Will Of The Governed

Posted on July 17, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, we need to ask ourselves, what is the meaning of the will of the governed? Is it the actual will of those who live in a nation? Maybe the will of the people is a perception. It doesn’t exist and so it can be whatever those in power wish it to be. Then there are the advances in public manipulation pioneered by Edward Bernays. If elites with unlimited money for public service ads can’t swindle us into whatever mindset the elite want us in, that mindset must be pretty bad. At this point, we use voting as an analogue of the will of the governed. Elections, however, can either show the actual will of the people or the will of the elites superimposed on the people. So I ask again, what is the meaning of the will of the governed? Is it a perception or do we have agency?

Since the Enlightenment, the will of the governed has been a guiding principle in industrialized Western style governments. Human philosophy transitioned at that point from the rights of kings to the will of the governed. Prior to Enlightenment we were ruled by a series of false arguments. One was that the king’s power devolved from God himself. Whatever god you happen to worship will do. Another was appeal to authority. Where the authority of the speaker denied questions. If the King or Pope said a thing, no matter how absurd, you were obligated to believe it. They were the legitimate authority at the time. The will of the governed, and questioning authority, upended those fallacies. The idea that people should not be imposed upon unless they accede to it is the opposite of the rights of kings.

Now that the will of the people is a foundational ethos of governance, every civilized nation on Earth has elections… even if simply for show. The idea is that they can point to a 100% approval rating by election as proof that the people accept their divine rule. Indeed, the legitimacy of any State is now dependent on its serving the will of the people, whether they do or not. So while every nation claims to exist at the will of the governed, very few do. Most governments today use strategies to manipulate the will of the governed to the will of the governors. They rationalize this by claiming to be smarter, better educated, and more moral than the common run of man. So they feel justified in subverting the will of the governed to their own will. How to do it is their question.

The answer for despots is to pervert elections, censor the people, and use mass media manipulation. This way they can appear to be serving the will of the people, when they only serve their own will. A system that truly exists at the will of the people cannot censor the people’s voice… no one knows the will of a mute. Good government doesn’t use mass manipulation to drive consensus… because a mark is not a free agent. Moreover, States that serve the will of the people never allow vote fraud… since the will of the people cannot be known if the mechanism to find it has been corrupted. Those systems that are corrupted, then, have reverted to the rights of kings. Censorship and manipulation are a reversion to appeal to authority. So we are coming full circle since the Enlightenment.

Today elites manufacture consensus with propaganda, censor the plebes, and election tamper. The term will of the people has no real meaning anymore. Even nations that espouse democracy as a core ideal engage in propaganda, censorship, and election tampering. In the EU, whole parties are banned, election winners are removed by unelected bureaucrats, and people go to prison for tweets. In the US, election fraud is canonized into law. For example, the recent LA election, and those who were charged as being insurrectionists for protesting the 2020 election fraud machine. So let’s drop the act. We are silenced, manipulated, and defrauded. We come full circle, returning to appeal to authority and the rights of kings… or in our case, the authority of experts and the rights of bureaucrats.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Limericks – Fun And Profit

Posted on July 16, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

America was called land of the free,
Ruled by fairness polity and decency,
Come the progressive,
With ideas impressive,
So now it’s called bureaucratic tyranny.

Cutting regulation makes the elite frown,
They consider you as but a mere clown,
The ten percent,
Seeking our rent,
So they have to keep the little guys down.

I’ve heard God works in mysterious ways,
And being in his employ really pays,
The alternative is an upper cut,
Here and eternity suffering but,
None will know till the end of his days.

Being tough shows strong character,
Building ideas and enemies peculiar,
But ideas alienate,
They investigate,
So one must beware of logic circular.

Perverting a system for fun and ______,
Extracting from the little Miss Moffit,
But there is a ____,
To the spirit lost,
As the good do paint their own ______.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Are Cultures Equal?

Posted on July 15, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, the difference between a successful culture and a failed culture is not in genetics but in its incentives. A barbarian acts as the barbarian due to his or her philosophy of life. The same is true of a civilized person. Civilization comes from culture just as barbarism comes from it as well. Take a Viking from Leif Erickson’s crew and bring him to today… and he will act a barbarian. Not because there is anything deficient in him, but in the culture he adheres to. Moreover, there are cultures that inculcate stupidity. They encourage actions that harm the actor and the audience. Rare is the culture that promotes pragmatism, thrift, and an entrepreneurial spirit. That’s why most cultures are corrosive of prosperity, freedom, and peace. This is why I say, cultures are not equal.

The only way to judge a culture is pragmatically, by outcome. Cultures have incentives. Every culture creates incentive structures that drive behavior. These incentivized behaviors determine if a culture is self-destructive, successful, or somewhere in between. Moreover, the more isolated a culture is the more self-destructive it is able to become. Isolation need not be geographical, it can also be ideological. A culture that has an isolated elite siloed off in an ivory tower is just as isolated as a tribe deep in the Amazon. The isolation is mental instead of geographical. That’s how successful cultures turn on themselves leading to civilizational collapse. Cultures that are not isolated, however, have to deal with other cultures. This competition has a winnowing effect on the absurdity that leads to failed cultures.

Cultures, for the most part, are not chosen… they are inherited. A child has no choice as far as we know in what culture he or she is born into. Once they grow, they might attain the knowledge to weigh cultures and choose one or an amalgam of cultures that best suits them. Most, however, never have the time or inclination to seek out a better way of living. So we mostly stick to the one we were born into. This means that unsuccessful cultures can live on for a long time, especially if subsidized by successful cultures. So a culture can do everything wrong and yet survive, even the competition of cultures if it is isolated or subsidized. The problem with subsidizing a failed culture is that it is often barbaric. That barbaric culture then can turn on its benefactor like the Goths on the Romans.

There are two ways a culture can expand, one is by war and the other is by success. Cultures that spread by the sword or gun will say so. Mao for example said, power flows from the barrel of a gun and so the communist party must never lose control of the guns. Islam is filled with Hadiths urging constant warfare against non-believers. These are barbaric cultures that can’t survive the competition of cultures unless subsidized. Special treatment is so ingrained in their psyches that if a subsidy is cut off they complain they are being choked to death. Without oil in the Middle East or progressives capturing the institutions in the West, Islam and communism would collapse everywhere. Even Communist China had to convert to fascism to survive. In order to seek trade subsidies.

Wise people don’t simply inherit a culture, they seek and cultivate the best parts of the best, as judged pragmatically. Just because someone is born into a failed culture doesn’t mean they’re condemned to it. If your culture inculcates ignorance instead of knowledge, hate instead of equanimity, war instead of peace, central planning instead of freedom, laziness instead of diligence, and political favor rather than merit, your culture is holding you back. It is not the equal of successful cultures. If a culture needs subsidies to keep famine from the door, it is a failed culture. Keeping it going by subsidy is just extending its harm to humanity. The solution is double-pronged, one is for the individual to adopt the best qualities of the best cultures, and the other is for successful cultures to stop subsidizing failed ones.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Central Planning Unites All Dark Systems

Posted on July 14, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, central planning unites all dark systems. If one were to draw a Venn diagram of every system of government that has delivered evil, they would overlap at central planning. Communists and fascists are notorious enemies yet both share central planning as a core element. The Islamic Caliphate invests all power in the Caliph, which is central planning taken to the extreme. This is because real evil can only happen when power is centralized. Distributed power allows for distributed evils but only centralized authority provides the mechanism for genocide, world wars, and all other crimes against humanity. While evil exists in decentralized power, the scale of a dark system, however, is impossible. To the future central planner the promise of central planning is too good to pass up.

A dark system is one that results in systematic evils visited on the people. The Nazis built a dark system by that definition. It promised a golden age but delivered genocide, crimes against humanity, and total destruction. Mao’s Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, promised a classless utopia and delivered famine on a national scale, industrial mismanagement of the economy, and a one-child policy that has devastated China’s demographics. The Caliphate Ataturk inherited was in absolute decline. He tried to change it to follow the Christian model of capitalism and freedom. Meanwhile, the Young Turks visited their inhumanity on mankind under his reign. There are plenty of other examples in history. Every empire and civilization rose in virtue and freedom, then declined in corruption and central planning.

Central planning is any system where power is elevated to the elite and away from the people. The more decisions are made by an elite the more centrally planned it is. Meanwhile the more decisions left to the people the more decentralized it is. Intellectuals for generations have touted the advantages of central planning. They argue if decisions are made by the most qualified, then the best decisions will be made. They then define the most qualified as the experts. People who have credentials, educations, and proven intellect should make the decisions. They further argue that decentralized authority leaves important decisions in the hands of laymen and laywomen. Would you rather have a trained doctor removing your appendix, or a janitor? Their logic goes on in this fashion.

Plato suggested a centrally planned system could work if the central planners were “philosopher kings.” Our central planners consider themselves those philosopher kings. Creating a dark system couldn’t be further from their minds. Many earnestly strive to improve the lot of man by totalitarianism. They diligently work to make the best decisions they can, but with so many decisions to make about so many arcane subjects, no expert can put the proper time into them. So they do the best they can. Even irrelevant questions like how long, wide, and what material to make replacement shoelaces are daunting. So, would you rather have a heartless doctor take five seconds to remove your appendix with a jackknife… or a janitor who loves you, with unlimited time, training, and equipment?

This is why central planning always ends up creating a dark system. Not only is it impossible to make all the decisions in an economy by an expert, but the incentives feed back into the nature of humanity to bring out the worst in us. If you know your decision will harm thousands, but it will help millions, it hardens you. Cognitive dissonance demands it. As one makes ever more heartless but “necessary” decisions, Arendt’s Banality of Evil arises. Evil gets baked into the system, not out of malice but out of efficiency. It turns out the most qualified to decide are those with the most to win or lose and first hand knowledge, not a distant bureaucratic expert. This is how and why central planning leads to a dark system. The answer is to decentralize power and leave decisions to the most qualified.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Limericks – It’s Just Modernity

Posted on July 13, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

Bureaucrats demand you comply,
The world is getting ready to fry,
It’s for posterity,
This is clarity,
Only idiots cut off their food supply.

Government is cloaked while we are transparent,
Minding our thoughts like a smothering parent,
A censorship empire,
Is a despotic umpire,
That’s when the tyranny becomes apparent.

Normalcy bias is a terrific thing,
It keeps us sane in a chaos ring,
But it’s also a tool,
To control a fool,
As we close our eyes to the evil king.

There was a cover up so corrupt,
The actors were just out of luck,
Black as a flue,
Dirty as one too,
Stars skating on a lake of muck.

Those who believe in __________,
Abstain from political _________,
Our rights are ____,
Just soldier on,
As we’re told it’s just modernity.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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The Revenue Tell

Posted on July 12, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, one way to tell if your government is extractive is by their rhetoric. Is every problem a “revenue” problem? If so, then you are being extracted from. Elites who run an extractive government are always looking to increase revenue. Equal governments limit themselves, their appetites, and their vision so they live within their means. Extractive governments do the opposite. They don’t limit themselves, their appetites, or their utopian vision. The result is extractive governments are perpetually in debt and constantly in need of revenue, to maintain their profligate spending, let alone fund their newest utopian idea. Extractive governments promise the Moon and stars but deliver debt and dysfunction. Not because the people running them are evil, but because extracting is a trap.

Equal government would be what Aristotle called “right government” in his Politics. Such a government serves the interests of everyone. What he called wrong government or what I am calling extractive government, serves the interest of politically favored factions. Clearly, most who are in one of the politically favored factions prefer extractive government. This is because they are the recipient of that extraction. Those who are extracted from are opposed to it, but have no power to stop it. We see this in Europe. The EU rides roughshod over the rights, demands, and property of the European natives, while it bans political parties and exploits the courts to chastise problematic people. This is an attribute of an extractive or wrong form of government.

Indeed, if you see your government exploiting law to keep itself in power, you can presume that it is a wrong form and is extracting. When there is a double standard… there cannot be equality. This is proof enough of a wrong form of government. Censorship is another tell of a wrong form or extractive government. If someone is silenced, they are not equal and so the government that practices censorship does not serve everyone equally. It serves some specially. At no time is this more true than when the censors are found to have censored truth to promote lies. A government that engages in sub human acts is not a right form. That would be a contradiction in terms. Such a government is clearly a wrong form that extracts. How do the extractors stay in power though?

Olson in his idea of the logic of collective action illustrated a quality of extractive or wrong forms of government. He said that if a government policy affects you a great deal you will put a great deal of effort into it, but if it has little visible effect on your life you will put little effort into it. This idea has the beauty of simplicity. It follows human nature like a river does a valley. People are at heart pragmatic. We seek the most efficient means to good. This means if a little effort results in a lot of effect then we will put that effort in. If, however, a great deal of effort leads to little reward, we put that effort elsewhere. It’s just pragmatism. So the extractors put maximal effort into extracting, while the extracted from put in little… until the balance is tilted.

Once it becomes efficient to put effort into stopping the extraction, because it has got so bad, the extractors need to use law, censorship, and sub-human actions. The extractors will have no choice. The further they go down that rabbit hole the more entrapped they get. The sunk cost fallacy only adds to the self-interest. Wrong forms of government, or extractive governments, become more despotic the more threatened they feel. If the spigot of opulence is touched, you can expect them to go apoplectic. The rhetoric of helping the downtrodden and denying the extraction becomes accusations and criminal charges of perjury. Such governments run perpetual deficits because they are extractive, not equal or right forms. So if you hear your government ever lamenting it needs more revenue it is extractive.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Limericks – Corrupt To The Core

Posted on July 11, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

This one thing should make you sober,
Human heartedness is close to over,
Here is a retort,
Nothing is as short,
As compassion for the seventh of October.

A lackadaisical attitude will leave it up to fate,
As time passes the foolish just sit and wait,
Emotion in a jar,
It’s gone too far,
When civil war does break out it’ll be too late.

Many people try to keep abreast,
Staying in the know is their quest,
But agency is in remission,
They need permission,
To even vote for their self-interest.

Experts claim to be an infallible proctor,
Of brilliant ideas what a great concoctor,
Opinion you can buy,
On them you can rely,
Just like the chanting’s of a witch doctor.

Sympathy is now a tool of ___,
Withhold it and experience ____,
Is agency in remission,
You don’t need __________,
From charlatans corrupt to the core.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Stupidity Leads To Central Planning

Posted on July 10, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, one of the primary attributes of a stupid person is the belief that if given unlimited power they could make the world into utopia. They would be the virtuous central planner. I suspect almost every stupid person on Earth believes that. Such ideas are born of the Dunning-Kruger effect. One need not know anything about a subject to assume they know it all. This is because we don’t know what we don’t know. The stupid, however, assume that if they don’t know it, it doesn’t exist. This facilitates the notion that one could rule the planet with an iron fist and Heaven on Earth would result. For one to be that stupid, knowledge of history must be perverted or absent, complexity theory has to be gibberish, and the ego needs to be the size of the planet they wish to rule.

History is emphatic that central planning fails spectacularly. Even when vested in the hands of Confucius’ Sage Kings, it was perverted by Yu. Modern versions have resulted in mass slaughter, famine, and world wars. Then there are the gulags. History is only a reflection of the nature of central planning by force. Confucius’ Sage Kings ruled by example and force of personality… not force of arms. They supposedly became the ideal of what they asked of the people. Seeing the example, the people would follow and be virtuous. How many people who earnestly believe they could rule the world with an iron fist and create utopia… would lead by example? I would wager not one. That’s why central planners need force, to keep the people from following the leader’s example.

People seek their own self-interest. I do it and so do you. It’s human nature. If we are asked to sacrifice for the greater good, and we see a good in it for us and our loved ones, we step up. If we look at those who are asking us to tighten our belts and they are loosening theirs, we become aggravated. That’s when force becomes necessary. External force is insufficient to stifle human nature, however. The example of greedy, power-mad, and egotistical rulers only makes everyone greedy, power-mad, and egotistical. This causes chaos because the people only follow law and morals when there is instant punishment. They have no self-restraint. That was beaten out of them by their leader’s actions and wrath. The stupider the leaders are, the more destructive the stupidity they foster will be.

I think most people who believe if they were made all powerful they would create utopia, earnestly believe they would improve the lot of Mankind. They wouldn’t seek to starve millions, start wars that kill millions, or enslave whole populations… that would simply be the result. This is because intentions do not yield results. There is a saying… concentrated stupidity is indistinguishable from malice. A single stupid person, no matter how stupid, is only capable of limited harm. Give that stupid person unlimited power, and they now have unlimited power to harm. The harm they can inflict is effectively unlimited. Not done out of malice or ill intent, just the result of a stupid person forcing their stupidity on mankind. This is because they don’t know what they don’t know, so assume it doesn’t matter.

The stupid will kick down Chesterton’s fence to help someone and be aghast at the results. Then they have to build a network of fences to mitigate the harm. That network of new fences to control evils creates banal evil. Constant little evils that make up day to day life under central planning… even as we look up and watch the politically favored fly above the network of fences. This aggravates us, which results in more fences. Moreover, stupid people are not likely to lead by example. Such people haven’t learned humility, gratitude, or temperance. These are qualities required for leading by example. So when invested with unlimited power, the stupid become hedonists fulfilling their every desire, as they demand the people tighten their belts. This is done not out of malice but out of stupidity.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Limericks – Collapse At The First Bout

Posted on July 9, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

In school it’s always hurry hurry,
It’s but an indoctrination slurry,
Gate keeper elites,
Take your seats,
And so learn what it is to worry.

Materialists only need one miracle,
Then their logic takes it spherical,
What’s before their eye,
They vehemently deny,
Claiming their hate is only empirical.

Redistribution of wealth is a noble dream,
Uplifting the downtrodden it would seem,
The self-promoted few,
Paid for by you,
Because the whole thing’s a Ponzi scheme.

The globalist elites to utopia set sails,
Despite the storms serpents and gales,
A glass palace,
The trouble is,
That whatever they touch always fails.

They apparently want us stressed ___,
Believing in absurdity without _____,
A house of _____,
Built upon shards,
Only to collapse at the very first bout.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Government Is Our Enemy

Posted on July 8, 2026 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, there is no institution created by humanity that is more clutching, venal, or crass than government. You could say that our only real enemy is government. Now, that’s not to say I believe in anarchy. That is to say that government has made itself the enemy of mankind. Several empirical facts lead to this conclusion. The fact that every nation on Earth is in deep national debt is proof of profligacy. The fact that Covid was created in a lab by US tax dollars, transferring gain-of-function to the CCP and killed millions is illustrative of pure unadulterated stupidity. The fact the governments of the world covered it up is proof of corruption. These are only a few examples showing that government has made itself the enemy of humanity.

An enemy of humanity must have several attributes that make it so. The qualities that make something an enemy are loathing, arrogance, and hubris. For government to be the enemy of mankind then it must hate humanity. Covid shows us it has no affinity for us. It must also be arrogant in action and thought. In the creation and cover-up of Covid arrogance was on full display. Remember they not only created the disease, they profited from it, by suppressing safe alternatives that might have saved tens of thousands. There could be no better example of one who thinks another is subhuman. Government must also have the hubris to think it can take over everything. As in an invading army. A real enemy seeks the foe’s total downfall and suppression.

A friend allows you to talk freely within reason, but an enemy can’t stand your voice. This is because friendship is a system of mutual benefit. This is often called a win-win. If an interaction isn’t supposed to end in mutual benefit but of the benefit of one and loss for the other, we call that a win-lose. Enemies engage in win-lose relationships. In war for example, one party wins and the other loses. Sometimes it ends in a disaster for both. This is where no one gets a benefit and everyone sustains a loss. We call this a lose-lose situation. Communication is critical to a system of mutual benefit. Talking freely allows people to understand each other leading to win-wins. A lack of communication leads inevitably to lose-lose or at best, win-lose. Enemies censor their foes.

The stupid often wage war on their own source of sustenance. In doing so they think they are in a win-lose where they are the winners and the farms, industries, and people they are waging war against are the losers. Such people extract from the nation, like trawlers sterilizing an ocean floor. Eventually there will be nothing left to extract. Then the winners become losers as well. Their win-lose game becomes lose-lose. But for the time being government believes itself the winner. It extracts, borrows and spends without limit. Even in the US there is censorship, and in Europe they are actively jailing people for wrongspeak and wrongthink. (A woman in the UK was jailed for silent prayer on the street). Governments start wars their cronies profit from and we bleed for. These are not the actions of a friend.

You may be thinking, “I don’t believe a word of it. Covid did come form a pangolin, the vaccine was safe and effective, heck, I get lockjaw weekly because the tetanus vaccine is a palliative not a preventative. Censorship is a good thing because that means people have something to say. Moreover, win-win is fiction, there are only win-lose or lose-lose interactions.” These are valid opinions based on the official narrative. You and I may grant the others the right to believe and say that… but those same people would deny us our voice. If your government doesn’t censor, wage stupid wars, extract from the nation, and set up win-win scenarios… that government is your friend. If it runs insane deficits, always needs more revenue, wages absurd wars, censors you, and wins at your loss… it is your enemy.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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