The Robot Apocalypse Is Already Here

In case you missed it, the much-feared Robot Apocalypse is not something far off in the future--it is actually already here, hiding in plain sight.  And as much damage it has wrought already in terms of technological unemployment and inequality, it is really only getting started.   Future net job losses are already baked into the cake.

And men, who are becoming increasingly redundant, will be the biggest losers of all.  The next recession will surely finish us us fellas off in terms of the power we once had.  While that is good for Women in that it will make it that much easier to take over sooner--something that will make us all better off in the long run, in fact--it can also have some very bad short and medium-term consequences for everyone if the transition is not properly managed.  We rise together and ultimately fall together as well.  Look no further than the Rust Belt and Coal Country to see a taste of the not-too-distant future for the rest of the country that case.

In the shorter term, we could implement WPA-style jobs programs to take the edge off a bit.  But eventually the Robot Apocalypse will upend those jobs as well, so a Job Guarantee (JG) program would really not be much of a guarantee in the long term, and even now would already have logistical problems and much of it would amount to make-work boondoggles as opposed to truly useful work.

Fortunately, there is a simple policy measure that can alleviate the worst aspects of both automation as well as the transition to Matriarchy.  It's called Universal Basic Income (UBI).  Every man, woman, and child would get free money from the federal government, with no strings attached.  No means test, no discrimination, and no perverse incentives.  One way to fund this would be to "tax the robots", of course, among other kinds of taxes, but given that our federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, they could literally just print the money and disburse it, just like the FERAL Reserve does to the big banks, without costing the taxpayers one penny.  (State and local governments, however, are not Monetarily Sovereign, and thus would have to raise taxes quite high to implement their own versions, so it it is best left to the federal government to do.)

Combine this with the rest of Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's Ten Steps to Prosperity, most notably including single-payer Medicare For All and free college, and abolishing unnecessary federal taxes on the bottom 99% of Americans, and that would be even better still.

Furthermore, men can become very, very dangerous creatures when they are desperate for money--almost as dangerous as when men have too much power relative to Women, and in some cases even worse.  Just look at the 1996 film Fargo to see it in action.  Or look at some pilot projects in some poorer countries where only Women are given microloans or other payments while the men get nothing.  Giving money to Women is of course a much better bang for the buck than giving it to men, but denying it to men at the same time breeds jealousy, resentment, and sometimes even violence against Women.  So even if you absolutely loathe men with a passion, pragmatism dictates than men and women should get equal amounts of UBI to defuse this ticking time bomb, especially since money is literally no object for the federal government.

Without a hard social floor of some sort, what we have is an abyss, a bottomless pit from which no one is safe.  It is long past time to put such a floor over this abyss, which will only widen and deepen in the future.

It's what the late, great Buckminster Fuller most likely have wanted.   Ditto for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so many other great minds of the past and present.  It's a win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.  So what are we waiting for?

2018 Is the Year of the Woman

Well, it's official.  Women, mostly progressives, won a record number of political offices nationwide at all levels of government in this year's midterm elections.  Thus 2018 is the Year of the Woman, more than ever before.

Thus, this is the beginning of the end of not only the nefarious Trump regime, but also the patriarchy in general.  It is only a matter of time.  It seems that my initial prediction that Women will finally take over in 2030 in the USA and UK, and 2050 worldwide, may not be so farfetched after all.  Perhaps America's dark night of the soul (in which one can now finally see the very first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel) really did have a purpose all along--to effectively accelerate the transition to Matriarchy, Goddess willing.

VIVE LA FEMME!  VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!

Does Paid Family Leave Really Hurt Women?

Last year, an op-ed at CNN by Vanessa Brown Calder of the pro-corporate LOLbertarian Cato Institute claimed that paid family leave policies actually backfire on Women by making companies less likely to hire them as well as entrenching traditional gender roles.   She seems to see it as s zero-sum game.  And to this day, the article is still being linked to on other articles discussing this important topic.

First of all, except for a very few states, the USA is the only modern or even semi-modern country that does not offer any paid leave for Mothers, let alone fathers or anyone else for that matter.  And even then, the few states that do are rather stingy  compared to most other industrialized nations.  The USA makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus by comparison in that regard. (So much for "Mothers and apple pie".)

Secondly, is there really any truth to the op-ed author's specious claim?  According to the weight of research evidence over the past decade or two, not really.  Except perhaps for poorly-designed programs that 1) force employers to pay for it, rather than via taxes (or money creation), 2) are limited only to mothers or are otherwise not gender neutral, and/or 3) have an unusually long duration--though that last one remains debatable, given the stunning success in the Nordic countries (whose durations of paid leave often exceed a year).  In fact, the only robust downside--if one can even call it that--to long leave durations (i.e. longer than a year) is that they tend to discourage Mothers from returning to paid work compared with durations between nine months and a year.  (A very subjective "downside" at that.)

Otherwise, the well-documented benefits to Women, children, society, and even men as well outweigh any supposed costs.  Ultimately, everyone is better off as a result. It is a win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.

Of course, once Women finally reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, this will no longer even be a debate anymore.

True, paid family leave is not an end goal, but merely a good starting point for a more equitable society overall.  Other things need to happen as well, such as Universal Basic Income, single-payer Medicare For All, shorter and more flexible workweeks for all workers, equal pay, affordable high-quality childcare, as well as longer-term cultural changes as well.  And of course, the biggest elephant in the room--MEN--need to start pulling their weight for once.  But in the meantime, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither.  So what are we waiting for?

THIS Is What A Real Anti-Rape Campaign Looks Like

Rape culture, or the attitudes and behaviors that promote rape and sexual assault, and/or blame, silence, or shift the onus onto victims, has been part and parcel of patriarchy for its entire 7000+ year history.  So it is not surprising that, even in the #MeToo era, the tendency to victim-blame (to one degree or another) still persists even in some anti-rape campaigns.  That is, the campaigns give Women the usual advice to not get themselves raped, as opposed to the "novel" idea of simply telling MEN not to rape in the first place.

Or, to put it as bluntly as possible, "make sure the other girl gets raped instead".  Because, let's face it, that is the cold, hard reality.  Predators will target the proverbial weakest antelope of the herd regardless of who it happens to be.

A notable exception to this persistent tendency, however, is Vancouver's "Don't Be That Guy" campaign that began in 2010 and was so successful that they brought it back just a few years later.  The rate of sexual assault dropped by 10% in 2011, which is impressive considered that it had been rising in the several years leading up to it.  And another big Canadian city, Edmonton, Alberta, has also decided to emulate such a successful program as well.

What makes "Don't Be That Guy" so different?  Because it puts the onus on MEN where it really belongs, NOT on Women.  And while many rapists, particularly serial rapists, may not be very receptive to such a message, the fence-sitters who can be swayed by cultural and social norms might.  And the good men who are not rapists who see such messages over and over may be more likely to revoke the rapists' "social license to operate" by not tolerating such behaviors and intervening when they notice red flags in that regard.  True, Vancouver also stepped up law enforcement and improved training for police officers during that time, so that likely had some effect as well, but it is almost certain that at least some of the 10% drop in the first year was due to the rape-culture-jamming messages of the campaign itself.

So remember, fellas:  Don't Be That Guy.  Seriously.  And even if YOU are not "That Guy", you probably know him quite well.

What To Do About Porn? (Part Deux)

In an earlier post, I had discussed (male-created) porn and its dark side, and what to do about it. One of the best things I had recommended was for Women to take over the industry, or at least jam the culture with feminist porn, as opposed to reflexively banning or censoring the often problematic stuff that is currently out there today.

Well, it seems that the city of Berlin, Germany is taking up this idea.  They plan to publicly fund and distribute feminist porn and make it freely available via public broadcasters.  Yes, really.  And their goal is to counteract all of the sexist (and often racist) mainstream porn that is currently readily available online to anyone with a pulse these days.  Young people will look at porn regardless, but at least with feminist porn, they will be learning useful things like consent, communication, and mutual pleasure, while hopefully unlearning all the toxic messages found in mainstream porn.

And I couldn't agree more.  Bring it on!

UPDATE:  Examples of existing feminist porn/erotica can be found here (NSFW).

The False Choice Between Liberty and Community

Imagine, if you will, the following thought experiment:  You have a choice between two villages in which to live.  In Village A, everything would be decided by consensus and you would have to ask permission for literally everything you do, and you would live to be 80.  In Village B, you can be your own boss, do your own thing, and not have to answer to anybody, but you would die at 50.  Which village would you choose?

If you are like most people, or at least most men, you chose the second one, right?  I know I sure would.  But these deliberately absurd examples are simply caricatures of Matriarchy and (the false promise of) patriarchy, respectively.  And this false choice between liberty and community is most likely how the idea of patriarchy was initially sold to men in the first place.  In reality, the decidedly Faustian promise of "every man a king" only applied to the top 1% of men, while the remaining 99% of both men and Women were serfs (if not outright slaves) to one degree or another.

The truth is, of course, far more nuanced than this overly-simplistic (and intellectually dishonest) thought experiment would imply.  There really is no dilemma at all.  Liberty and community need not be at odds with one another--except, of course, under patriarchy in which everything is a zero-sum game at best.  As Carol Brouillet notes in her essay "The Feminist Perspective", the literal meaning of "community" comes from Latin, meaning "free sharing of gifts".  And that is what life would likely be like with Women in charge overall.  And while macro-level decisions would indeed be made by consensus for the most part, there would really be no need for micromanagement, thus essential individual liberty would not be in any real danger.  We would all be sovereign over our own bodies and minds by default, as there would not be any reason why we wouldn't be.  Food for thought.

In other words, the false choice between liberty and community is just another patriarchal Big Lie that all too many people believe.  In fact, it would have to be in the top five of the list of Big Lies, right up there along with "everybody and their mother must work for a living", "everybody must procreate", "humanity is separate from and above Nature", and especially "men are the superior gender and should thus rule the world".  All of these assumptions are absolutely FALSE, and we must dispense with these at once.  Yesterday.

The Faustian Bargain That Wasn't

One perennial theme that seems to run through some circles of the Goddess Movement and Matriarchy Movement is the idea that Women made a sort of Faustian bargain during the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.  That deal, as the narrative goes, consisted of essentially assimilating into patriarchy by becoming more like men (i.e. less feminine and more masculine) or at least aspiring to the privileges once reserved for men.  And that is supposedly a very, very Bad Thing, as it supposedly represents the ultimate triumph of men over Women, and thus the ultimate triumph of the patriarchy.   The term "Female Erasure" is sometimes used to describe it as well, though the connotation varies.

Gender essentialism aside, this narrative indeed has all of the makings of a good story, except that it isn't really true.  What is sometimes called the "Eclipse" of the 1960s (or 1970s or 1980s, depending on one's perspective) does superficially seem to fit this narrative.  Instead of the patriarchy chewing Women up and spitting them out as in the pre-1960s world, this time Women appear to have been swallowed whole.  But what better way to destroy the patriarchy than from within?  In the belly of the beast, Women have been gaining almost unprecedented power, and soon they will be able to burst through and finally lay waste to that evil system once and for all, and replace it with their own, Goddess willing.

After all, sometimes darkness can show you the Light.  And besides, the apparently increasing aggression of Women actually began with suffragette and First Wave Feminist icon Emmeline Pankhurst, half a century before the 1960s even began.  Even Nikola Tesla remarked upon it in a 1924 interview, also predicting (quite accurately, it now seems) that Women would eventually take over the world.

So it appears that this so-called Faustian bargain was really not one at all.  And those purists and "retreatists", as I like to call them, who claim it is and want to somehow reverse it can easily find themselves to be inadvertent strange bedfellows with the reactionary Phyllis Schlaflys of the world.  Unless, of course, that was really their intention all along.

And rest assured, try as treacherous men may, the true Divine Feminine can never, ever be truly erased or extinguished, as to do so would literally impossible.  And once Women reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, then we will really know that for certain, Goddess willing.