People are really Stupid
I might have to retract what I said in my last post, whereas I thought people are less stupid than coward. Maybe in reality they are equally stupid and coward.
And I will give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it's just due to all this propaganda. The propaganda arm of the government that has been working tirelessly for 200 years to turn an educated critical thinking citizenry of the 1800's into mindless domesticated slaves and hedonists of the 21 century.
It's a remarcable job, we should give them a medal, they have proven that propaganda is a great tool to turn a human back into a monkey. Even Chomsky admits that humanity should be more critical thinking and that TPTB have done a great job in dumbing down the people, although he criticizes consumerism and the advertising industry for this, rather than the government think-tanks that are most likely behind it.
Example
Let's make an experiment. Go to one of your average neighbors, and ask them how much taxes they paying, and how much % of their work is essentially slavery to pay off the taxes, compared to what they are keeping for themselves.
I will guarantee you, that most of these people will have no idea what you are talking about. They will say 4-7% taxes, which are self-paid: usually local & property taxes. In fact if they set it up to be automatically levied via their credit card (there are services like these at your bank), then they won't even have to go to the town hall and see the money from their pocket be given to a bureaucrat.
So they will say: ahhhh not that much, taxes are really low, I am not affected by it that much.
You cannot make this shit up, because I have actually done this experiment with multiple of my neighbors, and they had no idea what the taxes were. What a degenerate idiocracy we live in. Is this what humanity is? A bunch of clueless slaves that don't even see the bars of their prison?
Income Tax
And this is really what is happening, most people have no idea of the existence of the income tax. Because it is levied automatically by their employer. Those who are freelancers, well they are fucked, they have to declare their income every year, but they are like 2-5% of the population.
Most people are manual laborers, they work in some office, or factory, or supermarket. They get their salary on their bank account. They get a receipt of the taxes, which they probably throw away, and that's it.
You get 1000$ in your hand, and that is all you ever care about. Meanwhile the gross salary is more like 5000$.
Poverty
This also ties into poverty. Most people are poor. But did any one of these people have just sit back and ask themselves why are they poor? After all, surely it has came to their minds, poverty is not a joke, so I assume people have been wondering about it.
Ok, so they are poor. And they ask themselves why? Well the most obvious reason is that they get 1000$ from their employer. They might say that they are not qualified enough for a better job.
But still, they might work in a supermarket and thats what they do. So they get 1000$, meanwhile they see you or others earning 20,000$ or more. So they get envious.
Alright, now instead of improving their skills to find a better job, they just sit there demanding more. But they also don't realize that they are probably entitled to 5000$, that is the value of their labor, not 1000$.
However they are paying 70% or higher taxes. But they don't know about the taxes. So they don't realize that they would be earning 5000$ if not for the taxes. And with a bit of skill improvement they could be earning 10,000$ as well. Well that is not that far from 20,000$, so the envy would drop.
But instead of getting angry at the government for stealing 70%, they are angry at the employer for not making that remaining 30% larger.
This is a very good propaganda method to turn the employee against the employer, and use the employees as a proxy army to extort more from the employer. The government uses the employees as a proxy army to extort more from the employer.
Because if they pay 4000$ to the government now/ worker, then if they force to double the payout of the employee to 2000$ which is still small, then the government would get 8000$ out of that.
So it's not the employer that they need to be angry at, but the thieves in suits at their local tax bureaucracy. However the propaganda is very strong.
And the funny thing is that this is a stupid Marxist doctrine of turning the employee against the employer. What happened to the liberation of the proletariat? Does 70% taxes on the working class amount to that?
Well that is the lie of communism, they are not liberating anyone, but enslaving everyone, except the commissars of the party. This is what is happening in the EU right now, they even call themselves commissars, and are increasing the taxes and tyranny on all citizens.
The only way you will liberate the working class if you eliminate the income tax. If you want workers to be independent and enjoy the fruits of their labor, then the taxes have to do.
I don't care if workers form cooperatives, or democratically run workshops. But the taxes have to go first. That is how liberty will come.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7VOYTfFZE
Well, that is kind of ambivalent, I take it you are from a first world country where your salaries are good enough for people to take vacations, buy a home and possibly at least enjoy life in a comfortable manner even though you are a slave to your life style, but people in third world countries don't have that privilege, in fact people who pay income tax are relatively high earners, the poor are fleeced via sales tax, and I will tell you something you either accept a very low paying job which you will be a slave forever or quit and take your chances and probably starve. So I really don't think people in third world countries are either stupid or cowards, they frankly have absolutely no choice. Perhaps if cryptocurrency does take off it would make a difference.
But the first world has really no excuse. We haven't had a major war for 75 years.
So what did people do in this 75 years to advance liberty? Well nothing.
Taxes are much higher than in the 50's, and unemployment, and tyranny is rising again.
So the first worlders have really really fucked it up. And they have no excuse for it.
That is relative, I am a middle class person, but I know many people who are poor here, like dirt poor, living from paycheck to paycheck.
The thirld world has been exploited heavily by colonialism, slavery, and all these weapons exports that fuel warlords and terrorists there.
If that would stop, then there would be no reason why the thirld world could not rise to a decent standard of living. I doubt they could rise to a utopia level, given that they lack the philosophy and the traditions of liberty there, but at least economically, they could rise out of poverty.
Cryptocurrency will definitely play a huge part of it. There are already Kenyan farmers I believe who sell their food in Bitcoin.
It's an interesting shift of the game.
Yes, I think the goals of the third world would be to give a majority of their citizens the opportunity to live a decent life, something which right now does not seem possible, not in the short term. The first world, well you've said it all, maybe conformism has taken hold and now the way out is difficult.
They don't have free speech. There is literally no free speech in 3rd or 2nd world countries, this includes most of Europe as well.
Free speech is the first goal people need to obtain before they can do anything else. Without freely communicating ideas and refuting stupid ideas, humans don't have a chance against tyranny.
What would you define as free speech, I live in a third world country and I can say anything I want, no problem, now the press just expresses what the government and the moneyed elite want.
I don't think that is how it works. It's more like if you say something controversial, you will get kidnapped by a local gang, which is controlled by the local police.
So the police is does not behave like a political police, they just outsource that job to local gangs. There have been many cases like this where the police controlled the gangs to do their dirty work, for the government.
No, I think you have that wrong, here we don't have that many kidnappings, and mostly they are for extorting money, we do have a lot of murders, undoubtedly the government has some say in these, but I think the majority are drug and gang related.
We do have indigenous people murdered for trying to protect their lands, this can be directly linked to government, army police and capitalists who are trying to make profit off of the land that rightfully belongs to these people. But what I am trying to tell you is it's not as simple as saying the government curtails free speech, there are a lot of actors and probably they are actually enemies, but still the ones who get screwed are the regular citizens who have nothing to do with these hidden agendas. I think I am not being too clear it is late here and I always drink a sleeping pill and I think it's starting to kick in.
I wasn't referring to your situations, I was referring more to Africa, I assume you are not African.
There have been even cases like that in the US, in the 60s, where many declassified papers shown how the police hired gangsters to kidnap black activists and women activists to torture them.
There has always been a clear partnership between gangs and the police, in 3rld world countries very strong partnership.
Thinking that the cops and the gangs are enemies is really naive. They are partners. The police could easily eliminate all gangs if they wanted to, but it's beneficial for them to not do it, so that they can do their dirty work through them.
They close their eyes on their drug businesses, and in return the gangs do some "black ops" for the police, since that way they can bypass warrants and due process.
That is how it works, the police is nothing more that just another gang.