One of the recurring themes of this blog is “how companies, particularly those used to having control over their customers adapt/not to the new world of communications, the new world of technology that empowers the individual.”

Yes, you do know exactly where this is going.

My name is Sarah A. Hoyt, and I fly.  I don’t fly often — anymore — and I don’t fly with much degree of enjoyment because I was always rather afraid of flying.  (Afraid is not the right term.  I hate not being in control.)

But there was a time I flew more and with greater enjoyment.  This was around 99 to 2000 when for various reasons, we and the boys flew (tourism, mostly) about six times a year, return trips.  (So, twelve times a year.)

I don’t know if you remember those days?  You checked your luggage in, the planes were on time more often than not.  If not on time, they tried to compensate and be nice to you.

Unfortunately 9/11 changed that.  But I think the change was deeper than we think.  It wasn’t just that the airlines, suddenly faced with multiple delays and fewer passengers took the exactly wrong tactic to make themselves profitable again: charge for ALL the things, make the seats so small that when someone reclines, they’re in the lap of the people behind, etc.  No.  It was that this change was aided, abetted, directed by an authoritarian type of mentality.

I can’t prove it, but I think part of it was all the bail outs from government to the airlines.  The other part was that well… the entire flying experience became more authoritarian.  You have to submit to being checked from head to toe to even get aboard (and yet, as usual, I flew with both liquids and blades I didn’t know I was carrying last week.  It’s kabuki.)

Along with this came the airlines ability to remove/accuse of interference or threats or terrorism anyone who argues too loudly with any of its employees.  We’ve all heard stories of people removed/locked up/etc simply because they wouldn’t or couldn’t obey instructions.

I remember the woman handcuffed to the airport bench who died through lack of meds, the same lack that was causing her to act psychotic.

I think the ability to get away with mistreating passengers (and call the police on passengers if they complain) and getting away with some egregious abuses that people tolerate because “well, who knows, next time it could be a threat” has corrupted airline culture.

I think what happened to the United Passenger was not only predictable, but inevitable.  Once airlines get used to the idea that you’re “cattle” to be herded and told what to do, arbitrarily, and that if you refuse to pay for extras you’re negligible, you have set up the conditions in which a passenger, sooner or later will get abused and the abuse will get filmed.

As with publishing, we have an industry that has a monopoly and is told by the government it is “vital” and given subsidies to prove it.  (Well, publishing hasn’t been, I think, but you get the point.)

Because the employees have full authority and can back it up by accusing their passengers of terrorism/denying them boarding/creating trouble, they’ve got into this mentality where the passenger is NOT their customer, but simply widgets to be moved around, ordered about and treated, generally, like things of no account.

Which explains why our airline travel is rapidly coming to mimic the qualities of Soviet travel in its hey day.

I rarely fly these days.  In the last 9 years, we’ve retrenched our financial position so often we’re now out of trenchers.  Also, frankly, I hate flying these days.  You have to get there an hour and a half ahead of time, and half the time the flight will be changed/delayed/strange.  The strange part usually involves distributing my family around the airplane like a kid’s thrown marbles, seemingly for fun.  (Like last week, when Dan and I were separated and another couple were equally separated for no reason either of us could figure out. — we traded.)  This is a problem for me, because I have severe mid-range deafness.  Yes, at a noisy con, if I smile and nod when you tell me that you just grilled your neighbor with garlic, it’s because I have no idea what you said.  So, in a noisy plane?  I have no idea what the attendants are telling me at any given time.  I have no idea what the announcements are.  Usually I look at Dan/Robert/Marshall and they translate.  And yes, there have been one or two situations in which flight attendants thought I was being obtuse on purpose, but fortunately not escalating to violence, as I rarely travel alone.

So, it’s not a pleasurable experience.  The reasons I do it these days are to attend cons; to accompany Dan on a business trip; to see our aging/ailing relatives (yes, we know eventually we’ll arrive too late.  We’re too far away.  But we try.

And every time I travel, the flight is overbooked and they ask for volunteers.  Sometimes I’m really tempted, because, say, a voucher for 1k would pay a trip to see my parents.  BUT what good does it do me to arrive, say, at Liberty con on Sunday, then turn around and come back.

I swear until yesterday I did not know you could get INVOLUNTARILY bumped, and the idea fills me with dread.  The reasons I travel, I’ll still have to travel, but it has the potential of nullifying the entire reason I am even there.

More on this later.

For now, everyone who is reporting on the UAL incident is saying the “doctor involved” has a shady past.  This is TO AN EXTENT TRUE.  Kind of.  He had some problems, some of them apparently resulting from PTSD (his treatment at the hands of the airline must REALLY have helped that) that led him into shady behavior AFTER which he did everything in his power to clean up his act.

The interesting thing here is where the Louisville newspaper reporting on him found his name to do the background check.  It wasn’t in early reports, and it was only in possession of the airline.

Did the airline give the name to the newspaper?  I don’t know.  I wish I could say it was unthinkable.

However, the behavior of various people coming out at the same time to defend United and to tarnish in any way the reputation of the man they were caught abusing, reminded me of the incident when I posted Frontiers of Insanity post.

This was a time when my blog got on a good day about 100 hits, but within hours of my putting up a post critical of Frontier, we had a bonafide Frontier apologist, casting aspersions on my character and acting like I was crazy and “entitled.” (BTW if you want a glimpse into how crazy and authoritarian airlines have got, that experience is a good example.  And it’s not even the worst we’ve had.  The absolute worst was 9? years ago when flying back from Chattanooga took us on a tour of the US, including overnight in Chicago and bringing us home too late to go through the mandatory parent interview to get #2 son into a dual college/high school program.  Fortunately Older Son ably filled in for us, and we just had to go in and sign papers after.)

This same comment about being “entitled” was left by a United Employee on a post of mine on FB yesterday.  He said I didn’t understand the trouble with trying to subdue a planeful of entitled and unruly people.

I don’t like the term “entitled.”  It is too often used by people who think they have authority over you to tell you to fall in place.  Yes, I know, you do get “entitled” people, who demand safe spaces and think life should be “fair” like an eternal kindergarten.  But there are better terms for them, like “infantile” and “full of hubris.”

In the context of the airline, let’s dissect “entitled.”  You’re d*mn right I’m entitled.  When you pay for a service, you are entitled to that service.  It is known as “contract”.  And I don’t really care if the government says it’s legal for them to drop people involuntarily.  The government is no arbiter of morals.  The truth is that in any other industry, if I pay for something I’m ENTITLED to it.  And if people revoke it after payment, it’s called fraud and there are all kinds of ugly consequences.

Just because the government thinks airlines are “essential” and enables ugly behavior, it doesn’t make it RIGHT.

Entitled?  Damn right I’m entitled.  When I pay for something, I bought it, and it’s mine, whether it’s a service or a physical thing.  This is known as property rights, and — as such — is the cornerstone of the civilized society we used to be.

Again, I didn’t know until this week that airlines could just refuse boarding at will.  I still need to fly, but the idea that it can be arbitrarily denied because of someone else’s priority or someone else’s fuck up does not make me love it more.  I always assumed they just offered more and more money until SOMEONE took it.

Yeah, yeah, I know “overbooking is why flights are so cheap.”  Is it?  Is it really?  I don’t know what the rate of missing/not being there for flights is.  I’ve missed ONE flight in my entire life.  It would seem to me that having passengers on standby would take care of that.  SURELY if you’re actually compensating people for giving up their seats — and playing fair with compensation.  I’ve heard rumors United Airlines vouchers are useless — it costs you more than one or two empty seats.

The only time another … ah… company denied me the right to a service I paid for, it was the post office, who told me I couldn’t have the mailbox where the previous owners had had it, under the porch, but must have it down seventeen steps, at street level, because their UNION didn’t want them to have to climb that many steps.

In both cases, both institutions were heavily subsidized and protected by government.  In both cases, service is/was lousy.  In both cases the person being served wasn’t viewed as the CUSTOMER or the person who actually kept them in business.

I fully expect airlines to say that passengers must “build in” days to their travel, to insure they get there in time.  I mean, the post office told me — when I pointed out having the box on the street, in a street with pedestrian traffic was asking for theft — that I should have anything important and certainly not checks sent to me.  (Which explains why they’re increasingly Spam Mail.)

What I say is that if I need to build in hotels for an extra night at each end, then their flights must be WAY cheaper.

In the end this is the problem with the game of authoritanism and subtraction of services the airlines play.  Sooner or later, you’ve subtracted everything, and frankly Greyhound starts sounding good.

And then, perhaps, government decides you’re not essential anymore and stops subsidizing you.  Or you have to learn to subsist on package-carrying only.  OR — and it’s already happening — an airline that actually believes their customers are their customers and deserve to be treated as human beings comes into being and sends you into bankruptcy.

What I know is that right now, where we are, United COMPLETELY misunderstands their position.  From their half-hearted excuses, to the letter their CEO sent to employees telling them they had done nothing wrong and the passenger was a poopy head, they completely fail to understand that the public in whose court of opinion they’re being tried are those same widgets they’ve been pushing around and mistreating for YEARS.

Frankly, just in terms of how closely packed together we were last week, I have enough of a hate-in for them to last me for years.

United has been very close to my “no, not even if it’s half the price” list.  Now they’re firmly on it.  I’m sure I’m not alone.

And that in the end is what happens when you forget who actually PAYS you and who you’re SUPPOSED to serve.  At some point, you subtract enough — like, assuring them you’ll actually transport them for money — that you find you no longer have customers.

It’s a great way to go out of business.  And all for lack of understanding that they’re selling SOMETHING and not in charge of ordering people around to suit the airline’s convenience.

NO ONE is entitled to your business.  NO ONE is entitled to play bait and switch with you. And companies who think they are and can will eventually be “rewarded” with disappearance.  It might take some time, but it’s inevitable.

The way to stay in business is to offer what your customers want and to be nice to them while providing it.

An idea so crazy it might just work out.

Snippet from A Small Medium at Large by Stephanie Osborn

Snippet from A Small Medium at Large by Stephanie Osborn, available for pre-order at Amazon now, e-book delivery on April 11, trade paper on April 25.

When Ke’ri Gla’d’s caught a cab at her hotel to head for the Machpelah Cemetery late on Halloween, she was unaware that a certain black Lexus, some distance behind, was following her to that same destination.

“Not too near, not too far,” Romeo said to India, as he drove down the street, following the yellow taxi, several cars in front.

“Here’s hoping she doesn’t catch on, and that she doesn’t make too many detours,” India agreed.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind a drive-thru, which she might do, given how much she been eatin’,” Romeo decided.

“You’ve got no room to talk, honey!” India exclaimed with a laugh. “I swear, both your legs are hollow. I don’t know where you put it all!”

“An’ there she goes, into th’ coffee shop drive-thru,” Romeo said in satisfaction. “I’mma get me a big ol’ café breve, like Meg likes, an’ a Danish. You want an espresso, or one ‘a them frozen, blended things?”

“Get me a frozen mocha, I think,” India said. “But nothing else for me.”

In moments Alpha Two were in and out, slurping drinks and sharing the Danish, while never losing sight of their target.

* * *

In short order, the Lexus drove past as the taxi let out an older woman, short and slightly stocky, dressed in a form-fitting black jumpsuit, almost a catsuit, with a black-and-scarlet drape cardigan over that. Tall black boots with silver trim shod her feet; long white hair cascaded down her back.

“That’s her,” India said. “It matches the description of her disguise we had from Alpha Four.”

“Good,” Romeo said. “Then we’ll park on the side street, head in, an’ mingle with th’ professional magicians.”

“On it.”

* * *

By the time Alpha One arrived at the cemetery at last, full night had fallen. Street lights illumined the sidewalk along the street, but within the cemetery itself lay mostly darkness, only broken by a few flashlights carried by the few foresighted individuals in attendance.

There was a large crowd already there, numbering several hundred; in fact, the crowd was so large that it spilled out of the small, cramped graveyard and into the surrounding streets. Some were in costume, some in formal dress, but most were in street clothes. They milled about, watching; some were anxious, but most were bored or amused. Several people, two of whom were in tuxedos, three of whom were in more…esoteric…clothing, took turns attempting to raise the spirit of Harry Houdini. As Alpha One insinuated themselves into the crowd, Ke’ri Gla’d’s, in what was apparently another human disguise—a short, red-headed, middle-aged female in silken caftan and robes—eased into this smaller group.

“Watch, Meg,” Echo murmured, lips barely moving. “You can tell who’s who by how they’re dressed, and how they conduct their séance. The guys in tuxes will be really formal and kind of rote, and they’ll have a real stage presence. Those are the professional magicians, and they’re just here to honor Houdini’s memory; they don’t believe his spirit will return. But the ones who are wearing the robes and buckskins and shit are the spiritualists who really believe the stuff. And they’re halfway expecting something to really happen.”

“I have the feeling they’re the ones who will be right, tonight,” Omega replied in kind. “But I sorta don’t expect any of ‘em are necessarily gonna be happy about it.”

“And I expect you’re right,” Echo agreed. “Aha. Look, across on the other side of the family plot.”

“Alpha Two,” Omega murmured. “But not sticking close together. Good. Oh, and there’s Alpha Six, and Four. Is Five still extracting from the hotel?”

“Actually, Five wasn’t scheduled to get here until after us,” Echo told her. “They were working with the hotel’s offworld management, and extracted as soon as she set foot in the taxi. They should be…glance casually over your right shoulder.”

“Aha. Got ‘em.”

“Yeah. And we blend in rather nicely with the magicians’ societies here, too.”

“Yup, I noticed that.”

“Heads up,” Echo warned. “She’s decided to take her turn. Wow. Classic Glu’gu’ik quantum spirit contact ritual.”

“Ooo,” Omega hummed, intent on the scene.

* * *

Ke’ri Gla’d’s stepped forward, threw her head back, and raised both hands toward the night sky.

“Spirit of the great Hou’d’ni, hear me; for I am Carrie Gladys Hardin! I beseech you, I who am your kindred, of your blood and kind, come to me now,” Gla’d’s invoked. “Pa Da’ko ta Gra’ko On’de, de b’oo!” She paused.

“‘In the Name of the First Creator, it is time,’” Echo whispered the translation in his partner’s ear. Just then, Gla’d’s flung her arms wide.

“Ari Ho’d’ni, ne ko’ko’be, la’la’da ge nu!” she cried.

“‘Harry Houdini, I command you, come to me!’” Echo translated again.

“Well, it’s dramatic enough,” Omega decided, sotto voce. “And the language makes it sound like a magical incantation.”

“Shush—something’s happening,” Echo hissed.

* * *

Before the alien medium, faint colors began to swirl in the darkness. Within moments the colors thickened, darkened, as the very fabric of spacetime itself seemed to distort. A bipedal, humanoid form began to take shape, hovering several feet off the ground. It was a man, some five and a half feet tall, with curly black hair, a high forehead over vivid blue eyes, and handsome, chiseled features. The crowd sucked in a collective breath of shocked excitement.

But as the ‘apparition’ of Houdini materialized, its appearance changed from the traditional aspect known from photographs, into the classic short-bodied, egg-headed look of a typical Zeta Reticulan Gray, complete with bulbous head, flattened nose, huge black eyes, and lipless mouth. The crowd surrounding the ‘medium’ shrieked in fear and drew back as far as they could. Many of those farthest from the gravesite found themselves pressed against the fence surrounding the cemetery.

* * *

Echo and Omega exchanged meaningful, mildly disturbed glances, then looked across the crowd, where Alpha Two was embedded. Omega rubbed her chin, glanced at her watch, then shook her head. It’s cool. Wait. Don’t take her yet.

Got it. Romeo nodded slightly. He made a subtle hand gesture, and he and India both sent the hand signals that forwarded the order to the other Alpha Line teams.

Meanwhile, Echo reached into his pocket, palming his cell phone. His thumb tapped several places along its screen and cover, activating the audio recording app.

‘Carrie Gladys Hardin’ held up a staying hand to the unnerved crowd.

“Hold!” she cried in English. “The spirits of the dead do not always appear as we would. Harry Houdini, I address you.”

“I…hear…” came a quavering, eerie voice, sounding almost like a distant echo.

“You know who I am.”

“I…do…”

“You know what I seek.”

“Yesss…”

“Where is it?”

Houdini’s alien shade was silent.

“I adjure you, Harry Houdini, answer me! Where is it?”

What came from the extraterrestrial spirit’s lips next was in no wise English.

“On’de, oo de n ko’te a tw’a, n do’ok a ko’a’du’ne ba’wa’ne. Tor’ko kl’ee, bo kwa’ta’do! To’de, n do’ok la on’wa ne la’la’du wo’of. D’an, der klo’vi’t do’n. K’oi’du de we. Nda’da’be. Tra’de, ba on’de, n do’ok la on’de ne k’ap wi’if’de’z, n fes’nus pe’dun ge’da n nu’ke’ke. Ka’de, n do’ok la ne du ka’ka’du b’an dan kre. Gun’gun oi’ko’s’un, wo ga lo om, qu’a’du bre. Kin’de, n do’ok k’en’ti’do, der ne wo ku. Wo’pe’wo’be p’op n b’oo! Bu’ke n dwa’z, der or’k lu’ke n kwa’z!”

And with that, the ghostly apparition faded into nothingness.

The frightened crowd bolted.

For what happens next see:

Years ago, I attended a workshop in which the well known, award winning editor told us his job was to filter the submissions and choose the best for his readers.

So far so good.  We have people here, including me, who have read slush, and of course, no magazine no publishing house, no newspaper or even newsletter could survive long if you just took whatever came in over the transom and put it out for people.

[And no, before you say anything, no, most of these things AREN’T going straight to Indie.  Most of the “fails” I am seeing on indie aren’t even real fails.  They’re just things I don’t like, or things that offend my sense of how well something should be researched.  They are not actually bad stories.  Most of them.  The majority of fails that “fail” across the board are actually what Kris Rusch called “Recital Pieces” i.e. stuff the author has written, polished, cleaned up and sent out to “editors” who are no such thing (or at least not good ones)) until the poor manuscript is dead, dead, dead.  This is made worse by people-who-think-they’re-editors insisting on perfectly grammatical English when writing anything creative, emotive or persuasive.  (Rolls eyes.) In other words, the worst of slush never made it to Indie.

Why not? you ask.  I have a theory.  The absolutely bottom of the barrel you got in slush was someone looking for affirmation, confirmation and pats on the back.  Those are probably still submitting to book publishers and magazines in hopes of being published by “real” editors.  Okay, maybe those aren’t the bottom, but the patients in mental hospitals and people writing on wrapping paper with chicken blood (you wish I were joking) aren’t even organized enough to put it up.]

But later in the same talk, the words “to educate the public” came out.  In fact, you couldn’t spend much time around editors without hearing this.  Stuff like “It is our duty to educate the public” was bad enough, but then there were things like “We need to broaden minds” or the one I think should be justification to send someone to the South Seas without a boat “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”

The thing I’m here to tell you is that they HONESTLY believed that.  These people who, by and large, had mediocre degrees from excellent schools — ie had studied English because they already knew it and it wouldn’t be much work — and imbibed the Marxist indoctrination from their teachers without so much as quibbling at the fact that Marx never understood distribution, or that his theory of value meant if I spend a lot of time polishing a turd it should be worth the same as gold polished the same time, thought they needed to “educate” the vast majority of people who have jobs, raise families, create things, do things, and, yes, read things.

One does not know whether to admire them for the lack of understanding of economics or the hubris.

In fact, they’d either become persuaded that what their professors preached was “smart” because, well, their professors preached it and acted like they were smart or — for the slightly brighter — realized that if their dim-bulb professors could have a career from spouting the “right” (left) nonsense, it MUST mean that the power in society was with the left and that saying these things would get them those rewards.

As far as that went, they were right.  We are surrounded by jumped up mediocrities, in writing, in editing, in academia, and even in science: people who got handed huge rewards by saying what the lefties in power wanted to hear, and joining the crusade to “educate” people.

Their hubris might never have done much, mind, without the changes in retail that allowed them to do all push in marketing.  (I.e. the large bookstores where what was actually put on the shelves was pre-selected by the publishing houses “confidence” [how much they told the stores to stock.]) Or, of course, by a corrupt press that did things like report “bestsellers” based on laydown, before a single copy sold.  (Years ago there was an article on how a supposed bestseller had sold two copies.  An unusual case, but not that out of the ordinary, when a lot of “bestsellers” got there on laydown (i.e. one week and out.))

However, the changes in the market place and the completion of the long march in the press and academia, gave the left a lock on these fields.  And unfortunately none of them had ever run a lemonade stand, or understood that while unsweetened lemonade might be “good” for people, for a definition of good, people just won’t buy it.

In other words, when you’re selling something to people, you have to give a damn what people want to buy.

I know that’s a strange concept to many people.  And yet, it is the truth.

And the problem for the left is this: they try to solve things like “people just don’t want to buy this” with more “education”, more control, more attempts at making people buy what the left thinks it’s good for them.

It doesn’t work.  The end result of the “push” model is the magnificent inefficiency of communist countries, where the few things for sale no one wants.  (The left senses this too.  Notice the mandate to buy health insurance, because if it wasn’t mandated you might not choose to buy.  Or you might buy a policy that doesn’t cover abortion and sex change operations, just because everyone in your household is happy with what they got at birth, and is not/is no longer able to conceive.  They know what’s good for you, Hater.)

The only reason people didn’t starve behind the curtain is that you can’t quite stop free trade.  You can just make it illegal.  But, well, that never stopped anything.  (The illusion it does is another leftist thing I don’t get.  Laws aren’t magical.)

When I was a kid in Portugal, while the “smart” people tinkered with the economy, people would make a living from the weirdest things, including but not limited to, learning to make bread during bakers’ strikes and sellin— I mean, letting your neighbors have a loaf and it’s it great they gave you a gift of money?

You can’t stop free trade.  You can distort it, hide it, or make it take unexpected turns.  But you can’t stop it.  Now that they no longer think we’re the only animal who uses tools, maybe they’ll come up with a new definition for humans “the ape who trades.”

The problem is when what you’ve been trading is your “correct” opinions for all the coddling that the establishment can provide.  Because see, the market isn’t there to support it.  It just isn’t.  No matter how loud you shout, you’re competing for a diminishing ability to reward your shouting.

Yes, we’ve seen Marvel admit that gosh darn it, the dogs just don’t like the food.  But my guess is they’ll double down.  Because the real market is not selling comics to people.  It hasn’t been that for years.  The real market is the executives selling themselves to the progressive establishment.

And the problem is the progressive establishment.  It achieved control of a society it despised, and it went right on despising it, and trying to “improve” it and “educate” it.

The problem is that if people had complied, society would have stopped working, because these people produce nothing but theories and screeds.

And people couldn’t comply with that.  So free trade continued to flourish.

The progressive establishment in those institutions it has taken over, killed, and now wears as an Edgar Suit, has tons of excuses as to why the dogs don’t like the food.  One of them is that we’re all “haters” and “oppose diversity.”  (In principle?  It’s more that I don’t give a damn about their type of diversity.  I don’t really care what’s between your legs, who you sleep with, or what shade of tan your skin is.  I care mostly about the contents of your character, and in writing, whether you can write.) Another is that we’re just too darn stupid.

For years, I heard the decline in book buying blamed on everything, from TV to games, to people being illiterate and these stories being just so gosh darned complicated they don’t understand them.

Yeah.

Look, can people (as a multitude) be stupid?  Sure.  I mean all you have to do is drive in any major city to find yourself screaming things like “What do you think your turn signal is for” or “Get off the d*mn cell phone” or even “Driving baked seems like a good idea, because?”

But people, as they are, are the market.  Or at least the people who read for fun are your market, if you work in any aspect of getting fiction to market.

Do people want to read Regencies that are basically modern characters in regency outfits?  Sure.  At least judging by sales ranks.  So if you want to make money, is it worth it spending the time I do going “ARGH, that’s just wrong?”  Probably not.  It might be worth it TO YOU if you’re me that is, to walk the line and get as close as you can to what the public wants while keeping things semi-historically accurate, though.

But in the end, what matters if you are making a living, providing the public with a product, is that you …. provide the public with the product it’s telling you it wants to buy.

Can you make a living without doing what the public wants?  What if your genius demands that you do something much better than what they want?

Ah.  Would your genius be counting on government grants, rich friends, or a working spouse?

The market is the market.  If you want to make a living in the market you adapt to it; you don’t demand it adapt to you.  As for your “genius” the chances of it being appreciated in the future, if it won’t sell now, are vanishingly small.  Shakespeare wrote for the groundlings, after all.

I don’t know how much longer we’ll have government grants.  We’re running out of other people’s money.  At any rate it’s immoral for you to receive money stolen from other people (or did you dress that up in prettier words) to support “art” that won’t sell. Patreon, go fund me (wealthy friends) and wealthy spouses might last longer.  At least there the money is given willingly.  But it’s not a big market, or a thriving one.

In the end the market is the market.  And not just for humans.  In biology books (yes, I read a lot of those,) I keep coming across things like “this small insect makes a living by seeking out and eating the sap of the blah blah tree.”

Making a living.  It’s a law of nature.

And no one ever really made a living by “educating” the public into ideas the public was NOT interested in.  The Edgar-suit wearing institutions and companies just masked that for a while and rewarded appropriate noises, not money-making work.

But that’s a good way to go bankrupt. It’s also a good way to create competition, which WILL appear to serve the market you’re leaving un-served.  Like you know, indie publishing, and news blogs, and…  Enough things that all those people the elites have been trying to educate realized they were neither alone nor powerless.

And now the times …. they are achanging.

It’s almost funny watching all these people making louder and louder noises, of what used to be the approved kind, fighting for the one or two spots that can still be rewarded by the establishment.  Almost.  Except it’s sad too.

And it’s funny watching them positing conspiracy theories and “hatey hate mc haters” as to why things are changing, when the answer is “you refuse to serve the market.  The market found those who would.”  Or, IOW, the dogs don’t like the food, so they found a way into the kitchen and are eating the elites’ filet mignon.

And now they’d better learn to swim, or they’ll sink like a stone.  For the times, they are achanging.

We went to Ohio for 2 days to take care of some family matters.

I meant to post last night and again this morning, but I didn’t, and we just now got back home.

I’m going to go in search of coffee, so I can write.

No matter who you voted for, the government got back in.

I think you need to be from a really old country to fully appreciate this.  Kings come in, kings go out.  Factions are taken out violently, and all their prominent followers killed to the mewling infant.  And yet, year after year, administration after administration, even when you ditch kings and bring in representative government, yes, even then, or even when you bring in socialists, then throw the socialists out, the same bureaucrats, functionaries, clerks get back in.  the same bean counters with the same agenda which amounts to something like “more power for me, my family and allies” and beyond all that, a devotion to the “proper way things are done.”

Trust me on this.  I was born and raised in a really old country.  Same names, generation after generation.  Same devotion to the way things are done.

It probably started way back in the middle ages, when the barbarian kings who had just taken down Rome sat there and scratched their heads (well, most of them HAD lice) and wondered what in heck to do with it all.  And the clerks (a word that comes from cleric) sidled up and said “I know how to read and write, and I can show you the records of the people, and who owns who, and what tribute is owed to you.”  And the king said “Ooooh, someone else can do the boring work for me, and I can strut around with a pretty crown, and fight battles, and do kingly things.  I only wish we had turkeys so I could eat turkey legs in style.  Deer will have to do.”

Then there was the modern state, for which I’ll blame Louis XIV, that right (possibly literally.  Has anyone looked at portraits of Buckingham?) bastard, who — advisedly to an extent– looked at the big noblemen who had plagued his ancestors and decided to make an alliance with the rising bourgeoisie to increase the power of the “modern state” (records and taxation by the numbers please) and reduce the power of the old nobility (mostly the brute force of arms, of if you prefer, quaffing, hunting, warring and wenching.)

In a way it was inevitable, so it’s probably pique on my part to blame it on Louis XIV (a man I detest, having read his biography,) whose descendants eventually got swallowed and spit out by the same bourgeoisie he encouraged, the same clerk-sy.  Whether he would have minded or not, that’s something else.  I think mostly he cared about maintaining his position in a turbulent time.

It was probably inevitable, because population grew, and as population grows, you really can’t have a king who is a glorified family leader, and knows every person in his employ personally, and once beat each of their grandfathers with staves or whatever.  The personal leadership thing can be appalling of course, when the leader is bad, but it’s at least personal.  However, as population/country/army/territory grow, you need bureaucracy to rule it.  You need layers and layers of clerks.

I will at least in the US deny the need for a federal department of education.  State level should be more than enough, and if you as me (yes, I know no one sane would) I’d be fine with city level.  People get together and hire teachers, and keep a close eye on them to.

But even if you go with the enumerated powers of our constitution, providing for the common defense of a very wealthy country which spans continental-wide territories is not same as calling your friends together and giving them some guns.

As much as I approve of the militia involving every able bodied man and woman, because that makes the invasion of the country impossible, and as much as — raised in Europe — I was taught to despise standing armies, the truth is when you’re the envy of the world, you’re going to need a professional army who does nothing else but the common defense.  Si vis Pacem para Bellum and all that.  (Always wanted to have a cat called Para Bellum.  Just like I always wanted to have a dog called Droit du Seigneur.)

And even if that’s the major function of government, you’re going to need a lot of bureaucracy to handle it, let alone needing a lot of bureaucracy to handle foreign relations with pissant countries the size of overextended parking lots, who expect us to speak with one unified voice and not as fifty squabbling states.

Which means bureaucracy and census and IRS (is there a reason we can’t run the government on a giant-sized national lottery?) and the machinery of … clerk-sy.

Which develops its own culture, its own fiefdom and its own idea of “how things are done” TM.

Which makes the Us same as all human societies since… er.

No matter who you vote for, the government gets in.  And that means if you voted for change — real change, not socialist bullshit — it’s going to be resisted every step along the way.  Ironically the socialist bullshit ISN’T resisted, because it’s more power for the bureaucrats.

This is why post-communist Russia has a much stronger flavor of Soviet Russia than Soviet Russia had of tzarist Russia.  Because the inclination of bureaucracy is to accumulate power.  It is a human tendency reinforced by the need for security, the need to keep your children as secure and employed as you are yourself, etc, world without end.

I once, when I was young and stupid, voted for a man who promised to reduce federal employment to 15 people.

It wouldn’t have worked.  It couldn’t have worked.  The machinery calls for cogs, and there’s the way things have always been done.  And if it had succeeded, it would have thrown everything into disarray and probably have made the pissant countries think they could take us.  they might even have been able to.

So, is this the fate of the world?  The mechanics of humanity?  Do people just get choked out by the state, more and more, till all men work for the state, and all their bread comes from it?

Oh, hell no.  I’m not one of those fatalists going on about the boot the and the human face.  No, I’m not.  There is a limit to how much these things can grow before they become a complete mess, so in the end it self-defeats.  (See “The lives of others”) but also, just like the apparatus of the early modern state was enabled by the ability to keep records and all sorts of techniques just coming into being with the industrial state, there are techniques and technology now which enable us to loosely correlate a lot of small groups, to administer a vast territory loosely without descending into chaos.

It might be possible — we’re yet at the dawning of that age — to not have the layers and layers of clerks and bureaucrats and defeat some of that “government” that goes on regardless of leadership.

But it’s not going to be tomorrow.  And it’s not a matter of “voting the right man in”.  There is no such thing as a hero on a white horse who comes in and vanquishes bureaucracy.  Dragons, sure.  Ravening hordes, sure.  But your average bureaucracy takes your white knight sans peur et sans reproche, swallows him whole and spits out the sad, bewildered remains.

No.  The only way we scale back the growth of government is the long march; Irish democracy; and a dose of never say die.  If we apply ourselves to it, our grandkids might see some palpable shrinking in bureaucracy and the way it tries to put out tentacles to every aspect of life.

Keep your powder dry.  Keep your spirits up.  Never give up, never surrender.

The fight might not be to the strong nor the race to the swift (though that’s the way to bet) but the fight against encroachment on individual freedom goes to the patient.

Be patient, be calm, and fight on.

There was a time — listen to me, children — when the left had the power to utterly destroy anyone they chose to.

They would descend in a swarm, find some little thing you had said, take it out of context, then pound you with it until you no longer had a job, a marriage, any friends willing to admit to knowing you.

Actually it wasn’t even required that they take something you said and take it out of context.  They controlled all the gate keeping positions and a whisper campaign could go out — the equivalent of having your papers stamped PU for Politically Unreliable — and depending on how much money they could make off you, you’d either be turned out without references (so to put it) or, in my field, be kept in midlist durance vile.  (In other fields there are equivalents, where you do all the work, but never get anywhere with money, let alone power.)

This is partly how they GOT all the gatekeeping positions, and kept them, or in other words, how they gutted all the important institutions of our culture and then wore the institutions’ skin, demanding respect.

The farce either worked for a while, or people like us saw through it, but there wasn’t a heck of a lot we COULD DO about it, so we shut up and pretended.

The difference was immaterial, really, since the result was the same.  The left had the power to destroy.

I would say the apex of their power was that amazing weaponizing of Mitt Romney’s innocent reference to “women in binders” (which meant women’s resumes in binders, and which meant he was bragging of AGGRESSIVELY seeking women for positions of power.)  Women in binders didn’t even mean anything bad, and couldn’t even mean anything bad.  But by repeating the words, and wearing  binders (!) to his events, the left projected the image that he wanted to do something unspeakable to women.

Note that their attempt at a much more grounded hit on Trump for using the word Pussy in a bit of locker room talk, netted them… nothing, except the usual academics and high middle class women wearing the usual vajazzled costumes while demanding respect.

Part of what’s adorable about this is that the left thinks they STILL have this power.  Well, their branding you sure destroys you in THEIR circles.  They just don’t GET that in a lot of fields and professions, their circles have become utterly irrelevant.

So it’s entertaining as all get out to watch them threaten me and my fellow rebels with the ruins of our careers.  Uh… we never had careers in the halls of the left.  Our careers are entirely outside their institution — sort of a parallel track — and we’re doing just fine, thank you.  In fact in terms of money we’re doing way better than the darlings of the left, by and large.  (Well, okay, my getting very ill and not having a new book for two years is an issue, but it would be an issue anywhere.)

They keep pulling the levers of the outrage machine and our public yawns, or points and laughs… at them.  This increases the outrage, just as the Pussy Hatters keep redoubling their impotent fury at the results of free and ethical elections.  It’d be funny if it weren’t so weird.

So, do they still retain the power to destroy, the way you know who is in charge of a society?

Sure they do.  Well, sort of.

If your career and your power comes from having penetrated their institutions they can at the very least still take you down a peg.  They can cancel your big book contract, or they can have you fired from the halls of academia.

Weirdly these days they need the RIGHT to cooperate in this kind of attack.  Their attack on Milo was the new new model for this.  “Find someone who also annoys people on the right.  Look for a sin the right would agree is a sin.  No matter how unsubstantiated the charge, the right will break a left piling on.”

Mind you, they can cost you a book contract or a job.  But they can’t prevent you from creating another job, or publishing your book indie.  They have the power to hurt — even with the right cooperating — but not the right to destroy anymore.

And the thing I don’t think the left understands, is that this level of outrage can be ginned up only a limited number of times.  And sooner or later even the right stops cooperating, because well, Lucy keeps moving the football.  (Granted they don’t catch on as soon as I’d hoped, but well, I have years of experience with socialist maneuvering that most of you are lacking.)

Every time the left pulls that lever for the outrage machine, they’re spending capital.  Every time they start a witch hunt, the skin suit slips a little and the respect we owed the gutted institution is lost.

It won’t be long till our only reaction to outrageous accusations is what it already is in Science Fiction outside their circles: point and make duck noises.

Anything we can do to accelerate that, from providing alternate paths to success, to refusing to join the outrage machine, only speeds up the time no one falls for their tricks.

They no longer have a monopoly of opinion-making sources.  And to sell their pov, they need a monopoly.

Go forth and have no fear.  For the times, they are achanging.

Why You Just Can’t Win

By Tom Knighton

Everywhere you go on the internet, it seems, you’ll come across an article decrying something for some kind of -ism.  Ghost in the Shell is problematic because Scarlett Johansson is playing a supposedly Asian character…despite the fact that the character looks white as hell in the original anime, for example, but it’s racist to take issue with Idris Elba playing a Norse god.

A better example, however, is the outrage over Netflix’s Iron Fist.  The character, Danny Rand, has always been a white dude.  He’s been portrayed on comic page and cartoon as a white dude.  So why is the live action character being a white dude a problem?  Oh, because it was a golden opportunity to make the character Asian, the social justice crusaders argue.

Now, keep in mind that Iron Fist is a martial artist and that’s essentially the key component of his power.  Why should you keep it in mind?  Because if they had made him Asian, there would be articles all around about how they were feeding a stereotype.  “Why must all Asians be martial artists?  Why did Marvel decide to perpetuate this stereotype when the original character was white?”

This is simple.  Social justice warriors will do everything they can to set the conditions so you can’t win.

The social justice bullies only have power if people feel guilty.  They don’t really have anything that we, the masses, don’t give them.  People have to feel guilty, because guilty feelings lead to people doing what the social justice crowd wants them to do to alleviate their guilt.

The man or woman who feels no guilt, however, simply points and laughs at their outrage.

It’s not that we necessarily think gay rights are unworthy, or that transgendered people are abominations, or that women should be in the kitchens all barefoot and pregnant.  Sure, there are some that do, but most of us aren’t like that at all.

The problem is that we refuse to see everything as outrage worthy.

Unfortunately, SJWs are trying to create a world where that is simply unacceptable.  Failing to see everything as dire, failing to see Western civilization as all that is wrong with the world despite its many victories and the higher standard of living not only in the western world, but that it has exported to the rest of the world, is proof that we are evil.

Again, this is nothing more than an attempt to make people feel guilty.

Ayn Rand once said:

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt”

Rand has a point, but she failed to understand that it wasn’t just governments that could do this.  Society as a whole can and will do this, as we currently see.

We know that diversity isn’t the real goal, because if it were, Sarah’s A Few Good Men and pretty much any of Larry Correia’s stuff would be touted as great examples of diversity in science fiction.

After all, look at Owen’s team in the Monster Hunter Series.  Two women, two white males, a half-Samoan guy, and a black dude (who was NOT the first to die!).  One of their key support guys is the librarian who is also an Asian explosives expert.

Yet both Sarah and Larry are touted as bigots by the social justice crowd in science fiction.  Why is that?

Well, neither did so with the intention of being “diverse.”  They just wanted to tell a good story.

Larry once told me that he wasn’t trying to create diverse stories, he just wanted to create cool, interesting characters, and the diversity of his world happened naturally.  It makes sense.  Trip, from MHI, is a great example.  A black man who played football sounds stereotypical, but that’s also only mentioned rarely in the series.  Instead, Trip is portrayed as loving fantasy fiction and playing Dungeons and Dragons while also having been a science teacher before his coming to work at MHI.

Yet where is the love for Trip?  Why isn’t any of the social justice crowd in science fiction celebrating that diversity?

Because they can’t actually use it.  Larry doesn’t care what they think, so they can’t celebrate anything he does.  That won’t make him feel guilty.

Instead, they attack him as hateful, misogynistic (the guy who created Faye, Holly, and Julie is misogynistic?) and try to use that to make him feel guilty.  Failing that, they want to make enough people around him—not just fans, but family and friends if possible—to feel guilty too.  They want to create a sea of guilt around him so they can try and force his hand.

To do what, I have no idea.  After all, he’s already creating diverse characters.

Our lovely hostess is in the same boat.  She creates a gay protagonist, and when the whole Sad Puppies thing got ugly, she was part of the same crowd labeled homophobic.  They completely ignored her work, work that portrays people of different types in a positive light—and has plenty of white folks in a negative light—because she as a person refused to feel guilt.

Both Sarah and Larry have, in a way, given the SJWs exactly what they said they wanted.  The wrote books with diverse characters and yet they’re still reviled as evil “ists.”

You can’t win with a social justice warrior unless you prostrate yourself before the altar of social justice, confess all your sin then ask for any you missed and confess those when pointed out, and beg for forgiveness.  You can only win with them by becoming one yourself.

The only way to win with a social justice bully is to lose.

Recently one of the people on the other side of the divide — no, not the one who thought we were being paid by the Russians (Geesh, did he listen to my accent, somehow) — was flapping jaws about how I and my friends will be crawling back and trying to make nice to the establishment of science fiction, because we’ll need to rebuild our careers.

(Does sinal salute with thumb and index pinching nose bridge and head inclined.)  Where to start?

First, at least for now — everything flip in a minute these days in publishing — I’m doing fine career wise.  I have three books hard-due at Baen and two more that will probably be bought, and which I intend to deliver this year (they’re sequels to DST and shifters.)  That is more than any other year I’ve worked for Baen (though part of this is my wretched health,)

But let’s suppose that all those tank big (unlikely since three are collaborations with bestsellers) and I’m given my marching papers.

So, what is my next move? Crawl back to the conventions and the power elites and beg for entry again?

Snort, giggle.

You know, I keep hearing this whenever someone speaks up in the arts, or media, or academia, or any other field that is heavily left. It’s like a lefty fantasy.  “These apostates will come crawling back and admit we’re right.”

Ah…   What sense would that make?

It would be like crawling back to the ex who tried to kill you BEFORE you ran away.

Look, there is no way, unless I became the most extreme of the SJWs (if I get hit on the head that hard, I’ll be on life support) that they’d even let me be published by the houses-other-than-Baen again.  Any house that accepted me (and how, since no agent would represent me?) would be subjected to boycotts and demonstrations and accused of being “right wing” until they dropped me.

Even if — let’s assume I was hit on the head, and somehow still survived — I became the most extreme of the SJWs they’d never TRUST me, so the closest I’d get is the place I was when I was in the political closet.  “Not trusted.”  So I would get to be in midlist hell forever.

Except that…. except that as publishing turns upside down and sideways most of the other publishers are shedding midlist.  So my chances of being able to continue having a job with any of them, even if I self-abased and lied to myself to that extent, would be zero.

Only a crazy person would trust the tender mercies of the left.  They don’t have any.  So I’m afraid their beautiful dream will never come true.

IF I lose my spot with Baen, I’m going indie.  (Heck, having seen what I got for my first indie book, Witchfinder, I’m going indie part time anyway now that I’m healthier (although not healthy, as is obvious. Ah, well, we’re trying to figure it out.)  Because I like big bucks and I can not lie.)

See, part of the issue with the left is that they see writing as “prestige.”  They see it that way, because most of them aren’t being paid much.  Years ago, when I mined the literary vines (that should be “literary”) I got told the maximum (MAXIMUM) advance I could aspire to was 12k.  I have seen no reason to suspect most of them get even that. Though a few darlings and bestsellers get around $40k and a particular one allegedly gets much more.  (To understand the allegedly you’d need to understand publishing contracts, in which each stage of payment is conditional on this or that and some of them are conditional on “pigs will fly through the air in merry chirping flocks.” The bit money is mostly an advertising gimmick.  I’d want to see that contract, before I remove the “allegedly”.)

So the left views writing as a way of bolstering their academic resume.  That’s why awards are SO important to them, because that means tenure or other boosts to their career.  And that’s fine.  It’s a model.

It’s just not the model I aspire to.  I have said before I’m not an author, I’m a writer, I work for a living.

My aspiration for writing was never the awards or the prestige.  It was to write a lot, have a lot of people love it, make a living from it.

I don’t object (on the contrary) to things like fan squeeing because it means my worlds came alive in other heads. Which is part of the goal.  The other part is that place where I can pay off my kids’ student loans.  Pay for our health care as we get older.  Pay for the CATS healthcare as we get older.  Pay for my bad habit of a roof over our heads and three meals a day.  (Obviously not wholly.  Dan makes most of the money around here.  BUT his job has dry spells, just as mine does.  Better with two.)  That is the real object of this and “why I write.”

So I’m going to go at least partly indie.  I’ve seen what my friends make.  I’ve seen what I made from the one book.  It will allow me to support my family.  That’s fine.

And I work for Baen, which I’m assured is completely declasse.  (I wouldn’t hang out with them otherwise.)

This, I’m told, is why I need to “rebuild my career.”

Whenever I listen to one of these people — no, not the one who thinks we’re Russian plants.  That one is just funny.  Also, he should pull up his socks or, as we say around the conference table at good ol’ Puppy Central Podnimite svoi noski —  I feel like I’m listening to “Write like it’s 1999.”

To them there’s only one way to get published, one way to have a fanbase, and yes, even though it generally sucks for their endeavours, one way to make money: the old establishment they control.

No wonder they rub their hands with glee to fantasies of us trying to “crawl back” into their good graces.

What they’re missing is that their world is restricted, small, old and dying.

They keep closing that door, like it means anything.

And we keep turning around from the little decaying house, and seeing a wildly beautiful and, yes, diverse world to run rampant in.

Does it have prestige?  Oh, not with the old establishment.  The old news-industrial complex will never call on ME for an opinion on anything SF/f.

So what?

Their audience is shrinking as fast as their stalwarts.

Out there, in the wide world, there’s millions of people willing to read what we write and pay for it.

And you know what, as Heinlein said, we write for people’s beer money.  There’s no more sincere flattery than people foregoing other, similarly priced pleasures for one of my books.  H*ll some of you passed up on a chicken to read my books.  That’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done for my work.  Thank you.

There’s no going back.  We — or at least I — knew that full well when we came out of political closet.

Sure, we’re now shuttered out of the old structures forever.

But we’re free in the world, and we’re emergent.

In the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid.  Go and make your own success, on your own terms.