Things Predators Like

     Predators of all sorts will concentrate where the prey is fattest. — Arne Stromberg, Gallatin University

     Robert A. Heinlein promoted this concept of a human trichotomy:

     …and no third category. What follows from that partition is an even simpler dichotomy:

     Anyone who doesn’t get that should see me after class. We can talk about your hobbies and BOCES.

     There are innumerable sub-categories of predators, but all share the defining characteristic of that set: they get part or all of their sustenance from the Makers, and not necessarily with the Makers’ consent.

     For some time now, American companies have been filling up with predators, at the expense of the makers. Some of them are easy to identify. The Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a predator: sub-category Taker. The head of the Human Resources department is a predator: sub-category Faker. They clearly don’t produce anything the company can sell.

     American society generally has been filling up with predators. Quite a number of them are open about it, too. That streetcorner panhandler you pass on the way home from work? Likely he’ll finish his day’s “work” by getting into a nice car and driving away. He might notice you watching, but he’s unlikely to care. There are plenty of ignorant sheep to fleece, after all.

     Predators like fat, unaware and unresisting targets. Those predators that have the skill will even create them. One of their most effective techniques is to promote the idea that they perform an important service, one that seems indispensable. If they can pull that off, the sheep will come to them.

     Sophisticated predators will often use unwitting makers to do the preliminary work of sheep-gathering for them. The kind of maker they prefer to exploit for that prep-work is the high-minded idealist. He’ll have an idea that seems entirely benevolent and beneficent. It might strike him as a way to make life better for everyone. And who knows? In the absence of slick, adroit predators, it might even work that way.

     But the mission of the predator is to see that it doesn’t.

     You’re probably wondering why I’m nattering on about such obvious things. As usual, I have a reason: an outfit that calls itself Worldcoin:

     Some Web3 projects are trying to create a better cryptocurrency. Some are tackling the problem of self-sovereign identity. Some are trying to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s an AI-created fake. Some are building systems for better governance. Some are trying to improve the development of AI through the principles of decentralization. Some are trying to reduce global inequalities.
     Worldcoin is trying to do all of the above.
     The goal is simple and modest: To create a system that will, eventually, freely distribute tokens to all eight billion people on the planet, as a form of universal basic income (UBI). But because the rise of AI will make it tricky to figure out who is human and who’s a digital fake, Worldcoin first needs to create a system that lets people — all people, across the globe — prove that they are in fact human beings.

     Please read it all. It’s a mind-boggling combination of uplifting and depressing. It’s also the sort of target that the largest and most voracious predators on Earth – governments – love best: the sort that would extend their control over the rest of us to an infinite degree.

     I have no personal stake in any cryptocurrency. I know people who think they’re the greatest thing since bottled beer. I refuse to put any of my wealth in any of them. The reason is Porretto’s Pessimistic Principle:

     The cryptocurrencies, being software artifacts, can be corrupted. Hacked. Twisted beyond all recognition. It just hasn’t happened yet…but you can bet the rent money that there are thousands of clever software nerds working on it as you read this. The blather about a token-system based on blockchain substructures being proof against such things is self-serving propaganda.

     The idea of a worldwide cryptocurrency united to a worldwide identification scheme must have the governments of the world salivating at the prospect. Let the high-minded private-sector developers and promoters do the hard work! When they’ve completed the grubby chores, governments will swoop in to “regulate” it. It will be “necessary,” you see, to make it all “fair.”

     What would eventuate were governments to impose themselves on this system? Surely they would want to control it. Indeed, for governments’ purposes, it’s the Philosophers’ Stone. If they could compel everyone to participate in it, it would give them complete control over all buying and selling. No one could transact for any purpose without government knowing about it…and issuing a permit-or-forbid edict about it.

     Then there’s the shameful “universal basic income” notion the proponents advance. They either have no understanding of money and credit or believe that they can set the laws that govern such things aside by dint of their brilliance and noble goals.

     Let’s put it in the simplest possible terms: If you produce nothing, what you consume must be produced by others. Therefore, you are seizing some of the value created by others without giving anything of your own making in exchange for it. It simply doesn’t matter whether you’re a common thief or you’re using some fiction of a currency, given to you by well-meaning but naïve persons, to do so. Every “token” you’re given for free leaches value from those “tokens” that are earned by productive labor.

     “But it’s for the greater good!” the proponents screech. “It would eliminate poverty!” they protest. As if poverty weren’t the natural and rightful lot of those who can’t or won’t produce something others will value. “It would reduce inequality!” they whimper. As if equality were a characteristic that Nature will tolerate for even a femtosecond.

     I know, I’m raving again. I’ll stop.

     This is really a special case of a general law:

     Aspiring benefactors of Humanity have done more harm to the general lot of Man than any category of entity other than governments. They’ve put tools into governments’ hands with which States can carry out their mission of subjugating us. Always with the highest of motives in mind…but what was that saying about good intentions?

     Keep away from high-minded idealists. Close your door in their faces. Work for your own purposes and pleasures. Do charity by giving survival goods: food, clothing, shelter, and energy. To protect your savings, buy gold and silver.

     And preach Christ. He wasn’t an idealist; He simply knew, as you’d expect of God, how things must be – the way the laws of the Universe are structured. Of course He did! As we hear near Christmas time: Wise men still seek Him.