bollox – Philosophics

Democracy: Opiate of the Masses

Aug 12, 2025Aug 12, 2025Posted in identity, intelligence, language, modernism, nature, perception, philosophy, podcast, politics, power, psychology, societyTagged bibles, bollox, critique, democracy, dumocracy, Enlightenment critique, idiocracy, illusion of choice, iq, language, Marx, masses, mediocrity, opiates, perception, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, satire, societyLeave a comment

Democracy is sold, propagandised, really, as the best system of governance we’ve ever devised, usually with the grudging qualifier “so far.” It’s the Coca-Cola of political systems: not particularly good for you, but so entrenched in the cultural bloodstream that to question it is tantamount to treason.

Audio: NotebookLM Podcast on this topic.

The trouble is this: democracy depends on an electorate that is both aware and capable. Most people are neither. Worse still, even if they could be aware, they wouldn’t be smart enough to make use of it. And even if they were smart enough, Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem strolls in, smirking, to remind us that the whole thing is mathematically doomed anyway.

Even this number is a charade. IQ measures how well you navigate the peculiar obstacle course we’ve designed as “education,” not the whole terrain of human thought. It’s as culturally loaded as asking a fish to climb a tree, then declaring it dim-witted when it flops. We call it intelligence because it flatters those already rewarded by the system that designed the test. In the United States, the average IQ stands at 97 – hardly a figure that instils confidence in votes and outcomes.

Democracy is religion with ballots instead of bibles

The Enlightenment gents who pushed democracy weren’t exactly selfless visionaries. They already had power, and simply repackaged it as something everyone could share, much as the clergy promised eternal reward to peasants if they only kept their heads down. Democracy is merely religion with ballots instead of bibles: an opiate for the masses, sedating the population with the illusion of influence.

Worse still, it’s a system optimised for mediocrity. It rewards consensus, punishes brilliance, and ensures the average voter is, by definition, average. Living under it is like starring in Idiocracy, only without the comedic relief, just the grim recognition that you’re outnumbered, and the crowd is cheering the wrong thing.

Austrian Economics Bollox

Jan 16, 2023Posted in economics, philosophy, politics, psychologyTagged Austrian economics, bollox, book, critique, economics, market mechanism, perception, philosophy, politics, profits, psychology, Steven Horwitz2 Comments

A citizen of the Internet shared this as if were gospel along with this comment:

Late Professor Steven Horwitz expanding on a Misesian theme. Monetary profit helps allocate resources to higher valued uses. Elsewhere, Mises spoke of profit in a broader sense, “profit” being the goal of every action. In any case, those familiar with what pundits (from the left mostly) tend to say about “profit” may be completely surprised by this take, since it is so contrary to what they often read and hear.

Of course, these are vapid words and wishful thinking. How and why do profits signal that value has been created? I dunno. They just do cuz I said so. The only thing that profits signal is a market that doesn’t understand the true cost of production and consumers can’t be bothered to do it themselves. Mattresses and shaving razor blades are two high-margin consumer goods with mattresses yielding 500 per cent profits and razor blades even higher. These profits represent economic rent and not value. The fact that imperfect information shrouds this excess does not make it ‘value’.

Regarding the mortgage market meltdown of 2007-08, there were houses being built into a market with no buyers. The same ‘value’ being created was demonstrably vapour. Say’s Law was off-target again. Supply does not create its own demand.

Is it no wonder that so many Capitalists are also Protestant Christians who believe in Bible tales as well? Even worse are the Christians who are not Capitalists but are exploited by Capitalism the same way they are exploited by their religion. I guess once you’ve profiled the gullible, you might as well just keep exploiting them until there is nothing left to extract.

Slotrocket

Jan 3, 2022Jan 2, 2022Posted in identity, language, music, philosophy, politics, societyTagged anarchy, bollox, democracy, language, marriage, philosophy, politics, psychologyLeave a comment

Being in a band is hard. It’s like being married to a bunch of partners, and if you are a band and not just some cat with some supporting characters, you’ve got artistic differences to consider. This is where I soured on direct democracy.

Slotrocket is the name of one of the bands I performed with. We played under this name exactly once, but let’s rewind to the democracy bits.

Skipping a lot of the details, I played bass in this line-up. It was a 3-piece with a focus on alt-post-grunge-nu-metal, but we all came from different places musically. The drummer came from speed metal, death metal, and maths rock. The guitarist-vocalist came from Classic Rock, Grunge and Nu-Metal. I came from all sorts of places, but I wanted to focus this project on the post-grunge thing. For the uninitiated, this is the likes of Seether, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin and so on.

We didn’t have a name. Since we only played with friends and at parties and sometimes provided the backing for live karaoke, it was just us. We did arrive at the name of Breached, but it turned out that a Canadian band was already calling dibs on that, so we just let it slide—especially when they released an EP in the vein of early Incubus.

But then the guitarist-vocalist didn’t want to hold both roles. Too much effort. He didn’t care which. In the end, they found a female singer who was interested. It seems that there was a mixup in communication. They asked if I minded if she joined us during our next rehearsal. I figured it was just another live karaoke session, so when I said yes, it turns out that she was now a member of the band. Truth be told, I didn’t think a female would cop the vibe I was seeking. She was no Lacy Sturm or Amy Lee. She didn’t know any grunge material as she was more of a Country gal. But that’s not the story.

The story is the name. We deliberated for well over a month to settle on a name. We decided to create a spreadsheet. We’d all force rank the entries. And each of us had infinite veto votes to kill an offending entry from the list.

Skipping ahead a few chapters, I liked Rapeseed. It was a benign word that sounded edgy. The boys were fine with it. Notsomuch, the girl. There was no particular rush until we booked a gig—the gig. We’d need a name to promote.

I came up with Slotrocket. Again the boys were fine with it; her notsomuch. However, she didn’t veto—later claiming that she didn’t think we could possibly be serious. Since I booked the date and created the adverts, everything seemed to go under the radar—or under the rug.

A bit before the show, I was distributing material and advertising on our media outlets (as it were) and she caught a glimpse of the promo mats. Let’s just say that she was not amused. Still, when the time came, we performed.

OK, so I skipped over some stuff—the months of pouring over a spreadsheet. Our goal was unanimity. The name didn’t have to be everyone’s top pick, but we did need to attain a consensus view. As it happened, two of the biggest decisions came about by accident, and they both resulted in hard feelings.

It’s not that the 3 or 4 of us couldn’t have eventually come to a unanimous decision amounting to all of our first choices, but this would have taken time—and who knows how much.

One may feel justified accusing me of allowing perfection to be the enemy of the good, but that’s just something apologists tend to say, as they defend their preference for democracy.