Polemic against Bryce Pointer's "Das Kapital: A Primer in Poor Logic"

 another article?

Hello once again. I came across an interestingly titled article on Karl Marx, and thought it necessary to read it and see if it had any new information to take into account. The article comes from the site 'Ten Minute Major", and prides itself on giving high-level insights and analysis in ten minutes or less. We must watch and learn, therefore, from the author Bryce Pointer, Mr. Pointer hereon. 

He groups his arguments within many sections. The work is an essay, same as this very blog. Only that Mr. Pointer seeks to push a certain agenda which relies on a reader that doesn't know about what he is talking about, and on his own predisposition to misinform. We will break down (or summarize where appropriate) each paragaph's essential ideas along with any anomalies we find.

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” – Ronald Reagan

He begins with a well known propagandistic quote by Reagan, the author of "trickle down economics", which resulted in the immiseration of the U.S working class. We do not care about his political leanings, but this is worth remembering for the purpose of understanding the goal of his agenda.

Introduction: Priming Poor Logic 

I. The author explains his firmly anti-communist stance in relation to the previous quote. States that he has read Marx.

II. Mr. Pointer gives background. He has read and annotated 2000 pages' worth of economic writings. He claims that economic debate boils down to bickering over terms and frameworks (meaning economic models), and that it doesn't seek a unified set of truths. He makes a chain of jokes following from his claim that the economists under consideration use much jargon, and that Marx does the same because he is not an economist.

We do not know what he speaks of when he says economic debate is centered around bickering or avoidance of unified truth. The actual thing he wanted to express was the view that Marx is not an economist. He is in fact an economist.

III. Some more jokes. More importantly, he claims that because he does not understand the words "exchange-value" and "surplus-value", that Marx intentionally overcomplicated the issue. We do not need to go into this currently, it'll come up again later.

IV. His analysis focuses on Volume 1 of Capital. He writes some filler text then actually states his purpose: Showing the fundamental logical errors within Marx's fundamental arguments.

V. He admits that he was biased towards disagreeing with Marx, though by the end mostly disagrees with his logic.

VI. He informs the reader that Adam Smith of classical political economy stated much of the same things that Marx would later write, and that the latter's criticisms are reasonable. Marx himself also openly admitted his work being based on Smith and Ricardo; one could argue that he expressed respect for both's contributions to political economy within his works. Mr. Pointer then says that he did not arrive at those criticisms out of logic, but by reporting on the systemic abuses of 19th century Britain. He is setting up his later explanation of Marx's errors. Cites a passage from Smith's Wealth of Nations about the bourgeoisie's tendency to seek self-enrichment at the expense of the public, i.e. the non-bourgeoisie, to demonstrate Smith's knowledge of the imperfections of capitalism.

VIII. References the joke about Communism being good in theory but bad in practice. He claims that the reality is the contrary, where Marx's explanation is based on good practical examples but 'founded on incredibly poor theory'. 

IX. "Thus, where Marx is wrong, he is so spectacularly. And where he is right, he is late to the party."

We will now change into a section by section description

Semantics

Mr. Pointer begins by summarizing some of the first chapters. His references are as follows:

1. Definition of a commodity

2. Sentence from "The fetishism of the commodity and its secret" which he declares to be pretentious. We do not care. We urge the reader to read the quote for themselves in full:

[From the Penguin Edition of Capital vol. 1, pg. 163

"A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties."

The metaphysical and theological aspects are analogies. What Marx later says is that the form of a product as a commodity within commodity production, makes it appear to a person as being the expression of a relation between commodities instead of a social relation between people. In other words, that when buying something, the workers who have made it are not seen by the buyer, and the buyer much less by the workers or the sellers. Thus we see commodities being related to each other as things, and us related to the commodity instead of the people who created it in the first place. We recommend for the reader to take some time to explore Capital and see what they think for themselves.

3. Use-value and exchange-value. He makes an error here by saying that both of these are sources of value. No such thing is said. Due to this he also makes the mistake that Marx refers to use-value when only saying "value".

[ibid., pg. 126]

"The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value [...] Exchange value ... the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind."

It is better explained in the book. In short, use-value refers to the physical body of the commodity. Tables, watches, oil lamps, boots, and so on, regarded as furniture, tools, and clothing and nothing else. The exchange-value of a thing refers to the relation in which a thing can be exchanged for another. x tables = y watches = z boots. This explanation does not immediately make sense until later, when money is brought into the equation, where each commodity is compared against money instead of against every other individual commodity. x tables = x money; y watches = y money; z boots = z money. It is not a source of value, but rather its form of appearance. 

The real source of Value is explained by Marx as being the "Average Socially Necessary Labour Time" to produce a thing, a labour theory of value. The full explanation we encourage the reader to see for themselves through the marxist internet archive or a physical copy. We do not claim to have cleared it all up here for this reason. We have, however, explained Mr. Pointer's error. He makes the mistake of taking use-value, the qualitative, immeasurable side of the commodity, as its quantitative side, the exchange-value and Value.

Mr. Pointer's next claim should be quoted in full.

"Yet in describing the “two-fold” nature of the labor power necessary to create such commodities and values, Marx suggests a false equivalency: that “skilled labor counts only as simple labor intensified [emphasis original],” and that the value embodied by commodities takes the form of “identical abstract human labor.” This is the first place in which Marx opts to ignore any concept of human capital."

From this we can know two things, 1) That Pointer did not read the full quote and 2) That he doesn't understand abstract human labour. To clear this up we'll see the full quotes he is referencing. 

Firstly, pg. 135:

"But the value of a commodity represents human labour pure and simple, the expenditure of human labour in general ... It is the expenditure of simple labour-power, i.e. of the labour-power possessed in his bodily organism by every ordinary man, on the average, without being developed in any special way. Simple average labour ... More complex labour counts only as intensified, or rather multiplied simple labour, so that a small quantity of complex labour is considered equal to a larger quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most complicated labour, but through its value it is posited as equal to the product of simple labour, hence it represents only a specific quantity of simple labour."

Thus, simple average labour is a basic unit, with complex labour being a higher amount of this simple labour taking place at a higher degree of intensity and focus at a given time. To give an analogy, there is a difference between 1 and 20, but both of them are regardless composed of the same basic unit. 1 is a single unit, and 20 is composed of that amount of units. 1 is only one, and 20 is twenty ones. This does not disparage the work of the baker or the doctor in any way. It only seeks to explain that their complex labour can only be the result of practice, experience and effort on their part to develop the skills necessary to do the work, and likewise for any other kind of work.

Secondly, pg. 137:

"On the one hand, all labour is an expenditure of human labour-power, in the physiological sense, and it is in this quality of being equal, or abstract, human labour that it forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is an expenditure of human labour-power in a particular form and with a definite aim, and it is in this quality of being concrete useful labour that it produces use-values."

Abstractions are generalized applicable concepts. Here human labour is not all the same in its purpose or level of complexity, but rather is labour in its quality of being labour. The baker's labour is not qualitatively the same as the doctor's labour, and the result of both expenditures is different. What is the same, is that they have both done labour as such. The "virtue" or "skillfulness" of both their jobs is not put into question, but is instead seen for what it is; their work, each useful in its own way.

Mr. Pointer takes his misunderstanding to be a sign of Marx ignoring 'human capital'. The trusty investopedia says that this means the worker's experience and skills. We have seen that Marx did take it into account.

His next section goes off the same error, which begets another one.

"Much of Marx’s argument relies on a premise he states simply, one which has implications for how relative value of commodities affects the relative value of the types of labor embedded in them. He asks: “How is the fact to be expressed that weaving creates the value of linen, not by virtue of being weaving, as such, but by reason of its general property of being human labor?” The underlying prior is that all labor must be of equal value, again ignoring skills and human capital concepts. Yet the conclusion of Marx’s reasoning is that the very setting of equivalences between the value of any two commodities through pricing reflects a discrimination between different types of labor."

We see here that he thinks Marx says that all labour has an equal value. We saw before that it in fact does not. That all labour is equally labour does not mean that every kind of work has the exact same degree of intensity, focus, or experience behind it. 'More complex labour counts only as intensified, or rather multiplied simple labour, so that a small quantity of complex labour is considered equal to a larger quantity of simple labour'. We must examine his conclusion that the equation of value between two commodity prices reflects a discrimination between different types of labour. He does not take into account that wages, money, and therefore prices, do not yet figure in the presentation (pg. 135, note 15): 'The reader should note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value the worker receives for a day's labour, but the value of the commodity in which his day of labour is objectified. At this stage of the presentation ... the category of wages does not exist at all."

Abstracting from his statement, the equation of commodity values in their exchange-value reflecting a discrimination between different types of labour makes no sense in the slightest from what we have just explained, and less so from the standpoint of abstraction. If in the time of 1 working day, 1 oil lamp is made, and in the same time 3 watches are made, the comparison between the two commodity values does not somehow discriminate between types of labour until we take wages into the equation, and even then, the discrimination is not felt by the commodities or the labour objectified in them. 

If both commodities still take the same time to make, and their value is embodied in something like $9 to $3 individually, i.e. one lamp and one watch respectively, it takes 1 oil lamp and 3 watches to place them as equivalents, appearing in the money form as "$9 = $3 + $3 + $3" or "$9 = $9". What Mr. Pointer may be referring to is the fact that the watch maker's wages may be lower than that of the oil lamp maker on account of the greater amount of labour required for the lamp's production, which shows money's power to obscure social relations. A short examination did not reveal where this conclusion of Marx's appears, but if any reader catches it, the writer asks that it is posted in the comments so everyone learns something new.

The next quote is not of any interest as it is already obsolete, but it is still necessary to show it.

"The First Error: “All Jobs are the Same”

Here we see the first of Marx’s fundamental errors: the assumption that all forms of human labor are “equal and equivalent”. Such a take is disrespectful toward professions requiring years of study and practice to master, such as medicine."

We have already seen how this entire line of reasoning emerges from a misunderstanding, so we will not repeat it.

His next section on exchange is a summary. The reader is encouraged to read it for themselves to form an opinion.

Metamorphosis section: Contains a minimal amount of useless remarks and is also a summary. 

Accumulation of money: Also a summary. Sellers not selling their commodity in order to buy another, but to transform their commodity into its money form and hoard it.

What Makes Capital Different 

General formula for Capital: With C-M-C representing the metamorphosis of commodities, the formula for Capital is its inversion, M-C-M, which is buying in order to sell. Since trying to only transform equivalents would be absurd, it must yield a higher amount, a surplus-value M'. 

The title of his next section we include due to its hilarity.

The Second Error: Projecting All of Human Greed onto the Rich

We may remark in passing that, with the current state of affairs (December 2025) in comparison to the date of publication (June 2024), the title is erroneous. The act here is not projecting greed onto the rich, it is the accurate conception of the rich as endlessly greedy in their search for eternal enrichment.

This section holds many such-like statements with agenda behind them. Mr. Pointer contends that the former judgment of the rich as greedy is applying a double standard, explained in the following:

"The problem however is that in the same way, people equally seek to profit by barter and exchange of commodities even with no intent of making a money profit(??). In C – M – C, one sells a commodity one does not want, and uses the proceeds to buy a commodity that one does want. The fact that the monetary value is the same does not nullify the fact that the exchange is perceived as a net benefit to the person entering into it—otherwise it would not happen. This subjectivity of use-values would suggest the proper form is therefore C – M – C’, and that by everyday transactions, we all make judgments about what we value and what we do not. How is this pursuit of subjective use-value any less greedy?"

Here he confuses profit with exchange, claiming that people seek to profit even without intending to make a money profit. This while the topic is profit in its monetary form, which has nothing to do with its other meaning as "benefit", which includes but does not exclusively mean the money form. He also makes a new formula, C-M-C', where the C' represents a benefit to a person engaging in exchange, which manifests as the appreciation we give to a use-value, which must never be confused with exchange-value. He then asks if this pursuit of getting things we want isn't any less greedy than capitalist profiteering. Again, considering current affairs, where the Earth's climate has changed, people are enslaved, tortured, murdered, invaded, due to the endless greed of the capitalists, shows his question to be purely rhetorical. The real question is if it actually is less greedy and the answer is no. His next 'illustration' is just as spoony.

"One certainly can argue that the subjectivity of use-values that taste can be said to represent makes it incomparable with the more objective pure exchange-value of money—but they are in fact comparable, as illustration can easily show. A house listed for one price can be bid upon at multiple prices, higher or lower than the listed price. Further, an identical house on the same street may be sold for a different price altogether than the first—what therefore is the value of either house? This could be explained by any number of factors extrinsic to the houses themselves: one family liked the style more, the neighborhood more, or was in a hurry to move quickly. These are matters of taste that are subjective and yet move markets. Marx’s framework leaves no room for these, and therefore his premise betrays a poor understanding of how markets—any markets—work in practice."

He argues that when use-values influence whether or not something is purchased that the exchange-value or the Value for that matter can be taken to be mysterious and undetermined. We have already seen how use-value is the physical body of a commodity, with exchange-value being the relative form of its Value or the necessary labour time taken to produce it. The specific utility of the thing, a house in his example, and the liking a buyer takes to the house does not by itself change the fact of the house taking, say, months of time to be built, or its cost of construction. The seller may change the price, its exchange-value, on account of this to be higher or lower for any reason, based also on the use-value of the house itself changing (beautiful views, safety, etc.), but it evidently does not make the use-value and exchange-value the same thing. Mr. Pointer's own misunderstanding and agenda drive his essay far more than his capacity to read.

His next section on the origin of Surplus-value locates it as taking place not in the sphere of circulation (within only sales and purchases) but in the sphere of production itself. Marx's formula being M – C – L – C’ – M', L= Labour-power.

Labour is a construct section

Here he expected for Marx to present the solution to the problem of wage-labour's mistreatment (which lay outside the field of inquiry because it is to go beyond it), but then argues that a proper counter would be that capitalists have to wait before gaining their profit, and that thus they must truly feel the same misery of labour. That he thought it to be proper is one of the prevailing mysteries of political economy.

He then summarizes Marx's further investigation of the worker's labour-power, which must be regenerated through "a mass of commodities" with an average cost, which makes it possible to calculate the value of this labour-power.

Exploitation

Here Mr. Pointer comes face to face with the illustration of the 12 hour working day where 6 hours of the worker's labour create a value equivalent to that of their wages, with the other 6 hours being done for free. He does not see this as a problem, and will carry his agenda to the ends of the earth to defend the capitalist class.

De Facto Overtime

Mr. Pointer continues on the warpath of misinterpreting Marx. He assumes Marx to state a definite necessary labour-time (the wage equivalent) that is a constant subsistence wage akin to Planck's constant. From the last section, we can see this is false. He then posits as a counter that a worker "turning the crank" twice as fast as another worker would create twice the value. Given the limited nature of his illustration, where turning the crank is a kafkaesque activity with no defined purpose other than turning the crank, it is impossible to tell what it is meant to show. If we observe it from the standpoint of labour-power of a given value, $50 over a whole working day, then we must also come up with the total value the labour-power generates, say $100.

That the worker becomes more productive due to this fastness would alter the unitary cost of each commodity while leaving the total of the working day unchanged. This would not change the hours of necessary labour.

Mr. Pointer then asks how this change would be dealt with, whether by working fewer hours for a higher rate and the same total wage(!!) or a higher wage. The fact of the matter is that if the capitalist gets their way, nothing at all changes about the arrangement, and they are none the richer for it, their commodities only become cheaper.

The next passage contains some considerations which in no way affect the wage-equivalent, as it is given by a worker's individual wages. That a worker spends $20 of their $50 on steak, books or cinema trips in no way affects the total wage. Mr. Pointer also claims that workers enjoy a share of the surplus-value, when this can only apparently be the case when the capitalist must pay their workers' wages out of the surplus-value, but does not change the money into golden tickets. Their wages remain the same in quantity. Their source is the only thing that changes. The same logic of the first point applies to the case of saving up money. That now $10 of the $50 is hoarded up for whatever reason does not change the wages into surplus-value.

He makes the same mistake immediately after, and includes the case of the only goods the workers would be able to obtain to be those of the same seller they work for, which thanks to legal measures "has rendered this a mere 19^th century bug, not an indispensable feature of capitalism."

He then claims that "We have over 150 years of evidence that suggests surplus-value is not uniformly distributed among the 'capitalists'." He doesn't provide any source for this claim at this point. He then questions whether "Running water, working indoor toilets, electric lights, telephones, radios, TVs, automobiles, air travel, computers, [and] smartphones" may be considered means of subsistence. Factually speaking, they are means of consumption. Using the example Mr. Pointer makes about a worker wanting to dine out or read a book with a part of their wages, we may consider all of these commodities to be part of the consumption fund for the workers, in some cases an indispensable necessity for their work or their family's work, e.g. computers, smartphones, telephones, TV or air travel. As for running water, toilets and electric lights, these are now a common part of daily life without which a person is not enjoying the same consumption as the rest of society. Mr. Pointer does not think he needs toilets or running water, for all that.

"Thus Marx’s third fundamental error: the assumption that workers are all underpaid and deprived of any value they generate beyond the bare minimum to maintain themselves. Marx will often recur to this fallacy throughout the rest of his work."

His assumption is that all workers are only paid their wages and not their entire value-product. As for the bare-minimum part, there is a reason for the name of 'minimum wage'. The only thing Pointer manages to do is outrun his own conscience.

He gives Marx his due in his summary on the working day.

His section on Productivity lacks some comprehension. We previously saw that higher productivity would cause each individual commodity's value to fall. This because the necessary labour time required to produce each one would decrease, meaning their value would necessarily be less. Mr. Pointer ignores it.

Mr. Pointer briefly considers a change in productivity being sourced from machinery, meaning a fall in variable capital with less labour necessary to produce the same or a higher amount of products. His vision is clear here. Less variable capital (total wages) and higher constant capital necessarily means higher capacity to pull more value out of less workers. His next statement is that a higher degree of productivity from labour becoming skilled necessarily means the value of it increases. In reality, this can happen without a corresponding rise in wages and result in greater surplus-value being taken for free, which does not help his argument.

Section on workplace culture

Here he attempts to misunderstand and misrepresent Marx quite intentionally, demonstrating a serene lack of a desire to educate. Here is Marx's quote:

"[Any average magnitude, however, is merely the average of a number of separate magnitudes all of one kind, but differing as to quantity.] ... each individual laborer, be he Peter or Paul, differs from the average laborer. These individual differences, or ‘errors’ as they are called in mathematics, compensate one another, and vanish, whenever a certain minimum number of workmen are employed together."

Within the full quote (in brackets) we can see that this means that the workers' own differences from the average labour compensate one another and vanish (within a mathematical calculation) once an adequate amount of workers work together to create a day of average social labour. Mr. Pointer takes the deviations or differences from the average labour to mean, within his ever narrowing and vulgar perspective of the world, to mean the qualities related to 'diversity'. We do not know if he means diversity of skill or of backgrounds, but it is clear already that he does not intend for his essay to be a rigorous critique of Marx, or even an educational article. 

His next section falls into the same error right before he is able to come to a logical thought, viz. that capitalist division of labour, within manufacture, has the capacity to damage a worker's sanity for their product; but he walks into a rake and suggests this is somehow incompatible with the former assertion he misinterpreted. Indeed, when you misinterpret things you can make them contradict anything.

Simpler time section

He wastes no time after his summary to imply Marx preferred the previous form of society to the one in which he lived, based on the fact he called peasants "that bulwark of the old society". Bulwark means something raised in defense, which means they were a protective barrier for the old society. Mr. Pointer conveniently omits the rest of the quote, where he speaks of "...The irrational, old-fashioned methods of agriculture". From this omission, Mr. Pointer weaves quite a self-indulgent narrative for and by himself, where Marx yearned for a former stage of history. No such thing can be found.

He later posits that workers' (non-existent) share in their own surplus-value is enjoyed by them and thus given a 'seat at the table' with the capitalists. A quote he omits right next to the one he places as justification contradicts this: 'But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage worker.'

Surplus Labour Army

Here he attempts to summarize the concept of the Industrial Reserve Army, which is a population of unemployed people used as the capitalist's threat of firing a worker, that if the worker protests, he can just hire another person for cheaper, for example. Mr. Pointer spins this into a narrative that places Marx as some sort of hater of population growth, which Pointer does not in any way prove. 

Pointer's Glorious Conclusion

He accuses Marx of taking his work as the sole source of truth. How? He does not explain, because he does not know. He also takes Volumes II and III to not be Marx's work. Engels having edited II from Marx's manuscripts and having constructed III out of the latter's notes, he says, could "technically" make them not be Marx's work. Should read: Makes them technically be the work of Marx and Engels, which is no reason not to read them. Lastly, he takes Volume II to be self-referential. That it builds on the theory of Volume I and critiques other economic works, namely Smith and Ricardo, does not figure in his wooden head to mean that it is Volume II of Capital, which takes from the previous theorization to expand on it, thus referencing a previous part of the work, since the second part must be based on the first.

For all of those reasons, which we have seen to be mostly the cause of Mr. Pointer's own pronounced lack of interest in reading the book accurately, he claims that the book is "profoundly bad for humanity." 

The amount of similarities between the argumentation of Bryce Pointer and our own Mr. Wave, i.e. the lack of rigour and agenda-ridden pettiness was a disappointing but altogether unsurprising element within this article. The reader is again encouraged to read the book for themselves.

References

1. The article itself. https://tenminutemajor.com/das-kapital-a-primer-in-poor-logic/ 

2. Investopedia. What is Human Capital? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/humancapital.asp

3. Investopedia. Karl Marx defined as an economist here. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/karl-marx.asp 

Eyes Closed Awake #1, MentisWave's problem with having civil rights.

Section 1. Preface

Greetings. The purpose of this small essay must be clarified before we begin with our presentation of this particular topic, as it must be handled with care. 

First of all, we must say what the purpose of this essay is not, and then state what it truly is. Our purpose here is not to give a detailed account of Rationalism, supposed right-libertarianism, anarchocapitalist tendencies, or even to present a knowledgeable standpoint, this in stark opposition to the subject of this essay. This essay will not educate the reader on Rationalism and will not teach about the political goals of the mentioned ideologies.

It will instead be sharing a perspective on a specific mode of thought, which, in accordance with the fact that this is an essay, said perspective is one of many opinions, an interpretation of facts observable within a sphere of influence in Youtube. The mode of thought may be identified within any political group. It is not a special occurence, and its ubiquity does not have any impact on the total repertoire of political beliefs. In other words, it has nothing at all to do with the theoretical aspects of any political group.

Furthermore, as the reader has seen the title, "Eyes Closed Awake", this is meant to be the first of at least three essays regarding the same youtube channel's videos, with the same basic name. To be precise, two more are planned, but the writer is not limited to this number. Any further essays are thus not guaranteed. Thank you for your understanding.

For all that, this essay does not claim itself to bear any scientific truth within it. We will be interpreting facts and statements. Whether the perception of these facts is sufficient for a correct interpretation will be seen by the reader inasmuch as we refer to all individual readers of this essay. A reader who pays attention to the truth is thus a necessity for the writer. This not coming from the standpoint of the liesome idea of the world bearing many truths in each individual, rather from the perspective of the every individual's accurate perception of the world's truth. From a less mystical angle, we only ask that the readers take the time themselves to double-check if what is being said is not made up or otherwise misrepresenting what is being said. The writer also hopes that this essay is an entertaining read. Let's begin.

Section 2. Introduction

We are going to be observing the contents of certain videos posted on Youtube by a channel named "MentisWave". It is run by a single person, and the videos posted on it can therefore be attributed solely to his heart. This channel's description is as follows.

"Rationalist and Right-Libertarian leaning (Yes, I like Hoppe) channel dedicated to exposing the nonsense of Clown World. Also memes."

What is immediately observable are the political beliefs of this person. He is a self-proclaimed Rationalist and Right-Libertarian leaning individual, and his goal is to expose a specific thing he calls the nonsense of a fictional place called Clown World. Of course, these are merely humorous euphemisms for him and his viewership. A quick look at the videos posted on his channel show his inclination to disproving the beliefs held in common by certain political groups, which he views as the inhabitants of Clown World, clowns as such. These political groups include feminists, communists, socialists, supposed liberals, and any group whose ideals include moral values of social progress and equality.

These former groups fit within what he calls "Woke" culture, which is opposed to his own political beliefs, making them confront him as the complete opposites of his ideal world order. However, we do not care about his political ideals. He can hold onto them for us. His modus operandi can be broken down into three phases.

Firstly, the presentation of simple facts to introduce the viewer into the topic. Along with this, he adds in various images to keep the viewer engaged. In the case of the video 'Muh Civil Rights: The case for total freedom of association.', he also brings up the opposing viewpoint he wishes to tackle, along with images to symbolize the group which holds these viewpoints as their own. Since he is honor-bound to tackle these viewpoints in their general presentation, he cannot outright tell the viewer any outright falsehoods. Regardless, he finds meaningful subterfuge in omitting any information that can help the viewer understand the opposing viewpoint fully. He is kicking around a sandbag named "Woke" while the proponents of the argument he is supposedly tackling watch on in mute sympathy.

Secondly, he uses this sandbag, along with any information he might have found on the side of the road as the bases for his further argumentation. Of course, the information on the side of the road can be isolated graphs, newspaper headlines, or incomplete snippets of information obtained from the internet, which can aid his persuasiveness in so far as the viewer doesn't look at them for too long. His own opinions are the true focus of his presentation, and information only plays the role of supplementing the persuasion by appearing to show the supposed truthfulness of it.

Thirdly, once this middle argumentation is finished in record time, he uses the ideas previously developed to attempt a further refutation of other talking points he takes as being fundamentally based on the central argument he believes to have proven wrong, in a museum-like procession where he, the savant serieux, dresses himself up as a spiritual medium through which Reason speaks. At the end of this deluded procession he takes this as yet another easy victory against the adversaries of capitalism, whatever their form of opposition, which further heightens his own self-perceived rationality against these opponents. In this case, however, his supposed rationality factors into his already high self-esteem, shown by his smugness in the face of each problem, which he handles with the utmost vulgarity and a continuous insistence to the viewer of his gracefulness. This third stage comprises the larger relative part of the time of each video.

Any other tactics he employs within his produced works are done precisely in service of this modus operandi. To see this in action, we will review the transcript of the "Muh Civil Rights" Video.

Note: The names "Mr. Wave" and "Junior von Mises" are used interchangeably, and only represent nicknames to add flavor to this essay. His channel name is Mentis Wave.

Section 3. The Civil Rights video.

An important thing to keep in mind before we see his real statements is that Mr. Wave, despite any statement to the contrary, is in favor of any form or system of discrimination that benefits capitalism. It can be race, sex, age and/or disability chauvinism (though this is not a complete representation of how these forms of discrimination operate), homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, and so on. 

The writer's prediction is that his reaction to such a statement, at the very least, would be the minimization and mockery of these forms of discrimination, and at most, a video dedicated to justifying them in favor of capitalism, since Mr. Wave does not have any morals. We must therefore take this moment to remind the reader that discrimination doesn't need to be opposed from a purely moral standpoint, i.e. discrimination employed in service of economic or political gain at the expense of human beings being morally wrong. To a person with no morals it is meaningless. A factual standpoint is more than enough. Any individual who discriminates must often base it on rationalizing it away in their imagination. A common tactic is also the twisting, doubting, or otherwise misinterpreting of another's words in order to delay their own confrontation of the argument.

A video transcription generator website was used to obtain these excerpts called "YouTranscripts". We will see the quotes first, and add our own thoughts after them, so reader and writer may face these quotes jointly.

"Hey, internets! So, this video is going to explain the reasoning behind what is often seen as the most controversial libertarian position, which is unfortunate, because when you understand it, it's not uncommon to realize that it's actually not that controversial at all and actually makes perfect sense."

We are starting off quite strong. He does not mention evidence being involved in the position, but we can forgive him for this. We will assume he means the reasoning based on solid evidence that is behind the position. He also says that once the position is understood, it is "not uncommon" to realize it makes sense. His language however is supposed to set up the viewer as part of a superior group of people, a majority (common) which understands, and is thus above the controversy.

"... What I'm talking about here is of course the abolition of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as laws that have similar negative effects in other countries; or to be more specific, repealing the parts of these laws which ban private individuals from discriminating against, or disassociating themselves (as it would be better said), from anyone they want, for any reason they want. In other words, the right to refuse service to anyone, period. End of discussion."

I have a dictionary on hand. He says "the abolition of the Civil Rights Act of 1964", which means to "put an end to" the Civil Rights Act. This means the whole act. Along with this one, the abolition of laws that have "similar negative effects in other countries". To this statement one would ask what the Act does, and what negative effects it has. It made discrimination illegal, to him a negative result. To abolish the Act would mean to legalize discrimination. 

The specific topic, which is 'freedom of association', is pertinent to Title II, which outlaws discrimination due to "race, color, religion, or national origin" in any establishment which is open to the public, i.e. establishments selling their commodities or services to the entirety of the US population. Must be noted before we continue that this short definition is obtained from the Wikipedia page. This would mean that a private individual or any of the staff employed by them could no longer refuse to serve a customer due to their race, skin color, religion, or national origin. This means that refusing to serve a person due to any reason that pertains to their behavior is still legal. It also means that no person is forced to serve someone (like slavery, which Junior von Mises omits entirely), rather that a person is legally bound to not discriminate against someone due to a prejudice related to the characteristics the title mentions. In other words, no one is barred from "disassociating themselves from anyone for any reason they want", as Mr. Wave says. They are instead barred from refusing service to anyone due to race, color, religion or national origin. A practical application for this law would be dissuading economic discrimination. As Mr. Wave usually does, let's imagine a hypothetical situation, one where this law does not exist. 

A black person is hurt in a car accident, and they need urgent aid. Another person accompanying them must then call up an ambulance to take them to the nearest private hospital. However, none of the private hospitals that are reachable before the injured person dies will render care on them due to the fact they are "whites-only", that is, racially segregated. The "blacks-only" hospitals are too far away to arrive in time. In a kind case, let's assume the hospital staff at the nearest private hospital do not care about the color of a person's skin and render care because they see them as human beings. The person is saved, in spite of the fact there was nothing preventing the whole problem from occurring. 
     The injured person was legally defenseless, while these 'private individuals', in this case white americans, are legally defended if they ever decide to let a person die due to something as trivial as the color of their skin. This is only one possible case under two categories mentioned in the Title, that of race and color. The unkind case is that a person has died while they could have lived.

If we imagine a situation in which the law is enforced, then the injured person could've been taken to any hospital; namely, the nearest one with the necessary supplies for adequate treatment. The problem, if we take humans to act lawfully in general, is prevented by the law's enforcement. If we take human behavior to also include unlawful behavior, then the law is able to react to it through fair punishment, if we also take the punishments to always be fairly given. Even though Mr. Wave does not advocate for fairness, good behavior or kindness, it is still important to point out the problem the abolition of the Act can bring to anyone who isn't part of a privileged group that, through historical developments, has major control of an entire nation's policy and economy, as opposed to a group that has historically faced oppression. To our "savant", the privileged group could be anything but the capitalists who inherited their fortunate fortunes from colonization, slavery and capitalism gratis, and much less the working class racists that think themselves superior due to their "race", or worse, their "Nation".

The implications listed here are immediately evident to people who know what the Act does within the glorious perspective of Wikipedia, while Junior von Mises's lack of adherence to factual information is immediately evident to anyone who is against racism and unsubstantiated claims.

Additionally, the final claim Mr. Wave makes is factually untrue. "In other words, the right to refuse service to anyone [is outlawed by the Act]..." On the contrary, any firm still holds it insofar as that refusal isn't based on the categories the Act outlines as protected from discrimination. And, funnily enough, the Act protects anyone without discriminating. One could not refuse service to a white person on the basis of them being white, either. This means that if the law truly does prevent and not just dissuade discrimination, it also expands the amount of customers for all firms, which is favourable for capitalists and their profit. Keep this in mind. Some of Mr. Wave's statements are argumentative and some are purely agenda-focused. The next one is the latter.

"Out of all libertarian musings, this one seems to take the crown for being the most confusing (indeed!) to the normies and the most triggering to the wokeoids, with the initial reaction of those who are not very well read (?) usually being to say that the right leaning Libertarians are all secretly Nootsies [Nazis] because of this, [and] that if the Civil Rights Act were to be repealed, then the country would immediately resemble World War II [Nazi] Germany."

The first thing we must take into account is that "libertarian musing" means a deep thought from libertarian politics to him, while this 'musing' confronts us as a disjointed and, indeed, confused conclusion, detached from facts or logic, which do not matter at all to Mr. Wave; the musing first confuses the libertarians, and the libertarians then recount it and evoke confusion in the group he calls normies, and triggers the group he calls the wokeoids. These two terms are merely used to mentally distinguish their users from other people who do not share their beliefs on the one hand, and opposes them on the other. Their actual content is not at all specific, and it is meant to be loose in order to lump people into groups; all for the purpose of simplifying the users' own thought process, while additionally simplifying the people in these groups. 
     In other words, the terms are a way to conveniently separate people into boxes, and turn the user's thought process into a rigid set of branching paths with obvious conclusions. A closed circuit of logic in their minds. He also implies this musing to be esoteric, only commonly possessed by people who are 'well read', which in this context he takes to mean 'knowledgeable'. A convenient thing to recall is that reading misinformation on the internet does not make their reader smarter. It makes them easier to manipulate.

Secondly, he claims the response of the "not very well read" to be that right-leaning libertarians are secretly Nazis, and that repealing the Act would make the USA resemble Nazi Germany. I am no historian, and do not know the experience of living in it. What I do know is that Nazi Germany carried out genocide on various groups it deemed to be unsightly and punished dissidents. From what we considered previously, abolishing the act would legalize discrimination, which would make such a scenario not only easy to achieve, but also a profitable enterprise for many capitalists, who could then buy (or simply take) land and other property for extremely cheap from discriminated groups which are being threatened with political persecution and death. Hypothetically, of course. Though this scenario is a preferable one for Mr. Wave. Next.

"Interestingly enough, we can see if this is true or not, because there are countries where no such law exists. I'll even show you an example so prepare yourselves to see this supposedly evil fist [this might be a transcription error] dictatorship, in which every single section of its commerce exists to systemically oppress and exclude all the minorities trademark (??) and, oh wait, it's literally just Japan: a first world constitutional monarchy with elements of democracy similar to the United States ... Japan has no laws prohibiting racial ethnic or religious discrimination or whatnot amongst private individuals ... you may occasionally(!) find a business here which refuses to serve a foreigner(!!) unless they are with a Japanese person or sometimes refuse service entirely(!!!)."

Purely based off what he says, we can see that he affirms there are no such anti-discrimination laws in Japan, and that it has a similar political structure in terms of democracy, and that you may "occasionally" find a business that discriminates against foreigners for reasons that are not elaborated on. However, a helpful commenter contradicts this claim with some information on Japan's anti-discrimination laws.

"Hi Mentis, I just wanted to point out, Japan indeed has both constitutional and laws regarding racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, those being Article 14 of the Constitution, the Civil Code 709 directly applies to that article. There is also the signing of "International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination". And yes, there's multiple cases of the Court ruling against store owners prohibiting foreigners from services." -sponge540

Taking this at face value, Mr. Wave's supposedly factual example is not factually true. Double-checking the article, we find the official government site to state the following: 

"Article 14. All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin. Peers and peerage shall not be recognized. No privilege shall accompany any award of honor, decoration or any distinction, nor shall any such award be valid beyond the lifetime of the individual who now holds or hereafter may receive it."

As the reader may guess, Mr. Wave has not replied in December 2025, while the video was originally uploaded in November of 2023, or two years before the time of writing. Another commenter also realized that there is an economic incentive behind discriminating when the anti-discrimination laws are absent, "because if most of people don’t want to see blacks in the restaurant, then they will only visit the ones refusing to serve them." (anonymus6556). Mr. Wave does argue later on that discrimination does not bear any economic incentive, and that, simply speaking, it is to the benefit of capitalists to sell to more people and gain higher profit, which we mentioned previously. He presupposed the conditions created by anti-discrimination laws where the laws are assumed to be absent in his example. He does not examine each scenario uniquely, and makes another mistake. That mistake completely annuls a portion of the transcript, which we will omit. Since the video is publicly available, the writer reminds any reader to watch the video for themselves to verify the writer's claim. Along with this, the writer kindly asks the reader to leave a comment on the video saying 'double-checking'.

"...at this point [where the benefit of anti-discrimination laws is evident], some of the libs [liberals] might ask: 'Well then, why not just make it illegal anyways? I mean, what's the harm? It's bad when it happens, so just make it against the law.' Well, no. The reason this is a bad idea is because civil rights are in fact not the noble "muh equality"[sic!] deal that Western liberals have been sold, quite possibly taking the number one trophy slot for the biggest piece of well-meaning legislation with the largest amount of unintended consequences attached to it ... [but] there is a stark contrast between what civil rights are supposed to do, [what they] claim to do(??), which is supposedly create a society of justice and freedom and equality for all, etc., and what civil rights laws actually do; which is that they take away people's freedom of association, aka, the people's right to interact and form communities with whoever they choose, which is of course, a two-way street [which requires consent from both parties]."

At the reasonable question of "why not just implement it?" he goes on a tangent, which we can analyze point by point or summarize it. The summary is that he made up another objective for the Act, and another result from his logic trees. Point by point, he posits that the Act was not a tool for equality as the western liberals he mentions apparently thought. He also adds that it had unintended consequences, and cites that the goal of the Act and its practical results are in opposition. The goal, according to him, was to create a society of 'justice, freedom and equality for all', while the practical result was it took away people's freedom of association. In point of fact, the goal of it was not to "create a world of justice, freedom and equality". It was to abolish discrimination based on the categories it outlined, as we saw. The practical result, from the standpoint of the law itself, does not take away freedom of association either. It outlaws firms discriminating based on race, color, religion, country of origin. Legally, it puts an end to economic segregation on that front. What Mr. Wave sees as freedom of association is not freedom, and is not associated to association, rather to discrimination. He mentioned this earlier, when he unintentionally equated discrimination, dissassociation and refusal of service. Thus what he was actually advocating, as is immediately obvious, was freedom of discrimination. Earlier, the writer briefly warned the reader that regardless of Mr. Wave's opinions, he is factually in favor of any kind of discrimination that benefits capitalism. From what we have just considered, this holds.

We shall briefly recall Mr. Wave's modus operandi, specifically the third stage, where he takes his perceived correctness in the stage of basic argumentation as the foundation for his further ideas, which aims and claims to uproot the whole problem and lay it bare. The common occurrences within this stage are 1) Ludicrous claims that lack substantive evidence, 2) Inventing new positions for the opposing groups, and 3) the taking of real conditions to be mere ideas in order to construct a fake narrative. Since the rest of the video does not argue anything of importance, we may be calm and see his own egotistical impulses separate him from the truth he could hardly say he sought.

"... Interestingly enough, this is the same problem with a lot of Jim Crow laws, and why many libertarians reject those laws as well, such as banning miscegenation or whites and blacks shaking hands being illegal; these also take away people's freedom of association (Jim Crow indeed did that!), so all the libertarian right position on civil rights is really doing is correctly identifying Jim Crow and Civil Rights as two sides of the same flawed coin, rather than civil rights somehow being a solution to Jim Crow, which they are not. So one side forces segregation and the other side of the coin forces integration (given the civil rights movement that was required for the Act to be created, the only group of people that would've been forced into it were racists), but both sides violate the property rights of those involved(??) as they dictate what they can and cannot do with their property (??); 'but wait,' the lib may once again contest, 'isn't forcing people to get along at least better than forcing people to not get along?' Well sort of, in the short term, anyways. But in the long run, not really, because taking freedom of association away, regardless of context (!!!!), has some very serious negative side effects, to the point where forced integration can actually lead to desire for more segregation(???). So let's take a look at what some of those problems are. The first of these issues comes down to the question of how civil rights laws are actually enforced. How exactly do you know if someone is discriminating against someone anyways? If you are a minority and someone treats you poorly, how do you know they are doing it because you are a minority trademark or not? As the victim perception fallacy shows, people are extremely bad at being able to tell if they are actually facing prejudice or not, and because of this we have enshrined into law the utter insanity(?) that is the disparate impact standard."

We see that libertarians reject direct discrimination, but accept anything that does not directly place a boot in the face of a person, as that gives them a concrete thing to overthrow, in their mind. What this means, of course, is that they want to be able to discriminate individually and have this general social discrimination form their racially segregated communities within the so-called Free Market, as they believe the Free Market will stabilize to then naturally reveal to them, through competition, the fact that discriminating people is wrong; this only if such an idea demonstrates, through the market, that it is profitable enough to erase their prejudice, this suspension of prejudice being as anarchic as what they call the "Free" Market. 

This mystification is only to cover up the lack of importance libertarians place on human life and true knowledge in general. Another mystification they claim to believe is that the individual is only as good as their profit, is quantified and valued through it. In truth, they lack any conviction to laws, morals, or even a fixed ideology. What they believe in is money. Any reading they do is in service of supporting the system they believe will eventually grant them enough money to stand alongside millionaires and billionaires. They will adopt any discourse, thought or idea they believe will bring them money. Moving on, he asserts that both Jim Crow and Civil Rights violate the property rights of those involved. He means that capitalists can't discriminate who they sell their commodities or services to. That he believes this to be government overreach is one the many characteristic sources of his frail terror. He then fabricates an opinion for a fictional liberal which conveniently simplifies the matter of integration into "forcing people to get along". Regardless of this, he still concedes that it may work short term, presumably for the aforementioned people to understand each other as equals when the option to discriminate is taken away, but not long term, where racist agendas would prefer to be able to discriminate in directly harmful ways. This is because he believes everyone to be as racist as himself, and would not tolerate seeing black people as equal for very long. The abolition of his freedom to discriminate politically and economically would, in his view, willfully ignoring the historical context in which he must necessarily situate his argumentation, produce negative side effects that would lead to the desire for more segregation, a shadow he projects on other people's character. He does not specify which of the racially segregated groups would have this desire, but we can make an educated guess.

Next, he questions whether or not discriminated people can tell they're being discriminated, and posits that because of a fallacy he invented in another one of his videos, people do not have the ability to tell if they're being discriminated against. We know from all this that he doesn't actually care about this particular thing, but rather made up a way to justify discrimination for his own ends. 
        In the opinion of the writer, a manner in which we may be able to determine discrimination is through recorded behavior which indicates a desire to treat another person differently along with the recorded concretely differential treatment. The person treated differently may present their own treatment as part of the evidence, and the fact of them being discriminated must be investigated by they themselves, and by others contributing to this investigation. As for discrimination, it can be as evident as a person calling another person a slur, refusing to serve them before or after that show of prejudice, or something as obscure as harsher judgment of another person's actions compared to another due to prejudice. 
        Determining discrimination requires, in the opinion of the writer, the examination not of a single individual perception, but of the social relations between the people involved. A toy model example would be three people: one  racist seller, one white buyer and one black buyer. The seller exchanges the white buyer the better loafs of bread, and sells worse quality loafs to the black buyer for the same price. From the black buyer's standpoint, they have had unfair exchange, as the bread is terrible, and from the other buyer's standpoint, they have obtained good quality bread for a certain price. From the seller's standpoint, which conveniently knows the other standpoints, they have given a fair exchange to the white buyer, and scammed the black buyer. 
        The racist seller's motive for scamming the black buyer, assuming the Act is enforced, may be the desire to discriminate in a way in which the desire to discriminate can't be easily demonstrated if they exercise their right to remain silent. Assuming it isn't, the seller may do the same thing, or outright refuse to sell to the black buyer due to them being black, in order to have racist white buyers. The difference between the two conditions is plain; the first case dissuades and to some degree prevents a racist seller (in this case) from discriminating openly and without consequences, while the second case gives them total freedom to discriminate against who in the first case appears as a buyer, and in the second appears as a patchwork of the seller's prejudice, vaguely matching the silhouette of a human being, whose own heart and mind are not recognized as equivalent. From this, it follows that discrimination must be the concretely different treatment between racialized groups within society, i.e. humans with certain characteristics lumped into 'races' existing in different social classes. What is meant by concrete differential treatment involves the material conditions which confront each racialized group, namely the political-economic-social conditions of each in mutual opposition.

His next claim is that this purported lack of awareness of discrimination, his own invention, resulted in the implementation of the disparate impact standard. Let's see what he says.

"...This brings to the legal table the idea that unequal [economic] outcomes are being caused by discrimination regardless of whether or not intent to discriminate can be proven, or, in other words, civil rights laws necessitate the use of the equity fallacy [another one of his grand inventions] where any inequality of outcome can be used in court as evidence of violating civil rights."

A quick search of 'the equity fallacy' reveals a reddit post from an account directly tied to him. In it, he argues that the academics conducting scientific research on how unequal outcomes occur due to various factors within the system are actually not considering various conditions that 'truly' affect unequal outcomes. These conditions are "regional demographics, culture, and religion". Looking at the sections in which he elaborates on them, we can go over them quickly.

"Regional demographics. The world we live in where daylong intercontinental travel is easily accessible has only existed for roughly a century. Because of this, people are still largely separated into different areas of the Earth on an ethnic basis, which means the very premise of the argument is flawed because we don't actually live in the same environment."

In another fantastic use of his time, he does not consider federal and state laws within the United States, which is not the entire Earth. He extrapolates the issue of internal US racial segregation to the entire planet, where the specific form being discussed only exists inside the US, then pretends that it makes the problem disappear. 

[Brief author's note: Mr. Wave's continued viewership is a hilarious circumstance.]

"Culture. Different customs have a profound effect on peoples values, and this has been backed up by solid evidence.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7126161/*

For instance, Some cultures may value wealth more and other cultures value enlightenment more while others may value leisure time more. Different cultures also have different ideas of what is considered successful, so expecting all cultures to achieve the same outcome in all aspects of western ideas of success is completely nonsensical." 

[*Quote from article: 'The “value” issue pertains to the fact that people make different decisions in part because they value or like different things. Addressing this issue in decision making involves predicting to what extent the beneficiary of a decision will like or dislike attributes or outcomes of the decision. Because cultures differ in what they value, they will differ in their appraisals of how good or bad particular options are(!). For example, residents of former frontier regions in the United States are more likely to choose unique names for their babies, possibly because frontier environments fostered an ethos of independence which in turn may have led people to value uniqueness (Varnum & Kitayama, 2011). U.S. residents in regions with higher pathogen prevalence tend to vote less for third-party candidates, possibly because higher pathogen prevalence seems to encourage value for conformity (Varnum, 2013).']

The article which Mr. Wave cites does not back up his claim as much as he thinks he does. He believes culture factors into people's desires in a profound way, determining in a simplistic way whether a society will pursue capital, spiritual enlightenment, or surplus time. The article cited contradicts that claim, as the values (not to be confused with economic value, as he does) of a culture may partially influence the decision-making of people. Another part of the study also takes into account the cultural differences in decisions weighing personal and social value impacts. In other words, whether the decision-maker's choice rests more on their personal likes and dislikes, or the social likes and dislikes they observe in other people, and how these may influence other people's reactions. His claim is therefore only partially substantiated, which is to say, baseless.

Let's return to his statement on cultural ideas of success and cultural desires, in which he claims that different cultures may have different ideals of success. Given the three different cultures he abstracts, that each prefer wealth, enlightenment and surplus time, his preferred position would be that the first would be the one to more generally seek wealth. Let us consider this a little more closely.

Within a condition of wealth, i.e. a capitalist owner of capital, part of the bourgeois ruling class, the individual bearer's capital confronts them as the material precondition for accessing a part of time freed up from the necessity to labour. Therefore, the possession of surplus time may be preconditioned by wealth. The bearer of this wealth and surplus time is then confronted by it as time free to be possibly spent in contemplation. Enlightenment being reached through ritual contemplation becomes a product of possessing surplus time or wealth thereby to the capital owner.

In short, what is not being argued is that the cultures focused on enlightenment or surplus time may only access these things through capital, as that is ahistorical. What is being argued, however, is that the second and third cultures, in a historically specific global capitalist society, find the elements through which to achieve their supposedly fixed cultural goals in the form of wealth the system presents them with, i.e. ownership of capital, of wealth in its capitalist form. The example therefore does not support Mr. Wave's claim at any time. All cultures in it will seek wealth in a global capitalist society, as wealth in this society comes in the form of capital, and this is assuming every person within the culture desires the same thing, which must be remarked to be the view of a deeply ignorant person. It follows that all of the toy cultures functionally seek capitalist wealth for their own purposes, and that the distinctions between them are wiped away as they are subsumed by the capitalist system. Here, the three cultures do not confront each other as having different practical goals, as they all seek the same kind of wealth, and their usage of this wealth is the only thing that differs. Given this capitalist wealth, Mr. Wave's argument therefore anticipates the only common underlying thing between the three cultures to be a common internal division between a capitalist class and a working class. Let's see his final point on this front.

"Religion. Probably the biggest external factor of them all (Oh really?). Various research has been done on the heredity of Religious ideals from Parent to Child with the results on most studies generally settling at 2/3rds.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/10/10-key-findings-about-the-religious-lives-of-u-s-teens-and-their-parents/

This means the majority of people (within the groups studied) adopt the religious followings of their parents or at least their ethnic and cultural origins (Notice he adds in a different thing irrelevant to religion in abstraction alongside the broader thing under consideration). Similar to culture, different religions have drastically different values that will have a huge impact on peoples choices in life, which will obviously lead to different outcomes in life (The outcomes are regardless outcomes, the problem is that they are economically unequal). A footnote on religion that must also be pointed out is it's major impact on gender roles. A study of LDS women showed that higher religiosity in women has a very significant impact on her choices in lifestyle and employment."

https://rsc.byu.edu/latter-day-saint-social-life/womens-religiosity-employment

Within the articles cited, we see that the first one contains statistical data on what he is claiming, namely, that children in the US mostly share the religion of their parents or legal guardians. This holds as much weight as the previous culture argument, as it is still a partial influence, out of the broader culture, over the individual decisions of the religious person. The latter article tells us that the religion of Christian/Latter Day Saints women has influence on their seeking employment or not. The reason is their "pro-family" ideals, where women are apparently expected to become homemakers, which cannot be fully shared with a stable job unless the resources necessary to do so are available.

For all that, this charming "equity fallacy" invention of Mr. Wave's does not contribute to the scientific understanding of unequal outcomes. In fact, his conclusion on the reddit post explaning the invention points to his belief that the laws influencing the material conditions of the people affected by unequal outcomes cannot be the true basis for the scientific explanation of unequal outcomes, and, in his extraordinary capacity for ignorance, argues that culture rigidly determines whether people are able to desire money to exchange for necessaries, following from the nice idea that their culture alone might fill their stomachs with food and their hearts with joy. Moving on to his next statements, we find a hilarious tangent.

"And this is where things get kind of silly, because if you explain this to a centrist, [i.e.] what the disparate impact is and what it does, many of them (which many?) will strongly disagree with disparate impact, and concede that the disparate impact standard should be abolished; not knowing that this is in practice the same thing as how civil rights laws are addressed, disparate impact is also the main legal power provider to The Cult of Woke [sic!]. The main practice of Wokeness is to paint themselves as victims to justify aggression towards whoever they have decided the bad guy boogeyman oppressor is, and having an element of inequality of outcome existing in our legal system provides them the perfect tool to make absurd sweeping claims (sound familiar?) of victimhood in an increasingly hostile march towards socialism which they can then legally force private businesses to take their insanity seriously by simply making sweeping unfalsifiable accusations as disparate impact shifts the burden of proof onto the accused to somehow show proof of the negative that they are not discriminating again (disparate impact measurement is the proof, so this is false). If you are a liberal centrist you may have noticed how all of this is very stupid (he isn't referring to his own arguments, unsurprisingly) and how the Woke behave is very insane. Well, guess what? Civil rights is the prime enabler of this behavior. It's exactly what they need to force people to fall in line with their Equity March [sic!] as the disparate impact standard actually requires society to not be colorblind (quite the opposite) ... this is also why the academic definition of racism that racism = prejudice + power, along with muh equal outcomes [sic!] runs contradictory toward the colloquial definition of racism (which one?) as the layman's definition (which one?) implies that color blindness is good (which one?) while the academic definition implies that color blindness is bad (what's the layman's definition?), and guess what? Disparate impact uses the academic definition, as does civil rights."

Here is where he begins his deluded procession in full. He refuses to state the colloquial definition of racism, and then makes up a way for the regular definition of racism to be somehow opposed to a false version of the academic definition stated previously, which is "the power to force prejudice on others", which refers to systemic, i.e. political-economic power used to oppress another group. It must be known that the writer is not a scholar of systemic racism, and thus does not know what the present results of its scientific study are, does not know a single thing. Luckily for us, Mr. Wave doesn't either. The next part of the transcript is mostly ludicrous claims. Enjoy.

"By necessity this is also the issue with Martin Luther King's line on people not being judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, which is a perfectly fine statement that libertarians in fact agree with. The problem is that statement actually contradicts how civil rights laws work in practice (he doesn't know how they work in practice or in theory), which means that if you agree with MLK's I Have a Dream speech, you actually disagree with modern academics and disparate impact (considering MLK Jr. having a major influence in the ideals of the movement that led to the creation of the Act, which remains in effect, this claim makes no logical sense, but we don't need to worry, as he doesn't either). This actually requires private businesses to discriminate against any supposed collective group that is doing well, in order to make sure that they are compliant with these standards (how?), and thus you get counterproductive ideas like affirmative action (which benefitted white people) or, even worse, you actually get reduction of academic standards, such as Oregon reducing what is needed to graduate high school, no longer requiring students to be able to do basic reading and math purely because those qualifications are more likely to have a disparate standard effect on minorities despite the fact that all this really does is (do not get your hopes up, he is going to say something insane) reduce the prestige of having one, thus screwing everybody else over, reducing the [use-]value of any diploma achieved within the state of Oregon, and really, any academic institution that practices similar clownery. The second problem is that discrimination is in fact sometimes justified ... "

The rest of the transcript will be shown in full right below, but the writer would like to take a moment to remark that Mr. Wave being racist was completely expected and in fact not a secret.

" ... For example, the phrase 'Islam is right about women' which, as some people have figured out (who?), yes, I was the person who came up with this ... [moving on from] 'Islam is right about women', what it really shows is an interesting, unique situation, where people from different cultures would actually be justified in not wanting to associate with each other (which?). For instance, muslims generally don't want to have to deal with screeching (this is pure agenda posting) modern feminists whose beliefs run counter to their own. Similarly, most feminism in practice runs counter to the traditional gender roles and pro patriarchy that is present within this islamic doctrine (the roles and patriarchy are also present in his own belief system). So when civil rights comes along, this creates an ideological contradiction crisis. If you force them to get along with each other at gunpoint (doesn't happen) then one of them has to stop being what they are (which one?). One party would have to completely revise their beliefs (which one?) which implies that there must be some inequality between them (this does not at all follow from the former statement). This is why so many Lefty progs have trouble answering the question "Is Islam right about women?", because it forces them to acknowledge the inherent contradiction with trying to pretend that everyone is equally correct (he has not shown this to be a fundamental, or even generally held belief of the group he is ascribing it to). How can everyone be right if people from different cultural backgrounds often hold contradictory beliefs and customs? Obviously, they cannot (and this is what a child could see), but civil rights laws comes along like a bumbling drunken idiot to take away people's freedom of association (we have already shown this to be false) so Clown World is now forced to jackhammer these two things together regardless of whether or not it can work, and the progs, in response, are forced to, well, basically just deny reality outright (how?). The third problem is that forced integration gets in the way of true integration (he does not define these concepts). Over 100 years ago, around the industrial revolutions, Irish immigrants faced a large degree of ethnic discrimination, to the point of being banned from many private businesses with 'no irish signs', and yet, that discrimination mysteriously vanished without the need for the Civil Rights Act."

The reader might have spotted the fact that Mr. Wave mentioned himself as the creator of a niche "right-wing" meme, which is still indeed niche at the time of writing. Since most of his deluded procession shows a lack of elaboration or factual bases for his claims, we can only look at the final claim, which is that irish discrimination mysteriously vanished without the need for the Civil Rights Act. We do not know why Irish discrimination 'mysteriously vanished'. A quick search led the writer to this article: 

How Irish Immigrants Overcame Discrimination in America

Alienating other minority groups helped the Irish advance

https://www.thoughtco.com/immigrants-overcame-discrimination-in-america-2834585

The relevant quote we must bring up is the following:

"While the Irish abroad opposed enslavement, for example, Irish Americans supported the peculiar institution because subjugating Black Americans allowed them to move up the U.S. socioeconomic ladder. After enslavement ended, the Irish refused to work alongside Black people and terrorized them to eliminate them as competition on multiple occasions. Due to these tactics, the Irish eventually enjoyed the same privileges as other whites while Black people remained second-class citizens in America"

We know now that they overcame that discrimination by utilizing discrimination against African Americans to move to a higher class in the US socioeconomic ladder. As such, it didn't "mysteriously vanish" without the aid of the Civil Rights Act, it was overcome by Irish Americans discriminating against African Americans. We will mark every false claim with highlighter as a fun game. 

"Why did it vanish? Well it's simple, really. Because colorblindness works, Irish immigrants had an incentive to actually find ways to get along with (should read: climb the socioeconomic ladder through discrimination) and become Americans as opposed to just using civil rights to try and force everyone else to just accept them by identifying as a protected class trademark, but that very active identity politics alone contradicts colorblindness which means people have an incentive under civil rights to never truly integrate(he is saying that since colorblindness works, which is false, that being bound to and protected by the not-colorblind Civil Rights Act, which contradicts the purported success of colorblindness, that the people protected by the Act have an incentive to never truly integrate. In short, that because the Civil Rights Act works, it doesn't work because it isn't colorblind. It is not hard to see the lack of logic in the claim.) not just because they don't have to, but because it would give up their protected status (The Act does not make certain ethnic groups into protected ones. It outlaws discrimination). Why make any concessions, when you can just sit back and claim infinite victimhood? (Made up an opposing position) ... (After bringing up his weightless Japan example again, he says) this problem has been called out extensively in the concept of the second, or new constitution in the book 'The Age of entitlement' by Christopher Caldwell, which I strongly recommend to anyone looking to understand this in greater detail. But anyways, the issue that all of these problems have in common is that civil rights by necessity requires state aggression to work (he means facing consequences for discriminating). It requires an authoritative power structure to sit as a monopoly[sic!] above everyone else, dictating what private individuals can and cannot do with their property (it outlaws discrimination). This means that civil rights is intrinsically tied to the problems inherent to centralized power dynamics and would in fact be better called 'civil entitlements' rather than 'civil rights' (a right is something an individual is entitled to), as all civil rights laws really do in practice is make people feel entitled to respect (he is saying he doesn't believe in respecting people he doesn't know, which was evident), rather than having to actually organically earn that respect (if he is referring to the Irish American overcoming of discrimination, he means discriminating African Americans with the advantage of having white skin), but that's not true respect, is it? (We already saw what happens in the absence of the Civil Rights Act, with Irish Americans gaining higher socioeconomic standing by discriminating against African Americans), that's just permanent victimhood (Third Stage, 3, Idealization to create false narratives). It's not going to solve any problems, it hasn't solved any problems and, if anything, has just made racial relations worse, as taking away freedom of association (he means freedom of discrimination) like this actually prevents meritocracy and prevents individualism from ever really being a thing. Rather instead, the incentive with civil rights laws is to lock people into an eternal collectivist struggle for who can be the biggest victim in order to gain access to the second constitution. (From his made up permanent victimhood and his version of the Act, he imagines a charming image of the Act resulting into 'locking people into an eternal collectivist struggle'. It just outlaws discrimination. Moreover, meritocracy and individualism do indeed exist in the current age, both being social problems emerging from capitalist relations which seek to obscure systemic discrimination.)

As we reach the conclusion of this video, the writer must thank the readers who have stuck the miserable path and arrived at its end. Let us see the final mental concoction Mr. Wave assumes to be true.

"In conclusion, civil rights laws are in fact not the great defender of equality. Rather, it is exactly the opposite, as the equality between collectives it seeks necessarily contradicts equality between individuals ..."

We have seen that the Act is not a great defender of equality, it is a 'well-meaning piece of legislation' that outlaws discrimination. We have also seen that Mr. Wave does not seek equality between individuals, instead seeking the freedom to discriminate in his eternal search for money. And finally, it is adequate to point out again that he does not care about equality. He cares about money.

Section 4. Conclusion 

As we bring this essay to a close, the writer would like to express great gratitude to any reader who happens to reach this point. If Mr. Wave has taken time out of his busy day to read this, he is more than welcome to review the arguments of this essay, along with the below scoreboard's counting. 

Scoreboard

Given Mr. Wave's inclination towards projection, it is necessary to include a section counting up the fallacies he himself commits within the video. 

THE STRAWMAN. +10

• MADE UP AN OPINION FOR YOU x 9

IT'S A SLIPPERY SLOPE, COMBO. +3 base, 1 mult, +3 mult on re-use

• IF EVERYONE'S RACIST LIKE ME x 4

ADVANCED AD HOM TECHNIQUES. +80

• CALLING PEOPLE NAMES. x 6 

COMPOSITION/DIVISION. +20

• ASSUMING EVERYONE IS RACIST. x 4

GENETIC. +3

• DISCRIMINATING PEOPLE. x 25

APPEAL TO (HUMAN) NATURE. +100

• THOUGHT CAPITALISM IS NATURAL. x1

AMBIGUITY. +10

• DOES NOT KNOW WHAT WORDS MEAN. x 6 

Base ScoreXMult = (10x9) + (3x4) [+12 mult] + (80x6) + (20x4) + (3x25) + 100 + (10x6) = (90+12+480+80+75+100+60)x13 = 897x13 = 11, 661 POINTS

BASE SCORE - 11, 661 PTS

IGNORING PEOPLE BONUS - +2, 325 PTS

WOKE MENTIONED - +1 PT

GOVT OVERREACH TAX (-60PTS) x 1 = -60

• LIBERTARIAN TAX DEDUCTION (+1/3 OF TAX) = +20PTS  

SCORE = 13, 947 

TIME: 11 m 44s = -704 PTS 

TOTAL SCORE

13, 243 POINTS 

References

1. Irish Immigrants. https://www.thoughtco.com/immigrants-overcame-discrimination-in-america-2834585 

2. Affirmative Action benefitting white students. Mr. Wave might call al-Jazeera a left biased publication, to which I tell him to pick any of the other publications that covered this piece of news, such as TIME or POLITICO. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/7/29/the-end-of-affirmative-action-will-also-hurt-white-students

3. Constitution of Japan. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html 

4. Wikipedia definition of Rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights

5. Britannica article on the Civil Rights Act. https://www.britannica.com/event/Civil-Rights-Act-United-States-1964

6. Wikipedia article on the Civil Rights Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

7. Mr. Wave's own reddit post on the made up "equity fallacy". https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/rwwxc0/the_equity_fallacy_why_unequal_outcomes_do_not/

8. An article on Brown v. The Board of Education by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, containing the arguments of the segregationists and the integrationists. https://www.americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/5-decision/integration-argument.html

9. Mr Wave's Civil Rights video. https://youtu.be/yuCpuHQy4Ro?si=AQbijSDAnZzIfmGV  

The miniscule publicity this affords him is well noted.