Pall Portion
Inter the dead with a bit of sugar, out of consideration to the earth
And he took the Duckstack which he had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it. (Exodus 32:20) (paraphrased)1
I have canoed all the way here to deliver this Duckstack to you. Let me tell you, about being fired upon with arrows by riverside duckstack poachers, the rapids of rapidly typing2, of the whirlpool which turned into a whale spout which spat me somewhere in New York and I had to paddle my canoe all the way down all the busy streets until I could reach the riverways again, and then I had to turn on each houseside water spigot in your neighborhood to flood the streets enough to reach your door and give you this. Apologize to your neighbors for me, would ya?
No returns.
Why I Am Not A Libertarian
fascists are the real libertarians the two sides switched in the civil war (2016)
I now and probably always will have a great respect for Ayn Rand, who I think would count as sort of the father [sic] of Libertarianism3. I think she had two main weaknesses: First, that her metaphysics a priori rules out the possibility of God and any reasoning that could even go in that direction at all she flatly refuses to consider, and secondly, that she failed to envision a society so stripped of incentives4 that raw capitalism (“corporations”) would be motivated not by profit but by virtue signaling. In other words, in her idealism she failed to grasp conquests law. I am not going to fault her for this though, because there just wasn’t data available to see how it would play out.
What I think libertarians are missing, is society.
In short, everything you do has splash damage in the radius of your social circles. If I bug out on drugs and annihilate my intellect for example, my family pays an immediate and nearly indefinite cost, my friends pay a new cost to interact with my new crippled self, The Duckstack’s readers lose out on the wonderful health benefits of reading The Duckstack, and all of these costs echo for completely unpredictable durations. For example if I, in my delirious ramblings, influence someone to also bug out on drugs, or if I commit a DUI resulting in an accident, or if by not being able to write something profound5 I cause some good that might have been done to be left undone. In other words, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. We are packed like sardines6 in our communities. You are constantly in friction with everyone else7 and any movement always bumps up against others and shifts your gravity well and jostles and bonks and rustles their jimmies.
But this is not why I am not a Libertarian. The reason I am not a libertarian is because people8 keep sneaking out and introducing poison into the watering hole. Even if victimless crimes are actually victimmed, I don't realistically care that much about most victimmed crimes. But, I do care a whole lot about victimmed lawfulness. We live in a society9, meaning, we have things in common with other people. You might even say we have a commons10. These commons include the environment, products, media, churches. When you have a lot in common at the commons, you got yourself a high trust society, which always benefits its members more than a low trust society. Every notch you lower trust by is a new cost imposed on you: maybe you can handle some trashed or trashy public services, and maybe you can handle having to lock your doors all the time, and maybe you can handle not having community events, and maybe you can handle high interest rates, and maybe you can handle not getting little plates of cookies from your neighbors at Christmas time11, and maybe you can handle constantly having to reaffirm to your kids that drugs and homosexuality and experimenting with sexuality and experimenting with genital mutilation are bad and destructive, and maybe you can handle not really being able to let your kids play with neighbors because the neighbors are not so careful with their kids diet and their kid will try to teach yours about masturbation. Maybe you can handle this! I would never doubt you.
But I think as you start to balance these checkbooks, there starts to be a line.
This doesn’t need to be so- there are many possible worlds where a tragedy of the commons scenario on a civilizational scale doesn’t actually pan out and instead everyone both cuts down the forest for paper and plants trees to replenish it. There are many possible worlds where libertarianism would work. but, these |absolutely| require civilizational virtues.
But what are the virtues of western society? Would it make more sense to list the virtues we have lost, which we can plot chronologically on a graph to chart mankind’s devolution the last 50 years? Self discipline. Temperance. Chastity. Stewardship. Honor. Honesty. Chivalry. Ancestral respect. Humility. You can’t build libertarianism in any sort of reliable form without at least some reliable virtues! And if we can’t have virtues (because they’re racist sexist homophobic patriarchal white colonialist or whatever other thing) then the only option to not getting all these costs imposed upon me are
investing a ton in security, both physical, emotional, intellectual, moral, and social12, so that you can function in regular life
or
use governmental force to reduce the costs on everybody.
Between the two, the second is the more moral option, because any positive returns benefit not just you but everyone. The error made is that government is not used in our society with the aim of increasing trust. In many ways, government is specifically used in as destructive and malicious fashions possible. An endemic of what I call “plunder mindset13” means the watering hole is no longer pure, the trees are dying, the oasis is becoming more and more desert, and unfortunately I care about myself and my friends who use this stuff, so I feel the rot keenly. Can government be used to increase the costs on everybody? Yes. But everyone knows the government's job is to enforce morality on the margin cases who wouldn't quite drive with the flow of traffic if it didn't. Your enemies have no compunctions whatsoever about enforcing their morality on you so you aren't really winning anything other than bondage by refusing to play.
And taxes suck, but I may be willing to have some taxes extorted from me to build “roads14”, which actually do benefit me both in theory and sometimes in practice. LGBT parasitism sucks, but in no way even can benefit me, ever, not even in theory. Its not even on the table, in fact many of them explicitly post about how they want to turn my children against me, get me fired from my job, siphon money to their clubs. Even little things like trying to get everyone to put their pronouns on linkedin is a minor cost, an inconvenience demanded of you for the crime of tolerating them.
Will I vote Libertarian again sometime? Probably.
FACT CHECK
Schmact check. #logic
What is a “fact”, anyway? Is it somewhat like a snipe? We have had our best scientists hunting these things for months and have found to date, nothing. Despite our best translations of the ancient lore and snooping around the best Mayan temples, not a single fact has been found. Are you sitting down right now? Is that a fact? No, you’re making that up.
Here’s what we know: Facts are two to four inches tall. Facts tend to be dark black in color. Facts have little flags on top of their heads. Facts are powered by electricity running through the ceiling, somewhat similar to bumper cars. Facts have unique and specific tones which they repeat indefinitely to communicate, like pokemon. Facts subsist on nothing but emotion. Facts can haunt or sooth, malicious or benevolent, staccato or smooth. Facts follow orders. Facts suffereth long, and are kind. Facts envieth not and vaunteth not itself. Facts are not puffed up. Facts can come in groups of up to 4. Facts cannot be seen. Facts are symbolic. Facts adorn themselves in decorations and fashion. Facts are free, metaphysically and financially.
If you have any leads on where we can find Facts, please let us know for an upcoming issue of The Duckstack. Thank you.
HISTORY
Its time for history to enter the ice age so that our kid can learn how to keep things frozen.
Took the kid to the store and surprisingly there was Halloween stuff everywhere of course. He told us “its spooky in here!” and then he grabbed a skull off a shelf and put it in the cart, then told us “I’m scared!” so we bought it.
Found the kid in the front lawn screaming about popsicles a couple days ago.
The kid, hoisting a baguette: “This is the biggest bread yet!”
Earlier the kid asked “where’s my baby brother” and I told him he was in the kitchen reading a book, because he was gnawing on one in there. “oh, I’m gonna go in the kitchen and read with him!” Neither of them can read, so this is gonna be good.
The kid has come into the habit of saying “you know what that means” instead of “therefore.” My wife observes that he has never, in this entire month, said we know what something means and been right. Observe: “It is getting dark outside! You know what that means!” “no, what?” “Its Halloween15!”
Kid was making hot chocolate with his mom, was pouring marshmellows into it and commented “A little bit more will do the trick!” and then poured in way more than he intended because he has no dexterity. “That’s a lot!” He observed.
The kid opened the freezer sometime today and all the ice cream sandwiches fell out, and he put them back in the fridge, which we discovered hours later. I think my wife may have been like “what are the ice cream sandwiches doing in the fridge!” To which the kid responded “so they stay cold!”
The little toddler/gnawer got ahold of my headphones sometime this week. He appears to have chewed a crack in the plastic, a hairline fracture undermining its total structural integrity, making even listening to music a perilous and stressful endeavor. Most of these things look small at first sure, but the thing is that this sort of damage spreads, and I need to find a fix asap before our whole house gets infected; viral hairline fractures coming off the headphones onto the leather couch, undermining its total structural integrity and causing it to crumble when used, dropping me embarrassingly on the floor. The fridge fracturing and crumbling, dropping ice cream sandwiches everywhere. The floor, now tectonic, shifting beneath us and shaking the whole house from its very foundation with every step. This is what will happen if I don’t find some epoxy.
DUCKSTACK COOKING: boiling frogs
Delicacy (?) in the bayou (?) (I guess?) favored by humans (?) and I assume flies16
We’ve had a lot of requests for our recipe for boiling frogs, and I have to say that our house17 recipe shouldn't disappoint! I'm sure most of you know the simple formula for boiling things which is "boiling water + object + time" which scales linearly until you've got something boiled.
The issue with boiling frogs, as most of you know, is that frogs do not like boiling water. Even if you set out a little lilypad and an umbrella, they still seem to find the environment unsatisfactory. This is a sign that frogs have really got spoiled these days, we've got a really entitled generation of frogs these days. I remember you used to be able to boil frogs and you could just do it against their will (this was before animal rights activists invented police and stuff) and these frogs really should feel grateful you're going to all this length for them, but they don’t, no respect these days. So you gotta really meme them into it. One way to do this is with insults or compliments, for example “All the cool18 frogs are boiling in water”. This usually works with the beta frogs, but you might be in trouble if you've got an alpha frog on your hands, or even a sigma. These frogs may not respond to peer pressure19 so you'll need to play it differently. Maybe you can bribe them, have you tried making them a nice suit and a hat? "Hey I know you don't like boiling water but I'll give you this if you deal with it for a sec", I have had a lot of success with this technique and a closet full of froggy tuxedos is a real staple in my pantry. If you're too poor to afford a suit however you may need to try some other things. You could try holding the frog under the boiling water of course, but if we're thinking about it rationally, that seems like a lot of work and time investment. So our Duckstack Head Chef has come up with a technique from you which he learned from an enlightened monk in tibet: Put them in not boiling water20, then boil that. Classic bait and switch.
You might feel a little bad for deceiving the little froggy so, but I would advise you to get over it. This is wartime. Such empathy will cripple you in crucial moments. I assure you, the frog would definitely have done the same to you, if the positions were reversed. The time for action is now.
With these helpful tips, we’re sure you’ll be boiling up frogs in no time! Happy frogging!
Not to be confused with when you divide your Duckstack up into 12 parts including the bones and mail them to all the tribes of Israel (Judges 19:29) (paraphrased)
Because I still have to break these things out every Tuesday and I still try to make sure to procrastinate starting until 10:00pm (business ethics)
And Libertarians are right, all that I’m about to write is really “big picture” stuff and absolutely not feasible to get into everyone in government’s heads on any sort of scale. Not without religion or culture, but cultural shifts towards better government would work a lot better than heavy-handed lobs at anarchy.
Businesses aren’t accountable to the public for making a good product, they are accountable to investors to make a cheap and reliable product, which in our culture means painting a rainbow logo on just about anything, because that’s the lowest common denominator for cheap and reliability among the masses.
“Profoundly DUMB” yeah okay hotshot why not both
I have no idea what a sardine is, I assume its some kind of deer, but trust me you pack them like tetris blocks
This is not bad. Friction generates heat, heat generates life. You are what you make of this.
Human Resources entities and those of a certain political persuasion
society
We live in a commons
A thriving Latter-Day Saint tradition that continues in Utah to this day
social security hah hah no I mean like taking collateral from everyone to insure they’re “really” your friend through incredibly elaborate rituals such as gangs use
We live in a roads
He’s not right yet, and speaking in toddler years (10 minutes = 1 year), he’s not even really close
because frogs eat them
Three of a kind. Straight. Full house. Royal flush.
socially of course. Not physically.
peer pressure cookers
The possibilities for things which are not boiling water are endless