New on OnlySky: Is oligarchy the human condition?

I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about the deferred dream of democracy and the stark reality that human beings have always been ruled by the few.

The early 21st century has seen a global turn toward authoritarianism. Nations that have always had oligarchical tendencies, like Russia, are growing more so, and formerly democratic countries like the United States are backsliding.

However, this isn’t a new threat. Almost every society, in almost every era of history, has been an oligarchy where a tiny elite class held enormous wealth and power. If anything, it’s democracy – true democracy, where everyone has an equal say, as opposed to democracy-in-name-only where the wealthy few still rule – that’s always been the exception. For all the reformers who’ve worked and fought for it, it remains a utopian ideal rather than a reality.

This raises the question: Is oligarchy natural for humans, in the sense that it’s an inherent part of our mindset and cultural makeup that can’t be overcome? Or is real democracy an ideal we might still one day hope to achieve?

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

The hunter-gatherer tribes of our past led an egalitarian lifestyle. But almost every society since then has been marked by extreme inequality. Whether in the form of pharaohs, kings, feudal aristocrats, colonizing imperialists, or corporations run by mega-wealthy investors, oligarchy—rule by the few, usually the wealthy—has been a consistent pattern across history.

To be sure, the oligarchs have never gone unopposed. In every era, people have dreamed of some version of democracy, of shared prosperity. There have always been radicals who proclaimed that we shouldn’t bow to crowns or thrones, that everyone deserves to have a say in their own future.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

Two portraits of Christianity in America

A withered, dead tree in a desert

[Previous: Let them eat the Ten Commandments]

It’s a consistent theme across history that religions are only as tolerant as they have to be. When they’re in the minority, they call for individual freedom and state neutrality. But when they attain majority status, they immediately try to take over the government, write their beliefs into law and silence the competition.

The state of Oklahoma is a case in point. There was a time when the courts protected Americans’ constitutional rights. Now the right-wing takeover of the judiciary is all but complete, and Christian nationalists are sure they can do whatever they want and get away with it. They’re dropping any pretense of neutrality and seeking to cram Christianity into public schools across the state:

All Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments in their curriculums, effective immediately, the state’s chief education officer announced in a memorandum Thursday.

At a State Board of Education meeting, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said the Bible is “one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country.”

“It’s crystal clear to us that in the Oklahoma academic standards under Title 70 on multiple occasions, the Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters said.

Every classroom in the state from grades 5 through 12 must have a Bible and all teachers must teach from the Bible in the classroom, Walters said.

If there’s any glimmer of hope, it’s this: even in a state as conservative as Oklahoma, this blatant Christian nationalism isn’t going unchallenged. Multiple school districts are shrugging it off. And as recently as 2016, Oklahoma voters supported church-state separation, resoundingly rejecting a bid to strip a secular provision from the state constitution.

But leave that aside for the moment. The political leaders of Oklahoma are proclaiming that America is a Christian nation. What does that mean to them?

Here’s a clue. At the same time as they’re preaching pious myths about how the Bible is the source of our laws, Oklahoma is also considering outlawing homeless shelters across most of the state:

A bill proposed in Oklahoma would make it illegal for almost all cities in the state to provide homeless shelters or outreach and halt existing programs.

Oklahoma Senate Bill 484, introduced and authored by Sen. Lisa Standridge, R-Norman, would prevent municipalities in all cities with a population under 300,000 from using city resources to operate homeless shelters or perform homeless outreach.

Only two cities in Oklahoma have more than 300,000 residents — Oklahoma City and Tulsa — which means that if SB 484 passes, the measure would affect every other municipality in the state.

…The policy is similar to Oklahoma’s anti-camping law that took effect Nov. 1, 2024, which criminalizes camping on unauthorized state land or rights-of-way such as under bridges or alongside public roads and highways.

Taken together, these actions send a clear statement. Oklahoma’s deeply conservative government wants schools to teach kids about the Bible and Christianity. At the same time, they want to make it illegal for homeless people to sleep outdoors and also illegal to build places for them to sleep indoors. They don’t see any contradiction between these messages.

(And yes, Oklahoma was also one of the states that refused federal money for feeding hungry children.)

Here’s my question. If Oklahoma is set on teaching the Bible, are they going to mention verses like these?

“And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.”
—Leviticus 25:35

“For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.”
—Deuteronomy 15:11

“Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate.”
—Proverbs 22:22

Call me cynical, but I’m guessing these passages won’t be included in the public school curriculum. Christian nationalists only want to teach the good stuff – the biblical passages about stoning gay people, butchering heretics, and commanding women to submit to their husbands. They ignore, or outright reject, the parts of the Bible that are suspiciously liberal, like caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger, loving your enemies, and the meek inheriting the earth. That woke stuff has no place in their version of Christianity.

This is the state of Christianity in America today. Whether it’s Christians who burn with hate and prejudice toward refugees and immigrants – and thus aspire to be among those the Bible condemns to hell – or the Christians who demand more and harsher persecution of gay and transgender people, or the Christians who want to make it illegal for homeless people to exist… American Christians, especially right-wing evangelicals, are a bubbling cauldron of hate and rage.

They try to outdo each other in sadism; they compete to see who can show the most cruelty toward the oppressed and downtrodden. At the same time, they thump their breasts and proclaim their superiority because they’re believers.

However, it would be unfair to leave it at that and say that these people represent all American Christians, rather than only most of them. There are a few – all too few – Christians who stand out as beacons of compassion and decency. Like Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde, who enraged right-wingers with a post-inauguration sermon at Washington’s National Cathedral:

“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said.

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors.”

Worth noting, Budde is also the bishop who helped lay Matthew Shepard to rest. After his murder, Shepard’s parents were reluctant to inter his ashes in their hometown, for fear that the grave would be desecrated by bigots. Budde stepped in, offering them space at the Washington National Cathedral.

If more Christians were like Mariann Budde, I’d have written something different. Even if Christians were trying to take over the government, but actually cared about using that power to help the poor and the needy and to welcome refugees because the Bible tells them to, I’d be more conflicted.

But that’s not the world we live in. It’s the worst ones who are occupying the seats of power and setting the agenda, and that’s been true for a long time. Their religion is a dead tree leaning over a dry spring. Whatever love or kindness it ever had was thrown away long ago. There’s nothing left of it but a withered cult of hate and power.

Image credit: David Brossard via Flickr; released under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

New on OnlySky: Weather whiplash

I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about how we’ll have to redesign society for the increasingly chaotic, climate-change-driven weather of the future.

The drought and apocalyptic wildfires in Los Angeles, coming just two years after a series of devastating floods, are a dramatic example of “weather whiplash” – weather that swings wildly back and forth between extremes of heat and cold, wet and dry. As climate change accelerates, disrupting formerly stable weather patterns, this phenomenon will spread to more areas and will get worse.

It’s possible to design communities that will survive the extremes of future weather, but it won’t be easy or cheap. We’ll have to build houses armored against wildfire, with metal roofs that won’t burn and landscaping without flammable greenery. But we’ll also have to engineer communities to divert and protect against flood: rivers that have room to rise, parks and gardens that soak up water, and even underground reservoirs to capture and safely store storm-driven overflow. Communities that make these choices now will have a greatly improved chance to prosper in the future, while those that don’t will be swept away.

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

Since we’re well past the point of preventing climate change, our only choice is to adapt. Until now, human beings have acted as if nature was beneath our notice. We’ve heedlessly built houses on floodplains, at the edge of crumbling coasts, or at urban-rural interfaces among ecosystems like chaparral that are evolved for fire. We’ve built them from cheap materials, like untreated wood that burns and plastic that melts, with no thought for insulation or energy efficiency. We’ve tried to entomb rivers in concrete, as if we knew best where and how much they should flow.

Climate change is exposing all of this for the folly it is. The more we try to ignore nature, the worse it will be for us. The communities that will survive the upheavals to come are the ones that are designed to be resilient.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

I don’t want a Great Firewall of America

[Previous: The Splinternet: The balkanized future of cyberspace]

After a dramatic weekend, TikTok is alive. For now.

Last year, Congress passed – by large bipartisan majorities – a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell the site to American owners or be shut down. ByteDance took their case to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ban this month.

TikTok’s owners insisted they wouldn’t sell. Despite the outgoing Biden administration declining to enforce the law, TikTok shut down on the night of Saturday the 18th. It came back the next day, purportedly with assurances from Donald Trump that he won’t ban it either.

But even if TikTok comes back for good, there’s a sword of Damocles hanging over it. Its existence is at the whim of the executive branch, which can choose whether to enforce the ban or suspend it.

If Trump allows it to exist, it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to suspect he’ll demand something in return. Will TikTok use its algorithm to push messages friendly to his campaign? Will it stifle his critics?

A shameful first

Like 170 million other Americans, I have a TikTok account. Its algorithm learns from what you watch and what you skip, so what you see depends on what you’re interested in.

Like every social media site, it has lots of vapid content and misinformation. But there’s good stuff there as well. My feed is mostly science and nature videos, beautiful places, books and progressive politics. It’s also a good source of breaking news, the way Twitter used to be long ago.

I don’t make videos too often, but I’ve experimented with posting content on TikTok about atheism and secularism, which got a reasonably good response. If China is using it to push propaganda on me, I’ve yet to notice.

As I wrote on OnlySky, the TikTok ban is a shameful first in American history. It’s at risk of being shut down not because of anything it’s done, but because lawmakers feared what it might do. It’s not even a punishment for speech – it’s a punishment for hypothetical speech!

Notwithstanding the court’s blessing, this is a horrible precedent. It’s now accepted constitutional interpretation that “national security” needs override the First Amendment – that the American government, at the very least, can ban any viewpoint or platform that originates from another country. Why couldn’t this argument be used to ban a Chinese-language newspaper, or a media website like the BBC or Al Jazeera?

If the argument is that China could influence TikTok’s algorithm to control what views people are exposed to, or harvest personal info to blackmail us… then why is it the only platform subject to that concern? Why don’t the same “national security” concerns apply to American social media companies run by American billionaires? The oath of citizenship says “enemies foreign and domestic”, after all.

You’re not the customer, you’re the product

By any measure, American social-media companies have done worse than anything that TikTok is accused of. Their algorithms have amplified harassment, toxic conspiracy theories, bigoted rumors, and right-wing misinformation. They’ve contributed to violent radicalization, the spread of fascism, even genocide. They’ve harvested massive quantities of data about us, with no constraints on how they use them.

In fact, Facebook has sold user data to China and to Russia. That’s the very thing we were supposed to be afraid of TikTok doing. Why isn’t Facebook facing a forced divestment or shutdown?

To be clear, I don’t think that TikTok is the “good” social media platform. Fundamentally, all social media companies are for-profit businesses with the goal of collecting user data and monetizing it. It’s just that TikTok is on the rising side of the enshittification curve, the phase when a platform wants to make its user experience pleasant to build an audience. Facebook and Twitter long since passed the peak and are sliding down the other side. If TikTok lasts for the long term, I don’t doubt the same thing will happen.

Instead of targeting TikTok in particular, Congress could have passed comprehensive social-media regulation that applied to every platform alike. That would have been fair and welcome. Such a law could have given us control of our personal data, like Europe’s GDPR, letting us decide who can collect it and what they can do with it. It could have mandated that social media offer non-algorithmic feeds, giving us the choice of what content we want to see. It could have guaranteed interoperability, giving us the right to delete our data or transfer it to a different platform.

But instead, they did… this. It’s roaring hypocrisy for Congress to ban a Chinese-owned company from doing the same things that American companies have been doing, successfully and profitably, for years. It puts the lie to anyone who claims that America has either free speech or a free market.

Flocking to China’s welcoming embrace

However, Americans aren’t sitting back and taking this. In an act of collective spite, they’re flocking to a Chinese social media app, Rednote. So many people have downloaded it, they’ve pushed it to #1 on app stores worldwide.

In fact, Rednote is a colloquial translation. The Chinese name of the app, Xiaohongshu, more accurately translates as “Little Red Book“. If the U.S. government wanted to stop American citizens from being influenced by China… it’s safe to say they failed catastrophically.

Rednote is similar to TikTok, but it’s hosted on servers in China. It has no American presence that a U.S. law or court would have jurisdiction over (although it could be removed from U.S. app stores).

The influx of Americans on what used to be an exclusively Chinese app has sparked fascinating conversations. People are swapping memes and jokes, answering questions about each other’s countries, even helping each other with their homework. It’s a true social experiment – perhaps the first large-scale cultural exchange between the U.S. and China.

I admit I’m curious, but also wary. Although I think the American government blundered badly with this ban, I don’t believe China is our savior. The honeymoon isn’t going to last.

Some Americans on Rednote have been shocked by the high quality of life in China, which they’re seeing for the first time. If that motivates them to demand more from their own government, so much the better. However, China isn’t the template we should be seeking to copy.

China isn’t a democracy. It has no freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion. There’s no due process; you can be disappeared or imprisoned at a party official’s whim. Chinese citizens need permission not just to leave China, but to travel or move internally within its borders (the hukou system). China props up totalitarian regimes like Russia and North Korea and wants to conquer democratic Taiwan. It has little or no tolerance for LGBTQ+ people and other minorities.

That said, it’s not as if the U.S. is a shining example of liberty to contrast with Chinese repression. We’re hurtling backwards on LGBTQ+ and minority rights. While the Chinese regime censors Tiananmen Square, American legislators want to ban books and outlaw history lessons. While China controls its citizens’ movements, red states want to round up immigrants and make it illegal for pregnant people to travel to get an abortion. The U.S. has colonized other countries and engaged in imperialist wars of its own. And now, for the first time ever, the U.S. censors foreign media just like China does.

Besides, whatever China’s government does, it’s not the fault of ordinary Chinese people. They can say that they have no responsibility for the actions of their state, because they never got to vote on it – a claim Americans can’t make!

There’s no telling what will become of TikTok. I haven’t decided whether to give Rednote a try. But whatever social media platforms I’m on, I’ll always be a lover of free speech.

No matter what, I believe we’re better off when people can express their views and talk to each other. I don’t want anyone – not China’s government, not America’s government, and certainly not a handful of billionaire oligarchs – deciding what I can and can’t see on the internet. I don’t trust anyone with that kind of power.

Congestion pricing and change rage

A road sign announcing NYC's Congestion Relief Zone

[Previous: Cars shouldn’t be a necessity for living]

I’ve always believed that all interesting moral problems reduce to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Briefly summarized, this is a situation where it’s better for each individual to make the selfish choice. But if everyone does that, it guarantees disaster, whereas everyone would have wound up better off if only they’d been able to cooperate.

To be sure, there are other moral problems that don’t fit this framework, like racists or religious fundamentalists who want to force their own beliefs on everyone. Obviously, with the state of things as they are, these people are huge threats – but at the level of pure philosophy, they present no challenge. It doesn’t take any serious consideration to dismiss them.

The real moral dilemmas arise when there’s a true clash of interests: individuals’ selfish desires against the collective good. Who should sacrifice, and under what circumstances? How do we prevent free-riders and ensure that those who contribute are repaid in kind?

Traffic in big cities is a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma problem. Most people see cars as more convenient than buses or trains, since you can drive on your own schedule and go straight to your destination.

But if everyone thinks that way, the system collapses. No matter how many roads you build, it’s impossible to accommodate everyone wanting to drive everywhere all the time. Massive traffic jams snarl every highway and street, and no one can get anywhere. Too many people choosing the selfish solution ensures a worse experience for everyone than if they had just taken mass transit.

Then there are all the other externalities of car culture. There’s noise pollution that disrupts people’s sleep. There’s air pollution that causes asthma and other health problems. There are the injuries and deaths from crashes and pedestrians hit by reckless drivers. There are the huge swaths of valuable space given over to parking – which raises rents and real-estate prices on the space left over for human beings to live.

This is where congestion pricing comes in.

After months of delay by our cowardly governor, New York has finally rolled out its congestion pricing program. It’s a modest $9 toll to drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan during business hours.

Congestion pricing increases the monetary cost of driving to be more in line with the true cost. It doesn’t take away driving as an option for people who need it. But for those who don’t, it’s an extra nudge to consider walking, biking or mass transit. It also benefits people who have to drive – because they’ll enjoy faster, easier commutes with less traffic.

Even in just a few days, there are encouraging signs that congestion pricing is working. It’s caused a dramatic drop in traffic on previously car-choked streets and bridges. The revenue will fund badly-needed improvements to the subway system.

All in all, congestion pricing is a great example of public policy working as intended. So, predictably, New York Republicans flew into a lather of rage over it.

For example, MAGA city councilwoman Vickie Paladino – yes, a sitting elected official – encouraged people to destroy the cameras that read license plates:

City Councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Republican who represents parts of northeast Queens, wrote on X that “a high-powered green laser pointer like the ones you find on eBay for under $30 can destroy a camera sensor.”

“So if you buy one of these lasers, be sure to NOT point them at any cameras, because they could be permanently damaged!” she added.

When another user on the platform asked if the laser pointers could “take care” of the MTA’s congestion pricing toll readers, Paladino replied with multiple thinking-face emojis.

As you’ll notice, there was no appeal to democracy. Paladino didn’t ask New Yorkers to protest, write letters or call their representatives. She went straight to wink-and-nudge calls for vandalism and destruction of government property. If a Muslim imam or an immigrant had done the same, who can doubt it’d be treated as terrorism?

It would be one thing for people like Paladino to acknowledge the tradeoff, but to argue that individual liberty is supreme and no one should ever have to sacrifice for others. That would be the philosophically consistent libertarian position.

But this is something different. It’s an immediate, knee-jerk fury at the mere idea of changing anything or giving up any privilege you have. Paul Krugman calls it “change rage“:

Yet while cars may be special, there’s a broader syndrome — change rage? — in which a significant number of people go wild at any suggestion that they should change their behavior for the common good. The change doesn’t have to involve major cost or inconvenience; seriously, even masking up during the pandemic wasn’t that big a hardship. It’s more the principle of the thing: How dare you tell me how to live my life?

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it took off during COVID. The stage was set by decades of conservative anti-intellectualism, which taught their voters to reject science and scorn expertise whenever it didn’t align with what party elites wanted.

Then, when the pandemic hit, the cult of Trumpist Republicans denied there was a problem, because admitting its existence would be a blot on the competence of their Dear Leader. All the anti-mask and anti-vaccine frenzy grew from this starting point.

This oppositional, defiant, “you can’t tell me what to do” attitude has spread to every issue on conservatives’ radar. They rage over replacing polluting gas stoves with clean electric appliances. They take a concept as simple and appealing as the “15-minute city” – the idea that cities should be designed at human scale, so all the amenities you’d want are no more than 15 minutes’ walk – and twist it into a bizarre conspiracy about imprisoning people in their homes. If drunk driving laws or no-smoking zones were proposed today, in our poisoned political atmosphere, I doubt they’d pass.

Democracy can handle the give-and-take of political sausage-making. What it can’t survive is one faction treating every policy it disagrees with as an existential threat. This isn’t just a hardball bargaining tactic. It’s a wholesale rejection of the social contract that makes us a society in the first place.

Image credit: Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz via Wikimedia Commons; released under CC BY-SA 4.0 license

Why libertarian cities fail, part 2

A concrete bunker built into a hillside

[Previous: Why libertarian cities fail]

Ever since Ayn Rand dreamed up Galt’s Gulch, real-life libertarians have been inspired to try building their own utopias of freedom, out from under the thumb of oppressive governments. Over the years, I’ve reported on several of these attempts, mostly for the entertainment value of libertarians learning, too late and to their cost, why the state exists.

I’ve written about “Galt’s Gulch Chile“, a real-estate venture that pitched itself as a haven of freedom, but collapsed in a dust cloud of lawsuits as investors and developers accused each other of fraud.

More recently, I reported on the wildcat community of Rio Verde Foothills in Arizona, which found a clever way to skirt regulations about water, only to discover, to their surprise and dismay, that human beings still need water.

Now there’s yet another wannabe libertarian utopia. This time, it’s Vivos xPoint, a planned community in rural South Dakota.

It was originally the Black Hills Ordnance Depot, an complex of bunkers built by the Army for munitions storage during World War II. The military vacated the base in 1967, and the bunkers sat empty for years, until the land was bought by Vivos, a real-estate company. Vivos’ raison d’etre is redeveloping military-surplus bomb shelters and missile silos into luxury bunkers for rich preppers:

The owner and operator of Vivos xPoint, California businessman Robert K. Vicino, told News Watch that he has had great success in leasing more than 200 of the bunkers so far and that the project is highly successful and profitable.

Vicino also said the bunker complex has evolved into a thriving community of like-minded people, most of whom are happy to live there and support one another while realizing their dream of a self-sustainable lifestyle in an area relatively safe from disasters or potential ills that could endanger society and the world.

Let’s hear more about the kind of person who’d plan a project like this:

Vicino said he first became interested in developing or selling survival bunkers in 1982. Vicino said he heard a female voice in his head clearly tell him that, “Robert, you need to build underground bunkers or shelters for thousands of people to survive what is coming,” he said. “I attributed it to the Holy Spirit.”

According to another article, his son Dante Vicino agrees:

The name of the game at Vivos xPoint, Vicino said, is freedom, freedom, and more freedom. And lots of privacy: The bunkers are spaced about 400 feet apart, each one bounded by a 30-foot perimeter.

Within that space, tenants can do pretty much whatever they please within the lease, whether raising a garden, building a hothouse, or creating a small parking area or garage.

“…South Dakota is a sanctuary state for conservative people, military veterans, and police officers. Everybody that’s getting thrown under the bus by all the left-wing [activity] that’s happening. They’re all welcome here,” Vicino said.

Vivos markets itself to wealthy buyers who believe the collapse of civilization is imminent. Their pitch is that the development is remote and well-protected enough to ride out any catastrophe:

The Vivos website says the South Dakota bunker site will be safe from “the marauders during the aftermath of a large-scale cataclysm or catastrophic event.” The site has a U.S. map showing that southwestern South Dakota is outside the range of submersion areas along the coasts, known nuclear targets, the Yellowstone blast zone and “high-crime anarchy zones.”

Am I too cynical for suspecting that the list of “high-crime anarchy zones” includes anywhere non-white people live?

Vicino says he envisioned a peaceful community of respect, cooperation and tolerance. However, unlike the inexplicably harmonious Galt’s Gulch, it hasn’t gone so smoothly. It turns out, when you assemble a self-selected community of distrustful survivalists, paranoid preppers, and gun lovers, all drawn by the promise of getting to do what they want… they don’t get along with each other.

According to the article, Vivos and its residents have been furiously suing each other. There have been complaints to the attorney general and at least one FBI inquiry. Residents have alleged a long list of broken promises: no security, no road maintenance, no trash pickup, no water. And then there’s this eyebrow-raising rule:

Vivos uses a 99-year lease agreement, so residents do not legally own their bunkers.

…Lessees sign a 14-page lease and eight-page list of community rules, and those who don’t pay or violate the rules can be evicted. One rule states that Vivos residents are forbidden from talking to the media about the bunker complex or the company under the threat of fines or possible eviction.

Remember, you move to this place because you love freedom! Now just sign on this dotted line that says you relinquish your First Amendment rights.

This isn’t an aberration. Time and again, libertarians claim to value freedom above all else – but when you look at their planned communities, they invariably have one person or a small elite ruling with absolute power. In my 2016 post “On Seasteading and Liberlands“, I wrote about the proposed “Freedom Ship” whose captain would have been a dictator with an armed private security force.

In 2017, in “The One Percent Embraces Doomsday“, I mentioned another survival project pitched at preppers built into a decommissioned missile silo. It came with the stipulation that the board of directors can force people to labor, prevent them from leaving, and imprison them at will.

Vivos xPoint’s anti-free-speech rules aren’t obscure fine print that no one cares about. They’re being enforced. Residents claim that if they complain, talk to the media, or file suit over living conditions, Vivos evicts them – while keeping all the money they paid up front for that “99-year” lease.

(Interestingly, this mirrors a scenario from Atlas Shrugged. In my review, I asked why banker Midas Mulligan sells land in Galt’s Gulch rather than just renting it, allowing him to profit while keeping control. Vivos has done that exact thing, as real self-interested capitalists should.)

Astonishingly, it gets worse. According to multiple accounts, people who live there are afraid of the staff hired to work at the complex. Many of these complaints center around a worker named Kelly Anderson:

Anderson was shot in the chest during an August confrontation with Streeter, a former Vivos xPoint resident who is fighting his eviction. Streeter said he shot Anderson in self-defense after Anderson threatened Streeter and his family. Anderson, who was unarmed at the time of the confrontation, sent threatening messages about harming Streeter to an acquaintance just prior to the shooting, according to text messages records obtained by News Watch.

According to that text log, Anderson wrote: “I’m about to f— his ass up,” and “What he did isn’t right and I’m gonna educate this mother f—.”

…Bunker resident Rich Roehm said he always carries a .357 handgun but that after the August shooting, he removed the “snake shot” cartridges and replaced them with hollow-point bullets with far more stopping power. Roehm called Anderson, the subcontractor who lives and works at Vivos xPoint, “dangerous.”

…All four residents interviewed by News Watch during an October visit to the site carried handguns for protection.

This is a huge irony that I doubt any of the residents appreciate. They bought these bunkers because they want to be safe from the chaos of the outside world… but it seems the biggest danger they face is from the other people at the complex with them.

This is a lesson that libertarians stubbornly resist learning. They want to be free of the state, to move to a place where nobody’s rules will be imposed on them. But when you try to get away from democracy and all its safeguards, you don’t get rid of authority. It just winds up in the hands of people who have all the power and none of the accountability.

New on OnlySky: The coming drone wars

I have a new column today on OnlySky. It’s about the future of war, and how humans are playing less of a role in it.

In the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine’s use of drones has been a force multiplier, allowing them to hold out against the numerically superior Russian army and even score some important strategic victories. We can be sure that military planners all over the world are paying close attention. It’s a glimpse of the future of war: not small numbers of high-tech, uber-expensive fighter jets or warships, but massive swarms of cheap drones that can be used for reconnaissance or to deliver pinpoint strikes.

In this case, drone technology has helped defend democracy against the invasion of an autocratic foe. But it’s not necessarily a development we should cheer. It’s all too possible that drones will make wars of the future cheaper, less risky, and therefore more common.

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:

So far, most drones have been used as kamikaze weapons—essentially, smart artillery shells that can home in on a target—or for reconnaissance to guide artillery strikes. But as the war drags on, they’re becoming larger, smarter and more capable. Like the Baba Yaga, they’re evolving into weapons platforms in their own right.

The newest iteration of Ukraine’s sea-going Magura drones carry anti-aircraft missiles. In a spectacular demonstration of how much the technology has advanced, one of them recently shot down a Russian helicopter. And, coming soon, the next generation of Ukraine’s ground-based drones will have grenade launchers and machine guns. They’ll be able to fight alongside infantry on the front lines.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

FFRF and Jerry Coyne: Atheists for human rights, or atheists for the religious right?

Once again, the secular community has been split by Deep Rifts. In a pattern we should all be familiar with by now, the clash is between a younger generation that’s more enlightened than the past, versus an ossified old guard, blind to their own prejudices, that joins hands with the religious right to oppose moral progress.

The story began when the Freedom from Religion Foundation published a column by legal fellow Kat Grant, “What is a woman?“, pointing out that society’s views on gender have been shaped by Christian dogma:

In much of the modern United States, gender is viewed through the lens of the religious traditions that were brought by European colonizers. Missionaries often viewed gender systems outside of the strict sexual binary to be a mark of a “less civilized” nation, and imposed views of both gender and presentation (such as forcing boys in residential schools to cut their hair) onto the indigenous communities. Catholic explorer Jacques Marquette wrote in 1674:

I do not know by what superstition some Illiniwek, as well as some Sioux, take on women’s clothing while still young, and keep it all their lives: there is some mystery, as they never get married, and lower themselves by doing everything that women do… they are called to the council, where nothing may be decided without their advice; finally, their claim of living an extraordinary life lets them pass for manitous, that is to say great spirits, or important people. (Translation by Hamish Copley)

In response, Jerry Coyne, a member of the FFRF’s honorary board, asked and received permission to publish a rebuttal. In it, he argues that sex isn’t a spectrum but a binary (not true). He acknowledges the existence of intersex people, but insists they don’t count:

Nowhere else in biology would deviations this rare undermine a fundamental concept. To illustrate, as many as 1 in 300 people are born with some form of polydactyly — without the normal number of ten fingers. Nevertheless, nobody talks about a “spectrum of digit number.”

Can Coyne really not see why sex and gender are of concern to progressives but digit number isn’t?

If the religious right was claiming that only people with ten fingers are normal, and that anyone with a different number of fingers is a freak who shouldn’t be allowed to teach children (“it will confuse them!”) or get married, or hold elected office… then yes, we’d be justified in pointing out that digit number is a spectrum and not a fixed value! Until then, we’re arguing against the harmful beliefs that people really hold, not merely hypothetical forms of prejudice.

Most shocking, Coyne argues that transgender people are more criminal than cisgender people:

Transgender [sic], then, appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders.

This is Bigotry 101. It’s exactly the same as racists saying that Black people are all criminals because more of them are imprisoned than white people, or Trumpist tabloids shrieking about every crime committed by an immigrant, or Christian conservatives demanding that every mosque be put under police surveillance because fundamentalist Muslims have committed acts of terrorism.

Coyne makes this argument without considering confounding factors – like the fact that minorities tend to get singled out for biased enforcement and unjust prosecution. For example, transgender people have been arrested for prostitution just for carrying condoms.

Publishing this article was a mistake on FFRF’s part. However, they realized this quickly and made it right by taking down Coyne’s article and publishing an unequivocal statement of support for LGBTQ rights.

In a snit, Coyne, as well as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins, quit the FFRF’s honorary board. So be it. If they want to consign themselves to crankery and irrelevance, that’s their choice.

Dawkins and Coyne are biologists, and perhaps they think that gives them special authority in this area, but it doesn’t. This isn’t a debate about biology, but about the social roles we assign to gender and the way we should treat people who don’t conform to stereotypes. Should your chromosomes, or gametes, or genitals be the determining factor for what careers you’re encouraged to pursue, or how you’re expected to dress, or what your role is in the household? I say no.

As I’ve written before, you’d think these big-name atheists would feel disquiet that their view on sex and gender is exactly the same as the religious right’s. But they don’t. In fact, Coyne airily dismisses the idea – “the FFRF has a remarkable ability to place any kind of antiwoke ideology under the rubric of ‘Christian nationalism'” – which demonstrates willful blindness to the fact that this is a crusade by Christian nationalists.

Anti-transgender bathroom bills and bans on gender-affirming therapy are top agenda items for the religious right. Coyne can’t admit that obvious fact, because then he’d have to recognize whose side he’s on.

In fact, Coyne and others aren’t just echoing the opinions of the religious right, but their priorities. Whatever you think about transgender people, a fair assessment would have to conclude that they’re not a threat to anyone, certainly not the way that religious fundamentalism is. Yet by making opposition to transgender rights their shibboleth, Coyne, Dawkins and Pinker are signaling that they consider it a cause more important even than atheism or church-state separation.

As any freethinker should know, religious conservatives have a long record of whipping up mob panic against minorities to advance their own agenda. It used to be gay people. It used to be atheists. But both those groups have won greater social acceptance, so bigots have moved on to the next disfavored group they can sow prejudice against. The FFRF recognizes this, but Coyne and others don’t. Instead, they’re adding their voices in support of this regressive and hateful brand of fundamentalism.

Threads of 2024

A vertical arrangement of multicolored threads

At the end of each year, I do a roundup of the stories and ideas that I kept revisiting over the previous twelve months. Here at Freethought Blogs, I’m carrying on the tradition.

OnlySky Dies… and Rises Again

At the beginning of 2024, I was a regular columnist for OnlySky, a media site founded by Shawn Hardin to advance the secular perspective through journalism and storytelling. I had great hopes for OnlySky, but it ran out of funding at the worst possible time. In March, it shut down, and Freethought Blogs graciously extended me an invitation to come on board.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Later in the year, OnlySky returned to life with a new, more focused mission of exploring possible futures. I’m contributing regularly again (here are my OS 2.0 columns) while continuing to publish my own musings on other topics here at FTB.

AI Is Eating the Internet

For better or for worse, AI is all the rage this year. On FTB, I wrote about “Justin” the Catholic chatbot, and how AI makes the perfect religious apologist because it contradicts itself with no shame but never changes its mind. I noted that social media has become a wasteland thanks to spammy AI and algorithmic garbage.

On OnlySky, I followed up with a column on how AI slop may destroy the internet as we know it, and how AI itself may be headed for a crash because of a problem called model collapse.

The Horseman of War Rides On

Israel’s indiscriminate destruction of Gaza hasn’t ended. In April, I wrote that Israel briefly had the world’s sympathy, but squandered it. I criticized politicians who think the First Amendment has an “Israel exception”, and rhetorically asked what the right way to protest is.

Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is approaching its third year. I wrote about how Russia is cannibalizing its own future by persecuting scientists, engineers and basically anyone educated, while sending the rest of its population to die in the trenches.

Where are they going to replace these massive losses? From American right-wingers, perhaps. In August, Putin threw open the doors to volunteers for the meat grinder. He’s also been busily recruiting useful idiots. At least some of these efforts are bearing fruit, as in my post about what kind of Westerner voluntarily moves to Russia.

The 2024 Eclipse

In a year with so many low points, one of the high points was the total eclipse in April. I mused about why we’re lucky enough to get these on Earth.

On the date, I made the long drive north to see it. Although I was concerned about the weather, I was lucky: upstate New York had perfect clear blue skies, some of the best weather in the nation for sky-watchers. The eclipse was an awe-inspiring sight, like a hole in the sky. Seeing it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, without question.

Capitalism, Religion and American Decline

The 2024 election is one giant leap down the road of American decline. The hemorrhaging of red states, and especially the slow dying of West Virginia, could be a glimpse of what’s in store.

In December, the assassination of a healthcare CEO shone a spotlight on the cruelties of unchecked capitalism and the evils it wreaks on our lives. It’s the perfect illustration of my maxim that capitalism (and religion) are their own worst enemies.

All this poses the question: Does living under capitalism inherently make us unhappy? My answer: no, but also yes.

Atheist Demographics

There’s one bright spot for freethinkers to take heart in: the nonreligious are still growing, while religions are shrinking across the board. And, in a massive shift that I’m sure we’ll hear more about, more women than men are shucking off religion for the first time.

Coming Soon

It’s been too long since I’ve done a review of a libertarian political novel. In 2025, I’m going to do a new one: The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith. This book is as gloriously deranged as anything that ever came from Ayn Rand’s pen. It’s going to be great.

I’m planning to publish the reviews first on my Patreon, so if you want an early look, subscribe today! They’ll appear on FTB at a later date, never fear.

Living in the dark

A lantern glowing in the dark

A secular sermon for the 2024 solstice season

We’re living through a time of darkness, both literally and metaphorically.

This is the season of the winter solstice, when the nights are longest, the earth is dead and frozen, and cold winds howl at the door. Our distant ancestors built up rituals around this season, lighting fires and decorating their homes with evergreens. It was both a reminder and a petition to the gods, ensuring that light and warmth would return and crops would grow again.

Thanks to astronomy, we know that this is a natural cycle. Prayers and sacrifices aren’t necessary to bring the sun back. However, those ancient rhythms still echo in us, and many people find their mood sinking into depression when the world is darkest.

Of course, there’s another reason to feel melancholy. As a new year dawns, America is right back where we were in the waning days of 2016. Once again, we’re dreading the next four years and the chaos and disaster they’re sure to bring. Once again, we’re facing the prospect of a long darkness ahead.

It’s hard to believe we’re back here. We’ve enjoyed four years of generally competent and decent government. The Biden administration was far from perfect, but it could boast a long list of genuinely meaningful accomplishments. It was respectful of science, concerned for protecting democracy, willing to treat all Americans equally.

Most of all, I’d say, there was the intangible sense of peace of mind that came from having adults in charge. The world was still turbulent, but you could open social media or check the headlines without fearing what you might see. There wasn’t that constant, low-grade anxiety at the back of your mind about the next nightmare about to fall upon us.

But it didn’t last. Given the chance to have four more such years, or to return to the previous era of blundering incompetence, gleeful cruelty, and anti-democratic authoritarianism… we know what Americans picked. A foolish nation has returned to its folly, just as a dog returns to its vomit.

Where does this leave those of us who look for the light?

It’s no challenge to be a secular humanist when times are good. Ours is an ideology of optimism. We want to believe that humanity is flawed but has the capacity to improve, that we’re leaving the follies of the past behind and growing wiser. Admittedly, it’s easier to believe this when the world plays along.

But that can’t be the only guidance that our philosophy offers. If secular humanism is a fair-weather ideology – if it only works when people are good and the world is peaceful – then there’s no value in it.

People have never been all good. The world has never been peaceful. We’ve always suffered from poverty, war, oppression, unfairness, toxic superstition, corrupt institutions and bad rulers. Humanity has been afflicted by selfishness, short-sightedness, stupidity, bigotry and violence throughout the span of our existence on earth. The times and places when peace reigned, democracy flourished and justice was upheld are the exception and not the rule.

Our morality has to be built on an unflinching recognition of that fact, like solid bedrock beneath a house. If it isn’t, then it’s a thing of straw – flimsy, insubstantial, incapable of offering advice for the world we live in. It’s no better than Christian morality, which proclaims that people are evil to the core and the world’s problems are unfixable, so the only thing we can do is wait for death.

To our credit, we have examples who prove that this is possible. The roll call of history lists countless freethinkers who lived in darker, more violent, more ignorant times than ours. If you look only at the facts of their eras, they had even less reason for optimism than we do. Nevertheless, they persisted.

There were philosophers like Voltaire, who lived in the dark ages of theocracy and monarchy; orators like Robert Ingersoll, who grew up with slavery and saw the U.S. torn apart in civil war over it; scientists like Carl Sagan, who lived in the shadow of nuclear war; feminist pioneers like Frances Wright or Mary Wollstonecraft, who refused to bow to patriarchy; civil-rights activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston or A. Philip Randolph, who dreamed of a world free from both religious and racist oppression; and many, many more I could name.

These past ambassadors of enlightenment didn’t give up or give in, however dark or hopeless the world seemed. They didn’t compromise their principles to fit in. They spoke out boldly, regardless of whether they found a receptive audience. They persisted in preaching that humans could do better. They carried the torch onward, keeping the flame of those ideals burning, preserving them until the next generation could take them up and improve on them.

That’s our task as well.

The principles of secular humanism are the right ones: reason, empathy, justice, equality. They’re better for the people who follow them and better for humanity and the world as a whole. I truly believe that, and that belief doesn’t depend on the outcome of elections or the results of opinion polls. I won’t give it up no matter how many people say otherwise.

In fact, our secular ideals are more vital and more powerful when the world is against us. When the majority of humanity chooses cruelty, a humanist morality that’s based on compassion and decency burns brighter and clearer by contrast. In times of darkness, it stands out like a lantern lighting the way.

However long this dark season lasts, we should carry that light proudly. We should preserve it for the future, just as our ancestors preserved it for us. The time will come when the world is ready for it again.