The Rainmaker

The Rainmakerⁱ, judging by its constant recurrence, seems to be a fundamental social role in the primitive societies of subhuman populations (Africans, Amazonians, Asians and assorted other Anatifers along for the ride, attached on the [outside] of the great ark of humanity). In places where actual people live, the social behaviours of the ever-present subhuman horde do not subsume exactly the common forms as seen time and again in the god forsaken shitholes where they live by themselves. Nevertheless, however they may be superficially adapted for camouflage purposes, they reproduce the same functionality, if seemingly in different garb, and they put forth the same pretense - chief among which, for its alternatingly alarming and amusing nature, the odd notion that their avatars are somehow "fundamentally human", when in point of fact they are the exact opposite : fundamentally antihuman.

The gist of this particular Rainmaker story is that a clan of poortards made a deal with a company specialised in making deals with clans of poortards. As it is common for all things made for the use of poortards, so that they may stroke their pointless ego and further their delusional if dearly held notion of apartenence to actual humanityⁱⁱ, the deal was paper only, and paper thin. Like their shoes, made of cardboard, so that they can pretend to wearing shoes "as gentlemen" instead of going around as the cattle that they are. Like everything else they "own".

To put facts on the steely skeleton of truth : It turns out, upon learned, scholarly examination, that out of 98`000 or thereabouts policies sold, 11`000 or thereabouts also made a claim. Fancy that! What's conveniently not discussedⁱⁱⁱ is the average lifespan of one of those 98`000 policies, but if you've had any occasion at all to interact straight with the refuse of Western society, you well know that you're lucky if their investment in anything outlasts the year. And so here it is : they manage to pay the bill ten times and expect a payoff. Except the bill was made to suit "what they can pay", which is marginally anything whatsoever, and the expected payoff is made to suit what they imagine (on the basis of having seen "how things truly are" on tv^iv ) that's due them.^v

Out of this deluge of claims the company paid about a thousand, which comes to about 1% of policies sold, which is what insurance companies pay if they don't want to go out of business.^vi Because that's about how much people are willing to pay. If the deal's ten bucks a month for a ~5k payout every 5 years nobody is ever buying those policies - do the experiment, see what pigeon picks between "one 5k lump in 5 years" and "ten bucks each month until then". If you make it half a million you just happen to be at the cusp of what the scum perceives as "Oprah rich"^vii and they just almost kinda go for it, so with salesmen going door to door and ads running all day on the tube you might just make enough to keep going, maybe. Long enough at the stretch for it to look like a business, at any rate.

The company, ironically, did its job, perfectly well. It extended the delusion of apartenence that they so dearly seek to about a hundred thousand ruminants with no business here and no place au-delà^viii, and it even paid a thousand or so of them, while expending the remainder on maintaining the delusion of employment for the benefit of random whores and so forth.

The company is not the only cog that did its job perfectly in this story.^ix The activist judge (who happens to be black ; but that isn't why he's a nigger) also does his job perfectly. To quote closing arguments,

What will giving a judgement of $10 million accomplish? All insurance company premiums will spin out of reach - and it will lead to government controlled health coverage. Yours is a grave responsibility. Be wise, be careful - and be just. Be just. Thank you.

It doesn't work, of course. It's blowing in the wind, what "be just", they're cattle. They can't produce in excess of consumption, they're not fucking euglena viridis to turn on the chloroplast. They're mammals, they maintain homeostasis at an expense, which the environment must provide or else they die, that's the whole story.

But nevertheless, the activist judge does his job well, it took many decades of little wanna-be President Bahamas pushing pseudoconstitutional law to finally achieve the desired effect. You don't bring a great country down in one day, in one fell swoop, that's what the America haters from without fail to realise. No, to bring the place down you have to patiently but diligently chew at the foundations, for decades, from within. You gotta have a dream to ruin a great place, bombs ain't gonna do jack.

Also the rainmaker does his job perfectly. You know what his job is ? Why, his job is to make it so that the woman doesn't get the 150`000 that's due her, but instead "get" 50`000`000 that isn't due her, nor does it exist. And so the company goes away^x and nobody gets anything except some bits of paper saying they "should" get various things they obviously, pointedly shouldn't. I'm sure God will be thrilled to cash them cheques, you just hold on to them dear, keep telling yourself how you were in the right all along. That's how it works, for srs.

There's also a subplot about some domestically abused woman that happens to be a cold blooded killer hidden inside a borderline personality. She murders her husband once she finally gets the opportunity, and The Rainmaker gets to pull double duty getting her minor charge dismissed as well. This beautifully completes the arch - on one hand "the evil company" has to pay an imaginary "infinity monyz" for "having killed" Joe through Joe failing to live on his own dime ; on the other hand "the good woman" gets to walk from the very mild charge of manslaughter for having actually, and deliberately, killed Joe. With her own hands. Same exact Joe. All this because she appears frail, and "the evil company" appears to have money, and really that's all there is in the cattle mind : from all, according to their capacity, to all according to their need. The murderer looks like she couldn't have killed, and so therefore she didn't ; the company looks like it could pay, and so therefore it must. Hurr, durr and a bottle of rum.

There is little more to be said, outside of noting the genius of Coppola : in order to bury, not critique, not deconstruct, not oppose, in order to outright bury the socialist mindset all you have to do is let it speak for itself.

The only question remaining is what the hell are we going to do with all these corpses left walking around above the ground, polluting the earth with their rotten stench.

1. 1997, by Francis Ford Coppola, with Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight. [↩]
2. This must incorporate an older discussion from the holy log :

   mircea_popescu http://btcbase.org/log/?date=16-10-2015#1300279 << so a) You'll spend your life driving between bickering nuts. This is a worse deal than what psychs get, at least there you gotta drive to his office. ; b) The blockchain and everything else is entirely superfluous here. your entire idea is "hey, make me the MP of renting in South Africa". Maybe they will or maybe they won't but you really don't need the funny hat. Hire some dudes with guns offer the old style protection if you got what it takes. And if you do not, I'll just talk to the actual dudes in question and you'll eat your own ass so fast you'll be on youtube.
   assbot Logged on 16-10-2015 08:05:02; HeySteve: I'll require evidence from tenant and landlord at start and end of contract and arbitrate based on that

   mircea_popescu http://btcbase.org/log/?date=16-10-2015#1300277 << Not unlike the idea that if "Liberland" takes off, it'll attract good people by declaring their allegiance to a country. Guess what - that's not how it works.
   assbot Logged on 16-10-2015 08:03:55; HeySteve: if the scheme takes off, it's also a way for honest landlords to attract tenants by declaring their compliance to a standard
   mircea_popescu aaand in other news, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-federal-government-now-holds-nearly-50-of-all-residential-mortgages-2015-10-16
   assbot Why the federal government now holds nearly 50% of all residential mortgages - MarketWatch ... ( http://bit.ly/1GhIek6 )
   mircea_popescu Pretty good huh.

   asciilifeform http://btcbase.org/log/?date=16-10-2015#1300456 << where i live, 'return keys' is a ceremonial thing, landlord traditionally changes lock each time
   assbot Logged on 16-10-2015 13:19:35; mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/?date=16-10-2015#1300253 << very easy to challenge. "you want these keys back ? pay up."
   mircea_popescu No, you do.

   asciilifeform Ah. Also lulzily, where I live, not only tenants 'feel oppressed' by landlord, but (small-time) landlords also 'oh noez we are oppressed' by tenants!
   mircea_popescu So yes, it's a contract like any other, it ends upon specific performance. If breached, the breaching party carries the cost of the whole story.

   asciilifeform The rub is that enforcement of the contract typically requires money. Or, at the very least, time. (To show up in court, press the issue, etc.)
   mircea_popescu If you don't have money your opinion about what you did is wrong. This is what "not having money" means. Just like, if your mark is bad, your opinion of what you know is wrong. Just like, if flies won't fuck you, your opinion of what's attractive is wrong. And so on.

   asciilifeform Where I live, it more typically means that you are 'more distant from the pipeline' on account of not having chosen your parents carefully.
   mircea_popescu Mno. This is what the poor pretend it means. It never ever does. (And amusingly, the poor pretend this is an exceptional time-and-place thing but pretend so ubiquitously and at all times. Kinda lulzily parallels the entire "i'm special in my you're special t shirt".)

   asciilifeform Yeah yeah if you aren't on a Nietzschean atomic dirigible you're nothing, I get it
   mircea_popescu Not the point! To get to the bottom of this matter, let's approach it from a more convenient angle. So, in some places/cultures, it is the habit that young men committing marriage PAY to the parents of the young bride a sum of money. In some other places/cultures, the habit is the reverse : the parents pay the young man to take her. In which of these two would you say the poor are being gypped ?

   davout Do tell!
   mircea_popescu Well obviously it's a trick question. In pastoral communities/other situations where the land is well under carrying capacity, the young man pays, because the old folk could have just drunk and made merry, but instead they put the effort into raising the filly / rose garden / whatever the dude's gonna enjoy. So they should get something for their trouble. Conversely, in lands at carrying capacity, the old dudes gotta pay the young dude for their unwarranted priviledge of having occupied a plot of land, which he can not do. This, so as to prevent the young people from just burning the whole thing. And when inheritance changes from male only to both children, as it did in post feudal Sicily, the obligation moves from her parents (as he will inherit HIS parents but not hers) to "both parents" which quickly devolves into a sort of "what rich man in the comunity wishes to sponsor this festival", aka, pay for all our sins, as we can't afford to do it. And so you get godfathers, and get to enjoy the movie. That's his role in the community : that he pays your blodgelt for you. These are tacit arrangements, you will notice : nobody bothered to type out nicely the Rousseau contract of it all, nor bothered to ask the poor to sign, or even explain it to them. Because fuck them they're not worth it. But it is NEVER the case that the poor are being gypped by this. Whatever the law of the land is, they're getting it back in some other form. So, if here the landlords rent out for 10 a month but you gotta pay 10 in advance "as guarantee" and there they rent out for 11 a month but you don't, it's the same story.

   davout First part sorta reducing to "we'll give you money with the girl to make make rape and pillage less profitable than civilized marriage" ?
   mircea_popescu Exactly and strictly, yes. And this obviously only affects the poor to any degree - if Antinous had or hadn't a trousseau or if he had to pay some homonymous coins, Hadrianus couldn't have cared less. Meanwhile - there are not enough rich people around to have the same sort of "what's done" thing going. And so they must have contracts. But to say you can't afford contracts AND YET you think you were gypped is basically just to swear and attest you're poor. Of course you'd think that, that's why you're poor : cause you're stupid. Too stupid to understand how things work and why, dumb enough to focus on one metric and forget about the others ("hey, engagement is hard to measure!") etc. "Psychothis is underdiagnosed" is exactly like the court's idea that the population is juridically underserved. Not so - you can't have things that are definitionally for the few (because the few don't benefit from the banal commonality of the many, so they need something else to allow society to function). In a world where evereyone's deemed a gentleman, you will need ~five times the population in lawyers. And it's all a colossal waste of time anyway, only about 1% or so of the population actually gets in relationships complex enough to merit memorialization, which is what drives the de-professionalization of lawyers and so on and so forth. Out of line equalitarianism is at the root of ALL social ills in the Western world today, not just one or another.

   [↩]

3. Because all views wish to tell a story, and this crew wishes to tell a different one - I don't mean a different one from the one I'm telling, I mean a different one from reality altogether. [↩]
4. The expression is "Friends Rent Control", or to quote

   Your cast of good-looking single hangarounds live in a fancy apartment in the middle of the town. None of them seems to work, or if they do, they're usually actors, columnists or whatever leaves them with a lot of leisure time to have drama in their clean, well-furnished apartments. How can they afford it?

   [↩]

5. Or, to quote,

   - Why did you sue for $10 million?
   - Is that all?
   - I beg your pardon?
   - I thought it was more than that. Your client has a billion dollars, and your client killed my son. I wanted to sue for a lot more.
   - What would you do with the money if the jury awards you $10 million?
   - I'm gonna give it to the American Leukaemia Society. Every cent.

   She figures the value of one of the cattle is, for no reason whatsoever, "everything that exists".

   Literally, the world, that's what she thinks. Her dumbass son that she made broken (hey, do you know what leukemia correlates with ? Down syndrome.), her dumbass son that couldn't make it, her dumbass son that failed the only true exam there is - to keep on breathing - is worth the world literally, the whole universe. Everything.

   Do not be fooled by the numbers she may spew, they reflect nothing to her. The woman does not have the general capacity to even understand what numbers are, or how they work, or why. Yet she confidently, Dunning-Krugerly relies on a firm if sorely misplaced, utterly misguided conviction that her son is worth everything that the other people, the people who know what numbers are, and how they work, and why, ever could be. All, together. She doesn't pick one and go "here, my son is a retard, because I made him and I'm in turn a retard like my daddy before me - but I pick this actual human that I want in exchange from the Great Shop in Heaven Mall for my broken one because I'm a consumer and we've come to expect". No. She just wants God to give her the shop.

   And what would she do, were God to actually give her the shop ? Why, turn it over to the government, of course. That's what government is for, right, to somehow bridge the gap between what she can produce and what she wants to consume. And, like any good barn animal she'll promise anything, sign anything, agree with anything and do any "opining" and "demonstratin'" and strutin' around for as long as that pretense seems to be maintained, and then be more than willing, be outright eager to... to what ? Once the pretense's no longer to be maintained she will ... what ?

   Yeah, that's right, reach for that other perennial social role of the subhuman horde, the sacrificial goat. Tapul ispasitor. For as long as the hardworking Chinese still send the boats to plaster over the gap between "everyone's capacities" and "everyone's needs" she'll agree ; and once they stop she'll want to stone Obama to death, because totallies, it's one random guy's fault that she's scum and doesn't want to admit it.

   And now time to examine yourself. Why do you think the dead kid's worth ten cents ? Oh, "he could have lived". Really ? Lived to do what ? She could have made another one for the cost of not using a condom, whatever that comes to, and he'd have also done the same, just as well. Sitting around bleating is not a life. It's not merely that it isn't worth money - it actually is not worth living.

   Oh, you say he had "potentiality" ? Really ? And how do you know that ?

   No, you don't get to go around pretending to turn the tables on me, that isn't how it works. You show it, I don't have to show why he didn't have anything. For as long as you got nothing I just shrug and not care, for good reason : because you don't got nothin'. You don't get to asume "you're worth" shoes ; "everyone else gets shoes" is no argument ; and your faith in your true inner self is not unlike your faith in Santa : there to make going to bed hungry easier on the identity. Not on the cognition, that part's not involved. On the identity. [↩]

6. And has been, for as long as insurance has been a mass market good. [↩]
7. Presumably "rich enough to give it all to the government". What, wealth comes with responsibility, it is your god damned job to do homework and keep the economy going and the markets sane ? Ain't nobody got time fo' dat! [↩]
8. What, you think they got a seat for you in Heaven ?

   Look at a church sometime - the only people with seats are the rich, the folk that paid to build the place. Why the fuck would you think Heaven's any different ? There's no place for you there, all they got is a ten by ten foot septic tank made of concrete and they keep stuffing the lot of your kind in there since Creation, that's all. Like down here.

   You know what's funny ? That you actually fit in the ten by ten concrete hole. Just like down here.

   Yeah, I know it's supposed to be extra-hot and sulphur and whatnot, but in truth they cut down on all the entertainment long ago. It wasn't cost feasible. What, you hadn't realised the poortards go to Hell ? Ha hahaha. Ofcoursetheydo. Heaven is for rich people, also just like down here. Not because they're so great, either, most of them don't make it. It's because you suck, that's all.

   (Lest you think I'm joking : I am not. The poor can not be saved for the simple reason that to be saved you have to have lived, and the poor can't live, they never get the opportunity, government life support and "the department of human services" are not living.) [↩]

9. It's a decent yarn, originally by Grisham. [↩]
10. "It's been looted", alright, but not by they being pointed at. On the contrary - it's been looted by they doing all the fingerpointing. As it's usually the case with thieves and their infantile craft. [↩]