The Ancient Seed of Destruction ...A pan of water containing a frog is placed upon the stove.....
The HMS Titanic was the most magnificent ocean-liner ever built, and state-of-the-art for her time -- but the seeds of her destruction were contained in her very blueprint. Similarly, the seed which will destroy The United States of the America as you've known it all your lives is also contained within its blueprint: http://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs....
All events have consequences. The consequence of inferior wrought-iron rivets in the Titanic's steel bow was a luxury ship unexpectedly prone to sinking after a glancing swipe upon an iceberg. The consequence of codifying the power to legally steal within a nation's charter is to doom the country to concerted pernicious attempt to seize control of it by characters of mendacious intent. -- The power to tax is the power to destroy, it has been said; now the power to vote is the power to tax (and hence destroy), and so moral corruption slowly seeps throughout the entire national character rather than being contained solely within a ruling monarch where it is instantly recognizable. I.e., no king could get away with stealing half of everyone's productivity, but "We the People" apparently can.
The tactic, if not ultimate strategy, of Cloward-Piven was hardly unknown before it, however:
H.L. Mencken, in "On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe", pub. 1920, wrote..
"The state, or, to make matters more concrete, the government, consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting "A" to satisfy "B". In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods."
If the power to vote is the power to steal, then, self-evidently, controlling the outcome of the vote is the paramount game in town for bad men. E.g., the Woman's Suffrage movement had more on its mind than doubling the voting base with the inclusion of a large class of persons who seldom paid the bills; it had its eye on establishing a direct income-tax and furthering and expanding "nanny" government roles in regulating business (AKA suppression of competition as some industry heads dominate the regulatory boards), entrenching already-claimed fiefdoms (such as the Post Office, whose competition-destroying antics had prompted Lysander Spooner's* seminal No Treason already by 1870) as well as more directly intruding into the personal liberties of the citizenry by arbitrary campaigns against certain types of property (starting with "Demon Rum").
The overriding ambition of the aforementioned characters of mendacious intent was to first entrench themselves by fulfilling a promise (per Mencken above), then spend the other 95% of their time utilizing their legislative majorities to ramrod agendas no citizen would approve of if he could interpret the impenetrable bureaucratese. The Great Depression and oligarchic four-term reign of Franklin Roosevelt mark the apogee of the pre-Cloward-Piven phase.
-- The productive, liberty-seeking citizen cannot vote his way out of this; http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-w.... -- the last hundred-fifty years is evidence enough of the relentless advance of the state at his expense. Tea Parties, SwarmUSAs and other new third parties may seem fresh and exciting (and may be good places to encounter like-minded members of the opposite sex), but they're not going to succeed in their intended purpose, since the bad guys are way, way ahead of them, and have glacial patience.
-- Complaining about illegal immigration is a complete waste of your time since any associated deleterious effects are symptoms of an out-of-control Ponzi-state, not a cause. (They're simply a tool; if it were not them, another would be found, or created.) Upon amnesty, illegality is no longer an issue, and they'll all be 100% bona-fide Americans with every bit as much granted entitlement to suckle the welfare tit as your average indigenous Octomom and double-dipping public pensioner leech****.
-- Complaining about trade with China, NAFTA, etc., is similarly taking one's focus away from causes to dwell upon symptoms. US government domestic policies make doing business internally unprofitable, and thereby drove industry offshore, whether it be China....or Ontario, where Chevrolet Camaros are fabricated in plants barely over the horizon across Lake Erie from the crumbling ruins of Detroit.
Any solution which consists of agitating for government to "do something" or acquire position within it is a fake solution.
* Ex-pat. The US is a temperate-climate all-four-meaty-seasons paradise. You're not really going to let these *******s steal the best place to live on earth, are you?
Real Solutions
* To hold any realistic hope whatsoever (beyond sheer luck), the first thing you must do is correctly analyze the situation. (That's why I wrote this.)
* Get off the hamster-wheel (pictured above).
If you have not read Atlas Shrugged; now, before the **** has truly hit the fan, is a good time to do so. And by "read" it, I mean exactly that. The whole thing, not the Wikipedia entry or Cliff's Notes. Also read Starving the Monkeys (below).
See also "The Philosophy of Liberty":
* Learn a skill which is marketable in a post-TSHTF underground economy, and learn to use Craigslist. Note: This is not as weird as it sounds; for example, if you can shape wood or grow food, you're already set. If you're a wall-street investment adviser, uh....
* Go Galt (AKA "Starve the Beast" or "Shrug"). The is living one's life in such a manner as to consistently deny the fruits of one's productivity to those who would seize it. Minimally, this means employing yourself on a cash basis and dropping off the tax grid; do not own real-estate or "luxury bling". Don't vote; don't pay; get off "lists".
* Civil Disobedience. -- Network with like-minded persons, and be ready and able to support each other quickly. A couple hundred people anywhere can throw a monkey-wrench into almost anything. But be mindful of fake solutions -- virtually all mass-gatherings are organized by groups which hope to influence political processes, NOT disobey already implemented laws. Example: marching on Washington to attend a rally to legalize pot is a fake solution; a thousand people each lighting up a joint in a park simultaneously is civil disobedience.
* Covert Disobedience. -- You'll know the time: It'll be when government is not only heedless of peaceful civil disobedience, but actively ups the ante by persecuting the participants.
Are you prepared for the greatest crisis in American history? Not if you haven't read Starving the Monkeys.
You're being lied to. By everyone on both sides of the political aisle. Liberals tell us that Obama's socialism will bring a glorious new era. Conservatives tell us that it won't, but we just need to vote Republican to solve the problem. And they all claim to believe that the current system can be salvaged. Don't kid yourself. The system can't go on much longer. But by reading this book, you can be prepared. In it, you'll learn:
* Why voting shouldn't be your primary tool, and how voting for even reformed incumbents only makes things worse. * How protest movements can become a dead-end without a plan for individual action. * How and why the system seeks to destroy anyone who thinks for himself. * Why you need much more preparation than gold and guns, or heading for the hills. * How to carve out personal and financial independence without attracting attention, while you prepare for the coming crisis. * How to be worthy of assistance during and after a collapse.
All this, and much, much more is in Starving the Monkeys. Some call it a 21st century version of Atlas Shrugged. Others find it chilling. But for those who are ready to face the greatest crisis in our history, Starving the Monkeys is a book full of promise and real hope.
Tom Baugh Interview with Free Talk:
Liberty Forum speech Part 1 - Introduction, The Problem, Defining Liberty, Ineffective Strategies Live:
Liberty Forum speech Part 2 - The Enemies of Liberty, The Myth of Justice, Offender Registries, Nothing Left to Lose:
Liberty Forum speech Part 3 - Tyranny of the Nice, This is Not a Civil Rights Era, The Myth of Oaths, Liberty Versus Civility, No Cold Dead Hands:
Liberty Forum speech Part 4 - Who the Enemies of Liberty Are NOT, Our Battleground, The Font of Value, Quality of Life, Friend or Foe, Corporatism:
Liberty Forum speech Part 5 - Regulation Surfers, The Myth of Sheeple, Beneficiaries of the Status Quo, They Surround Us:
Liberty Forum speech Part 6 - Where Ayn Rand Was Wrong, Unstoppable Crisis, Worse Than ..., Irreparable Economic Damage
Liberty Forum speech Part 7 - Scrapping of Infrastructure, Lessons Learned, IRS Hockey Stick, Take Heart, Anatomy of a Crisis, Influencing the Recovery, Stone Soup, The Myth of Labor Value, The Value of Ideas ... Liberty Forum speech
Part 8 - Schools and Obedience, The Value of Ideas, The Myth of Gold and Silver, Investment Versus Speculation, The Mythical Prepared Retreat, Individual Preparation, Conclusion, Audience Comments
If you set out to ruin a country, the smartest way to do it would be to borrow money and use it to increase the citizens' standard of living. -- Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle
Karl, in a recent Ticker, wrote..
We need to figure out how to live in a nation with a forty percent smaller GDP than we now have.
If Washington disappeared into the Twilight Zone tomorrow, I'll bet we'd have a 40% larger GDP within one year.
Let's watch Allen count the ways in which it presently (circa twenty years ago, when Laws of the Jungle was written; it's much worse now) enervates the nation:
Quote:
122
...Under the present system, taxpayers have practically no sense of actually paying taxes. Taxes are withheld from paychecks and included in the price of purchases. In this respect, our tax system resembles the Soviet model. Russians don't pay taxes; the cost of government is built into every Russian transaction. The reason for this deception is perfectly clear: no taxes, no complaints.
123
The great growth of our government in the twentieth century has been accomplished in conjunction with foreign wars and increased redistribution. As a temporary evil in our fight against fascism (a highly centralized, militarily aggressive form of government), the state introduced the withholding tax. Our fight against fascism quickly turned into our fight against communism (a highly centralized, militarily aggressive form of government), and withholding tax became permanent.
Without withholding taxes, it is doubtful whether the United States could maintain the highly centralized, militarily aggressive form of government that has been in power since World War I.
Withholding tax achieves two great goods for the government. First, it drafts all employers into an army of unpaid tax collectors. Second, withholding tax deceives the taxpayer. If he actually had to pay taxes from money that he received, he would be very angry with the government. He isn't angry now. Instead he grumbles at his employer for giving him so little "take-home pay."
124
If withholding tax is misleading, social security tax is downright sinister. The employer not only withholds a percentage of his workers' pay (currently about 7.5%), but he must match that amount from his own business.
A worker believes that his gross pay is $16,000. But his employer must match that $1200 which is withheld for social security, and so he sees the employee's gross pay as approximately $17,200. Since the employee never sees the additional $1200, he is totally ignorant of one of his biggest tax payments.
125
Social security taxes contribute to the distrust between employer and employee, but the state doesn't mind friction between its citizens. In fact, politicians thrive on conflict and ill will. Considering how useful the idea of hiding taxes is to the state, it is surprising that we have any awareness of taxes at all.
If the United States pursues this policy of tax obfuscation, we can expect to see the social security model enlarged and extended. Under some future system, the employer will simply pay all his workers' taxes. The employee will not be troubled by confusing withholding statements. The only time a wage earner will come into contact with the IRS will be when he is due a refund. Under such a system, the majority of people (like the Russians) can he persuaded that they pay no taxes at all.
126
Some taxes are so deeply hidden that no one but a specialist ever thinks about them. Import duties, for instance, are virtually invisible. These taxes achieve two useful purposes for the government. Duties raise money without antagonizing the population, and legislators can use them to grant a privileges to favored industries. In addition, the general population can he persuaded that such taxes patriotically save jobs.
A duty increases the cost of a product and that increase is paid either to the state or to the state favored industry. Such taxes may seem ideal from the government's point of view, but there is a problem. If a state employs import duties too aggressively, it risks retaliation from foreign governments. That retaliation can damage the nation's unprotected industries. Its most productive enterprises (the ones that need no protection) can lose important overseas markets.
The result of import duties is curious indeed. Without the state's interference, people tend to work at jobs where they are most productive. Let's say Americans can grow corn very inexpensively and Italians can make shoes at a very low cost. Americans sell corn to Italians and Italians sell shoes to Americans. But if American shoemakers are successful in keeping out Italian shoes, the Italians counter by keeping out American corn. Then we have Italians growing corn and Americans making shoes, the very jobs that they are least successful at performing. Duties, then, seem designed to destroy the wealth and productivity of the whole world.
127
Another deceptive method for gathering money is the excise tax or tax on a specific item. In America, a sizable amount of money is collected in the sale of gasoline, alcohol and cigarettes. Raising these taxes is very popular. Since the gasoline tax is used on highway upkeep, it is close to a user's fee and hence not very objectionable. The taxes on alcohol and tobacco have few critics since they are perceived as morally correct by the large segment of the population that feels the government ought to uplift the people.
The state can only raise excise taxes so far; after a certain point, bootleggers enter the market and the state's revenues begin to decline. Another problem with the "sin taxes" is their moral foundation. Is it right for government to benefit from customs it defines as repugnant? Should it depend financially (as it does) on continued drinking and smoking? These considerations persuaded the Prohibitionist party to oppose the taxing of alcohol. In general, though, the government follows a straightforward procedure with a morally questionable practice:
1. Deplore it. 2. Prohibit it. 3. Monopolize it.
128
If sales taxes were levied on all items, they could distribute the tax burden homogeneously. If people paid taxes on every purchase from food to savings accounts, taxation would be proportionate to money use. In America only the states and cities impose sales taxes, but the federal government has trouble resisting any possible source of revenue.
As withholding tax turned every employer into a tax collector, the sales tax turns every clerk and salesperson into an unpaid government agent. The tax creates remarkably little ill will. The clerk/collector is as much a victim as the taxpayer, and the clerk/collector is in the position of serving the payer/customer, who is always free not to make any particular purchase. Furthermore, the tax is usually forgotten. Few people notice that they pay $1.79 for a $1.69 can of shaving cream. The only time a person is upset by this systematic government directed shortchanging is when he makes a large purchase. He then discovers that 6% of $1000 is $60, and he wonders whether he can save money by buying his TV in a different state. He doesn't reflect on the fact that 6% of five hundred $2 purchases also adds up to $60.
129
The federal government receives 8 or 9 % of its revenue from a corporation tax. This is a very neat trick since corporations don't exist. They are no more than useful legal fictions. Perhaps the government could tax unicorns in order to give us human beings a break.
Corporations don't exist, but people do, and people ultimately pay corporation taxes as a hidden cost in the goods and services they purchase. The real problem with corporation taxes is that they divert useful work into tax avoidance work. The tax system contains thousands of incentives for clever tax avoiders. At present the system has created a truly dismal state of affairs in American business: The corporation that can avoid its tax burden is as likely to succeed as the corporation that gives people a product they want.
130
In recent years, the various governments of the United States have received 35 to 45% of the gross national product in taxes. These figures mean that the average citizen pays 35 to 45% of his income to government; but if you are an average citizen, you have no sense of paying so much.
You jump into your car, drive to the market and buy a six-pack of beer. You may notice that you pay a sales tax on the beer, and maybe you remember that the gas in your car is taxed. But are you paying any other taxes? Remember that the car manufacturer had to pay a corporation tax and that sales taxes were involved in selling the car. The beer manufacturer passed his corporation taxes on to you along with the special excise tax on beer. Consider the fact that the beer and the car had to be delivered by truckers. Did they pay any taxes that they had to pass on to you? The trucker has to pay for fuel permits, base plates, axle taxes, ton mile taxes and special fuel taxes. There is also a special excise tax on their tires. You could hardly calculate all the taxes involved in the simplest transaction and they are all invisible.
In order to uncover all the hidden taxes you pay, you must consider that you are ultimately paying for human labor. Each person involved in producing and marketing your beer, each person involved in creating and maintaining your car has his own taxes, taxes which he must ultimately pass on to you. If you do business in America and have no special method for avoiding your taxes, you end up paying that 35 to 45%. You just don't feel it.
131
Since taxation is the forcible expropriation of money by the state, politicians would like to hide the size of the financial transfer and disguise its violent character. In America, nearly all taxes are collected by manufacturers, merchants and employers. The rules of the game are simple: If you want to do business in the United States, you become an unpaid tax collector.
There remains one form of tax that is apparent to the payer and that he is personally responsible for paying: the property tax. Like manufacturers, merchants and employers, the property owner is very cooperative with the government because he has something to lose. Those who have a little something that may be taken away from them are the easiest to control. They are unlikely to resist being drafted into government service, and besides, they are not actually paying taxes but only collecting them. Their role as unpaid tax collector sometimes gives them opportunities for and knowledge about tax avoidance unavailable to the average citizen.
Let's say that each person knew exactly how much he was paying in taxes and that he was personally responsible for giving the money to the government. Not all the agents and armies in the world could extract from the American people what they are paying now.
132
From time to time, a call goes up for tax reform or even tax reduction. When legislators respond to these demands, the general public is in trouble. Tax reduction or reform is nothing more than tax concealment:
The call for business to "carry its fair share of the tax burden" is typical of tax reform. Since business will simply pass the burden on as a hidden sales tax, the general population will still pay it.
Tax concealment inevitably leads to tax increases. It may take four or five years, but once the tax has been hidden, politicians will increase it to extract more money. Make no mistake. Tax reduction or reform means tax increase.
133
It may seem surprising that government, with all its power and duplicity, cannot collect enough money to satisfy its clients' demands. But the demand for free money is infinite, and citizens do have the veto power when excessive taxation destroys their apathy. From time to time politicians discover that a national debt can satisfy some tax receiver demands without offending taxpayers. When debts come due, of course, both taxpayers and tax receivers are incensed, but the individual politician does not stay in office that long.
John Maynard Keynes devised a theory that legitimized governmental debt. He suggested that a strong central government could stimulate the economy out of a depression by borrowing and spending enough money. The state created employment would end the depression and generate enough tax revenue to pay back the borrowed money.
"Pay back the money." That's the hard part.
134
Politicians and intellectuals are fond of regrettable but temporary increases in state power that are necessary to achieve some desired end. For instance, Marx taught that the state would wither away under communism; the regrettable dictatorship was merely transitory. A giant military establishment was necessary for the United States to defeat fascism; the regrettable expense and curtailments in liberty were temporarily. Billions of dollars were thrown into the war on poverty; once poverty was defeated, we would all, presumably, be a lot richer. Hoover and Roosevelt had to borrow money to end the depression.
But we still have our giant military establishment; we still have poverty. And since the communist countries have the most tyrannous government, the revolution must still be going. When Hoover borrowed the first dollar to fight the depression, he probably thought that it would be paid back; but it has been repaid only by more borrowed money.
Isn't it fair to take Keynes at his word and say the depression is over only after the debt is paid back? Anything else would be a paper recovery, not an end to the depression but a deferment of it, a postponement. Since every American owes more than $15000 because of the national debt, can we say that the great depression is over?
Just as the communists are still fighting an invisible revolution against human nature, so the Americans are still in the middle of the depression, an economic downturn that was disguised in the 1940s but never ended.
135
It is an ill wind that blows no one some good, and a national debt is the illest wind of all. No one benefits. Taxpayers pay the interest and receive nothing. Borrowers have trouble finding money and the interest rate is higher. Investors invest in debt rather than wealth-producing, job-providing enterprises. Even those who hold the debt could make nearly as much money nearly as safely in other investments. Perhaps those in the business of moneylending are the winners. Some are, but they are all faced with a politically directed and hence unknowable demand.
To give a few people a small handout, the nation's productive capacity is crippled and its future is blackened. If you set out to ruin a country, the smartest way to do it would be to borrow money and use it to increase the citizens' standard of living. And yet politicians and their intellectual apologists will always find a reason why the government ought to borrow money. The reason is simple: Taxation is extortion. Rather than reveal this truth, politicians prefer to mortgage a future whose problems will belong to other politicians.
A while back I started listening to the Freedomain Radio guy's podcasts right up until the one where he said self defense is unnecessary because back when he was a little kid and his mother used to beat him up fighting back wouldn't have done any good. It makes me suspect that his vision of a non-violent society without a state rests on magical thinking.
It makes me suspect that his vision of a non-violent society without a state rests on magical thinking.
Does a vision of a non-violent society with a state rest upon magical thinking? Is our society becoming less violent as the state becomes more prevalent?
Does a vision of a non-violent society with a state rest upon magical thinking?
Yes. The error is in assuming that violence can be eliminated.
Somewhere between 4% and 10% of the population are sociopaths - they do not feel empathy with other humans and subsequently are not hindered by feeling of guilt when they harm someone.
Stefan Molyneux's high tech shunning might pursuade some of that group but isn't going to stop all of them, nor the most dangerous of them.
Somewhere between 4% and 10% of the population are sociopaths
It would stand to reason, then, that the last thing you'd want to have is a large, powerful, rights-violating government around for them to seize control of.
You're not going to get from where we are now to a condition of not living under a large, powerful, rights-violating government via pacifism when those sociopaths will be more than happy to get together with the authoritarian followers and set another one up around you should the current one cease to exist.
Anyone familiar with the results of Milgram's tests knows why we cannot vote our way out of this.
I agree with you on that point, but someone like Molyneux who goes around saying that violence used for self defense is unnecessary is completely divorced from reality. That kind of rhetoric just begs for someone who is equally as smart as you are and willing to use violence offensively to come by and subjugate you.
Before the Civil War the cadets at West Point were taught that states had the right to secede.
IIRC the line of reasoning is that the states are party to the contract that brought the federal government into being and did not give up their sovereignty in doing that. And unjoining adheres to sovereignty. Sorry that's so sketchy. The yanks won the argument with force of arms when their reasoning fell short.
Sure: the South seceded -- and they succeeded in doing so without armed response from the rest of the Union of the course of several months from November 1860 to February 1861.
-- Then the idiots insisted upon firing at Fort Sumter (after the Union declined to hand it over) in April of 1861: an act of war to which the North duly responded.
Considering that advocating violence against the state is likely to get you a not so friendly visit by SWAT, who in his right mind would go around advocating violent overthrow publicly? That's just plain foolish.
What I hope evolves is a culture of people who are strong and brave enough to resist predation (even if it means the use of force), while wise enough not to initiate it.
Do you have a plan for "violence used for self-defense" against force initiated upon you by government?
No, it's obviously pointless to try to resist this government with force.
Quote:
What I hope evolves is a culture of people who are strong and brave enough to resist predation (even if it means the use of force), while wise enough not to initiate it.
What you are saying makes sense. At least in the podcast I listened to Stefan Molyneux was stating that the use of force for self defense is unnecessary in the general case. That's what I was objecting to. If you want your philosophy for building better society to have any chance of being viable it needs to acknowledge reality. Wishing for a world in which a person did not need to be willing to use force for self defense just won't cut it.
It wouldn't take very much to make certain "officials" or "law enforcers" very uncomfortable on a personal level, without the use of violence, if a certain, select percentage of the population chose to get the information out there, wikileaks style.
That might be a significant deterrent, which is all that is needed to reduce the profit motive to predation.
[iHere is Robert LeFevre's classic argument (1959) for a purely free society, the essay that made him a leading, if controversial, spokesman for the libertarian position on government and society in the 2nd half of the twentieth century. He argues that government is in its essence a violation of rights, one that makes life brutal, poor, and short. He demonstrates that no government anywhere has lived up to its basic promises, and calls on all people to contribute to building a new kind of freedom.[/i]
Why all of this emphasis on political theory?
Start with my three-part organizational framework:
1) We're screwed.
2) There's gonna be a fight.
3) Let's win.
At present, we are wobbling between points 1 and 2. Very few people are thinking about winning the battle against transnational socialism, so we'll be talking more about that topic in the coming weeks.
But I think it even more important to consider a fourth point while we plan how to crush our enemies.
Let's say we pull it off, over whatever geography and time scale it takes.
What then?
We can and should talk about the foundational trilogy (DoI, USC, and BoR).
However, the fact that AmRev3 is in its opening throes suggests strongly that mere reversion to the Founders' works will not be sufficient either to secure our victory or to prevent tyranny from sprouting anew from its shattered remnants.
Hence the libertarian theory. LeFevre comes highly recommended, and it behooves those of us who will hacking away in the upcoming struggle to have a firm grounding in why we are fighting.
Killing your oppressors is both necessary and good -- but ensuring that you have done all you can to prevent their reincarnation is even more important.
Take the time to read each of LeFevre's chapters, and think how it might (or might not) soon apply to the area known as the Former United States of America.
The fact that tyranny is historically ubiquitous is not a rationale for it -- yet you're arguing as if it were.
Sushihorn wrote..
I have been extremely polite to both you and Bezzle when pointing out the abject failure of your theories and the historical bankruptcy of your beliefs. Yet you persist in constant repetition and deride those of us who've actually studied history to draw our conclusions with a variety of meaningless insults. But basically, you're no different than a Trotskyite Marxist waiting for his Workers' Paradise and for the state to fade away.
Limited government is the thing most consistent with maximum human freedom historically. Anarchism just leads to Slavery - just ask the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists.
Who were socialists, not anarchists.
Wikipedia: Anarcho-syndicalists seek to abolish the wage system...and state or private ownership of the means of production....
(Sound familiar?)
Q. How do you suppose these "anarcho"-syndicalists intend to board-up the markets and deny the right of property without establishing a tyrannical government to enforce their will at gunpoint?
-- There is 0% anarchism in anarcho-syndicalism. The coined term is just another example, among countless thousands, of context-destruction by socialists -- and you've bought into it.
Why did you buy into it? Answer: you never bothered to define your terms or the concepts behind them. "Anarchy", "government", etc -- it's all just tossed word-salad.
1) I do not go around "advocating anarchy" for the very simple reason that the word has been effectively destroyed due to the auto-reflexive Pavlovian bell-ringing response its appearance now generates (see exchange with Vegasradar on p3 of the Frog Stew thread). The socialists and nihilists (who usurped the term) and authoritarians (who self-servingly approved of their doing so: http://dwarfurl.com/3358e) have been very thorough in perverting its meaning over the last hundred-fifty years. Once a fine and noble word merely signifying opposition to -archy (being ruled, i.e., as by a tyrant), the term is now deployed as a clusterbomb to end all rational discussion concerning government excess. E.g., "....but we would have anarchy!" (when what they really meant to write was "chaotic violence", a quanta more liable to numerical analysis and comparison and contrast with, say, no-knock midnight hosedowns as a tool of terror in the arsenal of a Leviathan state).
I advocate Liberty. (I don't think that word has been destroyed. Yet.)
2. The Bill of Rights was an exceptional piece of work and, aside from the Declaration of Independence itself, arguably the most inspiring political statement in human history. But one MUST remember why the Bill of Rights was created in the first place: Alexander Hamilton and his league of Federalist crooks were hatching a monster, and Thomas Jefferson attempted to, as best he could, reign it in. The evidence of whether he was successful is all around you today.
Freedom-seeking people are going to eventually have to deal with the first ten words of Article 1 Section 8 -- because they are an anathema to liberty in principle; and the bad guys have been using A1s8 to steamroll them into serfdom ever since. Every bad thing ever done by Washington is the direct consequent result to it. It is simply impossible for such a thing to be present, and for government to simultaneously remain limited and constrained when the ability to steal is hanging there like a plump, ripe cherry for every bad man to grab at.
I have no illusions whatsoever that anything good will come of the probable mad hatter scramble of a "constitutional convention" which is likely to follow in the wake of the collapse of the Ponzistate, but something absolutely needs to be done about this -- and the pending implosion represents the best opportunity in your lifetime to do so. If you're not ready to jump in with both feet running the precise moment it wrecks, it's likely you'll miss your chance to meaningfully contribute to whatever "new & improved" thing hangs over your head for the rest of your days, let alone assertively and en mass put your foot down in declaration of an intent to be free of codified societal predation.
----- And now, for a fascinating bit of history, and related irony:
Masthead of the $1,000 bond of the Great Northern Railway, the only transcontinental railroad built without federal funds and without federally-granted land.
After the Credit Mobilier Congressional bribery scandal of 1872 finally left his corrupt and incompetent federally-funded Union Pacific and Central Pacific railway competition facing bankruptcy, Great Northern Railway founder James Jerome Hill expanded his railroad through the northern plains and northwest, and eventually established a steamship line to compliment the railroad (as the ships would carry goods delivered by rail), and trans-Pacific shipment of American goods to the Orient rose seven-fold in less than ten years around the turn of the 20th Century.
Things were looking good.... (You know what's coming next, don't you?)
Leon Czolgosz, Marxist assassin
In September 1901, Leon Czolgosz, a self-styled "anarchist" (as most proto-"Marxists" labeled themselves back prior to Marx himself becoming famous enough to have earned his own name-branded 'ism'), assassinated President William McKinley. Succeeding McKinley was his former Vice President Theodore Roosevelt -- who immediately set about initiating the so-called Progressive Era of vastly increased government intervention into all facets of social and economic life.
What did this portend to the great engines of American capitalism?
Despite the quality services and reduced costs that Hill brought to Americans, he would be unfairly lumped in with the political entrepreneurs who were fleecing the taxpayers and consumers. The public eventually began complaining of the monopoly pricing and corruption that were inherent features of the government-created and -subsidized railroads.
The federal government responded to the complaints with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which was supposed to ban rail rate discrimination, and later with the Hepburn Act of 1906 which made it illegal to charge different rates to different customers. What these two federal laws did was to outlaw Hill's price cutting by forcing railroads to charge everyone the same high rates.[21] This was all done in the name of consumer protection, giving it an Orwellian aura.
This new round of government regulation benefited the government-subsidized railroads at Hill's expense, for he was the most vigorous price cutter. His trade to the Orient was severely damaged since he could no longer legally offer discounts on exports in order to induce American exporters to join with him in entering as foreign markets. He eventually got out of the steamship business altogether, and as a result untold opportunities to export American products abroad were lost forever.
The Interstate Commerce Commission soon created a bureaucratic monstrosity that attempted to micromanage all aspects of the railroad business, hampering its efficiency even further. This was a classic example of economist Ludwig von Mises's theory of government interventionism: one intervention (such as subsidies for railroads) leads to market distortions which create problems for which the public "demands" solutions. Government responds with even more interventions, usually in the form of more regulation of business activities, which cause even more problems, which lead to more intervention, and on and on. The end result is that free-market capitalism is more and more heavily stifled by regulation.
And on top of that, usually the free market, not government intervention, gets the blame. Thus, all of the railroad men of the late nineteenth century have gone down in history as "robber barons" although this designation definitely does not apply to James J. Hill. It does apply to his subsidized competitors, who deserve all the condemnation that history has provided them. (Also deserving of condemnation are the politicians who subsidized them, enabling their monopoly and corruption.)
Thanks a lot, Leon, you stupid loser drip. You didn't single-handedly destroy forever the utility of a noble word and hasten the destruction of American liberty, but you sure did your damnedest.
So, then, to answer my own question, what is "anarchy", properly defined?
-- It is none other than the political manifestation of liberty. (E.g., similar to "capitalism is the economic manifestation of liberty".)
Pika-steph's sig wrote..
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
...was coined by none other than Claire Wolfe, a raging anarchist, and author of '100 Things to do Before the Revolution':
The point: Most everyone likes "anarchy" provided that the concept, when explained, does not involve that word. Why? Because they've been auto-conditioned to go NUTS when they see it by decades of immersion in Marxist-hijacking of the language seeped on down through the media and school systems.
So, then....
Cobra, paraphrased, wrote..
Show me a country today that is thriving under liberty.
The answer is suddenly obvious: Everywhere that people get away with it.
E.g., America throughout most of its history when government was easy to avoid.
99% of the laws all of us labor under did not exist a short one-hundred years ago.
19th century farm
Virtually 100% of everything you see in that picture (and what is going on behind the scenes) is either illegal now, or "permitted" only if the proper paperwork and fees are sent in. Houses and barns were built without zoning permits, animals were slaughtered outside of FDA guidelines, meat and eggs were sold without inspections, children were working (they called them "chores") and living in an environment with numerous safety-code violations, and being taught their ABCs by their parents rather than properly-licensed and public-salaried professionals.
-- And here I am, now, listening to great, heaping wads of people assert that liberty is an "entirely theoretical" "impossible" "utopia" -- in the one and only place on earth where a bloody revolution was fought over the very issue, and won.
Tesla
Posts: 15541
Incept: 2008-04-03
State of Disbelief
^^^ yes.
It's a sign of the total depth of the indoctrination that most people do not understand liberty AT ALL. and if they did they're not sure they like the near total self-responsibility that accompanies it.
The nanny state has become so engrained very deep in so very many that there's no real understanding of any other state.
You have a long education process to counteract that, Bezzle, but keep on...it just might get thru to more and more.
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"Even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked." -Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Neither the wisest Constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." -Samuel Adams
If you think you can't control yourself, what makes you think someone else -- himself subject to the same foibles as you are -- is up to the task of running your life for you?
An assumption of personal inadequacy is not a legitimate rationale to initiate force ("govern...") upon others.
no argument there. if you, personally, are not up to the task, there are plenty of people willing to assume the risk/reward of managing YOUR productivity.
Bohemian
Posts: 9658
Incept: 2010-07-27
California
Thanks so much, Bezzle.
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"The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice; you have owners. They own you. They own everything." - George Carlin
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