&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& && && && && && THE CHAOS ADVOCATE && && && && An Electronic Journal Advocating && && Personal Freedom In All Things && && && && && &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& *-------------------------------------------------------------* | THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You | | may review and read sections of this electronic publication | | to determine whether or not you would like to read the | | entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or | | if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use| | or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by | | mailing $2.00 to | | | | Mack Tanner | | 1234 Nearing Rd. | | Moscow, ID 83843 | | | | If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and | | stamped envelope. | *-------------------------------------------------------------* PAGE 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Letters to the Editor........................page 3 Editor's Page ...............................page 4 Chaos and Social Engineering.................page 6 The Common Good and the Voter's Paradox......page 10 Bad Citizens and Freedom.....................page 18 Getting All You Want.........................page 23 Wanted: A Few Good Writers...................page 28 PAGE 3 *---------------------------* | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR | *---------------------------* Obviously, as this is the premier issue of THE CHAOS ADVOCATE, we don't have any letters-to-the-editor to publish. We hope that we will have some to publish with the next issue. Letters to the editor should be sent to one of the following E-mail addresses and marked as letters to the editor of THE CHAOS ADVOCATE. Compuserve: 72037,2673 Delphi: MACKTANNER The Rational Life Bulletin Board 615-433-7869 Fidonet node number 1:116/38 Internet: Mack.Tanner@f38.n116.z1.fidonet.org Letter writers must identify themselves with their real identity and include a telephone number or an E-mail address which will permit us to verify identity. We will, however, publish letters anonymously at the request of the author. PAGE 4 *--------------------* | THE EDITOR'S PAGE | *--------------------* Freedom is the natural state of every creature. No human being, no law, no constitution can give another human freedom. It can't be granted, it can only be taken away. Freedom is not necessarily beautiful nor comfortable. It is never predictable and always chaotic. A free life can be dangerous, unstable, and sometimes violent, but always unpredictable. A lot of people don't like freedom very much. It scares them. They want a predictable world in which they can trust that things will always turn out just the way they want them to turn out. They delude themselves into thinking that humans can create a world in which there will be no anger, sorrow, hunger, sickness, violence, or hurt. Why wait for heaven when they can create heaven here on earth? But to create that wonderful, mythical world, they must first force everyone to obey a long list of rules, laws, regulations, morals, and ethics, all designed to insure that no one will do anything that might upset the harmony and predictability of the world they want to live in. The kind of world they want isn't possible if humans remain free. So while they are writing their morals, ethics, and laws, they also write out a new definition of freedom. They tell us that to be free we must be free from want, from pain, from fear, from hunger, and even sickness. They call the slave a free man because the slave master promises to provide for every need. The priests, politicians, and teachers tell us that we are free individuals while they feed us myths designed to make comfortable, well-fed slaves think they are free. The tragedy is that the kind of world they want also isn't possible if people are not free. So, while they take freedom away, the brave new world they promise never appears. No one owns your life but you. The only way you can be happy is by making the choices you want to make about what you do with your mind and your body. Because we live in a highly complex society, neither you nor I are every going to be able to do *everything* we want to do. Life is a constant bargain in which we give up some things we might like to have, so that we can have other things we want even more. The atomic basis of a happy, healthy society is the voluntary exchange. I give someone my time and my work for eight hours a day and he or she gives me money so I can make other voluntary exchanges to buy my bread, drink, shelter, and entertainment. But the exchange must be voluntary, not dictated by some priest or politician. If you are free, you get to choose what it is that you give up in order to get what you want to make you happy. We are sick of listening to people telling us how our PAGE 5 institutions of church, government, school, and medicine are going to make us happy. We think it's time we started talking again about how we can each maximize our own freedom in our own daily life. We think it's time to advocate freedom now. That's why we have started this journal and why we are distributing it through the electronic media. We're going to take a tough minded, no nonsense approach to freedom with no compromises. We expect to make a lot of people mad at us. A lot of people don't want to be free. Because they don't want to be free themselves, they don't want you or me to be free. We think it's time we started telling those people where they can go. We want to talk about freedom on both the philosophical level, and on the very practical level. How does one help his children survive the compulsory public education system? How do you protect your privacy from spying police thugs? How do you avoid troubles with the child welfare authorities? What legal ways can you avoid taxes, and how do people get away with illegal tax cheating? We intend to challenge the very limits on the first amendments. No subject will be taboo or forbidden, as long as it is directly related to the concept of individual freedom. We don't want to go to jail, so we won't advocate that anyone break any law, but we will describe how other people have broken the law in pursuit of personal freedom, and sometimes, how they got away with it. We will respect the copyright laws. Anything that appears in this journal will be the original work of the author and computer encoded with his permission, and we do understand the difference between free speech and libel. But with those caveats we will advocate the chaos of freedom. Welcome to CHAOS. We are the organization that Max Smart was out to stop. *-------------------------------------------------------------* | THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You | | may review and read sections of this electronic publication | | to determine whether or not you would like to read the | | entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or | | if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use| | or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by | | mailing $2.00 to | | | | Mack Tanner | | 1234 Nearing Rd. | | Moscow, ID 83843 | | | | If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and | | stamped envelope. | *-------------------------------------------------------------* PAGE 6 *--------------------------------* | CHAOS AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING | | | | by | | Mack Tanner | *--------------------------------* "Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter." --Anonymous Most of you have probably heard the story about the clever young man who offers to go to work for a businessman on a try-out basis in which the young man will be paid only one cent on the first day, two cents for the second day, four cent on the third day, and so on, the salary doubling each day until the businessman decides whether or not he wants to hire the young man on a permanent basis. Thinking he's getting a good deal, the businessman takes on the kid and a month slips by before the businessman decides he won't keep the young man on. When the young man presents the bill for his wages for thirty days, the businessman discovers it's cheaper to sign over the company than paying the wages. The businessman has just learned the truth of compound interest. By doubling a single cent thirty times, you end up with $5,368,709.12 on the last doubling. The business man owes the young man over 10 million dollars for the thirty days of work. While this common mathematical principle has long been understood, it's only been in recent years that scientists have examined and explored what impact compounding small sums can have on what are called chaotic systems. A chaotic system is any dynamic physical, biological, or mathematical system in which a complicated set of data interact in non-linear and non-repetitive way. (Anyone interested in a more technical explanation of chaos theory should check out a library book on the subject.) Until recently, the philosophy of determinism was the basis for much of scientific thought and direction. The concept was that if we only knew the equations and had the precise data, the future could be predicted. This concept is best summarized in Laplace's famous statement: "An intellect which at any given moment knew all the forces that animate Nature and the mutual positions of the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit its data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom: for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes." Pierre Simon de Laplace, 1749-1827 Chaos theory now shows how naive and ridiculous this statement is. What scientists have come to understand in only the last few years is that in all chaotic systems, very small variations in input data can have a profound impact on the future development of the system. The more the variables at the PAGE 7 initiation of the system, the greater the difficulty in predicting what impact tiny increases or decrease in a single variable will have on the progress of the system. In a perverse sort of way, the longer term the prediction attempted, the greater and more accurate the amount of initial data that is required to make the prediction. As the thousands, or millions of different variables act upon each other, no human, nor human manufactured computing machine can predict what the smallest change to any single variable will do to the future of the system. The most commonly cited example of a chaotic system is the weather. Other chaotic systems include hydraulic turbulence, biological species interaction, epidemiology, and all human societies and economies. Understanding chaos theory explains why scientists have such a difficult time predicting the weather more than twenty-four hour in advance and why they now realize that they will never be able to make trustworthy long-term weather predictions. It is simply impossible to collect the in-put data in the quantity and with the degree of accuracy necessary to make a credible long term prediction. (Of course, the government will never admit this is good reason to stop spending billions trying to do so!) Understanding chaos theory also explains why it will be impossible for humans to ever control the weather to produce a desired result with no danger of unexpected and undesirable results. Cloud seeding may make it rain over a dry Iowa corn field, but the impact of that intervention might result in an hurricane destroying a coastal city in Florida six months, or six years in the future. Given the complexity of the non-linear equations in describing weather patterns, no scientist will ever be able to prove that it was the cloud seeding that caused the hurricane, nor, for that matter, that the cloud seeding didn't contribute to the hurricane's development. Humans can impact on or redirect a chaotic system, but we can not prove or disprove exactly how the human intervention impacted on the system over the long term. We will know we changed the system, but we can never know how we changed the system, nor what the system would have done if we had changed nothing. All human societies and all human economic systems are chaotic systems. They develop and progress as a result of an incredible amount of input in which any single individual may do something that will have an unexpected and unpredictable multiplier impact on how the system will operate at some future point in time. Chaos theory explains why social engineering can never produce the expected result and why such schemes will always produce unintended results. Chaos theory also explains why neither the social engineers nor the critics of social engineering can ever prove what real impact an attempt at social engineering actually had on the economy and the society. We have been listening to a lot of political debate about what caused the riots in Los Angeles. The conservatives blame the deteriorating situation of the city on social programs of the Great Society, welfare dependency, government regulation, minimum wages laws, high taxes, and moral decline while the liberals blame the failure of the government to spend enough money, racism, police brutality, illegal immigration, and the entire American corporate cultural. The entire debate is total bullshit! There is absolutely no way anyone can scientifically establish what things might have been done differently that could have prevented the deterioration of our cities into the current social morass. Furthermore, there is no way anyone can scientifically demonstrate PAGE 8 what new proposals for social engineering will produce intended and only intended future results. The entire political debate over the domestic agenda that goes on in connection with the current presidential election is also total bullshit! Nobody can explain scientifically exactly what caused the recent recession nor place with any scientific certainty the blame on any set of government actions. And nobody can predict what impact all of the different proposed economic solutions will actually have on the future world economic situation. Yet every politician is demanding that we spend a trillion dollars on programs that they can't demonstrate will work and they won't ever to be able to prove that they did work once they are in place. The national economy and its interrelation with the world economy is a chaotic system even more complex, unpredictable, and unmanageable than the world weather and climate patterns. Any politician who claims he can control it for the benefit of everyone without damaging large groups of other people is either a fool, or a crook, or more likely both. The government can do lots of things that will have short term impact on the economy. Political leaders can lower interest rates, shift investment opportunities, legislate prices, regulate exchanges, and all those things will alter the economic future of the economy. But chaos theory explains why we can not predict what the long term result of such action will be and why the unintended results may well be much more disastrous than the original problem could have ever become if left alone and free of government intervention. All of this is scientific fact that can be described by observation of prior events, the examination of mathematical formulas and demonstrated with computer modeling. But don't expect any political candidate, office holder, member of congress, bureaucrat, or scientist working on a fat government contract to admit the truth of this. For them to do so would be for them to admit that the American federal budget is being wasted on social engineering projects with no guarantees that they will work or that they won't produce disasters. Chaos theory not only explains why economic central planning can't work, it also explains why government bureaucracy grows so fast. Because political leaders and the bureaucrats refuse to recognize that what they are trying to do can't be done, they work under the delusion that they only thing preventing ultimate success is more and better data. They excuse their repeated failures by insisting they didn't have enough data, *which is right*, but they refuse to understand that no matter how much data they collect, it will never be enough to allow them to predict and control what the economy is going to do. Instead, they collect and quantify increasingly greater amounts of data as the cost escalates much like the salary of the boy who stated out at a penny for the first day's work. The more information they collect, the more difficult the task of correlating, interpreting, and analyzing the information they have. They hire ever larger numbers of people who can be put to the task of collecting and handling the information. When things go wrong, the excuse is always a failure in intelligence and the proposed solution is to hire more people and gather more raw data. The more things go wrong, the more money they spend trying to fix it. A fascinating conclusion of chaos theory is that you cannot predict the result of the fix, even if you try to put everything back exactly like it was! When we used DDT to kill the PAGE 9 bugs and found out that it did more harm than good - in unexpected ways - the decision to quit using DDT may have resulted in greater damage than would have been the result of continuing its use. But if the government can't control the economy for the benefit of all, what is the government doing? Our politician leaders and the bureaucrats they hire play exactly the same role in the modern secular state that pagan priests and shamans played in ancient civilizations. Except, where ancient pagan priests and shamans promised to magically control the weather, stop the earthquakes, and curse the enemy with disease and pestilence, these modern wizards and magicians promise us that everyone will have a good job, decent medical care, and a useful education while avoiding drugs, unwanted pregnancies, and crime in the streets. Fortunately for us all, the weather generally does treat human populations pretty well, and despite the bungled attempts of government interference, millions of free people, all looking out for their own selfish interest, usually succeed in creating a chaotic, but healthy economy that provides most of us with all the good things of life and a few of us the chance to get rich. Like their ancient counterparts always claimed credit for spring rains, sunny weather, and good harvests, the modern political wizards and magicians claim credit for the successful economy and insist that the taxpayers contribute even more money to guarantee continued success in the future. They are taking credit for things they didn't do and charging us high prices for not doing it. The amount they take for themselves and for those whom they decide to bless with entitlement programs continues to grow. Most of us are working five full months a year for the sole purpose of feeding our monstrous and useless government beast. And still the wizards are telling us they need more money. They will keep demanding more money for as long as the taxpayer will pay it. The debt will grow like the wages owed the clever young man until it reaches the point where the whole government system will collapse under the weight of it's own debt. But don't worry. Just like the good weather stuck around for long after humans gave up on paying pagan priests to guarantee good harvests, the basic economy, the sum total of all human interactions and economic exchanges, will still be around long after the collapse of big government. *-------------------------------------------------------------* | THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You | | may review and read sections of this electronic publication | | to determine whether or not you would like to read the | | entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or | | if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use| | or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by | | mailing $2.00 to | | | | Mack Tanner | | 1234 Nearing Rd. | | Moscow, ID 83843 | | | | If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and | | stamped envelope. | *-------------------------------------------------------------* PAGE 10 *----------------------------------------------* | THE COMMON GOOD AND THE VOTER'S PARADOX | | | | by | | Leon Felkins | *----------------------------------------------* "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal." --Graffiti How many times has someone told you that everyone would be happy, healthy and content *if only* people would forget their selfish desires and work for the common good? By serving the common good, don't we also serve our own enlightened self interests because the common good guarantees the maximum benefit for every individual? Wasn't the *me* generation a tragic mistake? Isn't it time we returned to the ideal that each individual puts the community interests above his own selfish interest? Does working for the common good give a person greater benefits than working for one's own selfish behavior? If the answer is *yes*, then we should to be able to demonstrate that an individual sacrifice has a real effect on the common good. If my single, personal sacrifice can alter the final result, then I can say that my sacrifice produces more in rewards than my personal costs. But if my sacrifice makes no difference to the final result, why should I make it, especially if I receive the benefits of the sacrifice of others even if I make no personal sacrifice? The truth is that an individual sacrifice for the common good never produces a personal reward equal to the cost of the sacrifice. Let's look at some examples to demonstrate what we are talking about. Almost everyone will agree that voting is an important civil duty. Moreover, it's a duty that requires little personal sacrifice in our society. For most of us, it takes no more than a few minutes of time. Polling places are easy to find, almost always near the place where we live, registration is simple, the process is painless and most of us have pretty definite opinions about whom we want to elect. So how come only about half the eligible voters actually get to the polls? Let's say that on election day you find yourself 150 miles away from home on a two day meeting. (The meeting was scheduled after the final date for requesting an absentee ballot.) Your have a choice: you could do your duty, drive home, vote and drive back. Or, you could just forget the whole thing. Most likely you will chose the option of forgetting about it-- this time. Your reasoning is sound. The cost for you to vote is substantial while the return is, for all practical purposes, zero. Why is that so? Because your vote will not actually make a difference in the results of the election! While you may have other reasons for voting or not voting, as far as the election process itself is altered, your vote is just not significant. PAGE 11 You won't be alone in deciding not to bother to vote. As many as half the voters will not only decide voting is not worth the sacrifice of driving two hundred miles, they'll decide it's not worth the sacrifice of the risk of getting rained on, missing a favorite TV show, being late for dinner, or driving six blocks out of the way on the way home from work. Let us look at the voting situation more carefully and examine some of the counter arguments often made for why you should vote. *What if the election resulted in a tie? Would not my vote count* *then?* Sure, if that ever happened. But ties don't ever occur in large elections and if they did there would be a re-count. Your vote would still get obliterated! *But I like to vote. I really don't care whether my vote does* *any good or not - I get an internal feeling of having done my duty.* *And, if the candidate I vote for wins, I can brag about how I help him* *get elected.* This is the real reason why most people do vote. They have bought into a group of myths that make them think that their single vote really does count. Because they believe those myths, voting makes them feel good. If voting gives you a good feeling, by all means do it, if it doesn't cost you a lot of time or money. But what if you don't like any of the candidates, you know they are all crooks and that not one of them will do what he or she is promising they will do? Do you really feel good when you are forced to choose between Slick Willy, Read My Lips, or a rich Texas shrimp? *What about the possibility that my employer may reward me for* *voting and/or there are other rewards for being a registered voter?* If the reward exceeds the cost of voting, then vote. That is rational. But how often does that actually happen? The question is not why do so few people vote, but why does anyone bothers to vote at all. Voting may be a fun and pleasurable experience but it doesn't make rational sense as a way of getting a payoff for the effort and sacrifice. *If my voting will do nothing, what can I do to help get my* *candidate elected?* Simple: get other people to vote, lots of them. If you can get 10,000 people to vote the way you want and your personal reward for doing that exceeds the cost of your doing it then, rationally, you should do it. It doesn't pay to vote, but it does pay to donate a great deal of money to a political candidate which is then used to con less intelligent and less rational people into voting for the candidate who will promptly ignore the desires of those who voted from him but do everything he can to serve the desires of those who made big contributions to his campaign. That is why it's so easy to buy elections. The thinking voter gets no real, tangible rewards for voting; the bought voter gets whatever pay-off he/she is offered. PAGE 12 But if a single vote makes no difference to the outcome, what about the other things our leaders ask us to do as a civic duty? Let's look at another example of civic duty, one in which we could argue that the personal sacrifice has a much greater impact on the public good than the simple act of voting. Suppose you live in a California city that happens to be running out of water. The mayor declares - among other things - that the residents are to take baths only two days a week. Although this is not your day to bathe, you have just finished making a plumbing repair in the basement and you are feeling really grungy. The desire to take a bath weighs heavy on your mind. You consider the options. They can best be stated by the following "payoff matrix". | Direct |Member of Community | | Impact | Impact ---------------------------------------------------------- Take Bath | Great | - negligible | ---------------------------------------------------------- Don't Take Bath | Awful | + negligible | ---------------------------------------------------------- (The '-' means slightly negative; the '+' means slightly positive) When I take any action that uses community resources, it impacts me in two ways. I am impacted directly by my action and I am impacted as a member of the community. With regard to the bath water example, the pay off matrix would provide enough evidence to a rational person to conclude that the net pay off is heavily in favor of taking a bath. The loss that he/she would get from cheating as a member of the community is insignificantly small. Both of these scenarios present examples of a situation sometime referred to as "The Voter's Paradox". Basically that paradox states that the return to an individual from a group contribution that is beneficial to the group will be less than the direct cost to the individual. The paradox results from the fact that while the individual may have a positive personal gain in not voting, if everyone declines to vote, or to conserve water resources, we have a disaster on our hands. The two scenarios actually present two classes of the problem. With regard to the voting dilemma, the problem is that there is no return *at all* to balance the voter's cost of voting. The reason why this is so is because elections are a binary (to use a term from the computer world) event. Your candidate is either elected or not. We do not put 55% of candidate A in office and 45% of candidate B. It is all or nothing, which means that one less vote simply has no impact on the final result. The very improbable case of a tie vote is statistically insignificant. The second example of a water shortage is not binary in that every little bit of water in the reservoir does help, even if the actual difference one bath may make is down in the noise ( to borrow PAGE 13 another term from electronics). But one always gets a significant reward for cheating, i.e. instant cleanliness. Yet, if half the population does as I do, the impact is disastrous. *What if everyone did that?* Experience tells us that everyone won't. We can be pretty sure that a significant segment of any human population will believe the myths and do their duty. Like the sheep they are, they will vote, conserve water, and offer every sacrifice for the common good that the preacher, teacher, or politician tells them to make. But we are not writing this for the sheep who do what they are told to do. We're addressing this to those who think and act rationally in their own self interests. The rational individual is first concerned with the results of his/her actions as it impacts on his/her own happiness and well being. Such a person may decide to make a sacrifice in the common good, but will do so only if he or she is certain that the personal sacrifice will produce a common good result that is at least equal to or, hopefully, greater than the value of the personal sacrifice. What we are arguing is that such a situation almost never occurs. Most of the time, a personal sacrifice never produces an impact on the common good that would justify the personal cost. The final paradox is that if everybody did as I contemplate doing, then it would me even less sense for me not to cheat. The more people who cheat, the less rational it becomes to be one of those sacrificing personal good for the common good. The more rational, self directed, selfish people there are in a community, the less likely that appeals that everyone should work for the common good will produce results. This dilemma is sometimes called *The Tragedy of the Commons* which refers to the early New England practice of establishing a grazing commons used by everyone in the village. The commons pasture was a limited resource which all members of the village could use for grazing their milk cows and horses. The assumption was that the good citizens of the community will each limit their use of the commons to a fair share that would insure that the grass was not overgrazed. It never happened that way. In every case the commons was overgrazed into a dust patch. The reason was simple. Too many people recognized that as the grass was a limited resource, they had to get the maximum amount into their cows before some one else did. The expectation was always that if one didn't take more than his or her fair share, the next fellow would. The *Tragedy of the Commons* poses an extremely serious dilemma to those who would try to design a society based on the assumption that individuals will contribute to the group's well being rather than looking out for their own selfish interests. If we recognize that individuals are driven by selfish desires and we are looking for a rational basis for voluntarily contributing to community welfare, we are in serious trouble. Faced with the reality of the tragedy of the commons, society usually opts for one of two different methods for insuring the common good as well as the preservation of community resources. These two methods are not complimentary, but contradictory. PAGE 14 One of these is the pay-as-you go method, that is, the free market. In the free market approach, every common resource, whether managed by private owners or by a community government, is sold to the public at a price high enough to insure that the resource is not depleted. If there is a water shortage, then the price of water is jacked up until people have no choice but to limit the amount of water they use for bathing. This not only has the advantage of insuring that water consumption goes down, it also gathers capital that can be used to increase the supply of water through the creation of new sources. But the modern advocate of *socially responsible* government objects to the market place approach because it results in an *unfair* situation in which the rich wash their cars while the poor can't take a bath at all. Such advocates of the common good claim that the only way to fairly distribute a common necessity is by regulation. That means that you jail people who take baths on the wrong day and the only fair way to gather capital to finance new public projects is by taxation. You not only have to collect enough tax to pay for the water system, but you must also collect enough to hire the water cops, pay the judges, and to build the jails where you will put both water and tax cheats. But does such government action really solve the voter's paradox or the tragedy of the commons, or does it simple create a new commons, a public treasury, that then becomes the target of plunder for selfish people who will always put their own selfish interest above the common good? If we look at recent political history, it is obvious that the tragedy of the commons could also be called the tragedy of the public treasury. No matter how much we collect for the public treasury, it will never be enough to meet the demands of those who claim a right to use the money from the treasury. It is not remarkable that each individual describes the public good as those things that are in his own best interest. The elderly want more social security and medical benefits, the trucker better roads, the farmer crop subsidies, the investor bank guarantees, and the politician every single benefit that will result in more votes for him at election time. The inevitable result is that the government never spends the revenue in the public good, but only for the benefit of those clever enough to manipulate the system to their own benefit. We can see the result in America today. The entire political process has degenerated into a mad scramble over what should be financed with public funds as our politicians spend us into national bankruptcy. This paradox affects our lives in a variety of ways every day. A few more examples are provided for your amusement and to further illustrate the general nature of the problem: -- The congressman votes for more spending and higher taxes because his direct reward is greater than the small loss to himself of having to pay higher taxes. Further, the electorate of each district continues to encourage the congressman to spend for the benefit of their area, while complaining about the ever increasing national debt! PAGE 15 -- Even though free trade would benefit all nations and most consumers, I, as an auto worker or textile mill owner, will personally benefit more if I can elect politicians who will set high tariffs and limit competitive imports. -- The ecology of the earth will not be measurably affected by my actions. The destruction of the mahogany forests does not really depend on whether I buy this mahogany table or not. In any case, not much is likely to happen in my lifetime. -- If I somehow know that a chemical company stock is about to gain $5, and I decide not to buy because the company makes chemicals that end up in toxic dumps, two things happen: I lose a chance to make $5 for every share I could afford to purchase and the chemical company will feel absolutely no additional pressure to abandon the production of these chemicals. In fact there will be no impact on the company, nor their policies, whatever I decide to do. -- Currently the government is encouraging all of us to buy all we can in order to stimulate the economy. It makes much more sense for me to cut my spending and pay off my credit bills. If everyone does that, the recession becomes a depression. -- Young people who want to use their credit cards demand that the government lower interest rates even though that cuts the income of the elderly who are living on the interest off their savings. -- Should I contribute to Public Television? Not only will my $25 contribution not impact whether the station stays on the air or not, but my use of their service costs them nothing more than what they already spend. Rationally, I use but don't pay. --Consider the situation of a bank near possible failure. Suppose that you know that the bank's situation is precarious and that if several people suddenly withdraw their deposits, it will have to close. You have $5000 in deposit. What should you do? The bank will not close because of your individual action so your withdrawal will not hurt other people. But if there is a "run" on the bank, you lose $5000. If the above arguments are correct, we can only conclude that a rational and selfish individual will not voluntarily contribute to community welfare even though he/she would share in that welfare. We could even suggest that the only people who do voluntarily sacrifice personal rewards for the public good are nothing but patsies. The person who refuses to contribute to the common good gets a double reward. He or she gets the immediate reward of the money or effort saved, and the long term reward of collecting whatever public good the patsies created. *But doesn't altruism have it's own rewards?* There are very convincing arguments that living human beings are rarely altruistic. It is easier to believe that positive civic actions by individuals result from stupidity, intimidation, bribes, or the success of propaganda campaigns rather than true altruism! PAGE 16 But can't we educate our children through the school system about the importance of working toward the common good? We have been trying to do that ever since the beginning of this century. Education hasn't converted children into altruistic adults in this country and it certainly didn't work in the Soviet Union where the school system tried desperately to create the new socialist man who would always work for the common good. Indeed, it seems that just the opposite happens, the more educated a person is, the more he/she is likely to take rational actions and less likely to be easily convinced to sacrifice his own good for the common good. What is the solution to this dilemma? Do those of us wise enough to recognize the mythologies and the bull shit that priest and politicians hand out decide that we have no choice but to go along with the program of inducing guilt, intimidating the ignorant, propagandizing the uneducated, and bribing the electorate as it has been practiced by the churches, governments, and teachers for thousands of years? Or, do we shout out the truth? Do we admit to ourselves, and tell anyone who wants to listen that sacrificing for the common good makes no rational sense, that the only way to achieve the common good is to make every thing a pay-as-you-go proposition with the free market place determining what the price of every commodity and benefit will be? Moreover, do we make a rational decision to take every legal advantage of the common good and the common treasure for as long as others are willing to believe in the myths that teach it is better to serve the common good rather than look out for one's own selfish interests? Indeed, do we dare examine the very concept that there even is such a thing as the common good? Or is that idea as mythical as the morality that claims humans must put aside their own interest in order to serve the interest of the community? In reality, society is always a chaotic mixture of competing needs in which the needs and wants of no two individuals ever match. No matter how much you may want tax supported public schools, I'll remain convinced that public schools are a failed social experiment that should be junked. Some argue that the war on drugs does more damage to society than drug addiction could ever do. Do agricultural subsidies really serve the common good of the consumer who must pay higher prices at the food counter? There is not a single major political issue in modern America in which there is anything approaching a consensus agreement about what action must be taken in the common good. *Would a society in which no one gave a damn about the common* *good, be such a bad place to live?* Such a society would not put the butcher, the baker, or the farmer out of business. We all must count on other people, but the best way to make sure that someone does what we want them to do is to return the favor by performing for them what they perceive to be an equal favor. That's what the free market is all about. If you really think about it, we already live in a society in which every individual is really looking out for their own self PAGE 17 interest. It's just that we've allowed too many people to glibly lie that they were supporting the common good when all they are really interested in is their own selfish rewards. They lie about their love for the common good because they want to take advantage of our gullibility to get what they want out of the system. That includes every person who now holds political office and every person who is trying to get elected. Throwing the current bunch out and replacing them is not going to solve the problem. But what about the voter's paradox? How do we solve that problem? Why bother? If we give up the idea that people should sacrifice for the common good, we take away most of the justification for the politician. In a free society, voting shouldn't count for much. If people take full responsibility for their own lives, that leaves nothing for politicians to do. It's only when we allow the politician to make us slaves of the common good that we have to worry about whom we elect. *-------------------------------------------------------------* | THE CHAOS ADVOCATE is copyrighted by Mack Tanner. You | | may review and read sections of this electronic publication | | to determine whether or not you would like to read the | | entire work. If you decide to read the entire magazine, or | | if you keep a copy of the magazine for your own personal use| | or review for more than two days must pay a SHARELIT fee by | | mailing $2.00 to | | | | Mack Tanner | | 1234 Nearing Rd. | | Moscow, ID 83843 | | | | If you want a receipt, include a self-addressed and | | stamped envelope. | *-------------------------------------------------------------* PAGE 18 *-----------------------------------* | BAD CITIZENS AND GOOD FREEDOM | | | | by | | Jefferson Mack | *-----------------------------------* "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." --Lord Acton If every class is unfit to govern, then who will lead us? The answer is obvious. No one! Free, independent, competent people don't need leaders. A truly free society is disorganized. Nobody is in charge. Nobody takes orders. Everyone does exactly what he or she wants to do, taking orders from nobody else. If you want something from someone else, you make a voluntary trade or exchange in which both of you are happy with the deal. The people who preach the need to organize don't want you to be free. What they want is for you to pay their bills and do their dirty work so they can be free to do what they want to do. The last thing someone who wants to boss others wants around are independent, competent people who want to left alone to live their own lives. Such people never make good citizens, not the way a politician talks about good citizens. A political leader will tell you a good citizen obeys the law-- every law. A good citizen works hard--at whatever job the government tells him he is suppose to work at. A good citizen pays his taxes-- even if he doesn't have enough left over to feed his kids. A good citizen volunteers his or her time to work on civic projects the leader designs. A good citizen goes off to fight and die in wars with people he doesn't know so that the leader can win a place in the history books. The good citizen never complains--no matter how stupid or crude a government official treats him nor how much a leader asks him to sacrifice. Give a politician enough good citizens and he will rule forever, fat and happy, while the good citizens sweat and suffer and die to make sure the political leader keeps the good life. Politicians and bureaucrats spend a great deal of time and effort trying to convince the people they rule that a moral person must be a good citizen. Back in the dark ages they called it the "Divine Right of Kings". Now days it's called patriotic duty, or civic responsibility, but it all adds up to the argument that every decent, honorable person must put the interests of the state and the government above their own personal interests. BAD CITIZENS HAVE MORE FUN BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE FREE. A free society is supposed to have free citizens, not good citizens. The day you wake up and realize you don't have all the freedom you want, the first thing you want to do is bad citizen. A bad citizen may love the place where he lives. He may love his country and respect his neighbors. But a bad citizen won't love or respect the people who run the government. A bad citizen will always put his own interest and the interest of his family and friends above PAGE 19 the interest of some common good as described by the people who hold political power. We are not talking here about violent criminals or rebels. Political leaders love those kinds of people. They love pulling their guns, arresting people and putting down riots. If you don't think the politicians loved the recent events in Los Angeles, you haven't been watching the TV news. Every single politician in the country has jumped on the band wagon by promising us they'll solve the problem if we'll just give them some more of our money and a little more of our freedom. Political leaders love big trials with lots of newspaper space. It gives them a chance to show how powerful they can really be. They are expecting open confrontation and they will be prepared to deal with it. They have detention camps, secret police, riot control equipment, and the army ready to go after all those who dare openly confront the government. But any political leader who's got a country full of peaceful bad citizens has got a serious problem. Bad citizens work hard to support themselves, they treat their neighbors with respect, they won't cheat others for their own gain, and they don't do violent acts that hurt innocent people. What bad citizens won't do is help the government make his or her life miserable. They continually try to maximize the freedom they have, even if they have to break or ignore a few laws to do it. Too many bad citizens make government almost impossible. That's one big reason why the Soviet Union didn't work. Too many Soviet citizens realized they were never going to get a fair share out of socialism and they stopped being good citizens. They looked out for themselves rather than the good of the State. GOOD CITIZENS MAKE TYRANTS POSSIBLE. Nazi Germany wasn't filled with people who wanted to throw Jews into bonfires, make slaves of eastern Europeans, or rule the world from Berlin. Nazi Germany was filled with good citizens and Hitler did everything he could to make all those good citizens think they were better off with him in charge, even if they did have to give up a few freedoms. Hitler was more frightened that all those good citizens might stop being good citizens than he was of the allied armies. North Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq are filled with good citizens, all of them hoping that by being good citizens, they will help things get better. Only things keep getting worse. The good citizen works harder but gets less to eat, has less fun, enjoys life less, and has less hope for a better future. BAD CITIZENS HAVE KEPT THE UNITED STATES FREE. Back in 1917 a majority of the voters in the United States decided they knew what was best for everyone and passed the Eighteenth Amendment, taking away the freedom of a man to relax with a beer after an honest day's work. Hundred of thousands in this great country suddenly turned into bad citizens. They didn't organize into a let's- bring-back-the- booze political party or start blowing up police stations. All they did was to keep on drinking. Some bad citizens were more than willing to smuggle, distill, or brew the booze and sell it for a profit. In 1933, the social manipulators and the do-gooders finally gave up, agreed to throw out the great experiment and a tens of thousands of people went back to being good citizens. These kind of things keep happening all over this country. Have PAGE 20 you tried driving a fixed fifty-five along our highways? A whole industry has gotten rich selling us radar detectors to give us a chance against the modern technology of the Highway Patrol. Eventually, the wizards in Washington had no choice but to up the speed limit to 65, at least in a few places. The Drug Enforcement Administration, and every State and local police department spend billions each year to try and stamp out the use of recreational drugs. Yet every year, the price of the drugs go down, while availability go up. Anybody who wants to smoke pot, can, any place in the United States. Other freedoms are under constant attack. Take the issue of gun control. The people who tout this totalitarian principle keep telling us that the majority of Americans want some kind of gun control. So what? No majority in a free country has the right to take away the freedoms of any minority. That's what freedom is all about, and owning a gun is a damn good way to help make sure nobody starts interfering with your personal freedom. As long as the people who understand and believe that principle insist on keeping their guns, we are going to be able to keep them. In California the state government outlawed a whole collection of different kinds of semi-automatic weapons and demanded that every citizen register those weapons and turn them in. Non-compliance has been almost total. Americans used to be pretty good tax payers, way back in the forties and fifties. But one day we woke up and realized that the fat cat friends of Congress had all been given special privileges and were paying less than their fair share. So a whole lot of good taxpayers have turned into bad citizens. We are now a nation of tax evaders. We figure every angle, both legal and illegal to bring down our own taxes. Every increase in the tax structure is matched or exceeded by losses as more ordinary middle class citizens figure out ways to cheat on their taxes or join the underground economy. We've now got the politicians against the ropes. They are bankrupting the treasury, but they can't raise taxes any farther because the know all us bad citizens aren't going to take it any more. If we keep protesting and evading new tax increases, eventually the politicians will have no choice but to start cutting the waste if they want to leave enough money in the treasury to keep paying them their fat salaries. Each of the above examples shows just how much we are a nation of bad citizens. That's why we have as much freedom as we do. That's why in recent years, this country has been moving in the direction of more freedom, not less. The politicians are finally beginning to understand that you can't take an American's freedom away and make it stick. There are two many bad citizens in this country. HOW TO SURVIVE AS A BAD CITIZEN Once you realize that you are not living in a free country and that there is no go reason why you should be a good citizen, there are a few rules you need to learn so you can get the most benefit out of being a bad citizen without suffering more loss of personal freedom or even going to jail. A smart bad citizen won't let himself get caught being bad. He won't brag to his friends and neighbors about what a bad citizen he is. He won't tell the local newspaper how proud he is of being a bad citizen. He will not deliberately confront the government, and he will avoid doing anything in public that will warn any government official he is not a good citizen. PAGE 21 The bad citizen tries to be the invisible man or woman, the person the government official would never expect is denying the government his help and cooperation. That means if you want to be a bad citizen, you don't want to stand on any street corners making speeches demanding revolution and you don't want to run with a mob throwing rocks at police vehicles. You just want to live your own life, doing everything in private you want to do, exactly the way you want to do it. You want to look like a good citizen. You will even want to do some things that all good citizens do, like vote. Only once you are in the voting booth, you vote against every bond issue, every politician who's in office, and every new initiative that will increase government power or raise your taxes. If the only choice is between two common thieves then a bad citizen writes in someone else's name, or even his own. You insist on getting every possible government benefit you are eligible for and demand every government service the law says you are entitled to receive. If you are eligible, you'll collect social security, unemployment benefits, use food stamps, dip into Medicare, claim farm subsidies, and try to get the government to pay you for drawing obscene art or writing nasty stories. You may even decide to take a government job, if you can make more money doing that than working for some private firm. But a bad citizen who's got a government job takes all his sick leave, goofs off every chance he gets, and does everything he can to minimize the damage the government can do to other bad citizens. But don't cooperate with the bastards when it's not to your advantage to do so. Except when it's in your direct, economic advantage, you ignore the government. Never voluntarily do anything that will help the government in any way. If bad citizens know someone who is cheating on their taxes, violating a business license law, working in a job paying less than the minimum wage, or selling a little dope, they don't call the authorities. A bad citizen files his income tax return but cheats in ways that take advantage of IRS incompetence. Bad citizens work off the books and don't declare the income. They'll drive one hundred and fifty miles to buy a truck load of groceries in another state that charges less sales tax. A bad citizen loses his census form, or fills it in wrong. Bad citizens don't provide the government any kind of information unless they get an immediate benefit or there is a government official standing there insisting that they do it. Bad citizens don't sacrifice their own pleasures or happiness just because the government tells them such sacrifices are in the common good. They don't volunteer their services for anything the government is trying to do, no matter how worthwhile the project appears to be. If the politicians tell them there is an energy crisis, they don't turn the heat down and the lights off if they can afford the electricity. Bad citizens enjoy the freedom of driving their own personal cars instead of riding tax-subsidized mass transit systems or subjecting their personal schedules to the demands of car pooling. Bad citizens don't waste time sorting garbage unless there is a direct economic benefit for doing so. They don't man a voting booth, support the local sheriff, waste time in town meetings, donate to political parties, report poachers, nor contribute to the Community Chest and United Fund. They recognize that a government that steals freedom shouldn't get any voluntary help. PAGE 22 Of course, there is a chance that someone will show up at your door pointing a gun to make you volunteer for some civic duty like jury duty. When that happens, don't argue, go. But a bad citizen won't do anything more than what is absolutely necessary. On something like jury duty, it may even be possible to help screw up the system even while pretending to act like a good citizen. It the person on trial is accused of tax evasion, drug offenses, bootlegging, pornography, non-violent sex offenses, a failure to obtain a business license, or any other crime that shouldn't be a crime in a free society, a bad citizen can always find some justification for voting not guilty, even if every other member of the jury is convinced he's guilty. Such a bad citizen is exercising the right of jury nulification, that is, the right to set a person free because the juror thinks the law is not constitutional. But the bad citizen won't admit that to the judge, the jury, nor the press. Instead, he or she will insist that he or she was not convinced by the prosecutor's evidence. When the government confronts a bad citizen, the bad citizen will insist that the government official respect every right that the Constitution and the law gives every citizen. The bad citizen makes sure he knows what rights the law gives him, and then he demands they be respected. The bad citizen will be polite, he will fight the urge to get angry, he will never, ever, initiate violence against a government official, but he will insist on his rights. Unless he is presented with a warrant, he won't let a government official into his house, he won't give permission to any officer of the law to search any of his belongings, and he won't answer any questions, even apparently innocent questions without first checking with a lawyer. Even in the United States with all the protections against self- incrimination, most of the people in jails are there because they talked too much. When questioned by a government official, the smart person in such a situation becomes the dumbest citizen in the county. He hasn't been reading the newspapers, doesn't listen to the radio, doesn't know a thing about what is going on, but he loves the government, and loves doing his civic duty, and he knows his rights. If bad citizens are asked a direct question, they won't lie, but they give as little information as possible. They never gives any information that they are not required by law to give. But the do it all courteously, never suggesting by tone or attitude that they are being anything but totally cooperative. All you have to do is say, "I don't want to answer that question." If the government official insists you answer the question, then you say, "I want to speak to my lawyer before I answer that question." But most of the time, the bad citizen will never be bothered by some government thug because he will learn how to maximize his own happiness without having to have any dealings with the politician or the bureaucrat. PAGE 23 EDITOR'S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING WILL NO DOUBT ANGER MANY OF OUR WOMEN READERS AS WELL AS SOME MEN. WHEN YOU GET SO ANGRY YOU REFUSE TO READ ANY FURTHER, PLEASE JUMP TO THE LAST PAGE AND READ OUR OFFER. *------------------------* | GETTING ALL YOU WANT | | | | By | | Roger Victor | *------------------------* All you want of what? Come on! You know what I'm talking about, the thing that most of us spend every waking hour thinking about when we aren't getting all we want. I'm talking about the one thing that women have a one hundred percent monopoly on. And don't they know how to use it to get what they want? As the old country song says, they learn it in the cradle. They tease us, threaten us, deny us, bribe us, and get us to act like cretins and idiots before they hand it out in small batches. Most of us men will do almost anything to get it. We'll lie, steal, pay, and even promise to love the little darlings. Now unless you're rich, or so handsome that Greek Gods hide when you walk by, there is only one way you will ever come close to getting all you want. You have to have a wife. That's the deal men made for thousands of years. We brought home the meat, fought off the wolves, plowed the fields, and held the ladies when they were scared, all so that when the cooking fire burned down, we'd get access to the treasure cave. The girls didn't just furnish loving either. They cooked our food, sewed our clothes, chewed leather to make our moccasins, and generally made themselves handy all day long. I've never known a bachelor who was getting all he wanted. I certainly never did during those times in my life when I didn't have a wife. The feminine libbers like to call it prostitution these days, but call it what you like, most husbands paid well. Perhaps, they paid too damn well. Men didn't like to come home to find the creature with whom they wanted to roll with the ground too exhausted to move because she had spent the day scraping deer hides, stirring the mastodon stew, or pounding the clothes on a rock to get them clean. The answer was a credit card, a gas stove, a stainless steel pressure cooker, and automatic washers. All the sweetheart really had to do was to push the buttons on the dishwasher, run a vacuum cleaner across the floor, throw the clothes in the Maytag, pop dinner in the microwave, and get ready to make hubby's day as soon as he came home. Leave it to Eve. She kicked herself out of paradise. She got the idea that loverboy was having nothing but a good time all those hours he was out making a living so she decided she wanted a career too. Instead of looking on men as great guys who did so much for a woman just so he could get a bit of loving, they suddenly decided we were oppressors, the people keeping them from discovering their true selves. Look what we have now, a real war between the sexes. If you are PAGE 24 an educated American male between the ages of twenty-five and sixty, if you went to college, and if you work with brains instead of brawn, there is an eighty-three per cent chance you're not getting all you want, even if you have a wife. You're spending hours in singles bars pretending you're the "new" male; you're changing diapers and washing the dishes after you've cooked the meal; you're learning how to cry; and you're watching TV reruns alone because your wife's out of town on a business trip. You may not even be reading this in your own home because the current woman in your life won't let you keep "sexist trash and pornography" in the place. Whether you're married or single, the *new* woman has got you jumping through hoops in so many different directions that some of you are opting out, learning to live without any of it at all. Isn't it about time you stopped worrying about what women want, and started to think about what you want? Most men have pretty damn simple wants, a stomach full of tasty food, a place to put our feet up in the evening, and all the loving we can handle. So, how do you do it, how do you get all you want? The answer is so damn simple, it's surprising more of you haven't figured it out. YOU GET A HOUSEWIFE! The word is housewife, like helpmate, a woman who accepts you as the supplier of the good life and thanks you for being that by giving you all you want--a woman who cooks your food, washes your clothes, takes care of the kids, and crawls in beside you every night. I'll bet you thought that wonderful creature didn't exist any more. Your wrong, they are not extinct. But they don't hang around the places the average modern American male lives. Whether you're a twenty-two year old just drawing your first pay check, a thirty-five year old that's about to renounce sex forever rather than risk one more put down, or a forty-five year old with a divorce settlement that makes the sex his wife handed out for fifteen years the most expensive thing he ever bought, there is a woman out there who can make you a good housewife, if you know where to look. You are not going to find that woman in the senior class at the local university. You won't find her in the corps of junior executives in the corporation you work for, nor at the country club your folks belong to. She won't be waiting for you in a bar where the drinks start at $5.50 a shot. If you're young and you grew up in a middle, or upper income family in the United States, there is a good chance you have never met the kind of woman that makes a good housewife. If you want a housewife, you'll have to find a woman who is living such a miserable life that she'll grab the chance of cooking your meals, cleaning the house, spending your money, and playing cotton tail in bed at night just to get out of the mess she hates. For thousands of years, women gladly jumped at becoming a housewife because that was a hell of a lot better life than anything else they might do. Now days, the modern, college educated, American women sees herself as having a lot of other options that she thinks are better. So where do you find a woman who doesn't have those options. Here's a few suggestions where you can start looking. PAGE 25 THE AMERICAN POOR There are thousands of women working in jobs that pay minimum wage with no prospects for moving up the salary scale. They are not working because they like their career, they're working because they will go hungry if they don't. Most of them have been working since they were teenagers in drudge jobs that leave them dragging their ass back home to small apartments and tasteless meals. They are the women that never saw the inside of a disco, who read the funny papers and romance novels, not THE SATURDAY REVIEW nor the Sunday edition of the NEW YORK TIMES. That's right, one way to find the perfect housewife is to slide a few steps down the social ladder. Look for a woman who never went to college, and maybe didn't even get a chance to finish high school. Go hunting for a poor thing who will be only too happy to get pulled up a ladder she never thought she could climb. Make sure she understands what the bargain is when you find her. You want a housewife that will stay a housewife, that will stay home with the kids figuring out ways to make tasty but economical meals, patching the hole in your sock instead of throwing the pair in the wastebasket. I'll admit that with the joys of the American education system, the poor young ladies are much rarer than they used to be. But there are still some of them out there. All you have to do is look. Belief me, they will be happy you found them. But where do you look for them? You can't hunt deer in Central Park and you can't catch fish in the bathtub. If you want to find a woman that will happily sign up as a housewife, you'll have to go to the kinds of places they gather. One place to look is the small cities and rural towns of America. For every run-a-way from Minnesota that ends up selling it on Times Square, there are a hundred more back home still keeping it as a private stock and dreaming about a prince charming who doesn't have black grime under his finger nails and won't insist that she keep working at her job as a waitress or a construction crew flag girl so he can afford a six pack every evening. Save the money you would have spent on a Club Med vacation, and drive up for a weekend to one of the rural towns of the state you live in, not one of the places the tourist all go, but someplace where everybody, especially the women, know that a male stranger is in town. Take a summer vacation in the mid-west or one of the mountain States. Forget about the girls sitting at the bar, or eating in the fancy restaurant. Talk to the waitress, the girl checking out groceries, the counter girl at the motel, or the meter maid putting a parking ticket on your car. You may not even have to go that far from your own home. Most big cities have working class neighborhoods where parents often don't have the money to send their children to college. Instead of sitting at home watching the Celtics play basketball, take in a high school game in the part of town where the fathers all carry lunch boxes off to work every day. The secret is making it clear from the very beginning exactly what you are interested in--a housewife. When you meet a girl a couple of social classes down the way, make sure you work into the conversation early on how much you like the old fashion way, how badly you want a wife that will be a housewife. Making them understand that has a double advantage. First, you weed out those girls who have read so much modern junk they think a jump up the social ladder should mean an exciting career, not a life PAGE 26 of luxury tending house and waiting for a man to come home for some tender loving. The second reason is that you create a situation of trust. Too many lower class women have been burned by the man with money in his pocket who was looking for variety, not a lifetime diet. You want to to convince them you're for real. THE FOREIGN BRIDE If you've made it in this country you wear Italian shoes and suits from a London tailor. You use a Japanese camera and watch a television set made in Korea. You drink German beer and French wine and who with any money drives an American car? So why not look for a wife in one of those countries that producing everything else that makes life so nice to live. You've seen the adds in the back of magazines. "Asian women want to meet American men." It's not just the Asian women who are jumping at the chance of becoming American housewives. There are women waiting for someone like you in Mexico, Spain, any of the recently communist countries, all of South America, and even Australia and New Zealand too. Don't just answer a magazine ad. Learn all you can about the different foreign cultures. Pick the one that appeals to you most and spend some vacation time visiting there. If possible, learn the language of the country you focus your attention on. I've spent years living overseas and I know dozens of American men who have married foreign women, some as a first wife, and many as a second try. It doesn't work every time, but most of the men I know with foreign wives are a lot happier than the boys back on Madison Avenue who are still trying to figure out what the American model they're living with really wants. THE NOT SO PRETTY Every one likes a pretty girl on his arm and all cats aren't the same in the dark, not if one weighs one hundred pounds and the second one breaks the scale at three fifty. Still, homely women can make damn fine lovers, and grateful ones too. There are thousands of women who have given up the hope of ever being held, cuddled, and loved because their parents never paid to get their teeth straightened, their features don't quite fit together, their breast are too small, their hips are too thick, or their hair too thin. When you meet one, make her day and give her a smile. You might find there is a nice person there, one that would be only too happy to play the old fashion game of helpmate, if some man would only give her a chance. You'll be surprised how pretty they can be in the dark. So what if your friends smirk whenever you show up in public. When they're home begging the stunning beauty they married for another tiny bit of the loving she hands out once every two weeks, you'll be sacked out and sound asleep, the dark hiding the silly smile on your face the same way it hides your wife's crossed eyes or dumbo ears. If you absolutely have to have a stunning blond hanging on your arm whenever you show up in public, hire one for the occasion. Believe me, it will be cheaper in the long run. THE RELIGIOUS LADY Don't forget about the woman who thinks Phyllis Shafley is right, the girl who believes that God intended for the man to rule and the woman to obey. However, move carefully here, unless you share those same religious beliefs. If you don't, expect her to spend half PAGE 27 her life trying to save your soul. Worse yet, sometime the religious ones have been so sold on sex being evil, they never get over it being a no-no. They'll let you, because the priest tells them they have to, but they won't enjoy it, and neither will you. THE DIVORCED AND THE WIDOWED The older you get, the more of these there are going to be in an age group that fits your needs. There will be so many of them by the time you reach sixty, you may not even need to take a housewife to make sure you get all you want. Way back when I was a kid I knew a fellow named Chester who was sixty-five. He had a stable of women hauling his ashes that would have done a Mormon patriarch proud. His only problem was scheduling which one was putting out on what night. Still, it's not just sex we're talking about, it's the other goodies that go with living with a woman. If you're still healthy, able to pay the bills that come from supporting a woman, and look like you have a few more years, the widows and the divorcees, especially the ones with children, will be lining up to listen to your offers. ONCE YOU'VE GOT ONE PICKED OUT The real problem isn't finding a helpmate, it's the hard bargaining you have to engage in to make sure you get what you want. No matter where you find the woman, the key point is making it clear before she moves in exactly what the deal is. You'll be the one who earns the salary, she'll take care of the housework, and you decide when it's time to not make love. If you want to really be smart, you'll put it in writing, along with some very clear understandings about how you divide up the property and the kids if you decide she's no longer living up to her share of the bargain. The modern American woman working beside you at the office will hate you for it. She'll sneer at you, call you a pig, and try to talk your wife out of the happiness you both have. She will also spend a lot of time wondering why she can't have what that poor, foreign, uneducated, homely twit waiting for you at home has--a man who acts like he wants to act, not like NOW thinks he should act. I ought to make it clear here that I like the modern, educated, career oriented American woman. I've always liked bright, intelligent ladies. I agree they must be paid exactly what a man is paid if they are doing the same kind of work, and I have absolutely no problems taking orders from one if she happens to be the boss. At different times, I've worked for three different women and I got along great with all of them and promotions from two of them. I agree that they have every right to work free of sexual harrassment with the full respect of their co-workers. Some modern, educated American women even make good housewives. There are those who have figured out that being a wife and a mother can be just as rewarding and certainly as important to society as any job they could ever find. If you find one of those, you may have found the best of everything. EDITOR'S OFFER: EVERY HUMAN BEING IS ENTITLED TO FIND HIS OR HER OWN HAPPINESS, INCLUDING HAPPINESS IN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE, THROUGH THE BARGAINING PROCESS. WE WOULD LIKE TO PRINT A COUNTER-PIECE TO THE ABOVE ARTICLE, WRITTEN BY A WOMAN AND SUGGESTING HOW THE MODERN AMERICAN WOMAN CAN BEST FIND THE KIND OF MAN SHE WOULD LIKE TO SHARE HER LIFE WITH AND WHAT KIND OF BARGAIN SHE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE WITH SUCH A PERSON. WE PROMISE WE WILL PUBLISH IN A FUTURE ISSUE OF *THE CHAOS ADVOCATE* THE BEST SUCH PIECE SUBMITTED TO US. PAGE 28 *----------------------------* | WANTED: A FEW GOOD WRITERS | *----------------------------* We are looking for a few good creative writers, philosophers, and political theorists who are committed to the idea of personal freedom in all things. If you have something to say on this subject, let us include it in this electronic magazine. We are especially interested in personal experiences and practical advice that explain how an individual can maximize his or her own personal freedom in confronting and surviving the suppressive institutions of culture, state, church, school, and corporate business. We will also consider good fiction that deals with the same set of problems. For legal reasons we will not publish anything that advocates specific criminal activity nor anything that libels or slanders a living human being or legal person. Other than that, we will give serious consideration to any manuscript that advocates chaos and freedom. We can not offer authors any recompense other than the chance to get published in an electronic medium. We welcome articles that have been previously printed in other medium, provided the person making the submission has the legal right to put the manuscript into publication. Anyone submitting an article for publication in THE CHAOS ADVOCATE will retain all rights to the article or story except for the electronic publication of the article in a single issue of this electronic magazine. Writers wishing to submit articles and essays for publication can upload them to any one of the following E-mail addresses. Compuserve: 72037,2673 Delphi: MACKTANNER The Rational Life Bulletin Board 615-433-7869 Fidonet node number 1:116/38 Internet: Mack.Tanner@f38.n116.z1.fidonet.org We welcome queries and comments.