turn run the same divisive program on their component county-states, and city-states. Whatever that agglomeration of warring states is, the one thing it is not is “United”.
If that wretched hive of scum and villainy is government, then we need to find another word for the genuinely valuable service whose sole purpose is to secure (protect) the life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and other rights and properties of the individuals government is supposed to serve.
The key is individuals. It’s no good to glom people together into transient, unstable “majorities” that temporarily “win” at the expense of the minority, who (by definition) always lose.
Anyhow, the thing we call government is most certainly not a fountainhead of integrity. Anyone who looks for integrity in a system that thrives on conflict, fraud, and “progressive” parasitic exploitation of its most productive citizens is a crazed, deluded coon puppy barking up an empty tree.
Fortunately, there are still products and services whose providers have integrity, and provide honest value commensurate with what they advertise, and the price we pey for it. If everyone were frauds, no one would trust anyone, cooperation would vanish, and that would be the end of civilization. The collapse would be virtually instantaneous.
Of course, you can extend that same principle into the positive modes of human interaction. Integrity is universally valued. Everyone wants everyone else to tell the truth, to keep their word when they give it, to honor the agreements they make, to be reliable and trustworthy. There are no exceptions. It’s built into human nature.
Nice if you can get it. But what we want and what we’re willing to give aren’t the same. Unfortunately, the principle that what you give is what comes back to you is not universally understood.
In the past, cooperation and trust were emergent properties in human behavior that were the basis of survival strategies among two or more humans.
And we humans didn’t “invent” it either. Groups of animals were doing it long before humans existed. It’s every bit as much a part of what we often refer to as our “natural” or “animal” or “primordial” instincts as the more negative attributes of violence or savagery.
The question is, which of those natural aspects of our behavior should we choose to reinforce, encourage, and incentivize, and which ones should we de-emphasize, discourage, and actively disincentivize? Which ones produce the results we want?
Here’s an even more incisive question: What amount of preventing what you don’t want is sufficient to create what you do want? Most of what we currently call “government” is focused on the former (negative-squared) rather than on the latter (positive).
While we’re at it, here’s the most fundamental question of all: Do we even know what results we want?
The evidence on the ground that we have even bothered to ask that question—I mean from the standpoint of fundamental principles—seems pretty thin to me.
Oh we pay it plenty of lip service, especially in this 250th anniversary of the most articulate statement of such principles the world has ever seen. But talk is cheap. We talk freedom out of one side of our mouths, and then turn around vote ourselves out of it time after time.
I often wonder how much proof is sufficient to convince “the people” that the reason it’s not working it that it can’t work.
Excellent observations.
But I'm saddened by that last line. Everything I know and everything I've experienced tells me it's true. But I can't just sit here and accept it.
I should clarify. I absolutely do not mean that government can’t work. Government is an indispensable part of civilization. I’m guessing that’s probably why you “…can’t just sit here and accept it.”
I don’t blame you for that. I wouldn’t accept it either if someone said we don’t need government, or that real government can’t work. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not an anarchist.
The problem is that the thing we call “government” isn’t really government. It’s a political state that pretends to provide the service of government. It succeeds to a very limited degree in a few areas, but only at the expense of creating much bigger problems than it solves. The vast majority of it is not government at all.
In fact, the political state is the least likely kind of societal mechanism to provide the service of real government.
Yet, because of a fundamental fallacy—a universal false assumption—we believe that the only way to provide government is through some form of political state.
I realized that I haven’t defined the terms I’m using. I’m not deliberately being vague. There’s a right way to go about this, and exchanging Notes on Substack isn’t it.
"...and exchanging Notes on Substack isn’t it."
I'd say you're doing a good job.
Let's keep in mind that, twenty years ago, we didn't have an internet that allowed us to communicate directly with each other. We just had to take politician's and media's word for whatever they told us. These are very different times. Let's do all that we can with them.
I understand that.
The good news is that the task ahead has nothing to do with destroying anything. Creating what we want is a constructive enterprise.
When something that works is up and running, we just stop using what doesn’t work. In the meantime, however poorly it works, we don’t beat it to death with a sledgehammer.