Don't Fault the Floor

Everyone isn't equally guilty

Normally I want my discussions of articles to be ‘one and done’ - to be complete (or at least as complete as they can be given my time constraints) within a single post - but I’m making an exception for Innomen’s “No One Will Take A Pay Cut”.

The standard defense of ordinary participation in state atrocity is necessity: people say they have no real choice, that the system is too large, the costs of refusal too high, the individual too small to matter. This paper argues the defense is empirically false for the comfortable majority of a rich society.

At first glance, one might think Innomen is saying taxpayers have no excuse for not complying. But such a reading would overlook the last few words: “comfortable majority of a rich society”. He is not condemning all taxpayers:

A serious version of the argument has to separate two populations, because they are not in the same position. There is a genuine subsistence floor, a layer of people for whom there is no slack, for whom one missed paycheck is the street, and for whom the language of “just take a pay cut” is obscene. That floor exists, and it is not an accident. It is the disciplinary mechanism itself. The visible destitute function as a self-administering threat to everyone above them, a whip that costs the system nothing because the workforce administers it to itself through fear and shame.

It’s a visual whip. See these people? You don’t want to be like them, do you?

I have seen Honolulu Pravda commenters - members of the propaganda class, that sliver of Hawaii’s population that reads ‘serious’ content - openly look down on Micronesians, who are often on the floor in Hawaii. And they have even more contempt toward those who fell through the floor: the homeless. Their tone would get them banned if they were talking about Blacks or Jews. I’m horrified whenever they come up with a sadistic ‘solution’ for the homeless. They are deep blue supporters of The One Party, but that doesn’t make them bleeding heart liberals. They are more like the MAGAs they also hate than they would ever dare to admit.

And there are - or were - MAGAs on the floor. I know a former Trump supporter on the floor. They can no longer tolerate Trump’s Zionism. Not when its fruit is endless war. Yes, they fund that war. As do I. But I repeat, they’re on the floor - while I’ve gone tang ping. Our contributions to the war are minimal.

You can say that’s cope - that’s my way of rationalizing our complicity - but the only people truly qualified to condemn us are completely evading taxes. And the odds of our critics being in that category are slim. The homeless who are in that category have concerns other than purity spiralling. After having fallen through the floor, their first priority is survival, not feeling ‘superior’ to others.

The floor is engineered to make the threat of falling credible.

And visible, at least here in Hawaii.

Sanskrit bhūtala- ‘floor’ is from bhū ‘earth’ (in brown) and tala- ‘surface’ (in black). bhū is also the verbal root ‘to be’ and is cognate to English be. tala- is cognate to tolerate; their common root meaning is ‘to bear’: a surface bears weight, and tolerance is bearing something undesirable. To fall through the floor is to risk ceasing to be - to no longer be tolerated. I’ve written ‘floor’ in Siddham, my favorite among the many scripts for Sanskrit.

For the people standing on that floor, necessity is a real defense and this paper is not addressed to them.

Not addressed to my friend on the floor.

It is addressed to the large band above the floor, the people with slack, the people who could absorb a smaller income without losing housing or health, the people whose refusal would carry a real but bounded cost. That band is where the cooperation actually lives, because that band is large and productive and pays most of the taxes and staffs most of the institutions. And that band declines the cut. The disciplined floor explains why the threat is felt. It does not explain why the comfortable, who are not one paycheck from the street, still will not move. For them the honest sentence is not “I have no choice.” It is “I have a choice and its price is a number, and I have looked at the number and decided the children are cheaper.”

More cope on my part, perhaps - and hypocritical given the title of my Stack - but I do wonder how many are even aware of the children.

In the last two years, a staggering 64,000 children have reportedly been killed or maimed across the Gaza Strip, including at least 1,000 babies. We don’t know how many more have died due to preventable illnesses or are buried under the rubble.

Or the adults adversely affected by our taxes. Brave AI:

I think awareness in Hawaii is particularly low given our distance from the victims. We are 8,700 miles (14,000 km) from Palestine.

Our ethnic mix has minimal ties to the targets. And our media, like the USSA media in general, downplays the horrors. And the financing:

All those billions came from me and millions of others.

I didn’t know much of what Brave AI said. I suspect my neighbors in Hawaii literally know nothing about what it’s in the screenshots above. Particularly my non-English-speaking neighbors.

How would Americans in general respond if they were asked,

• do we give aid to Israel?

• how much military aid to Israel do we give?

I bet there would be MAGAs who would answer the first question with “no” because they still believed Trump was America first.

Note that Brave AI mentioned how Biden also gave Israel billions. If told that, some MAGAs might assume their hero Trump cut off funding! The binary paradigm of USSA politics blinds voters to the continuity underlying the periodic changing of colors.

Should we blame ignorant enablers, even if they are above the floor? Some are willingly ignorant, and not just because some don’t follow the news at all. I remember when I was a neoCON Zionist (redundant) and I believed in Palestinian crisis actors. As an Israeli I knew back then said, the IDF is the most moral military in the world. Ergo, it could do no wrong. Any claims of it doing wrong had to be wrong!

I’ve changed.

Suppose others changed. Became more aware. Lost the excuse of ignorance. Faced the choice. Would they take a pay cut knowing what I know now? Not evading taxes entirely, not even falling to the floor. Just a cut, not a gaping financial wound.

My guess is no.